When I set foot on the lush green campus of NIT Rourkela , it never occurred to me that I will be madly in love with this friend for the next 4 years. During the 1st year days, when we were forced to walk on the road with our heads down, this friend helped keep my dignity intact. In the company of my friend, I felt like a warrior who can destroy those harassers. Winter came and went by. Gradually my friend became the cynosure of all. By the time we were appearing for second semester final exam, my friend had become the most talked about person in the campus. Such was his charm that we often sacrificed our dinner or even a good night's sleep to spend time with him. Yes. I am talking about Counter Strike, the game for which our batch will be remembered for.
I can still remember when CS used to be confined only to a couple of my friends. After the winter vacation, when most of us had PCs it was a whole new situation altogether. Almost everyone got wind of its popularity.Mudu started going door to door to install CS. Susi's room enjoyed the attention of one and all being the CS hub of our hostel. Those were the days when the IP address of CS server was written down on our hall notice board. Server started soon after we reached hostel. Hungry and jaded young engineers as we were, took solace in cs_office, cs_italy, cs_militia. I can remember the days when Beeshmoy dreamt of going in a study tour and reaching Dust2 and Swagat hallucinating at night that he got killed for the lack of back ups.
We became sophomores and the passion for CS grew commensurately. DZ, Spartans, Trojans and other clans were formed.Lack of LAN connection in Hall-07 notwithstanding, Ram, Bhuppi, Pru and Anna started the era of fy_dust via blue tooth connection. I remember going dizzy seeing the number of rounds of matches played. If I am not wrong, usually the count touched a near four digit number. Having LAN after two months seemed like winning a million dollar lottery. Ramii's server and BloodWing$ arena saw more people lined up for auto join than the playing limit. Brawls for each of those precious slots were not rare. We started to emulate the CS video strategies. Anda started giving his critical views on them. Mota took to sniping. IndianKiller charmed us with his spamming. Ashrit ran like a mad dog with his machine gun. Saha had that unique idea of edge gaming. "B re pasa" call became synonymous with the terrorist bomb planting sites.
Third year was a hard time for we CS fanatics. Divide and Rule policy prevailed as we settled in three different hostels. Only a handful of us played CS. Dota ruled em all. Jihaad2.0 and confluence-2k9 remained the only occasions when proper CS matches were played. Wall hacks, head shot cheats and Beeshmoy's flash gordon acts ensured that CS turned a dying game.
14th April, 2010.Wednesday. Only a few days left for us to graduate. CS has long since been dead and forgotten. I don't know why but today we are celebrating CS day, a day to remember our passion for this game, our days of glory. As awkward as it may sound, but its true that it was that invisible bond of CS which kept us glued together these 4 years. I hope today which incidentally is the oriya new year, will mark an epochal change in my friend's fortune.
P.S. I believe I wrote it in the same tone as Praneet bhai did a couple of years back. I can understand how hurt you would have been to lose your friend then.
