My first day at the Deemed University

I remember when I was studying in school in my lower classes; I have written numerous essays on ‘My first day at …’ all that I can recall now is the last time I wrote that essay was long time back. Well school was so much fun back then. Simple homework, recesses where we used to play ‘pakda pakdi’, ‘bumpastic’ (a slightly benign version where u were to hit a guy with a softball). Later on in higher classes we used heavier and harder balls, for both as projectiles and targets ;) ). But all that is over now. We are adults in a professional institution getting trained to be professionals of the future. But it never hurts to write that essay again.

My first day in my college class was really good to start with. The time-table was not set and consequently the first 2 periods we sat in our labs, surfing the good old internet. Me, being the computer geek I am, was checking out the configuration of the computer. It was a Compaq Deskpro workstation with a Pentium-III(550Mhz, 512Kb cache),128 Mb RAM, 40GB HDD with a dedicated Matrox Millennium G200 AGP card!!!! I was speechless for a while. It was high-end system for the age in which I got admitted into my college (My college director will kill me if he reads this. He quoted once ‘You are not in a college, you are in a Deemed University’). So when you have such a beast at your command what do you do? Play games of course. I downloaded the Quake 3 arena demo while my gamer friend (A very very very lean guy from the state capital) started downloading Unreal Tournament Demo. Before the download was complete, a class was called for. A ‘Class’ without a ‘time-table’, how unfair? So we attended our maiden class I don’t even remember which one it was. I was too occupied with the thoughts of visiting the ‘Longest Yard’ arena after a long time. Once the class got over, I rushed over to the lab only to find that someone was already occupying my computer and chatting away to glory. I was just about to blow the person out of his seat, everyone went quiet. The only thing that could be heard was the humming of the AC and the computers. For a second I thought, was it me? Did the Quake 3 energy that was flowing through my body could have caused this tranquility? I was standing at the door of the lab, lost in my thoughts with everyone’s gaze upon me. Was it really true? I felt a hand on my collar and as my instincts would tell me I said “Kaun hai be?” To my horror, it was my senior. It was the guy would later take on the name of ‘Veto Corleone’, ‘Bhaktavaar’ and ‘Mard’.

Time after that near fatal encounter with the senior did not go very well. Our (each one of my batch mates present in the lab at that point of time) personalities were developed for two continuous hours, after which I ate a lunch which did not taste good. I needed some rest. We again had post-lunch unscheduled classes. What could be better? I took the last seat near the air conditioner and slept for two continuous periods. After that again a short round of personality development and we were off to our ‘Boot Camp’ to continue our hardships there.