In the second year, I got involved in the General Secretary election. Sankar Haldar became GS and we became very close friends forever. My weekend friends were not my old childhood friends anymore, we gathered at Amit’s house with new friends Babloo, Phalgoni, Mantu, etc. Some weekends Subal and I walked near the KFR railyard and smoked cigarettes. Rajat Mullick was my other friend who used to live very close to our house. Rajat and I spent many days together and used to go to a tea stall nearby. He was able to drink very hot tea in a second, almost like a frog swallowing a fly.

As usual, I was returning from home to the hostel on a Sunday night. As the bus approached near college, bus was stopped by a rouge of people trying to identify our college students, and one student was dragged out of the bus, he was beaten by a rough crowd, bus spade away from the troubled spot. I was scared and sat tight in the corner. Students got off the bus near the college gate and I was intrigued to hear a surreal incident of a fight between nearby neighbors who were taking revenge for a week-old trouble with a few annoying students. I felt very sorry that some innocent students were beaten for no cause of their own, and I shivered thinking it could be me.

Our college had around 20 big hostels to accommodate 2000 students. I moved to a different hostel each year with other EE batchmates. I met Manoj De, Samir Biswas, Gurudas Chakrabotry, Dilip Biswas and many others. We started to feel like free birds. Most of us knew somehow we had to be engineers. So we maintain a balance between our fun and education. Mostly our rooms were large enough for 4 students. But in the final year, we got a single bedroom. The campus area was large, more than 130 acres. We needed five years to get a degree. During our time failure of three subjects out of 10 subjects at the end of each school year was considered a total failure of the year. Consequently, repeat next year. The worst nightmare was if you failed two years consecutively, you would be out of the BE college forever. We used to call them CNR (can not repeat).  Incidentally, I lost my 2nd year, it was a devastating annus horribilis for me. I started to be serious from next year but nightmares went on my whole life, I still dreamt about failing an examination.

We used to participate in NCC (National Cadet Corp) similar to boys’ scout. But it had more military implications. After graduation, a good cadet in NCC used to get a job directly in the military, airforce, or navy as a fully commissioned officer. Every year a group of cadets was sent on a field trip to military facilities. I went twice, I had a good test of how a real military life would be. The field trip was mostly fun but out of the college environment.

My second field trip was at the Panagar military base. It was wintertime, we arrived very early in the morning by train. We got off the train and were lined up before marching to the base. It was a big junction and many unused train compartments were sitting idle around the shunt line of the train yard. We were allowed to use the bathrooms of the idle train compartments before departure. I was locked inside one windowless bathroom, luckily, my friend Rabin Ghosh found me locked while I was screaming in fear.

There was one other scary incident while we were returning to the dark base in the middle of the night after returning from a local trip to Santiniketon. We didn’t know the password so we tried to jump over the fence while the military was almost shooting at us. Finally, our leader escorted us to our camp. Otherwise, it was full of fun for a week.

As I approached the middle of adolescence period attention to other genders grew stronger but a fear of failing in education kept me away from girls. Nevertheless. I was no different than any other boy, I had enough of foolishness during childhood and temptation as an adolescent boy, but I have done far more good things in my life, than that of foolishness which had neutralized many times over. I used to smoke cigarettes a lot. I used to go out with my friends so I met a few girls as our common friends. On one such occasion, we went to Bandal Church and had a good time at the picnic beside the Ganges River.

Some of my friends were so smart that I had taken notes from them to prepare for the yearly examination. Swapan Chaudhuri was one of them. Gautam Dasgupta was other. a talented in music as well as a brilliant student. I was an admirer of his musical talent, we became very friendly during our college days. He used to invite me to his house at Chaurastha near Behala. He played the violin. Her mother loved me like her son. We used to have very nice afternoon sweets and snacks at his house. He used to sing and play the violin too. Our detachment started after college life.

I also spent time during some weekends with Dipankar Lahiri of Pansree Colony, Behala. Same with Mahitosh Mukherjee who used to live at Takurpukur near Behala. Both of them came to our house a few times. I rode my bicycle to meet Dipankar at his house a few times. I can’t forget those days. Those days of fun will never return.