3 idiots

This is the second post title inspired from an Indian movie. But let me make it clear  I have no intentions to compete with either Chetan Bhagat or Rajkumar Hirani. I belong to an altogether different league :p

As I travel back to the first few days of college I guess none of us (i.e. I, K and M) would have ever imagined that by the time we graduate we would be such great friends. I still don’t know exactly how and when we became friends. The only thing common in us was that we didn’t know why and how we had landed up here and we had no idea where we would end up… (Quite in contrast to others who had neatly chalked out plans of their future)

I am still trying to unravel the mystery behind scripting of our friendship as I take a walk down the memory lane………

The “All is well” concept was very well exploited by the three of us though M was always a stress carrier. Even the most trivial thing on the planet could get her worked up. But M‘s overly anxious act was well balanced by my “care a dead rat’s ass” attitude while K swung like a pendulum in between.

No matter what, we never let the fun quotient dip even if it meant missing out on studies. The time during lectures was to be utilized for doing almost everything which otherwise you would consider a waste… (time management… u see) which included daydreaming with your eyes fixed on the prof so that professor thinks that you are the most attentive student  or doodling while your jealous neighbour thinks that you are taking down oh-so-important notes (I remember one such incident when I was just sketching and the girl sitting next to me missed out something so she peeped into my notebook and when she discovered that I was not taking down notes…the look she gave me… as if I had committed the most heinous crime on earth). Then we had cell phones (your next best friend) you could text everyone on your contact list or better still call all those people in the class who put their cell phones on vibrate mode. HoP and PoP (lol… we didn’t even know the names initially) lectures were reserved for playing Bollywood. M always ended up frustrated as she couldn’t find a single movie which I couldn’t guess. And if a professor asked us a question we said “I don’t know” the best answer in every situational crisis…ah not to forget that innocent expression.

Practicals were fun. We were the most indolent of the entire batch. But by the end of the year, we realized that we won’t ever be able to complete our experiments if we stuck together. So we joined different groups with the result that our indolence reached an altogether new level.

Completing practical file work beforehand was against our pride so we always relied on others to get the work done. The only thing we were very prompt at was getting files from others. And if our file work was not complete it was never our fault but the fault of our lazy good-for-nothing classmates who were supposed to finish their work and hand down the files so that the princesses won’t have to move a finger. By the end of the second year, we were seriously contemplating to hire a scribe so that we could get rid of the utterly wasteful work.

The “best” practicals were of Engineering Drawing (I know K is going to kill me for this). K‘s attempt at drawing was a lost cause but it kept me and M in splits  After an hour of battling it with scale and sheet she would give it up and the result on her sheet was…well…hilarious. To explain it more clearly I would say if you ask a person who is not good at drawing to draw a circle he/she might end up drawing an improper circle or an oval… but if you ask K to draw a circle she might end up drawing a polygon. So while I and M struggled to complete and correct her work she would curse everyone from the person who introduced the subject in our course to the pencil, eraser, etc.

Med. Chemistry practicals were the worst. The yield of that damned product was never correct and sometimes there was no product at all. Most of the time, we ended up borrowing it from others or stealing it from the reagent store.

Analysis… Did we ever perform a proper experiment? I don’t think so.

Pharmaceutics… The only part I played was that of a supervisor and if sir came to check I would immediately grab a pestle and mortar or some beaker lying nearby and act as if I was the only person in the whole class who took practicals very seriously. The best thing about these experiments was that you could always add any ingredient by choice to get the desired result.

Pharmacognosy… Ah! This was more suited to the tastes of indolent people like us who refuse to move their lazy ass for some silly worthless herbs and powders.

And one fine day out of the blue the great news! (And whoever said that no news is good news was so right) Internals from next week!!!!! “WTF. They haven’t taught us anything. What are they going to test us for? ”  and then some fellow classmate would take pity on us and inform us of the vast syllabus. “When was this taught?” “When you were day-dreaming during the lecture..” “And this?” “When you were too bored to attend classes” “OK. But I am sure this was never taught” “Oh this..well we were asked to study it on our own”

It took some time for the feeling to sink in and then the great realization “SHIT. Haven’t made a trip to the library yet. No notes either. What the hell are we gonna do?” So while I and K tried half-heartedly to check out the books in the library ( it seemed as if we were getting groceries ) M would wield her sweet nature to extract out notes and relevant study material from seniors and classmates.

Whether it was an internal exam or mains… no matter how many days of preparation we had to study exactly the day before was our birthright. The first few hours of group study were spent cursing the subject, the author of the book we were supposed to study, the teacher, the college, the education system, etc. We followed the policy of maximum gain with minimum pain. We had no ambition to be among the top scorers. Our only aim was to get passing marks (We even wrote a book titled “101 Tricks to get passing marks”…that reminds me…got to call the publishers) and when the marks were declared the one who got better marks would be reprimanded “Bitch.. what the hell did you write?” while the one who didn’t get good marks would be consoled by cursing the examiner.

From 2nd year onwards I and K never appeared for the first internals of Med.Chem. (Thanks to our short attendance). In 4th year I went to college only when I felt like…and the welcome I got… no wonder the teachers missed me so badly.

And before we could even realize…we graduated!!!!

So the flashback is over but the story of our friendship is still being written…..

I know this is going to sound a bit cheesy even corny to some extent but I m going to say it anyway…

No matter how much I hate my college the fact is that it has given me two of my dearest friends for life. They have been so wonderful to me in spite of me behaving like a complete jerk at times. M was my alarm clock. I guess I would have never reached college on time if she didn’t religiously call me every day in spite of me hurling abuses at her for waking me up. K who has and in fact still deals (without complaining) with my downright stupid confusing questions which are irritating enough to drive anyone up a wall. They made me laugh and I on certain occasions made them cry. They have dealt with my quixotic ideas, impatience, bad temper, crankiness, and my blunt and at times hurtful remarks and yet have pampered every silly whim of mine. They have been my silent support system in every situation. I can’t even imagine how I would have survived in that hell-hole without them… Damn!! I miss you guys like anything