College Story: Assignments, Viva and other Blood suckers

This post is purely dedicated to few studious minds of our class. They are such a god gifted talent that they can ruin their own college life along with ruining others. From fighting for attendances to spoiling the mass bunks, they will do everything to blew the lid off from some average minds like me.

 Before entering into college boundaries I had heard about the fantastic ‘I-Don’t-Give-A-Damn’ style life in engineering, now I curse those mouths from where these words oozed. With my admission in first year I was quite sure of having the fun at the fullest but with advancement in semesters; our rights kept on getting suppressed, one after the other.

Our college wasn't like this before. A great lawn to sit on, common subjects (which was simply unifying each branch with the bond of commonness), fairly good teachers except the orthodox kind like farha and the real daughter of ‘Hitler’ Sama Jain, and last but not the least, lot of single girls to take a chance on, were few factors which somehow kept the hope alive that yes, this life could get better and better with passing semesters. But all hopes bite the dust as all we progressively faced are harsher rules, cunning teachers and fast paced commitments which claimed some of the pretty faces of our college.

1^st Year:

There were nothing like rigid rules in 1^st year. IT/CS branch were ignorant of the Ramani’s Effect (HOD of IT/CS). We could leave and enter our college at our own will. Except only one lady figure, Sama Jain, who had been tightening the screws, and ‘Goti’ (chemistry lab in-charge, I forgot his original name) who was famous for sucking the megaminds of students on their slightest of error, others remained quite cool. There was nothing like assignments except few small questions which were never a big deal. Fraha mam was our physics teachers then and according to her philosophy, a boy and girl sitting together is not less than a sin as they could develop sexual arousal any day and do what this society doesn’t give permission to do before marriage (Rebuilding the era of 80s cinema). Similarly, Sama was no less than ‘dress regulator’ as she restricted the use of funky boyish apparels while making sure that the girls are not showing their flesh to the crook hunters sitting under the same roof. Thus there was a complete ban on loose t-shirts, hand bands etc. and for girls she advised to maintain transparency in their character only, not in dresses. Once when she spotted a boy wearing bob marley’s T-shirt in college, she taunted “Mall mein ghumne jar he ho kya?” Look at the spontaneity of that boy. He replied, “Nhi mam, kal ke practical ke baad jaungaa.” I don’t know if he said this in ignorance or what.      

2^nd Year:

Computer geniuses were compelled to study each and every subject from each and every branch. Digital Electronics, Electronic devices and circuits, Micro-processor was giving us fully fledged experience of a crash course in Electrical department along with Computer Engineering. Further, due to shortage in syllabus few other management subjects were brutally injected. But let me tell you, these GIT management guys are not too bad as they provided us with a very nice (obviously by face) female teacher of Economics. I rarely had missed her class.

SOFT skill was taught by HARD muscle, Saundra Mam, I think the most eligible teacher of GIT. Leaving teachers and subjects the other thing haunted us were frequently changing rules including the one in which you could enter into college at your own will but can’t leave until all lectures were completed. We, the group of four friends, however found a way through under construction building of our college and started jumping a college wall which was not that long and thus made us the free bird most of the times. We meanwhile discovered few officially untraceable ‘Khopchas’ but what’s their use without a hot piece of cake beside you. After few successful attempts of wall jumping that wall got elongated and thus our movement got brutally barricaded.   

I have already wrote a lot about love stories cooked so replicating those will only hurt my ‘still-to-be-touched’ heart. Group friends kept adding the woes in 2^nd year. Actually a group with many commitments is not actually a group. Then it becomes a way to enjoy moments with commitment by hiding behind the backs of group friends. It had been the case throughout this year.

3^rd Year:

The beginning of 3^rd year was marked by some real reshuffle. The focus was almost shifted to our own IT branch with a lot of specialized subjects but it was too late for me to develop love all over again on these subjects. The rise in the era of assignments was marked in this year only. Innocence was dumped in the bins of assignment and registers were started absorbing the inks, page after page. 

The specialized subjects lead to brain smashing programs whose complexity used to be talk of alien for us until major practicals.

 When a hard practical is being examined by a cunning teacher then all you can say is “Ye practical kisi tarah nikal jaye bas. Next baar to le lenge iss teacher ki.” “Yaar, it’s enough. Ab dhang se padhenge. Fir dekhenge saala kya bolta hai.” Practical over so our resolutions. ‘Giriraj’ (lab in chage of DBMS lab) had almost promised to handover a back to me due to my impressive performance in his subject’s practical. Actually I was supposed to run 8 queries. I was able to run just 1 and even in that query I was asked to display items sold in store but I was shamelessly showing him the full DB table believing the full table is always better than a single column. Viva was another haunted dream for me especially when Bohra sir was used to sit in front of us. Now, whatever the question was, I gave him the answer I knew and whatever the answer was, he always used to play with my emotions. My old group shattered into pairs of two and I found few more creatures to hang out with. In this same phase most of my friends in the circle lost their virginity although never discussed it among us before gutting a peg or two. I had no stories to tell. For me, arrange marriage is the only hope alive. :D

4^th year:

In this running 4^th year, our branch is on the verge of setting new records in copied assignments. The glorious minds of our class think that doing assignments will improve their percentage and someday Facebook will come and hire them for earning those extra percentages due to aimlessly done assignments. 

Every teacher knows that all they need to show a crumb of bread to these glorious minds and rest is assured. They will run for these crumbs rumbling their own time along with ours.

This 4^th year was also blessed us with 30 days training. We played ‘Roadrash’ for 29 days and on the last day we grabbed an already made project from our mentor. How easy was that? But when you don’t actually make a project, you are actually giving a chance to your college teacher to bully you in front of whole class (in a project seminar) or give you a date to personally rape you (in viva).

As feared, day came when we (four members group, Manish, Dinesh, Me, Ashwarya) had to appear in front of ‘external’ to give a viva on project.  We, four, had already a discussion on Who does what in the project as it generally used to be the first question of teacher? Finally we appeared in front of the teacher. We told him what we had discussed earlier.

Dinesh said “I have done coding”.

“I have also done coding” manish repeated.

“Sir, I have done the testing part” Ashwarya said with ultimate confidence as if he had actually done the testing.

“My task was designing.” I whispered looking at suspicious face of the external.

“So, Ashwarya, you have done testing. Right? So tell me how many times of testing are there.” Asked external.

Confidence drowned, so does the face. Ashwarya kept twisting among words ‘Sir basically………..basically sir’…….

“Your testing procedure was manual or automatic?” he fired second question sensing a lamb, half-slaughtered already.

“Automatic” Ashwarya replied at once and we thought he might know the correct answer this time but our hope shackled by the bulling laugh of external. He had just answered that sensing the 50% probability of getting it right. On being asked about what is scope of the project he repeated the words as if he was firing back the same question to external. “Scope…………kya hota hai??? Ki………Kaise define karenge…………………………..” Ashwarya was himself choosing the correct format of the question.

“What is designing?” he asked from me and after my answer he was quite sure that we four had nothing to do with this project. Dinesh might have given few answers but the kind of impression we had on the external, it was so easy for him to negotiate 1 or 2 correct answers.

At the time of writing this piece of shi* that viva was the last one.

Exams are just over and I am now in my last phase of Engineering. Many say that 8^th semester is cake walk but who knows if some cake spoilers is waiting ahead.

That's almost it. This is obviously not the concluding part of College Story. Every time when I write one, thinks of making it the last one but somehow this story is not coming to an end. So, a slightly more atayachaar on the fans of William Shakespeare.  It is such a long post and if you are reading this line then I have to admit, your patience is amazing. And now those who started reading from here only, I have just one word, Glorious minds…….:D

If you have spotted a lot of mistakes in my post you can be a part of “Let’s stop the crime on literary world” campaign by typing “Stop this College Story and delete your blog” in comment section. Till then, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all my readers and criticizers.