The Mirandastics

Song for the mood: Kishore Kumar and Manna Dey - Yeh Dosti ham nahin todenge

Once upon a time there were a bunch of guys, friends for a long long time, who went to Tirupati and keeping in mind the temple traditions got their heads 'tonsured' (this is for Vijay). They always ate, played and moved together so they were quite a sight - 4 or 5 clean shaven heads walking together in a single file ... just fantastic! If you remember the old Mirinda ads you can guess by now why they were named the 'Mirandastics'.

Ok, before I proceed further, let me set the mood for this post. The Mirandastics are great friends of mine. They are quite a bunch; there is a lot of camaraderie amongst them. They are all very warm and helpful by nature. Although they speak in Telugu all the time, one of them speaks Telugu even with me (if you know them you can easily guess who it might be), and I don't understand a single word of it ... I never feel like an outsider whenever I am with them. In fact just a couple days days back I was out for a treat hosted by a Mirandastic, it was great ... :-)

Now lets get down to the bashing :-D

The Mirandastics are the most feared gang in college, yes like a true gang they always move together. They all stay on the top floor of my hostel building and you should see how scared people, especially juniors, are to go to that floor. Heck, I was scared to go to their part of the hostel before I got friendly with them.

As I said, the Mirandastics are very warm and friendly ... you can always feel their friendship. In their punches when they say 'HI'. In the punches again, when they say 'See You'. As I said, you can feel it. On these cold winter days when a Mirandastic greets me, my first reaction is a defensive stance that protects my face and stomach followed by a foot long back leap. I do say Hi, of course I do! But that's after the slight Muhammad Ali impression. Not that it helps, I still get punched. Their love especially pours out on birthdays. Birthdays bumps are served lavishly. I get kicked for just about anything. I once got kicked for getting good grades in the exam ... I was ambushed by a Mirandastic in the canteen and he along with Pranav twisted me around like merry-go-round while kicking me, at the end of which I was too dazed to realize that I had gotten close to 50 kicks! Yes, they counted. Another recent kicking was when my internship was confirmed. Very touching indeed ... :-)

The Mirandastics, apart from being a gang, are great individuals. There's Ravindra, the self-proclaimed "busiest lazy guy in the world". You always know when Ravindra is around, trust me. Plus he is a good photographer. Shashank is the quiet guy, as cool as ice. Always calm and collected no matter what the situation. Ravikanth is known as the 'Director'. He can make great videos, he has already made a few for the college. Nareen, and I have told him this, is the most mischievious guy ... and he does it so discreetly you'll never know. Rakesh looks quiet, but then he'll pull a joke on you when you least expect it. Rajashekar sleeps the whole day, wakes up at strange hours and goes to work when everyone's in neverland ... I meet him for breakfast in the morning many times ... difference being it is breakfast for me and for him it is a bedtime snack. Vikrant is the foodie. Plus he has a bike that no one except he can drive ... in fact only he can start it.

Whew! I can't write enough about these guys. The innumerable occasions playing marathon 12+ hour sessions of Call Of Duty multiplayer in the college lab would've been very dull without them. Here's a piece of advice, never put more than 3 Mirandastics in a single team when playing COD ... you'll lose. Forget the game for a bit ... the amount of antics and the edge-of-a-cliff rush that they bring to the game is fun! You can't stand in the room if you're not playing. I am not saying someone will chase you away. You'll go mad with the amount of noise! The celebrations that follow after a victory are nothing short of a battle march...

Do you know any such Mirandastics? If you don't then you are losing out on something. College life is fun when you have such folks around. They are a big part of whatever memories I carry with me when leaving this place ... if you ever get kicked so much, you won't forget either :-)

Terror Tuesdays

Song for the mood: Lynyrd Skynyrd - Tuesday's gone

Posting after a long time... actually the exams are over. The semester has ended, and with it most of what is known as college :-). Many have left for the winter to sunnier abodes (home) while some like me are still trundling to reach the exit ... translation, I got some project work left, so I can't leave for another week at the least! Woe is me...

Well, today is Tuesday. Which is one day before Wednesday - the day we live for. Okay okay, cutting out the crap, Wednesday happens to be our project meeting day ... the project for which I am staying back. Being the engineers that we are, Tuesday hence becomes the proverbial trial-by-fire, you see.

Tuesdays are sleepless ... Monday morning blues are nothing compared to Tuesday midnight terrors! Wednesday afternoon happens to be the project demo time, which naturally implies that 12 hours before the bell sounds we will be sitting in the lab integrating a piece of code into the huge software spaghetti.And as Murphy's Laws suggest, nothing will work at such a time.

Tuesdays are a test of language, personal and programming ... When a piece of code doesn't work, our nice language becomes even nicer. By the time the code (finally) starts working, like a car on bad oil, we would have exhausted the entire vocabulary. I think it is the constant shouting that makes us more tired than the code ... sleeping at 3:00 or 4:00am is a lot more satisfying than a normal sleep, I can vouch for that now...

By the time the Wednesday demos are done (worth a blog by itself) we are pissed enough to NOT work for the rest of the week. So, by the time the fire turns to a blazing inferno by Tuesday midnight the following week, the fire-fighting is ready to begin ... again ... we never manage to "go down in a blaze of glory" ... translation ... we always save our asses in the end ... :-)

As the late Ronnie Van Zandt wrote it, perfectly well ... "Tuesday's gone ... with the wind" ... see you around!