And then the ice breaks

The journey to Planet-E and back: A walk down memory lane

A series of blogs about my alma mater - Amrita School of Business(ASB) located in the beautiful village of Ettimadai which we Amritians fondly call ‘Planet-E’ and the happenings in the eventful two years of my life there. Dedicated to all Amritians.

And then the ice breaks

The classes had begun and we were in the middle of a gamut of assignments, when our seniors returned to the college after a two month long summer internship. The very first time we all got together was during a colloquia session in SKH. Most of them came across as very reserved and serious. “All of them have loads of attitude”, “Not even one person is smiling at us”, we were very quick to judge our seniors and make comments about them. However that was how we felt about them before the Fresher’s Day – a day much awaited by the seniors (and much dreaded by the juniors).

Like most of the important events in ASB, this one too was held in SKH. The serious faces and reservations were long gone; the seniors we saw on that day in SKH were a total contrast to what we had imagined them to be. They were all smiles and friendly to us, the reason for which became evident only after the event started. Yes, it was an official ragging session, but in a fun way. We were made to do all sort of crazy things – from doing a ramp walk in a saree to mimicking animal sounds to proposing seniors, we did it all.

On that day we also came to know that our batch had a lot of good dancers and singers too. I can never forget Dimple dancing to “Munni badnam hui” (it almost became synonymous with Dimple after that dance) or Vaisakh and Bipin singing. We also realized that day that, ultimately it did not matter whether you knew how to dance or sing, what mattered was the confidence to do whatever the situation demanded, without any fear or inhibition.

The day was meant to be an ice-breaker between the seniors and juniors, and an ice-breaker it was. Very soon we all became good friends. In the days following the fresher’s day party, we had the selection rounds for the various forums in our college. It felt like an extended ragging session by the seniors, but we enjoyed it, and so did our seniors.

That was the beginning of a very colorful period of our college life. I felt that the fresher’s party was crazy, little did I know that more craziness and madness was to follow, as the biggest sports and  cultural extravaganza of ASB – ‘Utsav’ was about to begin soon. I belonged to the category of students who believed that college life was all about studies and immersing oneself in textbooks. My friends from my engineering college days would vouch for it. Well, all of that was about to change, very soon.