Back after a long time. It took time to rummage through the memories and piece incidents together. I am finally ready now.
It used to be five packed days of labs and lecture. You might be forgiven for misconstruing that we had two peaceful days of weekends which we could relish with slumber. We had neither. Saturday mornings were frantic due to an 'extra academic course'. We had to get up, shear off our beards and dress up in filthy clothes to report to the NCC unit on the campus.
Must have been some pervert or masochist who must have suggested this to be a part of curriculum. This activity meant yelling and stamping your legs for three continuous hours. To make things worse, the instructors imagined themselves to be Captain Planet cronies. We had our main commander demanding us to be at the unit to report at 0755 hours (as he put it :)). The part that used to follow was amusing. People of all sorts (tall and short, thin and fat) used to display their parading skills. Yogi bear would have been amused for sure at this. Captain Planets used to observe us as if their life depended on it and any mistake would lead to the prolongation of the ordeal. It was painful indeed as our shoes seemed to be made out of iron and were demanded to be stamped on a rigid concrete pavement.
Amidst of all this was one particular Captain Planet who stood out. We used to call him 'Gaandu Shikari' and he probably knew it as well. He was Captain Planet with a dark side, boys loved him because of his double meaning and 'you know what' jokes. I remember him smacking Babu on the bums for parading as if he was showing off at the Paris Fashion week. (And Babu subsequently squealed as if he had an orgasm.) There was a 10 day camp dedicated to NCC so I will save the incidents for that in a separate post.
Meanwhile, midsems were on the corner so Professors tormented us by taking class tests. I never understood their philosophy, the portion to be studied was almost the same as the midsems. It was as if you were appearing for the midsem mock ups. Daaru however was unaffected by all this. He used to turn up about 15 minutes late for such tests (of 30-45 mins duration). He had friends everywhere and he had an amazing sense of vision which could bend, diffract and even somersault around objects so that he could easily view the solutions from anybody sitting around him. Daaru fared well (by his own standards) in all the exams leaving Babu at pains to figure what was wrong with him.
Meanwhile It was a couple of weeks before midsems on a lazy sunday. A short dark man knocked at my door. He asked me "Do you believe in God?" I replied "Yes!" Poor guy never expected me to agree so easily. He was at loss for words. He then flashed out a book with featuring a gun and with a title " Do you want to die? (or something similar to that)" He realised soon that I was not interested. He knocked on the next door and Puneet came out. Again the same questions. But Puneet was seduced by the look of the gun and probably thought this was some James Hadley Chase novel. He bought it and has not completed reading it uptil date. The person gave up on Puneet soon, he understood this was the only way if he wanted to cling on to God. Tukai on the other hand proved to be a handful and even corrected some of that person's fundae regarding the Gita. Hence Tukai was not disturbed further and declared an outcast.
Next on the line was Pandit. He did not buy the book rather he opened up his room for Satsang. Yes, the short dark man was an ISKCON agent. Soon the next few sundays would go with people gathering up at Pandit's room and looking at projector slides depicting heaven, hell or god. 'Haramkhor' Pandit had nothing to do with devotion and had least to do with God, rather he was playing with those people's emotions as they used to clean his filthy room every time they came. Thus Pandit enjoyed free cleaning of his room and free Kheer every sunday and probably used to sleep off during the Satsang. Anyways they soon picked up his emotional cheating, so they moved to uhmm say more greener pastures. Pandit had never complied with their wishes on getting up early in the morning and taking a bath!
The midsems were finally there. I remember the first paper, English for Communication. Babu procured well written notes from somewhere and was busy stuffing them in his memory. Puneet was doing the same. The paper was straight forward enough, but Puneet showed his decduction skills in that :). It had happened that we had the play Tughlaq by Girish Karnad as our weekly reading. Puneet managed to cook out spicy relationship between every pair of characters in that play (which included some illegitimate relationships and orientations). He painted relationships between the Stepmother and Tughlag, Tughlaq and Barani, Stepmother and Barani etc. He used phrases like 'Father is suspicious of Daughter'. We (Pandit and me) would have willingly paid a fortune to just photocopy that answer paper as relic for our memories.
After that came Mechanics paper, which was the worst paper I wrote since IIT JEE. None of the questions led to answers the magnitude of which seemed to instill confidence. It had put me into a trauma for the weekend. However, most of junta screwed up on that paper providing me some relief. Tukai however had been the star of the show scoring second highest amongst our batch and clearly asserting why he was AIR 45.
The remainder of the exams passed without any mentionable event. Classes started and Babu went back to mugging and Daaru did his best to make him do the opposite. I remember the English paper evaluation, it was the quickest. Puneet and me had to go to Sassy's office to catch a look at our marks. I had modest marks, Puneet meanwhile saw a classmate getting his marks increased by a bit of pleading and diplomacy. Encouraged, Puneet went ahead and thumped his paper on the table with a 'come on increase my marks old man' look. Sassy had a look at the paper for 10 seconds and then brawled "No way".
The next on the line was the Puja vacation - A welcome relief for me to go home and grab some chow. The train journey had been interesting, but Puneet had an even more interesting journey. Would be a welcome contribution from him!
Amidst of all this was one particular Captain Planet who stood out. We used to call him 'Gaandu Shikari' and he probably knew it as well. He was Captain Planet with a dark side, boys loved him because of his double meaning and 'you know what' jokes. I remember him smacking Babu on the bums for parading as if he was showing off at the Paris Fashion week. (And Babu subsequently squealed as if he had an orgasm.) There was a 10 day camp dedicated to NCC so I will save the incidents for that in a separate post.
Meanwhile, midsems were on the corner so Professors tormented us by taking class tests. I never understood their philosophy, the portion to be studied was almost the same as the midsems. It was as if you were appearing for the midsem mock ups. Daaru however was unaffected by all this. He used to turn up about 15 minutes late for such tests (of 30-45 mins duration). He had friends everywhere and he had an amazing sense of vision which could bend, diffract and even somersault around objects so that he could easily view the solutions from anybody sitting around him. Daaru fared well (by his own standards) in all the exams leaving Babu at pains to figure what was wrong with him.
Meanwhile It was a couple of weeks before midsems on a lazy sunday. A short dark man knocked at my door. He asked me "Do you believe in God?" I replied "Yes!" Poor guy never expected me to agree so easily. He was at loss for words. He then flashed out a book with featuring a gun and with a title " Do you want to die? (or something similar to that)" He realised soon that I was not interested. He knocked on the next door and Puneet came out. Again the same questions. But Puneet was seduced by the look of the gun and probably thought this was some James Hadley Chase novel. He bought it and has not completed reading it uptil date. The person gave up on Puneet soon, he understood this was the only way if he wanted to cling on to God. Tukai on the other hand proved to be a handful and even corrected some of that person's fundae regarding the Gita. Hence Tukai was not disturbed further and declared an outcast.
Next on the line was Pandit. He did not buy the book rather he opened up his room for Satsang. Yes, the short dark man was an ISKCON agent. Soon the next few sundays would go with people gathering up at Pandit's room and looking at projector slides depicting heaven, hell or god. 'Haramkhor' Pandit had nothing to do with devotion and had least to do with God, rather he was playing with those people's emotions as they used to clean his filthy room every time they came. Thus Pandit enjoyed free cleaning of his room and free Kheer every sunday and probably used to sleep off during the Satsang. Anyways they soon picked up his emotional cheating, so they moved to uhmm say more greener pastures. Pandit had never complied with their wishes on getting up early in the morning and taking a bath!
The midsems were finally there. I remember the first paper, English for Communication. Babu procured well written notes from somewhere and was busy stuffing them in his memory. Puneet was doing the same. The paper was straight forward enough, but Puneet showed his decduction skills in that :). It had happened that we had the play Tughlaq by Girish Karnad as our weekly reading. Puneet managed to cook out spicy relationship between every pair of characters in that play (which included some illegitimate relationships and orientations). He painted relationships between the Stepmother and Tughlag, Tughlaq and Barani, Stepmother and Barani etc. He used phrases like 'Father is suspicious of Daughter'. We (Pandit and me) would have willingly paid a fortune to just photocopy that answer paper as relic for our memories.
After that came Mechanics paper, which was the worst paper I wrote since IIT JEE. None of the questions led to answers the magnitude of which seemed to instill confidence. It had put me into a trauma for the weekend. However, most of junta screwed up on that paper providing me some relief. Tukai however had been the star of the show scoring second highest amongst our batch and clearly asserting why he was AIR 45.
The remainder of the exams passed without any mentionable event. Classes started and Babu went back to mugging and Daaru did his best to make him do the opposite. I remember the English paper evaluation, it was the quickest. Puneet and me had to go to Sassy's office to catch a look at our marks. I had modest marks, Puneet meanwhile saw a classmate getting his marks increased by a bit of pleading and diplomacy. Encouraged, Puneet went ahead and thumped his paper on the table with a 'come on increase my marks old man' look. Sassy had a look at the paper for 10 seconds and then brawled "No way".
The next on the line was the Puja vacation - A welcome relief for me to go home and grab some chow. The train journey had been interesting, but Puneet had an even more interesting journey. Would be a welcome contribution from him!
No comments:
Post a Comment