Recall: Amit Bansal

Amit Bansal, SMIT 2000-2004

If you had ever happened to walk into Room no I-306 in the boys' hostel of SMIT, Majhitar, chances were that you'd have found perennial occupation of one of the beds there. The figure - whose postures would range from slouched, to slept, to laid back - would more oft than not be idle, or passively watching some game being played on his computer by some other person. Perhaps the biggest motivational factor for that figure would've been the word "cigarette", or even the smell of it!

Meet Babu, aka Amit Bansal.

When I reached SMIT, the very first day I came across a guy who was dark, chubby, and had this huge thing on his face that was supposed to be a pair of glasses. Pleasantries were exchanged, and I didn't give much thought to this guy after that. Frankly, I was quite shocked when I heard him speak Nepali for the first time!

We all had rooms in the same Block; besides, we found out that we were in the same class (Computer Engineering - Section 'A'). It was all cool and fine - the residents of the Block quickly formed a very cohesive unit, and Babu was an integral part of it.

During one of our daily trips to the mess for dinner one evening, we got to know that Amit was from a place called "Babupara" in Siliguri. Co-incidentally, that day we got one of the worst cooked Gobi Manchurian for dinner, and co-incidentally again, the cook was from Babupara as well. As we were returning back to the hostel after our usual 1 hour 'Mall Road time', we started teasing Amit - a series of names followed, from Gobi Manchurian to Babupara. In the end, his name stuck to Babupara, and after a lot of evolution, it was shortened to Babu. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Luck was something this guy probably never ran short of. Before our Computer Programming practicals in the first semester, this guy had memorized (repeat: 'memorized') a C program to do Binary search. And while 80% of the batch was falling like dead leaves, flunking the C lab semester exam, this guy goes and gets the one program he had memorized. Luck, or something like it!

It was perhaps in the third semester that Babu had his tryst with his first cigarette. Of course by then his huge pair of glasses had reduced considerably in size! And in a matter of speaking, so had his pot belly. Anyway, Babu, Alvin and I were just getting the hang of 'G' that time - and there we were, the three of us, stuffed in one of the room's toilets lighting our first joint. Light we did, and blissfully taking puffs out of it, we kept passing it to each other. I still remember Babu's hands shivering as he passed it to me after his drag. That was how our dear Babu got introduced to the world of smoke - first hand. Before cigarettes, he actually lit a joint!

Always one of the lazier ones in the group, coupled with a lot of luck and a good memory, this guy had but just one measly backlog in his entire engineering period. Sometimes, it was fun to go to his room before semesters - he'd probably be the only guy asleep while the rest of the hostel was burning their midnight oil.

"Second!" was the ubiquitous phrase which was developed by none other than our dear ol' Babs! It was the ultimate call to get second in line for the sole cigarette among the group. People who were waiting for their turn just had to respect the person who shouted (repeat: 'shouted') "Second!!!" in this regard. After "Second!" became a rage, it was followed by "Third!" and "Fourth!" and so on, but none was as good as "Second!" - unless of course you were the first! :)

A lot many years have passed, and this guy still gives a piece of his mind to us, especially if he's woken up from his slumber!

I've had a lot of good as well as bad memories with him - and of course a lot of drunken brawls as well. Look forward to all of them - over and over again. Like the line in the novel "The Kite Runner" goes - 'For you, a thousand times over'.