Kannur, a place which many of us confused with Kanpur, a place never heard of, a place which caused us to search for it in the maps and on the web; a place when allotted made us take two steps back (although the counsellors said it to be Mauritius of India) and a place which is going to give us shelter for the next three years. Here, I met some very good and (going to be)successful people, but my pleasure lies in getting friends anybody can be envious of, friends on which you can rely upon, friends that surely will catalyze your evolution as a person, friends who are friends indeed. This dimension in which you are reading me, became my part as a result of sufficient ‘coaxing’ by a friend and the things you are going to read were drafted first on a friend’s generosity. Thank you friends, thank you very much for being with me, for bearing me.
This special blog is dedicated to all of my classmates, students of B.F. Tech (AP), batch: 2008-2012. Here I have tried to retrace the rays coming from the past which fell on my memory lens, directly or indirectly, throughout the year and got absorbed and interpreted after certain deviations.
Our journey started on 27th of July 2008. I along with many of us joined the rest on 17th August and so we missed the orientation programme. In a very short period, three of us left the place; a girl from Meerut was the last to join.
Some of us just stumbled into this course; some got it accidently while only a few got it according to their career plan. But there is no such diversity when it comes to choosing Kannur. Better to say, it was an obligation and not a choice.
During the first few days, most of us were very happy to be away from helicopter parents. All were feeling free, without someone to spy over our deeds. But it was a half truth only as on my first day itself the common topic in the air was ‘getting reservations for Durga-puja holidays’ and everybody was very pleased that there is only one and a half month between us and our homes. No doubt, our needs and our response sometimes become so complex to understand.
The subjects in the first semester were GS, CA, EOD, GEO, BC, MS, OVFI, FS and ITP. During those early days most of our time (especially during BC, OVFI, and Physics sessions) was consumed by non-academic discussions like questioning higher authorities for opening centre in a place like this, complaining about everything the institute had or did not had, constant cribbing about mess food, what we are going to learn in these four years and where is our future, is it secure or not? etc. CA classes were more social networking sessions provided with musical environment and Chemistry and MS used to make most of us sleepy. In a very quick time new discussions like ridiculous reasoning to get presentations postponed, reckless rush for last minute submissions, teasing a few persons nonchalantly and shameless sleeping in the class became part of our life.
On one of our business communication sessions we were asked to talk about our native place. While people from metros highlighted the various comforts of urban life, a girl from relatively small city sketched and verbalized her fondness for her native place by contrasting the charms of metro-life with people of dreams. I still remember the words echoing “there, youth may not know about malls, discos, metros, elevators etc but yes they do know about IIT’s, IIM’s, AIIMS, and of course NIFT, the centres of excellence because that is where they dream to be”. She declared her city the best in world as “even if it has nothing, it has the courage to be everything”.
Another girl from Jagdishpur stated her liking for Kannur as she was not getting pimples here and a boy pointed “if Patna is where people dream, Delhi is the place where dreams come true”. It will be quite unfair if I don’t mention the funniest moment, when one of us introduced himself “I am .... .................. ............, from Tamilnadu” with a weird and wild twitch of his waist which left everyone with a stomach-ache.
‘Weird’ a normal word although not used that much normally, has something special to do with our batch. The word was at the soul of the first heated argument that I observed here. Boys can find it in their memory with a little stress. Only in a few days, misunderstandings and gaps, some created while others planted gripped our batch and an unnecessary tussle began. Some of them resulted in minute clashes. Fortunately most of them are sorted out well and the pits if not fully filled had been bridged satisfactorily, although vulnerable.
Back to our course. The subjects in which we were made to work actually were EOD and Geometry. During EOD classes we did some very strange but interesting works like distorting cube, presenting one’s character through the colours in the cube and learning the secret behind optical illusions. On the other hand, during long geometry sessions, I can say, we enjoyed the most, not only in doing various projections but also non-academically. Sometimes flying big paper planes while at other causing someone’s mobile to wake up. But I have to accept that these two subjects had given us most of the sleepless nights. In the second semester we had some new subjects (SAD, EOT, BOTM, and POM) along with few extensions of previous ones (MS, FS, ITP, CA, and Geometry). But most of our responses were same. The strange thing was for the first time some of us unsuccessfully tried to cheat teachers and a friend’s kindness made me part of this. Hah, sometimes you find it hard to thank friends for their generosity.
In the meanwhile, during FS and ITP we were made to work in teams and at times we realised that even theoretically simple jobs can be as dead ended as trying to grow vegetables in the desert. Many a time it resulted in frustration and rifts. But there were times also when we rejoiced the sweetness of collaborative work environment.
I hope all of us remember our first FS session when after visiting other fields (Bus Stand and Hospital) we came to St. Angelo’s Fort which is guarding the enormous expansion of sea. Most of us had let ourselves get wet by the surging tidal waves. The saltiness of sea deposited on our cloths and on us as well. A few boys risking themselves to bring the sandal of the gaga girl who recently became the topper and the big Keralite fellow sincerely and tenderly drying the thousand rupees notes on the rocky shoreline.
I was lucky to get fort as my field. It was really great to spend those hot and sticky afternoons by the sea, seeing the waves coming and going and lashing the shoreline rocks with more power and energy every other time they came back. Turquoise blue of the water was standing out against the reddish black leaky laterite shoreline. The evenness of sea protected by sharp edged uneven rocks. It was magical to see the colors, contours and contrasts striking our observation every next moment and above all, shimmering water of Arabian Sea curving their way to embrace the shore with roaring rip tide, causing froth to rise high above the rocks along with moisture-laden winds taking away the harshness of the bright afternoon sun. A perfect place for composing poetry. Information was not a problem for us as we had got hold of Mr. P. Satyan who stuffed us enough to produce a proper document. This had given us plenty of time to enjoy our field; walking down Mopila Bay, searching turtles in the moat, reading the mysterious French inscription, counting the number of cannons, looking interestingly at the King’s emblem, trying to interpret the Arabic message on the cannons, debating over the hidden tunnel, talking to visitors, drawing sketches, getting pleasure from ice-creams, observing the mesmerizing horizon, the breeze, the boats, discussing each other’s crushes (in a specific case ‘the latest crush’) and seeing a girl’s secret floating over the waves.
Everything was ok and fine until the day before presentation. I will not call it suddenly but we started to find faults in each other’s work; a last minute crisis. Somehow we managed to get prepared in time but this was not the end; we were baffled by the jury and some of our own mistakes and thought ours was the worst. Amusingly we found ourselves on the top when the results came.
In the second semester we got ‘The French Riviera of the East’, Mahe as our field and surprisingly this field came out not that much bad as we had earlier expected. We came to know about a union territory, the Roman Catholic Church, and a market full of liquor shops (we met the Mayer Mr. Ramesh Parambath in person who apart from giving us detail, invited us for Mayyazhi Mahotsava and offered us to meet the CM of Pudducherry) while others were busy exploring the mythological stories behind the Muthappan temple, enjoying expensive rides in Sadho Merry Kingdom and understanding the working of Radio Mango, the FM station. This was the first time we made 3-D models of our fields and this catalyzed some ‘out-of-box’ thoughts inside our minds. A hefty work again but we survived the test.
ITP was a little less cumbersome and complex where we tended to keep immovable faith on our partner to complete the work for us also and well on time. In some cases the faith survived while on others it caused suffering. Lucky again as I got good partners who did not let me work alone and our project completed almost smoothly. In the first semester we shared a ‘find-type’ association while in second, a ‘matter-perfection’ one.
Exams fill you with anxiety and unease whenever they come. In our case they first came just after a month, before we started to feel properly settled. We had faded idea about the pattern and we were not sure how much preparations will be sufficient.
Not a surprise, we were restless until angels reported about the call from god. Our nerves relaxed and wrinkles vanished. But as usual demons doubted the angels especially ‘Mohini’ for not distributing the elixir of ‘A’ to all equally and some blamed him to consume the most, while some perceived him as a daemon (half god). Not to mention we performed beyond our expectations and preparations in the first paper. But sadly ‘god is one’ and so we had to prepare ourselves for the rest on our own.
During other papers while a reckless guy was questioning the aptitude of the paper setters by cracking the codes within quarter an hour, a few girls were filling the pages generously not willing to leave even a penny of what they had learned as well as what they had paid. Rest of us were searching for inspirations sometimes from our live vicinity, sometimes from the dead walls, while some daredevils were determined to extract them out of the invigilators. A few were hurriedly paining themselves to align their knowledge in accordance with the questions. Almost all of us succeeded in our attempts.
In the results of first semester although angels almost succeeded to form their guild at the top, it was neither an angel nor a demon but a Punjabi Maya who left everyone in our trade, across India, behind. The first milestone achieved; the first thing which may have caused our presence felt.
In the second semester many things were same like insufficient preparations, last minute revisions, people struggling in the exam hall etc. The things that changed were we did not get call from god this time, more jury based exams and some misunderstandings causing ill-treatment of few of our friends. I remember on the last day of our first year most of the faces had exhaustion, some had tears, some had contempt, some faces were contained with satisfaction and only one face was glowing enough with cheer and happiness to get noticed. This time result came as we had expected; most of us got what we deserved but sadly this was not the case with some of us.
Converge – Hyderabad, December 2008: For the first time we were, what I can say, with the real Niftians and it will be right to say that we were feeling inferiority complex. Although yellow was representing us, we failed to generate applaud and cheer out of the few events, we participated in. Only few words “Gone are the days when king Shahjahan used to send pigeons.......................” and a well laid cricketing partnership of 63 runs survived and kept our morale safe. Apart from this, we enjoyed a good time there as a spectator of some note-worthy matches and as a part of audience of really outstanding, quality performances. Good food and a good canteen were like a treat for us as we all were sick of the Kannur food. It was really extraordinary to stand on the big limestone rock on those cold winter mornings and observe the huge and high structures of Satyam and Infosys just in front. Warm sunrays were adding to the charm of the moment. Last day we had skipped the prize-distribution ceremony (we had not got even one) and visited some famous places like Tomb of old Hyderabadi Nawabs, craft village, Golconda fort, Charminar, Birla temple and Lumbini Park. The best moments for me were seeing as distant as possible from the heights of Golconda fort, view of Mecca masjid from Charminar apart from its beautifully detailed architecture and mesmerizing sight of the lights running at fanatic speed on road and on air as well, over the tributary from the fabulous Birla temple. Before leaving for our hometowns we celebrated Christmas having burning candles in our hands and Santa’s cap on our heads, as well as bonfire and DJ night.
It will be fair enough to say that last year our clubs were not more dynamic and integrated than the mannequins in our machine lab. A general feeling of ‘not included’ inside many of us and poor communication between the club members apart from insufficient preparations resulted in under the weather programmes. Surely, we all, especially the presidents and secretaries of various clubs are required to make the things better.
Some off beam happenings are always coupled with college life and we are no exception. The biggest and the darkest (relatively brighter) of them was locking our warden in his room. An unfortunate and unnecessary deed. Unfortunate because surely, nobody will want to be locked up, a breach of fundamental rights and unnecessary because there was no serious reason backing it (even if so there was no need to use such an expensive lock, a waste of money indeed). It was done just for fun but fun at the cost of others cannot be justified in any way and it was taken seriously by the faculty and the administrators. During the investigation they showed how qualified they are for their job and how easily they can break inside our minds and find the culprits. Unfortunately some of the guiltless also had to be a part of that distressing session. Although marked, people involved are forgiven and everything seemed to resume to normal apart from faculty’s disliking for a particular group of students.
Love and crushes cannot be separate from a stage like this and people like us; no doubt our batch is not void of them. Apart from refreshments and snacks M&C played important role in providing place for up-and-coming lovers. But our batch is also blessed with friendship. Friendship of both kinds: between likes and between unlikes.
There were times when we all got glued to the television sets. Sometime amazingly seeing NSG commandoes getting down from choppers to fight with the enemies of our country, eminent brave policemen leading from the front and embracing martyrdom, Star correspondent Mr. Deepak Chourasia counting the number of bullets fired from both sides and the world questioning about our methods to get rid of terrorists; while at others we were enjoying enthusiastically the world wide success of ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, particularly of Mr. A. R. Rehman. Some other times we were finding it hard to do our assignments due to breathtaking IPL matches; on other occasions, musing over global slowdown and the Satyam scam.
Last year we celebrated many of our festivals here. We were lucky because some are celebrated in this part of country only like ‘Onam’ and unlucky because we had to celebrate most of our habitual festivals far from our homes and old friends. Ramzan came first and I am pretty sure that our friends with concerned faith would have missed their family on Id very much, at least for not getting their Idi. Luckily, last year we celebrated Durga-Puja with our family. During Diwali some of us went to Yerchaud, some to Mysore and rest of us, here in Kannur enjoyed as much as we could, the gloomiest Diwali of our life. Holi celebration was a bit better in spite that we had exam on that very day and we returned from college with coloured faces, not to mention topless (boys only) as some of our shirts were made deprive of their seams while others were hidden to ensure their safety. Apart from these we failed to realise presence of any other festival in between. Sadly, festivals small or big seem to lose their importance in our lives. May be with growing age we are tending to separate ourselves a little bit from the old things which meant big to us; maybe we are getting professional in our approach towards life.
One more thing, at a time or another we all tend to complain about this place, about this course, about this institute but it is quite obvious. We cannot be completely happy and entirely satisfied with our present in most of our life.
There is one famous quote by Marcel Pagnol which says-
“The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see past better than it was , the present worse than it is and future less resolved than it will be”.So simple and so true.
Similarly it is also true that no matter what we think about where we are, no matter how many problems we are facing, no matter what way we are going to choose after this, no matter where we are destined to be in future; one thing that we cannot avoid and should not, is that our way to our destiny is through this very course, ‘B.F.Tech (apparel production)’ and through this very institute ‘National Institute of Fashion Technology’, Kannur. Nothing can be more unfortunate if we fail to leave our footprints behind in a land where we came first, where we are the foundation and where we will be regarded as role models for people to come.
With hope,
Bhargav
