Because Shit Happened

by Harsh Snehanshu

  ‘Light is incomplete without its absence,’ I said out of the blue.

  ‘What the fuck!’ he said.

  ‘I wanted to post this on YourQuote.’

  ‘It’s a good one, but why do you suddenly want to post it on your blog?’

  ‘Not blog. I want to start a website. Where common people can archive their one-liners, get famous, and in the long run, earn incentives. Imagine, tomorrow people quoting you, instead of the likes of Gandhi or Bill Gates.’

  ‘The idea sounds good. But I can’t see it as a viable business prospect. How are you planning on making money from it?’

  ‘You are going to help me achieve that, my friend.’

  ‘Me? How?’

  ‘T-shirts. The best original quotes, especially the witty ones, go on a T-shirt.’

  ‘What if the quotes are philosophical, like a quote on life?’

  ‘They go on other merchandize like a coffee mug or a poster.’

  ‘I’ll think about it and let you know.’

  ‘If you can come on board, we’ll be three people. My friend Vikram, you, and me.’

  ‘What about Pratik?’ he asked, concerned. He knew that Pratik and Vikram had been my co-authors of the YourQuote blog from day 1.

  ‘He’s not interested.’

  ‘Has he told you that?’ Rishabh asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘He’s busy with dramatics, he won’t get time.’

  ‘Fine, I’ll let you know.’

  I was happy things were finally falling into place. I had talked to the right person. As I reached my hostel, I called Vikram. It was the first time I was calling him in the new year. I greeted him and straightaway came to the point.

  ‘Just wanted to tell you that I’m pretty kicked up about YourQuote and I’m probably going to start it soon.’

  ‘That’s…great, brother,’ Vikram faltered in his speech.

  ‘You’re going to make the website. I hope in the last few months you have learned whatever you wanted to,’ I said authoritatively, taking the liberty to do so since he was my friend.

  ‘Bro, I’m really sorry but I don’t think I can be of any help. I need to learn a lot more. Currently, I can just do basic HTML and CSS, no coding as such,’ Vikram said in a frank manner. But, I felt betrayed, as though I had been given false hope. I didn’t say a thing, just learned my first lesson: In a start-up, never take anybody’s words for granted.

  From three to two. Disappointment clouded my mind while I waited for Rishabh to respond. When I pestered him for an answer, he explained the delay saying he didn’t get time to discuss it with his elder brother who was pursuing an MBA. However, often after classes, I would see him strolling and chit-chatting with his new friend Anjali Yadav.

  I neither had the courage nor the skill set to go solo. I didn’t mention anything about Vikram’s betrayal to Rishabh, fearing that one man’s choice might affect the other man’s decision.

  A few days later, Vikram called and shared with me the real reason why he could not uphold his promise. Four months before, he had fallen in love with someone in his college and didn’t get time to learn how to develop a dynamic website. I smiled and congratulated him. I actually felt happy for him.

  ‘It’s difficult,’ I uttered to Priya, lost in my own thoughts.

  We were sitting at Giani’s ice cream parlour on Bungalow Road, Delhi University. It was January 14 and she had just come back from her home. She was wearing a black jacket, one we had bought together last winter, inside which she wore a white top that I’d brought for her from Glasgow. Our left hands were wrapped around each other, while our right hands were waging a spoon war against each other to scoop out the Belgian Dark Chocolate ice cream. She won.

  ‘What, this game of ice creams?’ she asked with a winning smile on her pretty face. Had I not been lost, I would have wanted to kiss her on the cheeks. That level of public display of affection was doable in the North Campus—it’s another thing that it meant getting slapped from her, since she despised PDA.

  ‘Building a founding team,’ I said in a contemplative tone.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Start-up. YourQuote.’

  ‘What—the blog thing?’

  ‘No, I want to start a website on it. I’ve told you about it.’

  ‘Yes, you have. But why now?’

  ‘I just want to. I have also booked the domain yourquote.in.’

  ‘Yes, I’m proud of you for that,’ she said. Though she didn’t pay much heed to what I was saying, she was still supportive. Love is not only blind, but also deaf. I could choose to be irritated but you know, it’s really difficult to get angry at a pretty girl, especially if she happens to be your girlfriend who you are seeing after almost a month.

  ‘See, I’m the creative guy of the company. Rishabh, hopefully, would agree and handle the marketing and operational end. There’s no tech guy as of now.’

  ‘What happened to…what’s that friend of yours in Chandigarh?’

  ‘Vikram? He’s fallen in love,’ I said, as though love was a dreaded disease like HIV.

  ‘Wow, that’s so nice—your friends are getting lucky,’ she remarked.

  ‘Either make me lucky, or else…’

  ‘What…here? I know a better place,’ she said with a wink.

  We entered a three-storeyed apparel showroom at the corner of Kamla Nagar market that had an elevator. It was the perfect spot for a quick make out session. We jumped inside it, a little bit of grabbing, a little bit of tussle followed, and as the doors opened, we were wiping our faces with our handkerchiefs, standing at two opposite ends. Thankfully, nobody saw us. Except the camera, which I saw hung over the corner of the elevator but ignored.

  We rushed out as soon as possible, before anyone at the reception could tell what we had just done.

  ‘So, it’s only you and Pratik, right?’

  ‘No, it’s just me at the moment. I’m waiting for Rishabh to respond,’ I answered.

  ‘Why? What happened to Pratik?’

  ‘We broke up—rather he broke up. He’s busy with dramatics, he says.’

  ‘Okay, I think Rishabh would anyway be better. He’s already handled operations before. And you are already the king of Facebook, with all those cheesy I-love-you-Amol fans who would become your website’s users, and being an IITian, you’ll certainly find someone to manage tech domain too,’ she said placing her confidence in me and immediately winning my heart.

  Firstly, she sounded interested and moreover, she made me realize that I was wrong. She knew and understood the situation. The greatest support an entrepreneur can get is when someone from one’s family reaffirms their faith. Priya, in our steady one and a half years’ relationship, had become more than family to me.

  ‘Have I ever told you that I love you?’

  ‘No, but several others have,’ she winked and ran away towards the other side of the road, while I stood behind a car, silently adoring her raw beauty from a distance. I considered myself the luckiest man on Earth.

  When I returned to the hostel, I was informed by a fellow hosteller that Rishabh had been looking for me. I excitedly went towards Rishab’s room. I thought I was indeed going to strike lucky that day.

  ‘Rishabh, what’s up?’ I asked anxiously.

  ‘Sorry bro, I can’t be a part of it,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ It was loud, resentful, and expressed my anguish.

  ‘Amol, I talked to my brother who told me to first get into a job, save some money, and then think about a start-up, else the money will be a big issue.’

  ‘Rishu, come on. It’s an online venture—it requires very little investment. You know with T-shirts you have made as much as 50,000 rupees per order. Think about it, we don’t need much money.’

  ‘Bhai, you don’t know the hassles I had to face. Manufacturers don’t work on deadlines. They delay, make excuses, and in the end it’ll be us—the middlemen—who will face the misery of being abused by customers.’


  ‘But what if we can find one reliable manufacturer who works with us efficiently? With my reader base and your junior circle of friends, both of us can create—hell—get entry to every college, publicize the website, and route our T-shirts through our select ambassadors in colleges.’

  ‘Only if things were as easy as you make them sound.’

  ‘Only if you were not so cynical,’ I retorted.

  ‘I am not being cynical. I am just being practical.’

  ‘Let’s first try it, then opine,’ I replied.

  ‘I have already tried it.’

  ‘With just one manufacturer. Let’s find new ones. Let me google.’

  ‘Don’t Google, JustDial.’

  JustDial, India’s phone search engine, came to our rescue. Within moments, we had the numbers of over fifteen dealers in the South Delhi region.

  ‘I am not sure about it. My parents don’t like all this,’ Rishabh said.

  ‘Your brother is an MBA. Ask him to convince them.’

  There was silence. We didn’t speak for a while.

  ‘You know why people do an MBA? To earn themselves a good job. It’s ironical that they are called Masters of Business Administration when in fact most of them study to get administered by those who actually administer business,’ Rishabh yelled, in frustration.

  I chose not to fiddle in his family issues, it being his personal matter anyway. My family was yet to be informed about what I was up to and that kept me quite content for the time being.

  ‘Rishu, relax. Chill year. Let it remain unofficial. Don’t tell them,’ I advised.

  He was unwilling. I chose to let him go with the belief that if God wanted, Rishabh would return someday.

  Two months passed by. Nothing substantial happened in the period.

  ‘Rishabh is no more in the scene. He has backed out as I already told you,’ I was cribbing to Priya, she being the only confidante during the putting-the-first-brick sequence.

  ‘So what? You have got an entire IIT at your disposal. Reach out, talk to others.’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t know any other marketing guy.’

  ‘Have you found a tech guy yet?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘What the hell is wrong with you, Amol? You are cribbing just because you are not working,’ Priya chided. She just knew what suited the occasion more—a reprimand or a token of appreciation.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You find a tech guy and get the damn thing started.’

  I knew she was right. I was letting my inhibitions in reaching out and befriending strangers affect my own dream. I was cutting my own feathers before my first flight.

  ‘Thanks. Bye. Gotta go,’ I uttered.

  ‘What happened so suddenly?’

  ‘I’m going to find a tech guy,’ I said.

  ‘Sometimes, I feel that I put my wishes at bay by suggesting you to do the right thing.’

  ‘That’s why I love you—for all the sacrifices you make for me.’

  ‘Have you ever made any sacrifices for me?’ she asked in a serious tone.

  ‘Yes, I sacrifice something every night, for you,’ I joked.

  ‘Jerk,’ she replied and went off.

  It was time to test my negotiation skills—the skills that I had never ever utilized in my entire life. I had to pitch my idea to all of my batchmates. None of them were scary, none of them were unapproachable, yet I could hear my heart thumping in fear.

  Was I afraid of sharing my idea? No, not at all. After talking about it confidently with three friends, who acknowledged the plausibility of the idea but didn’t come on board, I apprehended something—ideas are not stolen, ambition is.

  My heart was still thumping. It was the fear of confrontation, the fear of being rejected, the fear of getting critically analyzed by my analytical batchmates. But, with the belief that my enormous passion would ease the process, I began. I was very clear that I would just share my idea with them, talk a little bit about my ambitious plans for it, and ask for their help.

  ‘Hi Sarthak. Are you free?’ I said entering the room of one of the best coders in my hostel. He was an AIR Rank 34, a CS sophomore, an International Mathematics Olympiad Silver Medalist, and had a perfect 10 GPA along with a dozen other achievements to his credit. His words used to hold such authority over my batchmates that if anyone affirmed that Sarthak had said something, it was considered an irrefutable fact. I chose him first, not because I saw a technical partner in him, but to get connected to someone he recommended. His recommendations carried so much weight that the person he would send me to would also take me seriously.

  ‘Hi Amol, how have you been doing? I have seen updates about your novel. Looks like it’s going well. Congrats!’ he commented courteously as I got seated on his neatly done bed. The bed sheet had a giant Earth printed on it, with the moon crouching down. I shifted a bit to observe what was printed on the area just beneath me. I realized I was sitting on a goddamn space station!

  ‘Wow, you sleep in space buddy,’ I joked. ‘Where did you get this bed sheet from?’

  ‘My uncle got it for me from NASA,’ he said.

  ‘Wow,’ I complimented.

  ‘So, how come the famous author of our batch is here?’ he flattered me.

  ‘Oh dude, leave all that crap. I have an idea. A business idea. I am looking for a tech guy,’ I said.

  I explained the entire idea to him. He seemed boggled. He didn’t expect an author to become an entrepreneur, it seemed. At first, he started pointing out flaws in the model. I took all his criticism in my stride and offered explanations to all of them, except one—how would I ensure that a one-liner isn’t copied?

  As the discussion went ahead, I could see him getting interested, but alas, he had to maintain his perfect 10 all throughout and he couldn’t be a part of it. He referred me to five other guys, all of whom were good coders, interested in web designing, he said.

  Just when I was about to go, he asked me, ‘Why don’t you learn coding? You have an enormous passion for your idea. It would be great if you take out a month or two and do it on your own.’

  I was astonished to hear that. I wasn’t a coder. All I had ever coded was those rectilinear doodles on the primitive language LOGO, way back in school. I had almost failed when they tried to teach me the simple programming language C in the first semester.

  ‘In a start-up, it’s impossible to do everything on your own. It’s all about outsourcing, finding a team,’ I said.

  ‘For a product start-up, the founder needs to understand codes very keenly.’

  ‘I’ll see. Thanks.’

  I made a swift exit from the space station.

  The next five meetings with the guys Sarthak suggested turned out to be hazy. Two of them said that they would ‘see’—implying they would never see—two openly told me that they were not good enough for the job, while one said ‘he liked the idea’, which I took as hey- I-like-it-but-from-a-distance.

  Dejected, I came back and saw the door to my friend Rajiv’s room ajar. Rajiv Boddeda, one of my dear friends, hailed from Vishakhapatnam. He was in the same department as me, Engineering Physics, and had also interned at Glasgow at the time when I was there. He was one of those guys whose smile—full of innocence and humility—could brighten your day. Thankfully, he was all alone, unlike other times when all the South Indians of our batch used to flock his room and share gossip in their mother tongue.

  I had shared my idea with him once before during our time in Glasgow. He liked the concept but we couldn’t discuss it further.

  ‘Hey Bodu, how are you?’ Bodu was the nickname I had given him.

  I discussed about YourQuote with him in detail this time. He seemed intrigued.

  ‘Where would you get the investment from?’

  ‘No idea. For the initial bit, the advance from my novel would work. I have around 80,000 rupees in my bank account.’

  ‘Wow, you are rich,’ Bodu complimented.

  ‘
Bro, I haven’t yet found a developer. Do you know someone?’

  ‘My elder brother Suresh has started a company named Brilliant Pals. They develop websites. I can connect you to him.’

  ‘Amazing!’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Connect me with him right now!’ I yelled in excitement. Things were working finally.

  For the next two hours, I was on the phone with Rajiv’s brother, Suresh. He stayed in Vizag and unfortunately didn’t understand English or Hindi at all. Nevertheless, he was as polite and helpful as his brother. He said he would put up a static website on the domain yourquote.in by the next week. I was to send him the layout and text.

  I waited desperately for Suresh to come up with something. Meanwhile, I just thought of updating Pratik about the development at my end. Pratik, relieving my conscience, told me that he had indeed become immensely involved with the dramatics club and was always on tours to perform street plays across the colleges in the Delhi-NCR region. When I told him that I was starting-up, he wasn’t shocked—which somehow redeemed me of my guilt of having kept him in the dark.

  On the other hand, it meant the search for the marketing guy was still on. I tried talking to a few guys, but as you know, engineers are reticent and laid back. Every time I passed near Rishabh’s door, I felt like knocking and begging him to join in. He made for the perfect partner, for we shared great chemistry. But then his irregularity in Entrepreneurial Management classes of late showed his disinterest, which in turn provoked my disinterest too.

  February, 2010

  In the meantime, there was something else that was cooking in my life. Much like 2009, when I got a chance to go to Glasgow, I had applied to several universities for internship in 2010 even. After two months of waiting, I finally received a mail from a professor from the University of Bordeaux offering me a fully sponsored two months’ internship in France, during the summer of 2010.

  Bordeaux is a vintage French town, situated in southern France near the France-Spain border, and is famous for the Bordeaux wine, besides some spectacular nude beaches. Moreover, I would get a Schengen visa which would allow me to travel all across Europe. A Euro trip was on my cards. The sheer thought of it sent me into an ecstatic trance. I called my parents to share the good news with them. They were joyous as it was my first academic achievement since my Glasgow internship.