So the other day, Mom, Sis and Mrs asked me to look at the Wechat contest on IndiBlogger, which they thought was interesting enough to take part in! And indeed, it was pretty different from the usual ones! So the objective of the contest is

Interesting, I say! So, who would be the five people you would like to have a chat with? Let us do something different this time. Let us exclude the obvious ones - parents, siblings, spouse, relatives, best friends, Mahatma Gandhi and Hitler! Phew! Read some typical MBA and IAS interview answers, and you would understand why I excluded the last two! ;)

So, in this post, lets discuss about some other, unknown people, who in some or the other way altered your life! And how your life would have been if they hadn't met you at that point in life. So, here are my five...

1) Turbanator - 1993, Nov 25 - A happy-go-lucky boy, from class 3-D, just came out of his school around noon to board his school bus. He was crossing the road, and was little less than 10 seconds away from the familiar secure surroundings of his school bus, when suddenly, out of nowhere a rowdy, over-speeding, typical turbanator West Delhi scooterist hit him from his left side. BANG! 11 feet in the air, and then everything went black! What seemed like some eons later, when passers-by picked up the kid, his leg was broken beyond recognition. 

It took him multiple operations and six months of bed rest to get it back in shape! So the 'who' part is pretty clear in this case - the scooterist! Coming to the why part - The kid understands how his life changed after the accident. It took him 20 years to overcome his fear of roads and eventually become The Furobiker. However, he still wonders sometimes - Did the life of scooterist even change a bit post that day? Does he still remember those deadly 5 seconds as the kid does?

2) Miss Hottie, Class 10 - Nerds seldom crane up their necks to look at something except for books. But when they do, you can bet your life on the fact that 'something' would be the most interesting thing in the 100 miles radius. But well, which hot chick ever falls for a nerd! She, instead, falls for the dude than the nerd! I can write 500 pages about the same, and can also prove that this would be the most tragic sad story you will ever read. :P (I think every devdas thinks so) But for brevity, lets cut the long story short, she shot him down for a guy who came to school on a Kinetic Honda and not on a DTC bus. The nerd got angry, and vowed to do something better in life, like IIT or something. :D

So yeah, I would like to add 'Miss Hottie' just to know how is the kinetic guy doing nowadays compared with the DTC guy?

3) The Keacher - Well, Keacher is abbreviation of the Killer Teacher - If you guys read newspapers or whatever the newspaper guy throws on your door every morning, you would know that the following story is a pretty regular feature in Indian engineering colleges, specially mechanical engineering departments: teacher spoils the career and life of a student because he either forgot to polish his shoes or probably took one day off in the whole year. The kid takes his own life and the professor lives to spoil the career of many more such students. But then such cases happen in other colleges, right? Wrong. However, it allegedly did happen in my college as well! Without giving much details regarding the same, for obvious reasons, I can just say that someday I want to confront that guy. 

I would like to talk to him once in my life. I want to know how can someone have the courage to appear in the class the next day and act like nothing happened?

4) Durban guy - One fine evening, four friends were enjoying the setting sun on the beaches of Durban, South Africa. Little did they know of the animals that lurk in the darkness that falls after the sun sets. One of the four was an ardent photographer, and hence an SLR was also present in the scene. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a fine native African gentleman appeared and offered to click our group picture. We politely declined. He smiled and walked away. It was complete three minutes till we realized that he just wanted to size the loot, before he returned with his gang. It was the first time in my life, i saw how big, naked and dangerous a knife looks while travelling towards you. All four were hit hard, thrown on the ground and the camera gone. 

Well, my mom taught me once - never hate or try to avenge such thieves. Poor guy must have some serious monetary issues, for which he needed the money. I just want to chat up with the guy to know if our camera was of any help to him. 

Also, as they say, what doesn't kill you, makes you strong. This incident gave me some serious perspective in life!

5) 40 year old Me! - Just wanna ask - How you doin'? From all the experiences, hardships and good times, what did you learn, and how did you use it in your life to reach where you are? And you better own at least one BMW by the time we talk!

Well, as you would understand that I had very short stints with these five people, (except for the fifth one, obviously) but then if I remember meeting with them in such vivid 70MM reel, then they have impacted me, and continue to do so in a huge way. Because generally, I don't even remember my own birthday some years! :P

So yeah, I want to chat with these 5 people on my WeChat group, and connect the dots that what happened, how did it happen and how was each event in my life related to the previous one!

This post is my entry for the WeChat with Anyone, Anywhere contest by Indiblogger and WeChat.