100 Things You Should Know Before You DIE‪!‬ SRM Podcasts

There are few people who have such beautiful handwriting that their handwriting looks like an art aur fir wahin kuch log hote hain ki they have such s****y handwriting ki you can't read a single word and i always fall in the second category.

So in my college jo bhi meri notebook dekhta tha they were like ki aakhir main likhta hi kyun hun. And main apne kam marks ka blame bhi apni handwriting ko de deta tha.

So in the second year of my college we have this teacher jiska naam tha Aneesh and he taught us material science. Apart of the theory he also took Practical lab for the subject. And for some reason which i dont know, he didnt like me at all.

To we were having our labs and he was checking our lab file aur unhone mujhe bulaya and jaise meri file dekhi he got very angry on me. aur fir unhone meri file fek di aur lab se bahar nikal diya. Later I Came to know ki meri 4 labs mein absent bhi laga di gai hai jiski wajah i was not allowed to give my lab exam and mera us lab mein backlog aa gaya.

Fir maine dobara lab ka exam diya paas kiya it was a different story.

In my final year jab mera placement ho gaya and i got a job to main department mein saare teachers ko mithai dene gaya and I met that teacher again and I gave laddu to him.

And he looked quite shocked to know that i got a job aur 30 second mujhe ghoorne ke baad he said ki “par tumhari handwriting to bahut kharab thi”. I smiled and replied ki “apparently they dont ask to write in interview but to speak”. And he put that laddu back and went away.

So ever since english composition was introduced in my school syllabus hamesha ek type ki exercise zaroor milti thi which was like writing a letter to your best friend or writing an essay about your best friend. Aur main hamesha usme best friend k naam alag-alag likhta tha.

But after my highschool i met this guy and he became a constant in my life as well as in those exercises. Hamne ek saath kaafi zyada achhi achhi memories share ki hain like ham saath mein guitar practice karte thhye. We discovered our love for literature together. Ruskin Bond ki naa jane kitni kahaniyan saath mein padhi hai hamne.

We were like Bros. We even had our very own Bro Code. And pure school ko pata tha ki they are like brothers from different mothers. We even decided ki ham ek hi college mein padhne jaenge but you know, life happens.

His father was retired from Indian Air Force so he also had this fancy of joining forces. Fir one day in my final year of college uska call aaya and he told me ki I am the second person after his father jisko vo bata raha ki He got selected in Indian Naval Forces. And to this day that phone call is one of the best phone calls i ever had in my life.

When i was working in Bangalore, he even came to meet me travelling hundreds of Kilometer.

And then one day I realised ki its been months maine ussey baat nahi ki and iski koi khaas wajah bhi nahi hai ki why i didn't talk? And even few months back he was visiting his parents. Aur usne milne ke liye text kiya and I didnt reply. Aur jab vo chala gaya to i regretted.

And I don't know why I did this. I also know ki he felt very sad because of that.

And if you are listening to this, Arpit you will always be my Best Friend.

So I was in the second year of my college and there was this guy Aadi. Main aur Aadi ek hi class mein padhte thhey. And Aadi was someone who was very much into football. He used to play for college. And I was someone jisne kabhi bhi football nahi dekha to for me Aadi was the best football player of all time.

Aadi ko dekh ke hi football ki vibe aane lagti thi and he used to wear T shirt of a football club, usko sabhi football clubs k players k naam pata tha. He sacrifices his sleep to watch football matches in the common room.

So One day i thought ki mujhe bhi aise cool sa dikhna hai and iske liye mujhe football khelna padega. So I went to the sports shop. I bought a football kit for me and then i went to Aadi and said ki Bhai aaj se main bhi football khelunga.

So I started playing football with Aadi. I learned a lot from him. Usne mujhe kai saare footballers ke baare mein bataya, clubs ke baare mein bataya and obviously some best football games of all time.

I used to practice with Aadi only but one day he wasnt there. So I went to this other guy who was also a very dear friend to me and yes a nice footballer and his name was Surya Pratap Singh, and we used to call him Surya. To uske paas jane k baad i started showcasing my football knowledge jo kuch bhi mujhe pata tha, clubs k baare mein, players ka baare mein. Par he ignored whatever i said aur vo itna impressed bhi nahi laga.

So i asked him ki Surya tumhara favorite club konsa hai? Usne mujhe dekha and he replied ki I dont watch football much, I watch cricket. Maine kaha what! You play football and you dont watch football games? HE replied ki Its okay if you are not a football fan.

And in the final year of our college Surya was the captain of college’s football team.

I recently joined a tech company in Bangalore and at that time I was 21 and everyone else who was around me was at least eight years older than me. So I started feeling quite left out and for days I used to sit alone, eat alone and even I was having my coffee all alone.

Then one day a guy whose last name was Ranganathan (I am forgetting the first name) came to me and said that he sits opposite of my cubical and he was told that I was good in analytics so he needs some help from me.

Tell me who in this world does not want to have an exhibition of his talent. I agreed upon helping him. Soon after I was spending most of the time on his desk. He became a friend of mine. We started having lunch together and coffee together. We used to hang out on the weekend. Although he was forty he was as jolly as I was.

It looked quite off to hang with someone who is 19 years older than you but yes... it was fun.

One day he sent me an email that he will not be coming to the office for the next two weeks and there is some pending work that I have to take care of. Also in the last line, he mentioned that his wife had a daughter. I reciprocated with the congratulations on the email.


Out of courtesy, I thought of visiting his house along with the gift for her daughter. I googled newborn gift ideas...clueless... I ended up buying chocolates. I went to his 2BHK flat. He used to live with his wife and one son and his mother was visiting him because of the baby's birth.

His mother looks unhappy as the girl child was born, his wife was the contrast. I gifted chocolates to his wife. Tried talking in a baby tone with his daughter. And then I congratulated Ranganathan who was standing on his balcony. I said that "You don't look happy." "Neither I am sad", he replied. I asked him what happened. He said nothing.

I started wondering about what must have happened. He looked at me smiling and said, "No big deal, everyone borns."

So I was in my school, I guess it was the sixth standard when I heard about Charles Dickens and it was through my class teacher, Ma’am Mridula who told us that from this year onward we will not be studying only short stories but also full-length books like novels and novellas.

So the first novel which was introduced in my curriculum was Oliver Twist and as I liked neither the class teacher nor the studies so I skipped the classes and didn't read that book. If it would have been a comic book which my father had bought for me I would have read it for sure.
But yes… who gets entertainment from classroom books… obviously not me…

Also, my class teacher was very cruel... She used to give me a lot of punishments. I even once wrote an essay for her with the title MY FAVORITE TEACHER and in that she found some grammatical errors which resulted in two slaps on my left cheek…

Nevertheless, after two months of classes, my summer vacation started and I thought of buying some comic books but my mother refused to give me pocket money. With no other options left eventually, I ended up picking Oliver Twist and after reading it I was like damn this is amazing. So I waited for my vacation to get over and brought another book from the school library which Charles Dickens wrote.

I read Tale of Two Cities than Great Expectations and then somebody told me that I should read Mystery of Edwin Drood. I started reading the book and I was in the middle of the story and the book was over. I was like no … this cannot happen … I flipped back to the front page and I found that Dickens died while writing this book…

Damn…..and I was like… You should just tell things before you DIE.