How I Met My Friends :-)

The latest one to catch a plane leaving india was Ramesh. All three of my engineering friends Kishan , Sreedhar and now Ramesh are at distant shores . wow. quite far !!

No way..the idea of friendship never crossed my/our minds when we met for the first time in jntu campus,hyd .People say "first impression is the best impression".But ,may be, "first impression" is not always formed in the first meeting itself. (Ouch!!! waht is this!! such a profound thought!!! :P jus kiddin... did that line make any sense? :-) ) Our friendship took almost one year to flourish. Actually,it may sound strange now if i say that we never atleast talked with each other in a friendly manner in the initial days.

For the past many days, i had been thinking to write a post on my initial encounters with them.

Okay.... finally.....Here i am narrating my first imp encounter with each of them which created a deep impact. :-) . Donot expect any thrilling moments in my encounters with them ...no way...those were just simple moments with a single or no dialogue exchanged.

Sreedhar: ( In USA now)

Among the three ..sreedhar was the first one i met with.

That evening ,i came back from college to the hostel in a desolate mood thinking about the wild wildest ragging waiting for me . As i entered into the room I found a bag(the kind which has sticks ..which we usually get when we shop at textile showrooms like chandana bros etc ) stuffed with clothes to the full next to the door.I sighed "Aah!! here comes another junior ". Finally, after sometime he came in to the room and in quite a cheerful mannner introduced himself as " Manchu sreedhar " . I think he prefixed his surname "manchu" too.He was saying "I was alloted the next room but seniors warned me to not to stay in that room and so i came here " .  There was a funny reason behind the seniors' warning :-)

okay..A day or two later ,minutes past midnight, I was about to sleep when sreedhar,came into the room. I wanted to get some sleep asap. Yeah..i had a good reason. And it was : A senior named Ravi would come knocking our doors in those early wintry mornings. And its not just a knock.He would just literally kick the door so hard. How do u feel when in a heavy violent downpour a thunderbolt falls close to your house.In that sudden loud explosive  sound,the beating of heart almost stops for a second and then it increases exponentially .We used to feel exacly the same when he knocked err kicked the door. Really. And For waht?? He would take all the juniors to the ground and make us jog and do all other weird exercises in that awful cold weather.

Back to the story happened that night ...The lights were shut off. Everybody was trying to sleep after some intense horrible multiple sessions of mass-ragging and exclusive-ragging.And the scene begins. Sreedhar struck a chord with madhan who was also our roommate . The common factor which made them bond instantly was they discovered they both were from navodaya schools,though different districts. And oh god..!!!! they started discussing about thier respective schools, teachers,friends etc etc .. I was waiting impatiently for the end of their discussion. But that was just goin on and on and on.navodaya..navodaya..navodaya...if they didnt stop that , my navodayam(new morning ,next day) would never come. I was feeling restless. Finally after much deliberation ,i took some courage and slowly requested, still lying on my bed and choosing words carefully

"sreedhar,..please.. sleep..in another few hours seniors will come again and take us to ground " .

No sooner had i finished my line than sreedhar snapped at me with a mix of frustration and anger :

"Abbhaaaa!!!! its okay man...nothing happens.. "(this is english version of waht he said.you may feel like this is nothing but  in telugu it was so caustic :-) ) .You should have seen my expressions when sreedhar blurted that line :-).

And they continued. Defeated and embarrassed by his caustic reply, i retreated and slowly tried to get some sleep trying to ingore their high decibel accoustics. :-)

Kishan: ( In USA now)

Ragging days. I overheard a news which was circulating in the hostel. That " a junior arrived at hostel with a costly branded bed mattress ". How could any junior dare to keep it for himself when all the overbearing seniors had their eyes on it like crouching tigers . Within a few hours it moved to some senior's room. I dont think kishan ever saw it again :-) That was the first thing i heard about kishan . We might have had our paths crossed later in campus or in hostel ,but nothing concrete happened.

And the first big moment was this: We both belonged to same mech.engg and his roll number was 310 and mine was 311 as we were alphabetically connected , K for kishan and kranthi :-) . There is a reason I meantioned the roll numbers. And it is : Whenever groups were made in labs we both fell into one group. So in first year we had workshop pacticals. That day ,we two were team and we were doing something . Waht we needed to do,which i vaguely remember , was we had to place some object in a rectangular box and fill it with the sand. We had to press the sand tightly into the box punching hard with something and afterwards we had to invert it. And then slowly we should lift the box up but the sand assuming the rectangular shape should stay there on the table .that object we placed initially should show up on the top obviously..And then some other process would follow. Dont worry if u donnot understand... because even we didnt understand anything that day when they explained before we sarted. edo nalugurithi narayana antuu follow ayipovadame maa policy !!!!

We geared up for the task. First we had to mix the sand thoroughly. . I was devastated seeing the way kishan was mixing the sand. U might have seen our 1990s telugu movies how a rich arrogant heroine, when ordered by hero to do the hard jobs like these, would do. Kishan was following that style.He was mixing with just the tips of his fingers. I was kind of  thinking "veedentraa babu.." observing him :-). Okay finally we placed all the sand into the box..punched it hard...and the next thing to do was invert the box and lift the box up leaving the sand-form on the table in a reactangular shape. We inverted . Kishan took the task of lifting the box holding the supports on either side of the box. He lifted. And the debacle followed.It was a total mess.  half of the sand was on the table and i saw another half of the sand stuck to the walls of the box and as he lifted further everything fell down making a heap. A succesfull failure :-)

I was totally shocked and so was he.After the succesful completion of the experiment one had to write his or her name on that sand mould with a needle or anything. Not knowing what to do we looked around. The other guys were doing well. Meanwhile a short guy from the supporting staff ,this staff always considered themselves as more important than the HOD ,came to us gave us a look devoid of any human emotions .He took a needle ,wallked away from us and he just added our names on some other's succesfully comppleted work :-) . Thank God !!! :-)

i still remember the style kishan mixed the sand and his expressions when the sand fell :-) .That was the first major incident happened between us.

Ramesh: ( In Australia now)

Same ragging days. We never talked. He always used to come to class with his friend Kalyan. Always.

Only, I used to observe him when our paths crossed.. Whenever I saw him the one thing that caught my attention was his dress. Parallel Pants was in vogue then and he used to wear them with maximum parallel-ness :-) . His pants, particularly a blue coloured one, used to be very loose from top to bottom and especially the bottom-loose was quite obvious. And whenever he walked they used to sway like the wings of a big hawk . As he came from a small town like I did , I used to imagine the conversation he might have had with local tailor of his .

Usually…at that age , we would fix on one particular tailor when we felt he would stitch well and the tailor would kinda become friends with the us.

The following was the conversation that used to flash in my mind in just a second whenever I saw him.

Ramesh might have gone with his friends to the tailor and

Tailor : namsthe Ramesh..

Ramesh says hi showing his new clothes to be stitched

Tailor: wow..this cloth looks great ...good quality (every tailor says the same)

Ramesh:yeah (and with an air of pride) am going to JNTU campus,Hyderabd u must stitch it well

Tailor : Ok..i will take care of that

Tailor starts taking measurements of Ramesh..

Tailor: How much parallel thing do u want Ramesh

Ramesh: fullu vundaali..maximum…. It should look great (his friends also intervene at this juncture and they all unanimously say “full parallel..our friend is goin to HYD” )

THE END OF FLASHING :-)

Okay... Later after many days …observing him at a couple of instances.. I found he was a guy with great sense of humour. We never talked much though.

one day at mess hall: lunch time :-

I was having lunch .Ramesh sat on the other side of the table talking to his regular friends. I wanted to share something with Ramesh and i called him. He didn’t hear. Then I called again “ Ramesh….”.He didn’t respond this time too. I was in good spirits that day.. and I called again “Ramesh ….ramesh..”

Then Ramesh turned towards me frustrated … serious expression on his face ..and he said

" knock it off, man !! "

That was the euphemistic version of what he actually said in telugu :-) . The original was brutal which if sent to censor board could be certified as "A" dialogue. :-)

I was stupefied with that outburst. Shell-shocked. All the time he heard me but he didn t respond because he didnt want to. And I was stupid to not understand that. I was totally afraid :-) .

That was the first major encounter with Ramesh.

adios

kranthi

P.S: I bet, none of them remembers a bit of their respective incidents :-) .