Chapter - 2

The tea-shop meetings had become a tradition. The final year of a dual degree course is generally very light. Except for a couple of courses, and the final project which needed to be complete, one really didn’t have much to do. Also, we got paid to do the project, which meant money for practically nothing. It was a period when there was a lot of time to kill, and we killed lots of it in the tea-shop.

The odd semester was filled with a lot of general stuff. Seeing and eating around in various places was one of them. One night, when my parents were away, we decided to spend the night at my place. We got to the terrace, and to the top of the water tank at the terrace, and started philosophising about life. We weren’t drunk, but we were high, literally and not. We started opening up to one another for the first time. I spoke about my various crushes from high school, about having asked a friend out in college in my first year and how it had ended badly. Punch spoke about how he had gotten drunk the first time, and the comical dance that had followed. Pramod’s skeletons were the most hilarious, talking about how stressful assignments had contributed to bringing out the sexually active human being in him. We kept talking till 3 am, at which point we started feeling really hungry. We walked into the kitchen, and decided to make some pasta. We didn’t have any red or white sauce, but what we did have was some garam masala. So, we decided to experiment, and played around with oil, macaroni and garam masala, till something edible came out. Well, it looked more like an upma, but it didn’t taste too bad.

We got to sleep at around 4 am, and woke up at 7am to visit the Kapaleeshwara temple. What followed that, was some fantastic breakfast at Karpagambal Mess. Anyone who has visited the temple in Mylapore, will know this small one-room mess right opposite the temple. The food though, is five-star. While eating here, worries about the next real big thing started coming up.

Hameed: Man, I was going through a few of last year’s placement files. Kinda screwed up dude, the kind of stuff they ask.

Punch: Ob you are going to thulp it all da, put your peace.

Paras: No man, I’ve been thinking about it as well. We need to start working on the placements, I don’t remember jackshit of what we did in four years of college.

Me: Shall we do some sort of group study? Will help, will also be fun!

Nigga: Group study won’t help da. See, the other six are VLSI junta, we are from Comm.

With that, Katrina got done with his Rava Pongal and we were ready to move. But the discussion hit us again at another treat, this time Katrina’s at Eatalica. This time, Pramod, the slowest eater in the group, decided to finish quickly, and jump into the discussion about placement preparations. If there was something that stimulated Pramod, it was academics. He decided that studying timers and stuff was the most important part of placement preparation, at which point Nigga and I lost them. It became clear here that VLSI junta would prepare in a specialized manner for the placements, and it wouldn’t really help to try get some sort of a group study idea working.