Saturday, April 28, 2007

4. Nite-outs!!!


That’s yet another one of those standard rules laid out for college goers…especially for hostellers(night-schies???).To be frank, I came across this word for the first time only after I joined the college—that too from an ol’iit pal of mine that too while chatting. The first time that she mentioned she had a night-out, I was like……. er..nite-out???....she???....she was out the whole night? OMG!!! what was she doing? Naaa…. but I never let her know that I was sooo ‘low funda’ed on such ‘technical’ terms. By yet another one of my ‘ingenious ways’ I extricated out from her that piece of info. At last I became enlightened of this new ‘collego-technical’ term. So night-out means….well it’s just another name for ‘burning the midnight oil’---the only difference being it needn’t necessarily be for studying alone. No.. no rules like that. It can be for doing anything ranging from serious studies to chatting, blogging or just chattering away through the whole night.


Thus being enlightened of this new term I realised that we’ve had many a night-outs… a looot many. The very first of our(or rather my) night-outs…. we were literally outside. We were in the audi; it was the LH farewell. The farewell party extended well into the night….way till 2:00 am. The party was…er….(cant comment on it in public---danger of being spied by the seniors who organised it). Well the only worthwhile part of the party was after 2:00 am when the party was over…and we made our way back to the hostel. We had to pass by the AH(1st yr guys hostel)…and guess what we did??? The girls howled and hooted and screamed their lungs out….in the dead of the night…at the AH. A few heads appeared at the balcony, whose unfortunate eardrums had to endure the horsepower of the gals’ vocal chords. Well!!... so that was something..….


The 2nd sem witnessed night-outs at almost regular intervals of time---the period of interval being 1 week. Being in the ‘rocking D-Batch’ these are unavoidable weekly circumstances. Come Friday evening, all the books will be closed(ie…if any were open by then). The next two days will be that of blissful enjoyment, completely unaware of the burdensome realities of the remaining 5 weekdays. As though fast-forwarded by some invisible remote control, the two days pass away at lightning pace. Sunday evenings come like a blot from the blue. Along with it comes the great realisation of the next day’s assignments, submissions, tutorials, records, and what not??? But still we don’t start the work…there is always a time for it…and that time is at around 11 pm(literally the 11th hour). The next few hours are that of searching frantically for the long lost books; scurrying from room to room in search of completed copies; racking our brains over Shames and Theraja problems, and where one head alone doesn't work, gathering in the common room with a packet of Parle-G, to put our heads together (….. and also to fill our starving tummies). By then daylight would have set in. So when do we sleep? Oh yeah…there is always time for that in the class, listening to the not-so-melodious lullabies of the faculties.

Night-outs have now become a part and parcel of our NIT life. The last of the night-outs that I had...it was a proper night out…didn’t sleep at all for over 44 hours. It was the last day of our first year in the campus. We were supposed to be dead tired after a mind boggling mechanics test, but the extra energy pumped in by the excitement of the forthcoming three month long vacation drove the sleepiness out from us. Sat through the whole night---packing, chatting, orkutting, watching many movies at a time in a number of laptops….that was a real night-out. The next night too, I had to stay awake till 3:00 am(poor me) to make sure that certain people get down at the right station at the right time in the right way……. (but… psst…psst don’t tell anyone…. I slept off just 5 minutes before they alighted the train).


PS: I had to take yet another nite-out to write this nite-out. It’s now 3:33 am local time.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

3. A Valentine's Day COE.......


February 07:
This was the day which witnessed the commencement of the comedy of errors(COE) of 2 naïve, inexperienced yet greedy chinkys in an attempt to outsmart the biggest ever M3(Money Minded Monkey) of all- S M kutty. The leading characters of this COE are….Resh and Nee;S M kutty, G2 Nair and of course AB.

With the newly developed M2 idea we went to class as usual. In class we were racking our brains away as unusual. Ya right, it was tronics class, no wrong we weren’t thinking about those opamps and amplifiers…..in our brains we were brewing M. we were waiting, with bated breath, to unleash our M making plans.
ie to buy cards from kutty at half the price and sell it for full price……(well this idea too was given by the M3 kutty himself).

As step 1, Resh went and told Kutty about our desire to buy the cards. He wanted the exact number of cards we needed, which I told him later while he was about to leave the class, after ‘n’ number of vain attempts to catch his eyes. We needed four cards. He agreed to it as usual without even looking at the face.

Break time: we went to the coffee shop for refreshments; but our M2 minds were racking away restlessly. Well this racking thing did bear fruit this time…at least that’s what we thought for the time being. As if God-sent, AB came along the way…(AB and God-sent?????)…we painfully endured his chalus and kathis and hopeless mouth looking for quite some time---all for greater benefits. We even had to tell him the names of the girls in C batch--- each and every one of them. But no that wasn’t the ulti….the ulti was when he asked the name of a 4th year girl(name withheld for privacy)---“ini 4th yrine nokiyillennu veendallo”……. Slowly after moments of painful endurance we began implementing our plans on him. After a hectic session of compelling, bargaining and pleading he finally agreed to buy 6 white cards for Rs 8 each….Bingo!!! Profit=(6 *(8-5))=18 Rs just from AB. Hmmm….not a bad way to start. But the funniest part was that we asked AB to send 3 of the 6 cards to us!

Now what are we waiting for??? Next stop @ Kutty. He was literally taken aback when we said we needed 10 cards, despite of his futile attempts to hide his surprise. He asked for the cash then and there…but as we are not potties..we agreed to pay only after he hands over the cards.

Meanwhile parallel to this, another plot was going on with the 2nd lead character of this COE. Ya it's G2 Nair—he was literally pleading with resh to buy some cards from him, but at full price. Why do we M3-in-the-making need cards from him @ full price when we already have cards from kutty @ half the price?? We merely turned down his offer .We came back to our hostel, elated. Wow! what a state of bliss we were in when we came to know we would be making a total profit of Profit=(6 *(8-5)+5 *2)=28 Rs

That night we were supposed to have a sleep filled with $dreams…..but naaaa….that doesn’t happen with us….we are sound sleepers…nothing can interrupt our sleep. We slept soundly enough….but not enough to wake up our roomies though.

Time goes on…….
February 08:At LAN: Reenz had dragged me along with her to the LAN to create a civil-blog for debutant. Our LH CC as usual was out of order-- when we wanted it the most. So here I was…sitting in front of the computer…surfing the web aimlessly for some 'Promethean'(blog) stuff. Then I pinged Kutty. Ok so coming to the LAN wasn’t a total waste after all. At least I could remind him to bring the cards the next day itself. I casually asked him whether he had the cards ready. No ----was his answer….” You are kidding right?”. No he wasn’t. Don’t tell me that our kashtapettu budhimutti implemented plans are going down the drains…..no way!!! I couldn’t wait to get to Resh….

I made a dash to the LH, to the mess where Resh was. I broke the idivettu news to her. She couldn’t digest the news nor the food she was eating… her(our) very first of the M making plans was going to poliyify….no.. no way!! To reconfirm the news Resh smsed Kutty….(imagine Resh wasting an sms…..the case must be pretty serious). Soon came his reply. “I’m sorry”….sorry mannankatta…. little does he know the plight we are in!!!

‘Your sorrows will be turned to joy’,says the Bible. Will our case be like… ‘your profit will be turned to loss’?????? will our Profit=(6 *(8-5)+5 *2)=28 Rs be turned into Loss =6 *(10-8)=12 Rs????? wait and see……

Time goes on again…….

We planned to launch a no talking motion against Kutty….. ….but however the next day he explained his stand to us….he simply didn’t have any cards left with him what is he to do? Hmmmm….

Kutty chathichenkil chathichu….. we are supposed to face such unforeseen situations in a business. Ok so we now have to think of other means….and fast… feb 14 was closing on us….we have to keep our word to AB and Deepthi. AB had entrusted us to write the cards for ourselves and to post them. He left for his home. Deepthi badly needed 4 cards. We had prevented her from buying it from others.

As if God-sent there came AB’s call………(AB and God-sent again??????). He was trying to remove himself from this card business. Finally we made him agree to reduce the no of cards but to buy them at full price. Bingo!!...he agreed. Ok now problems are a bit reduced. We at least came to break even. No loss ; no profit…thadikedakathe nokiyalmathi ini…. But from where are we supposed to get the 6 cards we need?

Ok only one more way….call G2 Nair…..call the very person whose offer we turned down a few days back!! Gathi kettal puli pullum thinnule?karyam kanan kazuthakkalum pidikkande??? What followed, must be the most embarrassing phone call that was ever recorded in the history of phone calls….. poor Resh pleading with G2 to sell the cards at a reduced price---her last attempt at making this business a profitable one…..How long the conversation lasted….I’ll tell you when the phone bill comes…but even after minutes of persuasion….unswayed as ever he is, G2 didn’t concede to our demand.

Deal made. We are gonna buy 6 cards from G2 at full price, and sell it at the same. When one door opens…another closes itself. So what’s the problem now??? Well…G2 is not in town…he’s gone to TVM to get his arm dragon tattooed@@@???and he’s got the key of his cupboard which contains our precious cards. Oh no! can things get any worse??? Ok…every problem has a solution with it…so does this one. All right so now what is to be done?? Break the lock. Didn’t work. Good lock….which ever company it was of. So now what?? Find somebody with extra cards…..

After hours of painful search we finally got one Mr Antony. Whoever he is, he had the cards. Our last hope……….a meeting was arranged at the ATM. We were supposed to meet this guy at 5 pm Friday the…....no not 13th…Friday the 9 th. As usual in all of our COEs….when the guy finally makes the appearance only one of us will be left behind…this time it was Resh. I had to go to the placement thingy… the guy came..not at the appointed time though…he was a bit late…but we finally got our 6 cards. Valentines day did not become our wallet emptying day after all!Phew!

Wah! That was some tale of 6 cards!!!..

A word to kutty: ne thanneyada the greatest M3 of all!!! :P

2. THE TERMINAL—Re-enacted???


The day finally set in ……….however the excitement didn’t. It was just another day…..woke up late, had a bite of aalu parota, and ran to the class-not at lightning speed though…..cos the first hour was tronics. The rest of the day continued just like that…ok …hmmmm…resh n reenz were all very excited….they were kind of distracted in the class (in fact they were literally counting down each of the 60 minutes of the last period-PP’s maths class). Surprisingly enough, I was able to pay attention. Then had a boring civil meeting in the afternoon(yawn….)


Afternoon came… slowly I started packing..Actually there wasn’t much to pack because of the 'limited luggage to be taken’ rule. Packed ’em all in jus one small bag. Mom came…I was a bit late …got good therees from mom and dad for that. Picked up vikru(bro) from his hostel and off we went to the airport. Reached airport at around 8:00pm local time. After checking the luggage we went to the restaurant to have dinner. By then it was time for departure. We boarded the flight at 10:00pm local time.

(Comments about the airport---cant even guess in which century the poor airport took its dilapidated birth. The airport was simply pathetic!! Tell you what…..its really sad that such public places which is frequently visited by the outsiders are maintained in such dilapidated condition. Imagine the first glimpse that a foreigner gets of the ‘Gods own country’!!! )

The plane was ok …not bad. I got the side seat….actually I took mom’s side seat. Took off sharp, at the right time-10:20pm local time. The view outside was beautiful. It looked like small sparkling stars embedded on the ground. But the land was in view only for a few minutes…..then came hours of total blackness.. Listened to some music, watched half of some lame Mallu film, had dumb refreshments…by the way the plane was air India express-343.
------------------------------------------------------------
The land of the arabs!!!!! ……..man the sight was breathtaking…..it was simply A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. What stark difference from our land!!! The land appeared to be an assortment of precious jewels decked with priceless gems!!!

Finally..we were in the land of the arabs…..the airport was GOOD!! hmmmmmmmmm…… another stark difference from our country. We had to undergo an eye print test(dunno for what though).These people…..what do they think of themselves…whenever they see Indians they start speaking broken hindi…..but their hindi is far better than their English..pakshe avarkum vivaram unde ketto…this particular man spoke to dad, mom ,bro n GK uncle in hindi….to me alone they spoke in english……God!even the arabs know how pathetic my hindi is!!!Meanwhile a young arab at one of the checking counters ‘sugar-beat’ed with me…..he wanted to know where I’m from…India…..where in India……Kerala…….where in kerala……TVM…...where in TVM…..my foot! Why in the world did he want to know all these???

Then we had to undergo some passport checking thingy. All of us were successfully checked out…..all expect me …….of all the people in the world, but me…. waaaaaah… Those crazy arabs said some gibberish in hindi and asked me to go to some immigration office…me ALONE. Then came those ‘idivettu words from his mouth……’.. “Meena…. your visa is cancelled”WHAT????CANCELLED??? ….Ok….fine…so…what am I supposed to do about it????? It was 1:15am local time.

Dad came to the rescue…but actually there was nothing he could do .Next 7 hrs were.hmmmm…….what can I say….it was a one of a kind experience…imagine 7 hrs stranded in an airport in a totally alien land. Vikru and GK uncle were sent to Ashok uncle’s place. Dad and mom stayed back. At first we thought it would soon be resolved easily. These arab people….they are too rude….’Hoooooooow…Ruuuude’ They never offered any help. ..nor help us find a solution…nor offer us a comforting word. They were on the stand that my visa was cancelled and so I have to apply for a new visa at 8:00 am local time. Whose faulty was it anyway?? Dad(short tempered as he is)..his temper rising…. began to argue with the people. Finally they agreed that if they could get the passport of my sponsor they would let me go. So we now have to call my sponsor after finding out who the heck he is; make him come all the way from wherever he was and on top of that persuade him to keep his passport at stake for me…..HOW DUMB!!by this time they made my parents submit their passport too if they wanted to remain with me. So now we were in a totally alien land…with no visa ,no passport….no nothing.!!!

Oh oo!… battery low!!!battery low!!! The lappy needs to be shut down immediately.Oh no!…my only source of entertainment ..that too gone?? am feeling hungry too.... my stomach has been empty for the past 4-5 hrs(groan..grumble)..no source of food is in sight either…. waaaaah…. Now what am I gonna do the next 4 hours????

LAPPY DYING ^v^v^^v---------------^v^v---------^v-------------^----------------
LAPPY DEAD___________________________________________
RIP.

1. “He has made everything beautiful in its time.”(Ecclesiastes 2:12)


Joining NITC was like one of the seven wonders of the world. Alright….considering my acad performance till 10th , it can be said that it was no big deal at all…but my 11th and 12th witnessed….hmmm….what can I say….one of the worst dip in my acads. And after writing the jee ’06, like what someone(Anupam)said…the “IIT….IIT…IIT…” chant turned to “at least NIT…NIT…NIT….” So it was indeed a miracle---me getting into NIT. No I didn’t get a branch that I opted for….but still…...
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways” declares the Lord “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways And my thoughts than your thoughts.”
So believing I started my professional course in NITC.

One year at NIT got over so fast... so quick! But the one year was packed…jam packed with ‘n’ number of activities and events.4 sessionals,2 end sems, Sangam, tech fest, Thatva, dandiya night, LH farewell, Campus trek, debutant, hostel week, adrenaline, LH get-together, innumerable musical nights…and to top it all..Ragam---NOKIA Ragam 07...Gosh……so many!!!

Though there had been a few highs and many lows…on reflecting the past one year…there definitely had been God’s guidance throughout। First sem acads wasn’t that bad। Went pretty well… got a not-so-bad gpa। But the second sem was pathetic… Simply pathetic (still dreading the results) :(

One good thing that happened during the 2nd sem was, we got a bunch of believers….the EU…ever united, where there are true dedicated people who stands for the Word. We are now one big happy family.

Life in the hostel too is great!---  hostel life is not all that bad…though there is room…or rather there are many rooms for dissatisfaction here and there; now and then…we form one great bunch … Got a handful of great friends…who have successfully…or rather is in the process of successfully converting the introvert that I was …or rather I still am….. into an extrovert. Thanku guys!! :)

And one word about my dear sibling too…life in 1st yr would have been miserable without him. Gosh the number of things he had done for me!!! Its not that great…. but still…….paying my mess bill, buying stuffs for me from kattangal, taking lib books for me, carrying heavy books from LH to lib in his cycle, accompanying me to the church, therivilikifying me and making me feel miserable after each sessionals(his favourite quote being……. “I got full for mech n tronics..and u barely scraped thru huh??)………. the list doesn’t go on very much..but still……. I am wondering how am gonna survive the next 3 yrs without him….love you so much dear bro…(vikru..kooduhtal ponganda keto…)

The classes are as usual….having all the elementary qualifications of typical coll classes. Bunking, listening to class very attentively with eyes closed, proxies(for classes as well as for tests),the frequent ringing of mobile phones in class, the professors' incomprehensible, and often senseless, boring blah blah blah….. etc..etc…and outside the classrooms ….well its treats, treats and more treats!!!

Exams are real headaches…...a real pain.We'd be enjoying life peacefully in the ‘serene’ atmosphere of the campus, when all of a sudden these unnecessary elements crop up…creating havoc and disaster…wrecking many innocent lives---at least that’s what we feel like. The exam week witnesses a series of night-outs---which apparently is another name for sleeping on the table with books used as pillows…. It’s the time when we become Colombuses and Galelios, discovering new new chapters hidden deep in the pages of big fat books …it’s the time or rather the only time when our Computer center has a momentary respite from the innumerable ‘orkuttians’. …it’s the time when we keep repeating to ourselves a hundred times---“mein aisa kyun hum????”

Hmmm…. Now that was a few highlights from my first year in NIT…..but that’s not even 1/10th of the whole thing…..now 3 more years to come….. what might be in store for us??? k……will wait and see :)