Begining of Aaruush for me --- Akshay

It was the March of 2007. I met Mahim Mehta in the Biotech canteen in lunch while i was returning from my lunch and he happened to casually ask me if i was willing to work for this event called Aaruush. I had seen the help Desk a couple of days ago in front of the canteen, i had the least idea about the event and what it was all about.
I asked Mahim about it and he explained it to me, and the next statement was "Bohot bhag daud karni hog, kar payega?". I said "Uski tension nahi hai, kaam bata"
We were in the 3rd yr of engineering and there was this sense of lack of achievement in me. I had always longed for an opportunity to pitch in and contribute to some cause, something that would give me an avenue to test my boundaries and explore my abilities, something except studies; wherein i had proved myself quite convincingly to be boundary-less (0 and infinity both are boundary-less, i leave it to you to make your choice here).
Having accepted the offer of becoming a Department Representative, i used to wait for regular updates from the organizing team (the description will be followed with soon, hang on). And i used to almost literally barge into the different classrooms and start making an announcement about the event and begin to publicize it, in an attempt to garner as much participation and motivativate the students as i could. I was known to all teachers in the department (well most all of them) and that being that, not many refused me an entry into their classes except few who knew could silence me by their stares or the very persona (including the not so positive connotation of the word,) they exuded.
I soon began getting questions from all my juniors about the event and i realized i was running short of answers to provide them with.
My department was having its own technical symposium somewhere around Jun that year and we were preparing for that too. I wanted to give that a higher priority because of its proximity of happening in the immediate future. Somewhere around Jun 8-10th the event wrapped up and i was rid of the responsibilities of the department.
I then took a break of a couple of days before barging into the Aaruush office in the Placement Cell (as we used to call it) 3rd floor, and demanded an explanation for lack of transparency in the operations. I then din't know any of the organizers, except Mahim Mehta , who was from my department. I remember not having being able to get an access to the core organizers for sometime before i finally got to this guy called Amit. I almost wanted to lamblast him for his inefficiency in making things clear and passing on the information to the lower ranks of the event.
I held myself back for the moment and i got some information but not much regarding the events, the rest of the answers were mostly "we're working on it!! "
About a week passed and i again went asking for updates and to my dismay the organizers had nothing to offer me as an update. I cracked up and let out my mouth wide open on i believe Amit and this other guys called Ankit, and also Sandeep Dhal i believe.
They had only one answer, " We're trying our best, we need volunteers but none is coming up". I offered my help right away and it was accepted just as quickly. And that day on i had an unprecedented access to the organizers' room.
Work was going on full swing and i realized that these guys were actually slogging it out but the fact that 10 guys were trying to manage an event of this scale was something completely wrong. But the dedication was inspiring. I used to leave for home at around 7.. and these guys would stick around till about 10-11, and this i know because one of the organizers was Prakash (oh another one i already knew from the organizing team).
Its funny but true that i came to know about the event more from Mahim in the beginning and from the other organizers later on, than my roommate, always. He almost made me believe that he was the "Secrecy Manager" of the team, as if to maintain all the secrets of the team whichever few he knew. reminds me of the confidentiality agreement the companies make the associates sign.The most loyal servant of the SRM body of ……. (I'll let you fill it for yourself, I'm letting you think, to ensure you don't doze off )

I was doing small things here and there, arranging somethings on the excel sheets here and there, preparing letters for sending requests to departments etc. It was a great feeling to be in an environment of work, in fact good work, of organizing something big, setting a precedent in our own institution. a feeling of giving something back to the institution.
Days passed and we marched into August. i was still the Department Representative and new people were now coming in to join the team, we had Mukund Awasthi ( who was in fact already working when i moved in), Swami ( less known as the Other Vivek) Kashif, Ajeesh, Nitin, Tarun, Ankur, Himanshu etc.
It was more buzzing now, the room, the Aaruush HQ, I'd like to call it. I came to know more of the organizers slowly and steadily. I discovered that the "guy" Amit was not just any other guy, that he along with Bikash was the one who conceived the idea of conducting the event. and the more i learnt about him, more my respect for him grew, and by the end of the year we were best of friends. After the event I also learnt that this guy was a big time 'dealer', and unfortunately i have no term in English which could substitute the emotion this word holds. Having said that the closest i can get to is probably 'blabber' a very loose term to signify that half of what you thought he was speaking was important, was actually not. Half of the reasoning you were provided by him are / were / will be useless, but your effort as a resultant of that reasoning fed to you would be exactly what he'd've wanted to extract from you.
I know its difficult, and so we'll leave it at that. For those of you who dint get a bloody iota of what i wanted to explain up there, we'll just let it be a secret we SRM and Aaruush guys share (you see, the effects of being a roommate to the 'Secrecy Manager' ???). I'm going to start naming the characters here and so The head is named "Mr.Dealer". These names however are confined only to this blog and must not under any circumstance be used outside the purview of this blog.

The next character I'd like to bring into picture would be Mr.IceBerg (Sounds like Mr.Zuckerberg from the Facebook story). Most of you must've guessed it, who else but Dua Ji. Man of few words, but important and pertinent ones. One guy who never had a "No" and "Not right now" in his dictionary throughout the event. And also the guy who knew everything about the event inside out. I somehow have a feeling he had just as good an understanding of the practical situation as Amit or Bikash or even more in some cases. A most polite, benign and affable character in the whole group. I remember Swami once asking him very seriously "Dua Ji, aap bina Sutta aur Daaru ke kaise manage kar lete hain ye sab???". Surprises me too.
He was ready to answer any and every query anywhere in the campus about Aaruush, asked by anyone, big, small, senior, junior, everyone. Extremely Humble and a pure gentleman. Unfortunate that i dint have much interaction with him during and after the event too. But we definitely hold each other in good stead and respect.

The other character i would mention here was of course the true-to-his name "Neta". Well not the usual connotation we associate the term with. Its more to do with the control the guy can achieve over a crowd and the blatancy with which he deals with people and in things he does. Iyer. One word enough to describe him ( surprising how both the Viveks were denied the privilege to respond to their first names and were instead give names which were akin to their middle or last names, Last name in case of Iyer and part of the middle name in case of Swami. Swami's actual name is VIvek Krishnaswamy Swaminathan, ya i know you're almost scrolling the horizontal bar there with your mouth wide open, that's what we south Indians are known to do to others). So Mr.Neta was one dedicated force in the house. Loud as a thunder, clear as crystal, sharp as a knife and blatant like Hitler ( i dunno why i use him as a metaphor, but bear with my mad spontaneity) I remember first seeing him walking in with Tabish with the orange posters in hand, a huge bundle of them and dumping them on the table and almost announcing to the whole bloody campus of their arrival. Sweating profusely, he demanded everyone clear the table so that he could lie there for sometime. and he dint wait for long before letting his barrel-ous body drop on the table and go plonk!!! Energy always has erupted out of him (sounds exaggerated??? meet him and you'll find my expression prosaic and underrated) We had a good partnership later on and with the 2 Viveks together its hell let loose… Its wonderful to have him carry on as a great friend and comrade even now. I'm sure the Bahrain goats are more fearful now having him arrived there, and the meat industry is flourishing more than ever.

The next character i encountered was Bikash Agarwal. My dad always used to say Baniyas are the best money managers around, having stayed in BIhar/Jharkhand for 18 yrs of my life i hadn't quite seen a practical specimen true to that definition and in college, final year i met this guy. Boy, this guy amazes me the most. I remember Neta telling me how he once asked BIkash for 20 grand to pay to the poster guy in Vadapalani. Bikash's answer was "Tu pohonch, paisa pohonch jayega". and true to his word Neta had someone waiting there with the money when he reached the place. The auditor certified his accounts and the best he'd seen. "Paisa" he was known and I'm not going to rename this guy, because nothing suits him better and nothing will. A smiling guy never worried about the money going out coming in, accounting every penny to the T. and more than just that managing and preparing the schedule of the events. The events chart was one hell of a chart i remember. Arguably the best support system of the group in financial matters. I'm sure everyone would agree that no one could've done it better than he did. Kudos to our "Paisa".

The next in line was Prakash. Well hang on. I might just cross the sarcastic decency level here while talking about this guy, for i know him more than just as an organizer,I knew him as my roommate too, Oh and MR.Secret roommate of mine.
This guy was growing his hair by the time i entered the group. And mind you he dint like the hair on his years (unlike Amitabh Bachchan) so it was necessary and eventually impulsive to push the hair behind the ears over and over again, at a frequency of about 1KHz. I wondered how there was hair left near his ears at all. with that frequency, the erosion force supplied by the fingers to push the hair, should've worked better than it did. Anyway, another striking feature of this character was the places you could find this guy in. he'd perennially be seated on the first computer you encountered on entering the room, making or editing some letter or draft and looking all so damn busy, you'd almost not wanna even look at him, lest his concentration and focus get diverted. Only later did I know the fruits he bore out of those long sittings. Neta and Dealer should know what i mean when i say "Sala aaj din bar kaam hi nahi hua". I'll leave it to them to comment on this and narrate the incident if they're demanded to. This guy also ended up 'handling' the hospitality department from the core committee side, the department for which Swami and I were responsible on the implementation level. having said that i must confess, it was mighty difficult to pull out that letter for request for hostel rooms from his computer (i now call 'that' computer as 'his' computer for obvious reasons). I almost physically held up Swami and bought him a couple of ciggies to palliate the anger for not having the permission to let the guests in the room a fortnight before the event. you owe a thanks to me Prakash, i saved your skin (hey that's like 1/3 of your body, the rest 1/3 comprising of your bones and another 1/3 your hair i.e)
and any question that came his way would never left unanswered at any cost, irrespective of whether his opinion was required or not, and whether it held any value or not. I would like to narrate an incident here. Apologies for digressing, but u might just connect with this one. Me and my other roommate were once discussing about football and were talking the cases when a red card can be handed to a player. we were discussing if a particular act could warrant a red card and this guy suddenly walks into our room out of nowhere and says, that's not a penalty. we both a look at him and go "What???" he says "you were talking bout penalties right??? i say that case will be a penalty if inside the D-Line". We ignored him and continued our discussion. It had become natural to us to ignore him even when he was relevant after sometime. a self-inflicted circumstance to him.

And so this guy had an answer for every question on earth whether he actually knew anything or not. But…. when my roommate asked him what committees were being formed and who were the heads in Aaruush, this guy suddenly had his lips sealed like those of Keanu Reeves in The Matrix. He felt it was a piece of information not to be divulged to anyone. A few more unimportant questions went unanswered between them and what followed was a song of abuses my roommate thrown at him and it ended in a ceasefire of talks between the 2 for over a fortnight. Silence…!!! Bliss…
So Mr.Loquacious Secret would be a good name but the sarcasm is more with Secret and so we'll strip of the first name and call him with the last name instead.

To Be Continued. . .