RECT...Full Senti

I got this Beautiful Video from Kutty. He told me it is a timepass video done by the 2006 batch. Little did I know that the 18 minutes of that video struck many a senti chord in my/ our life in REC Trichy, bringing back memories of 4 years, infact the best part of your life, if you look at it! We thought that we wasted the end of our teenage there in the dry lands of Trichy…but now I think it was one of the best 4 years of education and more than that learning. Learning to share rooms for the first time with guys who came from thousands of miles away from a distant state and a different language, learning to share food with strangers, learning to share your feelings of India’s cricket team, learning to Xerox the toppers notes and study for the end terms, learning to borrow cycle to go to the gate to take a sutta and tea, learning to be with your friend through good grades and bad, learning to help your friend in campus placements, learning to support your hostel in inter-hostel cricket matches, learning to be there for your department, even if it was just getting those damn tapes for RECFEST…there has not been a single individual glory in RECT if you ask me, everything has been a collective glory. I am proud of it.

This blog entry has come at a very strange time. The beginning of this week I came to know that a friend of mine passed away. Dibyajeeban Mohanty was a very lovable guy in my class, a proud Prod guy. He was never the loud character like many of us, but a very silent person, who worked really hard and was enjoying a very successful career when death came uninvited. I am sure there are thousands of people including friends and family who miss him from their daily life. The void left over by a human being is always difficult to fill. Our prayers go out to his grieving family.

Then comes the Batch of 2006, for producing a wonderful piece of musical as a REM piece for themselves. It has never been done before in REC Trichy and I think such endeavours should be appreciated and acknowledged for the future batches to outlive. There are a number of people behind the scene, who are mentioned in the titles. A special thanks for them and a even bigger Thank you for the hundreds of them, who played their part silently or otherwise in making this batch. Hats off to the Class of 2006!!!

How can I not mention my batch here… Any college you take, Engineering or any other stream, MBA or any other stream, you will find that, the current batch always think that their batch was the best batch. Likewise, I think the batch of 2001, was the best in our times. There were many issues, many problems but ultimately the batch was together and now when I see the way the guys connect, even after meeting after a long time, it brings out those memories of sharing sutta, tea and what not. I had some 10 odd pics of our batch on my laptop and thought I should put it online and pass on some of the memories. I have some hundred odd pics at home. So this piece is dedicated to my batch the Batch of 2001. Please note that the pictures might be revolving around Production and Lapis hostel.

Everyone goes through the grind in the first year, in Agate hostel, the secure first year hostel. The deputy-warden (called Dy-wa) was a pain the wrong place and I don’t think anyone would have forgotten the call for “We want Justice” in the late hours. The policy of the college to mix the people from different states in each room was a clever way of getting people to know each other rather than stick to their own groups. I know what most of present batch is upto, but I wonder what some of the guys, whom I lost touch with are doing. Like Pradeep, my first year roomie, who was a very strong person, both physically and mentally. We discovered his bowling skills in the 3^rd year and he was one hell of a bowler to face. He had a Suzuki Samurai which always had 2 people clinging on to it as it zoomed past the guys walking towards the classes.

Talking about cricket, our Prod team won the prestigious Lapis Cup in our final year. Matter with his slow run-up and fast bowling got us many a wicket. Basu was a strong batsman and used his height to the maximum. Amal was the exciting batsman to watch and a cunning bowler when it came to taking wickets. Sumit was our Captain and sensible cricketer who knew a lot of both batting and bowling. I was the opening batsman for the team, but my weakness was the slowball, which got me out many a time L. But the star of the team was this young guy in the picture (sitting in white shirt, I forgot his name L), he was the star batsman and super-star fielder, his batting stance was as perfect as Sachin’s, evenly balanced on both legs, he played for Tamil Nadu under 16, so that justifies everything.

Ragging is a story which can run into miles if each of us started writing about the adventures we had. I personally feel that that is a good thing to happen in the first year as it brings down to the ground some of us who thought we have been there done that by reaching here. Some of the relationships we have with our seniors even now justify the relationship which started of on a sour note and then moved to sweet and sour (alcohol). I think some of our seniors were just too good and I am sure every state seniors have done a lot for their state juniors helping them when they needed it, be it in terms of funda, campus placements, notes, books, music, money, daaru. A senior of ours with whom we didn’t even speak much for the entire 4 years, gave his junior a bottle of Whisky to have with his friends (us). I mean at that time getting a full bottle was like an oasis in the deserts of REC. This is a small group of the Production class. We tried to be funny and kind of different from the rest of the class. This was taken in the annual Symposium called Prodigy when we were in 2^nd year. We were forced to wear ties and attend it.

The pride of RECT for a long time was Octagon or Octa as it was popularly known. Thos were the days when there were no individual comps in rooms and everyone had to go to the computer centre (Octa) for browsing their @rect.ernet.in mails. The internet labs were always full and it helped to have a lot of friends, you could just do a quick check of your net mail ids that way. The apping for MS took away a lot of time of the junta who wanted to go to the US of A to study further on their preferred area of expertise.

Me and K had a very scary adventure inside this building one nite at 2 AM. The octa is open 24 hours, but it is applicanle only to the guys as the gals have to back in their hostel by 10PM/9PM (I am not sure). This place always a has a pride in our heart as it was one of the more modern looking buildings inside campus. This pic was taken in a rare occasion of a camera being smuggled into Octa! Please note the clean shaven Paddy in the picture, very different from his Thevar magan meesha now! The guy in the middle, with soda specs, well he has changed a lot now and I cucnt believe it when I heard his story the first time. The cheerful fellow on the left with his eyes closed, is a very lovable junior called Ashwath.

The send off part in the video is a very straight one with very less emotions, maybe the emotional content has come down a lot over the years. If I remember right I was sobbing away to glory that nite in the station and when we returned to the college after seeing off people, it was as if there was huge void in the hostel. As is the case every state students there are some particular trains which take you back to your home state. This was one of the senti shots taken at Trichy station!

Those last 2-3 days are spent in the station seeing-off lots of people...You might not know that person, might not have spoken to him in the last 4 years, but who cares, there is just enough sentiments to say good bye. Some of them are going to US for their MS, some are going to other cities in India to work, god knows, when all of us will meet up. But somehow, I have kind of met up with a lot of my close friends even after all this travel and working.


I cannot end this blog without talking about the culturals/extra curricular activities in RECT. There were a host of inter-department, inter-hostel events to keep you busy throughout the year, this is in between the inter-college festivals across the region.

This was probably the last inter-hostels where we did a dance jig. Avinash second from left was the hero of the whole dance drama..."phata poster nikala hero"...Also had some interesting characters for the first time on stage, dancing, like Saurabh (third from left)...I remeber dancing for the song, "Vaseekara" and kind of forgetting my steps in the middle of the song, on stage...it was embarrassing to say the least, but who cares, final year senti, you can get away with anything :)

The last few weeks were spent in fillin gup the REM mags, filling up each others space with whatever you remember of the other guy in the last 4 years. There were special sessions to complete this because as you reach the 4th year, people kind of give up on their enthu and kind of get lazy to do anything and everything.

The last thing I will talk about is the RECFEST, the inter-department competitions. This is no story of an underdog beating the odds and coming first overall above the highly popular department sof ECE/Comp Sci/Mechanical, but a story of how a group of individuals in our department decided to give it a fight and not be called a also-ran in the fest.

We competed, competed hard enough, we were nowhere close to the top 3 but we had a lot of fun and we were undisputedly the best team when it came to the movie-spoofs. This is a competition where we have to spoof a movie and enact a funny skit on stage. In second year our seniors gave the 2nd years the responsibility to make this skit. Little did we realise that we were going to do something spectacular from then on.

This was a show where you had to make a fool out of yourself in front of your batchmates, your seniors, your juniors and maybe some staff if they come to the show. Also we had a guy called Vicky, who created those really funny scenes and then made those scenes come alive with his very funny compering, followed by the musical bit provided by the mature Vikash, we had a super hit in the second year. We did Robin Hood in the first year, then Mummy and then Zorro.

We had in our midst the lanky Kaushik, who was always on fast forward mode when it came to talking as well as acting, Deva and Chandu as the side kicks of the villain, Prem would be the villain in most of the skits other than providing solid support in the cast and make up, madhur the beautiful damsel in distress, Subhash a junior of ours, acted as the occasional arrow, spear etc. Paddy just did his normal behaviour on stage which was funny enough to be called over-acting.
We had a good time enacting the show and I hope the crowd had a good time laughing I think. We did win the first prizes in the 3rd and 4th year. Life is no longer funny anymore.
Though once in a while, we talk about college life and what all stupid things we did once upon a time. that once upon a time will never come again as the best times of your life is made of people, real people, who were with you in that place living with you, playing with you, peeing with you in the neigbouring pod, watching Sachin score those 2 successive centuries in Sharjah against the Aussies, watching Zidane pump in those 2 goals against Brazil. Now if I go back, I am sure none of the places would be the same again, especially without those 430 odd people!