NITT Diaries — Chapter 4

College Days

‘Beep, beep… beep, beep” my alarm was blaring early morning disturbing my peaceful sleep. I turned it off, and then again after 5 minutes, I heard the wretched sound. This went on for around three rounds, or four rounds, or maybe more, I had lost track. I leaned and checked the time. It was 10:20. So, definitely not the fourth. “Excellent” I said to myself. I sprung up from the bed and rubbed my eyes once more to make sure. And yes, it was in fact 10:20. I ran to the toilet with my toothbrush, facewash and toothpaste, which was recommended by 9/10 doctors (apparently). Strangely, there was no rush or a queue for the washroom. Weird but somehow possible.

As I was running, I looked out of the corridor. I noticed people were there with luggage and suitcases rather than the usual line of Btwin and Mach-City. I had to take out my phone and check to know that today was, in fact, a weekend. I almost slapped myself and went back to bed immediately. Just as I laid my head on my soft, cushy, stinky pillow my phone rang. I picked up the phone and looked with contempt wondering who had dared to call this time of the day. And of course, it was none other than “Bruce Achayan. I was fairly surprised to see him up before 2pm on a weekend.

I picked up the call and he immediately started to yell “Dude, where the hell are you? I’ve been waiting near Bru stall for at least an hour. Come, we have to go”.

“Go where?” I asked after a 20 sec break trying to wake myself up.

“Basketball you fool!!!” he replied in a very ‘polite and calm way’.

Then he went on narrating the conversation where we planned about going to the main basketball court for practice at 9:00. After Freshers’ night, we were all exhausted, we decided to go to CCD for some drinks and I ended up drinking at least 3 café frappes. After consuming lots of caffeine and being half asleep, that’s when I made that promise. It’s a wonder that I even remember it at all. So, it’s not completely my fault that I forgot about this arrangement.

After telling him that I’d reach there soon, I got up and changed into my usual hoodie. I ran out and hopped on my cycle and sped through the traffic of cows. As usual, there was no time for breakfast, so I decided to get some energy boost at Bru itself. At Bru, I saw him sipping noodle soup while blasting music on his headphones AND most importantly, talking to a random girl. He gave me a very weird but funny smile.

“You were late and I had nothing to do. Soooo….” was his reasoning.

After bidding farewell to his female companion, he hopped on my cycle and we rode to the main basketball court. After only a 1-hour practice session, I was dead tired. Each and every muscle and bone in my body was paining. As we stopped at Bru agin on our way back, I noticed a guy with a gym bag continuously staring at us. He was fairly short, bearded and dark. He looked Like a senior. It was weird but I was too exhausted to actually give it a second thought.

“OK, that’s it. I’m out.” Bruce got up and started to leave.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“THE INTERACTION” He replied with air quotes. His seniors had asked all the Malayali freshers to gather up and have a meeting to ‘introduce’ themselves to the seniors. I went silent. I had nothing to say to him. I think he was expecting me to say something because he walked away with a disappointed look. As he walked out, I could almost hear slow sad music playing in the background.

After around 2 hours, he was back at the hostel. We all gathered up to know the details. He went on to narrate what had happened out there. He seemed pretty happy that this interaction had happened. Despite some awkward situations, he was able to connect with a lot of seniors. They offered to help him out in any circumstance. As he put it, ‘They were very chill, bro’.

One fine day, one of the more well-known seniors came to our hostel for a briefing.

“Guys, please listen!!! Before Aaveg, here is a chance for you guys to shine on stage and leave a mark. We are going to have ‘MOONLIGHT’. In this event, each hostel will get a chance to showcase their cultural prowess. This is the chance to give a preview of what your hostel is capable of and compare it to the other hostels. And, there is also going to be good food and a DJ night afterwards where you guys can rave your heart out. It’s going to be held on 9th of September at Barn Hall. So, everybody do come and enjoy. Any doubts on this?”

He asked. Nobody said anything. After hearing about good food and DJ Night, the were busy screaming. I don’t think they aware of the fact that he stopped speaking.

I was so happy to hear this. I was thinking about how I could go back up on stage. And then maybe, just maybe, I could try to show myself in a better light than last time. As soon as I got back, Bruce and I started planning what to do. We decided to do a dance performance. We arranged a hostel meet and discussed further about this. For the next 3 days we were neck deep in practice schedules. We practiced day in, day out and finally we were ready to go on stage.

September 9th. We were all set to go. We were third in line to perform. Most of the people in our hostel were nervous about performing. A tensed Bruce went around calming everybody down. And after that, it was my job to calm him down.

I didn’t think of anything. All that in my mind was the music and beats. When it was over, my heart started to beat faster, eager to know what the audience’s reaction was. After a second of silence in my mind, all I could hear was applause of the audience. My heart was filled with joy and elation. In the heat of the moment, I went straight to hug Bruce, while Bruce on the other side thought I was going for a hi-five and swung his hand. You can guess what happened next. His hand hit my face. Unfortunately, quite a few of audience noticed what had happened. I started to wonder if there would ever be a day where I could have a normal performance on stage. Good food and DJ Night brought an end to a fulfilling and enjoyable day.

Just a few days later, Onam happened. The whole Malayali squad was on fire. The first year were assigned to all kinds of chores for the celebration. The seniors seemed to like Bruce a lot, they gave him a lot of responsibilities. He must’ve made a killer impression on them to get such recognition.

The day before Onam, the whole Malayali gang had to stay the night at the Barn Hall itself to get things done. Poor guys. Around 6 A.M, Bruce came to my room and laid down on Rajeev’s bed. For once, Rajeev didn’t shout at him for doing that. Rajeev and I finally decided to go to Onam. After all, it was our roommate’s festival and seeing the effort that Bruce had put in, we just had to see what the end result was. We had to get ready early, by around 8 in the morning, and walk to the barn hall because none of us knew how to walk properly in these “mundu”. Bruce helped me with the outfit and tied a belt around — just in case. After an elaborate MUNDU v/s VESHTI photoshoot, we all got out and walked to the main hall.

The team had done a very good job with the decorations. The whole hall was filled with flowers, a photo booth and all sorts of traditional stuff. The stage programs were a lot fun as well. After that, all of us got up to have the legendary ‘sadhya’ that Bruce kept bragging about. To be honest, it looked and smelled delicious. I got up and walked to the place where they were serving the food. As I was standing in the line, somebody tapped on my shoulder and seemed as if he was cutting in. I was annoyed because the queue for ‘sadhya’ was very big. I turned around to look who it was, and it was the same guy who kept starting at me that day, on my way back from basketball. He looked scarier with the mundu and black shirt.

“What’s your name?” he asked me in a serious tone

“Anirudh” I replied fairly meekly.

“Hmm… I am Mukesh, Mukesh Iyer. 3rd year production.” He replied in an even more scarier tone. “Walk with me for a bit” he firmly said. At that point I was too afraid to say anything. He put his arm around my shoulder and walked me out. “I lost my cycle around 2 weeks ago. It was a white Mach-city with a blue lock. It was a new cycle though. It had a sticker of Metallica under its mudguard”

After gathering up all my courage I asked, “Umm.. can I know the reason why you are telling me this?”

“Nothing much, I just wanted to know why you have been riding the exact same cycle for the past 2 weeks” he replied with an intimidating smile on his face. I froze up. I went up to my cycle and checked. There it was, a Metallica sticker under the mud guard.

I realized that we must have swapped cycles sometime before, because my cycle looked the same, apart from that Metallica sticker. I didn’t know what to say. I looked at him with a stupid smile on my face, thinking about all sorts of possible scenarios. Just then, to my good fortune, Bruce came running towards us. He talked to the senior in Malayalam to find out what’s happening. After a lot of explaining, he helped me sort things out with the senior.

“Don’t worry dude, it alright” the senior then said “Your cycle is in the security office. I had your cycle for a while until I noticed that it was not mine. Does it have JJW written on it?”

After thinking for a bit, I remembered that my dad wrote that when we bought it. I didn’t bother to remember. I had even made fun of him when he had done that in the first place. But now, I couldn’t be more thankful.

“What is JJW?” the senior asked. Bruce started to smirk.

“Jhunjhunwalaa” I replied with an embarrassing smile. The senior also started to smile and walked off nodding his head.

I looked at Bruce and exhaled. It was a moment of relief. He came to me and put his arm around my shoulder and we walked in to have lunch. It was the best lunch I’ve had in a while. All of us headed back to our hostel by 5 P.M in the evening. It was indeed a very good day.