Oi Chilli Chicken!

I love Chinese food. I do not know how the addiction began but Chinese food makes me salivate almost similar in the way I salivate when I see... ummm forget it. Lets just keep it to "it makes me salivate". I love all types of Chinese food, right from food prepared in posh, swanky over-priced restaurants to the roadside "laal-dabbas" run mostly always by Nepali guys (I don't know if it increases the authenticity of the claim that the food is Chinese). There have been times when I have been told that a particular restaurant serves authentic Chinese food but I have no way of verifying that. The only way I could do that is either

• Visit China and eat Chinese food there (ofcourse there it would be just food :P )
• Tag along with a group of Chinese who certifies that the food served is authentic Chinese

Unfortunately none of the above 2 has happened yet. It has obviously been told repeatedly that the version we get here is heavily Indianized to suit our taste but seriously speaking, I have no complaints.

It is a funny coincidence that most of my Bong friends love Chinese food. It is a possibility that its an anamoly in my group of friends but if you are reading this, then just think about it. Does your Bong friend's eyes light up everytime you say Chilli Chicken? Does his words come with a "slurrrp" sound when you tell him that you plan to go for a Triple Schezwan? Have you noticed his involuntary smile when you decide to order Chinese? I think its a fact that a majority of Bongs love Chinese food except maybe 8 or 9 guys who became a PETA member and turned vegetarian and then realized Chinese food no longer tastes that great.

I am not sure why this liking for Chinese food has developed among Bongs. Maybe its the proximity, maybe its the Chinese influx or maybe its the deep connection we have with the Reds. It was a great idea to be inspired by the Chinese and import their food and communism (ok ok I agree there were various other sources of influence for communism to enter the hearts and minds of Bongs). Now I personally do not have anything against communism, but then again we Indians like to Indianize any sort of import. I think we should have kept the Indianization limited to the food and left the Communism alone. Take a look at West Bengal and you'll know what it has done to the state. (Supporters of Communism can take my case, I have no objection whatsoever) The food though has definitely been a hit!

I remember, during our college days, I used to indulge a lot in the "Laal-Dabba" Chinese. And I used to make Nicholas and Sameer accompany me. Fortunately for them, these dabbas opened up only in the evenings. There was a high probability that I would have made them eat the same thing for lunch too. Later on after careful discussions, we assigned a particular day in the week for Chinese food. I think it was saturdays. And of course, celebrations naturally meant more of it :D

If the Bongs ever decided to attack the Chinese I am sure that the only thing they would bring back from there would be more recipes. Spoils of war, you may say. Anything else would be morally just wrong! But then such is the initmate relation of a Bong and his food, specially Chinese.

Panchgani

I try to leave town during the year end. Its this weird idea I have developed that if I do that, then I have a great action packed year. Fortunately its been true for the past 3 years. So I shall continue with the tradition.

The 2008 year end was an interesting one. That was the last time the 3 Stooges went out together. It was one of those rare occasions when I was taking the initiative while the other 2 were cribbing and being major pain! Usually it was always the other way round. Nicholas would plan something, Sameer would agree and I would crib and crib till they forced me to join them. It was crazy. I kept trying to organize the trip, but we were just not able to decide on the days that would be convenient for all of us. We each had our limitations. I wanted to get back on the 31st so that I could spend the New Year with my family. Sameer had his issues and Nicholas had his.

Anyways somehow we managed and it was decided that Nickso and myself would leave for panchgani on the 29th of December night and Sameer would join us on the 30th. We would then be returning on the 31st. We had also thought of going to Mahabaleshwar but then that got cancelled for reasons mentioned below.

We reached at a really odd hour the next morning (it was more like night) at Panchgani. We were sleepy and it was cold! We hunted for a place and somehow managed to get a hotel. We had made plans to see some place at sunrise but once we hit the bed, nothing else mattered. When we got up, we realized that we couldn't survive there for a single hour. The place was "YUCK!" and there were bed bugs. So we decided that we needed to find some other good place. I am not sure why but we had actually budgeted our trip. Anyways we hunted around for another hotel and then we chanced upon Mount View Hotel. It was just awesome! An old house with a fantastic view. Just the perfect place for 3 friends to catch up on life.

We walked around Panchgani enjoying the weather and the sights and sound. Reminded us of our trip to Sikkim. Sameer joined us in the afternoon and we ended up eating the "Laal Dabba Chinese", remembering our college day chinese dinners. :D We then went to a place called Table Top, which is basically a huge flat area on the top of the Panchgani hill.
Obviously we took one of the usually not take routes and ended trekking up to the place. Really nice place to get a panaromic view of the surrounding hills, lakes and the city.

By the time we came down, it was almost dark. We roamed around in the town for a while and then headed back to the hotel. Played a lot of Table Tennis, arranged for a camp-fire that we hand planned for the night and then headed out for dinner. Came back after dinner and made ourselves a cozy little fire and then we started chatting. No idea how long we chatted but it covered a lot of areas.

Just like our days in the fourth year of Engineering when we would go for dinner to Bahadur Sheikh naka and then walk down to a nearby bridge and then spend an hour talking about everything under the sun. The warm fire in the cold night really felt very good.

The next morning we went around investigating the surrounding areas and ended up modeling quite a bit :) Pretty impressed with the outcome. Well the problem that came up was that we wanted to get back but Nicholas kept insisting that he wanted to stay. He wanted us to stay back too. The reasons became apparent later on that year but we each had our prior commitments. But we were both glad that he had a very interesting New Year that night :). So in our own ways we all got what we wanted.

I guess that's how things are. Its all alright at the end :)

TP = Taar Paar

Our college had a few awesome rituals and customs. These were customs passed on from generation to generation (I mean from one batch to the other). "Taar Paar" was one of the first things that our seniors taught us. It was for surviving in the college for the coming four years.

Our college, though worthless, had professors who were extremely paranoid about attendance. Apart from a rare few the others were disastrous. Could seriously screw anyone's enthusiasm for education. Only those who have passed out of my college knows what an achievement it was. (Not to mention that it was under the extremely, uhmmm, how should I put it? awesome university... The Great Mumbai University) I can already see a smile on all those tortured souls who have graduated out of MU :) Peace brothers! Peace! We have been there! Done that!

Alright so back to my story. We, the hostelites of RSCOE, solemnly swear that we are upto no good :), Yup! That was the basic funda. Our college had strict rules about getting back inside the campus. I think the deadline was 7 or something. Don't recall it now. And the guards used to make a huge hue and cry if students came in late, take their ID Cards, complain, and god knows what. Dumasses! Anyways, it didn't suit the students and so they found a way out. It was worse for students who used to come to Bombay on weekends for coaching classes. They generally returned on sunday nights. And if they left without the college's permission, then they would not be let in. The funny thing was that the college would not allow students to come back on weekends even though it was an attempt at trying out ways to pass out and graduate. Of course that didn't stop anyone from leaving the campus at their own will :P

During one of our ragging (oops, introductory sessions) nights, our seniors introduced us to the concept of TP.

"Abey! TP kya hota hai pata hai?"
"Haan bhaiyya! Time Pass"
"Ch!@#y@ hai kya? Time Pass! Abey gadhe yahan Time Pass ke liye TP karna padta hai. TP ka matlab hai Taar Paar. Campus ka Taar Paar karoge to hi kuch kar paoge. Jitni jaldi ho sake seekh lena"
"Theek hai bhaiyya! Kal hi seekh lenge"

Thus we were introduced to the idea of TP. One of our batch-mates who had come earlier and now was a professional TP guy, showed us the route to freedom. A section of the route fell in direct view of the guards, though they used to be generally quite far away. During the day, that was a tricky part. Usually what students did was slip out with the day scholars and return the TP way in the night. But there were emergencies when we needed to leave college during college hours and that too was an issue :( So TP was inevitable.

So we needed to pass that area within a flash of a second, somewhat similar to the cartoons where the sly fox slips from behind tree to tree to reach the hen coop. After that we had to pass through some pretty disgusting areas, with certain areas covered with extremely questionable material. I think I'll skip the Quantitative Analysis of it. We just tried not to step on it.

And then there was a wall with barbed wire on the top. We had to slip between that. Pretty difficult in the beginning but then we got used to it. The adrenaline rush was just awesome! :) Towards the end, there were guys who had literally stopped using the main gate. They TPed, even when we had authorized timeout. :D The authorities obviously knew that something fishy was going on, but never really was able to catch anyone (not in my knowledge). At times when the number of luggages were large, we had accomplices in the hostel, who would throw them out from the windows, once we were out. Getting in with a lot of luggage was a little more difficult. Care had to be taken to make sure that we were not caught between the main road and the point of entry.

It was a fun activity :) More like infiltrating enemy camps and then escaping to freedom after the mission was over :)

The Night After

My first night at Chiplun passed by pretty uneventful after the initial hiccup. The next morning my Dad came to the hostel pretty early. I was planning to attend my first class of Engineering. Was pretty excited about it. I had generally inquired about classes and had realized that college had begun quite sometime back and guys who had joined during the earlier rounds had in fact covered quite a lot. Also came to know from them that students had to buy Drafters, Drawing Boards and Tools for Workshop. I was pretty overwhelmed as I had NOTHING with me at that point of time, except for a couple of note-books. Now that I look back, I was pretty ignorant about what all a student needs for Engineering. But anyways I had decided that I would manage everything myself and found out that all I had to do to get the basic necessities was to go around asking seniors if they have anything to sell off/discard. One small problem though, they were seniors waiting for juniors to come in :P

Fortunately, the guys of room number 9 had told me from their ragging experience, the code of conduct. "Koi bhi senior dikhe, seedha hello sir bol dena." Showed me one senior and told, "woh dikha to Jai Maharashtra bolna", pointed to another one and said, "usse duur rehna :P". They also told me a few seniors who would probably be able to help me with the things I required. So I went around collecting stuff, making sure not to make eye contact with anyone in the corridors. 2 reasons - I couldn't distinguish between seniors and juniors cause I knew no one; These guys could see fear in the eyes :P. I later realized that it was easy to spot a junior (Once I became a senior :D)

The next morning I was pretty confident (I think it was sunlight that brought the confidence :D, sort of like in horror movies, where you don't feel scared if its a day scene) Soon after my Dad, in comes Sameer and Nicholas! Abhange (our store in-charge and a kamina) leading the infantry :P. Sameer (henceforth also known as Sam) had come with his uncle while Nicholas (henceforth also known as Nickso) with his Dad. Sameer had an expression of being extremely bored and generally disinterested in all the going on. His uncle though seemed very cheerful. Nicholas looked like he would cry any moment while uncle had a serious, gentle look about him. I am sure Nicholas was the saddest of us all to come to Chiplun. It was decided that we would have breakfast and then go attend class while our Dads would make the general arrangements :)

Anyways lets just go on to the night. :) We were settled in and generally trying to get acquainted with each other. Just for the purpose of anonymity let us call ourselves Alpha, Beta and Gamma :D. There was another code of conduct in the hostel. If a senior walks in, you stand up! Or u r screwed. We were generally sitting and each doing our stuff when a senior walks in. Beta and Gamma got up but Alpha conveniently continued to lie on the bed. The senior found it extremely insulting. He spoke to B & G and threatened A that he was yet to see fireworks. All of us were pretty scared about that statement. We decided that we should just sleep off. I don't know when exactly but suddenly very late in the night, there was some serious noise happening. Alpha was being given lessons on respect. What happened was that Alpha had opened the door after some heavy banging. It was the senior who had come earlier with the scary one (refer above "usse duur rehna") and a couple more. The scary one had a rod and he was threatening that if Alpha didn't respect seniors, then the rod would go up a certain not so nice place. Well I think Alpha remembered that for quite sometime.

Meanwhile Beta and Gamma had realized that something was fishy. Beta had raised his head to see what was happening but under strict orders of the scary one, "Abey tu uth mat! soye reh!", decided to follow orders. By the time Gamma woke up things were almost done and he decided to carry on with the sleep. There's a very high possibility that Alpha didn't sleep much that night.

The next morning we didn't speak much about it, though we do laugh about those days now :) The following night was better... lol pretty hilarious, now that I recall. :)

The First Night

No Chemical Locha tonight. Just not in a mood for any gibberish. As I had told earlier, I have had an awesome time in college. The 3 Stooges had always been together since day one. I'll just introduce the guys tonight, actually I don't know whether they will pool in money to get me killed once I am done but what can I say, these are stories that just needs to be recorded in some form or other. I'll try to keep the names secret while sharing some (umm....) embarrassing stuff but then again they weren't really embarrassing when they happened.

The year 2000 was probably the worst for students in Maharashtra applying for Engineering. There were thousands of students applying, the authorities had no clue as to what they were doing and the Mumbai University (MU) top brass was going cuckoo with their plans to increase seats. I think a lot of students spent the first year hoping that seats would increase and they would leave the god-foresaken college that they had foolishly joined under the pretext of joining a Mumbai University College. But then we were from a category, which was basically hopeless. Its the fabled OMS (Out of Maharashtra State) category. The OMS students basically get all the left-over seats after all the students of Maharashtra got some sort of a seat.

As is the trend, MU always runs late. By the time we joined college it was just a couple of months before the first semester examinations began. I came from Hyderabad, cause Dad was working there and that's where I had completed my class 12. I was the first guy in the room (26) and I had come in with just a suitcase. The first day I had reached there, I was shit scared. The place seemed pathetic. It was near a village called Aloré (ya it has that é). Chiplun city was quite a few kilometres away.

The thing I was really scared of was the ragging part. I have spent my younger years in a PG with lots of kids, so I wasn't really bothered about living alone. But ragging was something that I had no idea about. My Dad thought it would be a good idea that I stayed with him at the hotel on the first night and wait for the other students who were expected to come the next day. The problem with that was I was just pushing the inevitable. I knew I had to face my fears (seniors :P) that day or the next. So in spite of the fact that I had no bed, mattress or pillows, I opted to stay back in the hostel room. I had the stupid idea that I would be able to acquaint myself better alone.  A few guys I had befriended on the first day thought I was crazy (guys from room number 9 I think, I shall introduce them later) to miss out on Shalom (the hotel where Dad had put up) and spend the night alone in that state. I later realized that one of the guys was actually scared of staying alone in the night in a room, hehehehe!

Anyways I wanted to keep things quiet. The seniors were already sniffing around for juniors. They had heard that the last round of admissions had completed and students were coming in. Well I think I had switched of everything by 9 that night and was trying to convince myself not to show any sort of disappointment cause if I did, my Dad would have immediately taken me away. (He was pretty pissed off with the college on the first day itself). Not that I didn't want to run away myself, but it was my decision to join a MU college right from the beginning, though I wanted to join Computer Engg (another story) and not Electronics.

I think it was around 11 or so, there was a loud knock. I knew that my time was up :) And I also knew that resisting would just delay the process and make it more difficult. So opened the door and saw a bunch of guys standing outside. Asked me a few questions, realized that I had just arrived and probably felt pity to see the sorry state I was sleeping in (A bed-sheet on the floor with my bag as a pillow). Told me that they would be back again. My heart was racing the whole time but I was pretty happy with the turn of events on the first night. I had no more disturbances that night. The next night though was a different story all together... :D

The 3 Stooges

I had a very good day today :) How should I put it? It was like a complete day. I got a lot of work done (writing documents is a killer activity!) , met up with Sameer for lunch after a long time, (at our favourite KFC. The zinger burgers are to die for) and practiced Salsa (we choreographed our own steps for the first time). There's really nothing that I could crib about today.

I am really excited about the Project Management thing happening at work. It would really feel nice if we can set an example with our project and apply it to all new projects. But that's a long way to go because a lot of things look good on paper but implementation is a bitch. Bhakti is doing an awesome work in customizing the existing ESA (European Space Agency) Project Management standards and guidelines. I have managed to get a preliminary introductory document in place to introduce the stuff to the management. Lets see if the Chairman will be impressed but then again it'll be sometime before it reaches him. I just hope I am not bothered with all the other activities at work (which is obviously not going to happen). I sometimes feel that I seriously need to get my job profile sorted out.

It's always fun talking with Sameer. I remember in college, Sameer, Nicholas and myself used to have these long discussions on various things in life such as ideologies, principles, girls, marriage, philosophy and sometimes studies too :). I miss hanging out with them. And it's sad that life has got us so entangled that in spite of being in the same city, it takes us 5 months of planning to finally meet up. Nicholas has gone down under and God knows when he'll come back. Australia is really not making me feel good at all. At the current situation, I have an extreme negative bias towards that country. Its a very personal issue of mine and I have nothing against the country except a few oblivious blokes. Ok, getting back to my meet with Sameer. We caught up over a zinger meal, gave me good advice as usual. Its amazing how different he is now compared to the first time that I saw him come into room number 26 (I think that was the number) in 2000. Nicholas and his Dad followed. The 3 of us were always together except in second year when we ended up being in different rooms. It was so damn tragic. Fortunately by the end of the 3rd semester we were back to being roomies (total jhol giri ofcourse! we were officially still in different rooms :P) Right from our first year, it was always the 3 of us with our fourth partner changing every year.

We have had such awesome times together. Right from trips to Guhagar to Sikkim, we have gone to a lot of places together and hope that there will be a lot more places to go to. I don't know why we started calling ourselves the 3 stooges, cause I don't ever remember doing anything similar to the actual 3 stooges but ya that's how we like to refer ourselves as. There are so many stories about college and us, that maybe I should just make a label of it and start putting in some of our awesome adventures once in a while :)

P.S. Had an awesome Salsa session today and actually did our own little choreography. I ought to write down the steps so that I don't forget. Also realized that I need a lot more practice cause I am still very stiff and I do not have the smoothness in the movements. Its still jerky :( . But ya atleast I remember the steps better.