chapter 9: the end.. the beginning...!!! dedicated to all u friends and reenu....

GATE was to be scheduled on feb the 13^th . in about two months. I was sitting alone, totally lost. Feeling terribly like a loser.. people were packing. They were leaving to their places. my roommates too. it was so bad to see sam and divya leaving. they were goinng home after the course, to revise what they learnt and to write GATE... where was i to go? i had not taken anything much from hyd yet, and from coaching too.

"There got be a way out. I still have two months. Its not that i don’t know any thing.. if i start from somewhere I can make it. I can’t lose the battle that too without fighting. Come on! I got be tougher than that." This was how i was consoling myself. I opened the syllabus. It was huge. But there were areas i knew well. I had to make some strategy. God help me. i was weighing my options on going home and studying or staying back n revising here only.

Just then i heard a voice in neighbouring room. A girl was talking in kannada. I was least bothered. I carried on with my strategy. Met the girl in corridor next day. she talked a lot!!! She told me she was CS too and she was here for crash course. Crash course was something, where they finished the entire course in just two months, taking classes from morning 6 to evening 8 everyday. She told me everything about her. somehow we were alike. She too had come to start fresh, n i had just decided to start a fresh. Her name was Dhruthi.

In no time we became closest friends. My roommates were gone. I wanted to be alone and give time for myself. At the other end i desperately wanted someone to be with me n share my tensions.

How was i to learn everything now? dhruthi asked me to attend classes with her. her suggestion was there are 250 ppl in class who will know that u r not a crash course student.. just attend. She brought me time tables of everyday of her classes. I chose from them which all classes i needed to attend. There were other batches. I attended them. All illegally... breaking rules... i was learning concepts from wherever whenever i could. Now that dhruthi was with me, i was no more alone. we sat back late nights n discussed concepts. we had forgotten everything... life food hunger to great extent.. I found out this girl was a super fast learner but ended up making sillier mistakes than i did. We were alike that way too. we liked same food, hated same food, caught colds at same times, it was just like having a twin sister. And my journey finally was on track... at last something was happening.

We didn’t want anything else in the world, just one thing we needed was how to cut down the mountain. How to cross it. How to finish the syllabus. In no time...Well... there we were standing just a week left for the last battle.

Time passes in no time. and already it was the day of exam. Finally the GATE 2011 paper was in my hand. The day finally had come for which i had done so many things. it went well, though not best i admit. And there i was exactly a month later, with 99.05 percentile, 1294^th All India Rank in hand. And that fetched me a decent general merit seat in one of the prestigious institution viz. National Institute of Technology, Surathkal, Karnataka... Almost everyone had done well. We all had done well in the exam. And everybody got settled at different places all set to begin a new journey. And that is how the journey of hydabad ended. There were fights, there were frustrations, there was anger, there was fun. It was all a mixed bag. i made friends, learned to stay myself, learned to do my things alone. tried being responsible. Faced many aspects of life. friendship, hared, madness, fun everything. I know i could have done more justice to my rank, but no regrets. I did best of what i could.

With the result in hand i was online to check to apply for universities. I was checking my mails that day. and i had a surprise mail from reenu.

Dear Aparna,

I am sorry that i had to leave without any intimation. U deserve to know that i am fine and doing well. That GATE was never my cup of tea. More over i had so many attachments already to handle. Trying to care for people who were never worth it. I wanted to end it all i wanted to die. But then i thought why waste my life because max left me or jai doubted me? my life is more worth than that!!! It took me a real while to forget them and my past. Life was never fair to me. But now i have left it all behind. My parents are getting me married to a boy of their choice. He is good. And i am happy finally now. i got ur email id trough social network. I am glad i found u.

Now coming back to u, i am sure u have done well in GATE, and i really wish from bottom of my heart that u stay happy and all ur dreams come true. U deserve it kid ;)

Please keep in touch, i want u to know u r the best friend and a true well wisher this mad girl ever had. We are moving to London after marriage, hope we meet sometime in life...

And yes.. a small info, i have stopped all those bad habbits u didn’t like....

Loads of love

Reenu.. (all urs)

That brought tears rolling down my cheeks, it really means a lot when someone tells u, wat u mean to them. She meant a lot to me too... i just hope she stays happy for rest of her life...

Thats how a small journey of GATE 2011, ended. To start a new one fresh. i thank every single person from bottom of heart, both ppl i liked, n hated from bottom of heart, coz i learned a lot from u guys... and to my best parents on earth... mom and dad... dear frinds... cheers to our friendship, our old hostel, GATE-2011, and to all fun we had together....

i close this er.. story of mine with this chapter.. hope u liked it... thank u :)

chapter 8: the final war

Yeah.. shall we go downstairs and continue our conversation with a coffee?

He was waiting for my reply. I wish he had asked me after some OS, or DS class, at least I would have said “no” nicely.

But some how.. i said “no.. i got to go.. bye” and ran from there...

Divya was escalated, excited, cheered up, exuberant, and I don’t know wat! after hearing the news a boy asked me for coffee... she was behaving as if she was invited for the coffee.. That too by Hritik Roshan...

“wow, thats not possible, did he really ask U for coffee???”

“what do u think i told u divya?”

“ya.. but seriously??? First one right???”

“shut up, i am already bugged, he gives me big smile all day, tries to talk me all time, i keep running, n its fun for u”

“yaar.. why r u over reacting so much, have a coffee na, kya jayega?”

“yaar.. its not about coffee, i can’t smile like u all day and talk nicely, more over don’t want to hurt him either”

“hmm.. hey how does he look haan?” she had started teasing me now.

“yaar.. chup na...”

“ok ok” she smiled again. “let’s go for a coffee??” she winked.

I threw at her the first thing that my hand reached...

Classes were going on at the rate never before. It demanded more energy, stamina, and for me more food. But i was bugged up totally with hostel food. Just same daal, rice, everyday. I was missing home, mom made food. I did bring loads of parcels for me, like kurkure, lays, biscuits, wafers, chocolates but my stocks never lasted long. We also had an illegal immersion rod in our room, and often made coffee, Maggie, tea etc. but i was fed up. Only good thing about here was my block. My friends. Miss beautiful koel, barnali, tani, divya, sam, kalpana, and few more. We had started hanging out now.

We would go out shopping; we would go out to newer food stores, hotels, pani puri stalls, chat stalls, cake shops in and around and try out new things. Our favourite place was bengoli mithaiwala. It was a big sweets shop. I got chance to try out sweets i had never seen before. Our academy was at one of the center places of Hyderabad. We had anything and everything we wanted in and around us, all enough to get us out of track from GATE-2011, especially for food lovers like me.

I enjoyed a lot with my new best friends. Going out was a routine now. But once i was back to my room i felt terribly bad. I was there to study. But I was doing everything apart from studies. I caught whatever I could from my classes. Xeroxed all notes. but I was nowhere close to anyone else in class. Everyone was worried that they were not studying enough even after hours of studies, that they had doubts, that they needed more materials to solve. Why I was even there I didn’t know. Another month passed. People around me were getting tensed and I was getting relaxed for bad.

Kartik had stopped talking to me now. Even he was fed up of me. But still he gave big smile whenever we met. I always returned it back. Class was like second hostel now. There were friends. People had got into relationships. Class room number 308 was best place in Hyderabad now for most of us.

It was a data structure class. I had dozed off on the first bench that day. N sir asked me- Please open ur eyes. i heard someone waking me. some distant voice. But I was not sure. So I didn’t get up. Rashmi hit me hard n I woke up suddenly. Sir was staring at me. That meant something very bad was coming. I anyway never understood his jokes. But now it was going to be on me. Why did I sleep?

To my surprise sir didn’t comment like he did to that boy that day. He asked me to answer the question on board. I looked at the board. Definitely it was not the topic that was going on when I fell for sleep. There was some tree drawn there.

“Er.. What is the question sir?” i asked slowly.

Sir was angry. But I honestly didn’t know the question. Sir repeated the question for me.

Now it was my turn to answer. “Jai Vivekananda” I concentrated. Er.. i didn’t know the answer. Sir was in no mood of joke. He had already made a favour by not making fool of me in the class. Expecting him to forgive me if I answered wrong was too much of expectation from my side.

“Well, I have just explained this concept two minutes ago. Tell me the answer now.”

Suddenly somehow, I don’t know how, the answer struck to my mind. I suddenly remembered that class of trees taught to us ages ago during my college time. I somehow told the correct answer.

It was a correct answer. I was waiting for sir to respond now.

“u were sleeping or u listen to class eyes closed?”

“Sir i was listening...”

“or U were meditating?”

“Er.. no sir.. i was listening.”

Sir was really angry now. he knew i wasn’t listening. “Better don’t sleep on first bench from next time.”

Sir carried on.

And i was saved. Somehow... I don’t know... thank god.

My respect in class got doubled that day... people hardly noticed me before. Rather ignored me, as they had always seen me sleeping. But now I was enjoying some attention... ;) he he.. now i really wanted to study... things changed after that day.. People came to me to discuss things. I was no way ready to let my image go down. I started studying. At least I controlled my sleep little more.

Another month passed. And it was mid November now. GATE exam was just 3 months away. And if i looked back I found I was nowhere close to even 10 percent of others. I didn’t know many concepts yet, in many subjects, materials were pending. The piles of Xeroxes were increasing. All those scared me badly. I was not able to study in hostel; I had missed many lectures from beginning either by getting up late or by dozing off. Whenever I touched one subject, other subjects haunted me. And in three months, it was just not going to happen. I was not even going to qualify. And finally one day I gave up. And just after a week, on December the third, they said- “Course is over... u have two months to revise all this... Revise thoroughly... and all the best...!”

where was i? At the start of the ladder.. wat i knew? Nothing. What was i going to do? Sit and cry!!!! 2 Jobs gone, missed coaching... What next? In the mean time I got the confirmatory mail that my forms reached gate office and admit cards shall be sent soon!!!!

I was surrounded by immense pressure I could not handle... I was all alone, and I had no escape either...