being Xaverian for a couple o’ hours

The thought of being able to attend an exam in the prestigious St. Xaviers college had me going “WAAaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAOoooow!!!”. It was a chance of a lifetime for an ordinary student from WBUT, to spend around 3 hours there. It was like a dream come true, (although I had never dreamt of it :D)

We started off on our journey around 8 am. Took a bus to Park street. Getting off there, we asked a policeman about St. Xaviers college. He directed us towards another road and we went off walking. It is no mean distance to walk, when it is a summer day. After some time, we saw a crowd in a distance.The first thing I noticed was a huge red building with yellow bordered windows. It was the St. Xaviers. There were some banners hanging outside. They were about the reunion of the alumni and some tech fest. I asked my friend Avinandan if I was dreaming, and he pinched me 😉 . There were around a hundred people. All waiting. The studious and serious were revising. Some were chatting on phone, mostly girls. And as usual, guys were gawping at the perfect figurines. There was one with so much of eye makeup, one might have mistaken her for having 4 eyelids! 🙂

Around half an hour later, we were asked to make a queue. There was a brief rush and the footpath was clear. The queue started advancing. Being at the last, I was looking at all the heads ahead. It was funny to see all those heads in a line, swaying to and fro, bobbing up and down. Reminded me of centipedes. Once inside, we were directed to our designated class rooms. My place was room number 12, 1st row from the door, 3rd bench. Then there was the usual exam scene. The room was buzzing. At the stroke of 10, the room fell silent. The questions were twisting my brain out of shape and I was telling myself “Shoot, how am I gonna spend 2 hours???”

Anyhow, I managed to spend the time answering 30 questions out of 60. Afterwards, I was very thirsty. Searching for water, I went further inside. A corridor led me to the playground. Rooted to a spot I did a 360 degree turn, and once again, I was going “WAAaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAOoooooooww!!!”. It was magnificent and huge.

There were some foreigner students taking snaps. With so many blondes all around, I was a bit uneasy. Walking past them, I was humbled. I wondered, “তোরাই জীবনে কিছু করলি, আমরা  শুধু বোকার  মতন  তাকিয়ে  তাকিয়ে দেখেই  যাব ”      (You r great, you guys have actually done something in your life, we the fools will always be left watching)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were walking back to Park street bus stop. On the way, we walked past “Music World” store and “Flurrys“. Flurrys reminded me of a  scene from the film “Parineeta“, where Sanjay Dutt bets a game of cards with Riya Sen. By now, I was quite used to so many blondes roaming around. Thus the Flurrys didn’t bother me much. Then there was the historic “Asiatic society“!! I was thrilled. For a moment, it felt like things were coming right out of my old history books. Afterwards, we walked to Esplanade. There I witnessed for the first time in my life, a gay couple. Among the two, one looked like a normal guy, but the other looked like a girl to the bone 😉

A JOB INTERVIEW, 3rd in my life,1st one away from home -> Results are declared..

Today is my birthday! Thats why last  night my two partners, karthik and saaki gave me the B’DAY BASH!

We were supposed to get the results around 9pm last night. Yet, 8 am in the morning, and we were still waiting. Every now and then we were checking our mails, doing FB. My FB wall was overflowing with Happy Bday wishes..U know, in my life of 21 years I had never got so many BDAY Wishes in one day. Waiting for the mail, we were getting hungry..Then we went out for breakfast.

O! That reminds me of something. Last night we had seen a extremely lean dog, with a narrow face. It looked just like “KREACHER”, the elf of HARRY POTTER movies. So whenever we see any dog, Karthik says “Kreacher!!” and we have a nice laugh.. Today we were late for breakfast, so the “kochuri”s were finished. We had “paratha” and “Ghugni”. Then we returned back to our rooms and a surprise was waiting..

Guess what?? Our results had been declared! Karthik had cleared the test, me and Saaki didn’t. So after a short round of applause and facebook updates, we 2 settled down to watch “HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON”, an animation movie. I was also planning to visit my friends staying in HOWRAH, but there wasn’t sufficient time left, to go there and return. Karthik was supposed to report for his interview around 3 30 at the WBUT, salt lake today. There wasn’t much time left for him. So he went out,  took a chair and sat on the porch. He was revising all the topics and we were enjoying our free time. There is some benefit to failing after all..

Wishing karthik best of luck, we all went out. He took a taxi, and we went to a hotel for lunch. The manager was very talkative, he would go on speaking to u and u wud have to listen even if u don’t like that. Had a solid lunch. After that, I thought since we don’t have anything o do, lets go for a walk. So we went off roaming towards Alipore More. Saw a large number of high rise buildings, there was a whole high rise building labelled “GOLD’S gym”. We learnt a lot about bus numbers and bus routes. We walked for around a hour and returned back. On the way we had a chat about our favourite heroes and films. He told me to watch “shutter island”, featuring Leonardo Di Caprio whenever I get time. Having nothing to do, I went to sleep, Saaki was watching “the mummy” on my lappy. I woke up in the evening. Afterwards I went out to buy 2 eggrolls. Bad luck, then another idea struck. I went to a sweet shop, ordered for  3 “rasogollas”. Just like I guessed, the rasogollas were fresh and warm! They just melted in my mouth. I ordered another three for saaki. He too had a pleasant surprise!! And just as he was finishing them, karthik came in. His interview has been postponed to tomorrow 9 30 am. Again a little bit of Facebook-ing, teasing etc. Then we had dinner and came back to our rooms. Karthik seems quite tense. He is shuffling through the books and topics. And I am going off to sleep. Tomorrow, we shall return to Durgapur..