A night-out at IIM-Lucknow..

The bus from Kanpur dragged its bit out. The place I had to get down was Aal-Baal. Or that is what I got of the name, Alambagh. Lucknow was just 84 km from Kanpur and yet it takes two hours to reach the place. It was a bumpy ride and I could reason out why Uttar Pradesh is still in the BIMARU list. The rail connectivity between two important cities of the state was good, but the trains are never on time. Road connectivity was haywire. I saw railways crossings, like the ones in Bhurkhamunda village in Orissa, in NH25 connecting Kanpur and Lucknow. Construction of flyovers was on, but Gammon India would need their time to construct, maintain and collect their toll taxes.

Nevertheless, Aal-Baal came. Oops, Alambagh. It was a crowded market place and reminded me of Chandi Chowk, Delhi. Fighting all odds against the traffic, my friend Pratap finally got there to spot me. Vroom as we went and he showed me the railway station upfront. Trust me; it was one of the most beautiful Mughal architectures. It took my breath away, though my fellow Lucknow-ites where just whizzing past me, oblivious to the marvel, embellishing the place with pan flavoured red juice. As a part of the ritual, I had to pay my visit to Tunday Kababi at Aminabad. I never knew that, kebabs could actually melt. These Tunday kebabs, they did. Before we knew that it was 2000 hrs, 3 plates of kebabs vanished down our throats.

Pratap, then, told me of his plans of visiting the Janpath of Lucknow. On our way to the Janpath, one thing I noticed about Lucknow, reiterated by Pratap, was that the traffic signals at Lucknow do not work. Except the one I found in a busy market area. The signal near Vidhan Sabha did not work and so did the one near the Janpath of Lucknow. When I entered the Dr. Bhimarao Ambedkar Smarak in Gomati Nagar, I realized that it was not Janpath. It was Jannat. Elephant statues adorned the place; the haathi-senas were sculpted with red stone. Not only were there statues, but also bridges, structures, arches and various other portraits. It looked like Central Park of New York, although, my knowledge of the international hangout spot is only through hear-say. But, I felt that was the most justified way of describing Gomati Nagar’s flourished art work display - roads were wider; bridges over River Gomati and at fantastic speed on a motorcycle, the place didn’t look like the clichéd Uttar Pradesh.

We zoomed towards the prestigious Indian Institute of Management. A 15 km ride took us to the magnanimous school of management gurus, the fact being that it never seemed to come, until it really did. Carved out inside a dense forest, a passerby wouldn’t have an iota of knowledge of an IIM in that vicinity. We went in, and just like any other government institute the guards didn’t bother to awaken from their deep slumber. A peek into the ‘evergreen’ campus and I came to know that they do grow Grass which by popular thought was considered relaxing. Not to mention the inmates’ favorite code-word – “3.4” which translates to the 24 hours BSE (Booze Sutta Exchange) that is at 3.4 km from the main gate.  Thanks to constant pestering, Pratap took me to Himanshu Rai’s residence. I wanted to break a glass or two, but there were other serious issues, like the Indian cricket team being slaughtered by chokers, to watch out for.

As we reached Pratap’s hostel room I headed straight for the common room, greeted by just 5 guys watching the high tension match. My question was “Are you nerds kidding me? Five is all the number that you could muster for this livewire drama?” Yet, one cord of similarity between an ordinary Indian and an IIM guy was “Why did Dhoni give that last over to Nehra?” Reasoning with the former question, my logical thought was to believe that these guys weren’t watching the match for obvious reasons: because of their everlasting assignments and quizzes. On the contrary, the real reason was that that it was a Saturday night and thus there was no better thing to do than to attain Moksha.

Every wing had a party zone and every party zone was filled with guys directing gaalis at girls (they had a better word starting with the alphabet “b”), professors, the nine-pointers (euphemism for c**k-suckers) and obviously their untalented friends who made it to IIM-A. The generic widespread frustration among the lot was how close they were to IIM-A, but on the note of grapes being sour, they boasted of a better placement statistics than their considered rival school. I had an awesome night-out and never felt out of place. I never had to introspect on the fact that I could not make it there, despite which we all belonged to the group of souls enjoying similarities in rock music, grabbing pegs of soda and banging our heads.

It was four in the morning when I took an auto-rickshaw to the railway station as my train back to Delhi was at 0525 hrs. It was a journey to remember and quite obviously from my past experiences, the train was late. When the perpetrating train did arrive, I took my seat, with no fellow passengers for company; I settled down to sleep, until I was awakened by a co-passenger in Kanpur.