Karaikudi Memoirs part 1.

Karaikudi is a small town situated 2 hrs drive from Trichy in Tamilnadu. This town is famous for the chettinadu style of food delicacies, Alagappa Chettiar educational institutions and the massive houses of Nattukottai chettiars ( a type of tamil business class community who had earned huge properties doing business abroad in places like Malaysia  ).

My native place being Erode , had applied for admissions to engineering colleges in adjacent city , Coimbatore.But, destiny played it's part pulling me to a far off ( about 8 hrs travel distance from my native place ) .My father tried his best pleading to the admission committee to change to the nearby engineering colleges but in vain. Also in those times, in our community, they rarely send girls for college education to far off places. Nowadays , far off place has a different meaning ..may be a foreign country located in any part of the world. The world seems to have shrinked it's size in terms of the reachability point of view. So, with all inhibitions , my parents decided to send me to Karaikudi. This was way back in 1986. 

My dad took me for the college admission to ACCET, Karaikudi . The college is located in somewhat an interior place where only students crowd were seen mostly. The college bus stop was full with boys who were having fun time . My dad even checked with me if that college is OK , as there were no girls seen. And I had come from a girls school background. Probably he had thought I would be feeling uncomfortable in that environment . I nodded my head confidently and said I can manage. My father had then a sigh of relief .  At the first glance of college building , which stands still solid and majestic with a clock tower brought an awe in me , impressed a lot .The adjacent Murugappa hall was also standing majestically by its side. There was a formal admission interview in Murugappa hall where we need to move in a series of chairs with the interviewing professors sitting opposite.The math professor asked a quick question from the maths subject. I never knew he would be  our Maths Professor  for my first year .His classes would be quite interesting and no one could escape his eyesight .Once I got caught red handed when my eyes shut for a while in his afternoon class , due to the previous night long bus  journey from my home town . and also due to the after effect of the thick curd provided as part of the yummy Chettinad lunch  in our hostel mess. Unaware of  his meticulous nature ,  I was answering his unexpected  bullet  questions taking few seconds for which he got little wild for not answering instantaneously . The  guy sitting next  to me in the interview chairs seemed to be very  intelligent and answered the questions momentarily . Later I came to know he was a day scholar guy , a Karaikudi resident . He became my  classmate for the next 4 years and with whom I had never got an opportunity to utter a single word the whole of  college life. That's the way it used to be .There existed a large communication gap between the boys and girls , those times . 

We had received prior notice  from Alagappa chettiar college of  Engineering and technology , in short referred as ACCET , that the girls need to strictly follow the dress code of  only sarees .At the age of 17, we never had had the practice of tying a saree.So,the first preparation to college began with learning to tie the saree from mom .My parents bought some sarees from Bangalore as a prior preparation for college admission. Those saree colors and designs still say afresh in my memory , one of those was a pearl white saree with blue patches of geometrical figures , the other a bottle green saree with red checked designs and a couple of more soft chiffon sarees..

With a suitcase packed up, my dad accompanied me to the hostel after the  admission and we reached that day evening.. It was a newly constructed building with  3 wings of 6 rooms in each wing.