Saying Goodbye to my Grandfather

My grandfather had great love and affection for me. The news of his passing left me devastated

In an earlier post, I wrote about how, when I was getting ready to launch my new business venture in Lucknow, my father called to tell me that his father – my grandfather – has passed away. My grandmother had passed away about three years ago, after which my grandfather had sold his house in Lucknow and had moved in with my father’s eldest brother, who was based in Jaipur. My grandfather, a kind and gentle man, had great love and affection for me and the news of his passing was quite devastating. The story continues here.

As soon as I got to know that my grandfather had passed away, I immediately decided to go to Jaipur to pay my last respects. I left for the railway station right away – bought a train ticket to Jaipur and, while I was unable to secure a reserved birth, climbed into one of the second-class compartments spent the 14-hour journey sitting wherever I could find space, flitting from one corner to another whenever I was asked to move on. I tried to occupy as little space as possible and kept moving, not giving anyone a chance to complain too much. The journey passed without incident and reached my Tau ji’s house just in time. We left for the cremation grounds shortly thereafter where the last rites were performed. I was inconsolable, couldn’t hold back my tears and cried my heart out. While many of my other cousins had also been close to my grandparents, I was perhaps the one who had spent the maximum amount of time with them, and had a strong bond with them. And now, both my grandparents (from my father’s side) were gone. It was an indescribably sad day for me.

Once we got back home, I sat down for a quick chat with my father and gave him a detailed account of the progress I’d been making with setting up Pixels Multimedia. He offered his encouragement and said whenever I needed help with anything, I should let him know. Soon, it was time for me to leave. There had been no time to book train tickets – and certainly no hope of getting a reserved berth. So, I had decided to take a bus from Jaipur back to Lucknow. Upon reaching the interstate bus terminus in Jaipur, I found that the place was in a state of chaos – there was utter, complete pandemonium, with people hurrying in different directions, elbowing each other out of the way, trampling over others if they had to. I was actually unable to figure out where I'd find a bus that would take me to Lucknow. Thankfully enough, one person there – who seemed to be a porter of sorts – saw me standing there, dazed and confused. He offered to find me a bus to Lucknow, which he did within five odd minutes. He even got me a seat on this terribly crowded bus and helped me get my luggage on board. I paid him Rs 20 and thanked him profusely. Without a single word, he disappeared into the crowd and I was left thinking to myself if I should have paid him more.

The bus was terribly noisy and overcrowded. Somehow, I settled down, dozed off and completely lost all track of time. All I remember of the journey is getting off the bus the next day, in the morning, after reaching Lucknow. I quickly got on a shared three-wheeler (called ‘tempo’ in Lucknow) and hurried to my room. After a quick bath and a small breakfast of stale bread smeared with jam, I quickly rode down to Sahara Bazar to take stock of things. Tabrez was already there and work was almost complete – the walls had a fresh coat of paint, all the furniture was ready, the computers had been delivered, and all the brochures and other printed material had also arrived. The interviews that we had scheduled for the next day were also on track – a swanky, airconditioned room had been allotted to us at the aforementioned Jaiprakash Associates guesthouse, where we would assemble at 4 p.m. and meet candidates till 7 p.m.

The next day, I first met the two faculty members whom I’d hired a few days ago, and showed them our computers. They switched the machines on, ran all the software and seemed largely satisfied with things. They would be starting on the 15^th of the month, which was less than a week away. At three in the afternoon, Tabrez and I, along with two of my other friends, reached the guesthouse on Sapru Marg and chatted over cups of coffee as we waited for the candidates to start arriving. And sure enough, they started walking in at the given time and were asked to wait in the reception, while we spoke to one person at a time. We met a total of around 20 people that day, most of them being smart, young men and women who seemed to be genuinely keen on working with a new institute that would supposedly be competing against the biggies. Of all the people we met, one young lady – Seema – clearly stood out among all the rest. She had studied at the Loreto Convent, spoke excellent English, was articulate and very presentable. Seema was calm and collected while answering my questions and she spoke with a quiet confidence that I liked. We had found a counsellor for Pixels and like the instructors, she’d be joining us on the 15^th of that month.

In the meanwhile, Sharad and I had designed a bunch of promotional brochures and pamphlets for Pixels, which were now ready. Tabrez and I had already spoken to a bunch of newspaper distributors in different areas of the city, who had agreed to slip in copies of our pamphlets into the newspapers that they distributed, for a small fee. For three or four successive days, we got up in the middle of the night and rode to various major newspaper distribution points in the city with the pamphlets that were to be distributed. It was the month of December and it was freezing cold early in the morning. Still, from three or four in the morning, we got to work alongside distributors, helping them insert our promo material into hundreds of newspapers every day, hoping that they would reach a fairly wide cross-section of readers in more than a dozen residential areas. We could not cover all areas during that one week but planned to repeat this exercise after 2-3 weeks. There was not a great deal of money left for promotions, but I did also place advertisements in the city classifieds sections of The Times of India and The Pioneer newspapers. This, we hoped, would be enough to get us started.

We had started work on setting up the institute in October that year and on 15^th December 1996, Pixels Multimedia was open for business. It was what would be called a ‘soft launch’ these days; Seema, Tabrez and I, along with our two instructors – one was Aseem and I no longer remember the other guy’s name – assembled inside the office, which still smelled of fresh paint and freshly sawed wood, and I switched on all three computers and hoped for the best. While we did not get any actual students on that first day, a lot of curious onlookers from some of the other businesses inside Sahara Bazar came inside to look around, and Tabrez and I had a chat with a few of them. Some even promised to look out for us and said they would help us get some students. We thanked every person who came inside and offered boondi laddoos, a box of which I’d bought and kept in office the previous day.

I had spoken to the instructors whom we’d got on board and had expressed interest in learning to use all the image editing, illustration and animation software that had been installed on our computers. For one, I anyway had a keen interest in learning to use all the software – I was especially fascinated with image and audio/video editing applications, as well as 3D animation. The other thing was, the instructors were themselves quite young and I suspected their loyalties might be fickle – someone else might come along someday and offer to pay them more money, which might be hard for them to resist. Hence, I thought it would be best if I learned everything and got to know at least as much as both the instructors, so I could take over in case one of them was not around. Both were happy to teach me whatever they knew, and I would reach office very early in the morning and stay back till very late in the evening, endlessly practicing every bit of what I was being taught. I was obsessed, consumed with the idea of soaking up every bit of everything there was to learn about 3D StudioMAX, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere. I’d spend hours and hours going deep into the menus and sub-menus of each of these applications, trying my hand at everything, making mistakes, struggling, and continuing to learn at a pace that surprised my instructors.

Just as everything seemed to be going smoothly, Mr Nautiyal – who had given me a room in one of his houses, which was unoccupied at the time – called and said he wanted to see me. When I went to see him the next day, early in the morning, he dropped a bombshell, saying that due to certain unforeseen circumstances, he would have to ask me to vacate his house. He was profusely apologetic and seemed to be quite embarrassed about the whole thing, and said I could take up to a month to vacate the house. Of course, I said it wasn’t a problem and that I’d soon find some other place and move out. But where will I go, I thought to myself.

The story continues here