Saurav Maheshwari

Our school KV BRPL was located inside the township premises. Till 10th standard, our class used to have two sections A and B. As our school only had science stream for the higher secondary education, so in our 11th and 12th standard the number of students got reduced and both Sec-A and Sec-B were merged. Saurav Maheshwari was basically from Sec-A and earlier, I didn’t have much opportunity to interact with him, apart from those Hi-Hello kind of talks during the cricket matches we used to play on some Sundays. Later when we started to share the same classroom, I got to know Saurav more and he was gem of a person. I think many of the Sec-A guys were able to clear their Biology concepts because of Saurav. Well, those days during 8th and 9th standard, guys used to have hell lot of doubts regarding the reproductive system of human beings. Saurav’s dad owned a VCR and sometimes when his parents were not at home, Saurav and his close friends liked to utilize the opportunity and used to bring those reproductive kinds of movie cassettes on rent, to further enhance their biological concepts.

Saurav was quite a fun loving and an extremely friendly kind of guy. I even had the opportunity to had lunch at his house on few occasions. Wow! His mom used to make such yummy Alu Parathas. Almost 80% of the students of our school were from the township itself, well, I was from the minority group though. Earlier everyone including the teachers used to go home for lunch and on few rare occasions,  some sincere students used to bunk their afternoon lectures. Later the school authorities became strict enough and changed the rule. The township students didn't enjoy the new rule at all, as according to it no one was allowed to go home for lunch. So, everyone started to bring lunchboxes and that really created hell lot of opportunities for some of the foodie guys and trust me, they were quite plenty in numbers. Everyone had to somehow protect their foodstuffs till lunch time from those anonymous food stealers. I think the girls must have had a real hard time to protect their lunchboxes. Aha! Their mom used to prepare such mouth watering and tempting foods for them. As soon as we opened those boxes, oh! The aroma was so pleasing and I was really impressed with all those Mithais they used to bring. I must say, girls are very choosy and demanding with the stuffs they shallow, as long as they don’t have to prepare them. 

Not only girls and even some of the guys were also quite pissed off with those food thieves. That was the time when I and some of my backbencher friends used to empty our lunchboxes by 2nd period itself. Well, that minimized our risks to a great extent and also gave us the opportunity to enjoy some extra bites later. Apart from the girls, also few guys who used to bring good quality lunch, complained about those anonymous Tiffin Chors. Now Saurav often used to complain and then one day, he was so irritated that he came up with an extreme, yet very innovative idea. He along with few of his friends consulted with a pharmacist and one day, he mixed plenty of jamalgota seeds to not only his food, but also few other lunchboxes as well. Jamalgota is one of the best known laxatives and mainly used for severe constipation. I was not part of the conspiracy at all and they executed their plan in the first period itself. 

Fortunately I didn’t consume any of the damn thing from any of those boxes, on that particular day. But many of my friends were not fortunate enough. OMG! That day I realized the power of jamalgota. Actually, it's very much capable to convert serious constipation into ultimate loose motion. But under normal condition and specially on that particular day, it performed little differently. For most of the offenders, something unusual kind of chemical reaction occurred inside their stomach. Within no time, the food inside the stomach took an alternate path and poor guys started to eject from their mouth. Some of the guys puked 6-7 times that day and few guys even complained to the principal Sir. But the principal only said "why you guys had to steal lunch from others?" After that day, it became quite a daring task to steal foodstuffs from others lunchboxes. 

When we were in our 12th standard, Saurav’s father got a very good job offer and he had to resign from BRPL and joined a company in Saudi. Saurav also had a younger brother named Gaurav Maheshwari and he was 2 years junior to us. Both the brothers had to leave our school and got transferred to some school in either Delhi or Mumbai, I’m not very sure about that.  Once they left, I didn’t have much contact with him. Few months before our final 12th exams, most of us were little tensed, as well as confused about our career. During that time, on Nov 12 1996 the tragic Charkhi Dadri mid-air collision occurred over the village of Charkhi Dadri, to the west of New Delhi. The aircraft involved were a Saudi Arabian Airlines flying from New Delhi to Saudi and a Kazakhstan Airlines flying from Kazakhstan to New Delhi. All 349 people on board both flights were killed, making it the world's one of the most deadliest mid-air collision. It was so difficult to believe that 2 planes had a head on collision up in the sky, I mean there’s so much space out there and how could 2 tiny things collide just like that? 

Next day at school, we heard some rumor that one Saurav Maheshwari was in the passenger's list of one of the flight that crashed the previous evening. Everyone was so much tensed that moment, but I was cool enough and wondered, how the hell that could have been possible? But after sometime our school principal made the official announcement that both the brothers, Saurav and Gaurav Maheshwari was on board flight "Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747-100B".  The entire classroom went silent and we simply started to stare each other's faces. Even though our principal Sir didn't declare a holiday on that day, but our entire batch simply couldn't attend any of the lectures. After sometime most of us went back home. It was so difficult for me to digest the fact and just couldn't have imagined the pain, Saurav's parents went through after they lost both their grownup kids.

Without considering the security measures involved, according to the researchers the probability of such kind of a head on collision of flight up in the sky, at an altitude of 15000 feet is one in 100 million. Well, the probability is much lower than someone getting killed by a coconut, falling from a height of 80 feet above the ground. But yet it occurred and after that incident, aviation authorities across the world no longer relied on the theory of probability and developed the ACAS (Airborne Collision Avoidance System) to a great extent.