Because Shit Happened

by Harsh Snehanshu

  Little did I know that when she became a part of our discussion, she was going to become part of every discussion that was to happen thereafter. Her entry into our discussion was her entry into our venture. Though I must also add that she was creative, had some really whacky ideas, which sometimes didn’t fit in the business side of things, but occasionally outshined others.

  A week passed by and as Anjali seeped into the top tier of our organization, I started getting more worried. Rishabh had been spending more and more time with her, which alarmed me.

  ‘Dude, is there something cooking between Anjali and you?’ We were sitting in our hostel mess. The question made him cough.

  ‘Do you want water?’

  ‘No. The answer to both your questions,’ he said irritably.

  ‘Okay. There was no need to feel offended about it,’ I mumbled.

  ‘I’m not offended. It’s just that we are really good friends.’

  ‘You have been spending too much time with her lately,’ I said, without any prior thinking.

  ‘Yes, we have been discussing about YourQuote all throughout.’

  ‘Okay, that’s cool,’ I said, despite knowing that it was not cool. It was our venture. All the discussions about the venture should be done with me being present. But I didn’t say a thing to him.

  ‘You sound sad. What happened honey?’ I had called up Priya to tell her about Anjali.

  ‘You know the reason why I haven’t involved you in the venture?’ I told Priya.

  ‘Yes, because you don’t want someone to replace Rishabh in your discussions about the venture. You have told me that several times. Don’t spoil your mood because of it.’

  I hung up a few minutes later, relieved I had Priya to share my thoughts with.

  Last week of April, 2010

  April passed by in the wink of an eye. Though Rishabh and I tried our best to find a developer, we could not find anyone in campus. Exams were nearing and no one was ready to take part with novice entrepreneurs like us at the helm. Tired, helpless, and desperately waiting for xIncubator to set our wheels in motion, we decided to pay heed to academics for the time being. We disengaged ourselves from our entrepreneurial avatars and began preparing for the exams.

  I was happy to observe that Rishabh had reduced his interactions with Anjali. On one of the days when we were studying together, I probed.

  ‘Hey, I am seeing you at the hostel quite often these days. Has there been a problem between you and Anjali?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, I’m getting worried. Last week, Anjali’s roommate told me that she cries every night for me. It is just friendship between us as far as I’m concerned, but it turns out that she has fallen in love with me. That’s why I have stopped thinking about her altogether.’

  ‘Why does it make you worried?’ I asked.

  ‘Come on, I am not eager to go out with her. I had made it clear to her that I, having already been through three relationships, want to now only date a super-hot bombshell. That is enough of a hint not to come near me, isn’t it? After all, I have my own personal choices,’ he said.

  ‘Is it all about the looks?’

  ‘No, it isn’t…’ he fumbled, failing to complete his sentence.

  ‘Hmmm, moreover she is too young,’ he uttered after a lot of thinking. ‘She is just in her first year, straight out of school from a small town in UP.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ I said.

  Till the time Rishabh kept a safe distance from her, I was happy. But destiny wanted otherwise.

  The exams were over by May 6. Unlike our pursuits, we both landed up with an average grade B in Entrepreneurial Management. Frustrated, I had put up a status: ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover and a man by his grades’, which fetched a 100 likes to soothe my disappointment.

  As soon as we got free from our classes, Rishabh scheduled a meeting with a few of his juniors who worked with him in SAC. I introduced the concept of YourQuote to them. They all liked it. We included three of the juniors into the team: Animesh Bansal, Bhaskar Jain, and Shweta Khandelwal. All of them had just passed their first year and were spending two months at IIT to finish a summer project in Computer Science which didn’t require too much effort from them.

  Our team had become bigger. We were six people from IIT and two from NIFT. Rishabh included his ex-girlfriend Bhavika from Jesus & Mary College, who was for some reason still interested in him. Bhavika was already working with a prominent automobiles company as a marketing executive, and going by her credentials, we made her the Marketing Lead with the task of fetching T-shirt orders from colleges. Our little recruitment drive spread like wildfire in the campus and we started seeing more and more juniors willing to be a part of it. Another junior from IIT, Armaan, who was a reader of my novel, joined us after he got to know that it was my venture.

  By May 10, we were a team of ten people. We called it the Core Team, with C and T in capitals, and we organized our first meeting where we created the timeline to put things into perspective. Keeping in mind May 20, when xIncubator’s result would come out, we had targeted to launch the website by June 5. In the meanwhile, I was going to manage the technical development along with social media; Rishabh, along with Bhavika, Armaan, and Anjali, was to take care of the marketing division.

  Just as I was about to finish the presentation, Rishabh introduced a new member to all of us. Shikha Gupta—a straight faced girl with heavy spectacles and ill-fitted clothes. While we cracked a few jokes on her and laughed like dogs, she remained unfazed. It seemed as though she had been coercively dragged into the gathering.

  I signalled Rishabh to ask her to speak. She had somehow spoiled the cohesiveness of the gang. Rishabh shrugged, expressing that he had no idea about why Shikha was so silent. She was a year junior to us, had just started designing, and used to paint earlier. She joined as an assistant designer, under our Chief Designer Ruchi, who was from NIFT. Once the introductions were over, we hit the discotheque. The toughest phase of building a team was finally over and we were glad to realize that all it took was the deadly exams to end. It was time to party. Though Shikha was not interested, Rishabh took her to a side and persuaded her to come along.

  We went to Vasant Vihar, which was quite near to our institute. To promote interaction, mixing, and friendship, we broke into groups of two with people we knew the least in the group. I was clubbed with Anjali, Armaan was clubbed with Bhavika, and Rishabh with the lost and confused Shikha. We proceeded to Vasant Vihar in different autos.

  We partied all day long, but it cost us 5,000 rupees.

  ‘Damn, we wasted a lot of money,’ I said while returning.

  ‘It’s an investment, don’t you see?’ Rishabh said.

  ‘We haven’t even started earning with the venture.’

  ‘We will, very soon,’ he assured me.

  We finally started with web development. We used a Content Management System (CMS) named Drupal to make the basic version. Out of the three junior developers, Animesh, was the best. He was diligent, sincere, and really quick. Though I didn’t have any interest when it came to coding, but since I had a mental picture of the website ready, I chose to guide them.

  On May 12, as a token of their involvement, we printed fifty business cards for each of our team members and handed them over. I still remember the pride on their faces when the first held their cards with flashy designations like Marketing Executive, Chief Developer, Strategy Lead etc.

  Rishabh and my cards carried our pre-decided designations: Co-founder-Director. We had got something to boast about. I had stuck the business card on my hostel room door, while Rishabh chose to keep his cards hidden in his pocket wallet. There was another development taking shape during the after examination phase—Rishabh had once again started spending a lot of time with Anjali, which bugged me to no end, since most of the times when I would to go to have a quick brainstorming session in his room at night, he would never be around. I changed my designation on Facebook from Student at IIT Delhi to Co-found
er, Director at yourquote.in.

  On May 13, 2010, I created the page called yourquote.in, just to enable us to add it as our employers. Little did I know that this page would become our face to the world. I didn’t post anything for the first few days, as I had no idea what to post. I just added a description which said:

  YourQuote is a networking-cum-crowdsourcing website intended to tap surges of creativity in common people by creating a network of people who are good with words (especially one-liners), providing them with customizable space to record and host their creativity, and giving them an opportunity to get incentives for the same by branding for clients, merchandizing, and other avenues.

  As soon as I added it as an employer, it created some curiosity among my friends and readers. They all started asking me about it, about my future plans with it, and so on. The newly found attention seemed mesmerizing. The pride of being an entrepreneur captivated me. It gave me a better opinion of myself, better than even being a writer did.

  On May 15, I joined my internship in a renowned government defence organization that was to take most of my time for the following two months. The only good thing about the internship was that Pratik was my co-intern and the office was in Lucknow Road. Priya’s PG was at a five-minute walking distance from the organization.

  Every day after the internship, our trio—Priya, Pratik, and I—would attack all the famous eating points in Kamla Nagar, the bustling market of North Campus. Right from the delicious momos at the end of the lane, to Momo Point and QD’s in the side alleys, to Udupi—we raided all of them. The best part of the evening food raid was standing in front of book-stalls and seeing my books displayed on the stalls. If I saw any girl browsing through my book, I would suddenly appear and say, ‘Hey, I’m the author of that book you are holding.’ While some girls went gaga, others exhibited controlled indifference.

  Priya was done with her semester and had no internship at hand. On May 17, she left for home, promising that she would be back soon and making me promise to not call her all throughout, thanks to her conservative Jat parents who would have grounded her if they found out that she even had a guy friend, forget a boyfriend.

  ‘Is there something going on between Anjali and Rishabh?’ Pratik asked me in college.

  ‘No. Why do you ask?’

  ‘She leaves our dramatics team outings for him. I have never seen her do that in the past, since dramatics had always been a priority for her.’

  ‘I have no idea. Rishabh didn’t tell me anything about it. All I know is that they are good friends.’

  ‘Good friends don’t stick to each other so much,’ Pratik retorted.

  I had no clue. I came back to the hostel and was glad to find that Rishabh was in his room. But I soon found out that he was there just to share some bad news.

  ‘You know what? One of my school friends, Atul Mehta from IIT Kanpur, had also cracked xIncubator. He has already made it through,’ Rishabh said nervously.

  ‘What? How’s that possible? They were to announce the results on May 20,’ I said in shock.

  ‘That’s what I asked him. He said they had already informed the ones who were sure shot winners.’

  ‘Which means that we are not?’

  ‘Obviously. I told you that we were not good,’ Rishabh pointed out. I had never felt this low before. I had left my goddamned foreign internship for this.

  ‘Hmm, let’s wait till the 20th and see,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, let’s wait, but I seriously doubt us making it.’

  Only I know how I passed the next two days. There were sleepless nights accompanied by long strolls in the cricket ground, thinking about the forthcoming rejection. My ambitions had never felt so frightened thinking about the future. I had always been a man of the present. Consciously, restlessly, and doubtfully, I waited.

  May 20

  ‘You jerk! Where the hell have you been? Why didn’t you pick up my call?’ she whispered.

  ‘Umm, I was sleeping, I bunked my internship today. Where are you? Why are you speaking in such a low voice?’

  ‘Silly, I’m in the loo.’

  ‘If you are in the loo, then do the things that you went there for. Why are you calling while attending to nature’s call? Yuck. Can’t you do one thing in peace?’ I sleepily yelled.

  ‘Dumbass. I am not attending to anything. My Mom’s home. I just called to ask about xIncubator. Today is 20th; the result was about to come today. Have you forgotten?’

  ‘Damn! Sorry, I need to check. Hold on.’

  ‘I have to rush out. I’ll come online in a while. Let me know then,’ she said.

  ‘Sure,’ I sprang up from my bed and rushed to my laptop. Never before had I been so swift in getting out of bed.

  Refresh. Refresh. Refresh. There were just three mails—all three of them being praise mails from readers of my first book. For the first time, they didn’t make me happy. I was infuriated, saddened, and as I waited, Rishabh walked into my room. He was brushing his teeth.

  ‘We are done,’ he exclaimed upon seeing my morose face. His words were muddled by the toothbrush. He went to the washroom, spat, and returned with a clearer voice, saying, ‘No mail, right?’

  ‘No. Maybe, we are done. Shouldn’t they at least send a rejection mail?’ I asked.

  ‘They should, but I don’t know whether they will today itself.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘I was thinking maybe we should start with this after placements are over. If we don’t get selected by xIncubator, we would have nothing great to boast about in our resumes. We are already in IIT-Delhi, other IIMs don’t have such a reputed program, and competitions held by other institutes don’t have so much prestige.’

  ‘Hmmm, maybe you are right. What should we do? Call it off?’

  ‘Yes, I guess so. Continuing would be an unwise choice given the circumstances.’

  ‘I’m glad that we haven’t made any public announcements yet. The posters have still not been put up,’ I rejoiced.

  ‘Hmm,’ he said and went out.

  Was it really over? I thought. There was no response inside my head. It stood still as if waiting for a ghastly storm to strike. I waited for the mail the entire day while Rishabh chose to spend that time with Anjali. Interestingly, I didn’t feel bad about that anymore. I had accepted defeat. I also got angry with Priya during our online chat session when she messaged me saying ‘Don’t worry’. I found that very insincere because in my place, not worrying wasn’t possible. I had spent more than a year on that very idea—I couldn’t let it fall off. It couldn’t end it in a snap.

  The mail didn’t come. Nor did any call. It was over. It needed another sleepless night to bring me face to face with what had happened.

  May 21

  I lazily got up at eight o’clock the next morning. Languidly, I slogged ahead to the loo, put a thin layer of toothpaste on the dry bristles and brushed as slow as possible, not letting my teeth wake up from their slumber. My eyes remained closed for most of the time, partly in sleep and partly in dreams. There was somebody in the washroom who broke my concentration spell with his terrible singing. Wary of letting my sleepy mood get destroyed, I rushed back to my room with the brush held between my molars and as customary, I turned on my laptop and logged into my mailbox.

  Two heavy streaks of tears dropped down my eyes and kissed my toothpaste-laced lips. I started sobbing. It was the mail that I thought would never arrive in my mailbox.

  Hi Amol,

  Congratulations!

  Thanks for your patience during the xIncubator process. We really enjoyed interacting with you and believe that we can help you in your endeavour to make YourQuote into a growing concern and a big company!

  Sanjay has decided to fund you for xIncubator program and I will send you the term sheet on his behalf by 24th. Feel free to call us in case of any doubts.

  Meanwhile, we will get back to you on the next steps (apart from getting back to us on the agreement) by tomorrow.

 
Thanks,

  Praneet

  Crying, I ran into the corridor to find Rishabh. He was sleeping. I banged on his door with my fist. Upon hearing the noise, three other batchmates came out of their rooms but Rishabh was still asleep. After two minutes of continuous vociferation, Rishabh finally opened the door and I embraced him tightly. He drowsily asked me what had happened.

  I screamed, ‘Rebirth! We cracked xIncubator.’

  We both howled like wild foxes and our smiles outgrew our faces. It was a new beginning for us, it relinquished our faith, it pushed us into believing that our journey meant to be on the road for a longer time.

  I came back to my room and informed my parents who had little idea about what entrepreneurship was all about. But I tried, nevertheless.

  ‘Dad, pranam. I have won a contest in IIM-Ahmedabad. They have invited us for a ten days’ workshop in management.’

  ‘Amazing. I’m really proud of you.’

  ‘Yes, it’s indeed one of my best achievements.’

  ‘Will it help you secure a better job?’ my father asked.

  I thought for a while, and answered, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Great. I’ll distribute sweets in my office. Do go to a temple and offer sweets.’

  Gratitude is best experienced when it can be credited to someone who deserves more attention than our egos. Despite my parents being extremely religious, I visited temples only when I was forced into accompanying them. But it was the first time I went to the Hanuman Mandir just outside the campus by myself and offered half a kilo of laddoos.

  We announced with a great pride on Facebook about our selection at one of India’s most prestigious internet start-up incubation programs and the news took our seniors and batchmates by storm. Congratulatory messages flooded our News Feed. Even Priya, upon reading the good news on Facebook, called me and chatted with me for half an hour pretending to be talking to a female friend of hers with lots of ‘Kya kar rahi ho?’ and ‘Kab ja rahi ho?’ so her parents wouldn’t suspect a thing.