An Engineer's hippocratic oath

Our convocation was held on Dec 8th, appropriately there was some kind of celebration in office too complete with a gourmet dinner, of course I did not think twice before skipping it! It's also the feast of Immaculate Conception, which is celebrated on quite a lavish scale in one of the parishes in Mangalore city.

We paraded around in our graduation gowns, ready to throw our caps in the air and posed for all those photographs although I must admit to have not seeing the output! Then came the dinner and most importantly the feeling that this part of the journey of our lives was just about done.

I don't quite remember if this was the exact version of the Engineer's oath we took, 'I solemnly pledge myself to consecrate my life to the service of humanity...', however since the person standing next to me seemed to have made up his own version of the oath, I think I was grinning silly more than actually reciting the oath!

It was an honor to receive the graduation medal and certificate from Dr. H.S Ballal and Dr. Ramadas Pai(I hope I've got the names right!)

Who lived in 110?

Apparently, no one did, until we came along! I think it was a last minute allocation. The room was tinier than a jail cell, seriously! okay, I have not spent a day in a jail cell, but I am willing to bet it was!

Anyway, it did not matter, we had the best of neighbors and it was still the I Block and we could get to the common phone with ease! Despite all, I think I spent the least amount of time in the hostel in my second year!

The one particular memory I have is of our attempt at cooking aloo curry in our room, now why on earth would we attempt to cook anything that had aloo in it, while the mess had an eternal supply of that particular brand of vegetable, is beyond my comprehension. I think we spent more time arguing on whether the onions needed to be washed before cutting and cooking them, than the actual cooking time and you can guess which side I was on!

That's pretty much for the pictures of the rooms we lived in, in MIT unless someone is willing to enter the nicer New Ladies Hostel or the Old Ladies Hostel (that name cracks me up to this day, there's a comma in there somewhere... you can decide where to put it!) to click pics of our rooms there!

Bhagi Monthiche fest

Not wanting to sound redundant, I searched through my archives and found that I had posted twice before on September 8th. Well, the titles are pretty strange! but then they were not specific to this feast.

Of finger licking!, Eating right? I think I should start reading into my archives more often, it should provide an insight into what I was cooking, writing about back then ;'), probably not very different from now? Anyway, that in itself proves that this feast is a pretty big deal, more like was for me right now! although back home it still is.

You know the drill! kids offering up flowers in procession, the distribution of stalks of paddy and then sugarcane to the kids, preparing the novem jevan out of the rice distributed in the church and coconut milk (a specific combination of thick and thin), odd numbered dishes of vegetarian food and finally the most important of all, the entire family eating together. More than the event that this feast celebrates, it is the linkage with the harvest festival that makes it an event for the mangalorean Catholics, much like Onam, Pongal in other regions. No special significance is attached to the day here in the US and there is no special mass either.

This is where I digress from the topic in the title of the post, like I do ever so often! 

September 8th was like a July 16^th, the feast of Mt. Carmel, the day when we attended Mass and received brown scapulars or it was like those First Friday's of every month when the non-catholic students would get to play and we had to go to the church nearby for Mass. Teacher Joyce would macho up and be the pretend policewoman with her stud moves (hand signals to stop the traffic)! It was a sight to behold, a short petite teacher holding up traffic at a busy junction for minutes and queues and queues of girls in blue uniforms crossing the road! or the times when we had to mandatorily attend the 'Way of the Cross' on friday's of Lent in the College Chapel during our lunch hour. I do wonder if the Catholic institutions in the city follow all these customs to this day..., okay I agree September 8th can't be compared to any of this!

Wish you a Bhagi Monthiche fest, i.e. a Blessed feast of the Nativity of our Mother Mary.

On a footnote, Infosys started operations on this day in Mangalore 14 years ago and it became their second development center after Bangalore.

Room 206

My thoughts and memories are kind of juxtaposed right now and hence the chronological order of these posts will probably not make much sense, yet my goal is really not to document every single detail but rather those that are worth capturing and of course if my mind lets me. If I had to write about every single event from my four year stay in Manipal, I would probably have to quit my job which pays me to live here!


I don’t think I’ll ever forget that Sunday, a couple of bags were packed and we hauled ourselves into the cab that took us to Manipal. It was a day that will be etched in history forever, okay I agree, in my history only! On getting to the hostel blocks, it did seem like I was put up in a nicer looking block than the person I traveled with. The dinghy room, the fact that the best bed in the room was already occupied, the knowledge that my roommate was a keralite (call me racist if you may but this was my first time out on my own and familiarity does not breed contempt, although I did know that the third roommate was a school-mate) did not improve my mood that was slowly plummeting into an abyss faster than the elevator ride to the top of the tower of the Americas. It was only in the II year that I realized the true meaning of dinghy, we’ll probably get to that or not.

                                                                                      A view from outside, that corner room was ours.

The ‘how I came about being allocated Room 206’ is an interesting back story too. The nuance of room allocation was something I learned only after spending about two weeks getting to know the girls, including religion and region. And yes, I do believe those factors played a significant role in determining your room-mates. Our floor was pre-dominantly occupied by Konkani speaking girls, all speaking it with different accents, the GSB Konkanis from the area, the GSB Konkanis from Kerala and the Mangalorean Catholics. Most of the rooms had all GSB Konkanis, all Mangaloren Catholics, a couple of NRI girls with a girl from Mumbai and some mix and match like in our room.

Back to that first day in the hostel, I decided to leave the bed in the middle for the third person and plopped onto the hard bed in the corner facing the door opening, there really wasn’t anything to look around for, the custom desk and chair for each of us, the steel wardrobe and the whole row of bathrooms on the corner of the floor certainly did not look inviting. I unpacked the bare necessities and joined the others who were looking for a store to buy some more other bare necessities from! Trudging back from Kamath’s, which was right opposite the basketball court, I found more familiar faces and then ended up in the mess, it was called Ananya (it means single or unique). Rows and rows of wooden benches and tables lined the mess, aloo paratha and tea/coffee was on the menu and it was something I’d never eaten before and for some reason with the whole first day in hostel mood, I have always considered aloo paratha to be something I do not like! this is my probably my opening to mention that aloo was the staple diet in all our hostel mess's right upto the fourth ;') I promptly traveled back home the next day as we did not have a few hours! And that was just so classic of us from around the area, we could go back to our comfortable beds into familiar surroundings while the rest of the girls had to tolerate missing home, some bit of ragging on the weekends and could never complain.

My keralite room-mate was the sweetest girl I knew back in the first year.

MIT and Manipal was the place where the transformation happened, from a teenager to the twenty-something’s.

Chaddi Peter

A conversation with a friend on social networking turned to orkut and then to the one community I was a *owner* of on the site which is the only one reason for keeping my profile active and finally to Chaddi Peter, certainly not a delectable conversation turner but to cut to the chase, and boy do I love chases! Okay, okay, it reminded me of this post that has been languishing in my drafts folder for weeks if not months and it concerns St. Peter guarding the gates of heaven!

I think most Mangaloreans would know or have heard of Chaddi Peter. Sounds like an exaggeration? Would it be appropriate to say that most students in the city of Mangalore know of him? Or I could narrow the pool to students of a particular mighty all-girls institution and possibly students of a few co-ed and boys colleges too.

Chaddi Peter, a permanent fixture at the gate with his khaki shorts, whichever way he certainly has an envious job, not that I envy his job but I’m sure some would. His job profile does not match St. Peter’s at the gates of heaven to a T, his focus was more on making sure the girls didn’t slip out and even more on making sure that the boys did not sneak in although I must admit, I have not knocked on heaven's doors yet, so I can't speak for St. Peter's job!

I remember this one particular incident (I think it was the Hindi hour, certainly it had to be since it was the most yawn inducing class we had) when we were contemplating slipping out through the side entrance of the Bendur Church but then his stare made us stop and turn right back. So, technically it was not an incident and well, girls will be girls and had discovered other ways of breaking out of the campus (hush, hush). Of course I’ve heard of sob stories narrated, the devious little plans hatched to sneak out and even more interesting were the stories of those trying to sneak in.

It has been a long time since I visited my Alma Mater, the place where I literally broke through the shackles, although I must admit the process started sometime in the 7th Std! and came into my own. It sure was one of the best places to study in Mangalore and I believe it continues to be. The gate policy could well have changed over the years but the familiar figure of Chaddi Peter was proverbial when I drove by the college a few months ago.

To Thomas (a.k.a Chaddi Peter) and to St. Agnes (Deus Fortitudo Mea), the second Catholic Women's College in India, you may not be heaven but you certainly hold some of my fondest memories. How did this post turn into a love fest for St. Agnes, ah well… that's the thrill of the chase!

A decade gone by!

Mighty Mighty MIT

Manipal Institute of Technology, #37, thanks to Binaisha for the link.

Some other cool related links

This nostalgic video on Harsha’s…
The other MIT, a bit old, but excellent nevertheless….
On Arjun’s, we were in MIT then!

There's quite a bit on MIT, Manipal online, Enjoy relieving those good old days!

Proud to be an MITian

MIT Alumni Meet

Yep, this isn't really a musing, but I am so amazed by this place, have just got to get down to writing.


Feb. 12th was the day of the Alumni meet, apparently a number of people had registered, however only about a handful of people turned up. I am glad I was able to make it. Jeane was there too, so there was no dearth of company for me.

Met Mrs. Gowda, she comes across as a dynamic, charistmatic individual. After a short snack, we got right down to the formal function. T-shirts commemorating the Golden Jubilee of MIT, were sold at the venue (KMC Medical College, Lighthouse Hill, Mangalore). A new term has been coined as ManipalTech and was publicised so as to distingush our MIT from the many others that are cropping up.