GANGULY

Ganguly

 

I feel like Santa right now. With my bag full of stories and an aim to spread laughter, I come close to the white bearded burly guy from the North Pole. The only difference that comes to me is that I am not distributing gifts and the following is not for young kids.

 

Ganguly is a unique character. His stories all the more original.

My favorite though, is not a story. It is a song “Aambagane gacche tole gand maracche ganguly”. Those who know what this is, need no explanation, those who don’t, well I don’t wish to explain it. Some things cannot be explained. They are too precious to be shared.

We in Vidyapith had this thing to us. What I mean is that in our 5-9 year stint in Vidyapith we were associated with one very famous line or incident. That line has stuck to us like an alias. Ganguly unluckily has two of them. I have already discussed the more famous one. But the more hilarious one is when Ashok Da reprimanded Ganguly for sleeping in the class by saying, “Ganguly uth jao, varna agar sote rahoge to dekhoge ki tumhara bagal wala dost yahaan pe Praktani ban ke aaya hai” (Ganguly wake up, otherwise if you keep sleeping you will see that the guy sitting next to you has come back as an Ex student). Askoh Da was hilarious. Ganguly was the perfect victim.

Ganguly was one guy who could anything, anytime, anyplace for football. On hot Wednesdays and Sundays when most of us would come back to the cool shed of our dormitories and a glass of cold water, there would be one guy dribbling the ball in the playing fields. He had an insatiable appetite when it came to sports in general, football in particular. He was the most feared defender in the whole of the footballing fraternity in Vidyapith. For you who haven’t seen this guy in person, he is this short but stocky guy. (He might be as tall as Ritesh I guess. On second thoughts he has to be taller than Ritesh. Everybody is taller than Ritesh.) Coming back to the topic, it was hard to imagine that much energy is a boy with that dimensions. And I haven’t ever seen him, or heard from someone, complaining that he had enough of khelna. Simply unbelievable.

There were a few other yummy stories that you can bite into. We could somehow dig this out. Once when Manikant Da, our Hindi teacher asked us to write an essay about our “priya pustak” or favorite book, Ganguly in a very nonchalant way wrote about the famous hindi comic book serpent god Nagraj. That too in an examination. Not only did he write about him, but he wrote about how he got all his powers, something that maybe Nagraj would not be sure of.

Couple of stories that many might not know (contributed by Abhishek, thanks a ton) are as follows. Once when Ganguly had bunked the morning PT he had a peculiar incident. The morning PT would be like only of 15-20 minutes. Within this short nap, Gangs had nightfall. Do not wonder. Anything is possible with him.

The other story occurred in Kota. His parents had come to meet him. He is the only son and hence his parents are very close to him. In Vidyapith as well, they would seldom come to check upon and meet him. In Kota, Gangs had this whole stash to porn magazines. Sensing the calamity if her mom would see his messy room, Gangs cleaned up his room forgetting to clean the magazines beneath his bed. His parents were very happy to see the clean and tidy room. But as they say when you run of luck,  lightning can hit you twice. His dad  somehow felt that the bed was not very clean and wanted to clean it up himself. I guess you can figure out what happened. His dad went into a small shock and lay there over the magazines for 2-3 hours holding his head, acting as if he had seen a ghost. I wish we could see all this with our own eyes. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything, given a chance.

This present day aspiring doctor has a list of teachers who spanked him red. Dashrath da, Uttam Da and Burdan Da of all people have perfected their hand to hand combat skills on this poor creature. I guess when he became one of the Bhoots on Sivaratri, it came as no surprise to us we knew that God had hand picked Ganguly himself.

Reflecting on what all he has done and knowing that he is now studying for becoming a doctor, I pity the patients who would come to him. He would ask them to play cricket with him or else he would not treat them or in case they refused he would kick the balls out of them. Whatever the situation might be, I am sure Gangs would give me reasons aplenty to expand this post.

Thanks bro. For everything.