19th Sep'2021, Evening 7pm-9m - It was really a very happy and wonderful moment when some of my college friends were met online in a WhatsApp video call after a very long time and that is about 20plus years. And many are not even in communication all these years. And It's such a great evening time seeing and talking to our friends after this long, getting connected from different parts of the globe.
Just to give a short flash-back, we have studied Diploma in Electrical and Electronics Engg. (Year 1995-98) in Gov’t Polytechnic college, Visakhapatnam, AP. Those were the days of no mobile phones and all the communication used to be made with Inland Letters and post cards etc. Out of the total class strength of 50students, 13 of our batchmates were resided together in the accommodation allotted in the college attached Hostel and the others were used to attend the college as day-scholars.
Since I was also a hostel student, it happened like I had very less interaction with others in our class but all my daily activities like discussion about classes, subjects, exams, evening hangouts, watching movies in many theaters in Vizag city and then occasionally visiting RK Beach, VUDA park etc. and so many more memories were just refrained only just with my Hostel mates.
Yes, those were the golden days the days I spent with my hostel friends. Journey of that hostel life was just 3 years which might be very short, but the memories given by them are so beautiful and are remained in our hearts even now. It was a student managed hostel though the amenities and buildings are provided by government. There would be a warden, clerk and few cooking and housekeeping staff along with the participation of few elected/nominated representatives from 2nd & 3rd year hostel students called as ‘Mess Secretaries’ to manage the business of hostel with a strength of 130-150 students from all branches of 3year batches. All the expenses pertaining to the hostel are recorded in the expense registers and the same shall be accounted at the end of the month, further the costs would be divided with total strength to arrive on the amount that would have to be collected from each hosteler as mess-charges against that particular month. Some of our hostel mates were always very keen to keep the mess charges limited to as conservative as possible due to the low-income family back grounds. whereas on other side, few others demand for regular servings of Non-Veg dishes and asking for improvement in quality of food that is served in the mess with no bar or fear of mess charges. There were always yes / No opinions in the mess committee debates but still got to arrive on some decision at the end. (May be this was my first experience to get exposure for planning, budgeting, and understanding the importance of financial discipline which really helped in every stage of my personal life later).
As I mentioned before, there was no accessibility of mobiles
for maintaining the communication, we all have left the college after our
Diploma final year exams and had no clue about most of us where and how we have
proceeded in our lives further. But once we got the access to phones, internet
and then most importantly the social media like Facebook etc., slowly we got to
trace and connected with one after other and then we formed as a WhatsApp group
way back a year or so. Till date we have 10 friends out of 13, yet to find the
rest but hope the group will get with complete presence very soon.
Now coming back to the group video call, it’s quite warmth of
those memories and so funny to chat on a video call as a group after the gap of
such long time. Everyone is so excited to talk about their present life both on
personal and professional fronts while others are listening and interrupting
with their notes. Some friends have their kids with them so made them to get
introduced to other friends with their names and explaining about their
education etc. Also memorizing and recapping all the stuff we had done when we
were in collage / Hostel days and counting many friends with their names one by
one who were in touch but not joined the call, also enquiring about some
friends not in-touch to anybody so making plans to enquire about them.
That way, it was all about 2hours group call engaged in
spending time with sharing and discussing different topics like career,
personal life, social and political matters of respective origins, time zones
and what not?
So, it was very amazing feel to have such a call got arranged
with my hostel friends and that too on my birthday i.e., on 19th of
September coincidentally.
Thank you, guys, and wish you all GOOD LUCK!
