Days in College

My introduction to Balaji, was when, he and Vamshi had devised a fake virus when I had borrowed
Fortran77 from them in second semester..It scared the crap out of me and Sandhya
(whose computer it went on). When I called Balaji after we had figured it out, he could not hide his curiosity and kept asking me .. how did the installation go..

How he and I and (may be Prashanth) used to giggle a lot .. he for one, could not hold his giggle.
He would hold his mouth with his right Palm, with four of his fingers on his left cheek,
his thumb over the side of his nose and his nostrils would flare up and down..
and then he would laugh uncontrollably.. tears and all..
(I still could not remember the style of his laugh on the day I told all this to Prince).
He was caught often by BJS (one of our lecturers).

He was talented in so many ways.. he was whiz at computers, self-taught mostly.. he sang exceptionally well.. he was a performing artist for All India Radio. At times, he used to sing so well, that there would be tears in my eyes for no reason.
To me, my singing was a ridiculous gig when he sang. I remember, when we were preparing to sing the prayers for inauguration of IETE consortium, how we laughed at the HOD's office..
HOD was making us sing (a practice run) in his tiny office while he was attending a phone call,
(Imagine HOD, behind his desk and then chairs facing the desk, and then, in a 2 X 6 passage, there was Balaji, me and Vamshi with his Tabla! ). Our situation was quite hilarious, and on top of it, HOD did not want to disturb the practices, and at the same time, did not want the other party to hear the bhajan-keerthan. So he had cupped his hand over the receiver .. and was whispering in to the the mouthpiece and he had to repeat many times so that the other person could hear..
We could not continue singing and started laughing uncontrollably..
HOD was offended I think.. Balaji ALWAYS initiated these laughs,, it was always his fault!

Another of those rehearsals, HOD had called us in his room, (he was compulsive obsessive in some ways). He all of a sudden, while he was listening to our singing, got irritated by the fact that his phone wire (the coiled part) was all looped up. He left the receiver hang to the floor and let it rotate on its axis so that it will get untangled. and Along with our singing, the ring tone and later the engaged-tone started humming.. Me and Balaji looked at each other and we started giggling. Dr. HSS asked us "what happened?", we had no answer, we had to ask him some stupid question to divert him from the fact that we were laughing at him.

He would mimic, MSV, Anant Raman, FFT (what was his name ?) sir,
and a bunch of others. He had a disdain for stupid people.. he was very cocky that way.
Him and I used to laugh at our mutually hated people among our acquaintances.. He would bait me about 2 self-centered people among our seniors who thought the solar system orbited around them. I would bait him about the dumb girls in our class.
And we would bitch about every one.. and feel good about ourselves!


He had played many many pranks in college. Once him and a couple of others had pretended to be drunk on our way back from Bangalore. I ( still in my khadi-clad-ideological-self), was extremely disappointed in the cream-of-youth of my college.. They played so well! damn! He even said looking at HV-line tower, that he was looking at Eiffel tower, he even picked a fight with one of his competitors, Rajesh Maiyya, I was such a sucker!! I started crying silently.
It took them a lot to convince me that they were kidding with me!

If there was one thing that made Balaji stand apart from the rest of us,
it was the confidence to go and do things that the others can only talk in awe about. He had vision of things much ahead of our times. He dreamt of doing things.. he wanted to open an Embedded Systems Research
and Development Center (ESRDC hewanted to call it), of all the discouraging places in the world, in National Institute of Engineering!. He even managed to get companies to give us free development kits to learn to work micro controllers. That is only an example. He wanted to do so many things! He ran ahead of everything and created opportunities. He had the hope, no make that bull-headed confidence that things will work for him.. and dare they deviate, he would go wring their neck to abide! He had knowledge, imagination, confidence and vision to form his future.
What could life have done to kill the spirits of such a spirit, I dare not imagine.
But I sure hope people remember him for his stubborn confidence,for his dreams and for his will to go the extra untrodden mile, for his will to put in the effort towards realizing his dreams at the cost of his life.


I cant remember all of the things about him.. but.. but when I do, I will add them here. I dont want to lose the memories of him. This is what is left of him with me you know?