College Nostalgia - Part 1 (Getting There)

Its been years and years since I passed out of college... well not really that long.. but its definitely been a while. I am in constant touch with my good friends from college, who are still the closest of my friends! However all of a sudden this week, I am stuck with Nostalgia... thinking about the fun college days! So here I start a series on my college days!

It was the year 1996... I passed out of my 12th grade with a not so great marks to speak of. I had a 90%, but thats not good enough is it? Like most kids in India, I needed (mind you not wanted but needed) to be an engineer. I had played with computers most of my life (not so common at that point in time). Like all parents, mine too thought my life was doomed if I didn't study computer engg. I had no patience or courage to wait for the "general counselling"! My parents dint want to let their pampered and spoilt brat to rot in the myriad college hostels strewn across Tamil Nadu nor did they want me to travel miles and miles to the outskirts of the city to study.

We had our solution... and the one and only "Avinashilingam University of Women", Close enough to home and all women (I bet my parents were happy. I most definitely wasn't!!). Well to cut the long story short, I got ACCEPTED and went reluctantly to the first day of college. It was a bit overwhelming to see a classroom filled with some 75 or so girls. But as I started to get to know the people around me, I found some like minded people on the very first day!!

A couple of these people - Akila and Sandhya stayed on to be my great friends for the rest of my tenure in Avinashilingam! And these two and others made the Avinashilingam I remember not a strict and opressing place, but a fun and happy place. We shared many laughs, pranks, jokes, frustrations and struggles through the years!