Third semester memories ...

Just stumbled across this (relatively) true story I wrote in my third semester of college. Ah! The good ol' days, when I was a fool, blissfully frittering my time away in the hostel, totally oblivious to the bigger issues in life. I really enjoyed those days, and look back upon them with fondness, though I now regret having been such a wastrel then. What I've written makes for VERY interesting reading, and even I found myself chuckling at certain parts of it. Here it is:


It had all started the previous night. Had I looked up and seen the gloomy grey skies above me, metaphorically speaking that is, I would have at least skipped all the lectures the next day to postpone the impending doom (or plethora of dooms, should I say?) to some other (maybe more sunny) day. But the previous night I had been under the irresistible spell of AOE. And when you are under the irresistible spell of AOE, not even the mightiest tempest nor the most thunderous earthquake can root you from the hotseat in front of the computer (all you AOE players will understand me, and those who don't, had better try out AOE, to get what I mean). And when you are blissfully immersed in building and defending your empire against your competitors
(in AOE I mean!) , all the forthcoming disasters of the world seem to be very very far off and absurd.Even if Satan himself were screaming in your ears, that the sword of Damocles was hanging above your head, you wouldn't acknowledge it until, maybe, one of those pikemen very politely pointed it out to you.And so there I was, battling it out, with my pals Moti and Doc, for supremacy, in a random land map (as I said you'd better be brushing up your AOE knowledge!) completely oblivious to the disasters waiting to happen the next day.


A very normal AOE multiplayer game in an IIT hostel lasts at least two hours (if the players are good enough, and not intending to boast, I'm pretty okay too!) , and a very normal time for it to start is at around one o'clock in the morning.This AOE game so happened to be a very normal AOE game.So it was almost dawn when I went to sleep, blissfully dreaming of pikemen and
Persian war elephants ...


... I woke up at nine thirty the next morning, sorry, the same morning, when Doc nearly broke my room's door down, banging and kicking it, hollering for me to wake up and take the bad news from the horse's mouth please?


Before I proceed with my narrative on the first piece of bad news, destined to reach my ears, I would like to mention one very important ability of Doc's: his (seemingly impossible!) ability to spend the whole night up, awake, and then attend all the lectures, even the torturous A and C slot ones at eight, the next, sorry (again, I forget!) the same morning! Well even if he doesn't spend the ENTIRE night awake, he doesn't sleep for more than a token two to three hours as opposed to the regular eight advised by the doctor. There have been certain mornings when I have happened to attend the morning lectures, and very rare though they may be, they have given me the opportunity to see him attend these lectures. If the lecture is at eight, he will get up at seven thirty in the morning. Since he has slept only a few hours, his sleep deprived body has virtually been raped to the core and he gropes around the place sleepily, like my friend Dhakkan very aptly describes, a "zombie". He seems to be dazed and confused and all his actions seems to be very mechanical. He'll sleepily brush up and sleepily get into his clothes, and then proceed for the lecture. No bath, no toilet, no shave, no nothing ... Its as though some chip has been implanted in his brain giving him one and only one instruction: "must attend class,must attend class,must attend ... "!


Now don't let this soldier like dedication impress you! Because there is only one thing that Doc does in the lectures ... sleep! Yes, he attends lectures to sleep. You show me one lecture where he is not sleeping, and I'll eat my hat! Oh, yes, he also attends lectures to mark our "proxies".


By mid morning however, Doc manages to recover from his dazed and sleepy stupor. That's when you should see him in action: the quality of spontaneous jokes and sarcastic remarks, that he comes out with, are really remarkable, and worth listening to. This of course is accompanied by the usual paroxysms of rage emanating from the unfortunate victim of his ridicule,which is usually Moti or Dhakkan. Well I guess I'm straying from the topic ...


The aforementioned "proxies" lead me to the first of the disasters that happened that day. As I said, I was rudely awakened by Doc, with this horrible news. He had, as usual like a zombie, attended the eight o'clock lecture, marked our proxies and then, in his customary style, gone off to sleep. But it so happened that the prof. had finished evaluating our minor papers and distributed them at the end of the class. He then chose this, of all the godforsaken days, to pull out the usual trump card trick that professors have, to catch proxies: he tallied the students who collected the papers with the attendance sheet, and so caught all the proxies. Now this Prof was one tough, mean character to deal with, and he promised all of us, proxiers, an attendance "F" and boy, when he said attendance "F", he really MEANT an attendance "F", no arguments , no excuses! So there I was, I had slept through the first "F" grade of my degree! Please take note of the fact that I have carefully sidelined the issue of how I had done in that minor. Well, it only adds to the agony...


As this shocking news was sinking into me, I got about getting ready to attend the next lecture (it's really amazing how guilt psychology works: this shocking information, had pricked me enough to attend the next lecture, one in which I was yet to see the professor's face!). A small consolation was the fact that Moti was in the same boat as me (having shattered my peaceful morning sleep, Doc had now proceeded to shatter Moti's too with the news of the proxy incident!). To add to my frustrations, there was no water in the bathrooms. That's one disadvantage of staying one floor below the freshers, because the freshers, in all their earnestness to attend classes, have their baths and wash their clothes early in the morning (the whole lot of them) so that by the time we "early birds" get up, there's no water left in the overhead tanks. So I had to attend the next lecture without having a bath. I couldn't even wash my face or brush my teeth, for crying out loud! And believe me, you can't feel more sick with yourself when you have to attend a mid-morning lecture on a hot summer's day, without so much as even washing your face, and with the thought that you've have failed a course, hanging heavy on your head!


But there was more to come ...


The prof of this next lecture had also finished correcting the minor papers. Boy! When these minor results are out, they all seem to attack you at once, as though there is some conspiracy
to give you all the bad news (the marks I mean) in one fell swoop. Now before that minor, I had had a bet with my chum Nanga that I would fare better than him in this subject. Now, Nanga and I are constantly at loggerheads, as to who is the dumber of the two of us: him of me? I am still of the opinion that Nanga doesn't even deserve to be in an IIT! Unfortunately, Nanga fared better than me in this minor. Just how this happened don't ask me but now, I owed him fifty of the best bucks from my pocket.To add to my misery, I had scored a measly two out of thirty in this minor, severely eroding the foundations of my confidence, in my ability to get through minors without studying. The look that the prof had cast at me, when handing out my answer sheet, had been one of murder ...


After having finished my lunch (Man! It was one slow, long and mean lunch, what with all the "great news" I had received thus far!) I suddenly remembered, with a sinking feeling, that today was a Monday. And on Mondays I had my lab in the afternoon. And I had not completed my practical record ... Not started it ... Not even given it a thought! I hadn't even bought the goddamned file! I rushed to the nearest stationary shop and bought myself a file. I returned to my room , grabbed my pal, Atthi's lab rec, and hurriedly copied his experiment. Every word of it was copied straight off. No changes, just a pure, unadulterated carbon copy of whatever he had written.


Well, now it's easy for you to guess what happened next. Yes, the prof. very diligently corrected the prac files, and caught me for copying the experiment, word for word, from Atthi's file. Two grades down for me in that course, straight off!No arguments, no explanations, no nothing (I don't know, but I seem to have used this expression somewhere else too?!).


That lab was a torturous one! We had to design an electrical circuit which was supposed to do ... I don't know what! The fool that I was, I had chosen Nayyar (a much less responsible person than me, which is not saying much!) , as my lab partner. Nayyar was an expert at getting through this lab. All he had to do was come one hour late, tell the prof that he was not feeling well, and leave immediately, leaving me with the dog's work of cutting and fitting wires onto the circuit (You see, unlike Nayyar I am a goofbag when it comes to making excuses to sham work! It always ends up messily with me). And believe me, four hours of cutting and fitting wires onto a breadboard really saps you. It kills your senses, saturates your brain, and turns you into a zapped corpse; your hands don't move, your brain doesn't function, your lungs don't breathe and you really begin to wonder if everything is real or not. And to top it all, after all the hard work that you've put in ... the circuit invariably doesn't work! When THAT happens, you just feel like jumping out of the window of the lab (which is on the third floor, by the way!).


That evening, dejected, traumatised, scarred, bruised, frustrated, and what not, I returned to my room. I started playing the song which seemed to have summed up my feelings at that point of time : "People=shit" by Slipknot, on full volume. And then ... I saw Doc, Moti, Dhakkan, Rav and the gang returning from class with their own woes. And then I thought of my pals, my lovely hostel, the lovely campus around me, our lovely MS and departmental blocks and the state of the art facilities I was getting here. Did I deserve to be here? And then there was only one thing that came to my mind after that:

MAN, AM I LUCKY TO BE IN IITD DELHI OR WHAT????!!!!

Not bad for a third semester nicomcoop to be writing this, aye? I hope you people enjoyed it? I dunno, I certainly loved reliving the old days, reading this article. Note though, this story provides a unique insight into the mind and mental process of a typical, decent performing IITD student ... always bitching about grades, living the wasteful hostel life of AOE and nightouts, being very close to a tight circle of friends, using stupid sounding nicknames ... lol! Ah! What a fool I was back then ...

... time flies and people change!