NITT Diaries — Chapter 2
A Loss and A Gain
“Hachh!”, I coughed and woke up to find Rajeev lighting the incense stick and beginning his morning prayer. I tried my best to cover my ears and fall asleep again, but, eventually, I ended up praying along with him. Nope, I was not at all a religious kind of a guy, I just prayed so that my roommate wouldn’t feel bad (just trying hard to have some roommate bonding going). This had been happening for the past 3 days and I was already tired of it. I was clueless about how I was going to spend an entire year with Rajeev.
I hurried to the “Barn Hall” at 8:40 a.m., for the orientation program, with my new ‘Mach-City’ cycle. Gosh, it’s so annoying to ride a cycle again in your life when you are already a skilled motorcyclist. But I’ll have to admit, it’s almost impossible to survive here without a cycle, for the campus is humongous and I needn’t mention about heat in Trichy. On reaching the Barn, I befriended a few of my hostel mates, and then proceeded to the orientation program. I took out my phone to check my messages, and what a surprise! There was no 4G for both Airtel and Jio users. All hail BSNL users. Yet there was something great that made me fall in love with this place, “Air Conditioning!”. I guess this was the answer to my morning prayer. I don’t know how the rest of the program proceeded, as I was in deep slumber.
I headed to the mess for the lunch break. The mess food wasn’t the way I expected it to be. Being a North Indian, it was pretty difficult for me to get adjusted to the food (honestly, I’m not sure if I am yet). But there was lime juice, which was the solution to all my problems. I came out of the mess, and started looking for my cycle. I was still getting used to the place and wasn’t really sure where I had last parked it. So, I began circling the same spot over and over again, confused where my cycle actually was. After suddenly remembering where I had parked it, I pranced to the location where my cycle should have been. All I could see was a centipede. A huge centipede. And then it dawned upon me that I hadn’t locked my cycle. What a bummer. This was God’s way of telling me to pray ‘sincerely’ the next time. I started freaking out as I had no excuse to tell to my parents. The only person whom I knew personally in this campus was my second-year senior ‘Rohit Sodagar’. I called him up and he guided me to check for my cycle at the admin block and to put up a post on NIT-Trichy calendar page on Facebook.
After putting up a post about my cycle on the page, I hurried to the admin block and looked around the place to see if I could spot my cycle. I even asked the guards about the cycle. He gave me a nice scolding for leaving my cycle unlocked and told that he would inform me if he has any news about the cycle.
Dejected by how careless I was, I walked back to my hostel. The time was 7:30p.m. and I was disappointed at everything that happened that day. But you know, sometimes, miracles do come true. I saw Rajeev standing at the gate with my cycle. I was jumping with happiness on seeing my cycle, and I asked him where he found my cycle. All he replied was that my cycle was not locked and he took it to keep it at a safer place. You might be thinking that this was lame. But this is exactly what happened and it’s not some made up story. I didn’t know whether to be happy or angry with him. But the main point is, don’t ever forget to lock your cycle here, you might never find it again.
Just then a car came to the front gate of our hostel. From the back seat came out a guy with his guitar bag. He wore ‘Adidas Originals’ shoes, joggers and a blue hoodie, even in this scorching heat. He had long hair, was quiet masculine and approached me.
“Hey, I’m Bruce. Do you know who lives in room number 34 by any chance?” And that’s how I met my second roommate.
Both of us headed to our room, and within the next ten minutes, he was busy unpacking his luggage in our room. He was a Malayali, brought up in Dubai and he was completely the opposite of Rajeev. He was an athlete and an ace footballer.
Being a Marwari, I feel much comfortable speaking in Hindi. But with Bruce around, I should say goodbye to Hindi because slowly, yet steadily I found myself in awe of his English. After unpacking, he immediately started blasting heavy metal music on his speakers. Looking at my annoyed expression, he asked, “What are you looking at?”
‘Nothing…’ I replied and quickly started browsing my laptop. But the sad part is, I didn’t have a roll number and a password then to use the internet. Just brilliant.
That night I contemplated if the rest of my year was to be spent inhaling the strong smell of incense sticks and listening to heavy metal simultaneously.
