7. A Book of Knowledge
This one is going to be a special one...
This story dates back to my seventh class (98-99). It was an eventful year and it was the starter of the big feast that followed till the end of my schooling. I still remember the small class in the first floor of Ramakrishna Bhavan and those 3-seater benches. I used to sit in the second bench along with Upendra and Shiva. Upendra and myself were benchmates in school for almost 10yrs, right from the day he joined the school to our last day in school. He is a very very special friend of mine... I have loads and loads to tell about him and I fear this blog would never be enough.
Shiva was a new to our class. He was a different guy - never got along with our batch well, kept things to himself, hardly talked to people, struggled a bit in academics but hesitated to ask for help, was good at sports but not many knew that... It took quite a long time for us to become friends. There was something in this guy... the more I was getting closer to this guy, I was getting away from the rest of the batch. It was only in the next year that I realised that... after Shiva had left the school and suddenly I was running short of friends (but it wasn't for too long...)
By the time we started going around together it was already December, time for the Christmas vacation! It was a long boring one for me and I am sure everyone in our class had felt the same. January 2nd of 1999 was a good day!! We were back in school talking to each other how we spent our holidays, no one had any big stories and very soon we were back into the routine - classes, games period, art.. going to Shiva's home... trying to study there for some time. Upendra, the mathematical genius, often used to help us both and I tried the same for Science and social. No one realised how time was running by, 3rd unit test already... hardly a month to go before the summer vacation.
I always used to spend every single day of vacation at my native place... this time I decided not to and plans were on. After days of arguments and proposals we finally decided upon something very interesting... a General Knowledge Book. We decided to make a GK Book that could be used by three of us. We had a good number of books but no book had everything!! So we decided to put together every piece of information we could gather. We divided the work among ourselves... I was incharge of collecting the information, Uppi the incharge for the paper and binding (his father was working in a paper industry!!) and Shiva was held responsible for printing.
None of us were good at computers, so the idea of typing everything in MS Word was ruled out. The house owner of Shiva had a type-writer and Shiva had asked his permission for using it during the Summer. Uppi got all the necessary white sheets... to make it look a bit attractive, we decided to put a green coloured page after every white sheet - effectively making the book have 2 colours! The size of the sheets was A5 (my love for that size and the green coloured sheets is alive even today!). I had collected some 6 books which included Manorama 1999, Upkar's etc. To keep the book updated, I got newspaper cuttings of all major news starting Jan 1st. We were about to come out with a book better than Manorama itself... the very thought was exciting! Just to add to our excitement, we got a few more books from the Librarian (they were Specimen copies, which were being cleared)...
By the end of March, we had finished all major arrangements... I had written down some 50-60pages which had to be typed, Uppi had drawn margins for over 200 sheets, Shiva was coming up with a schedule for our work. It was exam time again and for a few days we had to postpone work... When we got back to it after the exams, we were reviewing our work... corrections, updates, editing, formatting, cover-page design... the work was getting tougher, more satisfying... we wanted everything to be ready before we started the typing. I had started working in the nights at home and during day at Uppi's home. Things were ON.. full swing!!
The content was up-to-date, exhaustive, reliable, presented according to our convenience, table of contents, index, photos... you name it, we had it. It was going to be the best work of our lives.. Everything about the book was excellent except for one thing -
I tried to carry on the work for as long as I could but somewhere things went wrong... the book is still waiting to be printed... I still miss our work... every time I am in a team working on something, I get reminded of my old days...
@ Uppi and Shiva - we will finish our book some day... I will pray that the day is not very far..
Few things I don't remember - The name of the book, the reason why we stopped, our budget, did others know about this? ...
--buddi
0450
24 - 11 - 2008
This one is going to be a special one...
This story dates back to my seventh class (98-99). It was an eventful year and it was the starter of the big feast that followed till the end of my schooling. I still remember the small class in the first floor of Ramakrishna Bhavan and those 3-seater benches. I used to sit in the second bench along with Upendra and Shiva. Upendra and myself were benchmates in school for almost 10yrs, right from the day he joined the school to our last day in school. He is a very very special friend of mine... I have loads and loads to tell about him and I fear this blog would never be enough.
Shiva was a new to our class. He was a different guy - never got along with our batch well, kept things to himself, hardly talked to people, struggled a bit in academics but hesitated to ask for help, was good at sports but not many knew that... It took quite a long time for us to become friends. There was something in this guy... the more I was getting closer to this guy, I was getting away from the rest of the batch. It was only in the next year that I realised that... after Shiva had left the school and suddenly I was running short of friends (but it wasn't for too long...)
By the time we started going around together it was already December, time for the Christmas vacation! It was a long boring one for me and I am sure everyone in our class had felt the same. January 2nd of 1999 was a good day!! We were back in school talking to each other how we spent our holidays, no one had any big stories and very soon we were back into the routine - classes, games period, art.. going to Shiva's home... trying to study there for some time. Upendra, the mathematical genius, often used to help us both and I tried the same for Science and social. No one realised how time was running by, 3rd unit test already... hardly a month to go before the summer vacation.
I always used to spend every single day of vacation at my native place... this time I decided not to and plans were on. After days of arguments and proposals we finally decided upon something very interesting... a General Knowledge Book. We decided to make a GK Book that could be used by three of us. We had a good number of books but no book had everything!! So we decided to put together every piece of information we could gather. We divided the work among ourselves... I was incharge of collecting the information, Uppi the incharge for the paper and binding (his father was working in a paper industry!!) and Shiva was held responsible for printing.
None of us were good at computers, so the idea of typing everything in MS Word was ruled out. The house owner of Shiva had a type-writer and Shiva had asked his permission for using it during the Summer. Uppi got all the necessary white sheets... to make it look a bit attractive, we decided to put a green coloured page after every white sheet - effectively making the book have 2 colours! The size of the sheets was A5 (my love for that size and the green coloured sheets is alive even today!). I had collected some 6 books which included Manorama 1999, Upkar's etc. To keep the book updated, I got newspaper cuttings of all major news starting Jan 1st. We were about to come out with a book better than Manorama itself... the very thought was exciting! Just to add to our excitement, we got a few more books from the Librarian (they were Specimen copies, which were being cleared)...
By the end of March, we had finished all major arrangements... I had written down some 50-60pages which had to be typed, Uppi had drawn margins for over 200 sheets, Shiva was coming up with a schedule for our work. It was exam time again and for a few days we had to postpone work... When we got back to it after the exams, we were reviewing our work... corrections, updates, editing, formatting, cover-page design... the work was getting tougher, more satisfying... we wanted everything to be ready before we started the typing. I had started working in the nights at home and during day at Uppi's home. Things were ON.. full swing!!
The content was up-to-date, exhaustive, reliable, presented according to our convenience, table of contents, index, photos... you name it, we had it. It was going to be the best work of our lives.. Everything about the book was excellent except for one thing -
We could never type it!
I tried to carry on the work for as long as I could but somewhere things went wrong... the book is still waiting to be printed... I still miss our work... every time I am in a team working on something, I get reminded of my old days...
@ Uppi and Shiva - we will finish our book some day... I will pray that the day is not very far..
Few things I don't remember - The name of the book, the reason why we stopped, our budget, did others know about this? ...
--buddi
0450
24 - 11 - 2008
