The second term could be compared to a huge storm. And the start of the second term could be
said to be the lull before the storm. There was gross inactivity after the end of the first
term. Nobody ever cared how their mates were doing. Some people were working hard on their
projects for an event in the capital city. SmartGirl did the smart thing, teaming up with a
senior who provided her with all the inputs that might have been required. She was a
supremely confident little girl. She knew what she wanted. There was ImpressiveBrain who
could do something no one else could. She harried and hankered the new professor,
WorthyChallenger, to such an extent that he became petrified of her. He was just another
victim of ImpressiveBrain, who made others work, so what if it was even a professor!
WorthyChallenger was forced to be all at sea when listening to her unending stream of hard-
nosed questions and queries, which were sometimes worthwhile, and sometimes mindless! Giving her company were her partners-in-crime, BeautifulLady and CatLover. WorthyChallenger could have been forgiven to think of commiting suicide!!! BeautifulLady was another who knew what she wanted to do. She had an unusual knack about her. CatLover would do all the donkey work that was there to be done, usually ordered by ImpressiveBrain. There were some who opted for the physically draining, and less glamorous competition. They were relatively unnoticed at the big event. Only when the snaps were shown, came to be known that they also existed someplace, standing the whole day in the lawns, wearing plastic smiles to anyone who came close, explaining them their concepts everytime like a tape being repeated over and over again!!! And yes, at the end of those days, their cheeks ached real bad because of the plastic smiles.
CharmedLife and BuddhistDude chose to stay out of this groupy-shoupy stuff. BuddhistDude went to Bangalore to be with his sister. TechnicalCalm asked CharmedLife what he was going to do in that week. He said he would be trying to break his non-stop sleep record, which was 48 hours!!!
During the event, there was a wonderful reunion of FrightenedGirl and JackOfAllTrades. His deputy, Youngster, dutifully looked after the stall, happy to do social service, while
actually missing in action himself!
At the main event, ImpressiveBrain gave a good account of her concept, and her partner
BeautifulLady easily quashed a tough poser that a knucklehead from a rival college down
south, had put forth. But there was something missing there. The Ladies'Man got all
entangled and grilled in the question and answer session. The cheerful Shorty wasn't spared either, her partner, Mimicry had no ideas. Her knight in shining armour, IAS Officer, tried to rescue the situation, but nothing seemed to work, although SincereToExtreme managed to hold his own in the face of adversity. Ultimately, it was SmartGirl who got all the
accolades, beating famed competition from down south. Her success was totally unexpected,
but every bit deserved. The large head-to-body ratio had done something extraordinary. Her
award acceptance speech was almost perfect. The plaudits came from everywhere, but deep down she must have thought "What the fuss is all about ?" If there was someone who could have claimed a part of her success, it were her parents, one of the most caring people. They had
arranged for more than half the entourage of everything. Assuming such responsibility for so
many people and carrying it off so well spoke volumes for them.
All this while, there was a jackpot waiting for MuteGoodLooker. Apparently, his laptop had
shed all connection speed inhibitions; like a dodo which suddenly got a set of flying wings,
and was rocking at a crisp 11 Mbps, because of the five-star location. He drooled his way to
goody stuff on the Peer-to-Peer network. On the last night, he got, like drunk real bad,
and everyone tried to control him but to no avail. The mute had suddenly got out of the
MuteGoodLooker, and only RapStar had any semblance of control over him. The next day, the mute came back again for good, and he was the butt of some bad jokes. Some thought it was
bad and he didnt deserve such a raw deal, while the ones who had been at his receiving end
the previous night thought he fully deserved the taunts, just for that one day.
MuteGoodLooker was back to normal again. He had learnt the lesson.
Only 12 people were scheduled to immediately take the train back. Two of them, Shorty and
CatLover trooped in at Platform seven as if there were a red-carpet welcome waiting for them
and the railway minister had ordered the train not to depart without them. They made it a
couple minutes before the assigned departure, much to the relief of the others waiting for
them. The problem was; they were spread over three bogies, but they managed well, and had a
real fun time together. In fact, the return journey was more joyful than the earlier one,
and CannotLoseWeight would take much of the credit for that. In one game of dumb charades, CatLover asked TechnicalCalm to enact one movie name. Now TechnicalCalm was quite well adept at this game, but on this one he was clueless, because he could not find out a way to enact the first word. Try as he might, he failed and astonishingly, CatLover enacted the word correctly. TechnicalCalm thought his pride had been hurt, but later on, CannotLoseWeight consoled him saying it was probably the dumbest movie ever! Like Roger Federer, it is okay to lose one match after winning 50 straight...It is also important to learn being a good loser sometimes.
The week that followed was one of the quietest ever in college. Not many people were there,
the professors were not there, the students had gone home. The ones who were running the
show were TenaciousClerk, Informer and SincereBoy. Informer, as always, blasted the top management and especially TenaciousClerk, behind their back. SincereBoy did his duties superbly well. One couldn't fault him for commitment and effort. Only in the second week some action started. Actually everyone, especially MasterOfCeremonies, were waiting for SmartGirl's return. Everyone showered praises on her, and college was up and running again, although a bit slowly. Realising that college was in cruise control, some students made the most with getaway trips to nearby spots. There were a large number of birthday parties in store.
Suddenly, a trend for such parties had emerged; it would last for 24 hours right from 0000
hours to 2400 hours. It seemed everyone was interested in partying hard. Rather than having
simple get-togethers in the evenings, like good old childhood and teenage days, these guys
and gals had gone way out of control, over the top! There were also some guys who would
always troop in to each and every one of these parties uninvited, like flies in a soup! God
only knew where they disappeared on their days...such was life. Spare a thought for those
birthday boys and girls. The birthday used to feel more like a punishment. In those days,
Coffee Shop became a popular late night joint for everyone. For some guys like RapStar and
PositiveEnergy, making an attendance here was more important. There were so many reasons in favour of doing so. Next ->
A rude shock lay in store for the students. WorthyChallenger had asked them to submit a
project by a specified date. These professors had grown very fond of the words like "SUBMIT"
and "LAST DATE". The girls used to be very nervous about it while the guys would laugh it
off. "Who is he to say such things ?", they'd ask. The whole situation was created by
WorthyChallenger, who sensed that if he wanted to stamp his authority, the time was NOW!!!
He wanted to score points over JackOfAllTrades and his deputy, Youngster, so that he would
be in MasterOfCeremonies' scheme of things. Youngster had learnt from JackOfAllTrades not to show all the cards at one time...rather he should do it slowly, the SLOWER...the BETTER. He
made the wise decision to stay out. College politics was shaping up nicely, but unfortunately the students were victimised...BRUTALLY!!! JackOfAllTrades was happy enough to
accept whatever the students had done...really everybody's project was nothing but COPY &
PASTE. But WorthyChallenger wouldn't budge an inch. He made everyone suffer...everyone did donkey work for hours...days...weeks...it went on and on and on it seemed like they were
travelling on the circumference of a circle. TechnicalCalm called it "THE ENDLESS
SUFFERING". His teammates SincereGirl and CannotLoseWeight were quite tense and wanted to "FINISH IT OFF" as early as possible. TechnicalCalm worked hard on it on the last few days and, with some help from his team. RapStar was in a worse situation. The poor fellow had idle teammates, he had everything to do on his own. At a critical point of time, after doing
all the donkey work...his computer went into a COMA...refusing to come back to life, try as
he might to resuscitate it. Ultimately it crashed. All the work had come to nothing. He was
physically and mentally shattered. It led to a drinking binge. Finally he came out of it
with an idea to recover lost ground. Many groups were in a shattered state of mind. The
laboratory used to be a cauldron of confusion and anxiety. It was also in part due to the
timing of the exams, which were now quite close. Effectively, WorthyChallenger had swallowed
the students' "PREPARATION LEAVE" all by himself. WorthyChallenger was a towering figure and his presence was intimidating to most of the students. He was a contraption of dirty
politics. TechnicalCalm also used to be intimidated by him...so he used his height to good
effect, standing tall and upright so that WorthyChallenger would have to actually "LOOK UP"
in order to see eye-to-eye. Such fears were dispelled. By now the guys in the class had
learnt a trick. Always go to meet WorthyChallenger immediately after his meeting with some
girls. That was probably the only time you might have caught him in a good mood and get away
with it.
Actually there was one group which was quite enthusiastic about this whole thing and
wondered why the others were crying foul. They had CatLover, BeautifulLady and NoExpression doing all the donkey work, especially CatLover had mastered it. BubblyCharacter would act as their supervisor, making sure of everything was right, while PositiveEnergy didn't get involved, although later on he had to. WorthChallenger had tremendous affinity towards this particular group for obvious reasons, although he didn't really help them out either. He only gave HOLLOW ADVICE, like the trunk of a tree infested by a colony of termites!!!
Exam day was the weirdest possible and the most draining ever for the students. Most of them
had sat up the previous night preparing for their projects and the exam itself. All this
while, JackOfAllTrades had been a keen observer from the sidelines. He understood
WorthyChallenger's gameplan. Soon enough he too joined in the action to prove he's second to
none in this business. He scrutinized each and every fault, and dissected them with surgical
precision. No one was spared, absolutely no one. His extraordinary behavior was not directed
at the students, but indirectly at WorthyChallenger, probably letting him know,"I am the boss around here. Whatever you can do, I can do better!". That day, WorthyChallenger could not stop his juggernaut and had to be satisfied with second best. Youngster was nowhere in the picture really. Then came the practical exam, which almost everyone runned successfully apart from some of the usual suspects. Then the time came for viva.
He would ask a question to a guy, who'd say,"Sir, I don't know", and another question, with
the same reply, and yet another question, with the same reply. He would make the guy feel
he's the dumbest in the world. Then he would say, "Okay thank you", leaving him wondering
what it really meant. In contrast, whenever a girl had been called up, he would ask them the
simplest of questions...and these vivas were taking longer than the guys...much longer...a
HELL LOT LONGER...call it INVERSE CHAUVINISM!!! TechnicalCalm decided to get back at him.
When his output was to be seen, he deliberately placed the chair quite a distance away from
the computer screen. So when WorthyChallenger came, he did not move the chair and sat on it.
Unfortunately, the momentum incurred carried the chair forward and thudded into the
keyboard (CRASH)!!! OOPSIE, and only TechnicalCalm could hear an almost inaudible utterance, " #$%@*!#@ ". They say there's light at the end of a tunnel...wonderful! More...
Everyone thought that surely the hardest part was surely over, but not just yet...there were also some theory exams coming up. These were lousy exams, with free-wheeling discussion going on, and people copying each other's running files and Googling at the same time too. JackOfAllTrades came back to his normal behavior. He wasn't bashing anyone anymore, he was his usual friendly self. Suddenly, everyone thought of paying back WorthyChallenger in kind next time. The students vowed to be better prepared and harass him so much that whenever he would come to take a lecture, there would be tremendous fear in his mind, and make the classroom atmosphere as intimidating for him as possible. For he had committed a cardinal sin in this game, he had played too well...so well that now he had nothing left to play anymore. This is where JackOfAllTrades had played the perfect possible waiting game. That clever old wily fox was a champion at that. Like in cricket, you give the first hour to the bowlers, you survive it, then the whole day is yours. He had ridden the storm, and had emerged a survivor. The students were battered and bruised though, and had their prides seriously wounded. They would hit back at the man who caused them such suffering and anger and frustration. They decided to hit him hard on every possible opportunity that came their way. What happened to WorthyChallenger ? Did the students have enough courage to thrash him out ? What happened to JackOfAllTrades ? Did he consolidate his standing in the eyes of MasterOfCeremonies ? What happened to the students ? What happened
to Youngster, and the others ?What happened next ??? All the answers in the last and concluding part of this trilogy ->
Story 3...coming soon!
Please do leave your comments...Thanks for reading!
