Happy Days

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Disclaimer: This is NOT a movie review for Happy Days.

PS: Long post ahead.

Even since I wrote this, I’ve been literally obsessed with “Are Re”. And not just that one song, actually all songs from the movie Happy Days. Despite not quite understanding them, I love those songs. Period. Day in and day out those songs run on an endless loop in my media player. I even wanted to set Are Re for my caller tune but mom threatened not to call me at all if I did that. Sigh. A couple of good friends recommended that movie itself as a “Don’t- Miss- It ” types. So bro and I sat down to watch the movie on DVD armed with ice cream and Lays We watched the movie without subtitles. Not because we could matladufy telugu but because the darned DVD didn’t have them. Initially we felt totally out of place. We caught words here and there and tried to make sense of what was happening. But as the movie proceeded we went along in the flow and understanding wasn’t a big deal.

The movie reminded me a lot of my own college days. The fact that I was just getting out if the hangover induced by watching “Kalloori” didn’t help one bit. Happy Days is set in an engineering college and one of the characters is called Aparna. Now it can’t get better than this can it? Every frame, every dialogue, there was something like what we’d done in out four years of college. The more I thought about it, the more I missed my college days. Aah.. Those wonderful wonderful days of my life…

Nostalgia…

Five years back, when I completed high school, I was determined to do “Mechanical engineering”. Yes, you read that right. But fate had other plans. Right at the moment when it mattered, I said ECE !!! [ Duh !! Yes, Thank you.]:( On first day @ college, I along with a few other girls confidently strode into a I year classroom and sat there exchanging initial pleasantries. A while later the lecturer walked in and I looked around to see that we were the only girls in the class. When asked to introduce ourselves, a guy from the front row walked right up and introduced himself and added why he’d taken Mechanical. A look of horror came upon our faces as we looked at each other and rushed out of the classroom. And thus began my coollege life ..

I was a slow starter when it came to having fun at college. Partly because I did not do my schooling in Chennai -> so no friends carried over from school and also because I had stuff like -> “Why would anyone talk to me.. I’m so uncool.. I hate this place.. ” and the likes which kept doing the rounds in my head. Six months later, by the time the first semester results were out, I had made some friends. Lab batch mates, bus stop mates, bus seats mates, bench mates he he .. And then started the real fun. The was no stopping or looking back.

I discovered how much fun it was to be in college and some of the most integral aspects of college life.
Seniors.. Ragging.. Canteen.. Store… Books.. Lab classes especially computer labs where we played games all the time and took lame print outs for records, electronics labs, where the apparatus never worked and we made up graphs on our own. We’d first draw a freehand graph and then plot the points…. Lectures where no one listened…. Seminars where a fellow student took class while the rest of us whiled away time….Class bunking – Mass bunking.. Until second year I never had the courage to bunk a class. I was the chamathu – 100% attendance types. Once a senior forcefully restrained me from going to class and there the streak ended…Juniors.. Movies.. Outings.. Beach.. Workshops.. Seminars .. Record notebooks.. Assignments.. Hostels… Inedible Canteen food.. College Magazine.. College trips…. Symposia… Event organization… Wearing Saree/ Suit …. Friend’s sibling’s marriage… College Strike…. Bus day celebrations…. Birthday celebrations.. Cake cutting… Treat.. Internals.. Practicals… Last minute cramming, Exam tension most importantly result declaration tension.. Mobiles.. Relationships.. Heartbreaks…Fights.. Break ups… Patch ups… Late night phone calls.. Non stop smsing…. Orkut…. Placements.. Interviews.. GRE.. CAT.. TOEFL… Offer letters.. Electives.. Projects.. Reviews..

Maan.. That was called living it up…

4 years flew past us before we could so much as say Engineering. And then it was time to say good byes and “Keep in touch” to the very same people whom we’d met just 4 years back and who’d grown to be integral part of our lives. Life took us all in different directions. Higher studies.. Jobs.. Marriage.. Life goes on.. But the memory of the carefree days lingers on..

Tomorrow is Graduation day at my college. I’ll be meeting my friends after a year. Some have kept in touch.. Some just didn’t.. Mails, scraps, text msgs, chats, offliners, tweets.. We’ve tried them all.. But nothing like sitting in canteen and talking cursing the lecturer over samosa and lemon juice. We’ll get to see our college one last time. The very same place where we learnt a lot about life. One last time visit the classroom which was second home to us hooligans who’d messed it up in every possible way. One last walk down the aisle which we used to run through every single day. One last lemon juice from the canteen whose food we used to despise. One last longing look at the majestic clock tower.

College.. Here I come…

Song for the moment:

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Filed under Musings, Pour outs

Tags: college, college days, emotions, graduation, Happy Days, Mokkai, senti