15. 1st day of 2nd Sem

Divya reached college the next morning around six. All of us were in sleeping like hypnomaniacs in orthodax-sleep, after the long small talks the previous night. She phoned us from the college’s main gate asking for help. Anu cut the call without even looking at it. Divya called her again. She attended the call and said, “I am sleeping call me later” and cut the call without even waiting for the other party to reply.

I disturbed by the calls was a little awake now. Divya called me. I attended the call and said that I will be at the gate in another 10mins. I just changed my night clothes and started walking to the gate. The gate was a good half a km from our hostel block. 

I could see her tired, and more than that annoyed. We came back to our room. Anu was still sleeping. Divya gave her a good kick and threw her heavy bag on her. Startled, Anu was wide awake. It took a couple of mins for her to realize what had happened.

Anu then started to get in duel with Divya. It was so funny that Maria and I were ROFLing. For those lucky souls who are not chatties in the internet ROFL – Rolling on the floor laughing. 

It got serious in a while, and we had to cut them off from each other but we were still laughing. After a few minutes of long silence, both of them apologized to each other. To our surprise they hugged each other, self-incriminating their stupidity and repeating ‘my mistake’.

Somehow the 1st day of our 2nd sem had a great start. Only then we realized it was time for shower. We scurried to the lavatory, which was already crowded. We got into dilemma, whether to skip bathing or the very first hour of our 2nd sem.

I missed Divya, she belonged to ECE. 2nd sem onwards we were be segregated into classes based on our departments. I was happy that at least Anu continued to be my classmate. 

Our classroom was at the east end of the main building which was built during the English era. The room was pleasantly sunlit with the trees subduing the light. The road across the canteen and the most frequented road run along the east side of the building. Hence it added sight seeing to our list of classroom hobbies.

The 3 rows of 4seater desks were concentrated more towards the last and people fighting for the center places. The day was very similar to the 1st day of our 1st sem with the regular intros with new classmates, and of course the talk about marks and ranks. More than that the most hot topic was about the phsyco(s), who will be handling subjects that sem.

I learned from my seniors that more than just hard-work and brilliance there were critical strategies that make acquiring good grades simple and smart. I was wondering who would be handling each subject, and most importantly ‘Data Structures’. The paper was perceived as ‘the mother of all papers’ for a computer science engg, as any processing would be useless without data.

Our first class was math and Padma ma’am handled the class. She was one of the best teachers, I had seen in college, or may be it was because of my favoritism for math. Padma ma’am thought us problems, and concepts as they should be. I was active throughout the class. 

Ishyu complained “Why on earth we computer enggs need math?”

Anu, “Oh dear, we have it till the 5th sem..”

The next hour E.Mech (Engg mechanics) was a physics esp. laws of motion, forces sort of a subject, and I felt like a natural. First time in college I was awake for 2 classes in a row. I was answering as many questions as possible, and that was part of the ‘critical strategies’.

I had made many friends in the break. I knew Priya, Sangamitra, Preethi Ravi and a few others. I now know Ishwarya, Revathy and Tamarai. My performance in the 1st two classes had stirred envy amongst my new classmates.

But the 3rd hour, Chemistry, ‘no way’, I was trying all possible tricks to at least keep myself awake. Nevertheless I was dozing off. Anu was voraciously noting down all the concepts, names etc etc. The first class was not so deep into the subject yet, I was literally sleeping.

The 4th hour thankfully was our class-advisor’s. She handled EVS (Environmental Sciences). She asked everyone to introduce themselves. That’s the best thing that could happen in a class for anyone. Nobody will doze off. 

I was making a mental note of everyone, of course esp. the guys esp. the handsome ones. Just then I looked around. It was not just me but every gal around me was doing the same. Anu, ‘my God’, I have never seen her as attentive as she was then.

She looked as if she was embedding every name and the details in some invisible notepad, as it would look lousy if she wrote it down in her note-book.

Both our afternoon classes were off. Data Structures ma’am will be in college only the next week, and the Digital Design sir readily agreed to our class rep’s request. He stated that we would make a mess during the free 5th hr so we would better leave.

We happily came back to hostel and the notorious ECE class regularities; Divya was there well before us. After lunch we had a good nap after discussing our new classes.

voraciously – greedily or hungrily.
Lousy – nasty
Hypnomaniac – a maniac of sleeping
Orthodox sleep – deep sleep without dreams
self-incriminating – blaming oneself