Ravi … Man, eh?

Well here’s the one that everyone’s been waiting for. Well, they do say that patience is a virtue and I could just have been testing your patience … just as Ravi would have … ;)

I’d like to begin by drawing your attention to the testimonial this gentleman once wrote for me. I’m sure he meant well when he began his ‘testimonial’ to me thus – “murgi...the only person on this earth who can gimme competation for the biggest ahole....heheheeee....” … Well ladies and gentlemen this is vintage Ravi. This one sentence apart from proving that he spells nearly as badly as Bharath, summarizes the abomination known to us all as Ravi Maney.

I still remember Ravi’s first week at college. He had some kind of plaster on his nose or eye or something and I genuinely felt bad for the dude as he seemed such a nice down to earth person. A couple of weeks down the line, I was looking hither and thither for the person who did him the injury in the first place so as to personally thank him for the great service he’d rendered unto mankind … well, temporarily atleast. I’ve often thought of performing similar services for mankind a number of times in the years that followed … : )

Now for those people who think I’m being overly harsh and judgmental, let me tell you a little more about the kind of person Ravi is. Imagine that you are an assassin in the act of murdering Ravi (don’t we all like to imagine that every once in a while ?) by stabbing him with a knife. Ravi’s the kind of person who would refuse to die and then make you want to stab yourself by calling you a lousy murderer and telling you that some cousin brother on his father’s side who was 7 years old could commit murder better than you. He’d drive you closer to suicide then by telling you that the knife you selected and which was now stuck in his abdomen was not even sharp and that his grandmother could sharpen knives better than you. Then he’d probably say that the knife that you used was possibly not even a real knife but a paper mache knife that you had bought second hand from some dingy grey market shop … grrrrrrrrr … I still remember the time when I came to college wearing my brand new Adidas shoes, the purchase of which a number of people (self proclaimed authorities in sports shoes) had been involved in over a period of many days after visiting a number of stores across Bangalore. I finally manage to pick a pair at quite a hefty price and decide to wear them to college right the very next day. Ravi sees the shoes and says – “Nice canvas shoes dude. What happened to your old ones? How much did you buy these for … no, how much did the store owner pay you to take these off him … giggle giggle … “ … It’s a good thing I didn’t hear any more of what he was saying because I was cursing his family unto a hundred generations ...

It can’t just be a coincidence that I always somehow manage to befriend the thinnest people around. I’m like a magnet for thin people and all my best friends in school and college have been extremely thin. Well, one could surmise that most people in my vicinity would look thin anyway but it has always bothered me to no end that these thin people who had decided to affiliate themselves with me, made me look fatter than I already was. Ravi’s like a parasite and an underfed one at that. Well I don’t mean that in some weird Freudian psychoanalytical way but simply in a grade school level biology class way, that he was like an organism that attached itself to a host and then sucked all the nutrients that the poor host organism had spent quite a while in assimilating. Ravi spent most of his engineering days attached to one host organism or the other (read Harsha or yours truly or a combination of both) eating whatever came it’s … err … his way … : ) … I’ve often been scared witless when during a meal at ‘Sanman’, a hand would suddenly materialize out of nowhere and dig into the contents of my plate. Wonder why Ravi still stayed the way he did and I, the way I am …

Rumours abound about a recent treat that Ravi gave some really lucky people, with his own money. But I’m not believing any old house wives’ tales about these treats that Ravi gave unless any food that Ravi paid for comes my way, period!

Ravi once said that after engineering he’d extort a percentage of everybody’s salary once they were all placed and then live happily ever after without lifting a hand for the rest of his pathetic life. The bloke’s dreams were short lived though as he got placed with Oracle soon after Engineering and just when everybody thought that Ravi would finally dish out those long over due treats (he owed us big time folks), he proudly proclaims that the placement firm that he got into Oracle through would be collecting the first few months' salary so we’d still be seeing hands materializing out of nowhere and digging into our plates at restaurants …

I’m going to be writing a book called ‘Mein Kampf’, on my struggle to get my copy of ‘Mein Kampf’ back from Ravi. He borrowed it shortly before I left for Hel(L) and my persistent requests (read death threats) have not resulted in the said book reaching me. But judging by the state in which another book that I’d once lent Ravi, reached me (3 years late by the way), I wouldn’t be resting my hopes on this one reaching me in any better shape. Ravi was quick to point out that the book was in three pieces when I lent it out to him but I swear to God, the book was brand new when I lent it to him.

I’ve often wondered what Ravi was up to at office and my ponderings in this regard have multiplied manifold after one particular incident that springs to mind about when Ravi in a spate of boredom (Oracle had put him on the dreaded ‘grave yard’ shift) sent a mail out addressing each and every person in class including some people whose existence yours truly was well and truly oblivious about ! Well that one mail categorically proved that this monster had a soft side too because the size and scope of the email suggested that a gargantuan effort (by Ravi’s standards) would have been necessary to compose an opus of such epic proportions. Well it was the usual ‘Raviesque’ bitching but we all know that the dude means no harm at the end of the day … and that’s the story of what has since gone down in the history books as Ravi’s 'magnum opus'.

I can never forget what will go down in my memory as the ‘Ooty incident’ when my posterior was exposed for the viewing pleasure of half the population of the hill station when Ravi in a state of mild madness caught me unaware as I was engaged in conversation with another classmate (who shall remain unnamed for it is his misfortune that he would have to die with the memory of yours truly nude (a truly ‘intimidating’ sight but a ghastly memory nevertheless : )). To put it in simpler language, I was talking to another classmate when Ravi, all of a sudden decides to (for whatever twisted reason unbeknownst to the rest of humankind) pull my pants and jockeys down. What transpired over the next 20 minutes is something that I would like to erase permanently from my memory but something that Ravi would never allow with constant reminders to me of all those empty threats and expletives and ‘brutal blows’ I hurled in his direction. Ravi, dude, you and I have kept all those things that Rowen uttered that night when he got sloshed in Ooty secret. It's time to let the world know ... hehehe

Well, all these little incidents and accounts apart, Ravi’s been a person in whom I’ve always confided my deepest and darkest secrets (wonder if that was such a good idea). Ravi would be the person I’d call when I was in dire straits with certain (all) subjects (not having opened the prescribed books for the entire term) to ask him which portions of the syllabus were ‘worth studying’ and which were not. A typical conversation over the phone on the night before the exam would sound thus –

Me: Machaaa, I’ve not started da (10:30 pm on the eve of the exam) … what do I do ? I’m screwed da …

Ravi: Chill da… Open the syllabus sheet. Ok … study the fist chapter, the second one … just glance through it … the third one simply follows what’s been learned in the second chapter, so it shouldn’t take you more than half an hour. Leave the fourth chapter … you wont be able to understand shit in so little time … actually YOU would never have been able to understand it … and so on … : )

Me: (A lot more relieved) Thanks da macha … so you’re sure that I’ll be able to finish the entire syllabus in an hour and a half like you said ?

Ravi: Yeah, I finished it in an hour and that’s why I’m telling you that you’ll take an hour and a half ...

Me: (that cocky @#$%^ … grrrrrrrr … some day …)

Ravi’s never gonna make it to the UNO for sure ‘cause if he did he’d cause a war between two countries and then ensure that the two warring countries went at it forever. MC and I would have made up much earlier if it hadn’t been for Ravi. Come to think of it, we’d have never fought in the first place. Wonder how Oracle included him in that quality audit team ...

Ok … well most of what I’ve said above may have been just a tad over-exaggerated (well, that’s left for those of you who’ve had the privilege of knowing Ravi to decide) but Ravi’s been a best friend all through college and one of the few people who’ve gone through extraordinary measures to ensure that we all stayed in touch even after we left college. Ravi'll never be the one to back-stab anybody (he does a pretty good job saying stuff right in the person's face !!). He'll never be the one to back off from lending a helping hand to anyone in trouble (He likes to stick around and laugh at the person). He's one deeply religious 'mo fo' but he's goin' to hell for sure ... muhuhahahahahaha ... but then, aren't we all ???

Ravi … the dude who we all hate to love and hate to love … naaaah … just kidding … love you the way you are bro … You remind me of me, maybe a tad worse than me but close nonetheless (you're probably right when you say that I'm the only person on the planet who can give you competition for being the biggest a**hole ) … rock on dude … You rock and you know it !!

Anubis ...

‘tis in college that you get to meet some of the nuttiest characters on the planet … the kind that you see only in movies and say – “Now, there’s a dude who just can’t be real”. The stereo typical teen movie college freaks have an inspiration from real life after all for every once in a while we chance upon perfect nutcases such as ‘Anubis’, the stereo typical adorable ‘teen movie college freak’. To whoever said that mallus were un-cool and that there was no way on earth that a person who consumed every part of the coconut tree from leaf to root and thought that anointing oneself with coconut oil was the latest fad, could be cool, here’s irrefutable evidence that suggests otherwise.

Anoop Haridas Menon … dude, I personally feel that Anubis is way cooler, so I’m gonna stick with that. Anubis is one of the coolest dudes to walk the planet, period, although the hairstyle he currently sports ensures that his face ‘makes sense’ even if you saw it upside down… :D …

Blessed with a sense of humour that most stand up comics would kill for, this dude has often dazzled us all with some of the most amazing line long quips we’ve ever heard … For a sample of this guy’s twisted but mind bogglingly creative genius, add him as a friend on gtalk and track his status messages.

Apart from this, the reason why we got along famously from the word go is because he’s the only other ‘connoisseur’ of death metal in Hel(L) and apart from my grandma, he’s the only one to have never taken my case about my fake Malayalam … hehehehe … but he’ll never get me to listen to Slip cock or crotch or whatever … (sorry buddy, I know you musta broken out in tears by now : ) ) I have never seen a grown man cry the way Anubis does when someone disses slip knot … I mean, come on dude, they’re just a bunch of morons in masks (I’m lovin’ this … hehehehe )

It’s actually hard to believe that this dude could possibly have once sported the typical oiled mallu look with thick glasses to the boot, walking around with a Brilliant’s tutorial book in hand, back in school … that kind of stuff could get one beaten up back where I come from … hehehehe … But, now that the mallu look is out of fashion, this dude’s here to stay !! Gamer extraordinaire, the world’s biggest (any bigger and he’d be the Goodyear blimp) slip knot fan, Hel(L)’s own t-shirt designer, self proclaimed photoshop and Bryce 3d guru (fraud), lazy bum and one of my best buddies on campus … dude I’ll never forget the jam sessions, the movie marathons, the mallu dissing sessions, the loser talks, the metal discussions, the video exchanges on youtube, Index ’06 ‘free riding ;)’ and all kinds of other li’l stuff that’ll be inside my senti li’l fat cholesterol filled heart forever … hehehe …

One particular escapade that’s going to remain imprinted in my head forever is about how three of us - you, me and poor krupa went bawling after an insti party into the prof residential area and unleashed our pent up feelings about all things prof related … if it weren’t for krupa’s sobering up and realizing where we were, we’d probably have gotten our sorry posteriors kicked outta college before ‘nubis could have uttered ‘tibilisi’ (people, this is one of Anubis’ ‘tourettes ‘)

Dude, why did you have to go and take finance and bring your coolness coefficient down a few notches ? We’d have loved to have you in the folds of ‘Zero fin @ IIM Hel(L) … sigh … maybe in a different life … rock on dude …nay … metal on dude … IKMK IKMK IKMK IKMK !!!!!!!! Anubis rulez … Stay cool, stay mallu …

An ode to the toads

Aniket’s our able leader,

Benefactor, supplier and feeder.

His whip strong and fine,

Keeps our behinds in line.

Prodipto’s the thinker with the brain,

With him around, only victories shall we gain.

He’s gonna win us Index,

Like a superhero in tight spandex.

Murgi’s the man with the tune,

Overall, a big fat loon.

His guitar leaves one and all spellbound,

His globe has the power to confound.

Anoop’s our very own funny man,

He’ll soon land himself a world wide ban.

They say he’s got the gift of gab,

Somewhere under twenty layers of flab.

Sai Suman’s, the man with focus,

If we faltered, he’d choke us.

He teaches school kids on week ends,

On other days, he does sit ups and knee bends.

Vasava’s the man with the brush,

Some of his works could make you blush.

Although he claims that he’s a Buddhist,

His paintings always celebrate the nudist.

Hemant’s our own Mr. analyst,

Ever the unrelenting misogynist.

His motto’s - In excel we trust,

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Sandeep Lal, the hip hop king,

We no talkin’ ‘bout tha way he sing.

Odes in his praise abound,

About the way his pants always kiss the ground.

Rupak’s Mr. Responsible,

Of unbridled clumsiness reprehensible.

God of all things Powerpoint,

He’ll never be the one to disappoint.

Sovan’s our knight in shining armor,

Perish all thoughts in this regard you may harbor.

If you thought our remarks couldn’t get any snider,

We just meant that he’s ‘free and a good rider’.

Last and definitely not the least are the fachas,

They might think otherwise, but they’re just a bunch of bacchas.

All they want is free food and booze,

But with them around, we aint ever gonna lose.

If you’re wondering ‘bout this set of clowns,

Upon whom all logic frowns.

Here they are in their Sunday best,

To do the bidding of that Aniket pest.

So, here they are, our motley crew,

A mish mash just like Irish stew.

We’ve got people of all colour and hue,

With the requisite amount of spunk and enthu.

Ajay Chauhan thinks he’s the Infobahn

Rohan Chitnis is no sucker for fitness

Hemant Gangaraju once made out in a zoo

Akash Singhla loves all the hoopla

Abhishek Bali leers at the kaamwali

Anirbhan ... “I have to work! Darn !”

Ankit Agarwal’s a li’l know it all

Rajat Goyal, knows not the meaning of toil

Monika Sharma’s quite the ‘charmah’

Shweta Jhamb … well, what on earth rhymes with Jhamb ?!

The Score - Index '06

The Score

… and then there was the Score …

It could only be destiny that brought a Score of individuals together , a Score of brave men and women, a Score of warriors who would for a period of three months share one vision, one dream, one breath … From the days of its conception, the team has come very far indeed to become the indomitable and formidable force that it is today.

The strength of the Score is not in the ability of each individual alone, but stems from mutual respect and the never say die attitude of each and every one its able warriors . Every stumbling block, every minor setback encountered, whenever the glimmer of hope seemed to flicker and fade to black, the warriors of the Score would only brush the dust off, bite the pain and get right back on their feet and just keep marching on.

Ably lead by our general Aniket at the helm, there does not exist too daunting a task for our 20 warriors with their myriad talents, abilities and skills. The Score has seen victory and so too has it smelt the stench of defeat. But, when the fog of war clears and when the light of a new day illuminates the heavens, the warriors are rejuvenated by the fact that they still have one another.

Nothing else matters …

It is with immense pride that we would wear the insignia of the Score at the battleground of Index ‘06 and the throngs of our war chant ‘IKMK’ would reach the heavens … Today we fight the good battle for tomorrow you will all sing odes to our glory while we rejoice with the Gods in Valhalla.

Intellectual krusade For Marketing kognition

Amar Chitra 'katthe'

It’s the first day of college and we’re all sitting in the quadrangle having just introduced ourselves to one another and Bharath decides to open his oversized food trap and comments – “ I don’t know why people are so addicted to the internet. I have never found anything interesting on the internet.” Knowing Bharath today, few people are going to believe that these words actually emerged from the great katthe/gardhi himself but back then Bharath was … well Bharath was just this silly little kid, a mere shadow of what he would turn into over the next four years. It goes without saying that these words of ‘wisdom’ disturbed me immensely which lead me to retort in a slightly inappropriate manner especially considering that we’d all just met.

If you’re wondering how it came to be that Bharath was christened katthe/gardhi, well, here’s the story. Back in the days when caller ID phones were still a novelty, I got a cheap Chinese made one installed in my room. During a visit, Bharath had to attend to a call from his mom and unfortunately received the call in ‘hands free’ mode. Bharath’s mom seemed extremely distressed about a certain gardhi which had escaped from its pen that morning without telling her where it was going and after a torrent of choice abuses, she decides to stick with just gardhis in her sentences. All that us shell shocked friends of Bharath, sitting around him could hear were random Telugu words punctuated by a ‘gardhi’ every two words or so. Well, that was the first and last time, we ever heard Bharath getting verbally assaulted by his mom as he was clever enough to receive calls in the drawing room from that day forth.

Having had the privilege of knowing several people who’d studied at Christ college it has often bothered me to no end when I'd try to figure out how on Earth Bharath could have passed out of both Christ school and college untarnished by the bad bad world and with all of his innocence intact. I still remember the day we forced Bharath into watching his first XXX porn flick. Well, the dude rather liked it but he spoils the atmosphere 10 minutes into the video by asking a typical ‘gardhi’ question – “Do they really do that in real life?” Nishant and I nearly passed out laughing. Then, the genius cracks us up even further by alleging that it’s all ‘morphed’ and rendered using a computer. I have never seen Nishant look as dumb founded as he looked that day when these words splattered out of Bharath’s toothy aperture !!! Later that night, we actually had a serious discussion as to how and when we’d have to tell the kid about the birds and the bees so as to facilitate the propagation of his clan… Flash forward a couple of years and we're all relying on Gardhi for the latest videos which for some reason only he could lay his hands on ... sigh ... We knew then, that we'd created a monster!

Gardhi’s a nice guy and all but he’s got a destructive streak. I’ve never seen Harsha ever lose his temper with anybody but even he blew his top and told Gardhi something to the effect of – “Shut the f*** up for five minutes and sit in one corner.” One incident in this regard which is particularly hilarious involves the kid removing a solitary hair from the back side of a very pissed Manju. How and why Bharath noticed that one strand of hair that had never hurt anything or anybody in its entire life and that too in the middle of Maths class lacks any kind of plausible explanation but the fact is that one moment, the teacher’s teaching us about some arbit transforms and the next moment, the entire last two rows are in splits after Manju lets out a heart rendering scream of horror on realizing that he’d just been ‘violated’ by Gardhi …

The dude’s strong as an ox. There’s even proof of him molesting poor Kaddi on tape shortly before he nearly decapitates yours truly with a take-down from hell. Bharath’s weakness ? – his spellings and his handwriting. He’s got brains and all but the bloke honestly must revisit his spelling and hand writing classes in kindergarten because he spells and writes worse than a dyslexic baboon. Words of all shapes, sizes, hues, colours, etymology and language have been brutally butchered by ‘the angel of death of written language’ !! But he could get away even with murder by flashing that bright sinusoidal smile of his which could have brought even Atilla the Hun to his knees. I swear to God, some female profs had actually fallen for the kid and he didn’t even know it. Poor kid!! If Nishant slaughtered jokes by missing out on the punch line, Bharath just slaughtered jokes, period ! I mean, the kid probably had the noblest of intentions when he decided to tell us the jokes in the first place but dude “YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO GIGGLE THROUGHOUT THE JOKE AND THEN KILL THE JOKE BY LETTING OUT AN INCOMPREHENSIBLE ‘GIGGLLGLGLLGGLGGEEELGLGLGEEEMUAMPHHHPMPHHH’ INSTEAD OF THE PUNCH LINE” !!

Bharath’s a foodie just like me and that’s another reason why we hit it off so famously from the word go. He loves chats, hell, he loves anything that could be classified under the umbrella of ‘fast foods’. He even tried to drink (the getting drunk kind of drink) once during the infamous Ooti-Kodaikanal trip. We’d just finished a whole quarter of rum amongst 7 or 8 of us (we really drank a lot those day, huh ?) and we were all pretending to be woozy and drunk when Bharath walks into the scene and decides to sample the contents of one of the bottles lying around. Soon he’s ‘drunk’ too and joins in the revelry and that’s when someone realizes the fire had to be started again. Nobody could figure out how the kerosene bottle had gotten empty all by itself, until some bright spark suddenly has an ‘aha’ moment and realizes what’d just transpired. Turns out, our hero’s managed to drink the content of an arbit bottle and having tasted neither kerosene nor rum before, just assumed that it was rum. Well, that pretty much wrapped up the party … sigh …

Bharath’s mom and my mom have this evil nexus thingy happening and they were great friends without ever having met face to face even once. What drew them to one another was their immense lack of respect for everything that their sons did. They’d often spend hours on the phone just talking about they’d ‘brought us up’ and how they ought to have …
Bharath’s tried to learn the drums and even the guitar but his only passion even to this day is – ‘computer gaming’. He’d manage to squeeze time out of anything to crack the new level that he’d have reached just that morning and he would succumb to the lure of his PC even during exams.

Bharath too was a member of the awesome foursome that did it’s project at NAL and if it weren’t for him and Harsha, some SARAS pilot would have been really sore with the scientists at NAL for having written a program to find out whether strings of flight data were palindromes or not :D.

Bharath’s been one of the closest buddies I’ve ever had and I could always tell him anything I wanted. I love the dude for the prick he is and wouldn’t ever want him to change. I will never forget his selfless sessions explaining concepts to me and Nishant before exams and how he always came to my place after his own practicals got over to teach me how to perform all the experiments correctly. Dude, I passed some of those exams because of you !!

Rock on ‘Gardhi’ and invite me home for Raggi muddhe like the old days when I get back to b’lore …

Love ya bro …

Enter the Acturan Micro Dodo

It seems like a dream, a distant mirage, a figment of my imagination … but those days really did happen. College life is something we all cherish to our graves and so too will I always cherish those days and remember every glorious moment each and every day for the rest of my life. For I fear that if I didn’t, they would escape from within the confines of my memory and be lost in limbo forever. I once knew a guy named Harsha …

The first day of college is always special because it’s the first time you see the nutcases that you’re destined (doomed) to spend the rest of the next few years with. That was when we first saw ‘it’. A silent reclusive large creature who preferred to sit aloof from the rest of us noisy ‘chatter boxes’ with only his over sized moustache for company, Harsha is the reason I no longer subscribe to clichés regarding ‘first impressions’ ‘cause boy were we wrong about the dude! The next few months would see this guy unleash his wizardry turning everything he touched into pure gold and of course he’s not a recluse but just a tad shy ;)

‘tis not just once that one would see Harsha sitting in class with a bemused expression on his face while the professor filled the board with calculations, apparently going nowhere and everywhere all at once. The thing is that he’d always manage to finish the problem in less than two steps in a shade under 45 and 3/7ths seconds while the rest of us mere mortals wondered what the point of existence was that the ‘powers that be’ had to subject us to such excruciating torment. Academics aside, Harsha is the most extraordinary musician I have ever jammed with (and I have jammed with some of the best). The guy can play a dozen instruments (I kid you not) and heed my words – he doesn’t just ‘play’ these instruments but knows how to caress magical tunes out of each and every one of them confounded musical doohickeys!

How could I forget our Engineering project? This testimonial would be so incomplete without an honourable (dishonourable) mention of our ‘endeavours’ in this regard. Guess, we spent more time at random fast food joints in that span of six months in and around NAL than at NAL itself. Those were some of the best days of engineering and I still can’t figure out how we finally managed to get the ‘bloody’ project (hope you remember that goof up on my part) done on time. Buddy, I’m sure we could all vouch for the fact that those days would have been sad … nay, miserable without you dude although we probably might have eaten a tad less than we did (but who’s complaining?)

“Brain the size of a planet…”, but lazy to the hilt, the dude who we all thought would get placed first took his own sweet time to decide when the muhurtam was right to open his mouth in an HR interview while all the top companies went whooshing past. Harsha has often demonstrated levels of laziness which rivalled a cross between a dead sloth bear and a pebble lying on a nude beach (don’t ask me ‘why a nude beach’) owing to which he’d sometimes offer to shake your hand without removing his own from his pockets. It goes without saying that this has shocked quite a few women (and impressed some others, a fact which we shall leave out for now).

The word ‘genius’ would be an understatement for a guy like Harsha, a complete under-representation of the bloke’s true potential. A large person with an even larger heart (did I mention that I wasn’t going to use clichés ?), Harsha’s never been the dude to back off from lending a helping hand to people who weren’t as well endowed (well, you can wipe that silly smirk of your face) as him when it came to exhibiting a grasp of certain concepts and subjects that even Einstein would have been proud of. When the dude finally got placed and had to leave the city, the entire class showed up to bid him adieu! If that doesn’t say a thing or two about the dude, I don’t know what else possibly could!

Thank you for the memories dude! Memories are what keep me going today … Sometimes we spend a lifetime trying to amass useless worldly sh*t when all we had to do is pause and reflect on the days that were and will always be in our heart to realize how rich we’ve always been. Those glorious days really did happen and they were the best days of my life. I once knew a guy named Harsha …

Love you always bro …

Just in - Harsha's finally spilt the beans. If you thought that he was going to the UK to further his career, you couldn't be further from the truth. To find out the real reason why he accepted the UK project, call the big man up and ask him yourselves ... Must i do everything ???!!!

Nishant(h) Betgeri TM

My earliest memory of Nishant is from Chemistry laboratory class during the first year of engineering involving a particularly large jar of HCL and a rather tiny test tube. Apparently it was fashionable to use HCL in whatever experiment it was that you were performing because all bottles were soon depleted owing to which the prof. in charge instructed Mr. Nishant Betgeri to go to the adjoining room to get a refill. Nishant picks up a tiny test tube(a really tiny one mind you) and returns with the largest bell jar you would have ever seen (filled to the brim with HCL) and then attempts to pour the contents of the bell jar into the teeny little test tube, much to the prof’s chagrin. All that the prof. could do was throw his hands up in the air and sigh – “Yellinda barthare !”. That’s when we all knew that we’d be seeing a lot more of this ‘graying’ zit faced little kid in the days and months to come.

Nishanth … oops … Nishant has had to live with the fact that no matter how many times he told the folks at the college office, they’d never get his name right on his mark sheets. This led him to contemplate the decision once, to change his name to ‘Nishanth’ to match his mark sheets (a more cost effective and less tedious alternative).

The only person in college who used to start studying for an exam after even yours truly did, was Mr. Nishant Betgeri. People have often wondered how this dude could manage to pull off the amazing feat of studying for an engineering paper in a mere 6 hours. It all came to light only a couple of terms into the course, when somebody saw his hands before he entered the exam hall. I swear to God, the dude had managed to micro-scribe the entire contents of ‘Microprocessors’ by Brey on his left hand with select programming examples on his right hand.

A slightly more hilarious incident concerns the C programming lab paper. Our lad got the ‘check if a given string is a palindrome’ program. Easy one right? Not for Mr. Betgeri who had failed to micro-scribe this one program on some body part. So he gets the code written by a neighbour and even manages to key it in without getting caught. He then ‘summons’ the prof to his seat and proudly shows his program off. His joy is short lived though, as most of you who have taken computer lab exams before would guess. He was asked by the prof to demonstrate his program by keying in a palindrome on execution of the code. The source code compiles without a glitch. He executes the program and when he’s prompted to enter a palindrome, our lad enters ‘4’. Obviously, having heard the word palindrome for the first time in his life that day, the bloke hadn’t the foggiest about what to do and it’s a good thing somebody caught the prof. as she swooned and fell to the ground fainting in disgust.

Nishant telling a joke would always be something that drew large crowds. It’s not the jokes themselves but his technique or rather the lack of It that made him our favourite comedian (clown). He’d somehow manage to grab our attention, build suspense and just as the joke was drawing near its conclusion and the atmosphere was palpably tense in anticipation of the final punch, Nishant would forget how the joke ended but have the crowd in a split anyway … sigh ...

He was one of the first of in our motley crew to buy a bike and I could partially attribute my being stuck with a Splendor for the duration of my Engineering degree to him. My Mom: “Nishant is such a nice boy (wonder where she gets these ideas) and even he has a four stroke bike”. Well, one had to see it to believe the ridiculous mileage the dude could squeeze out of his bike. Far off from the ‘under ideal test conditions’ mileage that the company promised, Nishant normally rode with a thin layer of petrol in his fuel tank and knew how to make even that last (ride at 45 kmph even if there’s a killer T-Rex chasing you and act like the energy crisis is going to blow out of control in a day or two). I’ll also never forget the time we’re trying to save Sharath’s posterior by calling his dad and telling him that we were seniors who planted the porn cd in his bag as part of our ragging him. On being asked who and what his dad was, Nishant ever the quick witted one, says – “My father’s name is Ram Gopal Verma and he’s a building contractor”. Nice thinking buddy. Wonder why Sharath’s dad didn’t buy any of it …

Come third semester and our young lad finally becomes a man and falls hopelessly in love and his idea of impressing his love interest is to learn her mother tongue. Then begins the most hilarious time for most of us in college when Nishant would try to learn Marathi from any arbit person who’d even had his flight stop over at Bombay for a couple of hours on a multi-hop route. He walks over to Ulu and innocently enquires “kasa kai?” to which Ulu replies – “Hoga lo, Innu mensin kai season agglilla … bandhidhane !!”

All these anecdotes aside, Nishant’s been a best friend and a brother (literally … my mom used to treat this bunch of dudes from college like her own sons and kick her own son’s ass all the time) and one of the nicest, humblest and most decent people I’ve ever known. His determination knows no bounds for once he sets his sight on something he’ll strive till he gets whatever it is that he aimed for and so he was also inspiring company to ‘work’ with during our preparation for CAT at career forum. Well, an account of those days could fill an entire book by itself. Nishant was also part of my engineering project group, one of the four stooges who a did a project for a CSIR sitting at Manipal Hospital’s canteen. There’s actually an aircraft flying in Indian skies today with the code we wrote ‘running’ on board! I think we even might have included Nishant’s palindrome code just for kicks ... :)

How is it buddy, that the two of us who hated studying the most finally were the only ones who ended up doing a post graduation in business administration? Wonders will never cease to happen, I guess …

Rock on bro … really miss you …