Those Golden Days

By Jhuma Bose

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It’s a story about a studious middle class Kolkata boy who was very happy being the goody-goody-topper of his local Bengali-medium school and spending his childhood days with his close group of school pals. He dreamt to become an Engineer but never thought that he would make it to IIT. But, as things happened, he got thro IIT entrance examination and also got a decent stre It’s a story about a studious middle class Kolkata boy who was very happy being the goody-goody-topper of his local

It’s a story about a studious middle class Kolkata boy who was very happy being the goody-goody-topper of his local Bengali-medium school and spending his childhood days with his close group of school pals. He dreamt to become an Engineer but never thought that he would make it to IIT. But, as things happened, he got thro IIT entrance examination and also got a decent stre It’s a story about a studious middle class Kolkata boy who was very happy being the goody-goody-topper of his local Bengali-medium school and spending his childhood days with his close group of school pals. He dreamt to become an Engineer but never thought that he would make it to IIT. But, as things happened, he got thro IIT entrance examination and also got a decent stream of Engineering in IIT, Kharagpur. He failed to convince his parents about joining a recognised Engineering college in Kolkata itself and stay at home. It was very difficult for him to go away from Kolkata, especially from his childhood friends and soon he found himself in quite a soup in the hostel life of IIT. But, as time passed, he could slowly adjust to the new place and the new life along with new friends and new freedom in life. He explored and enjoyed different aspects of student life in hostel and slowly started loving the hostel life. Of course his Kolkata friends were still as close as before and he still used to have fun with them during vacations. They even came to spend some time with him and his hostel friends during some important events.

Then came a twist in the story – our boy fell in love in Kolkata during the second year summer vacation and it went through quite a bit of drama before the one sided unexpressed love became mutual and explicit. The vacation was over and the boy and the girl were separated by more than 100km. They could now express their love mostly through letters only. Once in a while our boy used to come home in the weekends and meet his love.

At the same time, the boy was getting more and more involved in the hostel activities and he became General Secretary, Sports also. So he had to strike a balance amongst so many priorities – studies, hostel activities, writing letters to his girlfriend, making occasional trip to Kolkata for short and smart dating in the form of round trip in tram, sitting in zoological garden, walking in the streets and so on. In the hostel life also, there were eventful anecdotes of mess strikes, encephalitis scare, intra-hostel sports Olympiad, strategies of group studies, spring festival, inter-IIT sports meet, weekend movie shows, freshers’ interaction, Saturday special dinner, project work, job interviews – failures and success and so many other things of those Golden days…..

The five years zipped past and now there was time to say good-bye. Though he was happy in one sense as he would come closer to his girl friend, but on the other side, he had a heavy feeling of leaving behind those Golden Days of his life.

written by Tapash Bose,
illustrations & cover design by: Master Anjishnu Bose
with inspiration from Lord Ganeshji

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