HOTC Ch 4: The Ragam Story

S4 was a short semester, but didn't lack any of the unpredictability that makes college life so much fun. Every semester we start off bunking class (don’t blame us, teachers wouldn't have got the timetable ready by then) to watch a movie and this sem wasn't any different. Thus began another memorable chapter in HOTC.

Let me begin with a correction to HOTC Ch 3. Bhavah actually happened in S4. It was one of the first events in that sem. Shortly after that we'd the accreditation fiasco. Dressed up as terrorists to kill the dust, we cleaned the whole department for the first time in years. The pond in the middle of dept garden (yes we have a dept garden!) could be used by the archaeological dept to study prehistoric organisms. The toil didn't go unrewarded as we were promised the forbidden fruit - sessionals. Accreditation gave birth to many clubs unheard of till then. One of them was the robotics club of which we became the unregistered members. On display were the finest of our creations - Innak and Aruk.

February breezed through and accreditors awarded us an A. That year tech fests by individual depts were discouraged. So ISTE put up their hand to organise Aavishkar '07, a technical fest conducted by the CETians, for the rest of the world (supposedly). On the day of choosing event managers, a band of Applied turned up (thanks to KK again). Our class ended up having half of the main event managers. I was in charge of Physics Paper Presentation of which I remember not. The interesting events for us were AdZap and Industrial Village. Industrial village is the story about AS coming to the rescue of a hapless 'lady' event manager. We had a flawless design but the team with a multiplex in the middle of a huge lake in an industrial village won the event. Another memory worth remembering is the romantic Bach falling in love with R's eyes during the best manager event. Iceman and AS won prize in problem solving event that day.

Even while Aavishkar was going on, preparations had begun for Ragam '07. This year, we were determined to make CET presence felt at Ragam. As 2nd years, our batch took the initiative and intensive preparations for all events started at least a week before the mega event. Our band, which already had its share of break-ups, patched up and prepared for Western Orchestra.

The journey to NITC was so much fun with all of us together in the train enjoying our off-season class tour. I can still remember Appu and me chasing the runaway train in a station we had got down at 2 am to have to have a cup of coffee. The first day was slightly disappointing personally as our band didn't qualify for the finals. That was soon overshadowed by the amazing result in dance. It was only the beginning. By the final day we'd won most prizes by any college other than NIT. The prizes were for Street Play, Mime, Eastern Orchestra and many others. I'm happy to say that again Applied played a hand in most of those events; CET spirit scored above all that. The celebrations in NIT didn't last long because tradition predicted a fight. So we made a hurried escape back to railway station. The Ragam story is a truly remarkable one - one that should be taught to future batches as inspiration for following a dream, striving to achieve it and finding pure ecstasy on reaching the summit.

Even semesters has it's share of other events too like College day, LH day, Nuit 'd Emmaus, and MH day. I remember the College day particularly 'coz I'd one more rock performance. We must not have gained much fan following that day judging by the crowd response :-). But for me every performance has been a great experience and will always be.

Lastly, a few words about the club houses that sprang up in town those days. The first one is the famed PancharaKaadu. For years, the Acacia forest in CET between LH and main entrance had been the abode of lovers seeking privacy amongst the beautiful shades of those trees. We made it our club house #1. Boring teachers didn't worry us anymore, neither did the unfortunate souls who'd cut through PK. Club house #2: Madhavan Sir's tuition class. The previous semester taught us that electronic circuits can be interesting. What made it more fun were the innumerable days when we ended up either chatting away or went our club house #3 after trying our luck at the first circuit. #3: who said Trivandrum lacks a hang out place for youth. You have it right in the middle of town, under the shade of large, sticky-red-fruit bearing tree (dunno its name). Museum sessions on that lawn were the most enjoyable for me. These club houses brought the best brains in town together to discuss world issues, college life and PDs (ParaDooshanam).

Towards the end of semester, it was time for our dear final years to bid goodbye to our campus. The demo week was really funny. When it was over, we were so gloomy that it felt like losing someone close to us forever. We still miss you..

- JFx

Coming up: Ch 5 - Step Back to Ponder

PS: Everyone is encouraged to add all else that you remember in all HOTC (can be done as separate paragraphs in the end), plz add your name tag at the end of wht u add.