COLLEGE BLUES II

Well it was this teacher named Ms la. She was a gorgeous lady and seemed to have a kind face. Well I’m always bad at judging people. So then she came to the board and in a perfectly no nonsence manner.One look at her attitude and I immediately settled down to the standards i expected from an NIT, a premier institute for higher learning.

THEN PANDEMONIUM STRUCK!!!! question time!!!

Well I did clear my entrance and my twelfth grade with respectable grades but two months of happy go lucky holidays had erased my hard disc all clean.

"You there in the lined shirt, yes you , whats KCL?" I missed by hairs breadth.It was the chinki next to me the weird name. "Maam when volatge is so and so and current is so and so and the cirsuit is in so and so the net current voltage blah blah". My mind was running on overdrive.Yeah I've heard it somewhere before but what the heck;It was all greek and latin to me. I tried to go low and dissapear behind the benches and the guy in front of me.

"God please , save me ". Like all opportunistic homo sapiens I remembered Him only in distress. Hell to all the ideals I preached on being an atheist.This was mayday for my ship in distress;Only a supernatural power could save me.Well I should have stuck to my ideals because the invevtable followed.

"You there,shorty". ("Heh Heh not me again " , I thought) "You there , Orange shirt .Cant you hear me calling you ?"

Sirens blared , alarms rang in hi-fi volume and my adrenalin was pumping so hard in to my body that I thought my chest would burst with my heartbeat. I looked at her as though i thought it was'nt me ."Cant you understand English? Hello Bhaissab , uthiye to .angrezi samaj nahin aata?" Well this was really greek and latin to me. Hindi wasnt my best sword to fight with."Oye chutku".Well i could understand that and it hurt my false male ego."Hell to her questions.I aint no shorty".I rose up to my full height , easily dwarfing her and scaring her with the bloodshot look in my devilish eyes.( Atleast i thought so; comeon guys no drama no fun and no manliness)

"Whats KCL? Whats Kirchoffs law?" Mental overdrive clouded my eyes and a force of maybe a hundred G's shortened my majestic height. I thought the ground was pulling me so hard that i would sink into the earth.

"Ka ka ka sa sa sa llll..........maam iiii caca can't remember maam"

"What , you dont even know KCL?"

"Madam i know but i just can't remember"

"Whats your name;where are you from?"

"Nithin Ramachandran, kerala"

"Madrasi? Get out of the class!!"

My ears never betrayed me .They always worked well.Maybe they just conked off because of the new climate- I consoled myself.

"What are you staring at ! Get out I say!!"

What ??.....Hello?? ....Is this college or what?? I mean one wrong answer ( well no answer rather) and youre out. C'mon man get real ;I was looking at her hopefully trying to keep my face as innocent as possible but to no avail.

It was her eyes which were bloodshot with anger now. I quietly lowered my eyes and picked my books as she got back to the podium to begin her lecture.Mr Longname Chinki next to me held my hand and nodded quietlly with a quiet smile on his lips. Well a guy mocking me added insult to injury. (Later I realised that it was actually a note of empathy and understanding).

As I got out of the class my sisters advice played like a streaming real audio on a slow intenet connection through my head."Nithin remeber one thing - rub a teacher in college on the wrong side and you arent going to get a degree in your lifetime".

Well I started out well on her advice.First day , first class and here I am , thrown out of the class. "Thanks sis those last words really helped heal my fresh wounds so well."No more ego was left in my system.My brain was behaving like a scratched disc on a player.Not knowing what to do i stood outside the hall ,Tears flowing freely down my cheeks.(HEY laugh guys ; had you been there you woulda cried too).

Suddenly there were a zillion prof's around me."Ragging hai kya beta .Uska naam bata do hum dekh lenge".

"Whaaaa?"

Hindi blah blah kept on going at lightning speed for around a zillion minutes.I was stripped out of my identity card and I quickly realised that they thought I was crying because I was a victim of ragging.

Hell to ragging dude. Im standing here in a frying pan and your putting me into the fire.
As realisation dawned, I looked up to a old prof who seemed to be kind enough and blurted out-"Saaar ragging nahin nahin.....class question teacher nahin bola .....bahar nikla diya "My hindi was horrible enough but I guess they were used to guys from the south ( some dumb madrasi for them).The message registered instantly.

"Kya ragging nahin hai kya .Then why did you waste our time.We have other classes and your crying here and wasting our time.Get lost!!"

Hello?? .....Not again!!!

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Well that was the way my first class in college took place .Two "Get Losts" and a serious loss of pride in under an hour .

"Kudos Nithin, Good start",I tell myself.

Thankfully there were a few better days than that.Yeah you've guessed right ! There were worse days !!

I know you want to hear about all that too.Maybe I'll save that for later.Got to hit my bed now