Friends for life - My first blog

This is my first blog and is dedicated to my friends.

Year 1991: EAMCET counselling @ JNTU Masab Tank

I met my first of the five friends here. We fondly call him JP. My EAMCET rank was 422 and I could not secure admission in a government engineering college. My Dad consulted few of his colleagues and decided that ECE (Electronics and Communications Engineering) was the right fit for me. Don’t ask me why and how he arrived at that conclusion. I was happy to do Mechanical Engineering at Osmania University which was open for my rank. I was the first person to join CBIT ECE branch for that year. JP, whom I met at the counselling centre, followed suit.

Just 35 days later, the EAMCET counselling office announced re-counselling to fill in seats vacated by the more “intellectual guys” who left to scale higher peaks at IITs and BITS Pilani. The term they used then was “sliding”. I and JP managed to slide from CBIT to JNTU College of Engineering Anantapur.

We both had the dubious distinction of getting ragged at both CBIT and JNTU Anantapur, both  were notorious in those days for heavy ragging.

Year 1991: Lepakshi hostel

I met the rest (4) of the five friends here at this hostel. All outstation freshers (1st Year Engineering) get admitted into this hostel. Janani, Ravi (We call him pothu), Praveen and Krishna. I and Janani were roommates. JP and Ravi were roommates. Krishna and Praveen were roommates.

There are several incidents that shaped our friendship at this hostel and several memorable events including the ragging, the big caste fights that took place that year (this one was unfortunate), the fresher’s party, shift from yearly exams to semester exams – which was a blessing in disguise for Ravi, whose heroic stunts left him paralysed for more than six months. Only God knows how he recovered from the spine injury without loosing an academic year.

Year 1992: #1 Parvathi Nilayam

This is the place that truly built a solid foundation for our friendship that will (I am sure) last for life. We all concluded that with the clashes between the hostels and other distractions we should take a house for rent and concentrate on studies. We managed to do the first bit (taking the house) and never really managed to do the second bit (concentrate on the studies).

We rented #1 Parvathi Nilayam, just off the campus, and had the best part of our lives during those 3 years. Krishna officially stayed at NB / Amaravathi hostel to continue to be eligible for his scholarship.

From early morning breakfast at “Seenu tea and breakfast” hut to the legendary cycle journey (rented at Rs2/- overnight) to a second show movie, to our favourite evening snack – cut mirchi, to our once a while late night parota at the highway dhaba, each one of them is still fresh in our memory.

Our frequent visits to the town by getting into one of our college buses and walking around the “Police Complex” – It was one of the popular commercial complex to hang around those days, to our steaming hot idli and an addiction to movies, those are indeed sweet memories for life.

We somehow managed to be known as the best team and had a good rapport with the Principal and the rest of the faculty. We really enjoyed the occasional dinner that we had at our beloved principal’s residence. We used to have it on the day of  DD's (Doordarshan). “Chitralahari” - the 30 minute program which aired telugu movie songs. We also used to enjoy Chitrahaar – its hindi counterpart.

We were the most eligible bachelors in town and still secured the faith of our neighbours in the colony who used to send us sweets and savouries on every festive occasion and let us pick phone calls on their landlines (no mobile phones those days) from our parents every weekend.

We secured funding and managed an “Educational” trip to many locations in North India. We also went on a Bangalore, Mysore, Ooty trip by car.

Year 1995: Parents get-together

Just before we completed our final year engineering exams we managed to pull out the biggest and perhaps the best get together party (over 3 days) arranged by any one at that time. We managed to pull in parents, siblings, kin and kith of each of us. It was a get together of about 50 including our principal and several faculty members. We believed that this was the best way to keep our friendship long lasting.

As it turned out, I left for US to do my MBA, couple of them started working in Hyderabad, one in Chennai and one in Bangalore while Praveen went on to do his MBA at SVU, Tirupathi. Even though we all got scattered, our parents were and still continue to be in touch with each other.

We had a dream – this was conceptualised on the banks of Hussaign Sagar lake in Hyderabad. We wanted to have our own apartment - for just six of us. In the year 2002 we realised that dream - completed building our own apartment in Hyderabad. We stay together even today, nearly 20 years after we first met. And guess what – we named our apartment – “Parvathi Nilayam”.

I will share more events from our lives in the coming days. I want to leave this post with a small note. Friends are probably the only ones that we choose in life. I strongly urge you to make the right choice and choose friends for life.

Good Luck!