Monday, March 30, 2009

Intensive Care lab or the IC lab....

Remembering events in the IC lab(room 215/216, i think)....

Of all the classrooms and the pracs lab in Somaiya, I think most of us have had a "SPECIAL" interest in a lab on the 2nd floor sandwiched between the place where Kundargi ma'am USED to sit and the place with Swati Mahajan/Hetal D/Kholapure sat...remember that lab? Yes, the infamous place where TV pracs, n PComm pracs(hohaha) used to be conducted..i think it was called the IC lab (and for good reasons too). Lots of memories have been attached to that lab ever since our SE Extc began. I just happened to remember some of those as i pass on...

DLD TEST (Monday Tests)---> The first time I had managed to copy in the test with much ease, the venue for the first DLD test...No special memories about the marks though, I remember flunkin in that but by the end of the sem, I did get a respectable term work mark...

Multi-m(e)atter---> Again the culprit, DLD. It was DLD pracs goin on and times were quite rough for me in KJ bcos of my young blood thrillin and boiling (now its just calm n chilled...) and my habit of 'makin a mountain out of a molehill' stuff....anger was at the peak, etc. I was doin my DLD pracs with Subish Pillai, Mayur n Amit pawar(probably) and the group in front of me was headed by a cold blooded, white faced, cat-eyed, bad hairstyled, wierdo n a nerd goin by the name of SAURABH PITKAR (sorry for such an APT description). We were doing our pracs on LOGIC GATES and this fellow too had some relation with these GATES n an other GATE(entrance exam). It all started with a multimeter, a device used to check the continuity in logic circuits. I dont even know how the fight began but man...it was a fiery one. I think he had taken the multimeter which I had obtained and so I started blaming him, so he retorted back and the war of words erupted...blah blah blah...I dont wanna describe this but it was a very PATHETIC behaviour from our sides, this incident remains a black mark from my days in KJ, although if all my exploits in KJ were to be taken, it would fill up to be an enormous BLACK HOLE.


Dance pe Chance (for a punishment??)-----> On the lighter side, this incident still tickles our ribs. This happened during our PCOMM lab. For our B1 batch, Pcomm pracs were conducted by a NAGgin prof, Mr Nitin Nagori. He had gained a reputation of being a psycho killer for SE students, kind n smiling butcher for TE students, a gentle n pious man for BE students. So it can be imagined what condition we were in when we were just in SE. As I was telling, it was Nagori time and we had all entered the lab wondering what would be our condition in the next 2 hours under his supervision. 2 brave n daring persons remained outside the lab taking out their books or something else....2 Patils, Sandeep 'Sandy aka CD-man' Patil and Yashpal 'YP' Patil. Some mischievious thoughts passed thru their minds and God knows what they were thinkin when THEY STARTED DANCING outside the Pcomm lab. And as luck would have it, Nagori sir entered and caught them dancing. And were we stunned to see that sight!!! The punishment for that was he uttered his favorite words " Handover(or Gimme) your I-Cards, both of u" and called them inside for..... a BETTER DANCING VIEW!!...Sandy n YP were actually beggin for pardon and ofcourse their I-cards, but to this day, we people ve a hearty laugh thinkin about this incident.


Pa-Tale on a bench---> Another Icard donation act came shortly after, this time by Ashish Patel. Our P-comm pracs were finished and we were packing our bags,heading home. Patel was in a confused mood probably thinkin about the next Monday s test and he was pondering about this sitting on the bench where we kept our bags before entering the lab. Enter Nagori. "This bench is meant to keep bags, and what are u doin??". Ashish was in a fix n totally sweating with fear. Then came his trademark dialogue "Gimme your Icard" And then came some bombardment of words probably about discipline etc. If I am not wrong, Patel was asked to write an apology letter for this incident..cos it was I who had helped him in writing it.


TV Query----> Well, when TV pracs comes to our mind, we remember our "Chimnibai" Savitha Sonukale (we all have our accents but a birdie accent??). Nothing sort of special happened in those pracs except that it remained famous for Pitkar (by this time, he was quite reformed from the way he was in SE), still a nerd though. He ventured to ask that question which still confuses great human minds...."Madam, is Tv Bi-polar or Uni-polar??".No1 even understood the nature of the question. Not to mention, the Chimni was left shell-shocked. I hope Saurabh has found the answer to his query in his IIT....


Multimeter theft---> A bad incident which occured when people of B1 batch were doin their pracs. It was the IC lab and multimeters were used at a very high rate. There was inclusion of Anish Sanghvi into B1 from B2. The chor group were quite active and operating interdependently in B1, B2 n B3. It was during such a session when Hetal Doshi broke out a news to us that a multimeter had gone missing and the reported time was when B1 batch had last performed their pracs. Oh, imagine the shame n abuses we had to go thru when we passed by. Most people had suspicions against many others but as i have said before, to this day neither the multimeter or the thief was to be found...


Pcomm Pracs---> Again our hero, Nagori sir, steps up into the limelight for all wrong reasons. A proff to guide us durin pracs, all he would do was speak up some mumbo-jumbo tryin to motivate us ("Tum kar sakte ho" or "It s very simple...trust me") and then would get outta the lab to have some gappa-shappa with his proff pals. We were left wondering what neds to be done, whats the output to be shown etc. During this crisis, we had a saviour to save our skins (kinda similar to a Noah s ark...hehhe). Kalavati Ma'am..the persona who had taught us PCS(yuck!!!!) in Third sem. She was an ace at practical sessions and used to guide us properly thru our Pcomm miseries. Well, an angel was wat we required at this stage to combat the devil himself (lol..).

Pitkar' saga----> This has to be a memorable incident just like a freedom struggle and again starring, this time 2 villains, Saurabh Pitkar (the same gruff mannered like 3rd sem) and the abominable yet indispensable, Nagori. A very bad day in lab, we were asked to submit our journals and the scene was similar to the scene in Sholay..with Gabbar holdin his gun to the heads of Samba n his accomplices, pullin trigger but sometimes no bullet. No need to say,I was shot and so were many others..Shridhar escaped mostly due to his rappo with the proffs and his awesome handwriting, probably a few others had survived this onslaught, cos they managed to get atleast an A- (which was an equivalent of A++, wrt to Nagori s grades). I was sittin in a corner dejected , after hearing all that he wanted to say and ofcourse one A- and 2 or 3 B+ (but happy). It was also heard that due to some flaw, Nagori had torn off Rajeev Vasani s journal and so most of us were scared, thinkin of our consequences. Suddenly s if some good magic had worked its charm, it was noticed that Nagori was givin good grades and even improving on his previously given grades, for eg- some did get an A from A- after correcting the flaws. And with such expectations, our hero Pitkar(mostly villain, this time a cameo hero) came up and presented his journal to the great one, with hopes of increasing his grades from A- to A. There was an explosion at that end and all we could see after the smoke cleared was Pitkar returning to his seat with a C grade. We were shell shocked and with this many others who had been u to increase their grades turned back to their seats. But out Pitkar wasnt a pushover...he worked hard on the flaws, got it rechecked and kept on improving his grades from C to B-,B- to B, B to B+ and ultimately B+ to A-. This saga has gone down in KJ s history....Pitkar s saga!

As for the remaining times, we kept completing our journals, kept chit-chatting, bird watching, and most importantly DOING NOTHING SERIOUS. We ve even played Mafia during a lab session, such was the leniency in KJS. Everythin said n done, dont u think the name IC(Intensive Care) lab is appropriate??? But at end of the day, it was a lab which held so many memories of us and people related to us...
(A)JAY HO!!

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Somaiya s RobbingHood...CHOR GROUP!

Well, here we are at some stage in Second year(SE EXTC)/Third year Telecomm(TE EXTC), B division. By this time, I made a bunch of close pals and diplomatic with the remaining (except 1-2 gals...). Life was good (LG) in KJS with our normal routine i.e Train to VidyaVihar-go to college-Attend/bunk lectures-Lunchtime-Pracs-Assignment Chhapping (pls there s no need to mention "WRITE/WROTE/RESEARCHED")- hangout on slope-return home via train. This was the daily monotonous algorithm followed by atleast me. Around this time, our batch was to be rocked by the advent of a huge event. No, am not talking about the 26th July disaster (a blessing for few..!!). It was a group of deadly gals known to have whisked things right under the public s nose (A guy s moustache was stolen right under his nose by them...according to a legend!!). It was what everyone feared...A CHOR GROUP!!

I suppose the name was coined by Abhijit Nayak, a reported victim of the attrocities of The Chor Group (CG). It was a group of 6 gals of EXTC div B...moving in daylight under a name of Sensational Six(SS)--> as we called them or the Fabulous Five(FF)---> as they called themselves (a case similar to the story in which there are 40 donkeys but the person sittin on the donkey counted only 39 donkeys) a band of gals, feared (hohoho..!) and revered by many...
Sadly but ironically,the Chor group ki leader was the daughter of a Policeman, Priya Shingade. Her other accomplices were--->
Sonal Tawade----->ARMed n dangerous
Megha Pote ---->Looks could kill actually, a walking hangman s noose
Harshada Rane --->a torturous accent in "KYA HAII??!"
Neysa S-Haji Mustan---->looks can be deceptive..innocent looking but can be a real pain when she speaks her dreaded language feared by many....HINDI
and last ...and really the least(in height)
Virgin Xavier---->not related to the Xmen leader Charles Xavier, but possess same quality, they can read ur mind and damage it irrepairably!

Intimidating profiles, arent they?

Lots of strange n wierd things started happening when this society of CG (aka SS or FF). For eg. valuable assignemts were missing and only CG had access to all of them (completing on time), chalks n dusters went underground...sometimes students were found crying cos evil spirits (CG ofcourse...) had robbed them of their assignment sheets, benches, blackboard, chairs..everything was at risk...even a MOUSTACHE. Suspicions were aroused when assignments were completed on time or even before the assignment questions were distributed. They were claiming popularity..At this critical juncture, a multimeter went missing. Things went haywire when every practical batch was blaming it on the other even though it was reported to ve been went missing when B1(I was in B1) batch pracs were conducted. To this day, the multimeter hasnt been found and this remains a mystery even though the CG are the 2nd main suspects after B1 (coincidentally, Harshada n Megha are a part of CG n B1).
The CG reached its peak when Avinash Saraf s was reportedly seen complaining about his lost umbrella. The CG were the equal suspects alongwith Shridhar s friends (us mostly). Badmaash Saraf had raised a poll regarding this in YahooGroups and it was the CG who were convicted...Sadly due to lack of evidence, they were acquited. They were the only team which proved "Crime did pay".
Recent developments heard were that the band was disbanded (probably a rumour) Sonal, Harshada, Priya n Megha ve got commited(finally). Neysa n Virgin have escaped to USA and plannin to renew the profession (recession s not helpin ANYONE). Its been reported that Sonal was planing to join them in US..
To this day, they still remained at large..our SOMAIYA s own CG aka SS aka SS....
Thanks for all the memoirs gals...KJ wudnt ve been KJ if it werent for u!

The reminiscent past of KJS days...

Looking back at the 4 years of Engg in Somaiya which are assimilated into us just as our heart n brain, it was those years which shaped the character in me and what I am now..

First year in KJ Somaiya COE (Simply put as KJ) was just an ordinary one. I was in H div which people forcefully called as The Telecomm Div alongwith a certain G div. Ofcourse, there were about 16 Telecomm out of the batch of 64. Approx 1/4th of the class...
Nothing much to be written about the things in FE (H div). The regular Mechanics pracs, the workshop, the mix-max of Chemistry etc...The one thing I was regular in was writing assignments and workshop journals. I remember Mayur, me and Ashish Patel completing the assignments just under the proff s noses. Tough job indeed, but hey thats what challenges are for!! As every class has a champion, we had our own champion too goin by the name of Avinash Saraff (simply put as our own Diamond Boy. Always aiming to be on top, he ended up being a close pal of ours even though he maintained his ruthless attitude of CRIBBING.
And from Telecomm (H) there was Sonal, a very sincere gal (she seemed as such), Alok n Rajat (tag team people), Abhijit Nayak (YFE guy uninfected with the YFE virus until TE), Sandeep 'CD-Sandy' Patil (Name itself ws enuff), a certain Vaibhav Pandey (Mr LowJeans) , Nikhil Vichare (Our local Munnabhai aka "Love Guru"), Neeharika rastogi (Cuffe parade gal speakin HinGlish...noted for her "Mayuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuur" and "What rubbish" and "Mad or what??")

Classes were supposed to be a sojourn , come n go at ur own wish, puttin proxies and ending up getting caught (OUCH!!). Puttin FE n proxies together, how can we forget a certain YELPALE sir(Mech Dept, a Living GOD for those who ve known him). He was very supportive in our "Proxy Raksha". He d gone to such an extent that with only 5-6 people he had made an entire attendance sheet filled with attendance. His dialogue was "hi jagay rikaami ka sodtat??..te pan bharoon taka". Sounded like music to many in those times...

Studies n FE?? Duh....they never got along but finally my Karma(not the movie) paid off. As u study , so u reap ur marks....a logic learnt in those 4 years, but not applicable for all. I never understood an exams gravity untill the result day (not even the exam day intimidated me as much!)

I was never to imagine in my wildest dreams what was in store for me in the next 3 years in Somaiya..after all Telecomm students would be coming under one roof (A n B)..the people i wud meet...become friends/nemesis with...college hassles...train travels...running here n there for notes...Exam-time preparation..
It was a pain, to die for....