Anupam- The Dreamer

Growing as a kid, I was fascinated with the quizzes and the games and the competitions that were organized in my school and also in the colony that we used to live in, in a nondescript town of Shahjahanpur in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Once, I saw a 7^th standard guy making some money in a colony fete by making a Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) game, wherein if you touch the wire on the right answer out of 4 options, the bulb would glow, otherwise it will not. Similarly, people came up with some amazing ideas and made games to earn money.

So, when I got the opportunity of putting up a stall in my school fete in 6^th standard back in 2001, I called upon a few of my friends to do the same. At that time, I was studying in Don & Donna Convent, located in the city of Shahjahanpur, about 12 km from the colony that we used to live in, called Oswal Nagar. The colony was located far off from the main city and I used to travel daily by bus and it used to take about 1 hour one-side to reach the school. The owner of the school, Mr. Anchal Sir (अंचल not आंचल) was a dreadful man and he had his home in one corner of the school ground itself. Everyone dreaded his sight, because he used to beat children black and blue everywhere he saw some mischief committed by them. Kids used to pee in their pants seeing him coming towards them. Me and my friend once had the honour of getting slapped hard in our backs by him, even though we were not at fault, as he “thought” that we were trying to tear off his beloved and expensive badminton court net! Nonetheless, he thought to organize school fete once out of his deep “love” for school children 🙂

All the students were excited, especially the senior ones! If you happen to know Shahjahanpur and the UP belt, there some senior students even carried “katta”and “guns” to the school! They had money also, so they decided to put up some big stalls, of food like chaat, golgappe, chowmein, etc. They hired caterers for that and spent a fortune on the investments to earn some money. I was in 6^th class, with virtually no money to set up such a stall. So, I thought why not to replicate the idea of a dice game that I saw sometime back in my colony fete, do some entrepreneurship and earn some money. I took a simple paper chart and made 6 lanes on it with a car in each of them. Here is how it looked more or less:

So, the game was like this: We would have 6 players, each betting on one car. Each would pay Rs. 20 to play the game. I will throw the dice again and again, whichever number comes on the dice the car in that numbered lane will move one step. Again I throw the dice, again the numbered car moves one step as per the number on the dice and so on. So, basically whichever car reaches finish line first wins Rs. 60. So, basically I make Rs. 60 on each game irrespective of who wins the race and the winner gets Rs. 60 (Rs. 20 his own + Rs. 40). Rest all 5 players lose Rs. 20 each.

By this smart technique, we just spent about Rs. 100-200 to put up the stall, and at the end of the day we made around Rs. 2000! That was a huge amount. We were 4 friends, so we equally divided the money amongst ourselves.

Now, the catch of paper money was this- just before the fete, the great Anchal Sir came up with the idea of replacing the actual cash with the coupons! Bizarre thing, but something was cooking in his mind! So, the students basically had to turn all their cash into coupons before they could play any game or they could buy something to eat! And they were promised that the stall owners will be compensated with the actual cash according to the coupons they earned at the end of the day. But, Anchal Sir being Anchal Sir, had something crooked cooking up- He was never going to reimburse the coupons to the students! So, at the end of the day all their money value was lying in the paper coupons which had no actual value!

One of my colony seniors, who was in 11^th or 12^th class, I don’t remember his class actually, got to know about Anchal Sir’s game plan, somehow! And he told to the colony friends and juniors that “अंचल, सबके पैसे खाने वाला है। तो जो coupons collect किये हैं, उन सबको खर्च कर दो”. He made his discreet disclosure to spend the coupons, just 1 hour before the closing of the fete in the evening. At first, we were shocked, but as we trusted our senior bhaiya, so we quickly divided the money among ourselves- each got about Rs. 500 and off we went to shop in the last 1 hour, till the time that paper money had some value! It was at the expense of those students who didn’t knew about the game plan of Anchal Sir. So, we ate all good food items that we could- noodles, patty, pastry, cold drink etc. etc. Even after this, we had some money to spare, so I bought one “current-diary” (which gave electric shock when opened by the person who didn’t know about this feature) and one wooden snake! Basically, we had to extinguish all the paper coupons before they were going to turn into actual “paper”, so we bought anything and everything!

After the fete, it was promised that the coupons will be exchanged by Anchal Sir, but we knew that it was never going to happen. Maximum students went into heavy losses, who had put up big food stalls. We were saved by our trusted senior. So, the lesson that we can draw from here is that – whenever we are dealing in some paper currency like coupons which have no intrinsic value, then the person/agency issuing them must be trustworthy, otherwise they won’t have any value!

That was an amazing lesson at a tender age, but that has stayed with me. And, the more important lesson was not to study in the school of such a crooked person! Although I loved the ICSE Board curriculum and the teachers in that class, but we all moved out of that school after that year. All because of the legendary Anchal Sir! What an amazing experience it was, indeed!