Ultimate Maama - Part II

As we said bye and see you on 1st August, I instantly switched to the mode of enjoying the remaining 3 weeks before the college. With no one at home accepting my decision to do Civil Engineering, enjoying the remaining holidays was a challenge. Till date I have not regretted for the decision to do Civil Engineering at Anna University, however the reason for which I took up Civil Engineering was a disappointment. It is always easy to do a post mortem, and would be unreasonable to make any comment on how life would have been on a path untaken. Nevertheless what followed was 4 years of fun filled and highly rewarding college life.

July 31st, 1995
Traditionally Anna University always opens up the academic year on every August 1st; I think the rules have changed a lot now. On July 31st, everyone assembles at Vivekananda auditorium to pay the semester fees and register for the subsequent semester courses, 1st year students also had the same rule. I stepped into the Vivekananda auditorium proudly thinking that I am a student. Not sure how many of us would have observed, we always address school going pupil as SCHOOL CHILDREN irrespective of the standard, not many times we call them as school students. This is one of my favorite observations that my class teacher in 12th standard made a point to re-iterate. As a proud student of Anna University I sat inside the auditorium to wait for my turn to pay the fees. I was wearing one of my brothers blue striped shirt and as a perfect Chennaiite had left the shirt outside my trouser and was wearing a bata leather slipper. I was also holding a folder with all my certificates and most significantly a malaimadhi Tamil novel.

As I was waiting for my turn, was thinking to myself about Mohan Raj and wondered how it will be to attend classes along with him. Truly living to the cliché of “Will Live For 100 Years” I heard the hero of the posting’s voice uttering “Excuse me what is the time now”. As I turned to say the time, my brain somehow instructed my lips to pull of a smile from nowhere. By now the readers must be wondering what is so significant about Malaimadhi. If the shear look of Mohan Raj created an impression about him, it is the Malaimadhi novel name that made Mohan Raj set his initial impression on me. With all due credit to him if anyone see’s a guy carrying a novel named MANJU + 5, will come to the immediate conclusion to which Mohan Raj also came. To put it in Chennai slang, he thought I am a matter boy carrying a sex novel during college admission. That was a damaging impression to have first up. With our initial impressions set on each other, what we both went on to prove was that “initial impression need not always be the best impression”.

Kick Start...
First 3 weeks or so in our college was not significant however just towards the end of the first month we had that famous Ganesha drinking milk episode. This posting will not get into any details on the milk episode, however what is important is, the way we used the episode to win first prize in the intra college variety entertainment competition. This was one of the headiest moments in our college life, we got our first prize by beating the most fancied veterans from the third year mechanical engineering group. This significantly marked the first time that MohanRaj and I got to work together and started to appreciate each other. During this time I observed certain wonderful qualities of MohanRaj, the one that I admire the most is his patience. I am exactly polar opposite to him when it comes to patience. I have always dreamt to be as patient as him and to date have not managed to achieve it.

The next significant moment in out interaction came during the freshers party organized by Anna University in the Vivekananda Auditorium. I do remember the senior who ragged us, without physical or mental abuse from the senior; the whole incident was really funny. Both Mohan Raj and myself were asked to play Tikkilona in the main pathway of the auditorium, without a modicum of hesitation we both played that with great enthusiasm. When I imagine my dicky vis-à-vis Maams’s, there is no comparison at all. There were other incidents during the freshers party, for want of maintaining decency those are all censored. That pretty much covers the initial interactions with Maams, during the subsequent posts; we will get into some more incidents…