PROGRAMMING IN C
I and Swapnil finished climbing those college stairs to reach our class room on the 2nd floor (for Swapy it’s a big ordeal to climb stairs). Just outside our class room my eyes fell on the green notice board with a hand written notice on it- I HAVE LOST MY
As I entered the class room I spotted Swapy sitting beside Paresh on the second last bench and Nikhil was alone on the last bench. This was my new group- Swapy, Paresh, Nikhil and me. We sat together, ate together and even leave the college together- ideal characteristics of a group!
As soon as our ‘Applied chemistry’ professor entered the classroom and started her HARD WATER- SOFT WATER topic, I turned to the last page of my rough book and made two parallel vertical lines intersecting two horizontal ones with my pen and placed an ‘O’ at the center. I pushed the book towards Nikhil who was copying down all the nonsense from the blackboard. He looked at me with a disapproving look and returned the book to me without saying a word. Seeing this odd behavior I suggested, “Look I made a O at the center, now you can place a X- ”
“Hey I know how to play X & O! I just want to concentrate, Ok?” he snapped.
Though I was left disappointed but I could understand his need to catch-up with on going lectures. Mr. Nikhil Bajaj, more popularly known as Niks, had a late admission like most others and was lagging in his studies. Though he was one of the happy-go-lucky guys, he took his engineering too seriously.
I looked ahead and found Swapy and Paresh already engaged in X & O’s. I looked around to see what others were doing and my eyes lingered upon Sikha (name changed)- the only not-so-bad looking girl in the entire classroom. After watching her for some time I was bored. I whispered to Swapnil, “Who is next?”
“Your favorite. CP!”
My heart lit up as soon as I heard CP-COMPUTER PROGRAMMING. This was the only subject where my brains were of some use. And it was taught by the not-so-bad looking professor- Miss Damdoo. She was not only beautiful but also had a great sense of fashion. No one on earth ever thought that this sweet looking woman can talk, walk and sleep with C programs.
“She never repeats her dress!” Swapy said loudly as soon as she entered in a hot yellow salwar kameez.
“Her boyfriend owns a garment factory!” exclaimed Niks and all of us started laughing. But amidst all this laughter, Paresh shook his head and all of us wondered what was on his mind.
“I will be her new boyfriend very soon” said Paresh and we laughed harder this time.
As far as Paresh Gaonkar was concerned, he was shortest of us all but one of the smartest human beings I ever met. He remains the undefeated champion of one liner in our group. He was one of those who spoke less but once he starts, its impossible to control our laughter.
While the other lecturers made it a mission to put us to sleep, Miss Damdoo’s beauty and her ‘not-so-bad’ teaching made those days pleasant for us. And if the rumours were to be believed our group was her hot favorite.
- Swapy’s fluent marathi and his 100 Watts smile could make any professor’s heart melt. As I and Swapy remained together for most of the time, she started recognizing me too. (They say it’s the Munna Circuit jodi!)
- Paresh was her little angel. “Oh Paresh, your journal is so neat and tidy…you remind me of my engineering days!” she said once and made Paresh her little hero.
- And NIKS! He didn’t have that pleasant start like the rest of us. It happened so in one of the CP practicals when Niks failed to show her the required output on the computer screen and Miss Damdoo asked him furiously, “What is your branch?”
Niks said proudly, “Madam, Computers!”
“CHOD DO!” and she turned her back towards the unfortunate Niks.
We couldn’t stop our laughter when Niks recited his story to us over lunch.
Days were happy but stressful. My feeling of going back to Bhavans- my junior college was erased by the new company of my ‘happy-go-lucky’ friends. Though the never ending assignments and the boring lectures kept us busy all the time, none of us were ever bored in this process of engineering. In fact we enjoyed every second of this new life.
Days passed like seconds and Months like minutes. And the submissions came around just before the exams.
For all those who are new to the term called ‘Submissions’, let me have the honour to redefine it on behalf of all the engineers living in Mumbai.
SUBMISSIONS- It is defined as a period where in students are allowed to complete their journals and teachers are given that enormous amount of freedom to burden students with new assignments as soon as they complete the previous one.
It is a week long affair before the vivas where teachers don’t take lectures as they assume that students are tortured beyond limits and students share the ‘Give-n-take’ relationship of assignments among themselves. And this event ends with students submitting their journals at the last minute and the evil professors give all kinds of excuse to avoid there ‘not-so’ favorite students- “Come after the lunch break”, “I won’t accept your journal because its so untidy”, “How do I know that you have completed your assignment on your own… not by copying from someone else…lets have a mock VIVA”, etc, etc. are the most common ways of traumatizing students.
And after this there is a gap called PL-preparatory leave where college remains shut for a few days and students finally open their brand new books for the first time to prepare for the exams as they were mostly busy writing assignments or chatting with some virtual friend on Orkut.
I and my friends went through all of them. I know dear reader that you are on the verge of tears that how these little TAARE ZAMEEN PAR must have went through but we had no choice. And this is called Engineering.
Coming back to our wonder years, I will jump straight to the 1st day of our 1st Semester exams
Hundreds of students were gathered near the examination hall. I and my friends had a difficult time to find our seats.
“Merit toh fatt chuki hai!” said one of the girls to her friend. Though I overheard them, the fact was that I wasn’t feeling very confident either. All those thousands of feelings were bouncing inside my stomach.
I took out my bunch of pens, calculator and hall ticket from the bag and went straight into the examination hall. It was our drawing hall and was the biggest of all rooms that can have strength of about 120 people at a time. But today there were less number of people in the room. Most of the faces I saw that day resembled diarrhea patients of a hospital.
I wrote my seat number and other details very carefully on the answer paper so that I don’t make any blunders on the very first exam of my new life. One of the supervisors handed out a bad quality A4 sheet to me and moved ahead distributing the same to the remaining students. At first, I thought it was some kind of rough paper until I spotted some miniature fonts printed on the other side. To my amazement it was the question paper of the day! The quality of the question paper was so bad that even the local Bhelpuri wallas use better pages to serve bhel!
Within minutes of filling a few pages I realized that I wasn’t getting any answers. Goddamn Maths! After every few pages of mathematical gibberish I was writing, there were no straight answers. A sudden panic ran through my veins- what if I fail? I tried so hard to get into engineering and now this!
I scanned the room and saw Nikhil staring at the blank wall. Swapy was holding his pen inches from the answer paper but wasn’t writing anything.
After 3 hours of battle, the soldiers came out defeated.
“I am pakka gonna fail!”
“F**k this
“I think it’s just a nightmare or someone is playing some April fool joke!” were the few reactions that I heard on my way out from the exam hall. The first paper in engineering was like spending 3 hours in hell. And there were 4 more papers and a month long torture remaining.
Swapy took out his question paper and wrote on the top of it- ‘>35’ i.e. more than 35 marks while Nikhil was busy discussing the paper with Paresh.
That was the very moment when I prayed to god and said -“PLZ SAVE MY ASS!”
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Thanx for reading. Plz leave some comment so that i can improve my work...I wish to to write in soon.
--ARITRA SEN
