A walk down Random Access Memory lane (Part 1 - College)

Well ... there is never a better time to think of the past than the present. Lots of people might not agree with me in the concept of visiting our past, smiling about it, banging your fist on the table and saying "MAN !!! I MISS THOSE DAYS." coz it might also pull out some threads that open some doors which never get locked. Behind these doors lie some memories which are non-volatile, un-erasable, multi-function and they are the Esc key from the present.
A good time for me to visit the memory lane is during my walks to office, a 1 mile stretch across Downtown Chicago. There is no specific reason for these memories to come into my head, it's not an event, nor a face, nor the atmosphere that reminds me of places i have been, the people i have been with and the feelings i have felt. They just come.
Sometimes i just wonder how can there be so many things that one can recollect. Thats the architecture of the human brain. Lets not get into that.
If i think about what i need to write in this blog ... well i am sure its gonna be a long one coz there are so many different things, so many different thoughts that we go back to. I guess i am gonna split this blog into multiple parts. Lemme start with one ...
A place that i visit often, and i am sure many of my friends do too is COLLEGE. "MAN!!! I MISS THOSE DAYS." "THOSE WERE THE DAYS!!".

There used to be an excitement every single day to get up and head to the bus stop, where an old shady bus would pick us up. The familiar face of the driver smiling at us. Getting in to see some of the lecturers and staff members in the first few seats dozing off followed by the juniors and then ... at last the last benchers ... We always believed that the bus was missing shock absorbers, some people actually thought that the idea was for us to use the cushions built into us. BUT .. that was not easy. I shall keep the events in the bus for some later talk coz thats a story in itself.
Then comes college. After a 45 minute long ROCKING ride. Get off the bus, find some company, get some sunshine and obediently head to wards the attendance room. (I guess most of you guys figured out what i am talking about. Its the HTML. If you have still not then you are probably expecting me to elaborate it ... YES it is the Hi-Tech-Mens-Looo. Never figured why it was called Hi-Tech. Guess coz it resembled some Planetarium Dome. Wow .. what a comparison). Anyways pressure relieved. Now head towards the back of college, for a morning chai and some FRESH AIR. Well when will i come to the part where we attend class. Yes .. unless its Chintu Sir's class we woudnt. He was unanimously the best lecturer we have known. He was not a comedian. He never cracked witty jokes. He was not strict. He stuck to his syllabus. Yet .. all of us LOVED him. I know folks from my class who would not step into college until 11, but for his class they would be there. Man!!! now thats what i call a Lecturer. You know what actually ... i dont want to term Chintu Sir as a lecturer coz ... we have a definition for the word LECTURE, rather a source, a birth for the word. intelLECtual torTURE. His classes could never be a torture. So .. lets just call him Sir. The Non-Sir-Looking-Sir as one of my friends termed him. Coz he was probably 4 years older than us. Short. Fair. Kinda geeky look and did'nt quite have the Sir kinda look in him. When we first saw him we thought he was one of the seniors in college. Or probably our batch. Well lemme move on ...
Then comes the getting late into the second lecture of the day. High chances that the lecturer might throw us out, or rather ask us to stay out. But then sometimes they would be kind to us and let us in. Then find a place closest to the people who get good lunch. Get their boxes out, and start our first meal of the day, In class. Wow ... I recall a few incidents, which might probably be a bit too embarrasing for a few good friends of mine, so i wont recite them. But yeah ... we have been cought for eating in class. Asked to leave .. and the rest is history.
Our class saw some great co-operation and unity probably form the 3rd year of engineering. Mass bunks... indefintely postponing classes. Refining the list of questions with the lecturers for the test until we get the 5 to be answered out the 8 (makes life easier).
I cant forget the wonderful class trips we had. The holi, the trekking, the singing, the dancing to "Its the time to Disco" ... the lying on the roof of the bus looking at a crystal clear sky with stars like never seen before. The hotel rooms where we crammed 5 people in a double bedroom. The pranks at midnight, the video taping those pranks, the toothpaste on the foreheads, the fair and lovely on the hair and brylcream in the palm of their hands. Those were some good pranks on the ones who choose to be early birds to bed. The best part ... they were all GREAT SPORTS. HATS OFF GUYS.
I will probably go on for a long time, so i shall cut this blog shorter, move towards the end of my college days. The times when placements came. The Yeshwant Kanitkar books, the Kaplans, the IQ testers, the revising of fundamentals ... man there was chaos. You could see aspirations in their eyes, the tension when the short lisited names were announced, the joy when a offer letter is given, the tears when a friend makes it into a company and you dont and that you are splitting. YES ... that was the bad time. The time where we all had to part. Move on in the race for carreers. Move on in different directions, different companies, different domains, different cities, different countries, different continents. Those were the times of mixed feelings. Where you dont know what to choose. We made plans of shifting to the same companies after some time, little did we know that it would be so hypothetical. Still ... most of us are in touch. Thanks to the internet, thanks to cellular providers.
Another memorable day was the farewell party. It was in some resort close to our college. Pretty happening event i must say. Good talks, good music, good thoughts shared, good dinner and ... everyone feeling something which makes them low that college life had come to an end. I still remember sitting next to the pool and having dinner, and man ... that moment lasts. And i rode back home with a friend of mine, talking about life in college and how its gonna stay in our hearts forever. That was a memorable ride too.
Time moves on ... college life moved, we evolved to an extent to get into a professional groove. I am sure there still is a college student in us to a large extent. The "What da's", "Yenilla machha", "so what else .. (for 30 minutes)", "the fresh air sharing" ... tons of other stuff, that make us feel at times that we are still in a similar environment.
Probably i will evolve this blog over time. Coz i am sure i have not covered even 37% of whats there ...
I must say one thing "HATS OFF TO ALL MY FRIENDS, MY CLASSMATES FOR THE UNITY WE HAD, TO ALL THE LECTURERS WHO MANAGED US, WHO TOUGHT US, WHO SURVIVED US." all of them have a role to play to make those 4 years into a non-volatile, un-erasable thread in my memory lane.