Agriculrual engineering college, bapatla, 1990-94

Walking into the dusty streets of Bapatla, i enter the "Agricultural College"
campus to be invited by the great farmer with his formidable plough and a burning torch indicating his desire to weedout the creativity of students entering the campus with his plough and burn them with the torch. Exactly i would have this same feeling semester after semester as the rickshaw that takes me from the railway station to this elite Agricultural college premises.

The much feared and loathed workshop. Everyday mornining we would march to the much awaited workshop in khakhi clothes, filing away metals and smoothing wood surfaces. We would have the early morning oily chapathy to go through this ordeal, but some of the weaklings who cannot take food so early in the morning used to take insults from the workshop assistant. An extremely reserved and serious Rayana Rao's weird personality would look through his glasses at the slightest noise striking terror in all of us. He would whisper his lecture in mono-syllables, greek, latin and hebrew - anything but english. One or two studious guys would take his lecture notes - i can never vouch for the authenticity of the notes itself as it would have lost it's meaning in reaching one's ears.

How i love those subjects on agriculture - Anatomy, Pathology, Entymology to name a few. Most of these teachers have one thing in comon. They would read their favourite tarrot cards from their hands with immaculate precision come rain or shine, day over day endlessly. I wonder if this mode of teaching would ever change. Hopping from one department to another, taking advantage of the time to travel the distance, we would spend our breaks happily only to be disturbed by the nightmare of the next lecture.

Here lies the famed male dorms. In pothana hostel, one wold find lot of vemanas roaming around freely during ragging period. It houses some of the ill-famed rooms where we did some nasty things difficult to describe here.  Famous tap where people would soak their bodies with lots of soap, hoping all the dirt thrown over them by the sickening classes would go away with a single wash.

Popular B.V.Nath auditorium where some of us have spent uncountable hours in silent contemplation in the presence of opposite sex. In Guntur dialect we call this Tepa and Jollu. Please correct me if i am wrong in usage of these words. Many lives have been made and broke here. This place certainly stands as a witness to life - tall and gracious. The same level of activity seems to be missing now - probably sms, net and virtual dating made this age-old dating temple look pale.

Here you find the oasis for those thirsty souls in between transition from one hell-of-a-class(Rayana Rao) to another hell-of-a-class(Bhaskara Rao). If it weren't for the time spent behind the State Bank of India, sitting and contemplating our sanity - we would have lost our senses a long time ago. Just adjacent to that is the basketball court where we came together to mock at other teams during sports-meet. Evil bonds quickly.

Canteen- Respite from the humdrum of life in the college. We spent a lot time observing the spectrum of colors as various girls from our sister branches(ag.b.sc.) walk through the ground from one department to the other. A good number of resolutions, decisions and initiatives here have landed us at the foot-steps of B.V.Nath auditorium, the dating goddess. This certainly is not a place for weak hearts who cannot tolerate foul language starting with the divine letters (A.P., M., P., V.P., L.K.B. so on.). I guess more can be contributed to the list here. Others are welcome to do so.

Circa 1990. Sixteen nymphs entered these premises. They would hear the famous speech by the principal Agril college, on paddy and food grains as they strain their ears to catch any words on engineering or technology.  By 94 they became caterpillars. Today they are all full grown butterflies each with a different perspective of the world. But nevertheless they all love to fly. They are the 90 batch agril engineers from Bapatla, about whom this blog is written. Hope we get to meet once again and share with each other the nectar of our experiences. Finally this is the thin thread that binds us all. As you weave more, it can become stronger. Thanks for going through this so patiently. Following are some snapshots of the water treatment plant that chandra has donated.  And some are of me addressing the students - giving them some information on how to make it in life.   Subbarami Reddy in Rayana Rao's chair etc..

http://picasaweb.google.com/vamsi.kottisa/AgrilCollegePhotos