Festival of Youth - ME - 3** - Episode I

That's been a year and a half since my last post. The folklore of the Three Idiots plods on.

The registration process was precisely concocted to kick out the slumber. The 30 minutes of frantically scrambling all over the place kicked out the reverie. Somehow I made the 1.00 pm deadline after which Insti Babus would have gone home for their lunch. The fees were paid, the usual stamps registered on my receipt. The spring semester began.

It took the rest of the day to lumber my belongings from the common room of the hall to my cell. In the evening, the chill set in. No geyser in the bathroom was a pleasantly tickling experience, something which was to accompany me for the next four years. The toilet was a mess, the unknown psychotic prowler had been at large for the past three weeks. 

I had visited my faculty adviser in the evening and with an expression of submission collected my grade card for the past semester. I had just managed to keep my GPA below 8.00 by 2 decimal places. Advice and warnings regarding my future followed. Back at the hostel, Puneet gleefully went about strutting with his GPA which was a couple of decimal places above 8.00. Abhinav and Daroo were the most satisfied creatures with comfortable seven pointers. Tukai had lived up to his AIR, a taboo which otherwise befalls many of the front runners. Now that we had our GPAs, we were set to be branded. Puneet was now an "Atthi" (GPA>8). I had to content myself with "Satti" while Daroo and Abhinav took special pleasure in reminding me I was in the same group as them. Babu was quite never able to comprehend how he missed "Nehli" (GPA > 9) when he had put out the quantum of studies which exceeded the sum of the entire wing. Daroo consoled him by explaining him how too much of studies have a "reverse feedback" effect.

The semester kicked off next day with a 7.30am class on Chemistry. Half the class never turned up. It was a pleasant morning with the mercury dropping below 15 degrees on the Celsius scale. It was again a folklore in Kgp that nothing pretty much mattered with the course on Chemistry. You were supposed to earn a C whether you studied or not. Once in a while, the professors used to gift a 'B' just to defeat the monotony of it. And allegedly, to keep the statisticians satisfied, they doled out 'A's. Babu was however undaunted by all this and had pledged to return with a bash. He would be discovering his delusions four months later.

The afternoon initiated with the fabled Electrical Technology Lab where professors threw your lab report in the air to express their opinion and assessment. This adventure which was set for the next four months definitely merits a separate post.

The food in the mess was trash as usual. I sought solace in the dinner tiffin supplied by a Marwari from Gol Bazaar. That kept me on for a month. Puneet and Babu relished the mess food. Tukai mostly confined himself to milk and fruits. Pandit resumed his consumption of Lays at normal pace. This was the time when rickshaw wallahs and vendors were a regular sight coming through the gates. It wasn't the parents coming to meet their wards, but they were Desktops. Almost all rooms (exceptions included me) were populated by desktops. These were essential for "studies" and "project research". The users did study and research using probably the best and most versatile Local Area Network in the World. Yes, in the World. For any movie (you name it, you get it), any song, any goddamn document etc. were located on that network. As I type, the Kgp LAN or DC++ as we knew it, grows banishing away any competition possible.

So far so good. A week had elapsed. Classes were now a routine, Labs were torture. Then in the evening we were all summoned to the foyer. What could be the plausible reason, perhaps a few knew, however the EPABX system was roaring with orders ushering us down.

There, we met THEM.

To be continued ....