Summer of 1983!
Yep, that's when it all happened. I had finished school and completed exams in April. Results were out by June (I think). The world around me thought I would get a state rank. Only I knew the depths (or heights?) of my intelligence! I did manage a school rank and got 96 odd % in the science tracks.
Of course, like all the other zillion science students graduating from higher secondary school, I wanted to be a doctor. Or engineer. Had to be a professional! Especially if you are an indigent TamBrahm in a tier 2 city (Salem had just become a corporation at that time! Just imagine!) Of course, given our habit of hedging bets and the immense confidence in our own abilities, I enrolled myself in the local college for B Sc in Physics.
First Idiot - BSc Physics, Arts College, Salem.
The Arts College in Salem, situated in a serene green area of the town, called Maravaneri, was certainly not renowned for its academic excellence. On the 2nd day in college, whilst the AP in Physics was just trying (he was very trying, indeed!) to evince interest in thermodynamics, or some such weighty topic, there was a lot of noise in the corridor outside the classroom. One very un-collegial guy sauntered into the class and just asked the assistant prof and the students to get out of class proclaiming that the college was going on strike for some silly reason - his brother may have sprained his left little toe or was constipated; can't remember exactly. He banged on the front desks of the class frightening us puppies out of our pants. It was the first of several "outages" we experienced in my one month in the prestigious institute. We were waiting for the results of the engineering and medical college applications to come through. I had even attended the REC exams and interview; in fact, got a placement in REC Rourkela (I think!).
Second Idiot - BE Production Engineering, PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore.
Going to Rourkela meant going more than the stipulated 100km away from home (Coimbatore was only walking distance and Chennai just spitting distance - for the family). I am just kidding. It meant going too far away and spending money in hostel. PSG Tech came through in the state entrance, as I had ticked it as my first preference. My maternal uncle, incidentally, happened to be in Coimbatore. Just mentioning. My interview with the Principal during course selection landed me in Production (and not Mechanical, which is what I wanted) not that I had any clue as to what engineers in these specific disciplines did at that time; all I knew was I liked tinkering with stuff, like a mechanic; so, mechanical, a word sounding close enough seemed fine. Incidentally one of my 2 brothers was doing his 4th year as mechanical engineer; he was always looking serious; he had that look of someone "munnerufying" in life; so mechanical engineering it had to be!
First day in a combined class with students of Applied Physics - whoah! I had not seen so many hot looking girls in one place in my 17 years of blissful existence. Er, forget the fact that there were only 10 or 15 girls, but that was 15 too many for me! About 4-5 of them actually looked like potential "sightu"s - TamBrahms too (but, of course!). That was the best thing about PSG Tech. What? You were waiting for me to tell me the other good things about the place? Sorry. I should have said best, and only, thing! For every 2nd day or so, we had to carry this ridiculous wooden triangular stuff in our shoulder - T square? Protractor? Detractor? I forget the name of this engineering implement which was the equivalent of a medic's "masal dosa" white coat - and pretend that we were serious draughtsmen at work copying, or for some of us lost souls, constructing new art forms on draught paper. And then came the Applied Maths classes - the only things I recognised during those tutorials were the arabic numerals neatly ensconced between various symbols. The numbers stood out like nuts in a large bar of chocolate. The saving grace during those miserable days were four things: 1) my longstanding school chums, Shankar & Senthil were in PSG with me - we used to do combined "sighting" 2) my eldest brother was medical rep in those days and evenings were spent with him productively in either restaurants or drinking beer in the local watering holes 3) my uncle's family - had a great time with my cousins - unforgettable days! 4) my eldest brother's closest pal, the late Natraj, who kept us fed and entertained, many a dreary night. May his soul rest in peace.
Peelamedu, RS Puram, Ram Nagar, Seetha Pudur, SaiBaba Colony, Railway Station, Gazebo Restaurant, Annapoorna, Gowri Shankar, Esso Bunk, Natraj's house, Brindavan Lodge, Nehru Stadium, Pazhamudhir Cholai, dhaba parotta kuruma on Avinashi Road.....the list is long.
I think, as fate or the medical fraternity would have it, I was destined for better things than getting hitched to the girl from Madurai doing Mechanical, whom I really liked a lot! I still remember the shenanigan surrounding my exit from Coimbatore.
The results for the medical college entrance had come late that year due to some lawsuits filed by entrants (I think). So, got a telegram from my parents in Salem that I had secured a place in Stanley Medical College (again, I had ticked SMC as my first pref) and commanding me (yes!) to take the Blue Mountain train that night to proceed to Madras and that my mom would join me in Salem in the train. My eldest brother had left to Ooty the night before on a sales tour. No mobile phones in those days, remember! I had no way of contacting him then, so after informing my uncle, proceeded to Madras per command from my mother. My eldest bro fumes to this day that I left CBE overnight without letting him know! He was more angry that I had left CBE than having left engineering.
Third Idiot - MBBS, Stanley Medical College, Madras.
After having gone to my chiththi's place in the morning - she & her family have withstood the onslaught of perennial armies of guests, with the greatest sense of humour and sanguinity (3 cheers to them!) - left for SMC, that temple of medical education, situated in the wonderfully named Monegar Choultry, in the picturesque area of Mint / Broadway, from whose womb, millions of great doctors have been delivered (okay, may not be all of them, but let's pretend, shall we). We were greeted by an elderly character by the name of Vidyasagar (he was my dad's English professor's son, so approx same vintage as my dad), wielding a large jolna pai near the admissions desk. I thought he was the assistant professor of some subject or may be even associate dean, only to be informed later that he was very "attached" to the college and was still getting to grips with transcending the 3rd year. Such was his love for the college.
Having completed the formalities, returned home (aunt's place in Mandaveli) to chill. I had 3 cousins - 3 boys at home - so there was no dearth of entertainment. Either ghali cricket or hand tennis as long as daylight allowed. Of course, great DD in the evenings. The grand sum of 1 channel, starting with "Vayalum Vazhvum" until the news at night, all programs were watched assiduously. Of course, Chitrahaar and Oliyum OLiyum days were the highlights followed by the movie on Sunday. Remarkable days those were!
Of course, there was this little matter of having to attend medical school amidst all this feverish pace of life. It so happened that it was the monsoon season (remember, because of the delay in admissions, medical college started only in September) and Madras was literally flooded and it was pouring non-stop for 3 days. On the fourth day, I was contemplating about life in general, and this particular problem of having to navigate through the small river that was running outside the house, when the door burst open and in came the serious figure of my engineer brother - monsoon rains couldn't stop him, such was his concern for his little brother. Having verified that college had opened 3 days ago and that my ass had not moved more than 10 metres from the centre of the house, he portrayed his concern forthwith by kicking my backside with his booted hindquarter. Having sent packing from the house with nothing but a frail little brolly to protect me from the cruel elements, I reached Mandaveli's bus terminus after a little while and boarded bus no 4E. Entertaining though it was, this route took about the same time to reach Mint as it would for a bus to reach Madras from Salem.
Having reached the college with dirty feet and soggy clothes, I entered the hallowed halls of the Anat (short for anatomy) block and was asked by a stern looking tutor to proceed straight to the dissection hall on the 2nd floor. When I reached the portals of that wonderful hall, was greeted by a smell that many will not forget for most of their life. The stench of dead bodies immersed in formalin and taken out for the express purpose of educating ignoramuses like me, combined with the smell of locomotives in the shunting yard behind the anat block - made for an aroma that will completely put anybody off food for a good few years. But, I was made of sterner stuff! The hall was already overflowing with white coated young chappies and chappesses - about 150 or so. And so MANY girls! Okay, the overcast clouds lifted, nay dispelled, and out came the fairies. I can put up with ANY smell to just be near and look at so MANY girls! It just required closing one's nostrils for about an hour or so each day - I could do that!
The dissection hour was followed by a class in anatomy - this wonderful man with a neatly barbered goatee proclaimed the origins and attachments of the muscles in the foot - words like adductor, abductor, hallucis, pollicis, pronator, supinator flew past past us thick and fast. Undeterred, we stood our ground and took all that in our stride. After all we were gonna be daawkktuuurrrsss!! By the end of the first week, I could actually pronounce a full anatomical term without messing it up - extensor digitorum longus - there you go! But, I was close to taking up another college soon. Hey, I had done 3 colleges - in & out of 2 in a jiffy - how difficult would it be to do one more. I even thought about running off somewhere north without telling anybody, such was my love for this new college. But, then came time to move out of my aunt's place and into the famous SMC Men's Hostel, another prime example of a fair accommodation with the highest standards of hygiene that each and every doctor exhorted and strove for! Yeah right!
This was the most sordid affair in my entire life. Okay, there were a few more, I admit, but this was the first big one. The hostel team couldn't find enough place to accommodate the entire lot of guys who had come from all the outlying districts of Tamilnadu. So 14 of us were packed into one room - a 15 x 15 feet affair - people talk about cattle class these days in aircrafts; we were like cattle on the ground! I could well imagine how it would have been for all those prisoners cattled into rail compartments during the holocaust (incidentally, I cried through the last 30-45 minutes of Schindler's List in the cinema hall and have not watched that movie on tape or DVD ever again!). We got to know each other pretty well in that one month we were shacked up in that one room; too well for some!
Then came the affair of eating in the mess - oh, what a mess it was! - I do not mean it in the culinary sense, of course. But, the human capability to take punishment repeatedly is so ingrained, that we marked the attendance register there for the three veLais without fail. we were 17 going on 18, with hormones pumping a million litres of testosterone everyday and nothing to do about it bar playing basketball or football or cricket for hours on end in the evenings (frying peanuts doesn't count!). Such exhaustions required a gynormous amount of calorie compensation. And that, one got in good measure in the mess, forget the taste. I am being harsh. The pongal, lumpy though it was came with medhu vadai - we ate the pongal as side dish. The pooris were not great but the kelangu was good - so poori became a side dish. Similarly, half a kg of potato chips went well with fried rice or biryani. After a few months we started loving it. We did not know at that time that it was one form of Stockholm Syndrome. We belonged to that naive age you see.
Contact with family was usually by means of inland letters - they cost 4 annas (25p) in those days and later became 35p. There was a single phone in the hostel for public use from where we could make calls home (if you were in the lucky strata of society with a phone in the house - thankfully I didn't have to worry about that problem). Calls from home were picked up by an attendant who was employed for this sole purpose. Of course, he was never there 99% of the time, given that it was a government job in India.
I missed my folks very badly, having spent the best part of 17 years at home, spoilt by availability of daily home cooked food. In some ways, my dad had prepared us kids in the house by sending us out on errands or expeditions outside town even, on our own at times. But, let me assure you, it certainly didn't prepare me for putting up with 13 other guys in a room! Nor for the wonderful facilities in the great Stanley Men's Hostel!
I used to feel really depressed at times, missing my mom, dad, sister and brothers. And my beloved Love'O Colony, Sankara Matam, Kanchi Matam, Sharadambal, RajaGanapthi Koil, Patta Patta Koil, VaOoCee Market, 2nd Agraharam, Kali Amman Koil, Krishna Coffee Bar, Hotel Ananda, Hotel Vilwadhri, Salem Cafe, Siva Vishnu Guha Kandha, Imperial, Central, Palace Theatre, Sangam, Alankar, Sangeetha, Kumara Malai, Kandashram....the list is long! I used to cry when I was alone in the early days - it was only for a very very short time though. Something then happened to me that took away all my ills and worries. That something was "friends". I was very fortunate to have some wonderful friends, who made life outside the home that we were used to, tolerable, pleasant even. Thank you guys! And gals!!
My subsequent journey in medical college was made easy by having my focus divided equally between two important things in life - study and kadalai. Became doctors, after a fashion, eventually! Very likely ten years after exiting medical school. More for some like me. The rest, as they say, is geography!
This blog is dedicated to my puppy nephew Sai Prasad Ganesh who is feeling the mighty pressure of life weighing on him having just joined an engineering course in the US of A! Cheer up big guy, it gets better! Cheers!
Yep, that's when it all happened. I had finished school and completed exams in April. Results were out by June (I think). The world around me thought I would get a state rank. Only I knew the depths (or heights?) of my intelligence! I did manage a school rank and got 96 odd % in the science tracks.
Of course, like all the other zillion science students graduating from higher secondary school, I wanted to be a doctor. Or engineer. Had to be a professional! Especially if you are an indigent TamBrahm in a tier 2 city (Salem had just become a corporation at that time! Just imagine!) Of course, given our habit of hedging bets and the immense confidence in our own abilities, I enrolled myself in the local college for B Sc in Physics.
First Idiot - BSc Physics, Arts College, Salem.
The Arts College in Salem, situated in a serene green area of the town, called Maravaneri, was certainly not renowned for its academic excellence. On the 2nd day in college, whilst the AP in Physics was just trying (he was very trying, indeed!) to evince interest in thermodynamics, or some such weighty topic, there was a lot of noise in the corridor outside the classroom. One very un-collegial guy sauntered into the class and just asked the assistant prof and the students to get out of class proclaiming that the college was going on strike for some silly reason - his brother may have sprained his left little toe or was constipated; can't remember exactly. He banged on the front desks of the class frightening us puppies out of our pants. It was the first of several "outages" we experienced in my one month in the prestigious institute. We were waiting for the results of the engineering and medical college applications to come through. I had even attended the REC exams and interview; in fact, got a placement in REC Rourkela (I think!).
Second Idiot - BE Production Engineering, PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore.
Going to Rourkela meant going more than the stipulated 100km away from home (Coimbatore was only walking distance and Chennai just spitting distance - for the family). I am just kidding. It meant going too far away and spending money in hostel. PSG Tech came through in the state entrance, as I had ticked it as my first preference. My maternal uncle, incidentally, happened to be in Coimbatore. Just mentioning. My interview with the Principal during course selection landed me in Production (and not Mechanical, which is what I wanted) not that I had any clue as to what engineers in these specific disciplines did at that time; all I knew was I liked tinkering with stuff, like a mechanic; so, mechanical, a word sounding close enough seemed fine. Incidentally one of my 2 brothers was doing his 4th year as mechanical engineer; he was always looking serious; he had that look of someone "munnerufying" in life; so mechanical engineering it had to be!
First day in a combined class with students of Applied Physics - whoah! I had not seen so many hot looking girls in one place in my 17 years of blissful existence. Er, forget the fact that there were only 10 or 15 girls, but that was 15 too many for me! About 4-5 of them actually looked like potential "sightu"s - TamBrahms too (but, of course!). That was the best thing about PSG Tech. What? You were waiting for me to tell me the other good things about the place? Sorry. I should have said best, and only, thing! For every 2nd day or so, we had to carry this ridiculous wooden triangular stuff in our shoulder - T square? Protractor? Detractor? I forget the name of this engineering implement which was the equivalent of a medic's "masal dosa" white coat - and pretend that we were serious draughtsmen at work copying, or for some of us lost souls, constructing new art forms on draught paper. And then came the Applied Maths classes - the only things I recognised during those tutorials were the arabic numerals neatly ensconced between various symbols. The numbers stood out like nuts in a large bar of chocolate. The saving grace during those miserable days were four things: 1) my longstanding school chums, Shankar & Senthil were in PSG with me - we used to do combined "sighting" 2) my eldest brother was medical rep in those days and evenings were spent with him productively in either restaurants or drinking beer in the local watering holes 3) my uncle's family - had a great time with my cousins - unforgettable days! 4) my eldest brother's closest pal, the late Natraj, who kept us fed and entertained, many a dreary night. May his soul rest in peace.
Peelamedu, RS Puram, Ram Nagar, Seetha Pudur, SaiBaba Colony, Railway Station, Gazebo Restaurant, Annapoorna, Gowri Shankar, Esso Bunk, Natraj's house, Brindavan Lodge, Nehru Stadium, Pazhamudhir Cholai, dhaba parotta kuruma on Avinashi Road.....the list is long.
I think, as fate or the medical fraternity would have it, I was destined for better things than getting hitched to the girl from Madurai doing Mechanical, whom I really liked a lot! I still remember the shenanigan surrounding my exit from Coimbatore.
The results for the medical college entrance had come late that year due to some lawsuits filed by entrants (I think). So, got a telegram from my parents in Salem that I had secured a place in Stanley Medical College (again, I had ticked SMC as my first pref) and commanding me (yes!) to take the Blue Mountain train that night to proceed to Madras and that my mom would join me in Salem in the train. My eldest brother had left to Ooty the night before on a sales tour. No mobile phones in those days, remember! I had no way of contacting him then, so after informing my uncle, proceeded to Madras per command from my mother. My eldest bro fumes to this day that I left CBE overnight without letting him know! He was more angry that I had left CBE than having left engineering.
Third Idiot - MBBS, Stanley Medical College, Madras.
After having gone to my chiththi's place in the morning - she & her family have withstood the onslaught of perennial armies of guests, with the greatest sense of humour and sanguinity (3 cheers to them!) - left for SMC, that temple of medical education, situated in the wonderfully named Monegar Choultry, in the picturesque area of Mint / Broadway, from whose womb, millions of great doctors have been delivered (okay, may not be all of them, but let's pretend, shall we). We were greeted by an elderly character by the name of Vidyasagar (he was my dad's English professor's son, so approx same vintage as my dad), wielding a large jolna pai near the admissions desk. I thought he was the assistant professor of some subject or may be even associate dean, only to be informed later that he was very "attached" to the college and was still getting to grips with transcending the 3rd year. Such was his love for the college.
Having completed the formalities, returned home (aunt's place in Mandaveli) to chill. I had 3 cousins - 3 boys at home - so there was no dearth of entertainment. Either ghali cricket or hand tennis as long as daylight allowed. Of course, great DD in the evenings. The grand sum of 1 channel, starting with "Vayalum Vazhvum" until the news at night, all programs were watched assiduously. Of course, Chitrahaar and Oliyum OLiyum days were the highlights followed by the movie on Sunday. Remarkable days those were!
Of course, there was this little matter of having to attend medical school amidst all this feverish pace of life. It so happened that it was the monsoon season (remember, because of the delay in admissions, medical college started only in September) and Madras was literally flooded and it was pouring non-stop for 3 days. On the fourth day, I was contemplating about life in general, and this particular problem of having to navigate through the small river that was running outside the house, when the door burst open and in came the serious figure of my engineer brother - monsoon rains couldn't stop him, such was his concern for his little brother. Having verified that college had opened 3 days ago and that my ass had not moved more than 10 metres from the centre of the house, he portrayed his concern forthwith by kicking my backside with his booted hindquarter. Having sent packing from the house with nothing but a frail little brolly to protect me from the cruel elements, I reached Mandaveli's bus terminus after a little while and boarded bus no 4E. Entertaining though it was, this route took about the same time to reach Mint as it would for a bus to reach Madras from Salem.
Having reached the college with dirty feet and soggy clothes, I entered the hallowed halls of the Anat (short for anatomy) block and was asked by a stern looking tutor to proceed straight to the dissection hall on the 2nd floor. When I reached the portals of that wonderful hall, was greeted by a smell that many will not forget for most of their life. The stench of dead bodies immersed in formalin and taken out for the express purpose of educating ignoramuses like me, combined with the smell of locomotives in the shunting yard behind the anat block - made for an aroma that will completely put anybody off food for a good few years. But, I was made of sterner stuff! The hall was already overflowing with white coated young chappies and chappesses - about 150 or so. And so MANY girls! Okay, the overcast clouds lifted, nay dispelled, and out came the fairies. I can put up with ANY smell to just be near and look at so MANY girls! It just required closing one's nostrils for about an hour or so each day - I could do that!
The dissection hour was followed by a class in anatomy - this wonderful man with a neatly barbered goatee proclaimed the origins and attachments of the muscles in the foot - words like adductor, abductor, hallucis, pollicis, pronator, supinator flew past past us thick and fast. Undeterred, we stood our ground and took all that in our stride. After all we were gonna be daawkktuuurrrsss!! By the end of the first week, I could actually pronounce a full anatomical term without messing it up - extensor digitorum longus - there you go! But, I was close to taking up another college soon. Hey, I had done 3 colleges - in & out of 2 in a jiffy - how difficult would it be to do one more. I even thought about running off somewhere north without telling anybody, such was my love for this new college. But, then came time to move out of my aunt's place and into the famous SMC Men's Hostel, another prime example of a fair accommodation with the highest standards of hygiene that each and every doctor exhorted and strove for! Yeah right!
This was the most sordid affair in my entire life. Okay, there were a few more, I admit, but this was the first big one. The hostel team couldn't find enough place to accommodate the entire lot of guys who had come from all the outlying districts of Tamilnadu. So 14 of us were packed into one room - a 15 x 15 feet affair - people talk about cattle class these days in aircrafts; we were like cattle on the ground! I could well imagine how it would have been for all those prisoners cattled into rail compartments during the holocaust (incidentally, I cried through the last 30-45 minutes of Schindler's List in the cinema hall and have not watched that movie on tape or DVD ever again!). We got to know each other pretty well in that one month we were shacked up in that one room; too well for some!
Then came the affair of eating in the mess - oh, what a mess it was! - I do not mean it in the culinary sense, of course. But, the human capability to take punishment repeatedly is so ingrained, that we marked the attendance register there for the three veLais without fail. we were 17 going on 18, with hormones pumping a million litres of testosterone everyday and nothing to do about it bar playing basketball or football or cricket for hours on end in the evenings (frying peanuts doesn't count!). Such exhaustions required a gynormous amount of calorie compensation. And that, one got in good measure in the mess, forget the taste. I am being harsh. The pongal, lumpy though it was came with medhu vadai - we ate the pongal as side dish. The pooris were not great but the kelangu was good - so poori became a side dish. Similarly, half a kg of potato chips went well with fried rice or biryani. After a few months we started loving it. We did not know at that time that it was one form of Stockholm Syndrome. We belonged to that naive age you see.
Contact with family was usually by means of inland letters - they cost 4 annas (25p) in those days and later became 35p. There was a single phone in the hostel for public use from where we could make calls home (if you were in the lucky strata of society with a phone in the house - thankfully I didn't have to worry about that problem). Calls from home were picked up by an attendant who was employed for this sole purpose. Of course, he was never there 99% of the time, given that it was a government job in India.
I missed my folks very badly, having spent the best part of 17 years at home, spoilt by availability of daily home cooked food. In some ways, my dad had prepared us kids in the house by sending us out on errands or expeditions outside town even, on our own at times. But, let me assure you, it certainly didn't prepare me for putting up with 13 other guys in a room! Nor for the wonderful facilities in the great Stanley Men's Hostel!
I used to feel really depressed at times, missing my mom, dad, sister and brothers. And my beloved Love'O Colony, Sankara Matam, Kanchi Matam, Sharadambal, RajaGanapthi Koil, Patta Patta Koil, VaOoCee Market, 2nd Agraharam, Kali Amman Koil, Krishna Coffee Bar, Hotel Ananda, Hotel Vilwadhri, Salem Cafe, Siva Vishnu Guha Kandha, Imperial, Central, Palace Theatre, Sangam, Alankar, Sangeetha, Kumara Malai, Kandashram....the list is long! I used to cry when I was alone in the early days - it was only for a very very short time though. Something then happened to me that took away all my ills and worries. That something was "friends". I was very fortunate to have some wonderful friends, who made life outside the home that we were used to, tolerable, pleasant even. Thank you guys! And gals!!
My subsequent journey in medical college was made easy by having my focus divided equally between two important things in life - study and kadalai. Became doctors, after a fashion, eventually! Very likely ten years after exiting medical school. More for some like me. The rest, as they say, is geography!
This blog is dedicated to my puppy nephew Sai Prasad Ganesh who is feeling the mighty pressure of life weighing on him having just joined an engineering course in the US of A! Cheer up big guy, it gets better! Cheers!
