I was a young college student once, doing my Pre Degree Course (+1,+2) and then the Graduation Program at Government Victoria College, Palghat (1979-1984). We were a group of 17. A good majority of that gang had studied in BEM High School in the same class from 5th to 10th standard. In the College, we took different groups for PDC and had different majors in our undergraduate program. But we were good friends, with multitude of talents and varying personality. I could hardly remember any two of us fighting over the 5 years we were in GVC.
We were politically aware, sports crazy, fairly good in studies and generally considered to be a joyful, harmless group. Our political ideologies were different, from those who were neutral to SFI activists, KSU activists and even ABVP activists. Come college election time, we worked tirelessly for our friends irrespective of our political affiliation.
We were from different backgrounds. No one asked anyone what his caste was nor the size of his pockets. All of us will go to the canteen and eat to our hearts content. At the end, we will ask how much the bill was and one of us will go around collecting money. We all contributed whatever we had. There were some who didnt have any money. But it was never an issue. Others understood and covered up for it. Neither they nor the others had any qualms about it.
Ours was a mixed college with a strength of 4000, with an equal amount of girls and boys. The society was much more conservative those days. But still the group had its own share of love affairs, which were either encouraged by others or silently disapproved. But we had our own unwritten rules. Sisters of any of the group members and the girl classmates of any of the group members were out of bound. They were to be treated with kid gloves and the group was a sort of protector to all these girls, whether they wanted the protection or not.
We were the typical, lazy, ambitionless Palghat boys with hardly any care in the world. There were some good artists in the group. Jaju was a good cartoonist, Vijayan was good in mono acting, all of us had a fondness for reading, some dabbled in poetry and others just looked on with the affection only friends can have for one another.
One day, sitting on the covered well near the Pre Degree block (our head quarters for most of the day as we picked and chose the classes to attend-we spent more time outside the class than inside) someone hit upon the idea of Jaju drawing cartoons on big sheets of paper and displaying in the entrance to the stair case and of course in front of the girls room. Jaju was good at drawing, others supplied the money, ideas and the caption. We needed a name for it. We threw ideas back and forth but to no avail. Then someone blabbered 'Saska Panchiska'. It was a meaningless word, but it got stuck. Every day, students looked forwared to see the new cartoon from Saska Panchiska. We ran it for nearly an year and discontinued during the final year when we had weightier things in our mind like improving the first year papers and getting a degree certificate.
We were good friends who only wished good for our friends, even today. There was no malice, no jealousy, no inferiority complex. We rejoiced when one of us got a windfall, while we cried when someone had a bad day. Life was so simple and uncomplicated then.
After the graduation, we all moved away. Some joined the Banks, Jaju got into the Advertisement field, some like Vichan took over the family medical distributorship, Shaji and Diwakar went abroad, one or two took up the legal profession and one even became a share broker. It is sad that I have lost track of most of them, but I do have fond memories.
Why am I going back down the memory lane? What triggered these fond memories? With a start I realised that this June marks the 25th year of our graduation!! How time has flown!!
