1 'viva-cious' week

Went to Ranchi on the 12th, a Thursday. Sid, Arni & me were together after 4 months. The bonding was instantaneous & so was the tuning. It's strange, but you get along so well with some people........you stay away from them for a long time & when you get back.........it's as if you were never away.

Our Viva was on the 16th. We were the 1st group scheduled! Arni had got his project printed in Calcutta itself. There were about 350 pages (including code) in 1 copy! Our printing, photocopying & binding took the better part of Friday. The photocopiers in & around Lalpur chowk were having a field day. On Saturday, we met our 'internal guide', Mr. Sanjay Kumar, who wasn't even aware of his having been assigned this role by the institute. Such are the ways of BIT! we should have taken out the slides on Saturday itself, but procrastinated, & left it for Sunday. We were to pay dearly for this as Anupam came on Saturday morning & took us for a 'drink' during lunch. By evening, most of the photocopiers who could have done the slides for us were closed. We (Sid, Neeral & me) went around no less than 10 shops getting excuses ranging from 'machine under repair' to 'machine not capable enough'. It was at the 11th 'jheraaks' shop near Bajrangi on Plaza chowk that we hit some luck.

Monday afternoon (on the 16th), the 4 of us (Sid, Sittu, Sweta & me) were together in the computer lab with rumours of the scheduled 2 p.m. start having been advanced to 1 p.m. doing the rounds. At the practice, my presentation went on for 7 minutes when it should have been confined to about 3! The 4 of us were edgy, Sweta even more so. Determined to be the first off the block, we reached the lab where the presentations were to be held at 1 p.m., only to realize that Saurabh (41) & 'Miss Bobby' had beaten us to it. Sweta was livid. Anyway, they finished soon enough & we were on cue, sans the Extenal Professor who hadn't arrived yet! The 4 of us gave a remarkably cool presentation, only faltering once when we were asked why JAVA was named thus. We took all of 25 minutes even though the alloted time was 12 minutes per group, & Vandana Ma'm was visibly impressed when Sittu concluded 'all our work has gone live & the users are very satisfied with the working'. A trip to the canteen followed, where we aere treated with home made Parathas (courtesy Sweta) & cold drinks (courtesy Sittu), accounts were settled & our team dispersed for the final time.

What followed over the next few days was a whirl of booze parties (at Madhuban & Capitol Hill, no less!), lunches, dinners & card games as G8 made the most of the time we had remaining. The bar & the restaurant at Capitol Hill were pretty good, albeit deserted & we had the place totally to ourselves. The 7 of us (Ajay was absent), cosumed 10 beers, 1 Screwdriver, 5 large vodkas & lots of complimentary chips & sprouts. Anupam picked the tab, God bless him! Neeral was so sloshed out he slept at his place on the restaurant table & sat on the floor in the lift! Div picked up the tab at Madhuban, cause he'd earned 15 grand doing a modelling stint at Delhi. All in all, we made up for all the times we missed each other over the last 4 months. One thing I'm sure of, is that this is one of the best group of friends I've ever had, right up there with the school time ones & the colony gang.

At Shivam, Sandeep Jha regaled us with his interesting anecdotes about life in North Bihar & his visits to Nepal. This was one guy full of stories. Nice timepass. Awadhesh seemed resigned to the fact that Richa was going to marry somebody else. Both of them seemed genuinely in love. The stumbling block proved to be the same old ones......familial constraints & parental pressure. All I could offer him were my sympathies. Don't know when our society will evolve enough to let 2 adults be together & lead a life of their own. I really feel sorry for the two.

Among the others, most of the batch girls seemed to have put on weight over the last 4 months. Among the guys, Deepanjan had put on weight & Santosh & Prashant seemed to have shed years & become smarter! Amit Seth seems to have turned over a new leaf & invited us on his birthday.......to Kaveri! Besides, it's marriage/engaement time for the girls as a lot of them are going to turn Mrs. soon.

The only dampener to the whole week was the running around that we had to do to get signatures on the convocation certificate. 8 signatures (4 in Lalpur, 4 in MESRA), no less! The other sad thing was the poor guy who died in the wall collapse next to the college. One look at the man's crushed face & I involuntarily turned away. Couldn't muster enough courage to look that way again. His face still keeps coming up before my eyes.