Stratagem '04

Ok, so for the last few days, I was outta Delhi. I went to Kanpur, IIT Kanpur to be precise. They were having their annual tech fest and I went there to participate in Computer gaming event called Stratagem '04. Until today, I wasn’t sure wat was the meaning of the name Startagem and as I was updating BLOG, I looked on dictionary.com and found the real meaning located at http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=stratagem. Nice name I must say.

25th Feb. 04
Today was the day when we were supposed to leave for Kanpur. I got the reservations a day earlier. Me, Ashish Anand and Aditya Takiar were supposed to go to Kanpur. Kunal was already in Luck now and he said he would reach there by himself.

Anyways the day started at around 4 A.M. with me getting ready for leaving to the Railway Station. The train was scheduled to leave at 6:30 A.M. Took an auto from here and shared it with some ass who said that you don't have to reserve the seats for going to Kanpur. I didn’t notice it them when he said it but I realized it later. Ok reached the station at around 6 and called Adi and asked him when he’s reaching there. I confirmed the platform the train was arriving on. Adi came at around 6:05 and we went into the station and as usual started hunting for people. Ashish also came soon and we realized the train was about 2 hours late. So we spent those 2 hours playing Chess, Eating and talking about strategies about Q3 and CS.

Ok the wait was finally over and the train arrived. It was a sight of horror to see about 300 Bihari lining up in front of the doors of the coach that was supposed to be reserved for us. Anyways I instantly knew that there was going to be some fight with those unbathed-for-dunno-how-many-days biharis. I finally managed to get hold of the door and I was struck between a lady and her kid and a Bihari. Had to kick and hurt a Bihari in order to help the lady get it. Finally I was in after struggling for 15 minutes. Reached the berth that was supposed to be reserved to me and saw HUGE metal trunks lined up there. Anyways Adi also reached the place and finally when the train was about to move, Ashish also made it. We thanked god that we were alive and started settling. We were amazed to saw how biharis would smoke bidis, won't bath, spit wherever they fancy, sit anywhere they want. We had to verbally abuse biharis and made sure that we didn’t have anyone else seating on our berths. We occupied the top three ones in a compartment. And the best is yet to come; Ashish found out that he has lost his purse when he was trying to board the train. It had around 2000 bucks, his driving license, petro card, college I card etc. We were sad for him and he was looking as if he was given a shock of his life. To my amazement I found out that my wallet was also missing. I mean I am one of those people who would take care of things and be careful but I lost it. I had around 500 odd in there. BAD beginning. We even thought of getting down and returning home. Adi was laughing at all this time. Bloddy Takki. Damn the journey. It was like hell. It was HOT in the train and I had to take my shirt off and all. There were biharis all around me and they were smoking and made journey even more miserable.

Finally we reached Kanpur at around 4 in the evening. As soon as we came outa station, there were about 15 Rickshaw wallas around us asking where we wanted to go and there were few auto wallas that were asking if we wanted to go to IIT etc. They were charging 100 bucks and they said get a "parchi" form Prepaid booth and etc etc. We walked outta station and finally after negotiating a bit we managed to get an auto for just 60 bucks. And I was wondering if auto wallah is ready for 60 bucks, they how come the Sarkaari Prepaid booth is asking for 100 bucks. So we finally boarded the auto and we set off for the IIT.

The roads (if I can have the liberties to call em road) were BAD. As bad as they could get. I don't remember traveling on as bad roads. I felt like I was dirt biking. The auto driver was I guess on a suicide mission. He would scare the hell outta me every time he overtook any other vehicle. Also I guess it was compulsory for him to abuse every driver he went pass. Was a fun trip. So after around 40 minutes of dirt biking we were there in front of the IIT Gate. Sign of relief.

More to come soon.