Nomadic Existence - Part 6

MMM Hall of Residence. I’d been here many times but I never in my wildest dreams thought that I’d have to stay in this. There were no seniors here. No interaction with seniors. No wing culture. No late night parties. Just rooms. Scores and scores of rooms. It is the largest Hall in the campus with 800 rooms, i.e. capacity for 1600 students. The Hall is divided into four blocks each with 200 rooms equally divided in four floors. There are two messy messes, each for two blocks with the worst foos imaginable by the human brain. Some people disagree. They say normal human beings can’t even imagine the quality of the food served here. Nah, it was more like thatwe were served to the food. However, it all made MMM sound very organized.

It was not. Students were put there randomly and there were M.Tech students spread throughout. I wouldn’t have had a problem with this if there hadn’t been a ‘culture’ in MMM that undergraduates did not talk with postgraduate students and 25 year olds living in between 18 year olds did somehow prevent a ‘wing’ from forming. So people here interacted with each other less than that in my previous hall. Plus, there were no extra curricular events by the hall. In my previous hall there was so much to do that I would find myself running like Haile Gebrselassie throughout the day and here all people do except going to classes is… ummm… well there’s nothing exactly people do here! They live. And I was going to become one of them. Maybe. After going through the ways of Kharagpur last semester (with all my luggage that is) I’d learnt a very important lesson. And the song being played in the car can express it all in perfect words,

‘Hum hain is pal yahan. Jaane ho kal, kahan.’

The driver helped a lot in loading mine and Sagar’s stuff into the car. Most of the space was taken by the two mattresses we had. I wondered if I’d been insane to think that I found these to be small once upon a time. Then we had four big suitcases, two big bags and a lot of loose stuff like stationary, copies, calculators, extension cables, cell phone chargers, footwear, laundry bags, toiletries (including buckets), brooms, etc. We decided to get the room cleaned before shifting in and voila, when we opened the door we found that the room was already occupied by scores of extra pillows, mattresses, buckets, etc which the hall sells to new boarders. We had been ‘by mistake’ allotted that room. So after going through all the paperwork again we were given RR – 109. We got it cleaned and shifted in. Then I sent the driver back home. God! He’d helped us like a coolie. I immediately called up dad asking him if I should give something to him. When that was done I came back and started unpacking. I wanted to settle in as fast as possible as I hate to see things messed up and disorganized. After ten minutes when we closed the door we found that the almirah was locked. We went to the Hall office again and even they did not have the key to it. So we decided on breaking the lock and as soon as the lock was broken we saw a treasure of beer bottles and cigarette packets. The manager standing behind said an “OOPS” loud enough to make Sagar jump and quickly ran away. We were left standing there trying to understand what just happened. Another question on my mind was if the manager would let us keep the beer or would negotiate. Maybe the beer was his and he was scared because we had caught him. I wouldn’t have told anyone if he gave me a few bottles. But my fantasies were interrupted by his screeching voice, ‘Err boys, there has been a mistake. This room is already allotted to someone. They’re not back from the winter vacations yet. There is some problem with the computer. You boys have to shift to RR – 310.’

Silence. After 30 seconds of cold silence where I had closed my eyes counting numbers trying to calm down, I finally said, “But this is wrong. We have shifted here. There is too much stuff. We cant shift AGAIN.”

“But this room has already been allotted to someone else.”

“They can come back and go to RR – 310. There’s not much stuff they’d have to take from here. We’d have to shift with all this luggage you see here.”

“But they have been living here. It’s a computer fault. This room has not been allotted to you. I’ll send my boys to help you shift.”

After 15 minutes of bargaining we finally got our rights. The new room would be cleaned and our stuff would be shifted by the Hall within one hour. Still we had to be along with anyone taking our bags and we had to run up and down the stairs ten times before finally everything was done. I unpacked quickly. I had reached Kharagpur at 11 AM and now it was 6 when I finally had some rest. The room is good apart from a non functional tube light, a crow nest in the bathroom, a leaking tap and no friends. Still, I found the room better than any of the ones I’d previously been through. So I began a new semester in a new room waiting for the new year party. I don’t see any reason if by which I can be made to shift again but you never know. I’ve come to believe that living in IIT is quite similar to the nomadic culture. The only difference is that we use Gtalk instead of yelling YULULULU HU HA HE to communicate. You never know where you’ll be tomorrow.

Nomadic Existence - Part 5

What the Hell!


Why me. I’d had enough of trauma already. Shifting between cramped rooms. Do they realize I have to shift with all my stuff. From Bedding to pencil. Everything and if you reading there has never shifted with all your luggage, then you have no idea what it feels like. Specially if you do it yourself without those manly workers shown in cartoons. Now I had to shift to a wing with only few people I know. I had few options. I considered each.

• Nitin – Nah, he’s a drunkard. Cant have him coming back at night all drunk to irritate me.
• Utkarsh – Nice fella. But isn’t he gay?
• Sagar – Sabu. 6’5’’
• Tanmay – Nice guy apart from the fact he cant speak without slangs.

Ultimately I settled for Sagar, ‘cause he’s a nice guy plus he chose me and I thought its better to shift before he invites someone else. I took the decision. Sabu clearly stated he was not going to help me shift as he was ‘not well.’ So I shifted all by myself again. I’m getting good at this. This time I took only four hours. And there I was. B-104. My new adobe for the rest of my stay in this hall… hopefully.

Now this new roomie is cool. Is 6’5’’ tall but acts like a kid. He’s a tech freak, almost all IITians are which makes me feel they’re from a different planet, or maybe I am. Anyways he learnt it real fast that I really don’t care if google launched a new plugin by which I can see my emails on my mobile phone and he found this really odd. Almost all IITians found me odd in this respect. Like I had no ‘passion’ for new technology. Hell passion. These people don’t understand the difference between passion and frenzy. So here I was, sharing an internet connection with Sagar through a wi-fi network created by his computer. I thought I had a problem with a small bed. He used to sleep with his legs falling at the edge of my bed which was 3.5 feet away from his bed. Plus, the unbelievable feat – this 6’5’’ monster took a bath everyday. EVERYDAY. And people find ME odd! In case you don’t know, most IITians will not waste precious water in something insignificant as bathing. Twice a week bathing was found sufficient. Some people find that grouse. But when you have four bathrooms for fifty people sixty meters away from the room with damped walls, cold water whose color is anything but transparent and a variety of rare living creatures bathing with you which are found only in the intellectual environment of IIT, you don’t consider bathing as an everyday part of your IIT existence. But this guy, who could use the whole tank of the hall alone for bathing once; bathed everyday. No wonder we have water shortage here. But he was a good guy. He had made up all the patches on the door to our room by simple glue and did it all in one night. He had smuggled out an extra tube light for the room which came quite in handy when we needed to block the windows from opening as they had no hooks; and leaving them open would give the mosquitoes luxury of enjoying the ostentatious room we paid for. So there I was. Living with Sagar. Life was peaceful once more. Until, the inevitable happened.

…

It was a headache. I couldn’t take it anymore. After a heavy day of labs and classes, here I was trying to tell my roomie that I was least interested in knowing if Bill Gates had stolen all the ideas of Windows 7 from Apple. But it seemed like he had spent three hours collecting information and videos about Bill Gates’ perfidy and believed I had no right to breathe without knowing the ‘facts.’ I was a bit relieved when Tanmay came running to us. Due to public readership, I cant tell you his exact words. But between all the curses I just understood that there was a new notice which I should’ve seen by now. He was looking real worried and practically dragged us out of the room. Almost all the first years were standing near the notice board. I spotted it at the first sight.

“All first years are to be shifted to MMM Hall of Residence before the commencement of Spring semester 2009-10. All the keys of the rooms are to be given to the Warden before shifting and meals shall be provided in MMM Hall of Residence from the next semester.”

I was too shocked to think about my own feelings. I looked at Sagar instead. He stood as if he’d been slapped in the face. No reason stated. We had to shift and we could do nothing apart from shifting. Well, we could go on a hunger strike, or commit suicide, or make a rally or protest, but it’d be easier to plainly shift without speaking a word. So I went to the Warden of my Hall and spoke.

“What are the new room numbers?”

“That is a matter of concern of MMM. Go there and ask.”

That was done. Now I had to go to MMM. I had avoided it once but as they say, bad luck is like a importunate unsolicited guest and if that was too much English for you then understand that bad luck is just like the HMC, which won’t leave any chance of tormenting the students. But there was nothing I could do about it and I was getting used to this shifting business. Yes, I was hurt, but that doesn’t matter to the people who matter. I’d worked for this Hall, participated in events, people recognized me from the Hall and I was having a great time here. Well, no use ranting over what’s gone. When a bird pisses over you, you don’t go to sue the bird. You curse it and run to wash yourself and move ahead. I too had to move ahead. So I had two more weeks and then my winter vacations would start.

The new semester began on 30^th December and I had to shift before that. After much thinking I decided to comeback and then shift. Having my home in Kolkata I could bring my car along for a day and it’d be helpful when I’d have to shift to a hall around a kilometer away. Now just one kilometer may not sound that much but when you are taking everything from your bedding to your alarm clock along, you cant do it on foot. Somehow the HMC believed that relocating was a part of everyday life of IITians and we’d be more than glad to experience it every chance we got. So at the end of the semester in November, I packed my bags, left some at my Hall (if I could still call it mine that is) and took some home.