The High Class Boy was woken up by his boyfriend, as the bus was taken into college by the driver who doesn’t know where the brake is. He was not happy as his sleep was disturbed. He got down from the bus. He entered the canteen to have his breakfast. He could not resist the beautiful (only for him!) aroma of Pongal, his favourite. Nalla saaptaan. When he went to wash his hands, he saw Body Builder asking him, ‘ethana round da?’. He replied ‘only 4 da, kaasu theendhudichu!’.
Oru vazhiya LH1 kulla vanthaan. LH1 is the class for computer science students. One by one came in and the class got filled. The day begins with our mam taking attendance but not before asking, ‘Whether all buses have come?’ When mam was taking attendance, a voice came from outside asking ‘Excuse me mam’. That is Scientist’s voice. With a serious face (because it was Monday), he came to his seat. Scientist was sitting next to the boy having Hyperactivity Disorder called Sanku. He had a piece of broken scale in his hand. Asked him how the scale was broken, he said ‘dei vendam da, naan tensiona irukken’. Mam started doing her job. We started all our jobs, except listening to what the person standing on the stage was trying to explain. Our jobs include talking, daydreaming, playing, texting friends in the same class and also (school) friends, listening FM, reading newspaper, etc, etc and anything that prevents us from listening class.
In the next period Mobile Encyclopaedia had to take a seminar on Scenic Beauty of Delhi and Agra. He has qualities of becoming a great lecturer and that ‘obviously’ prevents him from getting a job in our college, when he completes his graduation. Our seniors, not being able to part with the college become lecturers leaving ‘six-figure’ salary jobs. Encyclo started his seminar with ‘a good morning to one and all present here’ and ended with ‘thanks for giving me this opportunity’. In between there was lot of action, literally. He was stopped by the bell for interval break. People would’ve heard of canteen having different dishes, but our canteen was a little special. They provide ‘same dish with different tastes’ every day, sometimes with more salt, less salt, over burnt, shapeless, trying all kinds of permutations and combinations. They’ve even patented the dish with International Food Corporation. Canteen is the only place where everything takes place. Birthday treats, gang wars, festival celebrations, everything, about woos and woes. Students, who fortunately battled out of the canteen unharmed, returned to class.
MahaLuckMe was the favourite mam of all the students. She understood the students’ mindset. She became one among us. We’ve never let her take class even if someday she decides to take. With her, we discuss about everything- campus recruitment tips, so called symposium, to name a few. We just could not forget the symposium season. We had one long (for our college management) week for preparation. For six and a half days, we discussed what should be the name of our symposium and for half a day there was actual work done not without sporadic altercations with other department students over ridiculous issues.
Lunch hour, sorry, lunch ‘half-an-hour’ is also an eventful period. Poker Boy waits for everyone to open their tiffin box, he then pokes his spoon in everybody’s food and he then opens. Poker Boy is the comedian of our class. Clashes between Deep Sun and Poker Boy leave all us in splits. When Deep Sun calls him using all kinds of holy words, some already existing and some tailor made for Poker Boy, everyone around him laughs including him to maintain his image among the distant girls who he thinks, always look at him. He boasts of himself saying, “naan la yaarukkum, orkut request anuppa maaten, avanga than anupuvaanga, naan la yaarukum phone panna maaten, avanga than pannuvanga”. (I’ve got a lot about him, thinking of writing a separate blog on Poker Boy). If it’s lunch period, then LongFella has a lots of work to do. After having his food, looks around for other’s food and then moves to canteen. Avan avulo saaptum, ...ceedee... madhiri aagamatendraan, ‘beedi’ madhiri thaan irukaan.
Afternoon classes began with a long bell followed by a long ‘yeppam’ by High Class Boy. The first hour was SOOPS. Our mam entered the class reading the book, continued reading for 45 minutes and left the classroom reading. Along with reading, she also did her excercise, which she could not do that morning, by walking ‘AROUND LH1 (50 TIMES, IN ALL POSSIBLE PATTERNS) IN 45 MINUTES’. For anybody who disturbed her reading, she said, “naaliku nee vandhu seminar edu”. The next three periods were lab classes for us. After a long battle for chairs and systems everybody settled and switched on their systems. By the time we logged on to our system, after a series of troubleshooting operations, there was power cut. In the next two minutes everybody was in the class sweating, trying to beat the heat by oohs and haas.
After sometime, suddenly the whole college building was silent. I could hear the sound of a pen dropped by someone in the first year block! ‘Aayama’ came for rounds signalling the students not to talk (if possible, not to breathe) and ‘ordering’ mam to silence the class. The time has come to welcome the one man army, Captain Prabhakaran, General Musharaf, and Adolf Hitler, all in one. He stormed into our class, adjusting his glasses, looking at the board. On the board it was written NP- COMPLETENESS PROBLEM. He advised, looking at the mam through the gap above his glasses, “mam, neenga example problems ellam solve pannunga, excercise problems’a home work’a kudunga, yes!” He asked us, “how many absentees yesterday yes?” Nobody stood. He was surprised and asked, “no absentees yesterday yes!” We answered him “yes”. Not believing us he said, “no no no, yes!, I’ll check with the attendance and come yes!”. He left our class with his pendulum walks, after entertaining us. The day was over when the bell rang followed by our class gals’ 100 metre dash to their buses. Kichu always had this doubt as to why they do so.
Assignment transfer (Kichu has done a Ph.D in this discipline), searching for their respective persons of interests, wishing bye to non bus travelling (school) friends are some last minute activities.We returned home everyday regretting why we had joined the college. But if it was not for our friends we got, the college life would’ve been as disgusting as reading a forwarded message from Poker Boy!!
D I S C L A I M E R
ALL THE CHARACTERS IN THIS BLOG ARE IMAGINARY AND ANY COINCIDENCE TO REAL LIFE CHARACTERS IS UNINTENTIONAL.