Trip to Pondicherry....

I have been away from blogging for sometime now. I traveled to Pondicherry last Saturday to collect the degree certificate from the college. It was too late to reserve the tickets. I decided to travel to Tirupathi by bus and then to Chennai. I liked the smooth journey by Volvo to Tirupathi. It was little bit expensive but Rs. 350/- extra is quite affordable now. I used to do a lot of calculus during my student days but hopefully not anymore.
Tirupathi bus-stand has a dormitory now where you are charged Rs. 20/- for four hours of stay there. Dormitory is well maintained and I liked the concept very much. Chennai gives that antique look in every aspect. Transport buses are still not that modern as a Veera or Metro express but TN buses carry heavy loads than its counterparts in Hyd.. I caught up with few friends in Chennai and visited Spencers for the firs time.
ECR road is well maintained and TNTDC is doing a great job there. ECR took just above 150 minutes to reach PEC. College did not loose anything from the time I left except those pairs wandering everywhere talking every silly thing they can think of. In fact, few things are added now. One is the Auditorium, IT Dept., and new labs in my dept. for PG programmes. Now, every dept except the lateral entries (Chem., IT) is having at least one PG programme running.
I caught up with few lab assts, lecturers, Asst. Profs and Profs.. One thing that everyone expressed is about the quality of the students. Govt. of Pondicherry opened two medical colleges after 2001, which means that the best local talent moves to Medical College. Also, PEC no more attracts people from North and North East of India. One reason could be they have colleges in that part of India, which are as good as or even better. There were good number of people from Chennai and other parts of TN. But, that is not the case now. 50% of the crowd in Hostels is from AP and rest from Yanam, Mahe, Karaikkal and TN.
Collecting the certificates was not as easy as I thought. It was a difficult task roaming from Univ. to College that many times. The more I roamed, the more sympathy that I could create. They were totally convinced by the next day that this guy has to be sent back to the place he is from. On the way, I could witness many relief camps but could not extend anything from my side except feel sorry for them. I wish they would be back to their normal lives soon.