Time to recount the second year memories! Thanks to the 2 leos S n S for reminding me of some of them :-D
The second year started with big g marofying major fight to get a transfer to the comps class. he had after all comfortably topped both the sems in the entire tronics branch! in spite of that he had to battle with the mgmt to get the coveted transfer! And if I remember correctly, it was almost a month into the sem that he achieved it :-) Of course the immediate effect of big g moving out was that the rest of us immediately showed our true colours and moved to sitting at the back of the classroom - the LLBs :-D
Sem 3 also saw some new profs coming to teach us, starting with Shikha who was one of the better profs in the college. Then there was Ms. R. Shah who tried to get people's respect by threatening that she was there till sem 8; unfortunately for her it backfired - she had no clue who she was dealing with and then we could threaten her saying even we are there till sem 8!! we also had vernekar (actually was there in FE also, but forgot to mention him) - again one of the better profs but a lil weird in true sakec style. And finally we had the grand entry of the one and only - Kotak!! This dude gave the initial impression as if though no one in the world cared for you as much as he did and that he was the most approachable and helpful person in the entire college. But soon everyone realized that the impression was just an illusion and the real version was much worse. In fact in due course of time, calling someone Kotak became the worst bad words to give to someone :-D
Somewhere along the way, sem 2 results came out and unfortunately some of the folks got a year drop and there were also new faces - people who had got a year drop previously came and joined the class. We had people like nitin pai, kavin shelat, shalaka (may her soul RIP) and one interesting sample who went by the name of siddharth - who again landed up in my group for some of the practicals! and also the one n only mr. ashwinikant (not sure if i got the name right!) who as far as i remember had such a strong physique that if he gave one punch to someone the dude would never get up again!!
sem 3 was also the sem when neta became a part of the grp and i got friendlier with moi moi aka psk! it was during this time that we would go to his place, and i would try my hand at playing the guitar. I had even learnt to play the first 1-2 lines of chura liya hai tumne (my leo buddies will of course have a different version of this :-D ) and then we would go again after about 2-3 months gap and i would have to re-learn those 2 lines all over again!!
then we had our group finally befriending one of the members of the B4(Borivli 4) gang! and we came to know what an amazing image they had of us! of course one of the best remembered instances was bunking class and going to watch hyderabad blues! goes w/o saying that the movie was amazing! and since we had forgotten to take a few people along, their reactions had to be heard to be believed!! but it did get me talking to julu - yeah though we were in the same practical batches the whole of first year we had hardly talked !! and she till day regrets tat decision and misses the first year when i had been a meek and silent fellow and talked to her on a need basis!!! :-D
-uv
p.s part 2.2 mite take some time, work life suddenly being very very hectic!!
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Brief Absence
Been only 10 days, but seems like it's been ages since I blogged :-p
These past 10 days have been quite hectic..suddenly loads of high priority bugs to fix, having to look into other peoples' issues, the usual round of meetings!! Also, had cousins visiting, which meant most of the evenings were busy eating out at good restaurants and for once not having to swipe the card...had uncle to take care of that :-D
And yeah, in between some smart asses in the GoI decided that some blog sites should be blocked and the even smarter asses in the respective ISPs went ahead and blocked the entire website!! So much for democracy and freedom of speech and expression!! It seems when this happened, India joined the elite group of countries like China, Pakistan, Saudi (and 1 more random country I dont recollect!) which censor the Internet!!! What a great club to join!!
Also my friends have been debating about the bomb blasts and the subsquent (and expected) inaction by the GoI..for some strange reason, I have been a passive participant in the whole argument! But has been very good to read and have a feeling, like most such arguments/discussions I have seen/participated in the past, this one will also come to nought, with people just indulging in "mental masturbation"!! (There I finally got a chance to use that term, thanks to chin bhai :-D)
Anyways, hope to be more regular now...probably will continue with the good old days series:-)
-uv.
These past 10 days have been quite hectic..suddenly loads of high priority bugs to fix, having to look into other peoples' issues, the usual round of meetings!! Also, had cousins visiting, which meant most of the evenings were busy eating out at good restaurants and for once not having to swipe the card...had uncle to take care of that :-D
And yeah, in between some smart asses in the GoI decided that some blog sites should be blocked and the even smarter asses in the respective ISPs went ahead and blocked the entire website!! So much for democracy and freedom of speech and expression!! It seems when this happened, India joined the elite group of countries like China, Pakistan, Saudi (and 1 more random country I dont recollect!) which censor the Internet!!! What a great club to join!!
Also my friends have been debating about the bomb blasts and the subsquent (and expected) inaction by the GoI..for some strange reason, I have been a passive participant in the whole argument! But has been very good to read and have a feeling, like most such arguments/discussions I have seen/participated in the past, this one will also come to nought, with people just indulging in "mental masturbation"!! (There I finally got a chance to use that term, thanks to chin bhai :-D)
Anyways, hope to be more regular now...probably will continue with the good old days series:-)
-uv.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Good old days - Part 1.1
Yes, I will continue some more with first year memories :-p Thanks to my buddies I now remember some more things which I can write about :-D
There are a few more characters that need to be introduced as well as mention some of the "amazing" teachers we had (can't really call them professors but will refer to them as profs since itz easier to write! :-p). I shall start with the dude who was the roll number before me - Gautam Tolat aka GT. He was one heck of a dude, a fellow gujju and a big fan of Hitler!! He was in almost all my practical groups for 4 yrs and I used to have some really interesting conversations with him :-D
Besides GT, there was a certain Sarita Tayshete and of course Subbuda! And in the first year, in Chemistry (if i remember correctly) there was Julu aka Aunty aka Ms. S! In these particular practicals, there was julu, sarita, subbuda and myself. And it was one comical group we had. I was then the very silent dude who still had trouble talkint to girls (kinda hard to believe for people who know me now ;-)) , julu who loved to talk (as i was to discover much later!) , ms. tayshete who was a weirdo like most people in sakec and subbuda who was also kinda like me. And in most practicals, the 2 boys would religiously do the pracs (just joking!) while the 2 girlz wud just stand n chit-chat!!
And since I have mentioned Chem, how can one forget the prof - S.N Singh! Still can't forget how he would stand in the class with a chalk in his palms and talking about vaater!! And shouting at big g for coughin in the class!! and asking the class to note down what he was saying as if it was some great gyan he was giving us!!
Then we had the 2 mechanics prof - J P SIngh - a quiet dude whom you could barely hear and Pawar - whose favorite dialog (as per my observations) was "Take 3 readings" - the take spoken in a very nasal tone! The mech lab had instruments which resembled the ones Einstein /Newton themselves must have used for their own experiments!
The Math dept was the best dept with Mrs. Hegde being the best teacher of SAKEC. Dahake came distant second and was another amazing character. One of his best one-liners was when he told some dude "You were born like this only!!" was absolutely hilarious when he had said it :-D
We had the amazing Krisboy who would do a wonderful mimicry of him and some of the other profs!
And who can forget the Commn Skills prof Mrs. N. D'souza! The only silver lining in an otherwise dull existence :-p A course which was the most boring to attend was made worthwhile thanks only to her :-D Too bad she left after a year!
Oh and we had the great M.B. Shaw (ex prof VJTI!) who would make us come at some unearthly hour in the morning to learn engg drawing! I have already desrcibed how "good" i was in this one and shall not venture there, but this dude thought he was some God doing us lowly mortals a favour by coming all the way to Chembur to teach us drawing. Frankly I don't think we cared 2 hoots for who he was :-D And his famous dialogue would be "Agar bhagwan bhi sikhane ko aaye, to bhi Shah and Anchor ke bachhe kabhi time pe nahi aayenge!" :-D There were 2 side kicks - a Khan and I think Ramesh who would teach drawing and Ramesh also doubled up as the Workshop prof! I think we had made some sofa leg and some metallic crap as part of the workshop course and had to write some 100's of pages of nonsense fulfill the requirement! Of course, we had the ever dependent Chin bhai who did most of the drawings for me :-D
Somewhere in between we had the sports week, where I think our class somehow reached the semis (or was it finals??) of the cricket tournament and in classic Indian team style flattered to decieve :-p Of course the cricket being played was box cricket which had some really stupid rules! But we had the most amazing tug -o-war team (girlz of course!!) led admirably by the captain - Rash whose strength and violent nature me and more so Suren were to discover during the later years :-D And I don't recollect who the others were in that team but I think they were the undisputed champs for the 4 years that we were there!
Coming back to Verve , the college fest, thanks to Neta for reminding that he had participate in the singing contest (solo and duet with Ms. Nair) and I think didn't win?? But he did win Dumb C along with Suren and someone else. Suren had also won the quiz with AK aka Bond (or was it in some later year??) All in all for the first year, we had shown major enthu in participating and winning quite a few of the events!
I think now I definitely do not remember any more about the first year and will write about the 2nd year next :-)
-uv.
There are a few more characters that need to be introduced as well as mention some of the "amazing" teachers we had (can't really call them professors but will refer to them as profs since itz easier to write! :-p). I shall start with the dude who was the roll number before me - Gautam Tolat aka GT. He was one heck of a dude, a fellow gujju and a big fan of Hitler!! He was in almost all my practical groups for 4 yrs and I used to have some really interesting conversations with him :-D
Besides GT, there was a certain Sarita Tayshete and of course Subbuda! And in the first year, in Chemistry (if i remember correctly) there was Julu aka Aunty aka Ms. S! In these particular practicals, there was julu, sarita, subbuda and myself. And it was one comical group we had. I was then the very silent dude who still had trouble talkint to girls (kinda hard to believe for people who know me now ;-)) , julu who loved to talk (as i was to discover much later!) , ms. tayshete who was a weirdo like most people in sakec and subbuda who was also kinda like me. And in most practicals, the 2 boys would religiously do the pracs (just joking!) while the 2 girlz wud just stand n chit-chat!!
And since I have mentioned Chem, how can one forget the prof - S.N Singh! Still can't forget how he would stand in the class with a chalk in his palms and talking about vaater!! And shouting at big g for coughin in the class!! and asking the class to note down what he was saying as if it was some great gyan he was giving us!!
Then we had the 2 mechanics prof - J P SIngh - a quiet dude whom you could barely hear and Pawar - whose favorite dialog (as per my observations) was "Take 3 readings" - the take spoken in a very nasal tone! The mech lab had instruments which resembled the ones Einstein /Newton themselves must have used for their own experiments!
The Math dept was the best dept with Mrs. Hegde being the best teacher of SAKEC. Dahake came distant second and was another amazing character. One of his best one-liners was when he told some dude "You were born like this only!!" was absolutely hilarious when he had said it :-D
We had the amazing Krisboy who would do a wonderful mimicry of him and some of the other profs!
And who can forget the Commn Skills prof Mrs. N. D'souza! The only silver lining in an otherwise dull existence :-p A course which was the most boring to attend was made worthwhile thanks only to her :-D Too bad she left after a year!
Oh and we had the great M.B. Shaw (ex prof VJTI!) who would make us come at some unearthly hour in the morning to learn engg drawing! I have already desrcibed how "good" i was in this one and shall not venture there, but this dude thought he was some God doing us lowly mortals a favour by coming all the way to Chembur to teach us drawing. Frankly I don't think we cared 2 hoots for who he was :-D And his famous dialogue would be "Agar bhagwan bhi sikhane ko aaye, to bhi Shah and Anchor ke bachhe kabhi time pe nahi aayenge!" :-D There were 2 side kicks - a Khan and I think Ramesh who would teach drawing and Ramesh also doubled up as the Workshop prof! I think we had made some sofa leg and some metallic crap as part of the workshop course and had to write some 100's of pages of nonsense fulfill the requirement! Of course, we had the ever dependent Chin bhai who did most of the drawings for me :-D
Somewhere in between we had the sports week, where I think our class somehow reached the semis (or was it finals??) of the cricket tournament and in classic Indian team style flattered to decieve :-p Of course the cricket being played was box cricket which had some really stupid rules! But we had the most amazing tug -o-war team (girlz of course!!) led admirably by the captain - Rash whose strength and violent nature me and more so Suren were to discover during the later years :-D And I don't recollect who the others were in that team but I think they were the undisputed champs for the 4 years that we were there!
Coming back to Verve , the college fest, thanks to Neta for reminding that he had participate in the singing contest (solo and duet with Ms. Nair) and I think didn't win?? But he did win Dumb C along with Suren and someone else. Suren had also won the quiz with AK aka Bond (or was it in some later year??) All in all for the first year, we had shown major enthu in participating and winning quite a few of the events!
I think now I definitely do not remember any more about the first year and will write about the 2nd year next :-)
-uv.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
I Am Angry!
Yes I am freaking mad at the recent happenings in Bombay. First it was 26/7 last year when rains wreaked havoc and the inept government didn't do anything. To make it worse, almost the same thing repeated about a year later. It must have been a feeling of deja vu! This time the rain gods were a little more kind and the rain was split over 5 days and was not as bad as the previous time. But thanks to the BMC, the people out there must have felt no different! In fact the misery lasted for 5 days! And again all the idiotic CM did was to blame the BMC!! I stil can't understand how the people of this great city let the CM go and not beat him up!!
Next what followed was even more ridiculous...a statue is smeared with mud at 430 am in some godforsaken part of Bombay (or was it New Bombay?) and the entire city is held to ransom by the Shiv Sena. Buses are burnt, shops are broken, people are forced to down shutters and rush home! For what? a statue of their leader's dead wife being insulted? I for one don't even know who that lady was or what her claim to fame is apart from being the Sena supremo's wife. I agree the act was a stupid one. But how can the Shiv Sena justify what it did? The ex-CM Mr. Manohar Joshi goes on air saying no one can get away after doing such a thing! They even warn the govt to arrest the concerned in 24 hours!! what a joke!! I had just one question for them..what were the sainiks doing when the miscreants were smearing the statue with mud? they were after all transporting it to some place as per some report I saw on tv. If they did not react or do anything doesn't that imply that they plain did not care and do not consider the lady in question as their own mother?? so why such a reaction?
And the last incidence which has really angered me is fresh in everyone's minds. It immediately brought back the memories of 1993. And had me worried as well when I came to know one of the seven blasts happened in Borivli! Worst was I could not reach anyone in Bombay and for a little while had no clue if everyone was ok. Luckily no one I knew was hurt. But hundreds of innocent Bombayites lost their lives. 200 odd if the govt is to believed. 200 is the number of people that must have been there in just one bogey during that time of the evening! As usual the people of Bombay showed the spirit of the city and rushed the injured to the hospital without waiting for the authorities to arrive at the scene. Once again, all the govt could offer as an excuse was intelligence failure and a paltry sum of 1 lakh for the dead and 50K for the injured!! How about guarenteeing the safety of the citizens? Or for starters, the basic amenities and infrastructure which we rightly deserve? After all 40% of the income tax collected country wide comes from Bombay alone!!
I just hope that the people of Bombay wake up soon and realize that the govt is not going to do anything to improve their lot unless we the people take some drastic steps. Also am proud of the resilience shown after another cowardly act by whoever did it!
And am finally done with venting my anger :-p unfortunately vented a bit of it on a friend yesterday who sportingly just listened to it patiently...thanks! up rishi ate it ;-)
-uv.
Next what followed was even more ridiculous...a statue is smeared with mud at 430 am in some godforsaken part of Bombay (or was it New Bombay?) and the entire city is held to ransom by the Shiv Sena. Buses are burnt, shops are broken, people are forced to down shutters and rush home! For what? a statue of their leader's dead wife being insulted? I for one don't even know who that lady was or what her claim to fame is apart from being the Sena supremo's wife. I agree the act was a stupid one. But how can the Shiv Sena justify what it did? The ex-CM Mr. Manohar Joshi goes on air saying no one can get away after doing such a thing! They even warn the govt to arrest the concerned in 24 hours!! what a joke!! I had just one question for them..what were the sainiks doing when the miscreants were smearing the statue with mud? they were after all transporting it to some place as per some report I saw on tv. If they did not react or do anything doesn't that imply that they plain did not care and do not consider the lady in question as their own mother?? so why such a reaction?
And the last incidence which has really angered me is fresh in everyone's minds. It immediately brought back the memories of 1993. And had me worried as well when I came to know one of the seven blasts happened in Borivli! Worst was I could not reach anyone in Bombay and for a little while had no clue if everyone was ok. Luckily no one I knew was hurt. But hundreds of innocent Bombayites lost their lives. 200 odd if the govt is to believed. 200 is the number of people that must have been there in just one bogey during that time of the evening! As usual the people of Bombay showed the spirit of the city and rushed the injured to the hospital without waiting for the authorities to arrive at the scene. Once again, all the govt could offer as an excuse was intelligence failure and a paltry sum of 1 lakh for the dead and 50K for the injured!! How about guarenteeing the safety of the citizens? Or for starters, the basic amenities and infrastructure which we rightly deserve? After all 40% of the income tax collected country wide comes from Bombay alone!!
I just hope that the people of Bombay wake up soon and realize that the govt is not going to do anything to improve their lot unless we the people take some drastic steps. Also am proud of the resilience shown after another cowardly act by whoever did it!
And am finally done with venting my anger :-p unfortunately vented a bit of it on a friend yesterday who sportingly just listened to it patiently...thanks! up rishi ate it ;-)
-uv.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Stage Fright!
We have a Toastmaster's club in office, which decided to organize a speech contest. The President of the club happens to be my cubicle mate and also a very good friend. He got a little carried away by my natural talent of blabbering a lot and felt that I would be a good person to participate! I kept resisting, but he went ahead and registered me anyways!
So there I was, bullied into participating and needing to talk about myself for about 3-5 minutes! And the speech needed to have a dash of humour as well! After spending some time on deciding what to talk about and failing to come with any good ideas, my blog came to my rescue - I decided I would talk about "What's in a name?"!! :-D I was still apprehensive about going and speaking in front of an audience and had once last chance as I had a meeting scheduled at exactly at the same time. But I had a colleague stand in for me and off I went to face the music!
As it happens at Sun, out of 900 odd people only 8 had participated (read that as 7 and 1 forced!). But surprsingly the number of people who had turned up to witness the event was quite large. Anyways, we had to draw lots to decide the order in which we would speak and as luck would have it, I was the last speaker...kinda like how I would always have the last roll number in school :-) The contest started off slowly but soon picked up pace and speakers 5-7 really raised the bar! Finally the moment of truth arrived and I walked up to the dias. Till that point I was super confident and then it happened. Panic struck, I got nervous, hands started sweating and I began mumbling some nonsense! I was speaking in front of a large crowd after a gap of 11 years - the last time was in school in an elocution contest - and the result showed! I ended up creating some part of the speech on the fly, cracked some lousy jokes and basically made a hash of things :-D
So as I had expected, speakers 5-7 won, and was glad that my colleague won the first prize :)
I ended up with a participation prize - a Toastmaster's clock!!
-uv.
p.s. the best part is, I use a blog to give a speech and then write a blog on the speech i gave :-D
So there I was, bullied into participating and needing to talk about myself for about 3-5 minutes! And the speech needed to have a dash of humour as well! After spending some time on deciding what to talk about and failing to come with any good ideas, my blog came to my rescue - I decided I would talk about "What's in a name?"!! :-D I was still apprehensive about going and speaking in front of an audience and had once last chance as I had a meeting scheduled at exactly at the same time. But I had a colleague stand in for me and off I went to face the music!
As it happens at Sun, out of 900 odd people only 8 had participated (read that as 7 and 1 forced!). But surprsingly the number of people who had turned up to witness the event was quite large. Anyways, we had to draw lots to decide the order in which we would speak and as luck would have it, I was the last speaker...kinda like how I would always have the last roll number in school :-) The contest started off slowly but soon picked up pace and speakers 5-7 really raised the bar! Finally the moment of truth arrived and I walked up to the dias. Till that point I was super confident and then it happened. Panic struck, I got nervous, hands started sweating and I began mumbling some nonsense! I was speaking in front of a large crowd after a gap of 11 years - the last time was in school in an elocution contest - and the result showed! I ended up creating some part of the speech on the fly, cracked some lousy jokes and basically made a hash of things :-D
So as I had expected, speakers 5-7 won, and was glad that my colleague won the first prize :)
I ended up with a participation prize - a Toastmaster's clock!!
-uv.
p.s. the best part is, I use a blog to give a speech and then write a blog on the speech i gave :-D
Monday, July 03, 2006
Good Old Days - Part 1
Time to go down the memory lane and re-count the experiences of my engineering days at Shah and Anchor Kutchhi Engineering College (SAKEC for short!). A lot of it is hazy now, but will try and pen down the events as I saw them and remember them. Some of it might not be accurate, so folks who remember it better, please feel free to correct it :-)
Here goes recollection of the First Year at SAKEC!
Story starts sometime in July 1997 when I finally joined the electronics branch of SAKEC. I still remember the first day of college when my friend Nilesh(or ND) and I took the double decker 90 ltd for Chembur and arrived for day 1. Our other friend from junior college, the one known as Big G and also the one responsible for me choosing this particular college arrived late as usual :-) Anyways, we reached college checked out our roll numbers and entered the classroom and took a seat somwhere at the back. Here we bumped into 2 dudes from Ghatkopar - Chin bhai and Subbuda. We immediately became friends and started talking as if we knew each other since ages! My buddy from junior college classes, Suren was also in the same class. Over time befriended AK, niloy, krisboy, inderjit and a whole bunch of people and above all Neta!
One of the first things which we checked out was the female crowd and needless to say, it was disappointing! I think we forgot that we were no longer in junior college (which had a commerce section and another commerce college which was known for it's crowd ;-) ) Well, things started going on smoothly and we got busy with the assignments and practicals and journal work. Life had suddenly become too hectic and it was a huge transformation from the junior college days, where at least I had led a very chilled life :) Soon sem 1 exams were on our heads and we had no clue how to go about preparing for it. Had about a month's preparatory leave (PL) where we joined our first set of crash courses. That is where we really came to know what the syllabus for the courses was :-p The rest of the PL was spent in collecting notes and going through those as well as some books. Anyways, the exams came and went and I was sure I would flunk in at least 4 of the 8 subjects :-D Everyone was guessing how many KT's they might be getting and it was a tense period of sorts.
After a brief break (long vacations were now a thing of the past!), college resumed and also the anxiety over our sem 1 results started increasing. But soon the work load of sem 2 increased and people kinda forgot about the results. Also, learning from my past mistake I had enrolled for regular class for engg drawing and going for the class every weekend in the most screwed up part of Dadar was a nightmare! Of course matters were made worse by my inability to comprehend what was being taught! I could never imagine the various views of an object and hence could never complete the drawings and would often wonder why on earth was such a stupid subject being taught to electronics grads in the first place?! Same was the case with subjects like mechanical drawing, chemistry and workshop!
As it happens in engg colleges, out of the blues one day the news came that the results were going to be announced that day. The anxiety came rushing back and everyone was tense. The result board was finally put up and after much jostling and fighting I managed to locate my number and saw a 0.224 P next to my name. I asked someone around if it meant I had passed and someone said yes! I could not believe it and in my happiness ended up hitting the dude next to me :-p After the crowd had subsided I checked again and came to know I had passed with grace marks :-p I had utilized the entire 10 marks available for, what else but engineering drawing :-D And then came the biggest shock that I had managed to get a first class as well :-D
So much for the fear of 4 KTs :-p Sadly, not all my friends had managed an all clear and there were lot of sad and crying faces around. Also, I was not good at consoling people in such situations and had no clue what to say to them. But netaji was good and he did a good job of it!
No sooner had the results come, sem 2 exams were on us and the whole scene of sem 1 was repeated. This time round though I was sure I would flunk in at least one of the papers! I still vividly remember how grossly under prepared I was for Physics and when I got the q paper, I found I hardly could answer 1 question! I relied on my 12th knowledge and also on the BU funda that if you write some nonsese, you might still get through! I followed that principle and wrote a lot of nonsense making up new physics fundas along the way, reading which am sure Einstein, Newton and the rest might have turned in their graves! :-D Also, in spite of all the classes and study sessions with big g, I managed to screw up engg drawing yet again :-D Needless to say, the break between semesters was going to be spent in a lot of anxiety and nervousness yet again :-)
And somewhere in between all this, we attended our first engg college fest, called VERVE. Had participated in quite a few events, and with some luck had managed to win an event called Tintoretto or 20 questions as it is more popularly known. We also had neta and julu (more about her and her friends in future posts) participating in the singing contest (or was it in the later years?)
Overall, the first year was a very hectic one and it passed by real quick and it was time for one of our last long vacations we would get in our life!
-uv.
Here goes recollection of the First Year at SAKEC!
Story starts sometime in July 1997 when I finally joined the electronics branch of SAKEC. I still remember the first day of college when my friend Nilesh(or ND) and I took the double decker 90 ltd for Chembur and arrived for day 1. Our other friend from junior college, the one known as Big G and also the one responsible for me choosing this particular college arrived late as usual :-) Anyways, we reached college checked out our roll numbers and entered the classroom and took a seat somwhere at the back. Here we bumped into 2 dudes from Ghatkopar - Chin bhai and Subbuda. We immediately became friends and started talking as if we knew each other since ages! My buddy from junior college classes, Suren was also in the same class. Over time befriended AK, niloy, krisboy, inderjit and a whole bunch of people and above all Neta!
One of the first things which we checked out was the female crowd and needless to say, it was disappointing! I think we forgot that we were no longer in junior college (which had a commerce section and another commerce college which was known for it's crowd ;-) ) Well, things started going on smoothly and we got busy with the assignments and practicals and journal work. Life had suddenly become too hectic and it was a huge transformation from the junior college days, where at least I had led a very chilled life :) Soon sem 1 exams were on our heads and we had no clue how to go about preparing for it. Had about a month's preparatory leave (PL) where we joined our first set of crash courses. That is where we really came to know what the syllabus for the courses was :-p The rest of the PL was spent in collecting notes and going through those as well as some books. Anyways, the exams came and went and I was sure I would flunk in at least 4 of the 8 subjects :-D Everyone was guessing how many KT's they might be getting and it was a tense period of sorts.
After a brief break (long vacations were now a thing of the past!), college resumed and also the anxiety over our sem 1 results started increasing. But soon the work load of sem 2 increased and people kinda forgot about the results. Also, learning from my past mistake I had enrolled for regular class for engg drawing and going for the class every weekend in the most screwed up part of Dadar was a nightmare! Of course matters were made worse by my inability to comprehend what was being taught! I could never imagine the various views of an object and hence could never complete the drawings and would often wonder why on earth was such a stupid subject being taught to electronics grads in the first place?! Same was the case with subjects like mechanical drawing, chemistry and workshop!
As it happens in engg colleges, out of the blues one day the news came that the results were going to be announced that day. The anxiety came rushing back and everyone was tense. The result board was finally put up and after much jostling and fighting I managed to locate my number and saw a 0.224 P next to my name. I asked someone around if it meant I had passed and someone said yes! I could not believe it and in my happiness ended up hitting the dude next to me :-p After the crowd had subsided I checked again and came to know I had passed with grace marks :-p I had utilized the entire 10 marks available for, what else but engineering drawing :-D And then came the biggest shock that I had managed to get a first class as well :-D
So much for the fear of 4 KTs :-p Sadly, not all my friends had managed an all clear and there were lot of sad and crying faces around. Also, I was not good at consoling people in such situations and had no clue what to say to them. But netaji was good and he did a good job of it!
No sooner had the results come, sem 2 exams were on us and the whole scene of sem 1 was repeated. This time round though I was sure I would flunk in at least one of the papers! I still vividly remember how grossly under prepared I was for Physics and when I got the q paper, I found I hardly could answer 1 question! I relied on my 12th knowledge and also on the BU funda that if you write some nonsese, you might still get through! I followed that principle and wrote a lot of nonsense making up new physics fundas along the way, reading which am sure Einstein, Newton and the rest might have turned in their graves! :-D Also, in spite of all the classes and study sessions with big g, I managed to screw up engg drawing yet again :-D Needless to say, the break between semesters was going to be spent in a lot of anxiety and nervousness yet again :-)
And somewhere in between all this, we attended our first engg college fest, called VERVE. Had participated in quite a few events, and with some luck had managed to win an event called Tintoretto or 20 questions as it is more popularly known. We also had neta and julu (more about her and her friends in future posts) participating in the singing contest (or was it in the later years?)
Overall, the first year was a very hectic one and it passed by real quick and it was time for one of our last long vacations we would get in our life!
-uv.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)