5 point someone ::Living the story:: Part 1

I was like just another Indian kid. Happy at getting a 90+ percentage in class 12, maintaining a clean record in school, featuring in the IIT-JEE merit list (Don't care if it was a fluke!!), and most of all, getting into a reputed college, BITS-Pilani, one that featured in the top lists of any survey!

I had it all, it felt like all those years spent among piles of books and papers finally DID amount to SOMETHING! All those assurances by my parents (i'm sure they all do it!) that it's just a little struggle now, study hard and get into a good college and you can relax after that... It all seemed true!! There was also a little voice in the back of my head, though, which kept whispering to me: "A little harder, and you could have been MUCH better off!!"... But i always put it away by asking myself, whether i would sacrifice those wonderful moments of enjoyment, fun for all those years??? No way! ke-sara-sara!I was happy with what i had achieved, and so were my parents!! (Actually overwhelmed having written me off as one who hardly ever studies and always settles for second!! :P )

So finally the moment had arrived for me to go away from home, off to fulfill my dream 200kms away. This was the first time i was to move out of the protective "shell" of my parents i'd lived in for , well, all my life!! It was difficult at first, to adapt to all the changes. First i met my room-mate (fro now on referred to as roomie), this hearty guy who at first appeared to be extremely studious and quiet! A character now i would never think of associating him with, he's anything but quiet! More on that later.He was really outgoing, so it was through him that i befriended the rest of the guys in my hostel.

By and by i met them all and we all got along pretty well. Actually too well i guess! When boys get comfortable in someones company they slowly open up and reveal their true "self"! This did not take long for us guys and pretty soon all of us were devising evil plans and pranks together.

At that time it excited me to think that this was the group i was to live with for a year, a feeling i'd soon come to realise was misplaced! As the semester kicked off, lecture halls were jam-packed, everyone would be running from one class to the other, sitting at the canteen for more than 5minutes would be frowned upon, and everyone was discussing acads! As expected, this initial spirit fizzled out in less than a week, surprisingly it lasted a month for me!! But as more and more were disillusioned by the system and methods of teaching, we (our whole wing) was still sincerely attending all classes with many even sure of scoring 10/10!

After that last bit of spirit in us also burned out, we too succumbed to that devilish monster called laziness. We would wake up every morning to see the other sleeping and so, sleep off again. It was like someone had rewired our body clock 6 hrs ahead. Afternoons were our mornings, sometimes even the sunset would be confused with sunrise!! While all this was happening, we did not realise one thing, that the classes were not running on our whims and fancies. We did realise it though, a little too late unfortunately.

Once the first round of tests began, it was a rude wake up call for all of us. Personally i never knew what was going to hit me, and when it did, i didn't know what to do! I knew what i had to do, but "how??" that was the question that i battled with all the time.

To be continued i Part 2........ :)