From top to bottom

Shain the time traveller, transported me to a different time and a different place. I am now lost in the late 80's ( the decade, not the latitude) wandering through MCC memories. When I escape those, WCC comes floating by. Either way, I end up here.

Okay. This is an MCC story (Oh Lord, thank you for having given me the opportunity to study in a college where I had so many laughs.)

MA III Sem. Subject : The Essay. Activity : Reading aloud. Professor : Long haired professor who impreses all girls (pretty or otherwise) by recounting story of barefoot walk in the Himalayas. As evidence to convince pretty girls, when Guys 1 to 17 laugh and shrug off story as exaggeration, carries in wallet a photograph of self sans sandals standing in (or is it on?) snow on Himalayan slope. Girls always deeply impressed as this gets them better marks. LHP also into intonation, inflexion, and attempts at embarassing prettily blushing girls.

Flashback to previous class: Girl1 (it was always Girl1, I wonder why?) reads. As the bell rings, she has reached sentence two of a paragraph, which is at the top of a page. Class marks spot, and disperses.

Back to incident at hand. Class begins. Girl 1 resumes reading where she had left off. ( Third sentence of Paragraph ).

LHP : Girl1, begin at the beginning of the paragraph.(which is the last line of the previous page.)

Girl 1: But sir, we had reached the top.

LHP (with feeling, yes, with lots of feeling and one very strategic glance at certain portion of Girl1's anatomy) : Yes ma, but I find that I infintely prefer the bottoms.

Girl1: blushes prettily.

P.S. I reiterate. I was not Girl 1.

Love and communication

Shain seems to have set off something with his MCC tag. Here I am now, MCC stories pouring out of me. It's even set the WCC stories flowing.

This one's an MCC story.

MA English First Sem class. A professor on the brink of retirement (one of the best profs ever) was keeping us occupied with a session on intonation. inflexion, expression and so on. Basically, trying to figure out whether we could communicate. He, could. And how!

POTBOR to the class in general : So, let's see, I think each of you should try and start with one sentence. Like so. (And proceeds to look deeply into the eyes of Girl1 while intoning with feeling) You have such pretty eyes.

Girl1 proceeds to blush prettily and cast her eyes down innocently.
Girls2,3&4 giggle.
Girls 5,6 & 7 smile wickedly, planning their sentences in their head. Girls 5,6 & 7 were really good girls. They just liked to be seen to be wicked.
Guys 1 through 17 snigger.

POTBOR to Girl1 : Now you try.

Girl 1: (Looking up at him shyly and innocently, intones with feeling) I love you.

Girls 2through 4 giggle. Uncontrollably.
Girls 5 through 7 gasp like idiots. This, even they would not have thought of.
Guys 1 through 17 sit up and look at Girl1 closely, as if seeing her for the first time.

POTBOR : (managing to control the blush at collar-level moves even closer, drops his voice a notch, and intones. With feeling. Oh yes, that was feeling, all right) Once more, please.

Class bursts out laughing. Girl1 blushes prettily - again - and enjoys all the attention. POTBOR smiles indulgently. And changes topic of lesson. Immediately.

Girl1 is asked out on dates by Guys 1, 5, 8, 14 and 17.

P.S. I was not Girl1.

The rain, the jasmine and the romance of the flute

Last night, as I stepped out of the house, the scent of jasmine came drifting in from my brother’s garden. Fragrance, they say, is one of the most powerful aids to recalling long forgotten memories. I was transported back in time, to one of the most beautiful nights I've ever known.

It happened while I was a student at MCC. We had an active Spic Macay chapter at college and so we used to have all the big names in classical music & dance visiting us for lec-dems. On the night in question, we had Hari Prasad Chaurasia and such an evening it turned out to be. For one thing, it was in one of the open halls at night. For another, the guy organising it had a brainwave and moved out all the furniture so all of us were sitting on the floor on dhurries. It was raining, the jasmine was flowering and - providence! the lights went out. I say providence now, but at that point, all I felt was impatience. No lights, no performance and awww, I didn't want to lose out on a chance to listen to 'a great'. But providence it was, and so there we were, about 25 of us in the darkness - Pandit Chaurasia, someone accompanying him softly on a ghatam and the most heavenly music from his flute. He was to have given us a lec-dem for half an hour, but he just smiled and started to play.

If people like me with no musical sense could sense the romance of that night, I can imagine how he must have felt. He continued to play for about 2 hours, stopping now and again to talk to us. There was one lantern somewhere in a corner, so we just about had enough light to see each other. None of us spoke, but many smiles were exchanged in that soft lantern light. That night, listening to the music and watching the rain, I learnt that the best memories you take away with you when you leave a college, have nothing to do with academics.

When profs turn biblical

Scene I: First Sem MA English Literature. The first session of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

The class was very quiet and a little apprehensive having been warned many times by the seniors about the brilliant prof who handles the subject. He seemed innocuous enough, as he introduced himself, and we drew a collective deep breath, signifying relief. And then he began:

Chaucer, you will find, he said, is like God's peace. And he picked up the book and started to read. As only three students in that class latched on to the allusion, and since Chaucer, did, for the most part, pass all understanding, there were many hours that semester when we found ourselves wishing for a run-of-the-mill average professor teaching us some run-of-the-mill average text. It was not to be.

When it rained on the equipment

Everyman tagged the rest of us MCCians for a post on our alma mater. I thought about doing this. Again and again. I had a lot of fun at MCC (everyone does), but I just couldn't pin it down to any specific incident(s). Or so I thought at first. But slowly, the memories came rolling back. And oh, how I giggled to myself, reminiscing about one incident and another, and then another.
Like most old colleges with large campuses, half the fun of studying at MCC was staying on campus. There was always something to do, and something or someone to laugh at. For us resident women students, the main source of our merriment was the WARDEN. I realise now that she must have been in her mid sixties, but at that time, we thought of her as closer to eighty. As far as possible, she stayed out of our hair, and we stayed out of hers. We would attend prayers and clap along while she sang, and she would watch us play badminton, volleyball and wall tennis (smashing tennis balls against the hostel wall) and once in a way encourage us with 'good shot' and 'well played'. As you can see, for the most part, it was a peaceable association. Of course, we laughed at her little foibles and follies, but never to her face. Or at least, never until that fateful night when she decided to lecture all of us on the care of the hostel sports equipment. The immediate provocation for said lecture was that it had rained and all of the sports equipment, having been left outside, had been ruined.
I'll attempt to reproduce her speech and memory permitting, I promise to stay as true to the original as possible.

" Girls, I am very very pained. Really very painful behaviour. All of you. You are all grown women and it is a shame that you have not learned how to handle equipment carefully. Cocks and balls must be handled with care. You think you can just like that find cocks and balls to play with? It is not like the Halls. The men students have lot of equipment. The college has taken great care so that women students also have equipment to play with. So you must treat the equipment with care.
You know what has happened? It has rained last night. And you know what happens to equipment when it is left in the rain? It is ruined. Look at this (waving a shuttlecock - definitely destroyed by the rain - in the air very vigorously) - What use is a cock when it has become stiff? And look at these balls (pointing to a pile of wet and totally ruined tennis balls), they have absorbed the water and are swollen and slippery. Balls must be dry. You will not be able to play with wet balls.
We will have to get new equipment. And I will tell the Principal that all the girls have promised me that you will handle the cocks and balls with care always. Do you promise, girls? "

We never figured out whether she was a total innocent or very very wicked. Personally, I go with 'innocent'.

Shain, thank you so much for that tag. Yes, I did enjoy MCC.