With all the stress of the PG entrance exams behind us, a bunch of us decided to get together at a friend’s house for a well deserved break. On the second day evening two of my friends S and K were supposed to catch a train to Delhi.
S: “come on guys we’ve to get goin by 4.45, the train’s at 5.25.n I’ve to go to the ATM too”
F: “arre yaar we’ll get there don’t worry!”
K: “yeah the station’s nearby, just 3-4 km”
So basically all of us ended up lyin around till 5pm
S: “come on guys we’re getin late!”
F: “Arre yaar pahunch jaayenge!”
So F, K, S and me piled in to F’s car n set off for the railway station. F drove a t a brisk pace n had covered about half the distance when we ran in to a procession!
F: “No problem, we’ll go by the other way!”
S: “Let’s go directly to the station, needn’t go to the ATM”
F: “arre yaar don’t worry I know these roads like the back of my hand, I’ll get you to both with time to spare!”
Unfortunately alternate pathway 1 was jammed at the railway crossing! The gates had just opened n all the cars trying to cross had jammed it! Had to wait there for about ten minutes, while the jam cleared!
F: “arre yaar don’t worry I’ll still get u there in time”
Then the road jammed again! And F took alt road 2 which also was jammed halfway thru. Unfortunately for us alt road 3 ran thru the busiest wholesale market with dozens of truck being unloaded on the road!
To cut a long adrenaline filled story short, we ran on to the platform to see the yellow painted X on the back of the train recede in to the distance!
S: well OK! You know what; there is only a single track for the next hundred kilometers! So there’s a chance the train may have to wait somewhere for a train from the opposite direction!”
So we decided to try to catch the train from the third station about 50 km away as the next station was too close for us to catch up!
So we set out on an ill fated journey
F: “the tank is almost dry we need to get petrol”
The first pump was too busy, the second pump was dug up, but we managed to get petrol from the third pump.
A bridge on the highway was under construction, we needed to take a deviation via side roads.
What followed was a high speed chase on narrow roads with several near misses!
By then we managed to call up a guy on the train n he informed us that the train was way past our destination! So we turned back. After about 1 km we realized that by the time we reached back the reservation counter would have closed, so we wouldn’t be able to cancel the tickets or buy new ones. So we turned back n went to station 2 only to find out they had never heard of things like computerized reservation! So following their advice had to go station 3 anyway. Got there half an hour before closing time and the booking clerk tells us an important rule they forgot to mention at the other station! – Once a train leaves, you can only cancel the ticket at the journey start point! And you don’t need a reservation counter for that! Any counter would do! So we dragged ourselves back to the car and drove 50 km back, cancelled the tickets, got a bottle of Romanov n drowned our sorrows!
N you bet we reached the station early for the next days train! And F hasn’t used the term arre yaar after that!
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Saturday, February 3, 2007
Reminiscence 2
This is a continuation from my previous post.
On the D day, landed up in front of the imposing college building admission letter in hand, parents in tow. It was a proper zoo with people standing in a line moving from table to table, feeding the creatures assorted certificates and various fees. Behind certain tables sat dreadful creatures referred to as house surgeons who sized us up and made occasional circles around names in a copy of the admission list which they had somehow managed to acquire.
The admission formalities completed, the principal gave his 'you are the best of the best' speech, no doubt under the influence of watching too many American commando movies, followed by assignment of hostels. One guy was mistakenly assigned to a ladies hostel leading to queries of how one may accomplish that!
However the list was soon corrected much to our disappointment!
With our first night in the hostel we became acquainted with the hierarchy of medical student life
House surgeon/intern - can leap tall buildings in a single bound
Final year - can clear medium buildings with a running start and favorable winds
Third years - can scale a compound wall
Second year - can jump over puddles
First years - can crawl on fours
The first couple of days were rather hectic, with the seniors aka chettanmar conducting Interviews late in to the night, displaying extreme interest in our prior love life, our knowledge of swear words, porn, human anatomy, politics and so on. If our knowledge was found to be lacking in any sphere they were only too happy to augment it from there own extensive database. Needless to say, those early sessions were extremely informative and we soon got to refer to seniors with various colorful epithets among ourselves. The chettanmar however displayed their superior cunningness by getting a short fellow from amongst themselves to pretend to be a late admission and come to us. our conversation soon turned to ragging and the fellow asked in an oh-so-innocent voice "how are the seniors here?" one guy unable to curb his enthusiasm blurted out " they are all f***ing b*****ds!" the rest as they say, was history. I'll just add that the fellow was seen coming for dinner at the mess with his underwear on his head!
On the whole I'll add, to the credit of my seniors, they exercised restraint, there was almost no physical violence, or exposure to various drugs, the abuse of which we'd assumed would have been widespread on the campus. And it was a great way to get friendly with the chettans and broke the ice with our own batch mates!
The admission formalities completed, the principal gave his 'you are the best of the best' speech, no doubt under the influence of watching too many American commando movies, followed by assignment of hostels. One guy was mistakenly assigned to a ladies hostel leading to queries of how one may accomplish that!
However the list was soon corrected much to our disappointment!
With our first night in the hostel we became acquainted with the hierarchy of medical student life
House surgeon/intern - can leap tall buildings in a single bound
Final year - can clear medium buildings with a running start and favorable winds
Third years - can scale a compound wall
Second year - can jump over puddles
First years - can crawl on fours
The first couple of days were rather hectic, with the seniors aka chettanmar conducting Interviews late in to the night, displaying extreme interest in our prior love life, our knowledge of swear words, porn, human anatomy, politics and so on. If our knowledge was found to be lacking in any sphere they were only too happy to augment it from there own extensive database. Needless to say, those early sessions were extremely informative and we soon got to refer to seniors with various colorful epithets among ourselves. The chettanmar however displayed their superior cunningness by getting a short fellow from amongst themselves to pretend to be a late admission and come to us. our conversation soon turned to ragging and the fellow asked in an oh-so-innocent voice "how are the seniors here?" one guy unable to curb his enthusiasm blurted out " they are all f***ing b*****ds!" the rest as they say, was history. I'll just add that the fellow was seen coming for dinner at the mess with his underwear on his head!
On the whole I'll add, to the credit of my seniors, they exercised restraint, there was almost no physical violence, or exposure to various drugs, the abuse of which we'd assumed would have been widespread on the campus. And it was a great way to get friendly with the chettans and broke the ice with our own batch mates!
Friday, January 26, 2007
Reminiscence 1
Not long ago, in a city not far from here, there was this boy who wasn't sure what he wanted to do with his life. So he went with the flow, joined all the tuitions and signed up for all the correspondence courses. When it was finally entrance exam season, the boy decided to keep his options open till the last by applying for all the exams for which he could find applications forms for.
In case you haven't guessed by now, that boy was me. I can still remember writing IIT JEE. Well not exactly writing, shading bubbles at random and staring at the ceiling! Kerala CEE was much better with questions like 'whats the national bird of india?' Then the Gods decided that i should qualify for both engineering and medicine, therby landing me in a quandary
Option 1 - join engineering and be with my old school buddies or
Option 2 - join med and be part of a select few.
Finally after much head scratching, my old adversary trignometry made up my mind for me. See, it even has the words 'no me try' in it! :D So without further ado, went and joined MBBS.
Was on cloud 9 for a few weeks till the course started. Was flooded with requests from my school teachers and parent's colleagues to 'advise' their children on how to ace the entrance. So i sat down and made up a few fake dos n donts like
'study what u are taught the same day itself.'
'cut down on tv, newspapers and magazines'
'buy humungous books with 25000 MCQs' n so on.
Received a request from a pretty junior of mine that she wanted the books of a correspondence course that i had taken, so pulled out the brand new books from the as yet unopened postal covers, went crazy with a highlighter and a pen, marking out 'important points' n trying in general to give the books a well used look before handing them over! After all i have an image to maintain!
If any of the above mentioned people are reading this, i beg their forgiveness for atleast temporarily screwing their studies!
In case you haven't guessed by now, that boy was me. I can still remember writing IIT JEE. Well not exactly writing, shading bubbles at random and staring at the ceiling! Kerala CEE was much better with questions like 'whats the national bird of india?' Then the Gods decided that i should qualify for both engineering and medicine, therby landing me in a quandary
Option 1 - join engineering and be with my old school buddies or
Option 2 - join med and be part of a select few.
Finally after much head scratching, my old adversary trignometry made up my mind for me. See, it even has the words 'no me try' in it! :D So without further ado, went and joined MBBS.
Was on cloud 9 for a few weeks till the course started. Was flooded with requests from my school teachers and parent's colleagues to 'advise' their children on how to ace the entrance. So i sat down and made up a few fake dos n donts like
'study what u are taught the same day itself.'
'cut down on tv, newspapers and magazines'
'buy humungous books with 25000 MCQs' n so on.
Received a request from a pretty junior of mine that she wanted the books of a correspondence course that i had taken, so pulled out the brand new books from the as yet unopened postal covers, went crazy with a highlighter and a pen, marking out 'important points' n trying in general to give the books a well used look before handing them over! After all i have an image to maintain!
If any of the above mentioned people are reading this, i beg their forgiveness for atleast temporarily screwing their studies!
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