Not a concocted convocation

"WOOOHOOO ! WE ARE HOME BOYS!"

We had just departed from our home the previous night to reach our college campus, yet that line sounded so meaningful.

Now, before I continue with my looong story…

Yes, Yess, Yesss! Now I have a female follower, a hot one at that!

A quick jig, a double somersault and a moonwalk, accompanied by a funny thought, that my current followers represent almost our entire nation – Hindus + Muslims + Christians + Losers, not necessarily mutually exclusive.

And as I said, this is a long story. So, go get your bean bag, popcorn tub and that Pepsi can, or you could just lie down on your couch and drift off to sleep halfway through. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Okay, who am I kidding? I just wanted to write something more than a couple of pages and check if I could keep the reader [NITKian or otherwise] engaged all the way.

So, we were eight of us getting off the bus, just before sunrise on the eve of NITK’s 8^th Annual Convocation, with seven booked tickets in hand. Our rockstar-behind-every-coding-line had conveniently forgotten to book a ticket for himself. After all, ‘Intel inside’. [Intel has this weird habit of supplying bookmarks which have their employee’s smiling pic with the tagline The rockstar behind every coding line. Our man here is using it with his Kindle. The number of books he reads on Kindle!]

As we crossed the highway surrounded by joyful shrieks, with blithe disregard to the scarce traffic, I was hit by a wave of nostalgia, reminding me of the Ten Commandments bestowed upon us mere average GPA mortals, by our NITK gods. 

1. If you don’t wake up to the alarm clock, not a problem. You WILL wake up to the power cuts. 
2. Life is unfair. Deal with it. Regards, Mess food. 
3. Be smart. Get a dumb peer group. Bunk the first class every morning and get your proxy. 
4. The day starts with a smoke and ends with a smoke… or a slug of whisky…or a bread omlette at 2 am… or a game of DOTA. [You already know where cmus used to belong.] 
5. The last but one row of benches in class is occupied on a first-come, first-served basis. The last row is left vacant – reserved, out of respect, for the late comers. 
6.  NITK has its own beach. Go party and drown. [A few of them followed this religiously] 
7.  Final year requires only two shorts and a laptop. [My present roomie is a living example. He hasn’t left this habit behind yet. Old habits die hard.] 
8. Bathing is strictly prohibited on public holidays. 
9. Slog on the day before the exams. Stay up the whole night, eat maggi, drink lots of coffee, and cram as much as you can. Have a group discussion in the morning before leaving to the exam hall. And then…copy. Just to be on the safer side. 
10. [I’m not getting the last one. I call upon my fellow NITKians to kindly help me out here.]

I will not bore you with details of that day – about how we ended up watching another lame movie ‘Lifu ishtene’ or how we got sloshed that night or how some of them belted the waiter for no reason or lied down on the road for an unknown social cause or how wannabe-he-man with bulging biceps, spilling out of his tight, half sleeved shirt, groped around wannabe-woman-from-IISC with silicon implants. 

All night long.

It was not one of my drunken hallucinations. Wannabe-he-man’s comment on the next day, with a dreamy look on his face,"Maen, his boobies were soo soft" is strong evidence enough. Well, at that moment, we all looked at him with raised eyebrows and silently walked out of the room.

The big day 

In spite of a splitting headache, I woke up at 6 in the morning to kick some ass in the basket ball / volley ball court. Funny when, during times like these, you feel sleeping is an utter waste of time. 

Oh! The feel of a basket ball in your hands! I was washed over by some bitter-sweet memories. Anyway, let’s skip to the volley ball tournament. What started as a Best of 3 sets continued till we had a Best of 7.

On the east side, the 2011 European volleyball champion team Serbia, with a man short. On the west side, our very own ‘Baba’, former captain of the NITK volleyball team. He wanted to take us one on five. HA! The audacity! We were going to teach him a lesson not to be forgotten for another ten generations to come. He would remember this day when his own cockiness would eventually make him go down on his knees, begging for mercy!

Three minutes later…

Baba was serving with a 4 point lead – 

naayi mari naayi mari thindi beke?

Roughly translated to – Doggy doggy doooooggy… do you want the bone?

And all 5 of us were converging onto the ball –

Nange beku nange beku nange beku.

Yes yes. I want it. I want it. I want it.

As we fought and yelled at each other,

Hey why didn’t you call man?

That was MY ball dude!

You stick to your place okay?

that dick-head simply enjoyed the next 60 minutes of the ‘grand tournament’. The final set was a close one, but in the end, the scoreboard read 4 sets to nil. Our baba might have thrown a few points here and there, but he did not let us win a single game, and I silently appreciated him for that. If you are a passionate sports person, you will understand why.

Graduands…

Dressed smartly in full-sleeves white shirt, black trousers and black, shining shoes, we marched towards the auditorium, with the sun right above our heads. As I looked around at the crowd, I realized that people change a lot in a year. I mean, just look at him. He was a 30-waist-size last year. Now, he has ballooned up to a 36. A minimum of 12 lakhs per annum, pakka! And there’s a 26 – must be one of those jobless fellows [I mean literally only] preparing for UPSC Entrance exams. And… WHOA! Now THAT is definitely 20 to 24 lakh material. Look at her gobbling up those hollow, good for nothing kachoris and those rotten cakes. Honey, this is not AXN’s 60 seconds to fame. This is a simple, welcome tea party.

And, as I stood in the queue to get some water from the sole Bisleri can kept for 500 plus people, I was inspired by the M.Tech guys, for their remarkable speed and dexterity. I was now second in line, waiting patiently to quench my thirst, as another Master tried to figure out the way to fill his glass with the mineral water. He bent down and rotated the tap to the left first. Then, he rotated it to the right. He looked up at me with a half-hearted, questioning glance and a deep frown, and then bent down and rotated the tap to the left again. Finally, he gave up and started to ask me,

How do you…

I think you have to push the tap. It’s written PUSH on it.

…to Graduates

After a wait of 30 more minutes in the scorching heat, we were led into the huge, non air conditioned auditorium. Our seats were already allotted branch-wise and I searched for the golden words. I started from the front row on the left and slowly scanned backwards…

OH DEAR GOD IN HEAVENS!

I was insulted. I was heart broken. I was infuriated. This was simply unacceptable.

Two years, we were first rate donkeys carrying around those 12-inch thick books written by eminent personalities like Khanna and Agarwal and what not, mugging up every line, every word and every number, just to get the highest ranks in the All India Engineering Entrance Exam [and try our luck with the IIT-JEE], so as to squeeze into the most respected branch by the general public, and four years we struggled, gazing at sine waves and handling IC chips that were smaller than my smallest toe nail, going half bald pulling out our hair while coding in MATLAB, breaking our heads to draw that stupid Gaussian/Laplacian curves and almost committing suicide while trying to learn formulae which involved some integrals of logarithm of sine square theta multiplied by some exponential raised to the power of root 3 and other nonsense, and here we were casually flung to the darkest corner of the auditorium with a tiny, proud display board – ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATIONS.

Why man, why? Why do we, the top intellectuals of the nation, have to attend this ceremony if we are treated with disrespect? And, check THAT out! Chemical Branch takes the hot seat. All they did in 4 years was vigorously shake a couple of test tubes and get VIBGYOR. 

All this, because of some retarded arrangement based on the alphabetical order. And Good Lord, add to this, we have to sit close to these Mining people. These inept, dirt diggers who are showcasing themselves as the leading gentlemen of India. I think Abhishek Bachchan would have had more self-respect repeating the lines ‘2G nahiii, 3G’ over and over and over again than us disgraced, 'tronix geniuses at that moment. 

I flopped down into my seat, dejected and disgusted. 

By the way, are you still awake? Thought so.

After several ineffectual instructions to maintain silence, to switch off our mobile phones and to stay confined to our seats, an old guy ambled along the stage, went to the podium, put on his glasses, took out a note, cleared his voice and declared, ‘The convocation is now open’, and then, dragged himself slowly back to his seat. Most of us looked at him in wonder – What just happened? 

Then, after an hour or so, I almost dozed off as one speaker after the other droned on and on about irrelevant stuff which we were least interested in, until…

National Institute of Technology Karnatak is a distinguished…

…jolted me awake.

It is an honor… NIT Karnatak, a premier institute…

I winced in pain. Somebody please shoot him in the head.

Karnatak

What is wrong with you man? Are you trying to change our state into the next wild, tribal dance? Do you realize what would happen if you performed the same stunt in Assam? It would read ass from both the sides, and I don’t think the Assamese people would serve you with their renowned, hot, black tea for that! I just ignored the rest of his speech and went back to my sleep, slightly irked. 

After four hours of non-stop, continuous drill, they started to distribute our degree certificates, one by one, OF COURSE starting with the chemical dolts. Two hundred annoying names later, they called out my name.

A fast walk, a quick smile and a camera flash. It was all over in a second. 

Oh, we still had the pledge of hypocrisy. It was quite amusing actually.

On this August occasion of receiving the Degree, I the Graduate of NITK, Surathkal, solemnly pledge that, HONESTY, SINCERITY AND HARD WORK shall be the cherished values of my life.

The motto of the Institute, namely ‘WORK IS WORSHIP’ shall be the guiding principle of my life.

I shall endeavour to the best of my ability, to be worthy of my Institute and my profession.

I shall always utilize my knowledge in the service of my motherland and humanity.

I shall always place my country above self.

May God Help Me.

That did it. I burst out laughing. May god help himself rather. The next thing we heard was,

The convocation is now closed.

Epilogue

The day ended in our friend’s room where we discussed on several topics ranging from poly-chicks to politics and extending to gadgets and processors. [I still believe AMD is the sole reason for global warming.]  The next day, as we walked out of our college campus, I was flooded with several thoughts and emotions. But, one particular thought stood out from the rest. I wanted to re-live the past 4 years, just one more time.

This was the place where my life had taken a ninety-degree turn. This was the place where the caterpillar had come out of its cocoon. This was the place where… cmus was born.

Fuck! That sounded profound!