The Kadak Chronicles: Beti ki kahani

Right at the outset, when I added color to my language, I started off with the abuses of the Maa-behen persuasion.  It was a logical beginning seeing that I was a very well spoken kid who rarely (if ever) conversed in any language but english.  Gradually, I added a lot of diverse words in multiple dialects which were suitable for a wide range of emotions ranging from pure ecstasy to abject misery.  My vocabulary was something I was proud of.  I owed a lot of my proficiency to the kids playing cricket at Hari Om Nagar as I’m pretty sure, I would never have heard of Aichi Kombdi without their help.  (Respect)

Coming to Infosys’ Mysore DC, I was well aware that my already vast vocab would be widening it’s horizons with the influx of pigments from multiple cities and languages.  A month into the life, I have friends from almost every demographic in the country, every direction on the compass and I have picked up a lot of the beautiful poetry that were otherwise restricted by boundaries of state and region.

Plenty of friends from Macha-land have joined us in symbiosis where we trade our gifts of the gab.  A lot of words have added themselves to the list for eg: Taioli, Tevdya, Kena Punda. (You want to know what they mean? Go to Chennai and shout them out loud at some busy junction.)

The most colorful and entertaining character though, is this guy from Bengal (whose real name was a mystery for 3 weeks, in the course of which we named him after his favorite abuse),  Betichod. Maa? Behen?  Passe.  Beti is in.  Paedo ka zamaana hai.

A real live wire, happy-go-lucky to the core, I have a little fact-list which should give the reader a good idea of what the guy is like.

Day 1:  Finds out that his room is right next to the smoking zone.  Conducts a recce of the room and finds out all smoke detectors.

Day 2:  Makes acquaintance with all sutta-loving people in the building.

Day 3: unleashes Betich** upon the world.

Day 7: Manages to conk the smoke detector.  Starts smoking in the room.

Interim days:  Invites other people to borrow smokes and lights from his room.

Day 21:  Flunks the first Bridge program.

Day 24: Caught copying in the retest.  Flunks again.

During the lunch break on the day after the test, myself, a friend of mine who we’ll just call Roy and beti himself were waiting at the counter for a glass of juice.  Beti unleashes another few pearls of wisdom.

Verbatim:

“Mere baap ko pata nahi aankhon ke saamni kaunsi patti laga rakhi hai.  Lagta hai apna baccha bahut honhaar hai.  20 saal me kabhi kuch ukhaada nahi, fir bhi lagta hai mere bete me talent pada hai.  ABCD me first nahi aya, Infosys me kya ghanta aaoonga?”

Another one of the brilliant characters in the setup is one of our very own, Naresh Kumar a.k.a Kadak  a.k.a Thakur Kadak Singh.  Names are deceptive.  The guy is anything but Kadak.  Tamilian by birth, Agri by association, bewda by choice.  This is a list of Kadak’s achievements:

Day 1: Wow, Infy is cool.

Day 2: Have to walk a lot.

Day 3: We can smoke in the bathrooms.  Laaaaay Bhaaari. (Marathi slang for insane.)

Day 7: Wine shop only 2 km away.  Love the system in Karnataka.

Day 8: Puke in food court and then explain how you went to Shila your Su.

Day 9-29:  Sneak out of campus and down one quarter every day.

The guy gives the word Stone-age a whole new definition.

Amidst such brilliant characters, I’m pretty sure, 6 months will be a piece of cake.  Life is productive, fun and I am for the first time, NOT jobless.  We make win here everyday, in various forms.  The Infy intranet belongs to Trinity, Alpha, Delta, Charlie, Tango and Dragon with SGT Shera abusing every other member now and then, we own the Gazebo and the Banyan, and we own the Atrium.  Ownage and stone-age.  That is what success stories are made of.  Shiv Khera, shake THIS.