BE---- The Third Year ( 1968-69)

So here I was in the 3rd year with an exam of the 2nd Year to complete.There was a lot of good natured ribbing from my friends because I had failed a simple subject like Workshop Practice.

Mine was the last batch of the 5 year Integrated course and it was commonly accepted that the 3rd year was the toughest of the entire 5 years.

We had new subjects such as Electrical Engineering,Fluid Mechanics, Strength of Materials , Civil Engineering etc.Apart from being the toughest year, the marks in the 3rd Year would count in getting the Branch allotment in the 4th Year.So there was added pressure.

I now had C.M.Mathew as my room mate and started hanging out with the Shimoga crowd.This consisted of Sripada Sastry, Nagaraja Setty,H.R.Sethuram as well as M.A.Ravindra. Madhusudana Rao was also part of this gang as was C.R.Nagaraja but they were not staying in the hostel.

Nagaraja Setty was my TT partner and many were the hours we spent playing TT with me practicing my attacking shots and him defending.

The notable event of 1968 was the wedding of Sowbhagya with her childhood sweetheart S.C.Anand Rao.This is a romance on par with that of Laila-Majnu, Heer-Ranjha etc.

In May 1960, Bhagya's brother Prabhakara got married to Anand's sister Pramila in Sagar and that's when the romance started.Bhagya was a sweet 16 year old then and Anand was a handsome and dashing 19 year old.It was love at first sight and there was no looking back thereafter.

The romance flourished for 8 long years under the benign gaze of the elders and culminated in marriage on 28th Oct 1968. The revenues of the Post & Telegraphs Dept shot up four-fold because of the inland letter and envelopes that these two used .Even when Bhagya spent long periods in KGF, the letters kept coming and going and I was often the guy asked by Bhagya to post these letters.

The wedding took place in Chitradurga at the Dodda Mane and I remember that Prabhakara had got his 5 sisters identical blue silk sarees.

It was in 1968 that I commenced the practice of spending my Deepavali in Bhadravathi and it continued for almost 6 years.
Kamalakshi and Papacchi had got married by then and so I spent Deepavali in the company of Nanjunda, Shankara, Shashikala and Chik Chaya.Great fun!!!

It was in this year that H.K.Nagabushan joined MCE in our 3rd year class.Nagabushan had already made waves as an exciting batsman and had scored a record 314 not out for Bangalore University in the Rohinton Baria Inter-University Cricket Tournament and had already played for Mysore State in the company of E.A.S.Prasanna,B.S.Chandrasekhar,V.Subramanyam etc.He was from Madhugiri and soon joined our group.It was exciting to hear cricket stories from him and he soon became the captain of the college cricket team.

I duly finished my Workshop Practice Exam, represented Sahyadri Zone again in Tennis in the MGS Tournaments at Mysore and applied myself diligently for my exams since I knew it would be difficult.
The hostel would provide tea at 10 PM in the night to encourage late night studying and it was common for students to stay awake till 3 AM poring into their books.
We would be up again at 6 AM and be ready to attend the exam at 9 AM.

I forgot to mention the Ganesha Habba celebrations.We would have the idol installed in the hostel and some senior students would do the pooje followed by a sumptuous lunch. In the evenings, we would go to town to attend the poojas of a big idol near the Bus Stand and also attend the music and dance programs and then come back.

Rummy had started going to College now and Sandhya was also growing up.I enjoyed my frequent trips to KGF since I would get properly pampered by my mom and sisters and carry a lot of goodies back to the hostel.

I also looked forward to the letters I received from home.Dad's letters were business-like and in English whereas mom would always write in Kannada in her beautiful pearl- stringed handwriting.It got to a stage where I could only decipher mom's handwriting in Kannada. Bhagya would also write postcards in Kannada and the first one or two times I got them read by one of my friends because I couldn't decipher her writing.After a couple more letters, I got the hang of her writing.

I duly finished my exams in Apr 1969 and got home for the holidays. As usual I plunged into the routine of swimming, tennis,library, billiards & snooker, shuttlecock and table tennis and movies.

My friends Paranjali and Kumar usually had a big stock of comics and the first thing I would do is go their houses and come back laden with comics---- usually Phantom, war comics, Archie, Dennis the Menace, Little Lotta, Casper the friendly little ghost, westerns etc. The westerns usually featured Kit Carson, Wyatt Earp, The Kansas Kid, Buffalo Bill etc.It was always about the whites ( palefaces)fighting and defeating the Red Indians( Apaches, Navajos, Sioux etc).Popular Western novels were written by J.T.Edson, Zane Gray, Louis L'Amour,Luke Short etc. Truly great stories and afforded hours of enjoyable reading.

During one of these holidays ( I'm not sure which year), I got into a typewriting institute to learn typing.I had a very valid reason for this.A lot of girls were attending typing and shorthand classes and I thought this would be a good way to meet some of them.

I'm not sure if it was my bad luck or otherwise, but most of the girls in my batch were the "paavam" type who wouldn't even lift their heads above the typewriter. The only good that came out of this was that I became familiar with the QWERTY keyboard and am now able to type fairly fast.
The good thing is that I'm even now able to remember the initial exercises:-- asdfgf, ;lkjhj etc etc. I did these exercises a 100 times at least and they are standing me in good stead now.

That's it for now.

Bye!!