Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Lotus shaped fans

One of the first things I noticed when I entered into my first year in BJB College, Bhubaneswar was the fans on the roof. They were invariably lotus shaped, most probaly untouched by electricity.

The students were creative enough to bend the rules and bend those hapless fans into lotus shaped junks. Not sure what motivated them to channel their creativity to metallic weaving, for the fans were great assets in hot and humid weathers.

If this happened in BJB College, then one of the premium education institute in Odisha during our time, then forget about the rest. Thankfully the weather of Bhubaneswar was salubrious those days. The absence of windows in the classrooms was a blessing in disguise as it provided cross ventilation for the cool breeze then to barge in providing much needed relief.

The wafts of the nature's conditioned air of those days can beat the best of the best Air Conditioning any day, any time. But it was not always the case. I still remember wiping off beads of perspiration from my forehead while writing exams on hot and humid days. In spite of my best effort a drop or two of those always fell on the answer paper no matter what.

When it happened I squeezed my mouth into a pig's snort desperately blowing away my exhaled air to dry off the paper and move on. If drops from the forehead and damage to the answer sheets were minimal, cut those lines and fetch an extra paper of answer sheet to rewrite the lines.

Not sure, if things are better or worst these days. I studied only for couple of years in that college before moving on to REC (now NIT) Rourkeka, where we had electricity, fans had access to them and students were no fans of BJP's election symbol (Lotus). Yet those were the days. ZINDAGI NAA MILEGA DOBAARA (Life will never come again).

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