Although its more than 5 years plus, some memories are very fresh. All the new students gathered the OLD workshop building(the dungeons) to check their roll numbers and class allocation. The Old building seemed like a punishment, where only the mechanical department was housed. It was a rainy day and quite uncomfortable.
I remember the 1st lecture was most probably UBJ's lecture and remember my brother saying that he is quite a pain. Then came the stalwarts.. Shivangi Ruparel, Borde (poor guy was ragged big time),the famous Hetal Doshi,YT and his hand and the soft skinned and no beard Patwardhan ( also the whistler,we imitated him quite a lot later on)!.Our long journey had kicked off.
Work Shop Building
It was a 2 floored dilapidated structure where everything except students was old. I don't think anyone who used to toilets once, used them again there. It gave us a nice country-like feeling with wild bushes behind (and Krushal towers behind them) and a stream of black water flowing besides. All the expectations were brought to ground zero when a new student entered that establishment. The never showed this building during admission, the hid it behind!! It was a nice welcome.
Even though Herr Hitler committed suicide after World War II, we felt his soul in Workshop sessions. He seemed to be the dictator of 1000sq ft workshop and was successful in spreading his terror amongst many ( he favored girls though!! ASS!!). He expected us to be carpenters like him and make male-female joints!! And when you would toil hard, fast to complete your job (only guys did)... you were asked to do the girls job so that the girl child of India was not put through hard labor. After the long hard work you put into metals, wood to make them look like some scrap material, you could find them in a sack lying in the badminton court where we discovered out "jobs" ,"safely stored". I don't know how useful the entire exercise was for computer engineers....any engineers!
I remember once we had our furnace session in workshop and the main instructor being absent, his assistant विश्वकर्मा (Vishwakarma .. someone whom you would see and by instinct call Pandayji !!) got his long awaited chance to give a public speech. We could feel his long suppressed childhood dream of addressing a crowd, was now turning into reality. He made the most of this opportunity and boredom was redefined for our batch. But God comes to the aid of the needy..this time a Goddess. Aparna had a sunstroke ,the session stopped, Vishwakarma's dream remained unfulfilled and we smelled fresh air again. Aparna was treated later that day with coffee and snacks from canteen.
More to come soon..
I think all our lives have transformed into something good/bad wherever we are. But it happens with me - someday sometime i stop and think back of the good old days mentioned above and long for them to come back.
ReplyDeleteI gave an exam recently(no names needed as i was not sure it was CET/XAT/CAT) at our very own SOMAIYA college in the new building, 3rd floor, room 303. And for some reason we had about 45 mins until the paper was about to start and absolutely nothing to do but stare at the old man from DTE who was supervising. But I, was lost in memories imagining our lectures from Deepu, Potey, PP ,etc. I looked at my bench and could imagine how 3 people fitted on it in a packed class. Of course the next thing that came to mind is all the snacks the benches covered up for us - grapes, chips, pan pasand,etc.
And after the exam everyone was giving reasons for why their paper did not go as planned. Well to a certain extent, I had mine. I answered the paper as if it had the time limit of an engineering paper. :))
More later ! Thanks saurabh for starting this especially when Nishit holds our long lost DIARY of memories and we hold our thoughts desperate to pen them down!
Where-ever we are or will be, we will cherish those memories ever.
ReplyDeleteRecently, I too went to the college and i could sense we people sitting on the slope, nishit pulling sunita's cheeks,
CR saying some PJ and Then Darshan and gang coming to join us.
I still remember the Ghatkopar Gang always entering late in the class and everyone heaving a sigh of relief from the boring lecture.
Nostalgiaaaaaa !!!