Life has been good and lazy since my last post. No exams, no study pressure, I have a decent attendance record… so a few bunks didn’t hurt at all. One of the best things that have happened till then is that the elections are over. I had already told you about my friends being directly involved in the elections, as either a candidate or helping them out with the campaigning. Being in second year, elections have been an entirely new experience. Till last year we were facing the music, on one had we were taken to movies and disco, on the other hand we were kidnapped and had to spend out nights elsewhere. This year there were two set of people, those who were involved in party politics and the others (including me) who were totally out of it. The former category had their own set of problems. Firstly they had to spend out nights trying to please the first year students. Taking them out to movies, giving them a gala dinner party (My god!! One of the nights, they had unlimited supply of chicken!!), taking them out to Kasauli etc etc. They even arranged for some booze and cigarettes for the drinkers and smokers!! All in all they tried out all the tricks to please the freshers. And since there was no kidnapping this year, the freshers must have had a lovely week. No kidnapping?? Why so?? Because this year all the first year students have been allocated the hostel no 7 which was highly guarded by CP….(Chandigarh Police). Last year we were the unlucky ones to be allocated hostel no 6 which has always open for anyone… So it was easy for some of the guys to come to our rooms and take us with them. So coming back to the former set of people, they really had a bad time visiting the freshers to convince them while missing their classes, and bypassing the “general college discipline”. At the same time they had to receive lots of threat calls from the opposing parties. That was the attraction of this year’s election. My close friends and classmates had received a few threat calls, and we all knew, it could be a serious threat. One of my classmate had always been associated with the SOPU party till the election time. He always took help from seniors of SOPU party since most of the residents of his hostel supported SOPU. At the very last moment he openly started supporting and campaigning for PUSU party. He received lots of threat calls. So he temporarily shifted to a different hostel, and visited his room only when he required a different set of clothes. He was really enjoying this, his comments were.. “ Ab zindagi jeene mein asli mazaa aa raha hai, bohut saari threat calls aai hai”. Some of the others were really scared and never moved in the campus alone. The other set of people had a much better life. Just had to face a little bit of campaigning and some of your friends wanted you to join them and help them out with campaigning. I was cleanly out of it. Neither do I wish to face threat calls nor do I wish to deviate from the “general college discipline”. There were also some new twist and turns in these elections. Everyone has to vote for 4 department representatives (DR) and 4 main members of the students’ union, namely the President, the Vice-President, the General Secretary and the Joint Secretary. This year there were only 4 valid nominations for the post of DRs by PUSU party. All the 4 nominations for the post of DR by SOPU party were cancelled because they filled up the nomination forms incorrectly. Apparently the teacher who assisted them in filling up the forms gave them incorrect instructions, and as usual PUSU partly was blamed for it. On the day of voting, I was amazed to see the amount of security in the campus. There were 2000+ policemen in the campus, water cannons, and teams of Rapid Action Force, Quick Reaction Teams and Riot Control Police. The campus looked like a protest venue.
Eventually SOPU turned out to be the winner this year.

Meanwhile we had another set of birthday party… we celebrated 3 birthdays together and had a combined treat at a grand restaurant: Mehfil, Sector 17 Chandigarh.