I didn't think I'd be up that early on a Saturday morning!
Especially after having had a long, hard week…
Not only was I up at 630, I didn't realize how eager I was until
the Zoom video conference call said I had to wait for the host, when I logged
in a minute before 730!
Within minutes, I was connected with 6 other people
from different cities and at least 20 others who had gathered in my hometown of
Chennai (the erstwhile Madras).
It's the 25th Anniversary of the Electronics and Communication
Engineering Class of 1994 from Sri Venkateswara College of Engineering. Fondly,
SVCE…
To put it down to good memory would be putting it lightly, because
I not only remember the shirt and trousers I wore to the selection interview
(in 1990), I even remember how accomplished I felt when I was granted admission
(though it involved a sizeable capitation fee).
I remember my first day (I even wrote about it - https://lakshminarayanb.blogspot.com/2014/08/rag.html), the first classroom (at our first campus), my first
friend and the first time I was selected to represent the college at an
inter-collegiate cultural festival (which led to the first of several trips,
tours, as we called them).
I remember the morning prayer, the long, fearful walks to the
labs, the khaki uniforms we had to wear for Workshop and the drafters we used
to wield for Engineering Drawing.
I remember how puny I was but could still out-eat all of my
friends, at the college canteen, the Dhaba on the street or at Motel
Highway, the only restaurant as far as the eye could see!
I remember the day I was selected for the College cricket team!
I remember the rainy day a bunch of us left College early to watch
MichaelMadanaKamaRajan (my all-time favorite movie). I remember our favorite
places (all over the city) to hang out and eat.
I remember the new campus! I remember the new routines. Water
cooler talks, coffee at the canteen, crossword puzzles in the classroom,
hand-tennis at the OAT and table tennis till the college buses threatened to
leave.
I remember the College Temple and the exam-day superstitions!
Long-sleeve shirts, the walk to the front of the exam hall for a cup of water
(knowing I had read all the questions and feeling relieved), spending an hour
to answer the Unit 1 question (the only one I prepared for well), and using the
full 3 hours (even if what I wrote under Units 4 and 5 were impossible to
read).
I remember how clueless I was at Viva Voce! After all I spent more
nights practicing charades, or as we liked to call it "Dumb-C". I
remember our picture in the papers the morning after we won the most
prestigious competition in the city…
I could write a book about it, but that we were on the video
conference call this morning (special thanks Muralidhar Singh and Madhavan
V for putting it all together) a little over 4 hours says the story.
It seems no wonder that it's my all-time favorite English song,
but if I had to paraphrase Bryan Adams' Summer of 69…
Oh, when I look back now
Those 4 years seemed to last
forever
And if I had the choice
Yeah, I'd always wanna be there…
Those were the best days of my
life!
