Memories of Goa.....

In a deviation from my normal blog about my college life, today I plan to write something about another experience of mine. Especially

because I was in Miami, Florida recently. Although there were many beeeuti-ful (punctuations are unintentional) things to see around, few people and memories came back to me. Although they were not as beeeuti-ful as the sight in front of me, but life is not always about good things....

It was Nov of 2005. We were on a sort of term break from our training. Self and three colleagues of mine decided to go on a trip to GOA. Here is a brief description of them....

Ghoda.... The horse. Yap, thats what they called him. Not sure why he got this name, but he always lived up to his reputation. He is a good cook and an even better hogger. Legend has it that nothing goes waste as long as he is at dining table. Overgrown horizontally, he always kept us on the edge of our seats - as there was no space left with him around.

Ballu..... The Papa Bear. Overgrown vertically, it is said that when he takes shower water dries up before reaching to his toes. Probably that is why he was so exited to come to Goa, as he could finally take a complete bath....

Kallu.... The lean. He had physical dimensions which can put Kareena to shame. There were rumors that he got selected in this course because of his size. They said he could go between the blades of the engine to inspect the interior faults. Truly I never believed those rumors as he would have surely tripped over the anti-vibration plates in the blades.

Tillu..... That's me. Can not brag about self in own blog, so it ends here.

We got to the shore and checked into our hotel at Calingute beach. Immediately we decided that the best way to travel in Goa would be to hire two bikes for the four of us. So we contacted the hotel to get us two bikes.

And there at 10 O' Clock position stood two bikes. A pulsar 150 cc, legend of a bike even today and the other one was a Royal Enfield , another legend made famous by the do

odhwalas (not to be mistaken with dabbawallahs). The name of the owner was written all over the bikes. BENTO it read. He gave his bike to us with one clear message, ' don't mess them up'. Oh well, we had two experienced bikers in kallu and Ballu. There was no way in the world we would mess up. We were sure to find that out very soon.

Like good (and intelligent) citizens we took photographs of the bikes from different angles. Ballu and tillu took the Pulsar and kallu and ghoda took the Enfield. A decision he will repents through out the day as the Enfield refused to start after every stop. It was understandable that Ghoda was excited to kick the Enfield on the first given opportunity as he might have thought it will make him look fitter on the beach, but it was not what Kallu wanted. He suffered through out the day as Ghoda could not do more than kicking the Enfield.... Yes, its true.... Ghoda and Tillu did not knew how to drive bike those days.

In the night we were making our way back to the hotel. Even though Ballu had four eyes, non of them supported night vision. So, we allowed Kallu and Ghoda to lead us on their Enfield. As we continued on our journey back from the nude beach (well we found only rocks there), on one of the turn we suddenly found the Enfield in front of us disappeared in dark. Ballu could only make out that a red bolt in front of him had disappeared. But well he had Tillu with him

-who calculated the speed of their bike, curvature of the road, speed of the wind, level of luminescence on th street and... and ....) to come to a conclusion that Kallu has made a dive in to the bushes with Ghoda being the first one to jump out of the sinking ship. Ballu stopped the Pulsar. And both of us ran towards the epicenter of the calamity....

'Thank god', Ballu said after close inspection. Tillu breathed easily. They were sweating now more than they had on the beach for the whole day. Really it was a miracle......

The Royal Enfield of 'BENTO' was safe....

And oh yes. Kallu had a few scratches. There was a crater where Ghoda fell. But they were ok.

SCREW THAT JACK

Engineers know how to draw. Yes, sure they do. But what finally comes out of the Engineering Drawing session is nothing less than modern art at best. It took our professors one complete semester to tell us how to fix a mini drafter on to the drawing table. No doubt they never expected us to draw something which manufacturers would understand. The instructions were very simple. There are two components, a 'connecting rod' and a 'screw jack'. Learn them and you can clear the exams. Although there were eight other component drawings in our syllabus we had complete faith in our education system. They cannot go beyond the basic two designs.

It was seventh semester final exams and next day was Engineering Drawing exam. As for the two of the class back bencher, vichu and I were playing cricket. Years later I realized it helped us to relax and perform better in the exams. Hell if we had know it earlier we would have made a pitch right in front of our class rooms. I casually asked my giant friend Vichu, (although he has lost a lot of weight now... god knows what they feed him in Australia. This is surely a fall out of the racism there and I strongly protest against it...) can there be a chance that they will give a component drawing in tomorrows exam other than the two we had just scribbled on our note books. He grinned as if he had just heard about news of infidelity of his girl friend. Thank god for the inertia of his extra weight he never came and hit me. But the message was loud and clear, we will not discuss of any other drawing (I still do not know what the other drawings were).

Next day in the morning we were again travelling in our beloved PNK SRT bus. After all these years today I realize we never tried to find out what it really meant. As usual we didnot get a seat, but our speko friend Amol had his seat near the window pretty well occupied. If I had that luck I would have slept all the way up to the college. But he ofcourse was the torch bearer of the 'RICH PEOPLE CAN BE HUMBLE' group. He was sitting with many drawing sheets and a giant smile on his face which said 'I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST AFTERNOON...' I kept my distance as I knew he can be a potential demoralizer, especially two hour ahead of the exams. But who can stop Vichu. He went ahead and asked the deadliest of all questions.... 'Hey, whats in those sheets'. The grin on the Specko's face grew another four inches either side. He said he had done all the drawings in the syllabus atleast once. He took names of components which seemed more like names of our forefathers contemporary to Greeks and Romans.

Just in front of the examination hall Vichu and I looked at each other as if our death sentence was about to be handed over to us. And whats worse we were not even married... As we entered in to the hall, Vichu recollected the names of all the Gods and Goddesses he knew. Some how I heard Shakila and Pamela also in those names, although I was not in mood to inquire about the details.

The question paper was of four pages although what really mattered was the last page, last question. I was somehow not finding the courage to open that last sheet. Then suddenly I saw the hand of Yuvraj going up in the air with a 'thumbs Up' sign. It surely meant 'All izz Well'. And surely it was. The SCREW JACK had lifted our souls. And we surely screwed it. All of us did pretty well. HAIL BHARTHIYAR.... HAIL BHARTHIYAR UNIVERSITY.....