Project Turn On (LXVI)

Reviewed by Lakshminarasimhan.

This post is dedicated to this blog's recent followers 205 889, Karthick and Enbanathan.

In our college symposium I was made the person in charge of all computer science related events. In fact, I was the one who asked for it, in spite of Shantnu warning me to concentrate on my academics. We conducted Programming contests, debugging contests and half a dozen variations of these.

Participants either got annoyed, or were intrigued about the tuff questions set by me. Our senior Harini, who christened me as Microsoft told me that I was proving to be a worthy candidate for Microsoft. I rather felt, that exercise helped me a lot in gaining more knowledge on coding and concepts.

Shantanu was also satisfied about the way symposium activities added to my knowledge. He dreamed more about me getting into Microsoft than me. We finished our 2nd assessments in the week after the symposium. We had our 6th semester exams in a month.

The symposium was academically useful, nevertheless it affected our 2nd assessment marks. As always all our 3rd assessment tests were replaced by mini-projects. That was one hell of an important thing for me, if I wanted to continue getting 9 in that semester as my 2nd asses marks were bad. I decided to do all projects in teams with Shantanu, as he would surely get me good marks in projects.

Anu and Sangi my understanding friends agreed to my idea of doing projects with Shantanu. We did include either Shantanu’s friend Hari and Palani or my friends if the team can have more than 2 members nevertheless the two of us had to do the entire coding stuff.

Anu and Sangi did manage, but Shantanu felt a little bad to leave his usual project companions Hari and Palani behind, as they were his only friends at college, who didn’t have any professional relation with him. Anyway he could never say ‘no’ to me, especially, if he saw my eyes turn red from their usual blue, and he in fact cared more about my marks than me.

The days were not enough for us to complete all the six projects. I stayed back in one of our classrooms with Shantanu till 8.30PM, beyond which I had to finish my dinner, and go back to hostel. We were doing well, but with that pace we would never be able to finish all 6 projects in time.

The entire department was busy doing projects. During the day we saw all the gangs, especially the bisexual ones under trees, classrooms and even on footpaths with their laptops, bugging themselves in completing the projects.

Most teams were mixed teams with a minority of the team working, and the rest resting. Tamarai and Vikram the two geeky guys of our class were teams together, and that was supposed to be the geekiest team in the department. Krishna and Sundari were teams together in most of the projects.

At hostel girls made sexually explicit comments about the duo Kirshna and Sundari. However bad I hated her, I never admit making comments about someone which were not true, and when it comes to sexually explicit comments, I would never ever approve of them. Girls stopped making such comments, at least in my presence.

We spent hours and hours together, but we never had even minutes for love or romance. The project work was killing us every second. Shantanu being a perfectionist never compromised on anything less than the best. This had us work longer, however the results we knew were really going to pay off.

It had become our usual schedule to go to bed by 2AM or even later. However engrossed and busy we were, Shantanu made it a point to bid as ‘I love u’ every night over phone before we went to bed.

In those weeks that had passed with the project works, I almost forgot mom; skipped a meal. At times even before brushing I turned on my laptop to check, whether the solutions that occurred to me in my dreams really worked.

Apart from doing our own projects, both of us were obliged to help our friends. This was the reason, why we had to work so hard and long. Nevertheless our friends were very helpful. They did everything they could do to support us, unlike other mixed teams where everything right from abstract submission till documentation will be done by a single person.

While at hostel we discussed things online, and coded independent modules. In the next evening, we integrated the program parts that we coded individually the previous night. We had only two more weeks for the deadline for the projects’ submission. We still had more than 60% of the work to be completed.

The worst part is one can never estimate the time one would take to complete a program. So, the work remaining may very well be more than 60% in terms of the time it would take. So we really started worrying, with 50% more time, and more than 60% of work, yet to be completed.

We worked at 150% efficiency while working together, hence staying together as long as possible was definitely a very good option. But the question was ‘Where?’ Finally we decided that we would work in my gramps’ guest house in the city.

The next day Anu, Shantanu and I left to the guest house telling grand pa, “I am staying with my friends on some work, for which we feel hostel not so comfortable”. Grand pa who was only too desperate for his only grand daughter’s love acquiesced without another word. I only knew it too well that he would have me killed, if he came to know a guy was one among the ‘friends’.

We worked and worked until we fainted. Actually it was not that hard but we did it terrifically big with a passion, as we loved to work in each other’s company, and we took sophisticated topics for our projects. The projects came up well. Near the deadline week we almost completed everything except for a few final touches and testing.

It was Tuesday of the last working week of the semester. Out of the 6 projects the demos for 4 were over, and obviously we topped in all of them but one. Shantanu tried to help Palani and Hari, and he gave the basic code of our complier project asking them to build up on the code, and change the interface to make it look like an entirely different project. Unfortunately we were caught, and our faculty got so very annoyed. We worried what would he do to our internals or worst case to our externals as well.

One of the good things I learned from Shantanu is not to worry about something that, we could do nothing about. So we got back to work as usual for the other 2 projects that evening. The project was almost over, and we would have very well finished it at our college, yet we left for the guest house.

The night passed midnight. Shantanu never got satisfied with what he had done. He kept improvising the project adding graphics and enhancing the interface. Anu as always went to bed in another bedroom. We continued to work for sometime.

I was drowsy, Vanessa Carlton’s-A 1000 miles was melodiously playing in my laptop that made me feel sleepier. I was tired of working till 3AM the previous night, and the project demos, that extended for the whole day, waiting in and around the department for the faculty. Shantanu asked me to go to bed.

I saw Anu sleeping soundly; I lied down by her side. Just then I remembered that we forgot to tell ‘Love u honey’ to each other. Though it was not a forcible formality, I had no intention of breaking it. I walked back to the room, where we were working.

Shantanu was exercising stretching and twisting his arms to let a proper blood flow. This was a normal relaxation procedure for an IT professional working for hours. I stepped closer to him, he looked at me, and I said, “Love u honey. Good night”

He inching closer to me tried to kiss me. For a moment the girl in me overpowered me, and I instantly turned away. Realizing the scene Shantanu stepped back and said, “I am sorry. Sorry….”.

He looked very embarrassed. I felt very bad about myself. One thing, I would have loved being kissed by him, and other, I had no intention of making Shantanu feel guilty. He was unable to face me.

I was struck there, clueless about what to do. My instinct said that, I should step in and kiss him.