I know it's been a long time, I haven't written anything here. Sorry about that pal...
Halt! Stop..
College days were the most pleasurable and memorable days in one's life, at least in my life.....and that's why I am writing.
This is not a fish market. Act like a soldier.—came shouting our HEAD OF DEPARTMENT and everyone dash inside the classroom. Some of the thick and chunky spectacle wearing guys would be discussing how and why the cricket ball spins in the air and what the effect is.
Really hard to handle these fellows...trust me!
Comes back from college, drink a cup of by two tea and a cigarette -that was awesome man ...smoke and smoke and smoke...Study, college assignments, sitting in the quadrangle with the girl I used to hang around, talking about novels, songs, school days and projects...etc
I remember the day; I took all my money which was sent from home for the whole month to date (go out) with the girl in a 3 star hotel and spent the rest of the month burrowing money and eating sambar and rasam only.
The system is like this--- You get the money from home, spend all of it to pay off the dues from the last month. Burrow fresh money for the current month and pay off when you get the money in the next month and that was a continuous improving systematical technique to survive. And it was called "The Money Law".
Hostel life was more memorable and impressive....you find a friend who stays in a rented house and party the whole night out, talking about babes and whiskey...the topic goes on!
Burrowing money was a custom of hostel life; you greet the person by asking him for some money. The one who asks first saves his chances of being asked by somebody else...You starve, you are broke with penniless but you will always have money for a ciggi, if not a bidi.
I remember we used to run around looking for a ciggi or a bidi in the middle of the night in every room of the hostel...That was funny man!
But today, I am drinking all kinds of fruit juices to heal from that smoke. So don't ever try that.... dude ,I quit smoking and the feeling is just wonderful!
Stand in a queue for everything – for food, for bath..etc...
I somehow convinced my parents to buy a PC. But ended buying a PC to watch movies, listen to different varieties of songs ( hard, sentimental, electronica, soft, rock...)and lay down with the eyes closed and dream about............whatever you want. You got all of them..20GB of songs out of 40GB hard disk.. I did a tremendous job collecting them. Hats off on me!
From playing games to disassemble and assemble every piece of it was a hobby. I bought the PC for C/C++ programming and writing project articles/reports. But I never did that. I tried once but the computer didn't let me do. So I quit.
I bought a second hand mobile phone shared by 2 of us as cute as a calculator- fx750 and as beautiful as an omega compass box and that was MOTOROLA..Yeah baby! I always carry that as an important asset.
Getting a call was more exhilarating that anything else.. I used to stay the whole night waiting for a call or a message. Hmm..What Can I say....more. You know what it is like...Think about the first few days when you buy a mobile phone....! @!@#@
I used to spend the night writing love letters for my friends...but you know what, all of these guys broke up after few several years of romances. Today, I am proud of myself as I have a secure girl friend now. I will tell you all more about her later on. Stay there!
What now? In the lab room- circuits, diodes, transistors, capacitors, oscilloscope. Wires breadboard...sounds good huh!
Well, my contributions in the team was to give space to the intelligent folks to assemble the circuit and let them do the experiment and me, note down the readings...I assemble the circuit once for myself during the lab exam – and I lost 1 liter of sweat, believe me! You can try that if you would like but don't blame me later on....
I didn't have a landline phone connection at home during those days, so I used to write letters or use to wake my neighbors just to tell my parents that I need money for so and so...reasonably good enough to convince my parents and that's when I learn my marketing skills and the power to convince people...See, it is useful to study outside home.
Going home during the vacation was another memorable journey. I went home for the first time after 2 years and it took me 9 days to reach home
Bang->Hyderabad->Kharagpur-> Howrah->Guwahati->Imphal.
My parents were happy to see me...after a long time...At home, I enjoy the long walks, evening drives , meeting friends, chatting and what not.. You get to eat all kinds of mouth watering foods....
The street lights buzz, the cars screech by with the music exploding from inside, MG ROAD used to be a place for the riches, damn freaky man and we were having a cup of by 2 tea from the roadside thella to refresh the mind.
It was nice to watch the beautiful cars and just envy them...that was around 1 'o'clock in the night during the exam days.
My final year was really challenging and that's when I became serious in life again...
Hang on, before that, I will tell you about the epoch of internet chatting –yahoo messenger, MIRC etc.
(To be continued)
* Devaraj Takhellambam contributes regularly to e-pao.net.
The writer can be contacted at [email protected]
This article was webcasted on October 16th 2006.
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