Four Years in Hell

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- “