Sunday 15 September 2013

Bhubaneswar Diaries

After my JEE counselling and seat allotment, internet told me it’s IIT Bhubaneswar where my destiny lies. With high hopes, I set out for the city of Bhubaneswar.  A city relatively unknown to me. A city with no acquaintances or relatives. A city unknown, language unknown, culture unknown. To be frank, I landed up here as a complete alien. The only thing that I had with me was my admission letter and broken Hindi. The story begins here. Transformation. Rather, Evolution.

I would like to give a small rewind to my childhood. I would like to break it into three parts... Born to a hardcore leftist family, I grew up hearing ballads of communist heroics. Baptized in leftism, the whole atmosphere was such that we were all part of the revolution to change the entire system and to create a socialist paradise. That’s the political part. The next part is food. Back home, a week's diet had a wide range of delicacies. From prawns, fish, beef, chicken, vegetables....well that’s a long list. Vegetables and fish have a really long sub lists within them. And the best part, at least for me, was the coconut oil that gave aroma and flavour to all the food I had in my life. The last and final part. The freedom I was in search of. To think freely, act freely, live freely. 

Now about the twist in my life. It’s a 360 degree twist. I came here expecting a twist but the twist was worse than what even Christopher Nolan could imagine. For the dinner, a plate ended up before me leaving me the choice of what to eat. Everything smelled different and even tasted different. Then the twist begins. To the comments that food smelled and tasted differently, I got a stunning reply" I have heard that you cook with hair oil". Then came to fact that coconut oil is not a universal oil. I started lamenting about having no beef for months, which was not even available in a thousand kilometre radius.  Non-vegetable became ‘only chicken’. 

In the political part, I met people who had no clue about Che (Guevara). Back home, he was god. For people who still have never heard of Che, he is a famous Latin American revolutionary, respected and admired across the world. Che was hailed as messiah of the downtrodden. Now they are asking who is Che? All the ideology that I lived for turned out to be completely alien stuff for the majority. Some people even laughed at me. Even now they do that. 

After all these twists, I started living the life enjoying the twists within. But in plain English, we all have twists within our destiny.  It’s a great experience to wonder about the twists in life; especially when you write about it in the later part of your life.


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