It was another day of my life at IIT Kgp. I get up and see my curse the alarm clock waking me up. 7 AM! It stared back at me. I still have one hour and thirty minutes till classes start. I can get up at 7:15 and make it. I go back to sleep. At 7:15 the clock is again asked to wake me up at 7:30. I was living a basic IITian life. Finally at 8, I woke up, terrified. I’d wasted so much time here. I immediately sprang up from the 5’6’’ cot supporting my 5’10’’ frame. Rubbed off the dust from the clothes I was to wear. Changed. Picked up my toothbrush. Rushed to the bathroom 70 feet away from my room. When I came back I remembered. My roomie! He’d asked me to wake him up for the class today. Somehow the squeal of my alarm clock was incapable of waking him. I shook him. No effect. I kicked him, nothing. Kumbhkaran had finally taken over my roomie. I had to take the ultimate measure now. I emptied his bottle of water on him. He shook. Looked at me the same way the gatekeeper had once. Before he could say anything I gave him a Godzilla look and said, ‘attend a class at least once.’
‘You know my signature. Proxy,’ and with that Mr. Sleepyhead drifted back to neverland again. After the first week he’d announced, ‘these teachers don’t teach anything. They can’t match my speed. I can study without them.’ And he’d stopped going to classes. Now he attended labs. Only labs. Me? I accepted I’m no intelligent specie. Maybe the OMR I submitted in JEE goofed up the computer well enough to make an opposite decision for me and get me selected. I went to class. When I came back my roomie was happily playing counter strike on his laptop. The day his chachaji left, just before leaving he handed over a beautiful Del laptop for my roomie. When he left, my roomie had tears in his eyes staring at the laptop. When he turned that machine on, he magically went into a different world leaving his body behind. He never responded to me unless I’d add a few slangs to my words. I asked him if he’d go for lunch today. No reply. Another thing I found weird about my roomie. He never had lunch or dinner, never mind sleeping through the breakfast and was never hungry. But I never had the opportunity to question the body of my roomie. At 1:15 PM I left for the lab scheduled at 1:30 and I knew he’d reach at least by 1:40. He was never late by more than ten minutes. After the lab we came back and my roomie was again drifted to the world of no worries. I completed enough assignments to let the prof keep me in the class for the next day and then went off to the next room to bhaat. In case you don’t know, bhaating is THE activity of Kharagpur.Bhaating means a herd of IITians sitting down in a room and chat about everything which can matter to us. From the placements in final years to the length of the dresses of girls wear. We talked about it all. Somehow I found these bhaating sessions utterly ridiculous and couldn’t stand for more than 15 minutes but I couldn’t leave the group. But soon it all started to make sense and now, I also interacted. And I knew all there was to know, or at least as much as my wingies (neighbors) knew. When we grew tired of bhaating we turned on the ‘best’ Hollywood movie which was a must watch and which none of us had seen. By 1 AM that would end and I’d come back to my room. Say goodnight to the body of my roomie and would goto sleep.
