Fate, that cruel
landlady, has dealt us our eviction notice. Time to leave, to say goodbye to 4
wholesome years of pure, unadulterated ‘raantigiri’. No more RAIT. The very
thought is like a ten-ton hammer hitting u right between the eyes. Time to
rejoice? Definitely Maybe !!! No more 2 to 4 hour commutes (stop laughing all u
New Bombay and BARC people). No more journal work. No more submissions. No more
term work tests. No more ‘jherox’. No more EXAMS ! NO more vivas! But wait….isn’t this supposed to be a senti
piece? Hell yeah baby it is!! About to follow are some of my memories bout life
in this madhouse.
Here’s hoping most
of u relate to them !!
Aakarshan:
Definitely the ultimate symbol of all
that RAIT stands for. An event like none other, NONE. The jeering, the
applause, the paper showers, the decibel level, the crowd waiting like hungry
wolves ready to tear u down at the slightest slip up, the delirium following
the end of it all….
One thing I remember is listening to the
tinkling of the keyboards, while twilight just about made it’s furtive way
around the horizon, standing with my friends (u know who u are!), weary from
all the manic dancing and getting that ‘God’s in his heaven and all is right
with the world’ feeling. Pretty definitive. (Soppy? Man, it is, I am going
soft…….!)
Horizon:
3 days = a massive blur. Now this blur
could have been due to
a) organizing stuff
b) excessive fatigue caused by the
RAIT ‘bench press’
c) lack of sleep
d) a particular class of alcohol
compounds and certain
alkaloid derivatives (mostly a
combination of the above
taken in copious quantities,
like there’s no tomorrow! All
part of our traditional Aadar
Satkar….?)
Take ur pick!
Add to this the aftermath of
the whole affair. Falling asleep while going back on the first train of the
morning, and awaking just before ur station. There sure was a guardian angel
watching over us! Sleeping for three whole days afterward. (Heck, who needs
sweetleaf?!)
The
canteen:
The nerve centre of the college. The
control unit. The central processor….(whatever……Maaf!) .The (smoky and dingy)
first stop after landing on campus for most. The scene of so many ‘aalams’ (i.e. banging like maniacs on the tables and
letting our vocal cords rip), conspiracies (oh yes!), journal writing sessions,
and good old time massacre (sic).
One thing I must mention here is Anna’s
(as from down south) Misal Pav. A stand out dish. One can write complete tomes
on this particular thing, but it will suffice to say here, that it has become
ingrained into our collective subconscious. Any RAITian worth his/her salt
should be a Misal Pav connoisseur by now. Four years of eating the same thing
day in and day out, does that to u I guess! All the same, decent food, decent
prices (Chhole Bhature, Veg Pulav, limbu paani).
The
carrom room:
Also, the cricket room. A dingy,
airless hole which was home to many guys. The all pervading stink of rancid
oil, along with some of the most gloriously distraught furniture ever known to
mankind. The scene of many a carrom match, plain faaltugiri and of course, the
SUC meetings!!
The
Campus :
Was cool when we joined…..is now
AWESOME. Even the staunchest critic has to admit that our campus RULZ! Straight
out of the Yoo Ess Af Ay (dyslexia anyone?). The mindblowing views from the
drawing rooms were unmatched. The place looks like something straight outta
timelessness in the monsoons….lush wet greenery all around, the building
defiantly standing up to the choicest of chemical infested Navi Mumbai
raindrops. Wonder why the campus reminds me of Circe…….
Workshop
:
One word definition ? HELL. The guys trussed up like god knows what in
those goddamn boiler suits. One piece affairs of course. I don’t know bout u,
but I positively detested it. One of the reasons being was that it was in the basement
(for more details, refer ‘The Joys of being an FE’, by the same author….
(Maaf karna, mere
andar ka Tanenbaum jaag gaya tha!)). Worst of all was filing/fitting day, when
the screeching of all those blunt files against metal was intolerable. Kinda
sounded like Annamika (of ‘ketwolk’ fame) on amphetamines. Plus u got to smell
like Ironman, if the Nirma soap powder ran out near the sink. My nasal hair
cringes at the recollection. Very painful.
The
commuting:
One thing which probably makes an
RAITian a VERY different proposition. The men from the boys stuff. Anyone who
balances the commute with the whole show has to be worth it man, has to be
worth it. Miseries compounded during the rainy seasons. Dadar and Kurla are not
exactly honeymoon spots in those watery months (or any month for that matter).
Ah, fair old Dadar, with that ethereal perfume… a $$%*@@#$ soul scalding,
nostril burning, mix of the choicest ‘kothmir’, ‘hari mirchi’, ‘adrak’, sweat ,
cotton clothes and cowpiss. One whiff and you are hooked for life. Back for
more, without fail.
And the time honoured joke which
went that ‘If someone as much as took a leak on the harbour line tracks, u had
a flood coming your way ’ (don’t ask me who thought of that one…)
proved cruelly true every monsoon. Case in point?
Vadala Road. (or Vadala port?)
Most of us have used Trains,
buses, ricks, in no particular order, to reach college, one way that is. The
trains…..now what do I say? A tortoise on dope could have whizzed past those
pathetic tin chains called the ‘Harbour Line ‘ trains. Miss one train, and man
u had it. The next one would creep in at it’s own sweet disposition.
Entry was simple. Pre-Kurla that
is. Then you got to know that the human skeleton can actually exhibit some
great elastic properties. Honest. A frantic body massage till Sanpada ‘teshun’,
where the train would literally purge itself. You were king till Nerul arrived.
Trust the ever
resourceful RAITian to actually manage to write journals in these conditions,
or grab some frantic knowledge bytes before the exams.
But one
consolation was the Vashi bridge. A grand sight indeed (especially at night)
And of course, the
Andheri-Belapur is the sort of stuff that legends are made of. Cool train, cool
people. It was here that I first cut my teeth…..
( the ego has
landed…..RUN!)
The buses ? Well, I remember the
khunnas between me and the ‘mashter’ over ‘suttey paishe’. But no grudges
against the buses, they are cool !
Nerul
Station :
Or Nerul Airport as we call it! Whatta
station man! I haven’t seen so much granite even in the ad for ‘Surendra
Granites’ that my cable guy assaults me with!
Speaking of the station, can Pushpa
Snacks Bar(!) be left out? Earlier we used to haunt ‘Satya’ (so called cos he
had a beard) for his samosa pav, until this guy came along on the scene. As
Jeetendra would put it……
“ PSB ne hame
paala, posa, bada kiya, hamare andar ke bachpan ke poudhe ko jawaani ka pedh
banaaya!” .U get the drift…….?
The
exams:
The half yearly pains in the otherwise
pretty simple life of an RAITian .
Lousy concept. The morbid fear of that proverbial ‘Ek Paper’, in which, ‘lag
jaayega’. Every sem, without fail. There has to be a red herring which would
give henna a run for it’s money (another lousy one….sorry). That dirty feeling
u get when u r just about to receive the paper, where everything u have done
dances like Mithun on Speed right in front of ur eyes, dissolving into a
psychedelic blur.
Ditto for the vivas. Only worse, u
developed a case of trapjaw as well. Gheraoing every emerging guy…”Kya poocha?
Kya Poocha? External kaisa hai?” . Boy everyone sure did have their five
seconds of fame on viva day!
The vivas were the most
challenging parts for most of us, cause they were about possibly the only thing
that an RAITian isn’t God in (well, most of us anyways)….. FUNDAS! Swotting and
sweating like mad before the vivas, and calling everyone except your
grandparents and the examiners themselves for ‘questions’.
Once inside, it
was pretty much pot-luck (matka!)
My
Dear Journal… :
The lesser said the better. Probably
the most stressful time in an RAITian’s life. Reams and reams of paper filled
up with writing by us, (‘the human Xerox machines’). Sitting up all night, and
struggling over to college the next day, bleary eyed and disoriented, to be
greeted by a fantastic scene.
Everyone was just about everywhere
doing just one thing. Writing. We would win all the medals in the Olympics if
they ever hold an event called ‘Synchronised Writing’.
‘‘Tera first page
hua, to idhar laa..!”.
“mera second page
tere paas hai na?!”.
“stapler hai kya?”
“kitna pages hai
total? (number) Kya?! Maa kasam, chhapo!”
Scrapping like
school kids over graph papers (especially the semi-log ones) and spare journal
sheets. Running around to Xerox that eternally missing Index paper, u almost
always never had one. Scales and pencils would do the Houdini on u, when you
needed them the most. Then you would just have to wait in stony suffering
silence till u could borrow them from someone. The feeling on submitting that
last journal every sem was esoteric. Usually went home inebriated after that
(from the joy that is).
The term work tests. Well I guess
we progressed to higher levels of shamelessness as our seniority grew.
bought Jigar’s just for the TW
tests. Chuppane ko easy hai
na…..(case in point? As far as
A div goes..this sem’s Software
Engineering test. Not only
were genuine Jigars seized, even
Xerox copies were not far behind!!)
Students
with ‘jigars’ of steel :
Kya main bolu ?! Hate them as u
might, but the fact still remains that you had to refer to them, at one point
or the other. No way out. How the Jigar’s guy squeezed in an entire semester’s
worth into an edition thinner than Kate Moss beats me. Data compression ka baap
hai boss! ‘Brilliant’ Jigar’s……One of the more enduring memories was getting
them Xeroxed at chembur. Mast 7-12 rupees mein ek Jigar’s. Felt nice. Real
nice.
God bless Dhiren Gajjar and Pankaj
Thanekar, who made the life of the middle class engineering student a mite
easier. All the best chapters from the recommended books, in one package. So
what if the flow was let’s say jerky (to say the least), quite a neat deal.
This also didn’t escape the Xerox machine’s sights. But they really had some
cool whoppers.
‘’Do you find engineering as hard as climbing
a mountain ? Don’t worry, we will make it as easy as drinking a cup of tea’’
has become nothing short of an Urban Legend. Or has it…..?
Chembur
:
The ultimate pilgrimage site. 25 paise
Xerox. Magic. The Xerox ‘gully’. Options hi options . Ingesting the noxious
kerosene fumes, and marvelling at the technique of the xeroxwallah.
Holi
in college:
What a riot! The only college in the
whole of mumbai, which would allow this sort of mayhem, at least till a couple
of years back, till they repainted the college anyway. Was fun while it lasted.
Would start of innocently enough with gulal, and ink pens. Then suddenly a
bucket would materialize from nowhere, and did it take off after that. Dousing
everyone in sight. Colours exploding everywhere. On the walls, the staircases,
the corridors. Dragging people thru puddles. Banging on inverted buckets and
singing. Dancing. Life….
The college would resemble a warzone the next day. No
prizes for guessing why they stopped it!
RAITisms:
Now this deals
with those typical words, why words, they can be rightly called as figures of
speech, which only an RAITian can comprehend. They usually had an obscure and
quiet beginning, but once they gained in momentum, nothing could stand in the
way. Usage generally spread like amoebiasis contracted after stuffing urself
with the bhajjiya paav outside Vidyalankar, to other colleges.
Scene:
Think about it. Brilliant
word, I love the feel of it as u loll it around ur tongue, and then
expectorate. Extremely versatile, it had it’s origins somewhere amongst the
Nerulites. It then spread to A div, and then there was no looking back. Ekdum
hit item hai boss.
usage
And so on and so
forth…….
Maaf:
The baap of all words. The Altaf
Raja of all Rickshaw tapes. The ….well Maaf! This has been immortalized by dare
I say, our batch? HELL YEAH! Just one word, but so many meanings…just the
inflection of your voice can make it convey a wide range of interpretations. One is eternally grateful
to Farooqbhai for it’s large scale popularization… rampant man, absolutely
rampant. Reliable sources tell me that it has caught the fancy of the Americans
too….what next?
Usage
The best use of
this word is when it is used solo. No embellishments. Just do this at home.
Say MAAF!
Do u feel it?!
DO U FEEL IT….?!
Care a Rat’s
posterior about things, Go hang it all, I don’t care….all these and much, much
more distilled into one four letter word…. and what’s more you can safely use
this at home, right in front of your parents!
Brilliant
Catharsis. My favourite word, currently (no prizes for guessing why!)
Note:
Other colleges
may beg to differ with the above para but maaf…woh unka scene hai!
AD-BR:
Had to be. For such an epic train,
there had to be an epic abbreviation. For those who came in late..(apologies to
Lee Falk), it stands for the Andheri-Belapur. All the way from AD to BR. This
train is a legend. Of course the morons traveling in it were too. God have pity
on the ‘uncles’ who used to suffer (both English and hindi usages to be
inferred) with us. Horrible decibel levels all throughout the journey, all the
way. Most of the discussions during the practicals would involve decisions
regarding whether to ‘take’ the 4:13, 5:17 or 6:23 AD-BR…they used to be very
serious, with all of us divided into camps and gesticulating earnestly, and the
profs thinking we were so deeply engrossed in the intricacies of whatever we
were doing, or rather supposed to be doing.
Probably the
‘besht’ prank in the AD-BR was to catch some poor unsuspecting junior and make
him sit in the midst. Then one guy would start
“Telefon ki ghanti
baje tring tring tring………..”
The whole gaggle
would join in,
“Telefon ki ghanti
baje tring tring tring………..”
“ke bhaiyya!”
“Telefon ki ghanti
baje tring tring tring………..”
“o bolo!”
“Telefon ki ghanti
baje tring tring tring………..”
The ‘victim’ would
look as confused as I did when I got my CP-2 paper. And then the entire group
would pounce on him, and tapli the living crap out of him, saying
“Phone kaun tera baap uthayega?!”
Suckers would fall
for this left, right and centre…..
Diwali
in college:
RAIT is probably
the only place in the entire universe where diwali is celebrated EVERY six
months, with almost fanatical regularity. Come again…?! Simple………RESULT TIME!
Not that the average RAITian cared
very much for results (most of us could very accurately predict the outcomes
immediately after the exams), still as time dragged it’s leaden feet on, you
began to feel the pinch. Restlessness would get the better of u until u wished
that somebody would go and sell his soul to the Crackerwalla. Then stupid
rumours would start floating around …..20 marks grace to start with, and then
it would dwindle faster than the sales of the ‘Models’ album to around 5 marks
by the end of the week. Next week, new rumour! Same time, same place.
Exasperation would reach a fever
pitch, until some dudes would sneak in a couple of ‘Laxmi’ bombs and ‘rassi’
bombs. U somehow knew when there was an explosion in the making, people huddled
around in sweaty little groups just outside the canteen, whispering and snide
glances all around. You would just about wend ur way upwards when BOOM! It
happened. If u were lucky, there would be a couple more…almost immediately u
heard a HUGE roar, reverberating throughout the whole building……followed by
blood-curdling cries of “WEEEE WAAANT REEESULT!” The security guys would come
rushing in, but by that time our homegrown Guy Fawkes’ would have made good
their escape. Only in RAIT…
The
Gorilla Deathmatches:
Some of the self
righteous ones among us (including urs truly) would whine about the lack of
‘facilities’ in college (read proper
labs). But natural, when u have worked on a princely 64 kb for the first 2
years. But then came the IT labs…..insane places, what comps, what furniture,
full2!
Once the initial admiration was
over, the fact sunk in that the very excuse for our janamjaat kaamchori had
ceased to be in existence…with such awesome labs, obviously u would have to sit
and code! What next?! Relax….RAIT hai yaar! The devil in us refused to restrain
himself. For one thing, with Windows NT in the picture, u had games to begin
with…Solitaire, Minesweeper et al (trust us to look the positive side of
things)
But hats off to the dude who
discovered Gorilla! Probably one of the most stupid games to ever take janam,
this quickly became the raison d’etre of almost all the practicals. Huddles of
people around the comps, whooping and cheering on the ‘players’. The level of
involvement had to be seen to be believed! How much pleasure could nearly 10
guys watching two gorillas throw explosive bananas (!) at each other possibly
derive? Oh, plenty! PLENTY! (Lots of personal grudges were settled in
cyberspace…)We even convinced some poor dumbass FE’s that it was our Final Year
Project (hee hee!), and that we were testing various projectile angles and
velocities. I still remember the awe on their faces….
Practicals were thus aptly dubbed
‘Video Parlour’ sessions, with us putting on our most earnest expressions
whenever the lab ass. Or prof walked in (people usually kept a VB or a c
session minimized just in case…)
The
‘days’ :
The usual suspects, tie/sari/rose,
friendship, traditional……
Each held on a
stifling Friday. Strutting around like peacocks and peahens from hell on
traditional day especially, photo sessions galore. Love confessed. Love
professed. Hearts broken…..
The
project report :
Sheer Nazi torture. Racking ur
brains as well as the library for material. Thinking of line expansion strategies.
Struggling with that hideous abomination called MS Word. One ‘enter’ keystroke
and boom! Where did it all go? One spacebar depression and watch the lines
repel each other as if they were magnetic, leave alone the formatting and
‘bullets’. Scouting around for the best print-out prices, where else? You
guessed it! Chembur. Getting the copies bound, and lugging them back, and then
marvelling at the sheer volume of work (we actually typed all this ?!)
(this paragraph is
pure mush…..u stand warned !!!!!)
I could go on
forever. Trust me. There is enough material to do so. But, like all good things
this one too has to come to an end (modesty anyone?!).
Along with an engineering degree, I guess
each one of us has also got a Master’s in management.
Sounds corny? No.
It isn’t. Interacting with such a wide cross section of people, you tend to
learn something from everyone you meet.
Interpersonal
relationships.
Time management.
How to judge
people.
How to get along
in life.
How to take it on
the chin and move right on.
It’s been much
more than just education, it’s been an EXPERIENCE.
Do yourselves a favour, guys. Keep in
touch with ur ‘group’. It might be difficult, it sure is, but I guess it’s the
only way to stay grounded and closer to who you really are.
One things for
sure. I know I am gonna have a lump in my throat everytime I listen to Axl Rose sing,
“Where do we go?
Where do we go now
Where do we go…….”
To all the people
I have known, it was, and continues to be a privilege. Thanx for everything.
Hope you find your
pots of dollars at the end of your personal rainbows……..
And yes,
May the Force be
with you……
The
resident lowlife,
Tapan.