Hardik Rajgor

I grew up in the suburbs of  Mumbai  and  apun  ka childhood was really  fatte . Kids would do a lot of  bol bachchan  on the ground   but then had to back their  shanpatti  with  kadak  football skills.   Those merely engaging in  bhankaas  were taken to the  khopcha  and given  kharcha paani.  One couldn’t go home and do  panchayat  about the  lafda  that happened on the ground because no one wants to be friends with a  phattu  who complains to mom. Also, because your  bantai  log wouldn’t be pleased, and  tereko dho dalega . We believed in being  bindaas  and settling our  nalla  problems  sumadi mein. As we got into  school , I turned out to be an average student who ended up scoring below average marks in  Hindi . “ Tereko  kitna aaya?” I would ask my friend who also barely managed to scrape through. ...

I ’ve been an average student throughout school and college. The guy not nerdy enough to be in the front bench but not naughty enough to rule the back bench either. I was strictly mediocre, like  Akshay Kumar , of whom not a lot was expected but he just seemed to keep doing fine. I scored just enough which ensured that my parents had to never visit college but not enough to avoid comparisons with Sharmaji ka ladka. I never ever failed. And then I enrolled for the chartered accountancy course. My dad’s a chartered accountant and a lot of my uncles are CAs, and naturally I was going to be a CA. That’s just how Gujarati and Marwari CA families roll. Dad, of course, didn’t tell me that. He told me that if you like math, you should pursue the CA course. This bullshit sales pitch was right up there with the time he convinced me to have paracetamol because it looked just like Polo. I cleared the entrance exam (CPT) in my first attempt and felt that I could conquer the world. Like...

W hen you were a child, adults often treated you like a burden during New Year’s eve, like a home loan or indirect tax. Mom and dad would stuff you with pizza, put you to bed, and then have their share of fun, that could involve anything from drinking lime juice (because it was 1998) to partying at a hotel function (sorry, still can’t admit it,  getting naughty ). As you grew a bit older, they no longer had the choice to keep you out of the New Year’s party plan. You were in that phase of life where you had discovered  Pokémon , beyblades,  Roadies , and  porn . It was no longer possible to fool you into eating Chyawanprash by telling you it was chocolate. You knew there was something important attached to  New Year’s eve  as friends and relatives kept whispering about it in the month of December. Around this time, the family began to gather around the TV to watch Manikchand Filmfare Awards, while feasting on pav bhaji and sipping Thums Up and waiting f...