Our Minor Project-aaruvi 2

It took so much research and time to get things done in flex. A simple “Hello world” with Java connection took entire 2-3 days. By seeing this, our parallel team dropped the idea of using flex. We didn’t want to discourage mam and sincerely tried for small things in flex. Still when we were unable to display a simple value dynamically in a table, we gave up. We failed to connect to database too. Once I and Chashmish was in her lab(without Chakli:)) and got a value printed in a table and rejoiced like anything…her friends started teasing, “What? Why so happy? Project over or what?”…hehehe…but still there were lot of challenges. Once we approached our mam and said we are not able to do things in flex and she came with us and tried her hands on database connection. And after a lot of efforts, database finally got connected on one of the pc but after some days when we tried on laptop, it couldn’t. Mam asked us to drop the idea of using database itself! Since mam insisted on working on flex only(even though we had very less desire to do so…) we continued with flex. We made the homepage screen. I remember we spent 2 days in showing simple popup and tabs. We completed the documentation and got it reviewed. We were preparing for the first review of project which was about to come.

We actually got mad as the date of review was coming nearby. We were burning midnight oil while ‘flexing’. We thought we hadn’t done anything which we can actually put in ppt and spent our time in researching and reading only. We prepared a ppt but scared when it came to ‘flex’ slide-“What if they ask this or that?”. We read a lot of theory about flex, but understood little. We practiced our ppt twice. I remember we were at Chashmish’s place that night and she ordered us to sleep earlier(as usual) but still giving final touches took around 2 o’clock that night.

Finally the day came. We met our guide and she suggested changes in ppt, so we did changes and rehearsed again. Mam sort of inspired us that we actually have done lots of work. When we came to lab, we were looking at who were taking reviews. As 3 of ours luck combined, Vibha mam and Priyanka mam came to take review. Vibha mam was always guide of Chakli in previous sem and Chashmish always had Priyanka mam in her every review. The presentation went well. The reviewers seemed to be happy by looking at cool GUI screen. They asked some fundas of OS which Chakli tried to satisfy. All in all, it was good and we had an ice cream after that.We were even more delighted when we heard that our parallel team(who dropped the idea of using flex) of 2 ranker is not getting good feedback :)

After the first review, the usual college got started and we started ignoring the project. But an incident happened. Chashmish got caught doing some mischief in our guide’s class and mam got very angry on her. Chashmish met her after the class to say sorry but still she was blowing and told her that we are not working sincerely anymore and not meeting her for project and that she is never gonna help in our project. Chashmish told us all these and we all got scared because this project got so much weight in final marks and she might give us bad score. We decided to start work on project all over again. Again we were facing so many difficulties working with flex, since we determined to show some remarkable progress in work, we were totally into the project for a week or two. We fixed one day to meet mam. Chashmish was so scared that she said, she’ll be behind both of us. But fortunately, mam had forgotten that event and talked with us as if nothing has happened! We got relieved. 

After this incident, we decided to work regularly. Then a big problem stuck us-the copy paste problem. You won’t believe but we just couldn’t simply do copy and paste in flex. Let me explain. We had lots of tables and buttons in one tab in screen which we wanted to replicate in 10 tabs. So we simply did copy from one tab and paste in another tab. We did this for 1 tab but then all of a sudden, flex will not allow to do copy-paste, it will not show any errors, it will just not paste!!! This problem almost took 15 days to solve. I used to take my laptop in my project lab and worked on this problem. When nothing seemed to work, we started naming our projects-Nirali, lali :D And one of the ‘Nirali’ worked slightly :) Actually I removed everything from screen and built the whole thing again. Then I could copy the thing upto 4 tabs. I thought now it will work fine so msg Chashmish and she jumped and came to my lab to see. But then we saw that its not working from 5^th tab. We did lot of googling on this, but in vein. We even became the member of orkut community and posted the problem but nobody seemed to understand the problem only, forget about the solutions. We got tired and showed it to mam, mam herself could not believe, but she said it’s ok if we do it for 4 tabs only. We got so many small problems like this which used to eat up our most of the time. I always cursed the ‘Help’ of flex because the examples given never used to work, and when once or twice it worked, both Chakli and Chashmish started shouting at me for shouting at ‘Help’:) Anything in flex, I just used to go thoroughly to solve so both of them named me ‘Flex queen’.

Now the time of 2^nd review came. This time we were pretty confident. For reviews, everybody’s lab timings were different so we used to choose whomsoever is the first and this time it was my lab. We need not do much effort this time. Chashmish just updated our previous ppt. We were going to show the running application itself. In the lab, when sir asked for review, my other lab mates had some misunderstanding. They said, “Sir, you told me that review is next week”. Sir got angry, “I told u last week that review is next week, which means this week, right? Now whomsoever is giving ready, will review it or else we’ll put zero.” We were ready. Sir took the review and he seemed to be quite impressed with the GUI and animations and all. He didn’t ask much, he knew we are hard working girls. After the lab, we got to know that we got highest or 2^nd highest marks in whole lab and I and Chashmish just jumped with happiness and told everybody. Now I feel, we seriously deserved that.

I mentioned about joining orkut community, right? That itself is another funny incident. There was one guy who seemed to be some super stud in flex because we saw him in every flex community. So Chashmish sent him friend request and after that I started linking both of them together and teasing her like anything. He gave his gtalk id to her and both of them used to discuss problems of flex. Chashmish has written whole topic about this on diary. Once or twice I chatted by Chashmish’s login with him(remember Mujse Dosti Karoge movie?) and he wasn’t able to answer my questions, so I declared(as per my habit) that he’s good for nothing. But still Chashmish continued talking, she used to wish him ‘Good morning sir’ :):):) and he would reply ‘Don’t call me sir…’. When she narrated her chats, I used to laugh and tease her like anything. After sometime, she got him blocked in gtalk because he used to ping her everyday…hehehe…we even made a song for him to make fun of him. I’ll tease her for this entire life. After a long time, we heard by some friend that he actually wants Chashmish’s photograph…my God! Such a chipku (sticky like gum)

Time went on like this and we added lots of enhancements in the project. We added animations and blinking text and cool hovering tooltips. We realized that we couldn’t done this pretty screen in any other tool. We always divided our work. Amity will do googling and documentation, Chakli will work on complex code logic and I will do flex hit and trials and animation part. My God! How can I forget that Chakli’s room in which we used to have 2 laptops on bed and one desktop on which Amity will sit and play songs! It was really so much fun. I remember we completed report at the last moment and Chakli and Chashmish ran to take its printout and spiral binding. It was already 9 and Chakli thought they will not find any shop for photocopy and spiral binding open and we had our final presentation next day! Though they found one, Chakli was still in all her angery+frustrated+scared pose(Chashmish politely explained gave me live demo after coming home :)) Actually we were not able to complete some of the system calls, and some were half completed and so on. So till end we were trying our hands on to complete them but finally when they could not, we had to edit the report again and again. We were delighted to see our colour printed cute-looking screens. After that we finalized the ppt and demo which we were going to show. Actually there was some bug in the project and it used to work for specified sequence of inputs only :) We had no time to look into it so we decided the sequence, “First we’ll click here, then we’ll put this in textbox, then we’ll click here…” something like that. Then we laughed on ourselves only that we are making fool and what if the faculty provides some random inputs? We had no answers.

Exams and vivas were coming near and this project ate up lots of time. We wanted to finish the presentation and all other submissions as soon as possible and do some study. We didn't want to go to college again before exams. Again it was my lab. There were 2 reviewers for my lab and they had got list of projects to take review. Now my roll number is last one. So we had to wait till entire 2 hours. Till then, we set up the project and rehearsed the sequence again and then just waited. One sir was the same who gave us highest in 2^nd review(we wished he came again :)) and there was another mam for taking review. Recess time has already begun but still sir was taking reviews, but mam went to her cabin. When we asked her to take our review, she denied by telling that now its recess and she has lots of work. She asked us to get review in either Chakli or Chashmish’s lab. We were shocked to hear this! I mean, we have been waiting and practicing since so many days and now she is telling to come to college just for 2 hours next day? We requested that sir but our project was in mam’s list. When some friends got to know, they too were angry about this, “What is this? If she can’t complete her reviews in time, its not our mistake!” We finally asked mam once again but she said ‘no’ again and we went out of the lab. Actually to me, it was ok, yeah I didn’t want to come to college and waste time again but we had no choice. It was better to have our review with better faculty next day. But Chashmish and Chakli was angry like anything. We all sat in the grass near b block. Chashmish said, “I just want to go out of this place as soon as possible. Pls, let’s go home.” I said, “Wait wait dear, I need to submit some assignments, and will meet our guide too, ask her what needs to be changed in the report.” Till I came from b-block, Chashmish has finished her crying in front of Chakli(she knows if she cries in front of me, I will be angry). We came home, had some food and both of them went to sleep while I was reading. Then we had tea and sat on swing in garden and discussed about other’s projects and all. We finally started study. When Chashmish finally got out of her frustration, she changed the report as per mam’s suggestions. We bought a ‘thank you’ card and a dairy milk for our guide for helping us and wrote something in pure Gujarati in the card.

Our presentation went well next day. Sir tried to understand the system and asked reasonable questions(not like other faculties who nods while we explain and ask hopeless questions). Our minor project finally completed. We went to meet our guide to thank her and gave her the card. There was another mam who came to see the system we made and told us that it would really help them to make students understand the operating system concepts. We chatted for sometimes and bid goodbye. All in all our project was great learning+fun experience. At the end, we got A grade:) We were so happy when we got the results because there were very few students who got A. When Chashmish wrote this topic in diary, she has thanked 3 ppl-Lali, that parallel ranker team and that orkut friend of hers. Because anytime we went to Lali’s place, we used to tell her everything(all big IT concepts). Even though she was hardly able to understand, she used listen very patiently. Same with that orkut friend. One of the member in that ranker team helped us in getting flex installed and told us some concepts too. So thanks to them too. Cheers to our rocking aaruvi team :)

Our Minor Project-aaruvi 1

I described about major project but how can I forget minor project which too has lots of funny memories. Let me put some background. We all have to do a minor project in 7^th sem in college. The worst thing was during 6^th sem, our placements were going on and you won’t believe that we were called to attend a class for this minor project when the first company has already arrived! As Chakli says, there’s never a coordination between placement and education departments.

Anyways, we needed to decide our teams ourselves which will include at max 3 ppl. This lead to confusions as we have to choose group mate from lots of friends. Fortunately for me it wasn’t a problem coz it was fixed that I and Chakli will do project together. But Chashmish(who was in CE class) was confused as she wanted somebody who will sincerely do project from her class(so her pointer was set to null :)) We asked lots of faculties whether we can combine CE and IT ppl in a team and when we got acceptance for the same, we were so delighted. We always studied together and now became so compatible that we didn’t want anybody to interfere in 3 of us. I remember a funny incident. When Chashmish asked one of our faculty about our team and she said yes, she came in our class(in her happy-go-lucky jumping jack manner), told us the news. Before I and Chakli could open our mouth, she said something loudly and stroke the table hard 3 times and went, making us in utter bewilderment as what she actually said!!! (She said, "Now my dream of making a project will get fulfilled"). Chashmish noticed Chakli’s confused face while leaving and got tensed thinking Chakli doesn’t want her in project and telling this story to all her classmates. Can you believe she got sympathy for the same with extra knowledge on philosophy of relationship from them? And when we all met after sometimes, we got clarified the matter and laughed a lot. Chashmish always wanted to reassure herself, so every now and then she used to ask one or the other faculty that our team is possible or not…hehehe

So team finally got finalized. Now which topic to choose? We had a list of projects in 6^th sem from which to choose. When we get a list, we usually filter it by faculty guide(obviously we don’t want a nagging faculty) which will actually shorten the list to very limited projects. Then we filtered it by number of ppl in a team and at last looked at project definition(which should be looked first). We narrowed down 3-4 projects and finally selected one, approached the guide madam. She has been my guide since 2 sem for seminars. We went to her and decided the project- Process Management Simulator i.e. PMS. It’s a kind of training simulator which will show some of the operating system concepts by animation. There was another group for similar kind of topic from my class with mam with 2 ranker students. She asked all of us to prepare this project in something called ‘F…L…E…X…’ We were like, “What???”. God knows, from where she heard about this, she just told us to make the project in this tool. When we all were researching on this, we were unsure whether its  “FLAX or FLEX” or something other than this. She said, flex 8 is the latest version and we could find only flex 3 max J We went to library to search a book on this technology or tool or language or whatsoever it is and we find nothing in the whole source of 30000 books! Not even from ieee forums. We were stunned! I asked others “Are u sure mam said flex only? Or was it something else?” We went to our lab and after googling we found there is something known as Flex, which is a kind of tool for making great GUI applications. And aaruvini(short form of our names) started research on it:)

Even after making a final sign off for project, Chashmish was not getting what actually we were going to make(‘maja nathi avti’). I remember when we were on our way from NIM to B-block, I and Chakli tried to satisfy her. For minor project, we were called 15 days earlier in college. We started making diagrams and documents and started ‘flexing’ tooJ In order to simulate concepts, we first need to understand the concepts. Hence we started reading our Operating System text book from start and narrowed down our project scope. Miss Chakli-the teacher used to make us understand difficult concepts. Since we had to come to college 15 days before the project, whole day we would spend sincerely doing project work because we were scared with the concepts and ‘FLEX’. Since Chashmish was in different class, her labs were different(B-104). I and Chakli too were in different batches so I was in B 201 and Chakli was in B 206. Chakli being Miss Rule will never leave her lab and go anywhere else(“As a rule, we should work in our lab only” J) So we had to come to her lab to read. Chashmish had to tell every faculty who came to supervise the lab her story of why she’s going to the other lab and when she’ll come back for attendance. Her friends used to tease her like anything. “Yes yes, we understand, only you are doing project in this whole world!”, “Wait a min, are you working on 2 projects or what? We need only 1 for minor…” In Chakli’s lab, there was lot of noise and some bad smell too was coming, but still we tolerated it for some days. But then we warned Chakli that we would not work in her lab and finally she bargained to work in B 201. Chashmish must have thought, “What advantage did I get? You ppl will never come to my lab.”

My God! We used to work so hard! We used to download ebooks on Flex and tried connecting Java with it and reading those books and making diagrams and documents and what not! Even after coming home!!! Even in recess!!!!! Meeting our faculty guide itself was a long process. First Chashmish will go downstairs to check whether she is available in the staffroom. If she’s not, she’ll check her timetable, ask other faculties, check other labs and if our unreachable faculty guide becomes reachable, she’ll give me a miss call(Chakli and mobile!!! In your dreams…). Sometimes Chashmish herself becomes unreachable. Hence we named both of them “unreachable code”(an error in C):) Mam’s English accent was tricky so after every meeting, Chashmish used to translate whatever she said in normal English and Chakli will make us understand what it means. In case any of them failed, they were gone…”How can translator stop working? How can compiler fails to understand the concept?”…hehehe…it was so much fun and yet learning.

Chashmish bday 2010

We used to celebrate bdays like festivals when we were all together. I generally start a mail chain or so almost a month ago as per my habit and we discuss a lot about anybody’s bday gift and surprise on phone, sms and mails. Because there has to be some special element for everybody’s bday, its becoming really difficult now to get ideas for gifts and all. But then we used to organize everything. And same happened on Chashmish’s bday in 2009.

Nobody can dare to forget or miss her bday because she start announcing about it a month ago. In 2008, we gave her a surprise by coming at her home exactly at 12 o’clock with cakes and celebration so in 2009 we had to do something different. First usual question was gift??? Chakli is fond of making glass painting and Chashmish liked it very much so we decided to make one for her. Chashmish was fond of(rather habituated) of doing lots of msgs then and always talked about her sms chatting. I once joked her that I’ll give her msg recharge pack on her bday and now we seriously decided to do so. I thought of doing some more fun. Once when I came back home earlier, I took all the empty boxes-big and small in size-and started gift wrapping it and then put those 2 msg recharge cards in the big hierarchy of boxes. And Lali has written some diary pages for Chashmish. “Lali has written something in diary” will itself be a big surprise for her. I got an idea that we should announce a gift hunt for her like treasure hunt where she’ll be given clues and she’ll find her gift from her home. Now hiding the gift at her place was a big task in itself. She was mostly at home so we can’t hide big glass painting in front of her. And even if we could, there was a risk that she’ll find it. We told our desires to her mom and she agreed that she’ll take care of all this. There is a room in her house in which nobody peeps in so we told aunty to hide gifts there somewhere. When all these discussions were going on one side, my parents were organizing a trip another side. That created a lot of confusions for mithu whether to plan her gift her before her bday or after I come back… Finally we decided to organize things after her bday on weekend.

She used to go to her company on 2 days from 5 to 10pm. So I went to her house at around 9 on Thursday when she was not there. I told all our plans to her mom and handed over gifts. Generally in bday celebrations, whenever we do any secret discussions, and bday girl ask about it, we start lying like anything and afterwards laugh like anything. So when I told Chashmish that I am going on a trip on her bday she was very sure that I am lying her and will give surprise. On her bday when I called her at 12 o’clock night, she finally believed that I was really going. She might be having hopes for Lali and Chakli turning up on that day but everybody knows that nobody initiate the plans without me.

I don’t remember the date(coz I am not ChashmishJ) when we exactly went at her place but it was Sunday. We first all got together at my place. Then just to check that she’s at home only and not having any other plans I called Chashmish and asked all random things in the world and got to know that her project partner had come and they both would be doing project(which we’ll not let them doJ) So up we all went…I think she was not hoping much on Lali so that too added to her surprise element. I was highly animated and gave everybody instructions that we will give her surprise, we’ll shout at entrance, we’ll harass her for gifts and NOBODY WILL TELL HER ANYTHING ABOUT THE GIFTS(nobody followed my instructions and I became popat(parrot)J) Everybody’s head were banging because of me when I started asking whether we should take match sticks for candles. My sis finally got sickened and shouted at me, “She will be obviously having everything in her home. Now shall we please go?”

When we were on the stairs with cake and ribbons, I started taking the video and my sis started grudging, “Off you started. If you are so much enthu, take the video of my face, my hands, see this cake, this ribbon and every minute things u can see here!” When she opened the door, I was expecting everybody to shout, “SURPRISE!!!” but only I did :P My sis started pulling my leg, “Its surprise only for her and not for us…Here is my surprise” and then she started decorating Chashmish with ribbons and spread ribbons everywhere in the room. We turned her house into a fish market, “Amity, do this, do that…change ur cloths…give us the match sticks…bring that table…hurry…do wear that capree…I want this…” She was happily enthralled, “Wait guys, at least let us finish the lunch! Let me clean the kitchen and let me…” Before she could argue any more, we sent her to change. My video recording activity was still on and my sis started giving different poses for video. Finally when everything was arranged, she cut the cake and we clapped and sang songs for her.

Now where’s the gift?? I and Chakli thought it was in that special room. Lali and Chakudi did not had much idea about it, still Chakudi was alarming us that she will tell Chashmish everything, and that she will take the bribe of one extra piece of cake for keeping her mouth shut J Chakli had written a small instruction for Chashmish about gift hunt in a diary paper so we gave that to her and asked her to read aloud. The paper included following:

“On your birthday, we have organized a small gift hunt. You have to identify

1.       Number of gifts

2.       Where the gifts are

3.       What are the gifts

To give you a lil hint, the gifts were placed in your home on 22^nd, and today is 26^th, you are still not able to find out ” 

Chakli explained her the hint in detail. Before she blurts out anything more, I stopped her and asked Chashmish to answer the questions one by one. She guessed the number of gifts-‘One?Two?Three?’ like that. Then she was thinking about the place. We told her, “You’ll not able to find the gifts unless you actually stand up and find”. So she started gift hunt.

I was taking video as usual. People are running behind her. She first entered in her room and said, “I cleaned this room yesterday only!”…hehehe…then she saw under the bed, on her computer table, in her big book boxes, in her cupboards and kept on saying, “I cleaned this cupboard thoroughly, how is it possible that…?” She found one bag and said, “Ah this is the…oh no, these are shoes.” She was confused and roaming here and there in the room and we were enjoying. Chakli took pity on her and said, “You have to search the gift in whole house and your house is not over in your room only”…Then Chashmish got enlightened that the gift cannot be in her room. I slapped Chakli for giving her the idea-“Now you will not give her ANY ANY hints…”  She went to her kitchen and drawing room to search, saw everywhere(even behind the fridge J) but could not find the gift. Tired, she sat on her bed, “Please give me some other hint, where else in the house? Kitchen, my bedroom, that special room, gallery?” I now have already told Lali and Chakudi the place. We have thought that we will give her hints like, “You need authentication to enter the room” etc types but she’ll surely recognize the room so Chakudi told her that, “You already mentioned in your statement about the place” She again started roaming everywhere. We were making fun of her, “See, if you’re not able to find it right now, in next Diwali when you do deep cleaning of your house u’ll surely find…when is Diwali? Oh its still 9 months to go…hehehe…now u’ll deep clean ur house tomorrow only…”

Chashmish tried to bribe Chakudi but in vein. She thought of calling her mom, but we told her mom is already involved with us. Finally after giving same hint again, she was sure that the gift is there in that special room. We all went there, nobody knew exactly where the gift was. We tried to look here and there but could not find. Now what?? We all went to ask her dad. And finally he gave a definite hint-“Only gallery”. Now this too wasn’t easy as Chashmish’s house had 3 galleries. We twice searched it and finally Chashmish located the gift which we gently grabbed from herJ Now we all sat in her room asking about what could be the gifts. Again somebody blurted out that 2^nd box is box inside box inside box…so she somehow guessed that it might be some coupon. Finally we all opened the gift and she was delighted to see the gifts but she was even more delighted when we gave her the diary pages written by Lali. She read it aloud and they both became emotional.

Now there was another surprise for mithu from my side. Chashmish knew about it. It was the mithu ppt. Actually we have collected lots of pics of all of us and put everything in a big ppt with music and animation and poetry. It is fantastic. I showed it to everybody and told them how it was started and how we collected the pics, Gujarati fonts, songs, sections and this and that. Then we went to have some food. We took lots of pics in different poses with caps, talked, pulled each other’s leg and finally went home. It was great fun that day.

MIS

Who will not want to live collage life another time? I had the opportunity to live it for additional 6 monthsJ Last semester project of our collage-Major project-was the chance given to all we fortunate 30 ppl. According to tradition, nobody takes this project in college-Nirma due to lots of reasons. The process of finding the project starts 3 months ago where you find any IT company who would take you mostly by reference(sometimes by interviews too!) and give you some training and project with certificate. Then you need to register the company and your project in college. We-Infosys hired ppl-became carefree because Infy was supposed to give us this project, but alas! it cancelled at last moment and lots of ppl like me had no option but to opt for doing project in college. Generally ppl doing project in college are seen as lower rated coz they are assumed not to have been selected in any good company and college doesn’t provide good exploration to IT world. But fortunately this time, our new Dynamic Director(DD-that’s how we used to tease him…that’s another long story) was enthu to make all applications running under one hood, hence he announced a big project-The Nirma Management Information System(MIS)- for 30 ppl in college and we chose it.

The project started with deciding technology and diving modules and team. I and Chakli were praying to be in one team and we became-The Attendance Team, with another girl. 13 modules were decided and we had a small so called ‘training’ on .net. We had a madam and a sir as our project managers. I am not sure whether they did some sort of planning like real projects or not but they used to give us impossible deadlines which was surely not to be met. Apart from them, we had one faculty guide and module lead for each module. I remember when we first went to met our module guide, the first thing he asked us to do was to create a database diagram! I mean, we didn’t know even the requirements of the project, how can we make a diagram? That too, he kept on asking for the same for next 2 days! Like 1^st sem students, he asked us to maintain a file with our daily tasks and keep on updating him. We had to do whatever he told(and being Miss Rule-Chakli in team). We started visiting faculties for asking requirements. We came to know that poor lab assistants have to fill attendance manually from a paper to some historical computer system to generate reports(now I realize why all lab assistants were always angryJ) Every application Nirma like timetable, budget, student registration etc was using was separate, desktop or web applications. The project was to combine all of them.

The design process was long. Each faculty had their own view about how database and forms should be and we had to incorporate all of them. We actually made chart like school students for our complex database hierarchy. Worst thing about our module was, we were dependent on lots of other modules, so even if we completed our work on time, due to the dependency, we had to keep on asking other modules. In every team there was one or the other member who was not working at all! Fortunately there was one guy, who had prepared the base of whole project(whom we called ‘King’ J). Initially it was boring but gradually it became fun. We(MIS team-that’s what we call ourselves) had lots of independence. Mobile is a BIG no-no in college but we were free to use it. We almost took control over that b-104 lab. People actually used to love project, we got wifi internet for free, we almost used to rule, we were getting respect from all the faculties becoz we were building system for them, we all got good marks tooJ Anytime any faculty came and started reviewing our work and giving impossible suggestions to implement. Dead(ly) lines were given to complete the coding part and we used to tell that its MIS-Mission Impossible System J There was a white board in lab in which our managers used to write about deadly lines for project completion which students will erase and write – “Thought of the day”. Everybody used to take turn, raise their hands, to ask Mr ‘King’ doubts about .net. Our lab assistant sir was also coordinating us in database. Initially he asked us to create scripts for creating tables and some ppl’s scripts were so hopeless that he got frustrated like anything. He almost took a lecture on how to write simple ‘create table’ query in Oracle and still ppl submitted bad scripts…hehe…

Our faculty managers shifted our recess from 1pm to 12.30pm so that we can complete our meals earlier and come back to work quickly. But this in turn created confusions in ppl and we used to have our recess anytime we wanted. If anybody has bunked, we used to tell that he’s in canteen for recess J Many ppl actually hardly came and at the end of the project we realized that he too was in project!!! Our usual timings were 8 to 4 but in coding phase we-sincere students-used to stay till 6 o’clock because that was the time we could work peacefully else there was lot of noise of antaxari and comments and doubts and this and that. And besides, we loved working in ac lab. Our lab assistants used to pull us out after 6 o’clock…hehe…And every Friday, there was a faculty meeting in lab so we got additional half hour recess.

As its Nirma, there has to be harassment for attendance always. So many ppl hardly came still their proxy was taken care of. We had to fill 2 attendance sheet daily-one lab register(in which ppl hardly signed) and one in faculty staff room(which was the main). Many times our managers suddenly came to our lab to verify attendance. So somebody has stolen the main attendance sheet itself!!! Now ppl who did not regularly signed in lab register, got their names in short attendance even if they were coming! After sometime, our managers created another main sheet which too was stolen! Hehehe...then they left creating 3rd one, they knew partially who ppl are coming and hard working, so they gave marks accordingly. I, Chakli and Mr King got A+ :)

Coding time was so less that sincere students like me used to work even after college. I, Chakli and Chashmish used to work together. I many times went to Chashmish’s home and told her everything on what happened today and how team course registration harassed us and how Chakli harassed me and what faculties told and this and that. She used to tell me about her project-how her project partners are not working and she had to work double and this and that. I and Chakli were always together or on phone or on chat. My other teammate named our pair-Tom and Jerry-always together and always fighting…hehehe…When we all work together, the room will become a Cyber Café with 2 laptops, books and a desktop and wires spread everywhere. In our lab also, most of the ppl used to work on laptops only because Nirma’s pc had lightning fast speed J We had fixed our places there and there were wires spread here and there.

We had n number of reviews-reviews in front of faculty guide, in front of faculty managers, in front of HOD, in front of Director(DD), in front of external faculties for viva, in front of random faculties, in front of senior faculties…and these too multiple times! I remember when we had review in front of HOD, he suggested lots of major changes after completion of half of the project. But our faculty managers were really supportive, they always cleared our doubts and helped us and told only to implement things which really mattered. We had presentation in from of Director and all branch’s HOD which lasted for 3 days only for 4 modules! Because every HOD used to give their suggestion and there was a cat-fight among HODs. It was fun to watch this entertainment. I remember in the last viva, we were banned to work because our database server frequently got down, and our deployed project was many times throwing errors.

When other students had already submitted their reports, we started making it. Our faculties were lesser worried about reports and more about system correctly working. Though our King integrated all the modules even after getting frustrated from hopeless errors in all modules, we did not have much time to test it properly. There were lots of pits and falls in many modules. But our managers told us, that they were going to have juniors to enhance the system, so any kind of change came, we told-it will be future enhancementJ We worked till the end, when rest of students had already given their vivas and all, we used to come to college. For all our dedication and after a lot of shout for party, we finally got one in college. We took group photos and had small funny award ceremony in which our King was awarded as best Employee and had a big round of applause for him and we were awarded as best team. There were other funny awards too like most chatting, most absent, best orkut user etc etc. It was so much fun at the end. I remember people took their pics in funny posed to put it in ‘About us’ section in the site. There is so much to write about these 6 great months. I would say, you’ll learn a lot about college’s processes and technology and customer satisfaction because our managers and faculties were our customers and they were never satisfied J I am proud that I was part of the MIS team.

My friend's wedding-4

Lali and her husband went to take some special pics. There the photographer was asking her to pose like this and that- “Mam one more…mam one more…mam your face should be like this…mam you must be only half seated…’ She said she can’t make it all because of her sari. But everybody insisted. Lali tried but at the end she got frustrated and said, “Now I can’t do it at all pls have mercy on me! How can you expect me to do all these in sari and heavy jwellary?” Everybody laughed secretly at her ice-cream like anger.

We were getting hungry but we decided we’ll take lunch with Lali only. Chakudi and Chashmish were secretly making plans of having ice-cream which we overheard and gave a glaring look to them. After these small fun, we asked Chakli when her wedding would take place. We warned her, “You must tell us at least 3 months ago the date so that we’ll book train tickets. And it should not be so simple, ok? We want all kind of functions, garba, music and bachelor party too, is that clear?” Chakli replied, “My wedding is in 2012 December, I am informing you ppl 1.5 years ago. So now don’t blame on me.” Chakudi said, “Hey, what we’ll do is, instead of shehnai(a musical instrument played in marriage), we’ll have ‘chi chi’ music for Chakli…hehehe…chichichi chi chi chiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii” Chashmish said, “And we’ll have bachor party with DJ. And pls don’t play your fav oldest songs in the world. I and Chakudi will manage DJ with chichichi music :D” I added, “Now Chakli will say, ‘I dnt like DJ, I dnt dance’. But we’ll not listen. We’ll fetch you and jiju for dance.” Chashmish said, “We’ll dance in baraat too.” I again added, “Yeah, in your marriage too, you’ll dance everywhere, even if we stop you” Chakudi: “In Tameti’s(Chashmish) marriage, we’ll decorate things with tometos instead of flowers and in card too we’ll write-Tameti wedding Tameto…heheheh” Our discussions went on like this and we could not stop laughing. Now Chakudi and Chashmish were fed up with sari and wanted to change(they’ve brought extra dress) but we all denied, then they secretly went to moms for asking and they said a big NO too J With sad faces, they returned. Chakudi started acting like crying and roaring, “I am hungry and uncomfortable in this heavy sari…I thought bidai was at 3 o’clock and its already 3 and nobody has even started lunch.” I said, “Yes you fat glutton, you are always hungry, now stop crying.” Chashmish said, “I can’t face her in bidai(a ceremony of bride getting separated)’ Chakudi said, “Have you brought the bucket to handle your tears? Whole river will flow…hehe”

Once Lali started taking lunch, we too started. Lunch was really superb. The heavy ritual started now-bidai…Lali was crying like anything. She could not control herself when she hugged her parents. Her mom too was crying heavily. Relatives were calming her down. We were still standing far watching this drama which happens in every girl’s life. Moms became sad remembering their bidai and we became sad for Lali thinking we will have to face this situation too. I thought we will do some joke and calm down Lali but when she came nearer to bid goodbye to us, we all became emotional and could not say anything. I had one thought in my mind since morning-“I am seeing Lali for the last time. God knows when we’ll meet. I am seeing Lali for the last time…” With heavy heart she left in the car…

When I came back to Chandigarh, I got a call from Lali! I was happily shocked. She was calling every mithu member for thanking that photo-diary. Actually we gave diary to her mom after her marriage to give her a small surprise and she was heavily surprised too! She was so happy for the gift that she almost talked with everybody for half an hour. She told everything about the marriage and how we looked great and how we managed for gifts and everything. 

Now she’s in Bharuch with her husband and having wonderful era of her life. A song for you dear Lali:

"Mubaraq ho tumko ye shaadi tumhari,

sada khush raho tum dua hai hamari"

Now who’s next??

My friend's wedding-3

“After all its Lali’s marriage and we should not look any lesser then bride herself! So we all gonna look beautiful-wearing saris and doing mehendi, ppl should whistle when mithu arrives! No arguments in wearing sari pls.” – kind of statement Chakudi made, nobody dared to argue too! When we reached Ahmedabad, we started searching for the suitable sari and jewelry of mom(and neighborhood aunt’s too J) After seeing all the possible options, me and my sis shortlisted some to select dynamically at runtime. Chakli also gave instructions to her mom remotely for sari and jwellary. So many preparations for 1 day, it was as if we were getting married and not Lali…hehe…

We all reached Ahmedabad Friday morning. Chakli was to come that night. We went to Lali’s home to meet her and ask her mom in case she needs any help. As usual we got open armed welcome with ice cream. Lali seemed to be happy and tired too. She said she has been running here and there since many days and hardly got sleep. We told her all our plans for her wedding. She told her plans- Pooja in morning, then to get ready to her aunt’s place, then to marriage hall, then after 3 o’clock bidai ceremony, then to in-laws, then next day reception, then to Goa,then next week Bharuch, then job…long long plans.

At night I, Chakudi and Chashmish gathered at R3 mall, for mehendi at around 10.30pm. Chakli was on the way. She was coming directly to my place instead of going home(like Devdas went to Paro’s place J) After doing bargain of 75rs per hand for half hand mehendi. I as usual was keep on asking about Chakli and selecting mehendi design and Chakudi and Chashmish was banging their heads by my questions. Chashmish almost shouted, "Her flight has landed on time, she's on the way to your house, she'll take dinner and change and then will come. What else u want to know?" Just then Chakli arrived. Chashmish said, "Thanks to God you came, I was about to get headache by her questions, she wants everything to be planned!" We all laughed at her angry mood. When mehendi started, we started talking about our usual life, Lali and comparing the mehendi, gifts and this and that. We all reached home at around 12. After an hour or so, I got tired with my mehendi so I cleaned my hand. And ppl, taking its advantage, started ordering me for tea and snacks as if taking revenge of my previous harassment. We have decided that we’ll harass Chashmish by rejecting her every sari(like we did for her patiyala in convocation :P) but she was saved coz didn’t bring her sari(must’ve got the intuition) After talking and giggling, we were all tired so slept earlier for a change after deciding to leave at 10 o’clock for next day.

Finally the auspicious day came. We all started getting ready. I wanted to wear something in red or maroon color and selected one bandhni sari of mom. But ppl said it’s not much suitable. Again I started harassing ppl by showing them different combinations of sari and finally came back to same sari with green blows. Chakli’s mom and neighborhood aunt also came to make us ready. We almost took 2 hours(quite early actually!). Chakli also wore a bandhni silk orange sari, she was looking like old time heroine and my sis wore cotton silk multicolor sari in which she was looking like big mom herself! Chashmish was in her usual teacher(masterni with big specs :P) style with multicolor silk sari. I as per my habit, started taking pics of us. I have pics like “before(taking bath) and after(getting ready)” At around 11 o’clock we started towards the venue.

When we reached, Lali just came there. I couldn’t recognize her at first glance! She was looking so different in her makeup and heavy jewelries and sari. I asked Chashmish to confirm whether she was Lali only. Suddenly she was looking so much like matured woman and not collegian girl. She waved at us and left with her mom. We entered into ac hall. She was amazed to look at all of us in sari and mehendi. She seemed to be nervous, after all the day has come when her life will change forever. We sat with her, she said how she got ready and how is the sari and the chunni and all. Her younger sister Tini was looking like angel in her fairy type of dress.

We went out after sometime and started taking pics of us in different poses(with Chakli peeping in-“we should not behave like this”…hehehe) We were going to and fro from Lali’s room to out. Then the baraat came and we were finally able to see Lali’s tall Lalo(or we now tell him ‘Kumar’) sitting on horse wearing shervani with turban. I told Chashmish-“See how magnificent he looks! We are bound to tell him ‘Kumar’ only”. Actually 'Kumar' word is used at many places as respect by in-laws. Then usual marriage rituals started. Lali was nervous till time but when she met her ‘Kumar’ she seemed to get relieved from tension. Though they had cameramen and all shooting facility, Chashmish asked me to take pics, “You know Lali-the most busy person in the world! On marriage day, we were able to see her hubby, God knows when we’ll be able to see the pics! Better we take it.” I started taking pics and once or twice I asked Chashmish or Chakudi “Now why don’t you stand up to take up the pics?” but lazy girls just sat on their chairs-“You are doing great job faithfully, carry on…we don’t want to interfere.” We were talking and looking at rituals. When Lali was taking ‘fera’(rounds for marriage), we started harassing them by throwing big flowers directly on their faces...hehehe.

My friend's wedding-2

After all excitements got over, we returned to our usual life, dreaming of meeting all again and doing lots of fun and dance in Lali’s marriage. It was somewhere around  June starting. I was waiting for my last day at Infy which was on 14^th June. But one day, suddenly(again!) Chakli called me that Lali’s  marriage is on 11^th June. She just mailed on mithu. I was like what, why, how so early and this and that. I checked the mail and it was true. I called up Chakudi to tell the news. Her reactions were also similar. We all had idea that her wedding would take place in September and now to come to Ahmedabad on 11^th June, in such short notice, seemed to be next to impossible. Everybody had their reasons and confusions.

Me: As I mentioned, I applied for resignation on 14^th June and formalities for this was going on. Also, I already had taken unplanned leaves and project required me for last moment knowledge transfers and all. And most imp, since I was in Chandigarh, train tickets were not available. I had to come there by plane from Delhi. Going to Delhi airport from Chandigarh by bus and metro and all was a big task itself coz I have never done that. That too just for 2 days.

Chashmish: She was in Pune, she had to come by bus. Though it was relatively easy for her to come, she has adjusted her assignments for the Saturday i.e. on 11^th June itself! She had to readjust it.

Chakli: She and her fiancé had planned to visit Ahmedabad next week from Lali’s marriage so that they could meet. During that week, it wasn’t possible for him to come. If she comes in that week, she has to take lot of leaves.

Chakudi: I don’t think she had some problems, maybe she was confused whether she will get leaves or not.

I called up Lali, asked her all “wh” questions. She told me that she has got her job and joining in June end. So the families and all decided for this date. I told her all the problems we have in coming. I was angry and confused and scolded her too for giving such short notice period, harassed everybody else for seeing plane and train tickets whichever available. Till 2-3 days, we discussed what should we do. I felt many times like not going. Everybody was in same state of mind. Actually apart from our problem, we got disheartened coz we have dreamt a lot about marriage that we would wear this, we will dance like this, we will sit next to the bride and tease her, will come 15 days before to help, we’ll eat this, we’ll manage the reception and all ceremonies, will have great time and this and that and what not. But we will not be able to do so and Lali’s wedding was to be done in simple manner.

Whatsoever it was, finally we all decided to come whatever it takes. After all, “hum ek bar jite hai, ek bar marte hai, shaadi bhi ek hi baar hoti hai aur pyar bhi ek hi baar hota hai.”(a dialogue from Kuch Kuch hota hai) Lali many times told us that it would be all right if you ppl don’t come, but we said, “Lali, it’s YOUR marriage and it’ll come only once in lifetime. Tara mate maan chhe, tane kya bhaan chhe…we’ll come even if you don’t tell us.”

One decision making process got over and second started. GIFT??? Gift was in discussion for 7-8 days!!! Gold, bags, any electronic instrument, mobile, sari, dress all kinds of options were suggested and discussed deeply in mithu’s mail chain, on phone, with friends, with our parents, with Lali’s parents and with Lali too J Lali’s usual reply was-“I don’t require anything, I have everything. Whatever you give, I will surely like it.” I actually made a table of what gift had what pros and cons(as per my habit)

Gift	Pros	Cons
Gold/Silver earrings k sikko/American dimond nu kaik	Saru lagse	It may become out of budget
Mobile	Lali ne finally saro mobile malse, budget ma b avi jase jevo joito hy evo. Am b e navo kharidvani j chhe.	Ene mongho joie chhe k sasto e nath khabar. I called her up to ask her. She said, she doesn’t have any idea abt it. But she’ll inform us
Ipod	Eni pase jo mobile nai ave to b at least gito to sambhli shakse.	Lali navo mobile levani j hy to ene ipod nib au jarur nai pade.
Sadi/dress material	Bahu j badha options mali rese	Eni pase already gift ma avani hase ghani badhi.

J Everybody talked different things. Finally one day, my mom visited a nearby jeweler and called me to tell me that she’s gonna take pair of gold earrings for Lali. Everybody agreed. She had 2 of options-American diamond gold or pure gold. She called Lali and Lali said she would love diamond earrings hence FINALLY big gift chapter got over. And since its mithu, there has to be something special, some surprise gift, sweetest memories. So we decided to give her a photo diary with some comments written by mithu. Some of those pics were so nice, I feel like showing them to the world on facebook. After all the long discussions and confusions we were finally happy that whole mithu will be again together after such a long time. We were waiting for the moment to come…

My friend's wedding-1

Lali lali lali

Wake up my lali

If you dnt wake up, I’ll become Lali(red i.e. angry)

And you’ll become pili(yellow i.e. pale)

I dnt know why I remembered this whn I started writing abt Lali’s marriage. She is the first one in mithu to get married. This was the poem I wrote in our imaginary story in which I thought when Chashmish will try to wake up her, she’ll sing this song(hope now her husband sings this too J)

If I start from starting, one day morning Lali suddenly called me to tell me that she has got some shocking news. I just joked tht her marriage is fixed and she said yes, it is actually fixed!!! I stood shocked, stopped my every work, missed my bus and just sat on the sofa to talk with her abt this. Who is the guy, how is he, his job, his family and all those infinite questions which can come into anybody’s mind. We talked around 20 min and she told me whatever she could to satisfy my eagerness. She had to call all mithu ppl. She seemed to be enjoying herself by observing our reactions. After she hung up, I sat for a second. Then obviously being a girl I need to empty my buckets of thoughts and share my knowledge to everybody in the world! So I called up somebody else and told everything. Then again, Chakudi called me to know whether I know what she knows! And so on this calling ended till 9.15. I realized that I need to catch the last bus at least! So I started towards office. On the breakfast table, all mithu except Chakli had a conf call and discussed everything again. Chakudi said, she was sleeping, dreaming when Lali called her and she got so shocked with the news that she suddenly got woken up as if from some nightmare! My God! Such a thrill for the news! I’m sure we all must’ve started our work at around 11 o’clock day.

Lali’s marriage fixing was as good as Vivah movie. And as ideal as tht movie too! All good people, 1 or 2 meetings, some general questions and its done! Chakli was not picking up our call, so we decided to harass her by sending weird bulk messages with Vivah’s songs: “Hamari shaadi me, abhi baki hai mahine 4”, “Do anjane, ajnabi…chale bandhne bandhan”…hehehe…We were all fascinated tht whole day. I gave this news to my every friend. What a day it was! Again we did conf call at night with Chakli, she got to know somehow and her usual dialog “Tame badha bau nakama chho”(u all are good for nothing J) started. We went to sleep with a smile on our faces.

We used to joke about Lali that if she’s Lali, her husband will be called “Lalo”, child “Lalu” and her tution class’ students will be called “Lalaos” to avoid confusion(which actually created confusion when we said “Lali is busy with her lalas and Lalo will take care of Lalu”) and what not… We all talked about this till several days and imagined how life would be for her after marriage. Since her husband is working in Bharuch, she was searching for a job there. We wanted to meet our ‘jiju’ but could not since we are all apart. Sadly, nobody could attend her engagement too for this reason. But we never ceased to tease her like anything. When we were in college, we imagined that we would do a ‘mithu’ test on everybody’s to-be husband that he has to stay with our gang for a whole day and present his autobiography. He has to survive without losing his mental balance :P When we joked to Lali “This is not fair. How can you decide without mithu test? We will decide whether he’s suitable for you or not ok?” To which she politely replied, “No, actually he’s very shy. He’ll talk very less with u ppl.” We kept her asking again and again to send his pic or to make us talk on phone, but as its with Lali with “Most busy in the world” tag, it wasn’t possible. We pulled her legs, “Lali, we know ur intentions. You fear, your fiancé will run away if he dares meeting us, but we also want to see who stole your heart :P Hope it may not happen that we see him in September i.e. on ur marriage itself! At lease send us pics of ur engagements, yaar.”

Actually Lali had double responsibility after she got engaged. She had to take care of her lalas’(tuition students) exams, her joint family and now her in-laws and fiancé. She was learning new dishes from her mother tooJ I think she already cooked very nice just improving herself. She left dieting!!! When asked, she said, “Now whom do I need for? He is not expecting me to be slimmer, he tells me that I eat, drink and just chill J” Her life was mixture of everything. I can imagine, it must have been beautiful phase of her life-going on long drives, waiting for weekends to come, eagerness to meet, our teasing her, going to in-laws and knowing more and more about her upcoming family. It is really a great feeling. I’m sure she’ll remember this in her entire life.

Placements-an unforgettable experience

Nirma is all about placements. People join the Institute only because it provides the best placements all over Gujarat. It’s one of the experiences one can never forget in life. Even if you will not take job and so sure of going US or doing MBA, when placement season comes everybody tries to have their part in the cake just for security of job. The first job is like a first love.

It was June 2008, when our exams got over and the next day only a company was coming. We’ve heard enough of tips from seniors and others, “Answer like this”, “Wear like this”. But I tell at the end no tips comes to your mind when you are actually sitting in an interview, only it’s you yourself. The placement includes a long process of PPT-Written Test-Technical Interview-HR Interview and almost took 1 or 2 days. We need to literally ‘collect’ data of our achievements. For some people it’s easy, but for a normal student like me it’s actually tough to think-"Was this really my achievement?". We as usual harass our placement coordinators like anything. According to me they have the toughest job in the world because they have to answer authorities, they have to answer stupid questions of students (because of lots of rumors), give same instructions n number of times to n number of people and besides they themselves have to prepare for their own placements. Then we needed to prepare all the 6 semesters’ subjects in just one go. We had time of only few hours to refer all the Barons, R. S Agrawals and Shakuntala Devi. And about those PPTs, for some companies I think being an IT company how can they set yellow color font with white background? In addition to that, some speakers just spoke as if there is a gun above their heads. Whatever it was this PPP (pre placement preparations) was not that much as it should have been for us but somehow we could clear the first company’s test.

On the day of our first interview, at sharp 7 o'clock in the morning we reached Nirma gates finding everything except gates closed! We all gathered in group and started revising topics (which we may have left in options in exams :)). You come to know that company has still not come yet and we have no idea when the process will start. I could not recognize some boys my class at all! Because they are looking like humans in those formal ironed cloths with a tie, clean shaved and what not. Finally, the interviews started first technical then HR. And for results you need to wait like till infinite time. Coordinators say result will come in this much time, but as always it never comes. Besides all this when the whole process gets over, and finally you want to eat something, you find dearest canteen closed. Whenever some results are announced, we are just praying for our name in that till the end. The interviews are like test of self-confidence. And after it gets over, you are so much thrilled with excitement that you just want to blurt it out in front of everybody. When not selected in the first company, some might feel that you have lost the game. But I don’t think so; it all depends upon whether you take it as success or stepping stone to success.

We were told(as usual) at 8pm that day, that the next company is coming in the morning at 8. Then again the same recursive process starts. People starts crying like anything (even boys) when 2nd and 3rd company is also gone. I remember some of them became so frustrated when they saw others passing the test due to cheating, they even decided not to sit in any of the upcoming company. And some, who had not been cheating yet, decided desperately to do so. Some became depressed when they see that their all friends have been selected. But when after all these rigorous efforts and emotional outbursts, when you are finally selected you feel like king of the world! Some actually jumps, some sings and shouts. People hug each other and first call mummy to say the good news.

According to me, only one thing matters in the whole process and that is your confidence. You learn a lot from these experiences which will be definitely helpful in your life. But you can never forget this experience in your lifetime because it’s the first biggest achievement in your life. 


There is a lot to write about. I have written almost 58 pages in our diary about placement! This was just a summary. Not sure what happens in other colleges, but this was how happened in our college. Hope everybody gets selected in their placements and get good jobs. All the best.

Written by
Rujoota Shah
Alumni(Nirma University)
05BIT030

Dear Diary

It was the master mind of Chashmish (Oops! She has mind after all!) who stated this idea to me and Chakli. Once we were discussing something about some wonderful memories. Then we thought we should treasure all of them, it’ll be a great collection for the future. So all in all we decided that we’ll write a common diary. Then we thought of where and how to write. We wanted to make it extraordinarily beautiful. We did not want actual diaries-book like-with thick covers and all because it would be difficult to share with three of us. We were looking for something else-colorful designer pages like project papers or Nirma’s assignment ‘tute(tutorial) pages’. We are smart you know ;) We can divide those pages easily for 3 of us, write and then just bring those pages to let others read. Apart from that, we can easily manage those in a file if the lot increases. In conventional diary, while writing something wrong happens then, we have no option but to tear that page which looks so bad. But in these project pages, we can easily throw a page in dustbin and write all over again! And its lot easier to write in separate pages(read also) than with 500+ pages of diary. So easy to carry, easy to handle, easy to file and hey, cheaper also (100 pages in almost 40 rs :) ).

Then one day, we went to all stationary shops. I remember that day. Amity and Chakli came to my house. We 3 with my sis were supposed to eat out that evening so we decided first we’ll go through all stationary shops and find the most beautiful pages. We went with 2 vehicles to search in all local shops of Gurukul. Now the chaos started. We somehow got separated. Then Amity and Chakudi went into some shop, called us(Me and Chakli) to come and see. When we reached there, they were not there at all! Again we called them. This happened vice versa also. Same thing happened when we decided to meet at Hanuman Temple. After wandering in whole Gurukul we finally met at a big stationary shop at SubhashChok called ‘Dinalay’. We were shown lot of colorful designer pages. We chose the one with red rose in the background, it looked (in Amity’s language) very romantic :) . My sis got frustrated with all these chaos for these pages…hehe…So FINALLY we bought our diary pages for the first time on. After coming home, we divided them,33 for each of us.

Now we 3 actually started writing diary on 5th September, 2007, Wednesday. We separately wrote ‘Prastavna’ (prologue) and when we met next time, we showed it to each other. We all were so thrilled! Then we went on writing and it became a hobby for us to write and then meet and read and discuss and comment and what not! Once we went to Lali’s place and gave her all those pages to read and she went crazy, totally mad at reading them. She read it again and again. We’ve given her pages to write, she wrote 1 topic but it seems writing is not her cup of tea. And Chakudi though always part of our fun is not interested in this diary business. So all in all we have 3 writers, 1 partially writer and passionate reader!

The diary is neither personal nor a group diary. We’ve given it or some of its topics to read to family and friends. Almost 70% of topics are open for all. You wont believe what have we done for this dear diary! We now know almost every stationary shop in our area for buying new pages. We’ve found out cheapest zerox-shop coz we want 3 photocopies of those pages for me, Lali and Chakli. Amity(according to her precondition) will keep the original beautiful pages. We’ve scanned few of them. We’ve divided them into sections and have arranged Big files(‘ghoda file’) for all of us. We almost have made 3 indexes. Sometime we just meet to count those pages, numbered them and distribute.

The diary contains every topic you can think of(and cannot think of!). It has movies, gossips, books, philosophy, fun, studies, exams, databases(yes, it does!), stories, poems, dialogues, college, home, picnic, personalities, discussions, birthdays, friends and so on and so forth. Its more than a just a hobby now, its part of our life. Diary is a time-machine, whenever we read it, we rewind the time and go into past. Whenever we read it, we totally go mad and laugh like anything ANYTHING. And our readers also have a big smile on their face whenever they read it and encouragingly give us compliments. This shayri(poem) is dedicated to all the readers of our dear diary.

Yun to hum jaldi kisise dosti kiya nahi karte,
Dard-e-dil diya aur liya nahi karte,
Ye to acha rishta hai apse,
Varna hum kisiko apni dear diary diya nahi karte!

Mile jab hum tum

Here goes the story of how my gang-'mithu' was created.

First let me tell you what does the word 'mithu' means. Its a Gujarati/Hindi word which means sweet. But we have another meaning for mithu. We are 5 ppl-Me i.e. Rujoota, Amity, Vidhi Shah(i.e. my sister), Vidhi Patel and Nirali. Mithu's special full form is as follows:

M - Maitri(Amity/Chashmish/Tameti/Formatting Queen/Prem etc etc 100s of nick names) means friendship
I - Idealistic(Vidhi Patel/Chakli)
T - Twee(Nirali/Lali/Lalu/Laludi etc) means sweet
H - Hasti(thats me) means always smiling
U - Utsahi(Vidhi Shah/Chakudi) means Enthusiastic

Each full form is the characteristic of the person. Generally we call each other by their nick names only-nick names are also created by mithu.

Lali was with me in 11th std in Noble classes. We became great friends. In 12th Lali had personal tuition and I was at Nobles itself but hey, we were still in contact with BSNL phone And then at the end of 12th almost in jan or feb (ask Amity for date) I met Amity at Nobles(hamari pehli mulakat…hehe...). She was taking her 12th classes there only but in different batch. We only just knew each other by name then…bcoz we both 'were' rankers ;). Smart ppl! One day when we actually met and discussed abt some paper or studies (we always do) and she told me where her home is. We both realized that we stay so much near!!! Anyways then we started coming at each other’s place for studying and all. I told both Lali and Chashmish abt each other and then they met at Noble’s practical classes after exams. So here I was sort of link for both of them. After that Lali took admission in B.Sc clg. I and Amity was in Nirma, but in different branches. Chakli was in my class in IT. I mostly sat with Shweta and she just sat with us in recess and all. I didn’t know how she is then bcoz she's a lil introvert kind. But after some time, we started sitting together. It turned out to be good coz we started talking lots of things(initially I and Shweta was lil confused as to wht to talk with her coz she used to talk very less!) Then I came to know that she’s actually logical and intelligent kind. Then we started meeting for studies. Later Amity also joined us. And my sis was always there laughing and shouting and telling how I harass her and all. She can mix with any group (good quality actually). Chakli likes to teach very much so now my sis got her teacher. And then we took Chakli to visit Lali’s place once or twice so Chakli also became the part of our lot. Hence it was I who introduced one another and Lali always thanks me for that. Thats why, they call me 'source of all good things'. But hey, I’m not the only one. The best link is our diary. Without diary we could not have been such a great friends coz it was diary for which we mostly met and had a great laugh and fun and what not!

Lali has done with her B.Sc in Chemistry and masters too. She got married recently. She is at Bharuch now, doing job in some pharma company. Chakli is at Calicut for her masters. She's interested in being a teacher. My sis is interested in doing MBA but not sure. As of now, she is Cognizant, Pune. Chashmish is in a company called AMDOCS in Pune and I'm in CGI, Pune. We 3 are fortunately in one city as of now, but we always remain in contact with one another by our special mail account called mithumahek(which has a story in its own)

Aha! Long story... But it is a short introduction on how our friendship began. As I stated, although we stay in separate places, will always stay in one another's hearts.

Hulchul ho dil me mile jab hum tum
Suhane weather me, mile jab hum tum

My first blog!

Jay Jinendra. Jay Shri Krishna.

Hello everyone,

Let me introduce myself(as I used to do in interview :)) My name is Rujoota. I am from Ahmedabad. I have been working with Infosys since 2 years. Initially we had 6 months of training in .net and SharePoint and then I got shifted to Chandigarh. Now I am working with CGI, Pune. Currently I am in Mumbai for some formalities and will soon shift to Pune.

Now that was the techy part. My main hobby is writing. You know what! When I was a child, if somebody asks me about my hobbies, I used to write drawing, dancing(though I knew nothing!) But in recent years I have cultivated this writing hobby. I will say thanks to my dear friend Amity. Almost 4 years back when we were in college-5th sem, me, she and other friend Vidhi were talking about writing diaries and all. Suddenly we all decided that we'll start writing diary and include memories of our gang. We actually bought designer pages and started writing soon. From then onwards, it became passion for me! Writing, reading and showing others about the topics which I have written. Then when I left Ahmedabad and went to Mysore, our gang(we call it-mithu) created a common gmail account to stay in touch. And I started writing looooooooooong long mails(so long that ppl get frightened by seeing its length :P)

When I was there in Mysore, many of my friends used to ask to whom I am writing this big essay to! This mailing is still going on...I wanted to start blogging since long time but as we say-"we didn't get time!"

So here I am. In my blogs, you will find things about my friends, my special memories and my daily things. There are lots of things in diary which I want to put down here...

So good-bye for now.