Sunday, February 03, 2008

3rd Feb
Its that day of the year, 3rd of February. So whats so special about this day? It seems like another usual Sunday characterized by a late breakfast at Tiffanys an excellent post-lunch sleeping session and a visit to the temple in the campus. Ya, to think of it, seems like a routine day, but wait a minute..I just need to go back a few years...Few ?...Oh, its 5 years now.

krrrr....krrrrrrrrrrrrrr........krrrrrrrrrrrr....(That was the sound of the tap rewinding ! )....Now its 3rd of Feb 2003. Wow ! Seems so good. The day we all joined the wonderful campus at TCS Trivandram. The day I met 34 of my amazing batchmates. Well, thats an understatement..This is the best collection of people from across India that I have interacted with..

2003 was a tough time. The economy was just about limping out of recession. 2001 and 2002 was characterized by a US slowdown and 9/11 which had a direct impact on the campus recruitment in India...The impact was so strong that we had IIT grads who joined TCS along with me..(Under normal circumstances they wouldnt have)...And the rest were from engineering colleges all across India. (Equal representation from the West, North, South and the East). Infact looking back, I consider it as one of the greatest learning experiences. Having lived in Mumbai all throughout my life, I was used to a certain line of thinking. But here away from home, we had different opinions from different people on the same topic. And boy it was fun !

Weekend trips to various places in Kerala (We covered it all, starting from Munnar to the backwaters and we even went to Cochin ! ), watching the world cup, dinner @various restaurants in trivandram...Boy , wasnt it fun..How can I ever forget pulling out my t-shirt and running topless on the streets of medical college junction of trivandram (we were a group), to celebrate India defeating Pakistan in the World Cup....I bet people in 'traditional' Trivadram would have experienced a cultural shock !

There are so many incidents that I can recall..The hard fought cricket matches, the Mowgli episode, designing a t shirt to celebrate the World Cup, the great music group singing away to glory on the long bus rides, slogging the last few days to come up with a class magazine...The list is endless....

But the best part of it were the people...The way we gelled together. Absolutely no differences. Learning about each others culture..Iyer speaking in Hindi and Mangu dada learning Hindi was just awsome ! And Droops Hindi which was heavily laced with a Bong accent... ...Awsome...

Each of us were unique and got something to the table...And we celebrated our differences.....Needless to say we developed great bonds of friendship that has grown over these last 5 years.


Tomorrow I would get back to classes and then the routine schedule and before I know it would be 3rd Feb 09'. One things for sure. I would definitely be celebrating it...!!!

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