CRAZY COLLEGE CAPERS…….
A good look at the baaaaaaaaad times we had………
_______________________________________________
by Prakash Subbarao
I passed the old alma mater the other day. It had been
several years since I had seen her. I smiled at her. She smiled back.
“It’s been a long time, baby” she seemed to say. I agreed.
Too long a time.
For us, college was a time of great fun with a bit of education thrown in.
The learning was incidental.
We soon found that lecturers failed to be amazed at the sudden drop in
attendance just after they took the wretched thing. One moment there were
66 dudes in the class. The next moment, the figure had dropped alarmingly
by almost 50%!
Slinking out was an art. It was initially performed in the blink of an eye
lest the stern eye of the prof catch you in the act. Later, as prof and
pupils got more familiar with each other, familiarity bred contempt and
guys became slovenly in leaving. The prof chose to look the other way
while the dudes dawdled their way out of class.
Still some more familiarity later, the prof announced with a resigned sigh
and the droop if his shoulders that he would give attendance to any one
who chose to leave. This announcement was made when things had started to
go out of hand. However these announcements were generally made by
unpopular profs who were heckled in class and wanted the unruly elements
out. Such profs enjoyed 100% attendance and 0% peace of mind. But more of
that later.
Our class room was a short distance from the canteen……that venerable
institution where attendance, though not formally taken, was mandatory. It
was at the canteen where plots and plans were hatched; plots against profs
and plans to attract chicks.
In short “them were interesting days”.
The canteen, being close to the classroom, was the spot where my
classmates parked their bikes. In those days the bikes consisted of mainly
“Vespa’s” – the Bajaj’s hadn’t been spawned yet. And these valiant Vespa’s
were vanquished without a fight – any old key would fit and start them.
I had a classmate called Yeshwant who had a Vespa. He was a studious sort
of bloke initially and a nice guy to boot. Hence his Vespa did the most
running around town without his prior permission when he was in class. One
day, he decided that he wasn’t feeling too well and needed a hot college
canteen coffee to perk him up. As he sauntered towards the canteen a
little cry of horror left his lips. “My Vespa!” he screamed. “It’s been
stolen!”. We had to quickly dissuade him from calling the cops and
explained the facts of life to him. His Vespa had become wife to many a
classmate who rode the wretched thing hard and fast. He was shocked.
Thereafter he started bunking class just to keep an eye on his beloved
Vespa. Still later, he made me its guardian, giving me a spare key and
asking me to keep an eye on it. Thus when he attended class I wheeled
around on his Vespa. My canteen attendance fell. No one complained.
There was a particular lady prof who taught us maths. Her initials were
VKD; Vasanthi was her name. She was good looking in a kind of way but her
English accent was atrocious. Our gang, though mildly attracted to her
looks was repelled by her tongue. Overall we gave her a neutral rating and
she, likewise, chose to peacefully coexist with us troublesome dudes and
things drifted along. She cast a jaundiced eye, however, on a fellow
classmate called Narasimha Reddy. What in him incurred her wrath, we shall
never know.
Narasimha was a very quiet guy. One of those stinking rich but studious
Reddys. He had a cat's grey eyes. Maybe she didn’t like that. Maybe she
had a hidden hatred of Reddy’s for reasons unknown. In any case she
targeted him with her icy wit and ridiculed his lack of knowledge of
things quadratic, equations included.
In addition to being stinking rich, Reddy was also an extremely calm and
unflappable guy. We had never seen him ruffled. Ever. This irritated VKD
no end.
One day, matters came to a head. The beautiful Vasanthi was getting
increasingly irritated that she was unable to irritate Reddy. And in her
extremely illogic irritation she asked Reddy to get out of her class.
“Why?” he mildly inquired. “Out!” she screamed hysterically. There is no
arguing with a hysterical math teacher and so Reddy outed. With great calm
and dignity. He may perhaps have taken a few extra seconds to exit just to
irritate her further but she stood there, teeth clenched, hands clenched
red in the face.
Five minutes after Reddy’s exited in disgrace, all hell broke loose!.
People were running screaming helter and skelter. The slightly beautiful
Vasanthi, screaming in fear ran down the corridor sans her textbooks; sans
her hand bag.
What had caused all this? Yes, astute reader, it was Reddy. How did you
guess?
Rejected by VKD and dejected because he had been exited from class without
sufficient reason, Reddy brooded over a cup of coffee in the
canteen…….that vile place where anti-establishment plots are hatched. As
he looked up, he saw with interest that a troop of monkeys was in full
strength near the canteen. (In those days in Bangalore, our simian cousins
were not an endangered species and made their presence felt most often
than not). Reddy also noted that the monkeys were making attempts to steal
peanuts being sold by a vendor who was sitting outside the canteen gate.
Monkeys and peanuts, Reddy mused. In a flash the quadratic equation fell
firmly in place in his over heated mind. He later says that all kinds of
differential equations also passed before his eyes in dazzling
technicolour. Dy/dx, where dy was the speed at which VKD exited the
classroom…….dx obviously being the function of time.
In that split second a plan was hatched.
“Give me all your peanuts!” Reddy ordered the bewildered vendor “I am
buying your entire stock!”. The stock was in a sack, obviously. So there
you have Reddy, lugging a heavy sack of peanuts with one hand, tossing
peanuts to monkeys with another and inching his way towards the classroom.
Slowly but steadily, like the Pied Piper of the college, he vended his way towards
the class with around 40 monkeys in tow.
When he reached the class, he lifted the sack in one swift motion and
threw its contents into the class. Before you could say "Hanuman" there
were monkeys everywhere in the class room. Before you could say "Ravana"
there were super-excited-almost-hysterical guys acting like monkeys and
jumping from bench to bench trying to avoid the already excited monkeys.
Picture 65 of us screaming dudes plus 40 excited monkeys plus a screaming
VKD. Picture also, a beaming Reddy, standing outside the class, arms
folded, a smile playing on his lips.
There was bedlam.
VKD swore that she would never take our class again. She kept her word in
this regard. A huge huge person, ugly as hell but (we later learned) with
a heart of gold, became our maths teacher. He was so incredibly
intimidating that there were actually moments of regret that VKD was no
longer in our midst.
But that’s the way the cookie crumbles, as James Hadley Chase so
succinctly puts it.
Bye for now!
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