I soon found out that there were a set of rules that juniors are supposed to adhere to in order to make their life more "pleasant". For example
1) Juniors should dress up in formal clothes only. This meant full-sleeve shirts and trousers, no belts allowed
2) Juniors are not allowed to ask seniors their CGPA
3) The senior is always right
4) If the senior is ever wrong, refer to rule no. 3
Although the last two rules are a direct ripoff from the age-old joke about how the boss is always right, the first two are pretty original. Initially I thought that the first rule was solely in place so as to make the first yearites as uncomfortable as possible, then I thought that the rule was in place so that the seniors guys could get their pick of first year girls, but then I inadvertently realized the true reason for this rule: It enabled seniors interested in "interacting with" juniors to easily pick them out in a crowd of guys.
And how did I realize this on my own? Well, as it so happens I hate formal clothes, so while coming here I packed my entire collection of t-shirts and jeans, and there was not a single button-shirt or pair of trousers in there, as a consequence of which I roamed about in casuals, and most seniors were none the wiser. This, along with the BITSAT score mentioned earlier, pretty much saved me from most of the "interactions" that took place in my second year. And those interactions were pretty rough on a few poor souls. I still distinctly remember the day Harold came back to him room with his eyes brimming with tears because a couple of seniors apparently asked him to swear at a tubelight.
But as far as interactions go, I guess that the first yearites from South India, and Tamil students in particular, drew the short stick. In my first year, the situation on campus was that the number of south indians there was steadily dwindling, as a result of which the remaining south indians on campus had gotten pretty close, despite their being from different batches. Hence, while the rest of the students had to interact mostly with their immediate seniors, the south indian first yearites had to contend with second, third and fourth yearites.
I can still remember days when Lucifer (my room-mate) would leave at 5 in the evening and return late at night, covered in bruises.
Ok, so the bruises part was false, but the rest of it is true. He didn't seem to mind it so much though, and would periodically describe particularly entertaining sessions, like the one in which he was asked to take a pick of three addictions: nicotine, alcohol, or pornography. And then there was the one in which he was asked to hump a pillar...
The aforementioned seniors had given us some homework: to learn our intros by heart. So, on returning to the relative safety of my room, I set about doing this with my usual enthusiasm and gusto. Picked up a brand new book, turned to the last page, wrote "Intro" at the top in big, bold letters, and wrote down the intro (complete sentences) below that and went about the task of memorizing it while my dad looked on in amusement. Mom was too busy fretting about the state of the room to care...
After I had my intro down pat, I decided to head over to the water cooler to refill my bottle. When I announced my intentions, my dad decided to accompany me, probably to save me from "interactions" with more seniors. When we reached the cooler, we heard a man shouting in a nearby room. "How dare you do that?? I will call up your parents, give me your phone!"
My dad and I exchanged confused looks and strained our ears to hear more, but all we could hear were some murmurs. Then the man shouted some more, and presently we saw a merry trio coming around the corner. At the head of the group was a dark man, flanked on either side by a man with a bushy moustache, and an old balding man in khakhi.
My dad politely greeted them, and the man at the front introduced himself as our warden, Mr. Stephen Carlton. I could almost hear trumpets blaring in the background at that moment...
Earlier that day at lunch I had seen a notice put up on the mess notice board. The notice welcomed new students to the campus, laid down a few basic rules and procedures like "if your wing member is sick, kindly inform the warden immediately". Somewhere in the middle of the notice was a statement that read "Students who have brought music systems or computers are required to inform the warden about this."
Hence, I decided that now would be a good moment to get it over with. The warden looked like a reasonable man, surely he would welcome me into the fold.
"Sir, I saw a notice on the mess noticeboard today."
I waited for him to congratulate me for my high powers of observation, but no praise was forthcoming, so I ploughed on.
"It said that students who have brought have to inform the warden about the same, so.."
I trailed off as I saw a look of bitterness spreading across his face. He opened his mouth to shout, and then suddenly seemed to remember that my dad was standing beside me, and changed tactics midsentence. I don't remember exactly what he said, but significant phrases stand out, like "Your son's room will turn into a gaming parlour", "I have seen this happen to many other students", "Everyone from the bhawan will gather in his room to watch movies and play games", and my own personal favourite, "Your son will be kicked out of his own room and will have to study under the light of the streetlights".
My dad and I patiently waited for him to finish his rant. He went off in the same fashion for several minutes while my dad nodded and made polite noises to assure him that he had his undivided attention. At long last he finally seemed to run out of air, and stalked off with some lame cryptic warning.
My dad waited until the chap was out of hearing range, and then turned to me and said in complete seriousness "Make sure that all of that does not happen. Studying under a streetlight will damage your eyesight"
All I could do was grin and nod.
[to be continued]
We reached our "wing". My room was mercifully empty at that time, and we entered to see no sign of my roommate-to-be. The room contained two tables, two chairs, two cupboards, and two beds. The lack of my roommate was decidedly a blessing, for I was free to choose the better of the lot. I quickly picked the cupboard away from the window that opened into the corridor (to keep my belongings safe from thieving hands), the bed under the tubelight (all the better for late-night-reading), and deposited my computer (that was soon to be lovingly rechristened 'Amey's half-adder') onto the table nearest to the power socket and the network plug-point.
At this point, a boy who had been cleaning up Harold's and Tom's room walked into my room and offered to give it a "washing". We gladly agreed and marched out of the room and left him to his devices. As it turned out, his idea of cleaning the room was upending the beds, piling the chairs onto them, and pouring a bucketful of water into the room.
While this was going on, I decided to head over and see how my friends were doing. So I proceeded into their room and saw that Tom's mom was gazing around the room with a semi-horrified expression on her face. I turned my gaze to Harold's mom and saw that she had fixed me with a freezing glare. When she saw that she had caught my attention, she motioned towards my shoes and indicated the pile of footwear lying in the doorway (the same pile that I had blissfully ignored while waltzing into the room) and asked me to remove my shoes outside as the room had just been cleaned.
Muttering an apology, I retraced my steps to the door with a woebegone look on my face, slipped out of my shoes, and turned around and looked at her with a sheepish grin.
It was at this moment that my room-mate chose to make his appearance, complete with four suitcases and a full moustache to boot. My first expression of him was that he was probably a South-Indian mafia lord in the making, for his bushy-yet-thin moustache decidedly made him look the part. His Dad introduced himself and his son, Lucifer, and also introduced his son's friend as Sean. This was followed by inquiries about my BITSAT score and rank.
It was late in the evening by the time all of us were settled in, and just as we were contemplating heading out for dinner, one of my "wingies" knocked on the door and told me that seniors in the adjacent wing had called me.
I pasted a brave, don't-give-a-damn look on my face for the benefit of my parents, announced to the room that I would be back shortly, and strolled out of the room in what I hoped was a nonchalant air. I peeped into Tom's room and saw looks on semi-apprehension on his and Harold's faces, and guessed that they too had received the summons. The three of us walked down the corridor and made our way to the crowd of seniors in the near distance, each of us trying our hardest to not lead the pack.
There were around six seniors and a couple of juniors there. On seeing us, one of them called us over and asked us if we'd just arrived. I nodded for all of us, not trusting myself to speak at the moment. He then asked us if we knew what an intro was. All of us shook our heads.
"Oye, get over here and teach them how to give their intros," he called out to a chap who was standing nearby with his hands 'respectfully’ behind his back.
The chap moved closer and started off in what I thought was an unnecessarily patronizing tone:
"Ok, here's how you give your intro.
You have to state the following
a) Your name
b) Your identification number
c) Your discipline
d) Your room number and hostel
e) Your home-town
f) The names of your city-seniors, starting from the fourth/fifth year, backwards
g) Your hobbies
All of these have to be stated in full, using complete sentences, No short forms are to be used"
"Got it?" the senior asked us.
"Yeah?", we replied unanimously.
"You're supposed to put a 'Sir' after every sentence you say, and not just in your intro...”
"Yes, sir" we intoned, sounding like a bunch of rookies at a boot camp.
"Good," he said, “Now give me your intros.''
I stood by silently as Harold and Tom gave their intros.
Once they were done, I started off with mine.
"My name is Amey Parulekar, Sirs,"
"My identification number is Two thousand and six, practice school, Zero three two Sirs"
"My discipline is Bachelor of Engineering, Honours, in Electrical and Electr-"
“Wait, what’s your ID?"
"Two thousand a-"
"Just the last three digits"
"Zero three two, Si-"
"Zuc three two, aa?" one of them asked the senior who was interrogating me.
"Are you a board topper?"
"No, Sir"
"What's your BITSAT score?” one of them piped up.
"Four hundred and thirty, Sir,"
This was followed by what can only be described as an unnatural silence as all of them stared at me as if I had just announced that I was about to have all of them for dinner.
Interesting enough, my Captors forgot about the rest of my intro and started asking me questions about my IIT-JEE and AIEEE scores.
As it turned out the best part about getting such a high score was not that I was nominated (but not selected) for the Aditya Birla Scholarship, or that I got to be in the same room (if one can call the auditorium a room) as our highly esteemed, then-president Abdul Kalam, it was that most of my intros came to a grinding halt at
“My discipline is- “
“Is that it??”
All four of us stared in disbelief at the brown gate that our car passed through. The words ‘BITS Pilani’ were written across it, and a banner saying ‘Welcome to BITS Pilani’ hung over the road. Two security guards in dusty-looking uniforms stood at the gate. Trees lined the road on both sides, and the walls beyond them were plastered with dirt. The hostel buildings beyond them looked somewhat run-down. It was quite clear that age lay somewhat heavily on this place.
One hour inside a cab stuck in traffic, eighteen years inside a train that rocked like a boat, six hours inside the luggage compartment of a car, and two years of slogging were behind me, and here I was, in the middle of the desert, facing the prospect of four years at BITS. And if the taste of Rajasthani food that we’d had at a roadside eatery on our way here was anything to go by, it was going to be a very long four years.
Our cars ponderously made their way to the registration room, which turned out to be the common room of one of the hostels. Two of my friends, Harold and Tom, were allotted the same room, while I got the one next to theirs. I stole envious glances at the relieved looks on their faces. Why couldn’t I have been the one to share a room with one of them? Who knew what monstrosity of a room-mate I might end up with… Knowing my luck, it would probably be some kid with thick glasses and a runny nose that he would periodically wipe on his sleeve. And he would probably call his runny-nosed friends over, and they would spend hours on end guffawing about something geeky and stupid.
Shaking my head with sadness and a lasting feeling of disappointment, I made my way to the ‘Photograph Room’. This was a room with a bed, a chair, a computer, a webcam, and a decent-looking female. While this might have stood for something else under totally different circumstances, over here it was just a room in which they took our photos for making our identity cards.
Now, if that dame had warned all of us that moment that the photos she took would end up on our identity cards for the rest of our sentence at BITS, we would’ve tried to look a little better. However, since no such warning was given, Harold ended up looking gay in his photo, while I ended up looking constipated in mine.
That being done, we moved out of that hostel and made our way to our respective hostels with our parents in tow. It was decided by mutual consent that we would wait till the next day to tackle the bank representatives who had set up camp right outside the hostel. Harold, Tom and I were in ‘Gandhi’ while Andrew, Shawn and Vicky were in Krishna. We lugged our suitcases (Harold had seven of them, my mom counted) to our hostels, and made our way to our rooms.
[to be continued]
Everything around me is white. I can hear the hum of the air-conditioner in a corner of the room. Every surface I could see seems impeccably clean.
A thought pops up in my head- “Is this a ‘clean room’ or something?”
I quash it. Damn it, I reprimand myself, your future depends on this! Get your act together and concentrate!
I turn my attention to the computer screen in front of me. They say that if you stare in an abyss for too long, the abyss starts staring back at you.
The following words are imprinted on the screen:
“Are you sure you wish to continue? If you click Yes, then you will not be allowed to return to these 150 questions.
Half an hour still remains. Plenty of time for me to attempt those twelve bonus questions which are reserved for the exceptionally brilliant/exceptionally foolish individuals who attempt all the questions. Thirty minutes to go. Plenty of time for me to check all my answers and then move on to the bonus questions.
The problem, however, is that I have already checked all of my answers. Twice.
I curse my fate. Half an hour is too long! Fifteen minutes would have been just right. Long enough for me to attempt the questions, but short enough that I could boast to my friends about how it had been a close call.
Story of my life.
With a heavy sigh, I move the mouse and click on ‘Yes’