How the Bakwaas Gang evolved from the eyes of Shawn Francis

How the Bakwaas Gang evolved from the eyes of Shawn Francis
Note: Everything that is stated here is solely my view on a whole lot of things. Favoritism may have caused some facts to be distorted but then that is the advantage of being author. So let us now turn back the pages.



First Semester Engineering, 2005:I had just got out of junior college and everyone had told me what a torture engineering is going to be. I was prepared for the worst. I used to talk to my building watchman everyday for ten minutes to perfect my Hindi and held regular conversations with my maid to improve on my Marathi. I thought engineering would be a ‘defining phase’ of my life and to drive home the point, I had skipped my family vacation to some country and attended the Orientation day of college. So far, so good. It was now the first day of college.
I entered college and ran to see the list on which my name was put up. I saw my roll number. It was really long. It took me two minutes to memorise it (not everyone is an Ameya Bhagat. This guy has the insane ability to even mug up diagrams). I then started looking at the names above and below me. Not a single girl anywhere in sight! I reminded myself that this was engineering college. Finally I found the name Deepti Jadhav. The name was very ordinary and so I had modest expectations. I stepped into class. Our class was plunged in darkness. The tube lights weren’t working. I strained my eyes and saw that there were three rows. All guys had occupied the side rows and the middle row was occupied by the girls. I decided to maintain the sanctity of the place and along with Kalpesh sat on the left hand side row.
Kalpesh, my first acquaintance in engineering, thanks to Moiz, a building friend. Kalpesh and Moiz were together in classes and so I was introduced to Kalpesh. The lecture started. Our teacher Shivangi Ruparel (SR) was by far the best looking female in class. Five minutes into the lecture, in walked Yogesh Chande and defiling the holiness of our class sat straight in the middle row and broke an unwritten rule that girls and guys would sit in separate rows. This revolutionary has gone on to break a lot many rules in engineering. Fifteen minutes later enters Khushbu Busa and plonks herself behind Chande. Two minutes later I turn and see both of them sitting together and laughing away to glory. I decide that Yogesh must be a girl magnet. I make a mental note to make friends with him. He seems good company. Behind me were Rishi Gaggar and Anurag Agrawal. SR tells us that Dayal and Tayal are good books for mechanics. Anurag didn’t hear the names. So he asked me to write down the names. I wrote down Tayal and Payal. Anurag likes the name Payal and we instantly hit off.
During the lunch break, Kalpesh and I used to eat in the canteen. Kalpesh used to keep on complaining that he wanted to form a group. Apparently only my company wasn’t good enough for him. In a few days he left and joined the now infamous shit gang. In the meantime Chande and I became good friends. We used to have a lot of fun in class. Chande was friends with Baxi. So I got introduced to Baxi. After shaking hands with Baxi, I told him that his laces are untied. He looks down and goes to tie them, only to realize he is wearing floaters. Little did Baxi know that the insignificant handshake would change his life dramatically. Saurabh Bajaj was a hostelite like Anurag and so Anurag bought him into our group. Another member (can’t exactly call her a member, but she spent a lot of time with us) was Ajanta. And so within 10 days of college, I found myself in a group of 6. This group satisfied all my needs. If only Kalpesh had hung on for some more time his life would never have been the same again. But here is the initial group:
Shawn: That’s me. Evil, wicked, always plotting, self obsessed and perennially lucky.
Baxi: Exactly opposite. Very innocent and perennially unlucky. An example of Baxi ka bholapan was that he showed me videos of his ‘friend’, one hour after getting introduced to me!
Chande: Fun to be with, but a little bit moody.
We three were inseparable in the first semester. Our outer ring consisted of:
Anurag: Was always running out of college to smoke. Spoke a dialect of Hindi which I didn’t understand at first.
Saurabh: Very efficient and sincere. He gave us the assignments. He also had finished the portion before the college had started, so was a help in studies.
Ajanta: She had purchased the brown files of submission before I had purchased my ream of ruled sheets also. She was responsible for supplying us with print outs and giving us experiments.
Back to present day, the outer ring has almost left bakwaas. The inner ring remains intact though. So in the first semester this group of 6 was formed. But what were the others doing then? Here is something about them:
Priyank: He used to wear three fourths and sleeveless shirts and roam around with a basketball. He had the knack of being extremely irritating. Was the most despised guy in class. Vivek Mapara was a close second. Now the crown lies with a certain Mitesh Mehta! He used to talk with the girls only and used to keep munching on his stupid chewing gum. Nobody liked him. Sumit once told me, “Ladke mar gaye kya ki yeh un ladkiyon se hi itna baat karta hain”
Sumit: Sumit is very noticeable so we all knew that he was part of the class. One day he came and sat next to me and said, “Main jinke saat bait tha hoon who log bahut boring hai (referring to the Dombivili gang). Tum log ke saat majha aayega.” He did not give me a chance to refuse him. He just sat next to me!
Siddhesh: Siddhesh was shorter than me and was always referred to as Chotta Shawn. He initially had a problem with this. Bear in mind this was the first semester and he didn’t know that being associated with me was going to be his greatest achievement in his insignificant life. During one electronics lab, he started protesting. He said that I should be called Bada Siddhesh. So an agreement was reached. We both worked on different kits and whoever got the right answer first would be known by his own name. The rest, as they say, is history.
Ameya: Ameya had no identity of his own. He was Chotta Shawn’s sidekick. He spent the entire first year sticking next to Chotte like glue.
Mohit: Mohit was the same. He hasn’t changed. Even in semester one he used to not attend. He didn’t have his bike at that time. And so I had seen him only in the lab.
Rishi: He was my lab partner and so an automatic inclusion in the gang. The ice breaker came when I caught him red handed in the workshop building.
Bhavin: I had come across Bhavin in the Computer Lab. All of us from A2 used to gather and have our famous ‘round table conference’ but Bhavin used to religiously write his program and store it in his BKD folder. Some habits die hard.
Kushal and Chirag: KK and Dhulla used to roam around together always. They reminded me of those typical Gujratis who wear those funny elaborate costumes and dance around with sticks during that 9 day festival.
Nishit and Kunj: Nishit was more recognizable by his voice than anything else and Kunj by his height.
This was the state of our class for the first one month. I was very happy. Baxi and Chande kept me entertained. Ajanta gave me experiments and print outs. Saurabh gave me assignments. Saurabh used to go on frequent trips to the canteen and treat Ajanta to bhel and dahi puri. Chande, Baxi and I used to always sit together in class. Once Poonam ma’am was fed up with our continuous blabbering that she finally said, “Roll numbers 31,17,9 get out of the class!!!”
Some days later, Yogesh volunteered to be the class representative. I used to wonder as to why he did that. It was only later on that a lot of things began to fall in place and I saw through this move of his. We had great fun calling him CR and boy he used to get real pissed. We lived happily till one mechanic practical. Anil was sitting next to me. He said, “You are from St. Annes school? I was in your class. You were the class monitor. I always admired you. Can I spend more time with you?” Now I am not one to decline requests made in such a polite manner and so Anil aka Anna became the seventh member of our gang. After a month and a half of practicals, A2 batch became a very close knit unit and with the introduction of Anil, came a whole lot of others. This was the state till the end of the first semester engineering. Along with the above listed names, Nikhil Galapure was also part of the group.



Second Semester Engineering, 2006:In the second semester, we shifted to the polytechnic building. It was without doubt the best semester to attend college. The benches were so huge that five of us could sit on one bench (or four if one was Sumit) Towards the start of this semester, Yogesh drifted away from us. He along with Nishit, Priyank and Kunj used to sit separately far far away from the epicenter of bakwaas. The reasons came to light only a few semesters later. At that time I thought that probably he grew bored of us and wanted a change. Kushal used to sit ahead of us and Angad and I used to keep slapping him from behind. One day Kushal, I, Sumit and Nikhil were sitting together on a bench in that order. It was Jumana ma’ams lecture. We were bored to death. C++ kabhi samjha hi nahi apne ko. So we decided to have a little fun. KK and I pushed Sumit with such force that the wafer thin Galapure flew in the air and went sailing across the row, only to land squarely on Vidhi Maroo (Shit gang Ltd. Member) That day Gala decided enough was enough. Never again did he return to the Bakwaas gang. Along with Gala, Ajanta also left us. She started sitting with the Mother India gang. Anurag was away in Kanpur for most of the semester. Another crazy thing that kept happening this semester was that whenever a teacher would call out the name of a bakwaas member, all the people sitting in that row would get up and make way for him to go to the first bench. It was in this semester that thanks to Anil we started discovering another facet of our personality. During this sem, I got to know KK, Dhulla, Anna and Mohit very well. Dhulla and KK are credited with the honour of bestowing upon us the name Bakwaas. ‘Bakwaas!’ was their standard reply to whatever anyone said to them. This rubbed off on the rest of us also and we also started saying Bakwaas so much that our gang was christened the bakwaas gang *trumpets*. This landed me in trouble once:
Hetal ma’am (with her hand in a cast): Shawn, write your program fast. Stop talking.
Shawn (the suck up that he is): Ma’am your hand is broken? How come? How did it happen? It must be so painful for you? When did this happen?
Hetal: Apne hi toh maara mujhe. Islliye haath toot gaya.
Shawn: BAKWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSS
Hetal: Kya? You said bakwaas to a ma’am? Give me you I card? How dare you say bakwaas?
Thankfully my guardian angel happened to pass by (Poonam ma’am) and I was saved. So this semester saw our class dynamics change a bit. These were the members of the different gangs in our class.
Bakwaas: (inner circle) Shawn, Baxi, Anna, KK, Dhulla, Bajaj, Sumit(s)
(outer circle) Anurag, Chotte and his sidekick, Mohit, Rishi and Bhavin
Bakwaas rebels/ Pinky: Priyank, Nishit, Kunj and Yogesh. Pinky if you take their initials.
Shit Gang: Aakash, Bandish, Kalpesh, Mitesh, Khushbu, Palak, Asmita, NJ, Vidhi. Group name evolved as the names of all the guys end with Sh.
Dombivili Fast: Our Galasaheb, Kardile, Praful, Prathamesh, Sagar, Loya, Swapnil etc etc. Group name evolved as all of them lived in Dombivili.
Mother India: Divya, Laxmi, DJ, Trupti, Kajal. Group name evolved as all members were very sincere and dressed in clothes preserving the rich cultural heritage of our country.
Chor Gang: Mapara, Kunal, Magar, Saurabh Agrawal, Mundada. Group name evolved as the members were always found using unfair means of increasing their attendance and kept falling in trouble with the authorities.


Third Semester Engineering, 2006:
At the beginning of the third semester, the pinkies joined the bakwaas gang again. We welcomed them with open arms. Ameya Bhagat began to have an identity of his own. We started realizing that he was fun to be with. He too realized that there was a world apart from Chotte. He blossomed and bloomed in our company. Priyank started wearing normal clothes like the rest of us and stopped chewing gum. He also got bored with the girls and now was a permanent fixture of our group. And he was some company. Our gang was now bigger and better and we continued to live happily ever after. The following semesters did no see the addition of any new member, nor did any one leave the gang. It was only until the seventh semester that the Bakwaas gang officially had their eighteenth and most special member. Welcome Bhabhi   