Crappy Days

… crappy days… crappy days…

That is how I would describe my college days when compared to Shekar Kammula’s Happy Days. Not just me, many of my friends who’ve had very eventful lives might describe them that way.

None of us got to sit beside a beautiful girl on the day of our counseling, perhaps because there weren’t name tags to the chairs which we could’ve rearranged. Our auditoriums were larger, counseling sessions spanned over four days, and parents sat beside us. Come to think about it, we were all so immature we might have hid our palms between our legs (pun unintended) if not inside our pants, rather than place one of them assuringly on a girl’s shaking palm. On second thought, change the tense to present.

We had very mild ragging sessions, and our seniors, like us, were too diffident to rag girls, forget boys and girls together. Even when they did, they weren’t daring enough to cut anybody’s hair or throw them in a pothole filled with muddy water. They would apologize profusely if they ever made accidental physical contact. Well, they were the law-abiding kind without much concern for higher moralities nor future friendship bands. That also ruled out going around beating boys with hockey-sticks. Freshers were also law-abiding. We didn’t go to bars nor drove cars. Not yet.

There were so few girls, some of us later feared that the movie Matrubhoomi was about our college. Those too were far from the dazzling kind. I’m sure all of them together might have received fewer compliments of the, “nuvvu ivALLa chAla andangA vunnAvu,” or any of its umpteen variations less times than Madhu in the movie got from Chandu.

One of the English professors was young and beautiful, more beautiful than Kamalinee Mukherjee. She was married. Not to someone who looked like Mahesh Babu, but to someone who looked like Superstar Krishna after getting old and bald. Still, she never left her pallu flying all over the front-benches, nor was she heard to be liberal with flirts, forget über-liberal.

Students were known to sweat blood, despite having long lists of accomplishments, but few ever became secretaries. And our college wasn’t flush with funds to give any secretary stylish buggy-like cars. Seniority often implied losing or renouncing bicycles and thumbing rides to college.

Even after growing into smart, sensible and rich men, none of the students I know ever grew the balls to say, “nenu chiTikeste e ammAyainA paDAlsinde” (or whatever). Even when drunk. The college stars were often overheard bemoaning, “What is the use of being a (Quidditch) star when all the nice girls are taken?”

Our days were filled with going to classes, doing assignments, preparing and writing quizzes. Even when we get nostalgic and drunk, those are still not times we could sweep away in a two-line verse of a montage song. That formed the majority of the time of the majority of our college days.

On second thought, change the tense to perfect. Throughout.

One more thing. Though their vocabulary has significantly shrunk, even those with the most stylish accents (learnt over years in foreign lands) still speak Telugu like Telugu.

One more. Heck! there are many more. I can’t relive all those crappy moments again.

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