Issued in Public Interest: People are
dying because of heat waves, naxals, derailed trains, plane crashes, SRK’s
movies and knowing the way Mother Nature is swinging these days, I’m sure there
will be more causalities in the very near future and if not causalities then of
course people will die… completing their life cycles. This piece of information
is not news to you. Everybody knows it. So all I want to say is let’s not get
scared of death. If you are not happy with something, someone, then go ahead and
express your dislike. That’s what I do on this blog. And that’s what I will do
till the end. After you have read this piece of useless advice if you start
doing exactly what feel like and in the process if you get hurt or killed then
I am not responsible. You would have died one way or the other.
The time had come for my favorite part of the day. Food. Even
though the stuff served in hostel messes would not be classified as food in
most countries, leaving out Uganda, Nigeria and Samoa; after 4 years of hostel
life food does become a high point in the day. But as in all good stories, the
moment you start enjoying something, it somehow goes away from you. We had a
new rule in the mess by our Hall
management. Now every month we had to log online and fill in a form stating our
preferences and quantity in which we’d like to hog. This was done in a view to
stop wastage of food, a noble thought. Sadly, the highly competent G. Sec had
forgotten some key factors:
·
We had many seniors in the Hall who had outgrown the prospect of
filling in large forms with 20 questions just to state what they would eat.
These elders were above the concepts like administration, rules and forms. Of course,
they were busy people who couldn’t waste time in filling stupid forms. As it is
they were finding it hard to graduate on time from the college. They couldn’t
waste precious fagging hours for filling food forms. Besides, they were
seniors. Who could stop them from eating?
· There would be a colossal line in the mess every day when every one
of the 700 boarder’s food preferences would be checked, marked, conveyed to the
mess workers, and finally people would be served colored stuff on their plates.
I am no great mathematician but I didn’t find the idea of serving 700 students
in 1 hour very feasible. Of course people smarter than me had drafted the rule,
so it must’ve been correct.
· People who did not fill the form and were not allowed to have
the colored stuff of their plates were still being charged for the food; while
they were emptying their pockets to the local canteen whose sales had had taken
a jump now. This was double screwing, but the students of engineering colleges
are well adapted to the concept of double screwing. It is one of the first
concepts which are taught to us in our orientation days. So people did not
really make a fuss about it.
Thankfully, I had nothing to make a fuss about as I had filled in the 7 page form, 1 for
each day of the week. I guess I didn’t have much else to do. So I ignored the
smell of the dingy green thing lying dead on my plate and dug in to what I’d
later call “dinner”.
But food wasn’t the worst part of living in the Hall, I apologise for making it look
like a big thing. Nor was it the fact that I was living in a 7’ by 11’ box with
a broken regulator and the smallest fan I’d ever seen and windowpanes which
were so large that the window never actually opened. There was just a small gap
in them to allow insects to come in. I would have liked to close the gap but
the windowpane was too large to be closed either. I think my college promoted a
green environment. That’s why we were encouraged to pay homage to the small
ecosystem in our rooms. After a while, you get used to it. The spider webs help
catch the insects and protect from the bright light of the CFL (yes I use a
CFL, going green you see). The lizards in the room also help in cleaning up
insects. Sometimes even the cat comes into the room when I leave the door open,
but it’s of no worry. The cat remains clean. It seems that my neighbor Nitin
has adopted this cat. One morning we found out that Nitin had spent the night
with the cat in his room. No one knows what happened during the night but in
the morning the cat looked adequately hung over. That was not the surprise.
From experience we knew that anyone spending the night with Nitin could not
expect to lead a normal life thereon. The surprising fact of the situation was
that after that night Nitin never let go of the cat. They had formed an
inseparable bond and I must say they did complement each other really well. A
week after that incident, the cat suddenly disappeared and we found a lot of
small kittens in the Hall. I do not
want to sound judgmental but the kittens did have an uncanny resemblance to
Nitin. Maybe…
But coming back to my point. That was not the worst part of living
in my college. These were the things which you learn to accept with time. The
thing which actually irritated you was the one which eluded your grasp like
intelligent decisions eluded the education ministers in our country. But let’s
talk about it in the next chapter. Shall we?
