My first story in SR - Series

Hi buddies...

To satrt with I am posting the series of stories which I had started to write about my college Friend SR... I am posting the first story of tat series today.. Hope u ppl like it n do post in ur comments. Negative comments are more welcome :)

What best you can do in your 4 years of engineering

-        Here is SR’s Ways……

(Follow them at your own risk)

PROLOGUE

Hello Friends!!! Senthil Raja, in short known as SR-the hero of my story is unfortunatelyJone of my best and closest friend. We did our Engineering together & the 4 years of my college life was made memorable by this fellow. Senthil Raja, is really a rare specimen who definitely deserve a place in the British Museum!!!! He is a guy, who always fails in his class tests in College but never had any backlogs in all the 76 papers, which we had to clear to get our prestigious B.E degree!!! He cleared all his university papers in a single attempt, which always left me & my  college mates wonder, how he had cleared his papers, when he used to score 0 or sub zero marks in his college unit & cycle tests!!!!

Now it is almost 2 years since we had left our college campus. In these two years I had always tried to unravel the mystery of How SR got his B.E degree but it all ended in vain. So, one fine day I asked SR himself to tell me how he had cleared all his papers in a single shot. Then SR started narrating his tales of how he had managed to get through each and every paper and also how he had spent his four years of Engineering which indeed inspired me to write them as stories. All his sagas are really very hilarious and I really enjoyed listening to SR. Hope you guys also take pleasure in reading these stories which would certainly take you back to your college days and will undeniably give u a reminiscence of your semester days. Enjoy Reading!!!!!

-M.Kaarthika

STORY-1

Electronics & Instrumentation Engineering was our branch in B.E. But we also had some CSE papers in our curriculum like Fundamentals of computing, Data Structures & Object Oriented Programming. In fact, we used to call E&I course as a Kichadi, as in each semester we had atleast 1 or 2 papers related to other branches like Electrical Machines of Electrical Dept., Engineering Mechanics, Thermal Engineering of Mechanical Dept., Solid & Fluid Mechanics of Civil Dept., & so on. In our 3^rd semester, we had this paper called Data Structures & C Programming, which was a core paper of Computer science Engineering. We already had an introduction of C programming in our 2^nd semester. So we were a little acquainted with Data Structures paper.

Now a few things about SR, which you must surely know, before we get into the story. SR is a guy who hardly makes his presence in the class. Almost for 70% of the classes in a semester he is physically absent and for the rest 30% when he is in the class he is mentally absent!!! And unfortunately if he is awake while the class is going on then the lecturer is in trouble. He asks the lecturer all unnecessary or necessary, intelligent or stupid, related or nonrelated questions and torments them. He is a guy who does not know the ABC of engineering but had done projects out of his own efforts in college which were even recommended for patent. He is the most laziest guy I have ever known, who thinks that taking bath twice in a week is more than sufficient but he is the guy who had also won the Best Cadet award of our college for his sincerity and discipline in NCC. He never ever completed studying even half of the entire engineering syllabus but he had won the Award for the maximum number of technical papers presented in the National level in our college. He is a guy who always troubles lecturers and our HOD, but always makes them smile by his actions and talks.  The biggest strength of SR is his tongue and it is his biggest enemy too. He can make anything become possible with his talk and he can win over the other person easily. But SR is a guy who talks nothing but false. So everyone, except me, never trusted his words.

Now back to our 3^rd semester story.

The exam time was looming and the lecturers have completed their syllabus and everyone of us  were busy in the library hunting for the books, so that atleast then we begin our studies and somehow clear the 9 hard-hitting papers of our 3^rd semester. Before our main exams we had Model Practical examinations in which we had our C Programming Lab. On that day almost everyone had finished their programs and were returning their answer papers when I saw SR giving a blank look at the paper and the screen. Again he looked at the paper, and the screen. Then he saw everyone had finished, still he had not started working the program in the system. I just went near him to see what he had filled in his paper. He had sincerely written the only 4 lines which every one of us writes in all the programs. The standard lines

#include<stdio.h>

#include<conio.h>

Void main ()

{

At that time, me & SR were not good friends. We were just classmates. After seeing his paper, I could not control my laughter. He saw me and said, “Hey topper, please help”. I saw the question and said, “hey it’s a simple program, first write a scanf statement and get inputs for….”, when he stopped and asked, “What is scanf statement?” I felt my head reeling, how could one write a program without even knowing what a scanf statement is? That was the basic of C programming. I just said to SR, “Oh my God, you need to study a lot, I can’t help you at this stage, God save you, I am sorry” and I just walked away.

The semester exams were finished and our results were out. Usually, after seeing my semester results in the net, I always used to see SR’s result, out of curiosity. I entered his registration number and was waiting keenly to see his result. This time I was damn sure, that he would have definitely got a backlog in Data Structures (DS in short). But when I saw his result, I certainly had a minor heart attack. SR had made a clean sweep, passing all the papers and had cleared DS with a minimum pass mark of 39 out of 80. SR had cleared DS!!!! SR had cleared DS without even knowing what is scanf. Oh God!!! What is happening??? Is this called Miracle???

So here is the sensational story of how SR cleared his DS paper.

 “Data structures, DS, Oh God I must definitely clear this paper. I don’t know even a simple C program but I somehow need to clear this paper. Anyway I have 3 days of study holiday for DS exam. So in these days I can study something and can get a minimum of 39. 39 is all I need. Let me go to Damodharan and ask him to teach me, he said he is confident of clearing the paper this time. If he teaches me atleast 2 or 3 important questions, I will be able to clear this DS.” Having these things rolling in his mind, SR went to Damodharan’s room in hostel.

Damodharan is another fellow in our class. He is no genius in C programming or a master in DS, Damodharan himself had backlogs in his first 2 semesters. Our genius SR, had decided to take help from Damodharan for clearing DS this time. What an irony?

SR knocked Damodharan’s room, Damodharan was happily resting. He had kept A.K.Sawney’s Measurements and Instrumentation book as pillow and was lying down. SR said to him, “Dai Damodhara, teach me DS da, by hook or by crook I have to clear.”

Damodharan said, “Dai machi, don’t worry da, DS is simple, we will clear it for sure. Why are you taking tension?”

“Dai see this book da, so big, I don’t know what to study and what not to. Teach me da.”

“I ll definitely teach you da, but what is the hurry? Did you hear the news? Anna university exams are being postponed due to rain. See today Mech department guys’ exam got postponed, surely our exam will also be postponed da, don’t worry machi”.

Usually in our odd semesters during September time, when there used to be rain, sometimes our exams will be postponed. Our college was not an autonomous college; it was affiliated to Anna University. So the exams were held in common for all the engineering colleges affiliated to Anna University in Tamil Nadu. So even in any part of Tamil Nadu when it rained, the exams were postponed.

SR asked” Dai, sure a? What if the exam is not postponed?”

Damodharan said,” Don’t worry da. I will teach u. Two more days are left. Tomorrow you come; I will teach you some important questions.”

Loyally believing Damodharan’s words, our hero SR went back to his room and had a good sleep.

Next day SR went to Damodharan’s room.

Damodharan said very cheerfully, “Dai u saw the announcement a? Today’s exam is also postponed, so day after tomorrow positively our exam will also be rescheduled. Don’t worry.”

SR said, “Yes da, now I am also sure about that, anyway teach me 2 questions at least.”

Damodaran,”Dai why study now da, anyway our exam will be postponed, if I teach you now, you will forget it before the exam. Then again you will snag me to teach me once again. I will teach you before the exam da, that is enough.”

“Ok  da. So just tell me how many questions we need to study in this, so that I will clear the paper. The book seems to be very big.”

“Dai just 3 questions da, 100% sure those questions will come, u will surely get 39 and pass”.

“Ok da. That is enough. What are the questions da?”

“Dai, I will tell you later da. There is one algorithm, which you have to study. It is like the Copter game da.”

“Copter a? What is that?”

“Dai it is a computer game. You have not played a? Dai get that laptop. Let us play. If you play copter game, you can understand DS da. The game is similar to the algorithm da.”

“Oh. So let us try”

By the way, just a small gist about Copter, to people who don’t know about that game.

Copter is an Helicopter game in which, the player has to move the helicopter from the start to the end without making it to crash either at the top or at the bottom or at any of the obstacles on the way. If the player had moved the helicopter without crashing and reached the end, then he has won the game. Of course, this has nothing to do with DS. I really wonder why Damodharan had related Copter game to DS. Anyway now just one full day was left before the DS exam and our hero SR had not studied even a single line of DS and had spent the whole day playing Copter game.

The next day in the hostel, everyone was waiting for the announcement of the postponement of the exam. And yes the announcement came at around 5’ 0 clock in the evening……………………..that the next day’s exam will not be postponed in any case and the DS exam will be held for sure!!!!!!!

The announcement struck all the students like a thunder. Many were cursing and scolding Anna University Examination board, many were searching for their books which they had kept somewhere as they were so sure about the deferment of the exam, while our hero hurried to Damodharan’s room.

Damodharan was still lying with his head over A.K.Sawney’s book.

SR,”Dai tomorrow exam da, teach me DS da”

Damodharan, “Dai machi, cool da, nothing can be done now. The flood has crossed our heads. Now it is almost 6 in the evening da, if we start now, we can’t cram anything da”

“Dai… what are you…..”

“Dai don’t worry, in next semester there is a paper called Object Oriented Programming with C++ and Java (in short OOPS). If we study this DS paper also with OOPS in the next semester, we will categorically clear da. So we will see this in the next semester da.”

SR could not even waste time to scold Damodharan or to worry about his plight. SR’s only aim was to clear the exam somehow or the other. So he hurriedly rushed to a CSE guy’s room and asked him for important questions. The CSE guy had already studied this paper in their last semester and so he had given SR some inputs. SR had noted down all the important questions in the paper and keeping the important questions paper in one side and the book in one side, SR started reading sincerely. So the whole night, SR studied. Starting from Djikstra’s Algorithm, SR studied all the important questions noted down by the CSE guy. At about 4 in the morning, SR had completed the list of important questions. So now he was confident of writing atleast something on each of those questions. So now he was also confident of securing 39, the minimum pass mark. So just to have a look of the whole syllabus, SR just scrolled over the syllabus book. He was shocked to see that in DS, he had almost completely finished reading the entire syllabus. Actually the CSE guy instead of giving him the important questions, has actually given SR, the whole syllabus. Disappointed that he had pointlessly wasted his time in reading the entire syllabus, he got ready for the examination. Even SR had fears that he would even top the DS papers which may even unnecessarily give an heart attack to the HOD. Because just ten days before, in the Model exams in the same DS paper he had scored 2 out of 100!!!

SR reached the examination hall and there he was happy to see the supervisor of the hall. SR had one favourite lecturer in CSE department. Even SR was her favourite. She was Susi Ma’am. The invigilator of the hall was Susi Ma’am’s friend. SR had seen the invigilator talking with Susi Ma’am and once SR entered the hall, the invigilator asked him, “Oh you are Senthil Raja?”

SR, “Yes Ma’am. And you are Susi Ma’am’s friend, then you must also be a good Ma’am”.

The invigilator was flattened and she was laughing. SR shook hands with her and said, “Ma’am I don’t know anything, you have to help me in the exam. Please clarify my doubts if I have any”. The invigilator just gave SR a stern look and went away.

SR got the question paper and he was amazed to see the questions. He knew the answers for all the questions. Even in questions which had choice, he knew answers for both the choices. Though he had no 100 percent thorough answers he was sure that he could write something on each of the questions and will remarkably clear the paper. For 2 markers, he had relied on the students sitting before him to show him the answers. SR had actually bi-hearted few programs, when he was writing one such program in his paper, the invigilator came and asked SR something. SR said,”Oh Ma’am, why did you disturb now? Now I have forgotten the whole program. If I fail in this paper, it’s because of you only ma’am.” He made such an innocent face at the invigilator that she pitied on him and at last she herself prompted some answers to SR.

Successfully SR had finished his exam. And when results were out, of course our hero had cleared the exam!!!! Everyone including Damodharan was surprised that how could SR clear. One person who could not even believe his own eyes on seeing the result was, “Mr. Balakaarthick”. He was the lecturer who handled this DS paper for us. He had called SR and said, “Dai I feel like quitting this job and going da. How could you clear the paper, when even some of the toppers had failed in the paper, this time????”

SR just gave a smile has an answer. Damodharan indeed had a backlog in DS and he was making his minds to clear the subject along with OOPS in the next semester. Call it mere luck or hard work or whatever you want but SR had cleared the Data Structures paper, without even knowing what is scanf!!!! Even now I ask him, “SR, do you remember What is scanf?”

SR would say,”French or German?”

I roll down into my usual fit of laughter, which I always have whenever I am with SR.

SR-Man of Brains but uses them only when there is a desperate need of it!!!!!