Those three years

And the college life ends. Some might say it’s the end of an era but I
say it’s the end of one of the best chapters of our lives. The old rickety benches,
the dimly lit class rooms and all the fun and environment around it
all will be over. Still look for a chance to go back and to sit at our
group s regular table but miss the group. Every one s getting busy in
their lives really fast and it makes me feel insecure that all of a
sudden the memories that v all created together will be forgotten only
to be remembered during occasional meetings. Time fly’s bye, truly it
does.



I can remember my first day in college not knowing anyone but by
bestie and the initial few days v were bored to shit. Then v met Mandar a short guy with a small but thick moustache you meet him and you know he s a guy worth trusting your life with. By that time v were still running in and out of Mumbai university trying to get our documents done, that s when v met Harshad a slim guy so talkative that you
will bet a million bucks he s got into the wrong field and should have
been a radio jockey. I always stayed away from girls and the notes and
stuff were always taken by Parth from this one girl who always used to
occupy the first bench of the class and rarely used to speak to
anyone. Initially v though her name was Fatima but turns out it was
Farhad, a guy trapped in a girl’s body. Honestly I was a bit sacred of her as I felt she was crazy, well just for the record she became one of my closest chums. But I was right about my first impression she s still completely unpredictable and spontaneous. Then last came in the pheobe of the group, Aarti, a day
dreamer and a total “i don’t know what to do “girl. She was a
complete over actor; her most famous dialogue came in front of the
Vodafone store and almost had Parth beaten up. They were just walking
down the road and suddenly she said loudly "usne mujhe yahan chuva
vaha chuva" a famous dialogue from a romantic family movie and not from any adult movie as the dialogue may represent. The crowd around them was stunned and had she been crying while saying that parth would have been beaten up for sure.


Initially there were many other people but slowly and gradually all the others had their own separate groups and we 6 people formed a world of our own. Things we did were crazy and we were probably the only ones who used to attend college regularly. The third year, when we all had migrated to GLC from other colleges was less fun and more study as we all were not that close but from the 4th year onwards it was awesome, things we did ranged from playing Gold spot in the class to dumb charades and throwing chalks and stuff. Once we had this powder fight were my talcum powder was used to spoil others dresses. And one time Mandar brought a unique colour during holi which would just keep getting darker every time u rub it. I remember during the end of the 4th year we had our Viva’s and all of us were sitting together in the same bench and what a time we had, we were the most mischievous group in the class and even the professor who was conducting the Viva keep staring at us and we would immediately indulge ourselves in books. We literally cheered any of our group members who used to go on the dais for his/her viva. And the professor was so much distracted that she said to everyone who went up there amongst us “wow your friends are sure supportive”. And we all scored well in it in spite of this “Chakallas” ( Harshad’s slang). The Transfer of property lectures were I and parth used to doze off sitting in the first bench and Farhad would keep nudging us to pay attention. The lectures of Ruparel Sir which I used to attend even though I had not taken Tax laws. And ofcourse how can we forget Farhad’s favourite professor Brijesh Ranjan. This guy once sent a text to her saying he’ s unwell and wont be able to make it for the class and we jerks typed in “ Get Well Soon Mamu” and hit the sent button….what a laugh we had, idiots of the highest category.



Our fifth year started off with a big fight which split the group completely and it was the talk of the town for sometime as everyone kept asking what happened and why but even in fight mode we were united as none of us told anyone outside the group what had happened and brushed it off saying it was just a silly bet. After one whole semester we came back as a whole due to Mandar’s effort and our own want to be with others as no one admitted but missed the other real bad. Then it was a complete party time we had so much fun probably the best three months, bunked every lecture to such extent that we didn’t even know who our subject professor was. And who plays UNO cards when their Viva is being conducted in the next room, V did. Who appears for exams without any knowledge of the paper style and keep staring at each other the whole time, V did. Who comes in late by half an hour for this exams directly from Shirdi completely unprepared, Harshad did. Played UNO cards the whole day along with dumb charads went to malls and played so many games that we had around 4000 reward points. That was the time of our life, saw two movies back to back, fought with the watchman, set people up, made the first table of the canteen our classroom where we used to sit eating and playing from 7am to 2pm………..so much we did.


The year ended with an awesome trip to Alibaug on the eve of my birthday, the first trip all of us took together. It was so much fun three days we had a blast no touch with the outside world except with family and I got a very peaceful birthday celebration at the beach the whole day and also gifts like a couple of Ferraris and a Batman T-shirt I was longing for. It was a full on party time we had awesome food, played everything from dumb charads to antakshari to truth and dare to doing what not. We used to sleep at 4 or 5 in the morning and wake up by 9 to go out and enjoy more.

What fun days they were now as it all ends nostalgic feeling kicks in and the bare fact that it will be years from now when all of us will spend such time together seems surreal. But we all managed to do one thing we all have created a personal space of the other in our hearts that cannot be taken by anyone else. But one thing for sure the three years that we all shared through love, fights, fun and games is a memory lodged in forever. V all made a unique group, Farhad Pathan a.k.a Angry Young Man, a Muslim who has never been within 1 km radius of burka and does not read namaz. Parth Shah a.k.a Sethji a Gujarati who was the group’s World Bank and very generous to even a dog. Harshad Puranik a.k.a Pj-King, a Brahmin who loves to have chiken and other non veg items. Aarti Nimbalkar a.k.a Overactor, No Comments. Mandar Jadhav a.k.a Mimbiya, a staunch maratha who’s best friends include jerks like us. And finally me Sriraj Menon a.k.a Bhukkad Singh, a south Indian born and brought up in Gujarat who has basically no knowledge about the ancient Hindu mythology in any form and loves cars more than girls. If people call us crazy I say, Hell ya we are!!!!!!!!!!!

A Birthday to Remember by.......

This year I had decided to spend my 22nd birthday with my college pals as it was our last year and who knows where we would be in the coming years, when it would be even difficult to speak to one another once in a week. So my friends organized a surprise trip for me to Alibaug a place on the outskirts of Mumbai with beautiful beaches.

We left a day before 28th catching a boat from the Gateway to the beautiful beaches of Alibaug. After 1 and a half hour of boat and bus ride we finally landed at the place at night and booked a room in which all of us could stay. After having a quick dinner we headed for the beach with my birthday cake. What a night it was all of us got down to the beach at 11pm in the leg tickling waters of the silent beach. Then started the long solitude walk along the beach in which I covered like 3 kms all alone in the darkness, it was so peaceful. As the clock struck 12 we cut the cake at the beach, I would say one of the unique ways of celebrating birthday is to cut the cake on the beach side at 12 something I will remember for all my birthday’s to come. The cake was so damn hard that even after attempting to paste it on my face the stubborn cake refused to break and after throwing it at the dogs it refused to be eaten by them. The night that followed was more entertaining I got some of the most prized gifts. The rascals gifted me a Ferrari Enzo Scale model and an assembly kit of Ferrari F430 along with an awesome Batman T-Shirt. The sight of the Ferrari made my heart pound more aggressively than ever, like a boy who likes a girl real bad and she accepts his proposal. After that followed a game of the legendary dumb shereds which had to be halted due to the electricity being disconnected. Then followed another couple of hours chit chatting and fighting the mosquitoes which finally led us to sleep at 5 am on my birthday.

We woke up within 4 hours since we had slept and headed off towards the beach and then followed the enjoyment of a life time for me. From 11 to 4 we were in the water lazing around playing antakshari, doing anything just about anything in the water. It was so much fun, I cant remember the last time I had such a blast during my birthday I seriously cant. And as the two days we all were with each other and almost disconnected from the outside world majority of my group mates love life went for a toss, maximum due to insecurity of the other person and it was so much fun. To be precise it was a “LOVE CHANGING” trip for all except me. We will cherish every moment of it the games, the truth and dare, harshad’s sleeping secret (which we have discovered by the way) and the fun of staying together for 2 nights and a day.
This birthday will be hard to forget, I realized when we all broke up to go home how much I started missing my friends and how much I loved them. That day even a dozen Ferrari’s couldn’t match the happiness that I had by being with them. It was a birthday I will cherish, in nature’s lap not attending unwanted calls being with college mates…………well that’s something………a moment to remember always!!!

The Batch of 2011

I Opened my eyes cursing the alarm ring that was blaring under my pillow, I had to get up and leave for the college as it was our Farwell day and all of us had decided to meet up at marine drive and have a good time together for the last time, because years from now when we will be finding ourselves as the unluckiest of the lot we can take a look at the old memories and bring a smile on our faces. The nostalgia hadn’t yet kicked in so when we met we all had a gala time on marine drive even though many were late by 45 minutes and so. But we tried to do the things we did the time all of us met three years back. After a quick breakfast at our old canteen where we used to spend time together we rushed into the auditorium afraid of being late but as its in India we were spot on time even though we were running 20 minutes behind the scheduled time. The opening speech was given by some dude whom I hadn’t seen ever in college until that day and the whole auditorium was packed that’s when I realized that these people are my classmates, as no one used to attend lectures and this was one occasion when everyone would turn up for sure. We all sat together hearing stories about our “new” classmates sharing their experiences in the five years spent at the college. And then came the warm good bye speeches by the professors who wished us best of luck for the future and also made a humble appeal to keep in touch and offered us a professor’s position in the college for any subject we might want to teach. Our college has been really an old institution and when one of the most well known professors made an appeal to do our best for the college is when we all realized that our heat beats for GLC no matter how much we may curse it, the love won’t fade away. Even after a decade when we will walk out of churchgate station and look at the iconic building it will bring a smile on our face. Because that s the place where we were nurtured to be the best people we possibly can be, where we spent the best times of our lives and made the best of friends. All of us received a nice coffee mug with the words printed “Batch of 2011”. It felt good. It was a short and sweet farewell.

After the official farewell from college the hunger pangs started to get the better out of us all. After meaningless discussions and a disappointing trip to Copper Chimney (they don’t serve buffet on weekends) we ended up at one of the most coveted locations in south Mumbai, “The Ambassador”. It was totally out of budget for all of us but we were so hell bent on making this day memorable that we decided to loosen the purse strings. The food was amazing and we made sure all of us had everything from coolers to the 6 desserts. The brunch lasted a full 2 and a half hour. Then came on the most legen…….wait for it..dary moments of the day. It was the day when India were supposed to face South Africa in the Cricket World Cup match. The hotel had a big projector on which the match was put on, so when the national anthem started all of us jerks instead of Parth stood up to show respect. At his such initiation we stopped having our food and followed his lead and then the food place which was full with people including some foreign nationals stood up seeing all of us show respect and within a few seconds all were standing up to it. It felt really good.

After some more food tucking and saching sehwag innings we decided to leave because we feared if we didn’t the staff will throw us out. The match was in full swing as the duo was on fire hitting the South African bowlers all over the place. We decided to go to the sports bar to watch the match. It was sad that Farhad and Mandar could not join us. I always wished they had stayed a bit nearby but it was already getting late and we they had to go. So we reached the sports bar which was jam packed as any local train is on week days in Mumbai. But we somehow managed to get three table seats in front of the screen. Watching the match was an awesome experience as we cherred on at every boundary and stood up to give Sachin a standing ovation for his ton etc. After the innings got over we headed home and while on my way I realized that it was one of the best Saturdays of my life and for all of us. We really missed our friends who could not join us at the Sports bar for the match but in a nut shell it was a farwell we all will remember for the rest of our lives. Generally people get nostalgic and emotional during farwells but it didn’t happen with us because inside we all knew no matter how much ever we say it we are gonna be in touch for the rest of our lives and we will be just as good friends as we are today. Love you all guys and I will be bothering u no matter where ever you try to hide from me. Cheers to ourselves!!!!!!!!!!:)

The Storm in the boat of friendship

Many times in life we meet people who leave an impact on us, but its only seldom that u actually live with those people in your daily life. Well I have experienced that with my college friends which are the best group of people you can hang out with. Whenever we are together v all get along like an house on fire, and we make sure that if we all are attending a lecture the professor turns around to look at who’s creating the fuss. Mumbai was beautiful for me only because I had idiots like them in my life without which Mumbai would only be a place of materialistic happiness for me ( please Ferrari and Lamborghini don’t feel bad I love you too but in a different way ). So as in every relation the world creates there came an up- down phase between all of us which led to the ultimate separation of the group. During this period we all had our alter egos taking control of ourselves in not initiating the compromise. All of us but this one guy in our group could read our eyes and tell that we were pretending to be happy without each other but we were not actually happy. The distance grew so much to the extent that from sharing a common canteen table and pulling each other’s leg, we moved on to having two separate table and the neutral guy moving in between to make it up to both the warring parties. As time went by and events kept on happening we grew more apart thinking that we were completely over it, but actually we were getting more depressed and depressed over the time. And all of us used to jell together so beautifully that in the 4 months that we avoided each other we didn’t make new friends in the college because we had a different frequency wave which none except us could match. Many initiations came by but because of this one person in the group ( like every family has a black sheep this person was the one for this group) the initial initiations were blocked by this person making us believe that no one cares now and everyone’s happy in their own way ( only one sentence for you, never cross my line again possibilities are I might tear u apart for what u did, I don’t care ). This went on till the end of the second last semester of the final year. The best part was that we all had a very good telepathic connection in the sense somehow none of us spelt out our disconcert to anyone in the college and no one knew why there was a split……..this is something we came to know after we patched up that none of us had blabbered anything to any third party in the college.

And finally the time came when we all were pretending to be happy in our lives , the next semester started and daily the simply sitting apart silently without acknowledging the existence of the other used to pain us, then boom went the dynamite when we came to know that there were 3 initiations from the other side but none even communicated to us due to the misinformer in between. We were pretty pissed off when we heard this and then what happened was that the compromise occurred and we all came to know how miserable we were without the other and the whole college which was about to digest the fact that we were now apart had a rude shock when we all sat together and began our usual gimmicks for about 4 hours non- stop. When we all met face to face did we realize that the reason for such a split was the black sheep who never intimated us of any initiations and had added fuel to the fire of the already grim situation. The day we compromised was awesome I haven’t felt so happy in like a really long time we were back to our usual self, pulling each other’s leg ( some even hair ), spilling coffee over each other, giving the bro half hug ( keeping in respect the Bro Code article 41 ) etc. It was such an invigorating experience, seemed surreal for a day but then it sank down to the truth. The evening went acknowledging each other on facebook and letting the thirsty fingers comment on the pics and updates that were old but due to the differences were uncommentable. We all learnt a few things from this:-
1. We were a pack, and could not be separated. United we stand divided we fall.
2. If ever in a fight always chose a good mediator (because of which this finally happened: hats off to you buddy, your return gift: a bigger mimba).
3. Sit across and hear the other party out.
4. Never ever believe everything that you hear until its from the right person.
5. Kiss and make up ASAP.
6. Recognize the black sheep in the group and never let it spoil the chemistry that all share.

This is a valuable chapter in mine as well as everyone of my idiot’s life and we would like to close this with a smile. And I have only few words to describe the happiness………. we are back with a “Bang”.


P.S:- We are Awesome!!!!!