Flashbacks: A Year To Remember Part I: How I Met Arka

Its only a year that has passed, but whn I look back, I find so many things that I could always fit a whole lifetime in that year that just went by so fast. I bet I have mentioned this line in almost every of the post, and everyone might have guessed it as my most favourite lines to start with, and as a matter of fact, whoever thought so, isn’t much wrong.

It was in the late July of 2009, when I first talked to Arka over the internet. He was a guy I only knew as one of my “to be” college mates, and He was the founder of the Freshmen group in orkut. The orkut comminity was moderated and not anyone but the freshmen and freshwomen were welcome. So his first scrap came was the one asking for confirmation that I am indeed a freshman and not some senior with the motive of spying, because seniors were strictly proibited and I clearly understood the reason later.

The sole purpose of the community was to get familiar with the fellow freshmen. But instead, we used to pick on every guy and girl who, even by mistake, wrote anything in the topics in the community that we could cook upon to make it sound embarassing. It was fun there.

Once upon a time, topics never ceased to crop up for discussion and we all would have been attracted to that community in orkut for updated posts. Arka started a topic called “Unofficial Community Chatroom” which provided an awesome Conference platform. It worked like, when some of the community members were online, everyone can reply to each others’ posts and the posts would go upto 50-60 in a single session, and it looked like the online members have had a Conference in that topic. We basically used it to pull each others’ legs “LIVE” on anything anyone would say.

There was a girl who is with us since freshmen year, we called her Polo, the girl with a hole (came from the mint of the same name). She was a bossy sort of girl, and was easily irritated. She was the type of girl, who would chase you till she is exhasted just because you called her a Dumb (which is quite honest)! Arka and me never lost a chance to tease her in any topic we could find or she let slip by mistake. Then sometimes, Polo and me would tease Arka when he once said that he has to rush to get Wheat from “Manuda’s” shop leaving the computer online, and after that everytime he said, “wait, I am coming” it would always be “Manuda’s” shop assumed, and teasings continued!

I adored to pick on a guy called Kamal who was in my section, and was the nerdiest person I have ever seen. As a matter of fact, I am still surprised of the reason why, but for Each and Every of his posts, I always found a funny reply!! Let me tell you why. He was the kind of guy who would start a topic called “News Corner” and will post 42 posts, 7:40 A.M in the morning, about a Sledge Dog who caught cancer coz it ate a stale fish somewhere in Greenland! (There were many more topics started by him, this is just a Sample!) So I guess, I am naturally licenced to tease such a guy, which I never failed to excercise.

Whenever Arka found me online on Google Talk, the only two lines he had to say: “Hi, community Chatroom e aaye na!” (Come to Community Chat). As a matter of fact, during the first days of college, I wasn’t having the days which I wanted or was remotely near to my expectations. So, the thing I looked forward to was, as soon as I got back home, I would find Arka or Polo online, or Kamal would have left a post somewhere on which I could feed. I was dying to meet Arka and his group especially after listening to all the adventured they had, but I met them properly after about a month of desperate waiting, more on this later.

Now, How I Met Arka. Funny story, in orkut I saw his display picture and I dunno if it was his haircut, but he looked like a 5 feet guy, but Polo told me that he was tree size tall. So back to the story, I was about to climb up the outer stairs of the office building during recess while he was climbing down when we collided, but it was not after a minute when I realised who the familiar face was, and by the time he had gone a few paces in the opposite direction, but I doubled back, called his name, and he turned back too, and what I did after that, I swear I still remotely have no idea, why I did – A Salute! I felt it was so lame and idiotic, that I didnt even wait for his response, I meanm  a SALUTE, Who Does such a lame thing! Now, any other guy would have let this slide, but the most amazingly astonishing thing about Arka is that, he tracked me down in front of the library the same day and said – “You are Samik, right?” Now what strange and funny about this is that, he could’ve thought me as anyone from the fact that neither has he seen my photograph somewhere nor have I said anything to him that he could match with my talking style in Google Talk. I still don’t know how he recognised it was me!

Arka and me went on to become Best Friend to this day, and this was how it all started! Arka and me discussed all crazy things in google talk, including about an idea of animation (which I am not going to mention coz I am still hopeful about it and I don’t want anyone to steal the idea!) or a theme for Google talk had found somewhere which displayed funny Emoctions.

Once, everyone in the orkut community came up with a “Meet Up Plan” in the Engineering Graphics Laboratory, (those who dont know about the subject, it was one of our back breaking subjects in first year), which I couldnt attend. Polo was very eager to meet me, coz she wanted to meet the guys who would fire her tail everytime they caught her online in Google Talk (one of them being Arka, whom she met during the “Plan” and the other being me). So, when Arka told Polo that he had already met me, she got even more desperate to meet me! Now the thing is that I was delaying meeting with her which was annoying her, and I was enjoying that...

Keep Reading for How I Met Polo, Aditi and Nirmalya...
To Be Continued...