Those bus rides... and those friends...

It wasn't all romantic, at least when I just got into Engineering. Struggling fairly hard during 11th and 12th, preparing for IIT-JEE, perhaps failing badly and then joining RV College of Engineering (RVCE) was little disappointing. However, RVCE was (is?) the best Engineering college in Bangalore, getting in there was a big success according to my mom. It was like a good arranged marriage, with parents being the happiest.

RVCE was nearly 15 kms from my home. During my first year I commuted through college bus. Two good friends from my 11th and 12th class, Vin and San, had also joined RVCE and boarded the same college bus which I did. Vin and I, being the less diplomatic ones and bit innocent during those days, were some of the greatest victims of ragging in the bus, while San was fairly silent creature in the bus. We were ragged by almost all our seniors who had even little interest in interacting with us, though none of them harassed or violated. It wasn't comfortable at all at the beginning . Some times I used to board girls bus saying that I missed the guys bus, with real intentions of avoiding ragging, never the less used to get ragged there as well. Our seniors extracted major fun in asking questions related to girls, fantasizes, sexual intercourse, kamasutra etc. Being more of a timid guy then, I had no idea of any of those things, in fact when I was younger I used to refrain my self from talking to people who used to talk about such things. My seniors took great advantage of my naiveness during the bus journey. One incident I would always remember is when they asked me how would I test a condom. Though I had expressed my deep disinterest in answering that question but they wanted me to answer at any cost. After getting pressurized from all corners, I had answered that I would probably check for an ISI mark on the condom. The whole bus had laughed at the answer of mine and from then on started calling me ISI boy. My friend Vin, who saw me getting properly screwed by our seniors decided to educate me on all the things that were required for a man to know. I went to his house during some weekends when his parents were out, to read the magazine 'Woman's Era". Also picked up other stuff (you know what I mean) from other sources to get better understanding. That's how and when, I got my first lessons on Sex education, which I must say turned out be quite astonishing.

The college bus journey went on to become a great fun as time passed. Our interaction with the seniors became very friendly. They started sharing their experiences with us quite candidly by the end of first semester. They helped us in various ways like mentoring, lending reference books, advising on semester exams and stuff like that. Though it was fun to go in the college bus, it was also an expensive affair hence Vin and I decided to take up government bus to commute from the second year. Mean while both of us had become good friends with one more guy called Jay, who was also coming from our area to the college. Three of us were like bus buddies. San continued commuting in the college bus during the second year as well.

Our journey to college in the second year was a real pain, as we had to catch multiple buses, that too it went via places like city market and hence the bus used to get stuck in all possible traffic jams. Missing the first hour was a quite common thing. Bunking classes was some kind of great feeling as it gave a sense of college hood freedom while missing classes because of sluggish traffic or getting up late gave a very awful feeling. There was only one direct bus from the college to our area and unfortunately timings of that coincided with the time of the last college bell. It gave us supreme happiness when ever we caught that bus.

I guess some time during the end of second year or the start of third year of our engineering, state government introduced many buses on the outer ring road. Our area (locality) and RVCE was located on the outer ring road. That was a great relief. Traveling in those buses made our life very comfortable as it had many seats vacant when ever we got in and more over it took much lesser time to reach our destination. San also left the college bus and came with us in the government bus later. We , that is Vin, Jay, San and I, had great fun in the bus with many conversation regarding events of the day and stuff. Sixty percent of the time the subject of our discussion was about girls of our college in general and girls of our respective department in specific. Though none of us had a bit of courage to ask any damn girl out on this earth but we had fair idea of what- dress, who - wore, which - day. During my third year I was attracted to a cute north Indian chick from my department. I did put my efforts in checking her out at least once a week. It was nice to see her in quite modern outfits and also talking about her with these friends of mine in the bus. I was quite excited when I met her during some college fest and got a chance to work with her. However I neither had guts nor genuine interest to pursue on her at any levels. Our friends, Vin and Jay had also fallen for some girls in the college, where as San never talked about any girl in specific, he was more of a listener of our weird day to day stories. Vin had got attracted to a pretty looking south Indian girl while we were in the first year itself, in fact to be more accurate he got attracted to her during engineering seat selection day it self. He did everything to impress her. Days when she talked to him were like the best days according to him, then. He cherished those events by repeatedly talking about those for months with us in the bus. She knew that he had totally fallen for her while we knew that she had little or no interest in him. Instead of taking her out his mind we rather encouraged him in all the ventures to impress her, which eventually failed miserably. I had great fun in building up good hopes in him about that girl when ever he spoke about her. When it became quite obvious that she wasn't falling for him we did the needful, perhaps the right thing. Our hero, Jay, had got attracted to a girl whom the whole college used to leach at. She was like a super model, more of a reserved types and our guy had not even socially interacted with an extrovert girl, even in the department. According to him she was good and rest were okay, perhaps I must say our innocent boy had very high standards. Vin, San and I made very funny sarcastic comments on Jay when ever he gave his rating about any girl in the college. Well, we did lots of ratings, created nick names, passed sarcastic comments regarding the girls we had met, seen and heard during those bus ride conversations. Seriously it was damn interesting!

We had made some more friends from our college and neighboring colleges, who commuted in those ring road buses. Our discussion with them were mainly on sports, movies and other university related things. On few occasion we did ragg our juniors but it was never as intense as the one in our college bus. All in all those ring road buses gave us a neat platform for much required social interaction and tension relief from the ever increasing academic pressure and career shaping objectives.

After completing engineering, as expected, all of us went on different directions to chase for the things that we genuinely thought of during those four years. San and Jay left India few years back. Jay had come over here (India) a month back and San came couple of days back. Vin and I took him (San) to a neat coffee place yesterday evening near our place and talked about those days when we just talked about stuff that we neither got then nor now, but just spoke for hours together tirelessly.