The G(r)and Vizier's Beach Party

Strange title ain't it? It has to be too, considering that this is a trip back in time. Its about a story untold, an awakening, nothing to do with gands and everything to do with a party.

It all started when the Karnataka CET results were declared and your's truly and Keshav found themselves within the top 'dade sow' (150) of the state.

The managers (read parents), the players (read professional course aspirants) and the promoters (read the bloated college managements) started their hectic strategies to secure the 'best deal' for themselves. The managers, wanting the best deal for their players so that their stock could rise favourably as compared to others; the players themselves suddenly behaving like top notch profesisonals who are negotiating a tricky defence agreement suddenly wanting to sculpt a career for themselves; and the promoters trying to rule the best of both worlds, brain and cash to their series, a la Kerry Packer.

In all this hullabaloo, suddenly the phone rang at Vattarmadom. For the uninitiated, this is the name of my house. (Still haven't decoded the meaning of it). I remember having lied about it in my school as "the house of peace"...Peace??when was it ever The Golan Heights for the term peace to be coined in separately? The Kothakurusi village (Ottapalam taluka (i suppose), palghat District, Kerala state) and the Bangalore versions of vattarmadom have been plentiful oasis of calm, laughter and all the other good things that u can think of.I still remember coming back from a wedding in Bombay as a 6 year old, diving on the floor, rolling like an elephant taking a sandbath and all the while exclaiming "Thatha, namma aam maari onnum illai". (Grandpa, theres no place like our home).

Anyway, back to the call. This is how it went.

Keshav: Maga, so what have you decided?
Me: About what?
K: Ob maga, seat bagge. (Obvious dude, about the seat)
M: Oh!!Illa le, tumba confusing agide..(No man, its damn confusing)
K: Listen to me. What do you say to KREC?
M: What do you expect we'll get there?
K: Trical or Mech
M: But I'm not interested in either...
K: I know maga, neither am I...But i heard that there is a branch change option available, whereby we can change to EnC depending on the marks that we score.
M: Are you sure you wanna leave comps in RV?
K: Magga, you must be crazy to say no to a chance to get EnC in KREC.
M: What if we don't get a BC?
K: Even then, trical has got good job offers...
M: Right, count me in.

Armed with this pre-meditated choice, we went to the 'counselling' session. Since our ranks were pretty close by our 'counselling' was scheduled for the same time slot. I still don't understand the term 'counselling'. COunselling is what happens when you visit shrinks or funda givers. What happened at the CET Cell and what still happens is a seat selection. If people think that a guy sitting in front of the computer displaying the seat matrix and telling me how many seats are available in each institute under which branch constitutes counselling, they need to reconsider. I hope the authorities concerned have the sense to rename the process just for posterity's sake. But for this post, 'counselling' stays; because thats what we were supposed to have undergone.

The counselling went off smoothly with some last gasp effort from Keshav to get that juicy EnC seat. How??? Even though the matrix displayed zero, our man went ahead and asked for the seat hoping that something like a last minute cancellation of a Rs.500/- ticket on Air Deccan might have occured. Well, whoever had taken those seats were not going to give it up, just like the travel agents who gobble up those tickets.

So here we were, two pre-university classmates, out to become the best of friends at the university. To cut a long story short, what ensued was this: the original BC matamorphosised into the slang BC (Behan Chod), electrical became the next best thing to God (thank God I didn't crossover into EnC), EnC became something that many loved to hate and the jobs did pour in!!! Every year had its share of adventures and before all these incidents in KREC, there were the so called 'Amit mane Conferences' (Conferences in Amit's house...[author's note: Amit also
called Buddi was also a classmate in pre-univ who continued his studies in bangalore]) wherein Adithya and Kshitij battled out to determine who would be the fourth roomie along with keshav, me and gandhi!!!

There was also the trip to Surathkal for the 'other state REC counselling'...Needless to say, I fell in love with Surathkal once I saw the beach and very happily rejected the seats on offer in the other REcs, much to the surprise of my dad who had been hearing dialogues like "I wanna live as far away away as possible. I want to experience India" etc etc for the whole week leading to the 'counselling'. The only regret I have is that there was a babe who chose Warangal or some
other REC, I don't remember...Whoever u are, my 'muuahs' to you..wish we could have spent some time on the beach!!! But then, if I had not chosen Surathkal............

And the story ends, leavig you all with the Vengaboys song, 'I Wanna have sex on the beach!!!'

PS: wish blogger had an option like livejournal for current song, current mood etc....