Key to being the ARKEE

It was a restless night, the thought of the first day at college kept me awake, the new people I would run into, enrolling into a course I was clueless about and more importantly the fact that my parents would be leaving me and going back home around 600 km away. I felt a pang in my heart and silently sobbed, already feeling a bit homesick.  The next day, I paid a visit to the Padmanabhaswami temple, one of the most famous temples in kerala, before I headed for the college and offered my prayers (the convenient religious sentiments that typically arise surrounding exams, new ventures) As soon as we reached the college, we were all directed to the architecture department for our first meeting with our HOD. The department building was pretty impressive, it stood out from the rest of the buildings in the campus, someone had put in a lot of thought into it in order to set a unique character to to its design and layout. We seesmbled in the seminar hall on the basement level one along wi...

The admission date was scheduled for October but thanks to the never ending formalities and political disruptions that arise every year around the engineering admissions, the date got postponed to the end of November.  Come November 22 and I set foot for the first time in the CET - a massive campus sprawled across acres of land. We were asked to assemble in the CETAA hall of the college where the principal greeted us and congratulated us for being part of the best college in Kerala. Parents all around beamed with pride over their off springs who according to the principal were the creamy layer. My father glanced at me as if I had just won the Oscar. Well, not bad, I thought I could sure cash on this one, while the aura lasted i.e.  Post session we moved onto the admissions floor in the main building. People already had kicked off conversations like they knew each other for ages. Its like humans, esp Mallus have an inbuilt radar that help them track down another fellow being by...