Fifth Semesters..

Semesters are eight in total in the engineering course, only six of which are quite relevant to my life.. I've gone through four already, with only its reflection yet to be conquered.. I would like to touch upon the beauty of one day in one such semester which is in fact this very day, the 12th of August, 2008..

The day started as usual with my late entry into reality from the now seemingly distant dreamland; when my mum had to pour water on my face to achieve the unachievable.. 'My awakening'.. After some last minute scurry and filling in my bag with the right 'fiction books' to read for the day, I stepped out to be escorted by dad in the ever so peppy 'scooty pep' to my kk nagar stop.. and there I ascended that heavenly abode on wheels, and it took me a couple of minutes before I covered myself from head to chin with my kerchief in the intention of repelling the dust that had been thrown up by the roads, and took out my book 'Joker in the Pack'.. a book with an irreverent view of life at the IIMs..

Lost in the book, I had hardly noticed the distance traversed by the bus for we had already reached the holy land.. I crept into my classroom without being noticed for that saintly look I now possessed.. Then rang that siren, quite similar in sound to the ones that are heard blaring in jails, though I've seen it only in the movies.. But the siren carried a bit of truth in itself depicting the college to be one such jail..

In came the Queen of Computer Networks, 'Mrs. Wall' and I did the only thing I'd mastered at college, a "YES" when my name was called out to collect the days attendance.. And then I was totally lost in time. With my '6 subjects in 1' notebook on top and 'Joker in the Pack' at the bottom, I shifted all interest on the latter turning page after page at a steady rate.. And thus the hour was spent..

And then entered probably the only teacher at 'holy land' with heart, 'Professor M' .. to enrich our infected knowledge on microprocessors.. And yet again, I was caught red handed while I was looking out of the window admiring Mr.Ramasamy.. "Ramasamy who?", might be the only thing up your heads at this moment.. but I assure you that I am no gay guy, for he is not one of those absentminded professors, not one of my so called mates, and definitely not the man behind the "Ramasamy Road" in kk nagar, whoever he is/was..! Rather, Mr.Ramasamy was the tiny humble owl, that seated itself on a nearby branch observing without much ado all the boring lectures that we students endured during our hours at the premises of the holy land.. Camouflaged by the bark of the tree, he spent the day without moving a muscle, sometimes earning my jealousy, as I wished to become like him someday, 'idle'.. Before I get into the next hour, I would like to convey my gratitude to Mr.Quake for suggesting the brilliant name 'Ramasamy' for the tiny owl..

Then came the super hour, and in came the discrete mathematician, Mr.Sunk, 'a legend', which he deemed himself to be, with a one in a million brain which had enabled him to get his PhD.. It was not his wish to bore us today with his stories of 'How he left his discrete maths(d.m) paper blank just because he didn't know one question which would have earned him only 98%; and how he came back to write the arrear and score a centum in that to get that coveted gold medal of his..' He was to continue today with another routine of his, 'testing us at something we never knew'.. As usual, the man, went to the last bench, took his seat and dictated a set of 6 questions.. an increase in number compared to the previous days.. And we happily copied the answers from under the desk, from the book, which we had surprisingly bought as we had had enough of his so called self boasting stories, when we usually failed to solve the sums.. Then, the man came to my desk, looked at my paper, talked to me about alternative techniques to solve the sums, to which I confidently nodded though I was quite perplexed at his sudden intervention when I barely knew a thing in the subject.. He kept talking to me about some 'lattice', and the only lattice I was thinking about was in Adyar in the form of 'Lattice Bridge Road' where I had my CAT classes... And then the hour was gone..

Then came Professor Ball.. and I won't be taking much of your time discussing about this hour because I hardly know what happened.. The man who resembled a lighthouse in the midst of two storied buildings entered the class and started his nonsense on DBMS referring to bucket as 'bucketu', packet as 'packetu' and more of that induction of tamil slang into that already horrible English.. Joker in the Pack, though, was my choice, with its 'internships' and 'love life with girls doing humanities in IIT Bombay' far more interesting than dbms.. And there was that terrific siren again, tickling our brains with reminders about the lunch hour..

I would not want to talk to anyone about the lunch, because I simply do not consider it to be one.. Apart from the so called lunch, I enriched myself with the mango pulp in the form of the 'Mazaa'.. and then back to class I went to Joke with the Joker.. After sometime, it was Siren time! again..!

DBMS Lab.. probably the best three hours in fifth semester where the queries seemed easy, and the teacher seemed easier that one program could shut her mouth for good.. Mrs. Wall, she obviously was. Surprisingly, today.. the lab was cool for they had switched on that wretched AC for a change.. The teacher seemed least interested in us, and so was I busy with the Joker again.. and then I did reach that epitome of sadness, erupting in the form of emotions.. The reason?.. I had finished the book, though i enjoyed every bit of the reality in it... The 'love for the IIT girl' was lost, life seemed 'miserable and cursed in every aspect but for the financial one with the huge Pay packet from MNCs'.. the magic of the IIMs i guess.. 'to gain something, sacrifice was undeniable', was the moral in a way..

Back to the holy land, I was wondering as to what I must do, when my senior came to my rescue taking me away from the job of being idle by assigning me the job of a 'test gamer'.. All I had to do was to play match after match of FIFA 07 with him on the network, 'just to pass time' according to me, and according to teachers 'make sure that the LAN connections were in order' so that the gaming event would not be a flop show during the symposium scheduled to be held on the 22nd of August.. Apart from gaming, I got my report card, with the results of the first unit test and I was beaming with pride, because the comment read "GOOD" and I had achieved a 'not so mere' feat of passing all the exams in the unit test for the first time since i joined college.. I was now a 'Six Piece'.. or rather.. my report card had '6 Ps', each P referring to an otherwise unfamiliar word, 'PASS'..! And then for the last time, blared the jail siren, disrupting my report card celebrations..

Back onto the heavenly abode on wheels, I was off to sleep infested dreamland soon, because of the lack of company during the journey, for I had not expected to finish the book so early..

And then I got down in kk nagar only to enjoy a ride back home in a 200cc pulsar driven by a mechanical mastermind, who verified the vehicle's quality pickup in that short journey.. This is how fifth semesters are.. Or atleast.. seem to be...