2K5 ROCKZ

by Ram V. Nampoothiri

“I LOVE MY FRIENDS THEY ARE MY STRENGTH. I WILL ALWAYS STAND BY THEM, IRRESPECTIVE OF THEIR DEEDS, AND EVEN IF I GET SCREWED UP, I DON’T CARE COZ IT’S THE NAIL THAT STANDS UP WHICH GETS THE HAMMERING"

The 'About Me' ramblings in Orkut profiles usually don't hold much value as one's character sketches, but the above is entirely true about him.

Short. Well-built. Fast-receding hairline. White shirt with pink-flowers, or blue with a huge Metallica print on the back and a zipper over the chest. Designer jeans with carefully made out tears all over. You can easily spot him from a mile away amongst the medico crowd, that is if he comes to college. But his appearance is the least important thing about him. He has his own unique take on anything under the sun – from medicine to politics to sports. And that made us hit it off together. I found that I could converse, debate, argue and laugh with him on anything hours on end without either of us feeling a wee bit bored. He has this rare gift of putting people at ease.

His exploits on the cricket field are widely known. Colour-blind he may be, but he pumped up Anwar into hitting a few sixes and even smashed a four himself (God knows how?!) on our road to winning the cup. What isn't known to many is his brilliant chess game. I looked like an idiot betting against this district player over a game with one of my pals. I lost the bet, of course, and he won a bottle of sprite and a lot of my admiration.

Another day, he greeted me with this question:

“Dude, heard about the quiz?”

“Ya.”

“How about we team up?”

“Sure.”

And off we went, without even a microscopic amount of preparation between us, sailing through the preliminaries on top and finishing third in the final. We were the third-best team in the college, but the fun we had was the best part.

A party freak, he is also a pretty good dancer, as we found out from Caterpillars at Genesis 2006. His remarkable organizing skills came to the fore during our three college tours so far. Without losing his temper even once, and without a single heated exchange with anyone, he made sure that we enjoyed three flawless tours to the max, all the while having a whale of a time himself. Not your typical burned-out impresario. Oh yeah, and he occasionally scoots off on unplanned stress-buster trips with his close pals.

In case you're wondering what's so special about being a popular, high-spirited college guy, there's one thing that truly sets him apart from the rest – he stands up unselfishly for people – his friends, his classmates. All of us know his super-fast attendance-taking and zipping through the registers, but only a few know about the mess he landed in as our rep, after we mass-bunked an average exam. The only time that he has gotten angry was when one of our classmates got beaten up in a row. In the events and the brawl that followed, he cut his radial artery and underwent an emergency vascular surgery and hospitalization for a couple of weeks. All for a pal. And some say a high made him do all that. I can assure you that he was extremely sober that night when he went to seek retribution for our mate. ViKu Sir later described him in the incident as “Look, these are actions which make a difference to the society we live in. Change for the better or worse I cannot say, but change certainly he has brought about, and you should all be proud of him.”

There are two kinds of brilliant people in this world – the ones whose heads rule over their hearts and those whose hearts rule over their heads. The former become highly successful and famous in life. The latter touch more lives than others and spread happiness and contentment, and become a part of our very souls.

“As we complete four years of acquaintance and friendship, I realize that you belong to the second group, mate. And I'm proud to have you as a pal. You're totally AWESOME, and then some.”

Moving on to the other end of the spectrum…..

She is short, cute and plump. And quiet. So silent, you wouldn’t realize her existence even though she has been around you for the past four years. She has a perfect attendance during the theory classes but the register doesn’t reflect it, and this is probably because the guy taking the attendance fails to hear her answer her name from the front row, where she sits in all these classes. Now you know how quiet she is. To make the contrast more obvious with the guy mentioned in the first part of this article, she dresses in the most simple, down to earth manner that one can possibly imagine, with absolutely no trace of jewellery, not even an earring, on her body.

However the most characteristic feature that sets her apart from everyone else is the pace of her speech and gait which, I’m afraid is really, really S-L-O-W. Except when she’s inside the exam hall answering viva questions where, (as the marks might reflect!!!) I think she answers them all a little too quickly.

An extremely God-fearing person, she is also very homely and gets very, very homesick if she doesn’t visit “Mama” at least once in a couple of weeks. That she hails from the same city as the hero of this article, leaves me wondering how different people, hailing from the same region, who studied in schools very near to each other, can turn out to be.

You don’t expect to see her on class tours, neither do you expect to see her dancing during DJ night. You will never see her involved in any sort of sport nor in your wildest dreams do u expect her to have her own Orkut profile. But you need people like this in the unit, always. To give you completed records to copy from, to teach you something on the morning of the practicals and to answer all the questions put forward by professors during classes to the unit. Why is it that everybody who notices her, talks to her or studies with her, likes her so much? Is it because of her willingness to help you, her simplicity or her down-to-earth modesty? None. People adore her when they see her universal love for all, and idolize her, when they realize the happiness she gets by helping others.

I’ve now described a couple of our classmates to you. These two superb and extra-ordinarily brilliant pals of mine couldn’t be more different from each other, whatever parameters you may measure them with. Except for one - A Heart of Pure Gold.