Hi Nagarajan,

Warm wishes my buddy and my roommate, how are you? Thank you for acknowledging of my memoirs of moon landing. Up to this moment I still see your face vividly when we all jumped with joy on that day. Welcome to these pages my friend, here comes more of our recollections, correct me if my memory is fading

Scooters & Mosquitoes:

Our lonely hostel buildings were built over the uninhabited dry land and predictably mosquitoes swamped our rooms especially during night hours, you could even notice their belly ballooned with our bright red blood. It was next to impossible to sleep without a net, now add to the bicycle, everyone had to have a mosquito net as well. My roommate Pillai had spent all his reading, until his Final MBBS, lying down within his mosquito net castle armed with a small fan, a reading light along with his books. I made fun of his habit but his reply always was “why spent energy sitting when you can read lying?”

We played volley ball in the middle court and ping ponged in the reading room. I followed Vietnam War, Viet congs, Naxalites and Nap bombs in the papers in the same reading room all thru my hostel years. Every one instantly morphed into movie play back singers as soon as they stepped under the shower; TM Sunderajan, AM Raja and Seerkali Govindarajan all come alive at very high decibels. Lambretta, Bajaj and prestigious Vespa scooters were parked side by side next to our tiny bicycles at the hostel front lobby and you could even notice a license plate with fancy number “007”, a James Bond logo. Those rich boys used our mess boys to wash their vanity vehicles nevertheless paid them well as well, I guess.

Beatles and the Bus

Initially a private contractor ran our cafeteria but in later years we organized our own mess in the hostel donating 100 rupees each as our down payment, when an average movie ticket was only 2 rupees then. In Sundays we enjoyed briyani along with a cigarette and beta at the end, some of us even swapped our hostel lunch with the vegetarian Tiffin box of day-scholar classmates, thus few non-smokers attempted inhaling smoke for the first time and few vegetarian friends tasted ” chicken or mutton”, of course without their parent’s knowledge, all at our men’s hostel.

We conducted even strikes, around 100 of us traveled to Madras, demanded our then female health minister a college bus with TVMC logo, initially we failed to persuade her but finally sent our college bus years later. We routinely danced at the hostel front, promoted “Family Planning” thru a play called Triangle, a logo of Niriodh condom, at the hospital grounds…boy what a hit it was? The whole nursing staff booed and laughed when we entered the hospital following day thus we became instant celebrities for one day. We celebrated arts and sports days at the hostel; we used college elections to get connected with our fellow girl students.

Among us were fans of MGR supported DMK and Shivagi supported Congress; Jayalalitha was cute and slim, unlike now ... Latha and Laximi were just blossoming out. “Chemmeen”, a Malayalam picture bagged the prestigious presidential award, Raj Kapoor, Rajesh Khanna were ever popular in the north and Beatles were breaking records everywhere in the West.

Dr.Kulam

First Batch

Labels: 1965to1971_Batch, Anecdoctes, Memoirs