Well now it's college time guys...........
My first college was A.M.Jain college, Meenambakkam. That was a good college. I was there for just 2 months. I love the thayir saadham of this college canteen. It was full of thayir (Curd) and rice blended in such a nice manner. It had curry leaves, green chillies and mustard seeds. And AMJ had a good Cricket team too. Then came the news that i had been allotted an engineering seat in Government Institute of Techonogy, Vellore. I was so happy, so sad. All my emotions were out there for one sec. Happy to go back to my place, sad hmmmmm... I dunno. I just felt a tinge of sadness too. Probably i was sad that i missed 2 yrs of life in Vellore.
Now comes those glorious 4 yrs in Thanthai Periyar Government Institute of Technology. Those days i still cherish. My best friends from College are Karthikeyan Padmanabhan, Satish Kumar, Muruganandham, Konguraj and Raj Thirupathy. The birth of this college is a story by itself. It was born due to political rivalry between Viswanathan of VEC and Durai Murugan, MLA Katpadi. VEC was a private institution and the government took control of it and renamed it as TPGIT. We were the first batch of student who were starting our first year in TPGIT. The previous batches were all students transferred from VEC.
Well to start with we did not have a building of our own. Our first year campus was in Officer's line, Vellore, opposite to Hotel Ganga. Taj, Apsara and Lakshmi theaters were very near to our first year campus. Ragging wasn't much mainly coz the first year was seperated from the rest of our college. Very interesting character that we met in the first year was the one-eyed jack in chemistry department. Well the interesting thing is he used to weave stories and get money from each one of us. This would happen when we go to the room to clean our pippettes burettes and test tubes. And by the end of the year our man had a lunaaaaaaaaaaaa moped.
For the second year we moved to the main campus in Bagayam. It was next to CMC campus. Was a nice location. Actually it is a polytechnic. And the worst thing was when we come by bus the conductors would never say that stopping as engineering college. They used to say polytechnic. It offended us much. But nothing could be done. The major things in second year was arranging and rearranging of major studies by students. Some chose ECE some mechanical. This is when Satish Kumar joined us from Government Engineering college Tirunelveli. Our group began to take shape. My mom moved to Vellore and my father got transferred from Tiruvallur to Vellore too. So we were back as family in the same Gandhinagar locality. But this time around we had to rent a small place that didn't have garden.
TPGIT was a place with dreams some realised theirs and some had theirs shattered. Our group was formed. Satish Kumar, Karthikeyan.P, Konguraj, Muruganandham and me. Raj Thirupathy and Sasi Kumar were associate members. We guys had nothing to do but to pass comments. Satish was the topper of the college. A real brain. Konguraj is the real electronic engr. He would just take some old tape recorder that is not running and assemble a crude one for our room. That was our entertainment. Muruganandham loves to read tamil novels by Balakumaran. Karthikeyan.P is a gymmer. And meeeeee the narrator. hahahahaha.
TPGIT was famous for it's stone benches. Stone benches were ppl lost the most important part of their belongings, their heart. There were numerous love pairs among our classmates and ofcourse seniors and juniors too. And u can see them sitting on the stone bench every morning, afternoon and evening. What would they talk ? God knows. I certainly didn't think they talked about electronics nor politics. Well do i sound like a person who is polambifying (lamenting) coz i didn't have a girl friend ? Other places where u can find pairs of TPGIT students are Jalakandeswarar Temple (Vellore fort) and the lawns of Vellore fort. Vaazhga Kaadhal. We were entertained for 3 yrs by such pairs.
And how could i forget the faculties
? Vijaya, Rahila, Hemalatha and Thirunavukarasu were the main faculty in
our college. Our favorite was Thirunavukarasu. Not that we liked his class
or way of teaching but again entertainment.
"Sollungappa oru chipla evalavu
transistor irukkumnu theriyuma ungalukku ?" (Do u know how many transistors
does a chip (what chip) have ?).
He would then look around. Satisfied
that nobody knows anything, he would go on "panendu lacham (12 lakhs)".
Well he did it in all the classes
and still nobody answered his question. It would be very funny. Hell no
i am not belittling his contribution towards our studies. His lab would
be the one which preps our marks. He was very generous and would urge the
external to be generous too.
We went on tours every year. The only batch to do so. Cause normally second year would be a no tour year. I dunno the reason. We went to Bangalore, Bombay, Trivandrum. The tour to Kerala was very memorable. Thirupathy and me would have lost our lives on the Ashtamudi lake bridge. We were just talking and talking and crossed the road. We were distracted by a loud creech of a car breaking hard.
We went to ISRO and saw all those showable secrets. We witnessed the high level security within ISRO. We had a very friendly official who, after seeing our TN number plate on our bus, was happy to show around. Much more than we were actually supposed to see. We were very happy with his efforts and decided to take a picture of us with him. Nothing happened as we stood and couple of our classmates took out their cameras. The moment there was a click sound we were surrounded by gun toting guards. Our cameras were seized and film rolls were exposed. Very good pictures of sun rise in Kanyakumari were lost. But national security cannot be compromised.
I did finish my B.E. with not so flying colours. But yup i did finish it. Then it is time to search for jobs. Back to Chennai.
Websites related to Vellore.