L(unch) and T(ea) days - Part 2 - Conference Room

I think this blog has seen too much of blue of late. Let’s change the mood with some good ol’ nostalgia.
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We walk across huge metal monsters called heat exchangers and reach the North Block, which housed the Heavy Engineering Division. Quite unlikely division for atleast Amit and me. Both of us together weighed less than a quintal I think. Yeah, for that I would have had to remove my half-a-ton-wallet which I was famous for in college. I think people seriously thought I had ‘some’ problem when they saw the huge wallet protruding from my pant. For your information, I used to somehow squeeze the not so small wallet in the front pocket of my unwashed-for-two-months-jeans.

As we enter the building, Abhi is still convincing Amit that we did not have to send any excel sheet for that week. So, here is Mr. Datta, who was kind of like our assistant guide. But, I am still unable to get over the fact that for a whole year, I repeat, for a whole year, we did not finish a single task assigned by him.

What an achievement! What a bunch of shirkers! What a great manager!

‘Good Morning guys, did you work on the Tube sheet?’
‘?!?!?!’
‘It was the flange design I had asked to write a macro for. Did you guys do that?’
‘Oh! That one? We sent it last week itself. Abhi, you mailed it na?’
‘Yes sir. I think there is a problem with L&T firewall. It seems to be not receiving our emails’ (clap clap clap)
‘Hmmm…Ok. Send it to my personal id. I will take care of it.’ (I think he was secretly plotting to either kill us or send us to an uninhabited island. Poor guy.)

Now we move on to our main guide who is busy ,as usual. He was as absent minded as a scientist. He had just given us access from the main gate, but on seeing us he would give a surprised look and say

‘Oh! Today is Friday? When did you guys come? Can you please wait in the conference room? I will be there in a while.’

The conference room was a small room with a table and eight chairs. It also housed a zillion books on Heat and Mass transfer, German and British Standards and lots of other mechie techie stuff which only Amit had an idea about. For us, three mechanical engineers, they were books in Hebrew. Infact I think Abhi would know more about Hebrew than mechanical engineering. We can talk about that later.

This conference room was our ‘adda’ every Friday. This is where we discussed about everything from Mallika Sherawat to Manmohan Singh, from Nanotechnology to Porn, from Marathi literature to Tamil songs, from crushes to mathematical puzzles, from economics to ‘geometry’ ;-) Everything. This was our street. We played by our rules.

Amit: ‘Abhi, I had told you that we had to submit something for today.’
Me: ‘We had nothing to submit for today. This was supposed to be submitted a month back. I thought he would have forgotten about it. Elephant memory. Saala.’
Santo: (laughs) ‘Kal Sehwag ne kya catch drop kiya yaar’
Abhi: ‘Its ok we can do it this week. I got my call letter from Wipro. I am going to have a medical test sometime this week.’
Me: ‘Tujhke dekhke I feel you will pass all tests except the fertility test.’

Amit starts reading from one of the books from the shelf. It was about Thermal resistance or something, I don’t know what. More importantly, I don’t care. Me and Abhi are more interested in discussing about one of our batchmates love life.

‘Hey, you know what, R gave a huge bouquet to M. It was as big as her. She was floored it seems.’
‘Hmm..some people have all the money dude. I don’t think I can even buy a cutting-chai to my girl friend, if ever I get one. Sigh.’
‘Don’t worry about not having a girl friend dude. Just believe in one theory. Hot girls get ch**tiya boyfriends and handsome guys get ordinary girlfriends. We are no-way near handsome, so someone else should worry not us.’

Just as we are discussing one of the most important theories in life after Newton’s law of gravity, that Venky walks in. There is a hushed silence. Its like a mortuary out there.

(to be continued)