A Friend!

He was allotted room next to mine in the hostel. My first recollection of him, he was little plump, he was wearing his pants high, aptly fitted the nick name that we gave him some time later "Uncle".

We got along well during the college. I don't know how our friendship started, but Uncle told me later that it started with an ordinary conversation. Bunch of us were in one room. The topic of discussion was our first program that all of us had written on a Unix system and everyone had taken a printout on a line printer. Suddenly the conversation took an ugly turn, one guy accused the other of taking his printout! To most this would seem too trivial a thing to fight about. But, imagine, these were a set of people, who had not seen a computer before, much less worked on one. For everyone the first program was a novelty and an achievement, taking a printout of the programming gibberish  that they could take home and show to their parents or friends was a big thing! Especially when there was no chance of getting another printout (Printouts were regulated by the lab in charge).

I was laying on the bed, face down, half asleep. When the argument got louder, I yelled back, yaar tu mera printout le lena. Everything quitened down! Uncle recalled later, Manish you seemed ultra cool.  I think that is what started it.

Uncle was an exceptional singer.  He also liked to drink. More than once we ended up holding glucose bottles in the hospital to get the muck out of his stomach! At one time, his hospital stay came right in the middle of our exams, where he, one more friend and I ended up missing exam for one subject, that we could not afford to miss.  At Thapar, for every subject, there used to be three internal exams of max 30 marks each and one final semester exam for max 40 marks. Students had the option to pick the best two of the three internal exams, which along with the score in the final semester exam used to determine the grade in a particular course.

Three of us, Uncle, another friend and I, after initial 2 semesters figured a way to work the system to our advantage, at least that is what we thought! Every semester, we decided to skip one internal exam completely and use that time to go on hiking and trekking trips in the lower Himalayas!  When the entire class was busy giving exams, the three of us  would  take off, once every semester, for a week or so. That way, we never missed any classes and also did what we enjoyed!

However, this used to take the flexibility of choosing the best two out of the three scores away from us. We used to only have two scores with the third being "Not Appeared" in all the subjects.

Now you probably understand the crisis situation when Uncle  hit the bed right in the middle of an internal exam that we could not afford to skip! We came up with a grand plan to get out of this sticky situation. Though the situation was of our own making, but our classmates, all of them, with no exception, contributed and helped. I truly think that I was privileged to have such an exceptional set of classmates! When I look back, I am sometimes amazed that it happened. In Thapar grading is relative, top 10 percentile get  "A" grade, next 20 get "B" and so on. It was clear that the three of us, having missed two internal exams and having to score out of a max of 70 marks  (One internal exam 30 marks and one final semester 40 marks), would certainly get "F" grade. We suggested to our classmates that we reduce the max marks for that subject from 100 (30 and 30 from two internal exams and 40 from final semester exam) to 70 for everyone. The rational, since grading was relative, if the max marks for everyone get reduced to 70, no one would lose! To reduce the max marks to 70, it was proposed that in the final semester exam for that subject, none of our classmates, other than the three of us, would attempt questions for more than 10 marks! Imagine this happening in a professional college where competition is intense.

It is a different story that our professor was not too amused and he decided to give "D" to everybody, the lowest grade, just short of failing everybody.

Number of times we sat on the roof of our hostel, where he sang songs with I being the only requester and  exclusive audience.

We both smoked. We used to go on long walks from our hostel to the college gate to buy one stick on credit from the panwala (I actually met the same panwala again after 20 years. He still sits in the same pan shop, though there is a lot more competition now. His kids have grown up and have all gone thru' their school education!). There we used to sit on the benches of the dabha near by and used to talk about everything that would interest young boys of 20-21. Thoughts seeped deep in idealism, with no connection to reality, to everything about girls that can't be printed.

Like all relationships, our friendship also went thru' ups and downs. We had our own differences, which at one point got to  an extent that we were not on talking terms for a few semesters.

We even rallied the entire class to boycott lectures of one professor for good one month, because he had addressed one of the girls in our class derogatorily. I do not know if our method of protest was right or not, but those were the days when we were not ready to take anything lying down. If we thought something was not right, we stood up and fought!

I don't think my stay in Thapar would have been half the fun, had Uncle not been around. At the farewell party, I was adjudged the best outgoing student. When I walked up the stage a part of me wanted to call Uncle and the other friend to come on the stage and share the award with me. However, the moment came and went. I still think, the three of us deserved the award as a group, for our exploits during our stay in the campus were not complete without each other!