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College
alas is no more. And given the present state of things its seems like an unreal
dream ….. too good to be true. God! What life it was! The sense of reality hit
me so hard…so hard that I’ve spent sleepless nights struggling to recollect if
I(or we) really had it that good? Had it all been so uncomplicated?
Among
the best things about college were problems…. or the lack of them. There was
nothing you couldn’t do! No authority so far removed that can’t be reached out
to! If you couldn’t solve it there was the guy next door who could or he knew
someone who could!
And the best part was
a lot of things got sorted out even if you don’t turn up!
Assignment submissions?? You could always find that dude who
says “F*** it man!! I’m not giving it till the last day of exams! Even XYZ
(insert name of the topper here) isn’t giving it until next week! If these asses want to work their asses off let them…now let me get back to Family
Guy! ”. Good Pep talk! I go back back to not giving a F***!! So the thing is I am not scared of taking risks like this! Just wanted to make sure there were enough rotten eggs(or good eggs) with me in the basket!
Weekly Journal submissions ?? Even more fun! It was Concrete
Structures lab journal! Pappe and other fellows had written something like 6
experiments and even had time to cover their journals with brown sheet (Why
they ever did never quite hit me!)I wake up at 9 and have a hearty breakfast of
puri and channa . Check out the net to see if any new celebrity adopted an
African kid or something. Then at 11 AM realization dawns on me that the lab is
at 12:50. So I take my time acquiring someone’s completed journal. Much to my
annoyance the Civil Dept has only two kinds of people: ones who have their
journals ready well before time and others ….well, like me. And a lot of people
from the former get converted into, irresponsible, non-journal writing louts,
who didn’t give a damn about their less fortunate non-journal writing ones as the semester wore
on. Digressing! Ok its 11 am. I am in
search of a journal and the usual sources have already lent their journals to
the poachers(A dangerous group who also don’t give a damn about finishing their
journals, but think it is wise anyways to get their hands on a completed
journal, just in case.)As usual, you tell yourself…you are an engineer! Think
out of the box!
Thinking out of the box never quite helped me. By12:10 the
urgency of the situation really hits me ,the usual defaulters are on course to
completing their journals. Shit! Aaaah Rajeewa is done with it and is proudly
flaunting the tidily covered journal in the corridor. Open my mouth to ask him
if he’s taking his journal for a function of some sort. Hold myself up!!Do I
really want to taunt someone who’s my only hope??Journal acquired with minimal
fuss! Head to my room and bolt the door shut! Yikes half an hour only! Fully
focused I flip through it and my heart sinks seeing 10-15 pages of neatly
written experimental engineering gizmotic bullshit stuff, accompanied by tidily illustrated diagrams on every page.F***!! I would need a lifetime to complete this!! Look at my laptop and my gtalk is
on…..need to change my status message…from that movie I saw last night! Put in
a lot of thought into the status message! Somehow I am convinced that this
would give me more focus! 10 minutes later and a status message that
read…”Attempting the impossible ” I put pen to paper!
15 mins left! Halfway through page
three, that was talking about last week’s experiment where I stuck a
thermometer through half a dozen boiling beakers of tar at various levels of
discoloration. The guy who lent his journal wants to fill up the Index sheet of
his journal! How annoying! I try to convince him that there were people who had
written less in their whole journal than he had in his index! But NO he wants
to do it!
10 mins left…. NO way I can do
this! Keep my door open and play some Floyd to soothe the tensions.
5 mins left..... Mental calculation.... assures me if I bunk today and attend the next 3 weeks of classes covered on the 75% attendance thing! Brilliant!!!
Bell Rings..... I am off to sleep!
NCC classes ?? :
12:30 pm Wednesday: one of those unlikeliest of unlikely days the Hostel 6 Mess
(which on normal days serves un-likable, well uneatable lunches) serves great
lunch of piping hot Khichdi with unlimited Pappad and Curd . Hearty meal done
and head back to my room.
12:45pm:
(As first years we could opt for Arts & Music, National Social Service
(NSS), National Cadet Corps (NCC) or get pushed into PT Games by default) The PT
guys are already out in their incredibly short shorts and T-shirts. Forget NSS
guys! God knows where they disappear after lunch.
1:15pm:
As luck would have it apart from me there’s only one other NCC guy in the
hostel. He calls up ”Dude you wanna go?”
Me:”Let’s
go at 2:30”
2:30pm:
NCC Friend calls up again ”Dude….?”
Me:
”gimme 15 mins I am about to finish this
movie”
3:00pm: I call
up my friend ”Dude…?”
Friend
”Arey yaar!!! …am sleeping!But you go if you want to!”
I
look at my ridiculously Khakied and even more ridiculously small NCC outfit
shoved rather haphazardly under my bed.I note that even if I had joined the NCC
as a kindergartener I d still have had difficulty in pulling on those pants.
Then I look out at the blazing sun and convince myself that only a mad man
would walk all the way from the gate to the other end of the campus in the
heat. The inexplicable humano-magnetic forces of my cosy bed also influence my
decision. With a promise that I will not miss NCC classes from the next week I snuggle
into my bed for my ‘Siesta’. Just before I doze off though, I mutter a word of
praise for the soul who coined such a term and made sleeping in the afternoons
an aesthetic if not fashionable thing alongside “Cheese tasting” and “Wine
Tasting”.
Theory Classes: The best part about BIT has to be theory
classes (among a whole host of other things, of course!). It would take me a
whole book to describe how wonderful the classes were suited to everyone’s
needs. in I believe there were 3 categories of people in college when it came
to theory classes.
There were those who took it seriously and took copious
notes. These were the first to arrive in class and settled down with pens at
the ready well before the bell. This group consisted of the girls (of course!)
and a small number of few guys, a number that could be counted with 2 fingers. The notes these people took
down formed the basis of everyone’s preparation (well in most cases this was
the only preparation).
Then came those who walked in just after the Professor had entered. These people just nodded on to whatever the Prof said while he was
looking and taking advantage of other times to take a bite of an apple or sip a
cool one. This formed a major part of the class including myself.
Then of course there were those who just didn’t give seriously didnt give a F***!!These were a gang of "outlaws" who lived dangerously and strolled in with the collars up and a no visible notebooks(Funnily! All of them usually carried a pen, never found out why? But then the desks cant decorate themselves can they?) They usually wandered into the classroom halfway thru the lecture and settled
comfortably in the last bench. The last group was notorious for their pursuit
of luxury in the last benches: dragging around the tables noisily unmindful of
the fact that the Prof’s chalk had stopped midway thru some diagram and half
the class was looking in their direction. When they settled (usually with a
newspaper/novel/laptop/) though a restive calm prevailed over the class and business
resumed. I belonged here in the wild, with the last benches! My habitat, my home!J
Also since a majority of Civil Engineering involved working
on charts, we had huge desks with adjustable inclines. For me and a lot of
others in the final category, this was a Godsend. We could set the incline
really steep and spread our upper body over the desk like a specimen on a
Surgeon’s operating table. While some had the audacity to snore, most of us last benchers just respectfully nodded off to sleep and when woken up by the lecturer, pretended to have missed out the some nuclear secrets and hastily scramble for pen and paper. We then engaged in furious note taking for the next 30 seconds until the lecturer cooled off his/her interest on us!
College to me was heaven itself! If ever there was anyway I could live those 4 years again, I would give just about anything up! Now I know whats all the fuss about college!
Disclaimer : F*** = FISH :P
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