Pinto Has An Idea

by Rajeev Saxena

  ‘Okay, you are 410.’

  ‘Char sau das!’ Pinto exclaimed in Hindi so that there was no doubt in hearing what the clerk said. ‘Yes, Four One Zero, Pintoo.’ It felt like time stopped for Pinto. It was the biggest dream come true for him. Nothing else could give him more happiness.

  It was Rahul’s turn next on the phone. He learnt he hadn’t made it. He didn’t seem particularly sad.

  Pinto did not have a phone at home, so the first thing he did was to rush to give the good news to his parents in person. Who says small towns don’t have an infrastructure? By the time Pinto reached home on his bicycle, one of his friends—who had a motorbike—had already given the news to his mother and father.

  People started pouring in to congratulate the family. He was probably the only person from the whole district that year to have such a high rank in JEE. Pinto and his parents didn’t get any time to talk until that evening, and that was the time when they really felt the joy of the success.

  Success comes with responsibility. Suddenly, Pinto felt a heavy weight on his shoulders. Several junior students from his school started coming to him asking for guidance. Some of them would ask really weird questions: ‘Did you study throughout at a desk and chair, or did you lie in bed for longer hours of study? How many hours did you sleep? Were you eating a lot of non-vegetarian food? How often did you go to the temple?’

  The next thing to worry about was ragging. Pinto had heard a lot of stories about the ‘torture’ carried out by seniors by way of initiating new entrants to an institute. There was nobody in his city to guide him on how to face that kind of primitive initiation. So with that fear on his mind, he set off on a journey to a place that he believed was a temple of education. Pinto wished Lavanya could have joined him in IIT, Kanpur, but she had not been selected again. The good news was that she was selected in a state engineering entrance exam and was planning to join another state college in Kanpur.

  Pinto’s first day at IIT was interesting. From the main gate of IIT, the hostel was about 1.5 km away. Like the others, Pinto and his father took a cycle rickshaw to the hostel. He asked the rickshaw-driver, ‘I heard that most of the students in IIT speak in English.’ The rickshaw guy replied, ‘Yes, sir.’ Pinto worriedly asked himself, ‘I don’t know how to speak English. What’ll I do?’ By that time they were at the hostel gate.

  ‘Papa, why don’t you go inside and enquire about my hostel accommodation? I can’t speak English.’ Pinto was getting more jittery by the moment.

  When Pinto’s father went to see to things, a student who looked senior approached Pinto, who was still standing by the rickshaw uncertainly, beside his big steel trunk and bedroll. Pinto thought it’d be rude to ignore someone, so he smiled slightly at him.

  As if on cue, the senior boy turned ugly. ‘Mother-fucker, why are you smiling?’ he snarled. It made Pinto squirm. He tried to say something in English but couldn’t bring himself to do it, so he responded in Hindi, ‘Eise hee—just like that’.

  The senior exploded, ‘These uneducated people come from all those small cities to spoil the institute’s image.’ Pinto was shocked. ‘I burnt so much midnight oil studying, and got the all-India rank of 410.’ he wondered. ‘But these people have declared me uneducated practically on sight!’ He didn’t realize that he was merely being ‘ragged’. The senior didn’t stop. ‘These guys need to be punished till they give up and leave the institute. I’ll come tonight and fuck you!’

  Pinto was terrified by now and close to tears when another senior, who at first appeared kind-hearted, walked up and said, ‘It’s an “open” place. You will be fucked; it’s not just a fake threat. People are very open-minded here and certain relationships are very common.’

  The rickshaw-cyclist was watching all this. When the seniors left, he turned to Pinto and said, ‘Don’t worry, sir. These guys are just doing a little “majoranjan” at your expense. The rule actually is that nobody can even touch you physically.’ The rickshaw guy, who couldn’t even pronounce the Hindi word for ‘entertainment’—‘Manoranjan’—properly, seemed like an angel to Pinto. He replied with a put-on air of calm—just like any other Indian in a corruption-ridden country—‘I’m not worried. I have a lot of contacts in the hostel, you see.’ Even though Pinto sounded confident, he was anything but.

  To his surprise, nothing happened that night.

  Pinto’s father left the next day. Several other parents stayed, in the hope of ‘protecting’ their children from ragging. But the seniors were very smart. They’d intentionally pick the rooms where parents were staying and would ask the father, ‘Uncle, can we take him away for five minutes?’ How could a father say no? And then the boy was gone for four hours, moving from room to room and being ragged in turn by all.

  Several incidents were typical to ragging. A group of seniors would show up at 11:00 p.m. and gather a couple freshers together. ‘You,’ they would point to one of them, ‘go to Room 302, and you, mother-fucker,’ pointing to another, ‘go to 304 and knock on the door’. When the senior opened the door, rubbing his eyes, the fresher was supposed to say, ‘Your ass is nice,’ or ask a pointless question like, ‘Did you eat your dinner tonight?’ The senior would be left half-asleep and thoroughly annoyed with the fresher, while from the other side of the hallway, there would be uproarious laughter from the group of seniors.

  IIT administration was strict about ragging, because it had been known to get out of hand. There would be some punishments to seniors. One of the older boys, who was found guilty of harsh ragging, was given the task of cleaning the hallway regularly for fifteen days and had to have a register signed by freshers testifying to that.

  One day, one of Pinto’s close friends, Pankaj, made a childish mistake. A senior student, Vishwas, came to Pankaj’s room and started teasing him, ‘Dance like Madhuri Dixit.’ Pankaj’s act was hilarious as he never danced and certainly not in front of strangers. Vishwas clapped and came up with his next order, ‘Go to the adjacent rooms and get some more freshers. You guys need to pair up… like Madhuri Dixit and Anil Kapoor, for instance, and show that sexy dance number dhak dhak karne laga.’

  Pankaj politely said, ‘You cannot rag me after midnight as per the rule.’ Vishwas didn’t move and instead said rudely, ‘What’ll you do if I don’t leave your room?’

  Poor Pankaj didn’t have a choice. He left his room to knock on the adjacent doors. Suddenly a plan flashed in his mind.

  He took the padlock off his neighbour’s door and locked his room from the outside, leaving Vishwas locked in.

  And to make it even worse, Pankaj threatened, ‘I’m calling the warden.’ It really was against the rules to rag someone after midnight, and the senior would have gotten a severe punishment if reported. Viswas was afraid, but threatened in his turn, ‘Pankaj, don’t do that, nobody does that. It’ll have bad consequences. You are taking a big risk.’

  And all hell broke loose. Several seniors and juniors came out of their rooms, understood what was going on, and started asking where the key was. Pankaj innocently told them he had been scared and had thrown the key out of the window. From inside the room, a scared Vishwas was pleading with them to open the door.

  Finally, somebody broke open the lock and let Vishwas out. It was worth the fiasco, seeing him panic. A senior joked, ‘Vishwas, were you ragging or were you being ragged?’ Pankaj suddenly became a hero among his classmates but he still had to pay the price for it. A clique of seniors boycotted Pankaj for almost six months. If Vishwas’s batchmate was eating next to Pankaj in the hostel mess, he’d be loud in his sarcasm, ‘Guys, eat well, don’t leave any food on your plate, no talking, no jokes. “Sir” is here. If you don’t behave well, he’ll complain to the warden.’ In the reading room, they created banners in big, bold letters announcing: ‘“SIR” IS HERE! BEHAVE!’ Whenever Pankaj entered, they’d raise the banners above their heads and sneer at him.

  IIT kept Pinto very busy. After almost two months, he got time to visit Lavanya in H
BTI, Kanpur. Once in a while, Pinto and Lavanya went for dinner but nothing more than that. Pinto never took the relationship seriously. He also met Lavanya’s in-laws a couple of times. It was impressive that they always referred to Lavanya as their daughter and had, by that time, broken all their ties with their son. Their son Asim didn’t seem to care either, and never visited them again.

  Pinto’s roommate, Ved, would often tease him about Lavanya. Pinto would unhesitatingly reply, tongue-in-cheek, ‘Yes! My stomach flips when she is around and the mere thought of her makes my heart skip a beat!’ Ved soon got tired of teasing him.

  Pinto found his first two years in IIT really boring from an academic perspective. There was so much weight placed upon theoretical knowledge that it was hardly any fun. Ved and Pinto would often share their thoughts about the IIT experience. Ved would say, ‘My grandfather thinks a mechanical engineer would know every nut and bolt in a car. Though a lot of people still mix up the job of an auto mechanic with the job of a mechanical engineer, I feel IITians lack practical knowledge and don’t produce good engineers.’

  Pinto disagreed. ‘It is easier to become an engineer, in practice,’ he’d argue, ‘than work as a researcher of complex theoretical concepts. There is so much focus on theory, as well as a wide variety of courses, so that every student can develop an expanded mind capable of visualization and imagination. Those are the characteristics that make IITians fit for any kind of job.’

  Ved was not convinced. ‘I’m waiting for my third year when there is some real focus on a practical project. I heard that we’ll build machines in the same way an engineer would build them.’

  Pinto was immediately curious. ‘That’s the fun in doing mechanical engineering. I think we need to start thinking now of what to build,’ he said, concentrating furiously on the task ahead.

  Ved was not that worried. ‘Yes, it’d better if we did,’ he said laconically. ‘It doesn’t have to be an innovative piece but the machine has to be a demonstration of engineering excellence, which is judged on whether the design is done correctly, how the machining-together of individual parts is done, and whether the assembly works as per design or not. Typically, a team of three students would work on a project.’

  Ved, Pinto and a youngster called Shyamal made one team.

  They decided to create a water pump with an off-centric rotor. Just like any other pump, the idea was that it would take water from a source and expel it from the other side with more pressure. The rotor divided the cylindrical pump body into two chambers. One chamber had the water inlet. The water collected in that chamber was pushed to the other chamber by the off-centric rotor. This second chamber had an outlet where the water was released with pressure. The plate which separated the body of the pump into two chambers had to move up and down with the rotor and had to seal the chambers while the rotor was in motion. The plate was placed in a small rectangular steel housing supported by two springs. The springs were welded onto the bottom of the housing.

  Shyamal noticed, ‘Dude! Sometimes, these springs snap. If that happens at the time of exam, we are gone. Pinto, you are Mr Innovative. Can you think of something?’

  Pinto remembered the corn machine he had invented when he was young—which he was still really proud of. ‘Oh, yes,’ he thought, ‘we can use springs in the same manner I used in the corn machine!’ He explained to his team of three, ‘Let’s try this. Drill a hole in the sliding plate and insert a rod passed through the spring. With the additional support of those rods, the springs will never snap.’

  ‘Eureka! Eureka!’ his teammates teased him. ‘You have to shed your clothes to say that word.’ Their classmates laughed.

  EIGHT

  T

  he look of the institute changed entirely when the annual inter-college festival called ‘Antaragni’ took place. Everyone dressed in their best, and fairy lights were strung over the tree and walls and even the gates. And there was music everywhere. Unfortunately, the ratio of girls to boys was very unbalanced in IIT, with around 15 girls in a batch of more than 300 students. During the Antaragni festival, various girls’ colleges around the country were also invited—which the boys in the institute considered a mercy. All the arrangements were done by the students themselves. Ved was cultural secretary so on his shoulders rested the responsibility to make the festival successful.

  Ved, Pinto and Shyamal would sit in the hostel canteen and strategize over the arrangements. Ved was relieved that some of his duties had made headway, ‘I’ve formed all the groups… stage decoration, audio, publicity and photography. Haven’t decided about hospitality, though.’

  Pinto giggled, ‘Anybody will be ready for hospitality. Why worry about that?’

  Shyamal, who didn’t have much experience at this sort of thing, asked, ‘Why?’

  Ved was surprised, ‘Are you silly? Don’t you know hospitality folks get time to spend with all the girls coming from different colleges? They go to the railway station to pick them up and then act as their exclusive guides for four whole days. I’d love to do the job but if I do, everybody will accuse the cultural secretary of misusing power.’

  Pinto was confident, ‘That’s a sweet problem to solve. We’ll figure it out. Let’s get back to work.’

  Antaragni turned out to be a great success. When it wound up, Ved, Shyamal and Pinto were sitting in the canteen again, this time with an air of relief. Pinto asked, ‘Hey, Shyamal, which show did you like the best?’

  Shyamal was a sophisticated guy. ‘Usha Uthup was good,’ he said airily. ‘And I was amazed that mere students could put up all those fantastic classical music performances. Some of them were just like professionals!’

  Ved had a different opinion. ‘More than talent, I liked the creativity. Did you watch the comic skit by the gang from IITK?’

  Pinto smiled. ‘Critics would say it was cheap.’

  Ved agreed halfway. ‘Sure, but you need creativity to think that simply and come up with double-meaning dialogue… and that also very quickly based on what’s happening in Antaragni.’

  Shyamal, who was listening to them patiently, couldn’t hide his curiosity. ‘Tell me what it was. I missed it. What was the plot?’

  ‘Order a coffee for me,’ said Ved, ‘and I’ll tell you the story’.

  ‘Okay. Start now.’

  ‘Do you remember those bold and sexy girls with short dresses from Andy College in Delhi? What a great fashion show they did last time?’

  ‘They are generations ahead of us.’

  ‘So how could we spare them a trick this time? The scene was like this:’

  ‘Monika gets off the train at Kanpur railway station along with her friend, Shaily.’

  ‘Monika asks Shaily, “Hey, did you pack all the ‘magazines,’ you know what I mean?”

  ‘“Yes, I did,” responds Shaily.

  ‘“What about that carton of Marlboro?”

  ‘Shaily again says, ‘‘Yes, can’t live without them.”

  ‘Oh, one more thing, the Black Label? It’d be difficult to get it in Kanpur, you know.’

  ‘Of course, how could I forget that?’ Shaily confirms. ‘Suddenly she exclaims, (here, Saurabh changed his voice to a high treble) “Omigod, omigod, omigod, shit!”

  “What?” Monika asks, innocently.

  Shaily says, “I forgot to pack the clothes!’’

  Ved got up, ‘Coffee is over and so is the skit. Let’s get back to studies.’

  NINE

  F

  or several ‘topper’ engineering students, humanities and theoretical management subjects were really tough, so there were some students who’d play pranks on professors of these subjects, although such tricks were more or less rare. One of Pinto’s classmates, whose nickname was Champ, did a funny thing once. He knew he was failing a management course so, after completing his final exams, shameless Champ went to his professor’s house and broke down crying. ‘Sir,’ he sobbed, ‘I couldn’t do well in the course as my father had been sick for the
last six months. If I fail, I’ll have to spend another six months in the institute. My family isn’t well off, so they won’t be able to support my education for another six months, and I won’t be able to complete my degree. Sir, please save me, do something!’

  Professor Verma melted, asked him to write a research paper again and passed him on it, although with a bad grade, but at least ensuring Champ didn’t have to repeat the course.

  After a few weeks, there was a conference of small-scale industries in IIT Kanpur. Professor Verma was one of the main organizers of the event. One entrepreneur read out a paper about the positive impact of local suppliers on quality and delivery for his business. It was a local company making electric heaters and supplying them countrywide. Professor Verma was very impressed with his paper and requested, ‘I’d like to get some more data for performing further research on it.’

  Email and Internet were not yet available in those days, and the only way to provide data was on an old-style floppy disk which could store a ‘massive’ 1.2 mb of data. Professor Verma was in a hurry and offered to have the disk picked up from the entrepreneur’s office.

  The entrepreneur said, ‘My younger brother Champ studies here so I’ll send it through him.’ He felt proud to be associated with an IIT professor, especially when his own brother was a student there under him.

  Professor Verma was taken aback. All he could say was, ‘Champ is your brother?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the entrepreneur said with pride. He had no idea about his brother’s deception.

  When he got back from the conference Professor Verma called Champ to take him to task for inventing his poverty, but thick-skinned Champ insisted on arguing, ‘Financial position is a relative concept, sir, and just because my family owns a factory doesn’t mean they have a lot of money. We are “not well off” doesn’t mean we have to beg to eat, but it does mean we have difficulty maintaining expenses, which includes those on my studies.’