Remember...

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!