M.E. @ S.E.com

                       Time and tide waits for no man….and as the saying goes it didn’t wait for me as well. After the month long university engineering exams (yeah we have exams lasting over a month in engineering) they finally got over and we decided to go for our second trip at Matheran.

                       This was the first of the Matheran trips and more importantly it was an all guys trip so there was no overheads of planning the trip. We left without any booking and we had planned to be a little adventurous by doing trekking from Nerul station to the hilltop. So far so good, till the sun started bearing its heat upon us and after a couple of hours of listening to Parekh’s “ bas its just 10 minutes ahead” we all just slept on the road there waiting for a godsend angel to transport us to our final destination. And there came a taxi willing to take us along we didn’t even wait to bargain just thankful that the torturous walk was over. At matheran we had some bizarre experiences where we started saying ghost stories at night and then there was the story of “Sagar ka Bhooth”. After which we also played the imitation prank on the hotel waiter at night…the details of which are too confidential to divulge into which I am sure the people present would know better. This was also  the trip where the still closely guarded secret of “Big Job” surrounding Saurabh Sankhe emerged… By the way Saurabh is a guy from our group who was teased with Sumangal in the first year as they were the first Dostana couple to win a 3 night 4 day stay at Goa and he is the same guy who carries nailcutter for a 3 day trip as he thinks that his nails might outgrow….

                         So, that’s how we kickstarted second year and then it was regular college again. The trend for this year definitely was Birthdays. It became a trend wherein Gaurav, Karan, Arpit, Jitin, Parekh and I went at night 12 prior to the birthday to wish the person and we went to almost all 20 people’s houses encomapassing an area from Mulund to town to Borivali. It literally covered the entire Mumbai. This was almost always followed by a birthday bash the next day and along with that was a trend of surprises. It started as innocent small level gifts and with increasing expectations the nature and magnitude of suprises just expanded exponentially. There are a few that I would like to quote to show you the change of trends. It began with Gaurav’s birthday where we threw him a surprise house party which by the way was not that much of a surprise for him as he had figured it out and the trend continued with Sumangal’s birthday where we created an entire treasure hunt for him with several gifts and he had to try and figure out the riddles which lay all over his building. Then was the best part of the year where all the twenty of us came together to pull off a video for Karan on his birthday. It was the best gift that anyone can get and each one of us had some part to play in its development. I still remember the night when we showcased the video on his birthday and there was not even a single person who didn’t cry. I must admit I used to be very jealous of him then as having your own birthday video is like having your friends with you-live all the time and I felt that even I wanted something like that. And my friends did realize it and how…..it was the month of February when Parichay – our college cultural festival was in full swing and everyone was busy in their own life still all of them gave quite some time of their own to make my birthday the biggest ever. They used a better software (than the one I did for Karan) to compile the video, they used a better storyline to make a movie out of it and they gave me 20 gifts to make it perfect. The video had a built in treasure hunt where each one gave me hints for some gift which I had to guess and then there were dedications. Trust me it was and still is and will always remain the best gift of my life….i couldn’t thank them enough then but every opportunity I would get I would like to thank all 19 of them (me being the 20^th one) to make every moment so special for me…and the best part of it all was that everyone was up for the idea….makes me feel special man…I would take this opportunity to thank all of them.  Arpit, Gaurav, Henali,Jitin, Karan, Khyati, Monal, Mangal,Namrata, Nihir,Nisha,Parekh,Resha,Ramita,Saurabh, Shardul, Tejasvi, Thakkar and Vishal  (yes people this is my group of 20 which I keep raving about and with whom I have literally lived my four years of engineering) newazs too much senti stuff….lets come back to the fun part…

                         This is going to be one long blog as there is so much to write…

                     Second year was the time when there was the introduction of new friends in my life… I became friends with the tubelight of our group Namrata (don’t kill me for this)… she was so slow at understanding jokes that at times we felt that she laughed today on a yesterday’s joke…but she is a fun character to be around…take for example that she by mistake dashed into the CPU of the Computer in a laboratory and she went and said sorry to it..or she looked at the fan and asked us “why does this go round and round??”. These are Namrata trademarks if you ask such questions you pulled of a Namrata. I also became friends with Tejasvi…let me give you a brief introduction…someone who takes a lot of tension for whatever the exam, who has a stationary store on her study who is very creatively inclined and loves to make friends she’s a lively character… I still remember I used to call her up everytime she went for some tuitions as if I was her transit buddy….During the exam times I became friends with Henali who over the years has now become my study partner and we keep having these “who gets more marks” competitions which she always wins without doubt as she is the more studious one. It’s been four exams since and I am still waiting for my turn to beat her..and then there were also Karan and Mangal (sumangal actually but too long to write or say). There are nice little stories that follow to describe our friendship and I still wonder in amazement how the three of us came to be friends.

                             Okay so second year was the time when a lot of Jhols happened ( Jhols as I describe them is any tiff between any two god damn friends for any ridiculously god forsaken reason) and I became popular as the Jholmaster as somehow I fell into one Jhol after the other without me even understanding how. It was as if I was the honey and Jhols were the bees never left me alone….and Mangal was a companion in helping me settle them one after the other.. and Karan was my April Fool buddy…we (including Harsh, Tejasvi, Karan and I) had pulled of a monster prank by faking my accident just one day prior to 1^st April and that I was admitted in the hospital and people bought it…it didn’t last for more than an hour as it went out of hand and I do not want to indulge into the consequences that followed which didn’t really bode well for me as everyone was angry but we had also pulled off another intelligent one where we made everyone believe that our website ( a forum created by Karan for Computers) was hacked and everyone believed it smoothely till the extent that people started planning the look of the next website,karan even faked a call to his bank to revert the credit card payments this was a fun one to pull off. Newazs so that’s how I knew both of them and three of us shared quite a good camaraderie which became stronger when Karan and I turned dectectives.

                       It was around the time of October when Mangal started behaving differently. He was aloof and secretive and that’s when I suspected that he was upto something. I confronted Karan and told him that I feel that there is a girl in Mangal’s life and when I told him outside Makrand’s tuitions that it was Ramita I suspected he got angry at me suggesting that it just cant be the case. Anyways I didn’t stop my speculation and then once before submissions I called up Mangal to ask him when was he coming to college and he said that he was out alone  buying stationery from Bhagubhai but was on his way and then when Karan called him up he told Karan that he was in the library. Unknown that he was that Karan and I could be together and even though we had to meet submission deadlines we just left all the work and got to work like Sherlock Holmes. We visited the library with no sign of him and that’s when I told Karan that if we find him with Ramita it stands confirm. We went to the stationery shop through a backdoor entry and there voila he was with her and stationery they were buying. Mangal realized that evening that his secret was unearthed when we gave him a friendly embrace and a pat on the back in front of the entire group for no apparent rhyme or reason but his secret remained closely guarded with us till he went and told everyone about it on his own. We definitely were very happy for them.

                          Ours is a very active group and we like to take part a lot in college activities. That is why in the third semester all of us were actively involved in the techinal festival of our college Protocol by C.S.I.(Computer Society of India).And we organized three events- the outhouse Treasure Hunt, The Robotics racetrack and for the first time in D.J.Sanghvi “The Amazing Race”. This is an event which is my favourite as now in its third year it has become the most important event of a college festival and I am proud to be associated in its charter year. I remember vividly that our events had record participation for that year.

                              But we were not only active in college activities we were also active in crazy activities and the craziest thing that we have ever done is to divide our group into gang and antigang. Gang as I understood was a bunch of whackos who considered themselves to be self proclaimed like-minded freaks, in my definition they were perfect wannabes.  Considering the slack that I have drawn towards the “gang” you must have figured that I was from “anti-gang” infact it’s charter member along with Monal and then the legacy carried on by Resha. Anti-gang I must admit emerged as a retaliation to the idea of gang and we considered ourselves to be the more rational of the lot which was clearly envisaged by our t-shirt quote which read “aint no buffoons ain’t no boneheads, we are the intellectuals that all fools dread” as coined by Resha. The t-shirt which was launched by us on the train journey to Nainital was by the way a mastermove as the “gang” never considered that we could be of any good and this shut them up and how. After this it died down though but you must be wondering what was this Gang-Antigang for…what purpose did it serve…to tell you clearly- even I don’t know it was just an expression of imaginative brotherhood but however silly it was it was fun.

                                  Every year had its set of trips and this year my group went for two one day trips and coincidentally I wasn’t there for both. First was Lonavala in the rains and they keep on raving about it more often than not to make me jealous but I do not regret missing it as I was on a trip to London and Switzerland which definitely was cooler as in Switzerland I did Sky-Diving from a Helicopter and this is one of the most thrilling experiences of my life. That thirty second freefall was as if I am jumping into a blackhole and my entire life flashed by in that timperiod for the sole reason that before jumping the instructor tells me that it’s his first jump too…The second one day trip was Alibaug somewhere in October when I was at Ahmedabad my native place. Incidentally Alibaug had some girl bonding through the expression of “whackos” – a group which did some girly stuff that I didn’t clearly understand and neither was I interested in knowing but more importantly “whackos” started at sunrise and sunk at sunset….and thank god for that.

                                The last most significant thing worth mentioning for an eventful year was the Nainital trip. A very hectic trip organized by C.S.I which many people didn’t enjoy due to the cold and the immense travelling. Although I feel otherwise as I did enjoy on the trip and that was the first time I made friendship with winter as earlier I used to hate the cold. My friendship with Gaurav also grew with this trip. ( Let me introduce Gaurav – also known as G, Gentleman, Gavar, Gauri. Quite a charmer with the girls, he is a sauve Casanova well aware of the tricks of the trade so girls beware…and when I say this they feel I am jealous of gauri but clearly my statements are for the better of the female population at large…..hehehe … but he is a buddy and someone who knows all my secrets. His only drawback is that he supports Manchester United). Anywazs coming back to the trip The best part of this trip was in the night journeys by train where we use to stay awake and do timepass by singing and hearing to Nisha’s ghost stories. Also the evening at Delhi when we went to Connaught Place was memorable as the place was good and there we took some one million photographs and we have the best ever group snap taken here.

                                      So that’s how the second year also went by. But clearly I would rate this year as the best year I had in engineering. This was the year when I enjoyed the most and living life with friends got a whole new meaning for me.