Four years ago, I had just struggled through an entire year in my own approximation of hell – Brilliant, Pala repeaters course, and was terrified I’d end up in a college where everyone around me studied 4 or 5 hours on a working day, while I felt like an incompetent idiot, again…. I had this idea in my head that I would get to have fun only if I got into a government college. So even though I got a scholarship for a seat in the electronics and communication department at Saint Gits College of Engineering and joined up, I was pretty depressed as I was expecting to have four boring years. We had foundation classes during the holidays which I mostly bunked, still living in denial. Then our formal classes began, and I was put in the class of FY-C 2005. All my illusions of an uneventful, boring life in college were shattered in about a week. In class, I spent most of my time getting bombarded by paper balls the size of coconuts every time a teacher turned to the blackboard. In fact, it was customary for students to bring stacks of used notebook paper from home purely for ammunition. We had already discovered that newspapers aren’t very good for making paper balls. You either started rolling ‘em up or paid with bruises. It was a hell of a class. We had people from all branches and soon we became friends with our classmates’ friends in other classes and so on. Within no time almost everyone in our year became great friends. We started going for trips and parties within a few months and it was always attended by dozens of people from all branches. We were such great friends that we simply couldn’t comprehend how our seniors seemed to stick more to their branches than their year. We promised each other that we wouldn’t go down that path, that we would always stay as one, irrespective of our branches. It’s a promise we have kept till now, the last days of our college life.
I heard “1st year ki jai” during our own fresher’s day in first year as some of us stood on the stage singing “We will rock you”. Back then it was a sound of joy and laughter, a promise for a future together.
Then came 2nd year and with it, experiences that forever changed my perspective about the college and had lasting effects on me and many of my friends. We started having problems with seniors, the college authorities, seemingly everyone. We were no longer innocent first years who had a penchant for having fun, at least, not in the eyes of the rest of the college. To some, we became notorious - rebels against the establishment. We struggled to adjust to the new treatment for a while, coz we were still the same old kids we were a few months ago, only in new and very different circumstances. We were constantly in trouble in college, mostly for standing up for our friends against seniors and college authorities when they were being persecuted unfairly. I think I spent more of my time at home than at college, clutching big fat show-cause notices and suspension orders. After a while we learnt to go with the flow of the current. There’s no denying we changed. But whether the circumstances changed us or we changed the circumstances, I guess there will always be a debate. And frankly I don’t care to debate our side too much. I believed in what I stood for, what I continue to stand for. But through thick and thin, our batch stayed strong. The tougher the times, the stronger became the bond. I guess there are some things that you can’t go through together, without being bound together forever. Our old “1st year ki jai” which was a slogan of happiness and spirit became “s-3 ki jai” and then “s-4 ki jai” and so on to “s-8”. It morphed into a cry of defiance, sometimes of unbridled rage. But throughout, it remained a symbol of our solidarity. It lasted through all the fights, suspensions, dismissals, strikes and everything. The batch became something more than a mere group of students who joined college in the same year. It was a cause, a banner or a flag which united everyone under it. Through four years, it has been the only institution that has justified the faith we put in it. If you need help, the batch is with you. Whatever class or branch or block you are in, there will always be people to answer your call. They‘ll commiserate with you when you hit a rough patch, they’ll celebrate when something good happens for you. When you’re cooped up in a building getting through different stages of a job interview, they’d be celebrating each stage you get through in their own way, opening bottles of whisky and calling up anyone who didn’t hear the news yet. That was the kind of camaraderie that we had. Your successes and failures weren’t yours to enjoy or bemoan alone, it was your friends’ too.
Coz among us, there are no royal mechs’ or ec rebels’ or king electricals’ or mighty civils’ or majestic computers’. There’s only S-8…one year, one gang and one voice . You come for nakshatra or fresher’s day or any program at college and look for the most spirited and wild crowd in the audience. If you’re looking for us, on sunny days look for the dust rising up in the amphitheatre. On rainy days look for the nuts dancing in the rain. Hell, when we went on our S-5 five day tour, we caused a mini-riot in the Brindavan gardens of Mysore when our EC , civil and electrical classes met up inside the gardens. When the EC and mechanical buses came close to each other on a highway, we were calling S-5 ki jai from one bus to the other. It’s difficult to describe the experience, the emotion we feel…to go out there and yell “bolo bolo s-8 ki…” once and hear dozens of voices yelling “Jai” with spirit. It’s an old promise, upheld against all odds, every single time. A memory to cherish, every single time.
Now we’re on the last leg of this great journey. Every day we come to college eagerly, and every evening we leave, sad that one more day has passed. Not because of our love of this college. Not because all our memories here are sweet. But because this is where our friends are. Coz this is where we came together, laughed together, rode together and of course, screwed up together. This is where our batch is. Here, we lived a life, that was larger than life. We got enough memories here to last us a lifetime, and maybe make a dozen campus movies. All these college movies are full of actors acting out our kind of life, imitations really. This here is the real thing.
For those who‘ll follow in our footsteps through the years in this college, I have only have one thing to say. Don’t give in to those who’ll have you split up along the lines of branch and class. And if any of you do manage to stay together, if any of you do manage to keep calling “Jai” for your year and not for your branch, remember….we started it. Or if this custom ends with our passing, and you never hear that sound here again, know….that there was such a batch.
For one last time……… “BOLO BOLO S-8 KI JAI”
Sharath C George,
S-8 EC
2005-2009 batch
S-8 EC
2005-2009 batch
Note: I originally wrote this as an article for our college magazine, when a friend told me to write something for it. However, they never published it in the magazine.
