It was when I boarded the train back home (Mumbai to Hyderabad) after a decent gap. Generally, the graph of the crescendo at the railway station decreases as you board the train into an AC coach. On contrary this time, the crescendo kept increasing as I made my way into the coach, and a gentle push on the cabin door treated me with a blast of laughs, loud talks and a “Lunchtime Class Room” kind of atmosphere. Only moments later did I discover a bunch of students with a jersey representing their school and a tracksuit. Some with a headset on, few having a munch of something that is packed from the boxes, few trying to climb up on to the berth. I made my way to my seat allotted and as it turned out I was seated right next to a batch of young boys. 11 PM train it was and there was nothing other than planning to hibernate for the day. However, the bunch of kids was excited with their journey and the intensity of their voice is the best indicator of the same.
Then came the first shocker of my journey.
I settled into my berth and started to read something that I carried. It was about 15 minutes before departure. One of those kids, Avik his name was came to me. “You are reading Keepers of Kalachakra by Ashwin Sanghi, nice book it is. I read it a couple of months earlier”. He turned away from me and began to tell his mate “areee….I told you remember, Ashwin Sanghi who writes books like that of Dan Brown”. I was surprised to say the last and hailed the scale of knowledge about books that little one had. However, little did I know, this was just the start of what I call a “spree of staggering surprises” those school planned to treat me with. Shortly then one kid told the other, “I shall buy a cool drink when the train stops at the next station”. “Dude, this is Duronto, which wouldn’t stop anywhere until it reaches its destination. This is a superfast train and look at the coaches, they are not ICF coaches, they are LBH coaches. The germen technology highly suitable for high speed”. I’m not exaggerating, I was stunned with the information about the rail coach the kid had. “Oh, yes I did not recognise, all the high speed trains including Rajdhani and Shatabdi have LBH coaches” said the other kid this time. The one silently staring into his mobile sprang up and added his bit of knowledge to the conversation “You know what we get food on this train, for free” stressed on the latter half of his statement. “And clean bedding too. Both food and bedding are outsourced to the contractors who make a lot of money from those contracts”. I told myself, these kids have more information than what I had at their age. Just imagine 13-14 year kids talking about what they just did. With more topics of this sort I did not, I started to believe these kids challenged my expectations. If talking about Dan Brown, LBH Coaches and Food contract was not enough, Rithvik- a stout chubby kid with geek looks explained his mates about the Railwire WIFI and how google helped to power 500 odd railway stations in India with free wifi.
I dragged myself out of the amazement I was stormed with and believe me it was a tedious task to pull out of the topics these kids were talking. As I began to immerse into the fiction and flipping pages, train started to attain high speeds that those LBH coaches are designed for. Their faculty came up to them shortly after. After giving the necessary instructions and asking the kids to behave themselves, the teacher said, ”Go through your respective ‘case sheets’ and history of the case as well…we shall have a demo round in the morning”. Now being an MBA graduate I know what a case is supposed to be. I couldn’t place my perception about the case into the present context taking into consideration the age of those kids. So, in an un-resistible quest to quench my thirst of confusion, I began to inquire the teachers about my stint with these highly innovatively talented people for last one hour. She said the kids were attending a conference in Hyderabad where each one is giving a speech about the present day's issues which the world is facing. The memories of my school days came crashing back into my system and topics like overpopulation, pollution, poverty, untouchability etc ran through my mind. I then spoke to those teachers for some time and quietly got back to my book, then slowly into the eternal world of dreams.
Barely 7 O’ Clock, read my wristwatch, the first glance I had was of those kids, one with a paper in hand trying hard to remember the content, one with his iPad frantically scrolling through, the other kid scribbling something in a notepad and others doing similar things. I got up, looked at the commitment those kids showed and gradually went about to complete my morning duty. As, I washed my face, looked into the mirror and I found myself very fresh. Maybe I was getting ready and fresh for something that shook me a little while later. As I came back to my seat, my blast of shock was ready. Hot and Spicy.
I admit to the fact that I was feeling nostalgic and wanted to hear what those kids spoke and how they did. Those teachers were facing the kids and the first kid began his speech looking deep into his iPad. “Crypto Currency is a digital currency came into existence in………” after hearing to those few lines, I was flabbergasted (tell me if there is a better word). Even before I could come out of the shock wave that I graciously accepted, the kid started speaking about blockchain association and its negative impact on the economy. He completed his speech, then a lean stick like kid with a comparatively huge iPad raised his head while everyone around was staring at him. He gently said “4 minutes 28 seconds”. I was still in the la-la land, virtually feeling awkward when the teacher gave a broad smile and said, “Why don’t you cover up next 30 seconds with Indian Government and it’s plans of launching our own cryptocurrency”. I remember last night the teacher telling me, these kids are from 8th and 9th standards. And going by what was happening around me, it was little hard to believe their standard was just that. “Miss, there is not much interesting information about Lakshmi the Indian cryptocurrency, However, I found JIO COINS more interesting,” he said. It is exactly then that I realized, it isn’t just when a beautiful girl smiles at you or when you get placed that you pinch yourself to make sure it is not a dream. There are also these kinds of instances where you wish to believe, this isn’t a dream.
If the first kid gave me a shock wave, a high tide of the same was yet to follow. The chubby kid was next in line and started to speak about the USA and it’s stand on trade regulations with developing countries like India, Turkey etc. His was followed by a lecture on LGBT rights. I was wondering if kids of this age were even allowed to talk about issues like the one I’m listening to. The speeches or rather the lecturers those kids gave varied from Cross-Border Infiltration to UN intelligence agencies. I particularly loved one kid who spoke about digital laws and cybercrimes. I liked him may be because, out of all the topics that were spoken by them, this was one I had little information about.
After about 45 minutes of me being in awe, I found myself googling about the topics those kids were speaking about and silently listening to them in detail. These were speeches on issues no doubt, but those which are not expected to be delivered by school kids. I was always interested in debates and elocution competitions. However, I never spoke anything more than Poverty, Population, and Pollution. Believe me, it was a pleasing sight to see those bright kids and it was a verbal beauty to listen to them speak about the various things with clarity and impact. They really made my day.
Pursuing a Masters in Business Administration and aspiring to become a manager shortly, I wonder if I have that spark in me which I saw in those kids. At that particular point of time I felt those kids were not just a few generations away, they were light years ahead.
Sakethursforever : )
