To be born...

To be blessed with His precious gift- Life,
To dream of a light in the dark,
To have a haven so warm and safe,
To have the chance of leaving my mark.
Being the delicate one was not an easy task,
To live with perils all day long.
But in your love and care did I bask,
Taking in the world as it came along.

All the sights were but a blur
But through your eyes you showed me all.
My words were not even a slur
But you alone did hear my call.
Deaf to the outside world was I
But your voice was my lullaby.

With each passing day I grew more
Apprehension too coming to the fore...
Before the long wait could make me sore,
The day arrived for me to soar!

Ay me, I was born a GIRL.
I was too little to understand!

My cry was all that was heard
A fresh breath, all I could take,
Before my existence was stilled.
Life as I knew it, ended there!

Fate played the cruelest game ever.
I could have been my brothers' little sister
And my parents' loving daughter but here I lay,
Denied of all that Life could offer me.
To be burnt as a sacrifice and thrown away.
Was it for God or was it for society?

To my parents, bound and helpless as you were:
I pray that I live eternally through you.
To my brothers, for the silly quarrels we never had:
May you receive a sister's love through your daughters.
To God: as I accept my fate with sorrow:
I hope I am destined for a better future,
For I have always heard my mother say,
'All that happens, happens for a reason.'

I hope my life's purpose justifies this.
In spite of these comforting thoughts
The reason still eludes my comprehension.
I guess I was too little to understand!

(My first ever poem- Titled Destiny's Child)

The Curious Case of the Malnourished Chicken

It may sound weird coming from a vegetarian who eats only things 'green' or rather to quote my friends 'pullum vaikolum'. Coming to a semi-closure of exams and with the smell of holidays already in the air, all of us friends took an evening out to have a birthday treat. This treat was apparently for the 'trouble' we went into to organize a birthday celebration for one of our friends midway through the exams. It all started this weekend when we realized that the birthday was up in two days. Immediately we started chalking down plans and got ourselves ready for the big night! We had to wake our dear 'padipist' from sleep and had to make her cut the cake and invite her for her very own 'theppu' festival! And all that she could think of saying was, 'Thanks guys for the trouble you have been up to'. Telling this to a jobless Compsci, you are sure to get some witty remark and all I could think of in the middle of the night was, 'Ya. Huge trouble. We had to bring the cake all the way from Uganda!'(This is the abridged version and my friends know very well how far I can go with a chali and hence am not posting it here!) And thus came about a treat for the birthday and the auspicious day did come...
With other important matters to take care of, I ended up late for the treat and made my friends wait. It was when I reached there that I realized that the 'Soda lime salt' that had been ordered around half an hour back had not yet arrived. We kept on reminding them about this order and finally it came. This was the huge drink that MG had ordered and after taking a sip of it her expression said it all. Then all of us took a sip of it to understand what the issue was and it was the 'pinch' of salt they had put. The only plausible reasoning for it was that they must have put a 'pinch' of salt for every reminder we had given them. Finally all of us helped in finishing off the drink and had a supplementary drink after that to get our taste buds into action again. This was not the first time this was happening. The 'heartthrob' she had asked for (in another place) was also unavailable. The poor kid was subjected to a lot of 'theppu' that day for the same reason!
Next up was the Canteen (mainly because all the chicken items in the earlier place was over by the time we went). We went there to have an early dinner and had to wait for 5 minutes to get the non-vegetarians to decide what they were having. The ruckus, I must say, was for deciding whether they wanted a Chicken Fried Rice or Chicken Noodles. I mean, what difference is it going to make?! Chicken was anyway THE menu! Finally the decision was to go with both and the vegetarians went with dosa. So as we cleaned our plates with the last remnants of food, the non-vegetarians were still gorging on the chicken items.
We came back to the hostel and that is when one of my dear friends ( referred to as X from now) remembers about the chicken in the mess. All that I could do then was stare at her and wonder about her craze for chicken. Now to talk about X for a while. She is a true mallu at heart or rather stomach. She claims to eat anything and everything that will not bite her back (another mallu trait) which I find very silly because obviously you are not going to eat anything while its alive, or will you? With mallus you never know. The craze for non-veg food is so rampant that I sometimes wonder what I am doing in its midst. I keep on telling X that she is the biggest chicken lover I have ever met. But its just not chicken. The way my friends here wait for the mess to open just to get some non-veg food is unbelievable. While the vegetarians here start countdowns for holidays the non-vegetarians on the other hand have various countdowns in a week, one for chicken fry, one for chicken curry, one for fish curry, one for chicken fried rice and so on... And there are many more such items but am not mentioning them for fear of getting beaten up by any mallu for making him/her drool. All my friends wake up in the morning wondering what would be there for breakfast and on hearing 'dosa' all they have to say is 'Chicken dosa? :D'. Yes people, I get the point. Anything vegetarian can be converted to a non-veg. The first thing that any of them do on entering a restaurant is count the number of non-veg items in the menu and just like in any cartoon series I can see eyes popping out here and there. Any restaurant is rated on the quantity of non-veg food it offers more than the quality. Especially if the restaurant's name has anything to do with non-veg then extra points. Whenever all of us go out together, the vegetarians make do with whatever veg that is available and the non-vegs will still be deciding whether a shawarma or a bucket of chicken or anything else is better. Just tease them about this and immediately the retort comes, ' Its after all pullu and vaikol. Just choose whether you want it fresh or dry :P' After years of studying girl psychology my tip to any guy is get a girl a plate of great non-veg food and half the battle is won!
So as I was saying, X enters our Lionel 'MESS-I' and gets her share of chicken fry and comes out. Though I'm not great at judging such food, I could realize something immediately. I am aware that a chicken leg has a bone in it but at the same time that is not all it has! But the fry that came out of the mess was something like this:



I, myself, felt bad for X, though she did not have much of a reaction, which I assume is because she gets such chicken every other day. And yet the countdown for chicken fried rice that will be made available on Sundays continue! Mallus, true loyalty, it is...

(Dedicated to all my dear friends [:P])

Exams = Creativity

Exam time calls for creativity and that is exactly what has been happening around here. This time around there were a lot of creatures who were as jobless as me.
To start with...Creature Number 2 ( had a terrible Maths paper that I'm going to forgo all my love for the number game), my sweet big bro. At a safe distance greater than 20 kms away from me where only my voice reaches he found his so-called haven. With his internship supposed to be at full swing all he finds time for is to message and call me for all the affairs concerned with this world. For once, all those trivial things in my life caught his fascination or rather his imagination. All my naïve [;)] one-liners and messages were subjected to much speculation that I actually realized that the guy has not listened to even one interesting word I'd said in the last two years. Calls every now and then, confessing that the sole reason for the call was to bug me and leave me irritated for the next hour and a half, followed by messages was the usual routine. Essence of the blah I've written – Interns are jobless!
Creature Number 3 – My dad! Just like the pranks he has been pulling off from as long as I can remember he found the perfect timing this time around too. From pranks that had made me cry when I was 3 years old to now, that guy has not changed one bit and neither have I! I still fall head over heels for everything he says or does. This time around too the fall was pretty huge, if I can say that. Again at the end of this self-proclaimed belated April Fool's prank all that I have to say is, “ A few more days before you are paying heavily for this mister.”
Creature Number 4 – Or rather creatures. It has to be none other than my friends. Starting from the 5 days apparent study leave all of us have become experts at inventing ways of using time productively, as we refer to it. We started the 'study week' royally by going out for lunch to the closest available restaurant and came to the conclusion that we had to do this more often. All thanks to me, I must say! This time our usual antics gave way to new ones. The latest one that we came up was a poster! All of us were done making formal posters and so we just grabbed this golden chance to see each other on a poster. It must have been all the farewell hangovers. This graffiti up on my wall, which we now call the 'Ironing and Postering' wall, has been the interesting poster that we have ever come up with. With special art work from MG, it just showed us that second year wasn't as boring as it seemed to have been. All stories and nightmares have found a special place in this piece of paper so much so that our club juniors would have a terrific day out if they laid their hands on this. Though it just took an hour to do the work, it has been updated time and again with long-forgotten stories. With this up in my room, all of us take a minute or so every day to admire the work that has gone into it and just observe a moment of silence thinking of what all has been etched forever and what have been passing fancies. The DJ and the movie-dialogue sessions in the room has also come under ridicule. It just takes some random music to have me and Anju in splits. Maybe this is what is called exam hysteria or maybe just some not-so-random jokes. Another one of our favourite hobbies has to be posting rubbish on each other's Facebook wall and then deleting it as soon as the thread is over. If people find it weird, I don't disagree. When did I ever say that we all think normal?!
And for the grand finale... Creature Number 1 has to be I,Me, Myself! [:D] With just half my exams done and the other half still singing lullabies to me I have been finding time to do every other trivial thing or maybe not-so-trivial after all. Cleaning up the room for the umpteenth time, doing some laundry, chatting nonsense, packing to leave for home (which is sadly a week away still), an unsuccessful attempt at catching forty winks and now this... In the middle of the night with sleep evading me, surprisingly, I sit idly listening to some good music and watching the rain through my window... That sounds too romantic... Oh... Whatever! I guess its time to sleep after all.

A day to remember

Indeed, today was one day I would remember for a very long time to come. Before my friends just go too ahead and think that it was they who made the day special... hmmm... I must be honest here and say that the unforgettable moment occured at sometime between 1 and 1.30 in the afternoon. [:D]

9.00-10.30 a.m. - After a very long night spent on reading a novel and burning the laptop's charge (alright, it was just my weak attempt at a paradox for midnight oil [:P]) I went to sleep very late (by home standards) the previous night and hence woke up at 9! Just as I wake up I receive a message from MG ( as usual, our jokes and 'fun' and all the innocent souls who we planned to annihilate today. I must say that we wake up each day thinking as to who the unlucky martyr for the day would be!) and the reason for that particular message was to check whether her free message offer still existed, considering I am the one who takes note of all this for her [:D]. Unfortuantely not, and I knew that I would have a very dry day today without all our joint expert opinions and polls and what not. I woke up and as I was just getting out of the house, appa calls me and asks me to do some paper work which I promptly finish and leave for a chore that he asked me to do before I left. I come back to realize that he had come back from office and was waiting for me and his little paper work. Then just as appa was getting into his car I ask him for cash for the lunch today and I asked for 100 because I had loads with me anyway. And he gave me 200. LOL... And that is my appa. Then I take my scooty and started leaving right behind him just to see the driver uncle waiting for me and appa calls from inside and says, " Varsha, wear your helmet and drive carefully sweet heart. Or you can come now in the car and have it for the day." for which I go like, " Appa, it is ok (I did not want to trouble the poor driver uncle considering how weird my friends' plans could be) and the helmet is broken. I meant the front glass is and that was the only reason for me to wear the helmet. Get me a shades and I will wear the helmet then [:P]". Appa said, " Next time darling". [:)] .And then I drive all the way to kowdiar and realize that my sweet lil friends had taken a detour and asked me to come to zoo. On calling they said they were just on their way. So i drove half the way back and returned back to museum. After all there is no point in me staying put at the zoo till they come!

11.00-12.45 p.m. - Even after I did all the driving around town I ended up in museum before them and I had to wait for them though I constantly pestered them with my incessant messaging about making me wait! After all this fighting we entered the zoo and I was not spared or rather the monkeys were not. Poor creatures I must say. Let me just say, we are descendants or rather We are family or in my friends words (who all had serious claims to the title of Mojo Jojo) I was family! I guess my friends were not tired of the zillion photos they had taken of me with the monkeys the last time we went. Not only the monkeys, ranging from the King Cobra to the Painted Stork to the Hippo, no animals were spared. And at the end of the trip all that my friends could say was NIT had made me very logical (it was just a dig at all my jokes or should I say jokes on me?!) From the beginning of the tour till the end, all that VS could say was 'I'm sleepy' or 'I want to eat'. And since we had not yet decided where to have lunch from, we finally decided on Sindoor Palace, our home as usual. And with every passing 15 minutes each and everyone was getting hungry. I finally got fed up of all the grumbling about food and we called it a day at the zoo. Though I must say that I never really wanted to go to the zoo because I had already seen all the animals in front of the zoo as they were entering:my friends! [:D]

1.00-1.30 p.m. - As usual, everyone takes turn on my scooty and this time VS was lucky or rather unlucky to be sitting behind me. I drove from zoo to sindoor and I noticed a police jeep in front of the restaurant. As I was about to take the turn into the restaurant, the police asked me to park and to go along with him. And it was then that I realized that I was being caught for driving without a helmet. LOL. It was a first-time experience and all I wanted to do was burst out laughing. I was struggling to keep a straight face. The police inspector asked me for all the documents and God bless my mom for having kept all that properly in the scooty. And as my other friends came behind me, they got confused; they could see the police and thought it was something serious but on seeing my face they thought I was laughing over some joke! Well, I must say that this police inspector was one big MLA or in other words a despan. After checking all my documents all he had to say was, "First impressionil viduva. Fine onnum adakenda. :)" . I just turned around and did :P and all my friends just burst out laughing. Oh my God, it was very hilarious. Starting from the very first minute till he finished liteally studying the documents I was just hoping that he does not question me as to why I was laughing or rather take a dig at my feeble attempts to control it. And the funniest thing was, I then wore the helmet from the entrance of the restaurant to the parking lot inspite of him saying no need. It was just that I could not help playing a joke on him there and I guess he also did understand this because it was very evident. Anyway, because of all this my friends had a mighty good laugh. And thus today proves to be the first time I was caught driving without a helmet and hence will remain precious for a pretty long time!

1.30-2.30 p.m. - After all that walking in the zoo, sindoor had to feed 7 hungry girls who almost brought the whole place down talking and chattering.

2.30-4.00 p.m. - We spent the rest of the afternoon in the comfy settings of CCD. All of us just crashed into CCD and chatted and chatted and chatted. After everyone almost came up-to-date with everyone else's lives and after we had one of the best ice creams we have had for a very long time we dispersed the area before anyone could throw us out. [:D]

Then as usual I dropped one of my friends back home, the person keeps on changing every time though. And then after a very joyous and eventful day I entered home late in the evening much to the annoyance of my grandmom who wanted me to spend the day with her. But as I always say, 'There is nothing that a kiss cant heal' and thus a peck on her cheek was enough for her to forgive me though I had to promise to spend the next day with her much to the delight of both of us. As usual, I ended up chatting with MG (or Anju on other days) till late in the night.Thus as the night dawns and I yawn, I regret that the day has gone. (yes MG, I understand, it is a very poor two-liner [:P] )

Courtesy for the day- All the places that would have kicked us out if we had not emptied the area in the next 5 minutes, Moni, Pri, Deepz, Achu, Jani, VS, MG (and all the innocent souls who were subjected to our comments today[;)]),Anju and most importantly the anonymous Mr.Police. [:D]

Study Time

Study time in room 209 was always one to remember. I was presumed to be the acting teacher and then there were my roomies who sat through my hilariously confusing conceptual lectures. Be it mechanics, physics or maths (though in s2 I had one of the most awesome teachers of all times who was confused herself) I slithered my way through all that.

These sessions were informative like in physics I sat thinking about the various annels of quantum mechanics and finally ended up saying, "Hell, why are we even bothered about the dates. One person ends up finding something and another person comes along half a century later to disprove it and we as engineers are bothered about that. Why cant we just learn the right thing?! And beware you all, if you all grow up and find something that my nieces and nephews have to worry about, I'll come over and kill you all!!!".

Mechanics, on the other hand, was fun. Let me just say that it was a subject i loved. And I still remember that fateful day before s2 endsem when all of us were huddled together trying to get a grasp of every little concept. By afternoon, when I was mentally tired, of having to use my brains once in a while like this, my caring and loving roomies forbade me from 'taking a nap'. Well, had I been in their spot I would have done the same thing considering the fact that waking me up for studies can be more difficult than studying itself! While my roomies happily took turns taking naps I sat there pleading to the rest of them for a 5 minute siesta, but to no avail.

There were countless other subjects. Oh I almost forgot electrical. It was funny how in s1 I had electronics and I ended up teaching my roomies all the network theorems in s1 without learning it myself and initially my friends were gulping at how I knew all that and all I had to tell them was 12th standard physics or more specifically AO sir.

Anyway after s2 when all of us entered our different branches we also put an end to our small but fun-filled study group. And just as I thought that those days wont come back ever again I had a very surprising end sem. Maths still remained to be a common subject and me and anju ended up doing combined studies for that. Statistics and distribution were the topics and I still remember how we studied all that formulae. There was regression with me almost getting aggressive with that topic and finally how aggressively we had to regreesively fit those curves! All those Latin dance forms seemed better than Latin squares. Once we think we are done with two proportions we come across several proportions and in the end i felt like tearing up the notes into several proportions. And now even thinking about all that I am in splits.

Even during this time we had all the fun possible. This end sem was no different. There have been times when we used to play antakshari 2 hours before the exam or comment on jokes from malayalam movies, the most recent ones involved Punjabi House and Akkare Akkare. And our solution to excessive-studies-boredom was a dj session which ended up in robl (rolling on bed laughing)!

Now my combined studies involve MG and those sessions last barely 5 minutes before I end up sleeping. MG then packs everything and returns to her room fearing induction of this epidemic of sleeping! I can't blame her seeing how me and anju end up sleeping most of the time. Though we try taking turns sleeping and waking each other up all these efforts turn futile in the end.

Whatever it is, all that I can say is this combined-study or not-so-combined-study sessions are the only times I enjoy during exam and also my incentive after the exam- sleep...

19th Birthday Bash

15 October, 1991 - the day when this little brat let out its first cry and let the universe know that she had entered this world after all. I must say that I was born on Durgashtami (mallus would definitely know of this auspicious day especially thanks to the movie Manichitratazhu) and that made it all the more special for my family members as I did prove too hot to handle!

And now 19 years after that, my family has still not found the perfect solution to contain this little devil. This 19th birthday of mine proved pretty good for me, rather I must specify that it was good till 2 pm in the afternoon! Friends and family alike made it all the more special and God alone knows what all preparations went into this birthday bash of mine. First and foremost let me start of by saying a big thanks to all the my near and dear ones for making the day extra special (though I did spoil some of the surprises, sorry [:)]). A big umma to all my roomies, extended roomies and my family!!!

14 October,2010- I had my LD lab in the afternoon and it ended pretty fast and so me and MG (Marilyn) met in front of the MB and started walking back, describing all our lab events and commenting on it not even sparing a single moment. Then both of us headed straight to our mess (this month MG ending up in the veg mess for a change) for tea or rather some more evening gossip. While we were sitting there and chatting, I see anju and akhi enter the mess with a big bag in their hand. I saw them animatedly talking to the mess chechi and I knew the reason! MG suddenly sees anju.

MG: "Anju's not in this mess. Is she?"

Me: "No man. She came to keep the cake in the fridge here [:)]"

MG: "What caaakkk....... Oh shit... Anju..."

She ran to anju's side and explained to her that I knew of everything. It was worth seeing anju's face. ROFL. She ignored me and with that million dollar expression of hers, she ran out of the mess. Akhi, in the meantime, tried to change the topic but she herself could not help laughing at how embarrassing a situation they had created for themselves.

I came back to the room to find anju hiding behind a book and trying really hard to not look at me. And out of nowhere both of us just burst out laughing. MG entered the room and then I was trying to calm anju down saying that the surprise was just broken earlier and when anju left the room, I kept on making fun of them saying that I needed to practice that surprised Miss World expression for that night when I had to cut the cake. " No thanks... If you do something that idiotic, you wait and watch.. ", MG said.

At around 6 pm, anju gets a call in her mobile. She sees the number and says, "Varsha, Varun achachan is calling". I checked my mobile and seeing no call in mine I told her to answerr her call. She answers it and gives her mobile to me and all I had to say was, "Its for you. You talk to him [;)]". Then it strikes her. She runs out of the room with the mobile. MG, sudhi and nids enter the room then just to see me lying head down on my table and laughing.

All: "What happened?"

Me: " Varun is planning a surprise for my birthday with anju and I just got to know of it."

All: "OMG..."

MG (running out of the room) : "Anju forget it. She knows it."

And after all the conversation outside my room, they enter to see me grinning widely.

MG: "For all the pain and trouble you have caused us, we are surely giving you a special GPL tonight.'" And the expression in everyone's face said that clearly.

The truth was I was feeling pretty bad that I had poured water over all their plans. But it was so hilarious to see all of their faces when they were caught red-handed.

At around 7, everyone disappears from the room and I realized that all of them had gone to meet Varun outside the LH gate. I just look out my window and I see two familiar figures on the walkway behind the BB court. And suddenly anju screams, "She saw us." That was it. I had reached the zenith of controlling my laughter and I just burst out laughing. In 5 minutes, the entire 911 gang was in the room. Their vicious expressions said it all. With much venom in their voice they made it clear that the night was one I would never forget thanks to all the kicks I would get!

I promised myself that I would not spoil any more fun and I swore that I would atleast act as if I knew nothing (though later I realized that I did not know most of the things), after all I was a dancer. I got ready to take a shower and as planned earlier by my friends I was to wear a party top for the celebration. On seeing the top they went like, "ohho.....ooooo." And when I said the 4-digit price tag of the top, all that MG could say was, " For that piece of GLASS??!!!!"

I took a shower and only later did my friends realize that it was to escape all the cake facials that I otherwise might be subjected to. But my friends have always maintained that there are better uses of the cake for the stomach than for the face! My friends on seeing me in the new and hmm (other adjectives) top, passed various comments the MOST DECENT one being, "Hmmm... This is a Ladies Hostel.. No point!" [:O]

At 11.30 (after 2 hours of everyone missing from the room) , MG enters the room and closes my eyes and leads me outside for the apparent surprise birthday bash with the cake I had seen earlier in the day. I must say it was a sweet celebration with all my friends there and we did have a lot of fun!

Returning back to the room, I told anju that I was going to take a power nap for 20 minutes and that I had to wake up and study for my exam scheduled for the next day. MG and anju, meanwhile were perched on anju's bed and gossipping about me and since even after my persistant questioning they had no plans of revealing it to me, I just dozed off.

In the middle of the night I hear another birthday song and it came from pretty close by. When I opened my eyes, I saw that all of 911 were standing there with a nicely lit cake in the dark room.

Me: "OMG. You guys are crazy. How many cakes man?!"

All: "Its from Varun achachan."

After the song, I blew off the candles and cut the cake. This cake was exclusively for the 10 of us! And while all this was going on, anju hands me another big bag and I open that to realize that there were two BIG packs of Celebrations and some comparatively smaller Temptations packs inside it. That was my birthday present from Varun. That made up for lunch and dinner for 2 days for the 10 of us!

Then came the funnier parts. My birthday presents from my friends.

1) Prank message- I get a message from one of my friends and apart from the birthday wishes there was something pretty weird to the entire message and later I realized that it was a prank from MG and anju! The video they took of this entire exchange was pretty hilarious and there are time even now that me and anju sit and laugh over it!

2) Bag - My college bag tore on my way to college and I had to make do with the new bag that my parents got me as a gift and I did not want to spoil it by taking it to college. My friends knew of that and they got me a sweet bag as my present. And till today I have been flaunting that bag of mine!

3) Card - This was the most enjoyable gift of all and I keep on telling them that. My friends were keeping on pestering me to open the bag and finally when I did, I found this huge card in it. I take it out to the incessant coughing from all my friends. I see the cover of the card filled entirely with one alphabet (an alphabet that comes in the first 13 alphabets of the English language, and nothing more will come out of this mouth of mine) and I just kept my mouth shut.

MG: "Hows the design? [;)]"

Me: " Thank you my dear. I can see your art work clearly in here especially the alphabet. I refuse to comment on the design of the card. *weird smile*"

MG: " That is not fair! We would not have done that to you had you not spoiled all our surprises. This is our sweet revenge. Hey, did you see all that little hearts next to the alphabet and to some 'key phrases?*wicked smile*."

Me: " I did see all the hearts and alphabets and all the coded things in there. And I am just going to keep my mouth shut." I knew that they were waiting for me to comment on all that and I was not going to play into their trap!

Anju: " Now that is how we add some 'personal' touch to the entire thing. [;)] " *hi5 between anju and MG*

Me: " I see all the 'personal' touch that you people have given it. Do you realize that I can't take it back home and show it to amma?! (But now considering the fact that even amma pulls my leg quite often taking it back home is not going to be an issue as I have already told amma the entire story) .The only person I can show it to is to Varun thanks to all your artwork with that one alphabet and the code-name in that!!! I made up the code-name, how can I not recognize it, you fool?!!!"

Anju: " Didn't we just make your day thanks to the card? [;)]"

Me: "No comments. All that I can say is that this definitely was 'one hard kick'!"

Apart from all that there were personal little mails from all of them behind the card and each and every letter was so cute that I actually could not stop laughing. Anju made sure that even that letter from her was not spared of the alphabet! After all this is the opportunity she got to make up for the earlier embarrassing moments!

After all the fun we could possibly have, mostly fun at making fun of me and more leg-pulling, all of us dispersed at 2 in the night and somehow me and MG could not even think of our supposed exam the next day!

The day went off well and then came the dreaded afternoon when I sat down to write my exams. The exams went so terribly bad that I came back and cried for the first time in my life over an exam. And all that Varun had to say was, " Ok. Maybe you won't get a 30 on 30. Please for God's sakes be satisfied with a 29 [:P] and stop worrying the rest of us. This is the problem when you get so used to extremely good marks. Welcome to engineering, my little sister!"

Apart from that exam of mine, it was an awesome day, well spent with friends and family and I must say that the 'surprises' were indeed amazing. Though the card caught me unawares (as I was pretty sure that my friends would not pull my leg on my birthday card) they made sure that I was embarrassed like anything on that card, the birthday was one Great Day!!!

Life in a Girls' School

I have done my schooling in Holy Angels' ISC School which is a girls-only school, the main reason for this post of mine. Well let me make this very clear, this post is not meant as a chauvinistic one or some sort of girl-power post but instead a frank account of a free spirit who enjoyed life within the four walls of that prestigious institution.

First of all the reason why I am writing this post is, in the last month or so when we friends chatted about our school, my roomie also being from a girls-only, I realized that the fun I had in my school knew no bounds, partly because of the above-mentioned reason. For everyone it was a different emotion, a different recollection-of-sorts, a different reminiscence, a different environment, a different life all together. After everyone had dispersed, I still sat in thoughts of my school and that is when i made a mental note that one day, some day, I would write on it.

I seriously have no clue where to start. I still remember the first day when amma left me at my school, my first ever assembly, my first ever teacher, my first ever friends, my uniform. Now that was something I was very proud of, our uniforms. It was a checkered knee-length skirt and a white shirt with a tie and thus we got ourselves a chic look. If I start talking about all that then I would just never stop. But I will never forget these special things in my life. What brought out the naughty people in all of us would be our 11th and 12th standards and everyone in my batch would agree to that. I mean the levels of insanity that our classrooms have seen in our year are inexplicable. Coming to the 11th, the penultimate senior year and the year when all the chains are broken loose and hell is released, when all the quiet, sweet and innocent awaken the devils and monsters lurking within them. Don't get me wrong here. It is just that the freedom one enjoys on reaching that year is quite enigmatic as it is that one year when you get to enjoy after your 10th boards and before 12th boards. So the students just utilize it to their advantage.

We had a rousing reception into our 11th and some Fresher's Day fun (organized by our seniors to just get some practice of ragging) we all settled into our classrooms knowing very well that come June, July and August we had be lined up with events after events. Our very first one was school elections. One fine recess our new Principal enters our classroom followed by some of our senior teachers and announce that we had to vote for our school representatives. Well it was all a joke then! Finally the results and posts of the elections were out (after meetings with seniors and juniors and teachers and God knows who all, the results were finally decided) and I was the Assistant Head Girl. Thus started my tenure as the AHG and as the Head Girl, the next year. And then in between all that started practice for the famous LaFest. Well let me just put it this way- it was just pure hysteria as far as some of the people were considered , after all this is the most prestigious inter-school event in Trivandrum. Well there were others but LaFest always enjoyed that supreme spot. All inter-school fests were enjoyable in its own sense and was different in some way when you were the team captain. I must say that the nervousness does get onto me during results time but after a few results we become pretty sure of our standings and I must say that we sweept LaFest in our 12th and lifted the trophy for one last time! And thus the rumors started- the all boys school would definitely have a soft spot for us and it was a known thing that we would finally win LaFest. But all that I had to say was, " Guys please check out the points table! The huge gap would in itself answer all that!". In school though, none of us thought twice before speaking. The endless conversations and teasing our corridors had been a witness to with bf's names being called and what not! Even our teachers did not stay back, "How are your guys in other schools? You would have seen them in tuitions yesterday right? So what are they saying?", and then would start a lively discussion on some of the tuition classes with expert opinions from our teachers too.

In between all this I was busy concentrating on my coaching classes. There were 7 of us who used to attend MathIIT from our school and that in itself earned us a lot of names like 'zombies', 'bujis' and much more (refer http://jani91.blogspot.com/2009/08/life-of-iit-aspirant.html for more details) and when ever we heard that we used to just fume thinking of our performances there and if at anytime one of us voiced it out and i seconded that opinion I would dig my own grave and the pastor leading the entire group would be VS starting off with, "Varsaji, you shut up. You don't have any right to speak about performances." But in between all this we used to have a lot of fun staying back in the school so as to attend the class and the ride from school to MathIIT and all the mimics that VS did the next day.

Then there were times in my class when our expertise was needed, especially in some of our boring classes. When people have had enough of learning for the day they would just pass a chit to me and request me to disrupt class in some way (Now that is a side of me only my school mates know while others just find it very difficult to accept that). I would usually have my head buried in the assignments or books that I had under my table and pondering over its solutions which unfortunately my school teachers always misjudged to be a contemplation of their questions and remarks. Then feeling pity over my friends who had suffered this lecture for some time now (though i had no clue what was happening) I would raise my head and stare at the board just to know what topic was being taken in class! Then if it was a topic that had already been done in MathIIT then i would ask all the questions that sir asked us, some very technical ones and baffle the teachers which was like 10 minutes of comedy time for all my class mates, seeing the way I put the question so that our teachers could not understand the question for 5 minutes and then when they figure it out they try to present it in the same complicated method that i had asked and finally end up saying, " Hope you all have understood what i said, though that is not there in your syllabus"! English hours were the only hours I listened to because they were interesting, what with Shakespearean plays and readings (in the true Shakespearean style with curtained doors and daggers and great stage settings within the classroom)and poems. Well that was heaven for me! At this special moment I must thank my English teachers for the fact that they were very instrumental in helping me disrupt classes. After all my simple questions were made so complicated just by the use of some English jargon not very commonly used [;)]. Shakespeare also proved instrumental in getting me a new name. 'Beelzebub' was picked up from Macbeth and immediately attached to me. Apparently this ruler of hell is what suited me the best and I always said that I had no problem because after all I was leading some devils and who called themselves Angelites!

In our 11th we also had to spearhead the Magazine Committee. Running around and going to all the classes individually and asking everyone to submit articles, then screening the bunch of stuffs we got, making soft copies of it, then more running around to do our own articles (thanks to being part of the Literary Club), then doing reports on events in schools, carrying out polls, in short an entertainment in itself.

There was a reason I mentioned about our uniforms in the beginning. Let me just put it this way, our corridors were pretty airy and even in a slight breeze all our skirts just have minds of their own which wander freely in that breeze. It was such a common phenomenon that most of the times people rarely bothered about it (after all shorts were an integral part of our uniform) and we used to howl from within the classrooms, " If the show is over, let us know, we need to close the windows :P". Eve-teasing was something we indulged in within our own classes thanks to all this skirt-flying and cheesy remarks.

Another interesting thing that happened was the introduction of a house dress. It was of growing concern for everyone including me and during the speculation period, I was the butt of all jokes with my classmates designing my dress to just irritate me. After all I had to represent all the four houses and hence the weirdest design was of a skirt with stripes of all the four colours. I almost had a temporary black out imagining that thinking that I belonged to some circus troupe. But when the uniforms came I must say that I had the most decent one of all! Mine was a pure white skirt and a white tee with just single thin stripes of all the four colours on one side and the school emblem on the other. It was just cool. My friends on the other hand had a disastrous time what with blue and red and green and yellow skirts and white tees with coloured cuffs. All that we could say was we turned heads in that uniform of ours! It was true because early in the morning when me and my friend went to AO sir's place nobody actually noticed any change in my attire, but when my friend walked in even the buji's (aliens as we called them) who would not take their heads off from the textbooks checked the uniform out and could not suppress a laughter. This was converted into a huge story in class that morning. In the evening when we had to make an entrance in MathIIT, I still remeber VS's plan- go just 5 minutes before the class starts, enter in a single file and that too like a colourful rainbow and from the front entrance (and with me, the least colourful, at the very back). We knew that we would be the laughing stock so we thought of making the most out of it. We entered like that into a classroom full of people and there was silence immediately. And after 2 people had entered the chit chat started and we knew that the topic of discussion was our uniform. The girls realized that it was a planned entry, after all we had to live up to our school's name (all meanings intended)!

In 11th, the other fun thing we had to do was organizing the farewell for our seniors and I still remember of how we had to meet our teachers with like every small thing and get approvals and sometimes even with the Principal when it came to catering and venue! Well after all the troubles we went through I must say that we did shed a few tears when our seniors bade goodbye to us.

Talking of farewell, how can i even forget that time of ours?! That was the time of the year when our desks were filled with slam books and memoirs. Well we decided to celebrate ours a bit more differently (apart from the normal sari-clad eventful evening and night we have). We blared music during school hours but trying our level best not to interrupt other classes, that is the least we could do, after all we had to study like that when our seniors had enjoyed. It was January and the boards were just coming up and we were all too busy with our coaching and everything. So as usual the MathIITians were seen sitting and completing assignments when there was music in class. All the MathIItians cuddled around me for copying the solutions while the some of us who had done it continued to think over some of the doubtful questions. With music and dance in class, these people had a very difficult time controlling me. But when 3 songs played there was no stopping me, namely Zara Zara, Desi Girl and Hips Don't Lie. Ok....Stop going by the lyrics of the song. The music is good to dance on. Anyway when these songs played my classmates would arrange 2 tables together and would push me on top of that and I happily danced away to glory not even bothering that I was right under the fan (refer uniform) . It was nothing less than a discotheque in class and since it was just us, all the lyrics of the song were given great importance(and the rest of the description I am censoring)!There were no reservations whatsoever! The dance continued till one of the teachers entered the room to find the Head Girl dancing on top of the table. And being the rep, it was me (along with the rest of the house reps) who finally had to meet all the teachers and ask them permission or rather put on an angel face and request, " Mam, last few days at school. Then we will all leave you. *sob sob* Mam please can you cancel class for today and may we pleeaaase enjoy?" to which we were always met with, " Ok girls for the last time. We will all miss you big time sweet hearts. Don't make too much of noise though". And we never waited to hear the last part. And today all this just seems like distant memories, but memories nonetheless.

Now living in a college were the female to male ratio is 1:4 , I pity all those people who have never been in such schools. There are always arguments to this saying that co-ed would have been a better option and all that crap but I genuinely feel that any individual would have to go through such an institution at least once in their lives to know what school-life actually means. It is from here that I learnt the meaning of true freedom, the ease with which I can converse with my teachers, the courage to take on anything challenging, those starting lessons of managerial, organisational, leadership, technical and soft skills, the confidence to just get on stage uninformed and give a speech whenever the occasion demanded (and have some fun informal moments on stage) and much more.

Well this place truly holds a special place in my heart...