The brilliant reply

Colleges are like that! Looking back, most of the things that we did (rather THEY made us do) make absolutely no sense now, but yeah, they make a part of some fantastic memories.

Ours was a batch that was unanimously horrible with UNIX. We had been working on windows and we have had quite a few visiting lecturers refusing to teach us because we were novice of the first order. What did they expect? Why would a person with a Torvalds DNA structure sit for a lecture on the first hand! Finally we managed to get hold of a professor who would come, ramble in the class and leave. The teacher and the class were unanimously indifferent to each other!

It was this afternoon lecture, hardly a time to learn UNIX or VI, but the professor was busy bragging about VI and its features. Nobody in the class cared a damn. What difference did it make to us? Suddenly he raised his voice (he probably realized that the class was fast asleep) and asked loudly - "Do you know we use the h, j, k, l for navigation in VI? If so, how the hell do we actually type the alphabets h, j, k, and l?” No response. Nobody had probably even heard the question. He suddenly looked at Ashish who had the same 'disturb-me-not-look' as he always had. You there, can you tell me?
What sir, asked the thoroughly confused Ashish. "If we use h, j, k, l instead of the arrow keys in VI for navigation what do we do when we have to type those alphabets?" asked the professor. "Use the arrow keys Sir!” came the brilliant and unadulterated reply.

Never again, as far as I remember the professor asked any questions in our class ;)

p.s. As with most of my posts, names changed :)

Anecdote

It was already 11 and our turn to register our group. But there was no sign of Ravi. Sid, Neeta and me were worried. He had the project reports and without submitting them we would have been disqualified immediately. It was one of those college competitions where a win ensured you could bunk classes for the next 20 days on the pretext of being tired. Obviously! Winning a competition is no mean task even if it’s sponsored by your local chaiwallah. A win is just what it is - a win. And yeah, it nurtured our adolescent egos too.

Our worried faces searched every moving object in the room to catch a glimpse of our 4th partner who seemed to have suddenly disappeared. Frantic searches lead to a dead end and just as we were about to give up, in walked Ravi with our reports and a bunch of girls with worried looks. Until that moment we thought we were the only ones with a question mark on our faces. "Can you guys help?", I heard him shout and looked towards him. "Neha here has lost her purse. She had lots of money in it. We have been trying to locate it visiting every place she went to but no use. Can you guys pitch in for help?" So there lay our answer! As we 3 idiots were finalizing our strategy, our cool-as-a-cucumber partner was busy skirt chasing.....he had probably got introduced to Neha half an hour ago but he spoke of her purse as if it contained his hard-earned money. We were too angry probably because none of us spoke for full 10 minutes. Finally, Neeta blurted out, "Let’s get a horse". We all looked surprised...Horse, what for?, asked Sid. "Yeah, so that the knight in shining armour can ride a horse, locate the missing purse and rescue his damsel in distress", said Neeta to deliver the knockout line and drill some sense into our partner.


Till date we have a field day watching an embarrassed Ravi run for cover whenever we remind him of the incident :)

:)

When in despair and sadness, wear something new, buy a gift for yourself and see the change.