The "Baap" of IV’s – Bhongir (Part – 3) – Last and Final Part

Walk down the memory aisle with Bhongir part 1 and part 2. Thank you all for your lovely comments. My friends have been reading them and have been overjoyed at the response from the blog world 🙂 🙂

And so, we all set out from Bhongir to Hyderabad, carrying along some sweet memories (I guess you must have got the proof by now). We were cramped into a jeep along with our professors, instruments and luggage. Now, this prof of ours to keep us entertained was telling us jokes which only the guys could laugh at and girls had to look east, west, south and north with a sheepish smile and think “When will this journey end!!!”. Added to his, KP had a bad back ache which the cramped jeep was not helping in any way. We were also not able to do anything and were watching her with sad eyes. The only thing we could do was to wait until we reached Hyderabad and pounce on T, our class rep. You cant expect 19 people cramped up with no movement space along with luggage and other stuff to be quiet also right?

Anyways, T got left and right from me and KP and then we let him go with a warning. Then, we all started towards the rooms allocated to us in the hostel at Uppal. Definitely much better than the tents, but somehow we had started to miss the tent life. It was almost evening by that time, so we refreshed and spent the rest of the evening playing shuttle. Initially when K had carried the shuttle rackets, Captain and many of the guys had kept on her scolding her for bringing additional luggage. Later on, with nothing to do in the evenings in the camp as well as at Uppal, we all ended up playing shuttle almost everyday. So, that extra luggage had been a blessing in disguise. So, when we traveled to Hyderabad and then to Chennai also, the shuttle rackets were treated with utmost reverence.

The initial two days went off with some training programs and visits to some survey institutes. We looked like a bunch of information hungry kids trying to gobble up as much information as possible. We also got to see some live satellite data recording although the data and the process was greek and latin to us. The only exceptionally intelligent geeks like Y, V, B, Sab and T were asking questions while the rest of us tried or atleast showed that we were trying to understand every word told by the instructor in those institutes. 

One particular institute we visited was quite far away from the main road from where we could get a share auto to Uppal. Not knowing how to reach the main road, all of us started to walk. After sometime a tractor came along, and all the guys asked the tractorwala for a hike to the main road. The guy readily agreed and so as you can see below, a bunch of smiling faces riding away to glory in our brand new Mercedes. 

The last two days of the trip, we were left to ourselves. The professors relaxed in their rooms, while we went about roaming. It was Birla temple, Hussain Sagar Lake, Koti and of course, Charminar. Now, B has always the weirdest of ideas (Some things can be really weird). So, this time his weird idea was to dress similarly. Although skeptical at first, we all agreed to it and went about shopping for it. As you very well know, guys cannot shop much so the very first dress shop which had some nice jibbas on display was attacked. We entered, we selected, we bargained and finalized on 12 pieces of a particular Jibba. The guy went to his godown and nearby shops to gather exactly similar 12 pieces of the “Jibba”. We did get the 12 jibbas but with a slight color variation.  So, the next day was decided to be the inaugural day of our lovely and pretty “Jibbas”. Every filmy family has a family song or a tattoo to identify their kid if the kid had got lost in “Khumb ka Mela” but we had the “Jibba” to identify the entire batch :). What a family!

I know I know, you must be all laughing on seeing the above pics but thats what we looked like – A bunch of crazy people. Wherever we went we got stares, giggles, funny smiles but nonetheless we wore them through the day. Now, for the scoop, our professor on seeing the jibbas, went to the same shop, told the guy that he had sent the 12 people the previous day to buy the Jibbas and got a cool 20% discount. Really smart uh! 

After all this circus, it was time to catch the train to Chennai. We came back well in advance, packed our things, cleaned up the room and were about to leave (or so we thought). The guys brought in some share autos to take us to the Secunderabad station. We had almost reached the gate, when the guard locked the door and didn’t allow the autos to proceed further. We all were confused. The guys and professors got down and tried to reason with the staff. Their claim was that one of us had broken one of the buckets in the hostel. We knew that this was just a means to take some money from us as we all had buckets with us and certainly, it needed a lot of extra effort to break one of those iron buckets. We argued, tried to reason but to no avail. Moreover, it was getting late and we had just an hour to reach the station. Finally the professors and guys got frustrated and gave the guy/staff Rs.100 after which he let us go (So much drama for money!!). More than the  money, what we felt bad was this staff belonged to an institute which we all idolized as students and we had certainly never expected such a thing to happen over there. 

With 45 minutes left, the share autos started towards the destination. Well by now as you will also be knowing the autowalas also had to be appeased with promise for extra money for the waiting time. 5 minutes, the autos were moving smoothly, 10 minutes, the autos had to slow down a bit and 15 minutes later, there lay ahead of us a huge traffic jam. Another 10 minutes went by and we were left with only 20 minutes to reach the station to catch the train. The station was a good 15 minutes walk from there and that too if we walked fast. All of us took one bag each and started to run. The guys formed a queue for as long as they could form and went on passing the other things. Gasping, panting and numb on the legs (at least me), we reached the station. 5 more minutes were left but all the boys had not come yet and then came Indian Railways to our rescue. “Hamesha Aapke Saath!!!” should be their slogan. The train was another 10 minutes late (Big Relief!!!). The missing guys had come by that time and we heaved a sigh of relief :D. Thereafter it was a smooth affair, no more such incidents (Thankfully!!!)

Well, if you are admiring the guys of my class, yes they are really praise worthy. Our IT career teaches us about team work, but these guys are really a team without even having to tell them. Emotions and friendship is what has really bound us all and kept us together over the years. But then boys will be boys and are not without their quota of hilarious stories.


“Sight Adhichifying” would be a degrading term. The guys of my class call it “Admiring beauty” and thats what they did on the train to Chennai too. Mr. 3 Clap M and Mr. Tall R (who thought of himself as Mr.Chennai) first took a survey of the train. First towards the right from where they returned empty handed and then to the left. Left side they hit the jackpot as there were two sweet girls in the next few seats itself. They talked to them, made friends and those girls even came and played cards with us and our guys were on “Cloud No.9“/* Click on the picture below to listen to it */. The goody goody faces of the guys at that moment was a sight to see. I never understood what pleasure guys got in talking to girls. Realized it very much later. 

One of them Su was even more bolder. This was while we were roaming around in Hyderabad maybe around Charminar or Koti in the evening. This was a typical Muslim area with girls in burkha roaming around with their kid brothers. Su stopped each kid coming in our way and asked “Do you have a sister?”. After 5-6 kids, we literally dragged him away from that place least we all got beaten up :). But besides these basic “guy” qualities, they are all GEMS :).

This brings us to an end of this three series nostalgic post on our trip to Bhongir. It was fun reminiscing those 10 wonderful days. I couldn’t post many incidents least this series became boring. Maybe I will post a cartoon series on those incidents in the near future :). And as I always say, “Friends are the best, Nothing to beat them!!!”. This trip and many more which we had during our college times brought us all together and bound us all. “Ye Fevicol ka mazbood jodh hai… Tutega nahi!!!” 🙂 . Would love to go back to college and re-live that time.


P.S.  “Sight Adhichifying” is “Line Maarna” in Hindi. 

        GEM is Ginger Eating Monkey and not the real GEM 😛