My Encounters With The Prettiest Eyes

8. Our First Practical

Our First Practical

Unlike Rodrigue's integrated students, we HSC students never went to college. Our teachers only sent us practicals and tutorials to write, that too two months before our practicals. We were warned only once that we were supposed to complete our practicals as they were to be submitted in our college. By January, I was done with physics, chemistry, computer science, and English. I had completed half of the math tutorial.

We received our practical timetable around a week before the practicals. They were to be conducted in two days, and I was damn excited for them. Earlier than this, we had practicals in November which were canceled by Sameer sir.

Then I needed only two things — one was a uniform, which Maa had arranged. Our college didn't have the college symbol on the shirt. My father had a shirt that matched quite a lot with our uniform. The pants, though, were not similar. He had black pants while the college pants were blue. But I had to manage.

Second thing I needed were three different fruit juices. Only then I realized that sugarcane isn't a fruit. So I managed with watermelon, lemon and orange juice.

Thursday,9th March 2023

I left at six in the morning, since our practicals began at 7: 30. I reached Khandpur station at half past six. Surprisingly, I saw Sarthak getting off his bike outside the station. I ran towards him and quickly greeted him. It was a nice coincidence that we both were in the same college., tied up with different coaching institutes. He had even called me a few days back when he saw both of us in the college list. But I had forgotten about it.

By seven, I was standing in front of my college. Baburao Shankar - the board read. I had never been to any HSC board school ever in my life. I had heard that they were the best somewhere, while at other places they were not. This one, resembled the latter of what I had heard. It seemed to be a damn old building, and the plants reminded me of Venkatesh school, but it was 1000 times better than this.

We climbed the staircase and on the first floor, I met some students from AOS of the Niral branch. Timothy was one of them. He was the anchor with me on AOS Day. We smiled at each other and shook hands with joy.

First, we were then called into the physics lab where we acquired tables. I, along with Kirti, was with the B1 students on the table. We were given our sheets where we wrote our names and copied measurements, readings,tables and certain diagrams from our practical book.

It lasted for an hour and soon we were free. Not allowed to leave the premises, we all were sitting in the class. The chemistry students came back and then it was our turn to perform it.

With our lab coats we left for the chemistry lab. The 4th Test match between India and Australia began as we took our papers to write the recorded readings. I had to work on table number 8. where I met two more students from Niral. One of them surprisingly knew my name, and suggested the other guy to join me in the experiment.

The teacher was showing the procedure while my partner was busy roaming around,taking snaps and going to the washroom. And when he returned, he asked me what we had to do.

"Abe kutte. Tu kab se ghoom Raha hai yaha se waha. You are doing nothing but time pass and then you are coming to me asking the procedure.", I barked at him.

"What did you call me???.a dog??"

"Yes.", I was damn frustrated.

"Now you just wait and watch..", threatening me, he went to his friend.

"Ha Bhai he called me a dog", I could hear him complaining about me. And in no time, my entire apparatus was gone and I had nothing to work with.

On the other hand, the game had begun. Australia were off to a flier, with Travis Head smashing Shami all over the ground. They could not take a single wicket in the first ten overs. Rarely does an opponent team achieve that feat in a test match in India.