A lifetime in law school contd....

Chapter 4: Hostile Hostel

The local bars in Nagarbhavi were where one normally spent one’s evenings. Small, seedy, dingy, smelly joints with Kannada film music blaring out of out-dated transistors.

Heaven – after a strong ‘boiler’, which was half a glass of Captain Jack whisky (Engine Oil for the uninitiated) topped up with Knockout beer.

And it was always likely to be at one of these bars that trouble brewed, seemingly stirred on by the terrible brew.

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I still remember the time Sad-Das (Sad-Ass, remember?) had once insisted on a ‘home cure’ when I was down with a slight fever. This involved us strolling over to Sarovara, the closest bar, and ordering whisky with Citra. He muttered something about the lemon essence doing the trick.

Sure enough, after a couple of whiskies with C, I was toasting the ingenuity of this Meatloaf look-alike. I was so far gone that I actually agreed on rooming with him the next trimester! Him being medically astute and what not…

But when we were allocated a room in the third trimester of our first year, it was a disaster. Our room was on the ground floor of Himalaya Boys’ Hostel, right next to the common loo, with windows that opened out onto the hostel septic tank.

Aaarrgghh!!!

I cursed the collective stench that ganged up and hung out in our room. It gagged you speechless and then clobbered you as you walked in. I cursed it to a private hell of its own where it would’ve had to smell itself forever.

Sad-Das appeared less tormented though and seemingly had a sanguine approach to Life. I had never pegged him as a philosopher, and a philosopher he had to be, for it took a detached mind to live through a summer in that room. Just goes to show, I thought. You never ever really know, do you?

After a hellish trimester in Himalaya, we shifted to another Hostel – Ganga, which was about a quarter of a kilometer away from Himalaya. We had to, for sanity’s sake!

And so, I was both flabbered and gasted when I discovered that the sinister stench had shown amazing perseverance by managing to stalk us to our new quarters.

Meanwhile, old Sad-Das hummed on blissfully, as he unpacked and settled into his new cubicle.

Christ! It was then that I couldn’t help but give Mr. What-Smell-Are-You-Talking-About, a long hard jaundiced look and an ever-so-slight snuffle.

That’s when I realized that all the whiskies and C’s in Nagarbhavi could never keep old Bad-Ass and I together as roomies…
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Naturally, I spent a lot of my time out of my room. And most of this time was spent in the room adjacent to mine.

Kabir Singh, Sundaram Surendra and Balvan Bhupinder were my obliging neighbours in Room 105.

“Power Structure” was Balvan’s pet obsession and his attempts at house-breaking Sundaram ranged from ‘extreme’ to ‘excessive’.

For starters, he called the biddable guy – Susu.

And so, “Susu, what the fuck is wrong with you?” was the common refrain of the room.

Also often heard were, “Why do you drag your feet when you walk about? Why do you wipe your nose on your palm?” And the classic – “Why do you have to breathe so loud?”

Meanwhile Cabby, crafty old fish, would snigger away in a corner, loving the conflict but refusing to get drawn in.
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The only time poor Susu got any respite was whenever B. Sampath walked into the room.

It was always ironic to see Susu team up fervently with Balvan whenever the latter tried instilling the virtues of an efficient power structure in B.S.
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Living in the hostel was annoying.

Waiting for an empty loo in the morning, only to get an unoccupied loo that wasn’t quite empty.

The constant noise. It could drive you to chew on your pillow after you were done gnawing on your mattress.

The ever-so-long queues at the mess for the kind of food that even starving Ethiopians would politely decline.

The rules. And the assholes who tried implementing them.
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And living in the hostel was fun.

Catching up with floor mates as we brushed our teeth or shaved in an extended L-shaped basin. In this regard, nothing could beat the time we watched Cabby talk to himself in the mirror and promise himself that he was going to be a movie star. Or the time Susu actually managed to give himself a slip disk while cleaning his tongue.

Adding to the constant noise.
There was this pesky little senior who lived above Room 105. We’d make enough noise to get him running down so as to shut us up and then as soon as we heard him settle into his cubicle above, we’d make enough noise to get him back down. He just didn’t get it…

Food fights in the mess when the electricity went off.
Balvan earned his stripes and was called the Curd-Surd, after he hurled a bowl of curd on an irritating junior’s face.

And breaking the Student Discipline and General Management Committee Rules made all those inane rebellious teenaged stunts worthwhile.

After all, our battles against the vapid, evil minions of the SDGM were all part of the glorious war that we waged on Law School – for being the place where we were forced to change our inane rebellious teenaged ways.