Friends

Here's my newest. Well not exactly 'mine.' Dedicated to all my friends, specially Shubham who helped me make it and to everyone, who inspired me for it.

Nomadic Existence - Part 2

If I’d thought that was bad enough for a start, I couldn’t be more wrong. Three days into my IIT life and I was approached by this senior who asked me to shift. I had been allotted the wrong room and as they are running through a management crisis I’d have to be shifted to another room on a temporary basis till I get my final room. For all non-IITians reading my article, it should be understandable that it is not an everyday affair you shift all your luggage to another place just waiting to be shifted again. Plus, it wasn’t my fault that they were facing a crisis. You have a problem – you sort it out. Why bother me? But that’s one of the first things you learn in college. Seniors are always right. A senior’s words have to be followed by anyone willing to stay alive till he gets his degree. I did not. I went straight to the manager and told him my situation. He looked sympathetically at me, picked up his phone and called someone. Within five minutes the senior appeared inside the manager’s room. I later realized that he senior is the hall’s maintenance in charge and who goes to which room is his decision. So the manager didn’t have the ‘power’ to oppose the decision and I was given a time of 36 hours to shift. Now I had two options, either to shift as they say with all my luggage, or don’t and wait and see what happens. I went to check out the new room. It was double the size of my current room. Double the amount of dust. Both window panes broken. More graffiti and more nudity. But what left me bewildered is already some luggage was kept in that room. That room was meant for four people, not two. My immediate reaction was that four people cant live together! Its against humanity to make four people live in a cramped situation like this. Plus one roommate was bad enough for me. I don’t think I’d be able to take on more. I talked to my roomie about it. We decided to wait. The next day morning the senior came to check if we’d shifted. We had no option. We started the procedure which took five full hours. Finally, we had packed again, shifted from C-311 to C-334. This, when I was starting to get attached to C-311 which I thought will be my new home for years to come. Thankfully, the new room was on the same floor so we didn’t have to take the suitcases and bags through the stairs. None of the seniors which made us shift came to help us. As seniors, they were already helping us, by teaching that we will have to carry our loads ourselves in life. What they forgot to tell was that it is the seniors themselves who bury us with that load.

We never got to see our new roommates ‘cause as soon as we’d shifted to the new room, the senior told us that since we were so keen on getting a permanent room, we’d been finally allotted D-121. D-121! Right now I was on the 2^nd floor of C wing. Now I’d have to take all my stuff to the ground floor of another building 50 metres away. You’ve got to be kidding me. But they are seniors. And seniors don’t kid. They order and we have to obey. After 6 different hours, we were finally in our new room. D-121.

Nomadic Existence - Part 1

C-311

I liked the sound of it. 311 was the number of my previous room too and now in IIT Kgp I was again given this number. Perhaps just a coincidence. But whatever it was, I liked it. I signed the register for room allotment and asked for the keys. The gatekeeper of the hall looked at me as if I had asked for one of his lungs.

‘Your room partner has it,’ came the straight reply.

Now where did that come from? I haven’t seen my room partner (or roomie as I now call it) yet. I asked where was he supposed to be. Again I got a frown as large as the Huangpu Bridge. Something told me that this gatekeeper wasn’t very much used to questions.

‘Gone for the registration,’ another flat reply.

My IITian brain started to tick. The registration started at 9 AM. Mine was over by 10:30. Now I’d even had a small chat with some teachers (which I later realized are to be called Profs) in my department and wasted a lot of time finding this hall. For some reason, everyone who heard I was a first year and was trying to find out my hall was guiding me to a hall named triple m hall of residence though the website clearly stated I was not going there. Finally I’d found my hall. It was 12:30 PM now and this guy had gone for registration! With my keys! I knew it’d be tough to share a whole room with someone. I asked the gatekeeper if he had the phone number of this guy. He looked as if he was going to freak out now. How dare I ask such a personal question. Had I no ethics. He looked as if he would have smashed me with his palm. He lifted it up and took out another register. God he had so many registers. I wondered if the gatekeeper was on leave and the accountant had been made to sit in his place. He opened the relevant page and put his hairy finger on a line (yes his finger was hairy). I saw the name. Akshay Goenka, 09AE1034, 09747217986. I dialed the number. A voice which could have easily been personified to the Arbanian mountains replied.

‘Yes. You must be Vishal Gupta (how did he know!). Yes, you must be wanting the keys to our room. Yes, we are coming. We are just having lunch. Yes, we’ll be there in a while,’ and he hung up. I was like, ‘……’ What was I supposed to say. In all that running around I simply forgot I needed to have lunch too. Well, you are reminded of lunch only when you have your keys.

After around one hour, I was walking towards C-311 with Akshay Goenka and his chachaji who I realized had talked to me on the phone. ‘Thank God,’ I thought. Else how could one have lived with Mr. Arbania for four years! Chachaji unlocked the room. Well, he didn’t have to as the door had enough cracks and one punch would have knocked it off its hinges for good. And that’s one punch by me, I wonder if a fly would be scared when Akshay slapped the wall next to it with his skinny hands. Finally, after three attempts, the lock guarding Ali Baba’s treasure opened and we were facing… an end. The room had ended before it began. 10 feet by 6 feet, I estimated. Two beds, one chair, one table, three cemented door less racks, hanging plasters, posters of nude girls from different parts of the world, graffiti, broken window panes, dust all around and no bathroom in the vicinity. To say that I was shocked would be an understatement. I wasn’t shocked. I was traumatized and I use that word just to make you feel the gravity of my situation. So here I was. One small room, one skinny roomie, one ton of dust, one lan port without a laptop and the nation’s best engineering college. My life had begun.