JNTU and such

All know that T is visiting this weekend. What all don't know is that she is visiting since her hubby and a few of his pals from IIM-B want to watch 3-Idiots together (T is from a predominantly IIM family - sis - XLRI, bro-in-law - IIM-A, T- IIM-L and her hubby IIM-B, but I digress)

I also know for a fact that a lot of people who liked "Happy Days" were from CBIT and enjoyed the movie since they got to saw their Alma Mater in it.

Coming to my Alma Mater (and Subhash's for that matter), we have no such luck. Gone are the wild shrubberies (not to go behind which we were warned as freshers by Muriki Reddy, our then principal), the rocks, the beaten mud paths, our shortcuts from the bus stand to the main building and so on and so forth. Gone! Now the whole place is a concrete jungle. Sure, it used to look ugly earlier, and now it looks straight out of some cosmo city, but hell, I think the older one was prettier. When Subhash and I used to visit the place in 2004, we used to be in awe of how much has changed. We once went and had chai (well he had chai and I had some junk oily stuff as usual) at our old canteen guy Gandhi's stall just outside of JNTU (I think after the recent rush of IT, even that stall is no more) just to relive the old times. The new canteen just didn't have that charm.

I remember when we were freshers, we went into the canteen once. Now if you are from JNTU, you know this is taboo. GIRLS in the canteen!! That too fresher girls!! My god! It was something that had stopped a long time back (apparently during the days of "autonomous" strikes). We were a bunch of girls who loved to steal a daredevil moment and so we just walked in after days of planning. I remember distinctly how N, G and G (maybe?) were all shocked (these guys were Subhash's classmates, BTW) and couldn't say anything (N was notorious for ragging but he had a rule, no girls;) ). So they kept staring in disbelief and we became some sort of heroines of the college ;)

Of course this brought us into the wrath zone of R who was a second year female student who didn't much appreciate girls who didn't wear chunnis (read me) or girls who wore chunnis but used them as fans (read K) and in general didn't appreciate juniors going out of line. And when she heard the canteen story, she made sure we got extra doses of ragging whenever we ran into her. This was in addition to writing workshop notes for her classmates. Sigh!

Yesterday, when my prof visited, his son was asking if I knew some girl who was my junior. I said no. My prof said she wouldn't have ragged so she wouldn't know. I said, I ragged way too many people so I need specifics. I am sure my prof didn't know this angle of mine till yesterday. I migt have dropped a few notches in his estimation ;) But seriously what fun it was to be in the final year, to stop by a class full of Mech/Metallurgy students, make them all stand up and mass-rag them single handedly. Whatay fun! Right above the principal's office at that.

So many more good times like these.

Here is to JNTU where I always thought I spent the most useless years of my academic life doing nothing.

Till I went to grad school that is.