Chapter 16: Life in the Hostel

Vidya was sitting close to me, apparently still thinking about the chapter on ATKTs which we had done the past day. She was not furious at Aditya anymore, thankfully, and he himself seemed to be beaming under the attention that Veena was bestowing upon him. Aditya and Veena were taking a walk in the garden below and Chitragupta sat in a corner, eyes glued to his search engine.

“Dipen, yesterday when Aditya was slandering you out of jealousy, I said ‘I know Dipen very well’ very confidently. But, look into my eyes and tell me whether I was right,” said Vidya in the typical lovey-dovey style of the beloved when she wants to be assured that she is not stuck on a fool and that her faith in you is justified.

I wasn’t going to let her down so replied in a soft tone, “Yes my sweetu!” She beamed at her new nickname and I knew my arrow had hit her heart at the right spot.

Vidya bit her smile and chirped, “So, tell me more about yourself. When you think about your engineering days, what is the best memory that comes to you?

That was an easy question and I replied without a thought, “The hostel days. There are a lot of memories attached to my stay in the hostel.”

“Hmm… okay… go on…,” Vidya encouraged, hoping for a detailed answer.

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The origin of the word “hostel” is a tale that dates back to the 12^th century when the very famous English Dictionary was being developed. But before that, have you ever wondered how a language develops? Have you ever thought why a table is called a table or an elephant called that? Have you ever wondered how these names were thought of? Any language develops based on the whims and fancies of individuals assigned to make that language, i.e. someone from the board assigned to develop the words in the English language thought of calling ‘that huge animal’ in the zoo an ‘elephant’. Upon approval of the board, the whole world now calls ‘that huge animal’ an elephant. There is no logical reasoning why that animal should be called an elephant and not zambala or something else. The word “hostel”, however, is an exception; it was formed out of a little confusion than out of sheer whims and fancies of any individual, group or board.

In the late 1150s, His Highness King Edward III wanted to expand his dictionary of English language Boxford so that it also includes the local flavour of different countries. So he made an itinerary wherein he would visit Russia, Americas, India, Denmark, etc., and invite one delegate each from all these countries to work on his dream project. While His Highness was visiting Ahmedabad in the late 1150s, he noticed one Gujarati lady selling some white and yellow coloured stuff at a roadside stall. He got inquisitive and wanted to taste that white stuff. He went to the lady and gestured to ask what that stuff was. The Gujarati lady was intelligent and understood what His Highness wanted to ask. She answered, “Aa dhokla ane khamman che” and handed a piece of white “dhokla” and yellow “khamman” to the king. He loved it so much that he ate around ten pieces of each. His happiness also showed in his inviting her to England to help his team work on the dictionary of English language.

Very soon the true Gujarati Hansaben Shah became the talk of the town. The whole of India had high hopes from her that she would go to England and impress the king so much that He would bestow her with loads of jewels when she comes back to India.

In a month or so, Hansaben reached the land of whites – England. She was so excited to see everyone so white and well-mannered. Everyone kept saying “Please” or “Thank you” or “Sorry” for any and every damn thing! She was totally bowled over by the handsome young men in England. She had never seen such awesome handsome dudes in India. In India, she was used to seeing lean, brown, dirty, zero-in-dental-hygiene, lecherous men!

A week after landing in England, Hansaben was introduced to the other seven delegates from Russia, Americas, Denmark, Germany, China, Australia and Brazil. When Hansaben Shah met Mr. Hose Benson from Denmark, it was love at first sight for her. Mr. Hose Benson was six feet tall, as white as a swan, muscular, with dimples adorning both his cheeks. She had imagined her entire life with Mr. Hose already, to the extent of thinking out the names for their children – Chagan Benson and Magan Benson. Hansaben was then introduced to Mr. Vince Hogward – the transcriptor who wrote the words in the dictionary after the board of eight nationals approved that word. After talking to Hansaben for around ten minutes, Vince made a mental note that she does not mean what actually is most times. For instance, when Hansaben greeted him for the first time, she said a word which sounded like halo. He even touched the back of his head to see if there was any halo behind him; none! Vince understood that she meant to say “hello”. In short, it was upon Vince to deduce what Hansaben wanted to say.

This is how a word made its entry to the Boxford dictionary- After any national out of the 8 said a word and defined its meaning, there had to be silence in the room for at least 10 seconds which would mean that everyone agreed. Vince would be sitting in an adjacent room that would enable him to only hear the discussions amongst these 8 nationals. Whatever he hears or is able to deduce from what he hears would be a final entry into the Boxford dictionary.

Before the D-day of finalizing the words, there was some spark between Hose and Hansaben. They used to go for long walks, and talked for hours together. Hose was just flirting because he was missing his beautiful girlfriend who was waiting for him in Denmark; Hansaben, on the other hand, was very serious about her love for Hose. She couldn’t hold on to her feelings after a while and decided to declare her love in the session on finalizing words for Boxford dictionary.

The following was the seating arrangement of those 8 nationals around His Highness’s discussion table:

#	1	2	3	4
	Mark Schlokosvski (Russia)	John Benetton (Americas)	Hose Benson (Denmark)	Frank Benjamin (Germany)
The Transcriptor- Vince Hogward (in an adjacent room)					His Highness King Edward III
	Hansaben Shah (India)	Chung Lee (Obviously, China)	Vanessa Hugens (Brazil)	Jonathan Trumpet (Australia)
#	8	7	6	5

The session started with Mr. Mark Schlokosvski. He suggested the word “Discombobulate” and stated that it would mean “to confuse”. Such a difficult word in those days actually discombobulated the rest seven nationals. No one said anything for the next ten seconds for they were not able to understand what had just been uttered. Vince took this as a signal of their approval and hence, the word “Discombobulated” was added to Boxford. The word “Discombobulate” would, for the rest of ages of mankind, mean “to confuse”. While the other nationals were suggesting one word or the other as per their order in the room, Hansaben was busy weighing her pros and cons of proposing to Hose Benson right then and there!

After Mr. Chung Lee suggested the word “SakiNaka” for “a place where Saki is made”, it was Hansaben’s turn. She couldn’t hold on to her feelings any longer and blurted out “Hose, tell I love you. I want to live in you happily.” Feeling a little embarrassed with the gaze of all others on her, she pointed at others asking them to leave and give her and Hose some privacy, “you leave, you leave, you leave”. No one in the room understood what was happening and there was silence for about twenty seconds after that utterance. Vince, sitting in the adjacent room, thus announced a new word on the basis of what he heard and interpreted –

‘Hostel (Hose, tell) – A place where you live with happiness and love. And everyone can live in it (you leave, you leave, you leave). No matter what region, what nationality, what creed or caste.”

His Highness King Edward III couldn’t believe that there could be such a simple word for a place where everyone could live with love and peace. Nationality or colour or money wouldn’t matter. Such a place would be called “Hostel”. His Highness was so happy with the word that He declared that Hansaben Shah be given seven horse-carts of gold and permanent citizenship of England. And that’s how hostel came into use and probably how Hansaben became the first Indian immigrant to England.

Not just this, Hose Benson himself gradually started loving Hansaben and forgot all about Denmark. They got married and had two kids – Chaganlal Benson and Maganlal Benson.

Now that we know about the origin of the word hostel, let’s see what happens in a hostel in an engineering college.

A hostel is normally divided into different blocks and has quite a few rooms for one to be able to count. On an average, there are three students sharing one room; the number of room partners decreases as you rise up in seniority. As freshers, you will have to accommodate with three other freshers; but as you rise up in seniority, you might have to share your room with only one mate. A fresher in any hostel has an excitement and nervousness equivalent to that of a non-mumbaiite coming to the CST (Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus) station for the first time! He looks around and tries to admire everything new around him and says to himself, “This is my home for the next few years! I have to make the most of it.”

When you join a hostel as a fresher, most times, your room partner will be chosen by a lottery system; it’s all about luck! After you have been assigned a room, you go and check out where it is and how clean it is, the view from the room, the proximity to a toilet, the bathrooms, etc. Let’s suppose you are the first one to find the room and you have three other to join you. You take your luggage to your room and belch out a few abuses, the degree of which will depend on how bad the room is as compared to you expectations! Since you are the first to enter the room, you will have the liberty to choose your side of the room. You switch the fan on, which runs so slow that you can almost count the number of times it rotates if you fix your gaze on one of the blades. You instinctively check if the regulator is pointed at the lowest speed. But, no! The arrow points at top speed. So, now that you know how much air you are going to get even when the fan is at its best speed, you sit in various places in the room to check which part of the room is the most airy to finally choose your spot!

You sit on your chosen bed, which looks dirty and well-used by all others who have slept on it before you. You sit on it and imagine a few good scenes that’d happen in the course of those four years. Inevitably, a sweet, good-looking girl will be a part of it. You imagine talking to your girlfriend while loitering in the lobby, giggling with room-mates on lewd jokes about teachers and fellow students, and sleeping to your fill without being disturbed by anyone.

Your train of thought gets interrupted when you feel something biting your butt! Oh damn, bed-bugs! They have been there for generations. It’s like humans encroaching the jungles and then animals attacking humans! The khatmal tastes your blood and signals to his mates that it is party time; a new bakra has offered his butt to the bed-bugs.

You get up instantly and wonder what to do next! How to get rid of the bloody khatmals! Now that you have already stood up, you think of checking out the bathroom and the toilet. Just as you go near the toilet, a foul smell emanates from it. You clench your nose as hard as you can with your fingers to avoid falling unconscious. You run away as fast as you can, saying “B*********, hagaa hai ki mazaak kiya hai!” And that’s when you see a senior washing his hands and looking at you with distaste in his expression. He says, “That was me. You got a problem?” He keeps staring at you, measuring his first bakra for ragging! You blurt out a meek “sorry sir” and go back to your room. You then recollect that you wanted to check out the bathroom, too. But first you want to make sure that the senior has moved away from the wash-basin. Oh no! You cannot be that lucky. He’d still be there, checking you out in the mirror! You are gone, beta! That’s when your heart would utter the first meaningful “lag gayi!”

Just as you are wondering what to do next to save your ass, someone knocks at your door. Some thin bespectacled kid with a bag is waiting for you to respond. He introduces himself politely, “I am Vinayak from Yevatmal.” You smile at him and say to yourself, “He is my man! I shall bully him!”

Vinayak will keep looking at you wondering what your unspoken dialogues were! Then he will look around and ask if he can occupy the place on the right side of the room. You smile and help him put his luggage down. Vinayak then sits on that cot and you guys keep talking about the high school, stream of engineering you have been admitted to, etc.

You wonder why in the past minutes Vinayak still hasn’t felt the pinch in his butt. That is when you realise that these bloody khatmals have an eye for a fat butt and like to suck blood from the fleshy ass like yours and not the bony ones like Vinayak’s!

In a day or two, you get to meet the other two room-mates as well. That is when you know that you have to live with these fellows for the next one year, at least.

This is what you will find in a hostel room, most likely in a guy’s room:

1)     Four guys sleeping till 8.00 am, at least two of them flat on their stomachs, and one other looking at the fan and wondering whether to get up or not!

2)     Four unkempt beds.

3)     Three buckets – two for bathing, one for soaking clothes. One of them has to be red for some reason.

4)     Three mugs for bathing. You don’t need one for each when you can share them.

5)     A bottle of Khatnil (a very famous medicine used to kill khatmals) lying under a bed.

6)     Scattered assignments and journals on the table.

7)     A small idol of some Indian god somewhere, mostly Ganpati.

8)     A broom in the right hand corner of the room.

9)     Four pairs of shoes and one pair of bathroom slippers, white with blue straps! If some room partner is rich, then you may find a pair of Nike floaters, too.

10) A cricket bat and a green coloured tennis ball adjacent to the broom.

11) Four mobile phones on the table, all average models with nothing to boast of. It can be different if your parents had promised you a new one upon admission into a decent engineering college.

12) At least two mobile chargers hanging from the sockets.

13) Bars of bathing and washing soaps, along with one packet of cheap detergent powder.

14) A few hangers where clothes will be piled up everyday till your room mate shouts at you and makes you wash them.

15) TIME CAT notes, Barrons for GRE, ‘Quantitative Aptitude’ by R.S. Agarwal. Competiton Success Review scattered on beds/ tables.

16) Pleasure magazines secretly hidden under everyone’s beds: Mayfair, Debonair, Chastity, Playboy, Fantasy, NaughtyBoy, Fun, etc.

17) A guitar hanging over one roommate’s bed.

18) Two badminton rackets, one Chameli shuttlecock.

19) One shared computer and mildly loud speakers.

20) Love stories by young authors, with glossy, attractive covers.

21) Small posters of pretty actresses, some of them scantily dressed.

22) A long line of red ants marching from the window to the table where a packet of biscuits from last night lies open.

So, after having a look at a hostel room, let’s take a look at the routine of a hostelite.

A hostelite is a very optimistic person. He plans to wake up at 6.00 am, go for jogging till 7.00, have a bath at 7.30, have breakfast in the Mess at 8.00, read newspaper till 8.30 and reach college at 9.00! That is what I call optimism! What happens in reality is this –

The hostelite snoozes the alarm at 6.00 am, looks at the ceiling, tries to gather strength to get up for jogging and then finally dozes off till 8.00 again. Now it is Mother Nature’s call wakes him up and makes him stand in the queue! The pressure is building up and the fart bomb clock is ticking! Finally when his number comes, he has to open and close the door like a fan atleast five to six times to make sure that the gases emanated by the previous fellow don’t make him unconscious! What follows is bliss and someone else shouting from outside the gate, “Are you fucking asleep or what?”

After that great start to the day, the hostelite brushes his teeth and goes to the Mess to have breakfast. He tries to recollect what day of the week it is. It’s Wednesday. So, he will have to choose from upma, poha, aalu paratha or omlette. Picking one of these options is more difficult than voting in the country’s assembly elections! Decision made. Omlette it is! And now what? Tea or Coffee or just plain milk? You call the Mess boy with some pet name – usually Chhotu, Oye, Manyaa, Raja, Bhimaa, etc. He doesn’t come to your table. He prefers to stand near the counter from where the cook throws the ready items for him to take to the table. You just shout out what you want and he conveys that to the cook. The cook, with his expertise and agility, makes Omlette at a speed that makes you wonder whether you are actually given a fresh made Omlette! You finish your breakfast and go the room, take a bath and pick up Bombay Times. Most of the times you would be more interested in knowing what Priyanka Chopra wore at a fashion show than about some new scam that has rocked the country! Now it’s time to head to the college. Since you started the day pretty late, it’s but natural that you will miss the first lecture. You stand outside the class, waiting for the first lecture’s professor to leave the class and then enter the class looking sheepishly at the girl you like! She smiles at you and that’s what I call a “Babbar start” for the day!

You go to the last bench, improve your cartooning skills, play X-O, and make your crush laugh! If she looks back and smiles at you, then you repeat what has made her smile even more. You while your time till 1.00 pm, which is time to head to the Mess again. You sit in the line and wait for Chhotu to serve you food. You look at the food and wonder what on earth did you do wrong to deserve that watery dal, rubbery chapattis, and chewing-gum bhaaji! You don’t eat; you just gulp something down and let the acids in the stomach take care of digesting that blob of food. Then you go to your room and relax for a while after which you have to attend the practicals. After a small fifteen-minute siesta, you go to the lab and stand at least three feet away from the electrical equipments and hope that someone from your group of eight will have the courage to touch those equipments when the current is on! Then you attend one more lecture and at the end of the day, head to the canteen to have some vada-pav, kaanda-bhaji or some such delicious, oil-dripping delicacy! You indulge in some chit-chat with your friends before heading back to the hostel at 7.00 pm. If the weather is pleasant, then you could lie down on the green grass in front of your hostel and wonder what you are doing with your life and what you should be doing, etc. The clock strikes and now it’s time for dinner. You eat something light and then go for a stroll with your room mates. You crack jokes till your stomach hurts with the resultant laughter! When you come back to your room, you copy a few assignments from the others. After that is time for your favourite book; you try to live a vicarious life through the lead characters in the book! With that ends your day!

The above-mentioned routine is for the non-PL days. When the exams near and your Preparatory Leave (PL) starts, your routine is quite different. You sleep at 5.00 am and wake up directly for lunch. After having a heavy lunch at 1.00 pm, you will feel drowsy and hence would want to sleep again. You have two solid reasons for going back to sleep in the afternoon: you slept at 5 in the morning; you have to stay up all night again.  

In order to recharge your batteries, you sleep from 2.00 pm to 5.00 pm and then go to the hostel canteen to have tea and some snacks. You chit chat with your batch mates over the tea about how difficult the subjects are and that you are not able to understand anything. You then wait for them to respond. If they agree with you, you feel good. If they don’t agree, you feel your balls in the mouth! You then talk about till what time you are planning to study that night. The undercurrent is the wish to hear “Wow! You sleep at 5.00? God hai tu!” You just smile and feel good about that hollow sentence. You then go to your room and open the Crash Course notes or the notes xeroxed from your classmates and try to read till 8.00 pm – dinner time! You finish your dinner and stroll near the hostel for an hour before heading back to the room. You play NFS or listen to a few songs to freshen up before the long ‘readathon’!

You suddenly realize that you haven’t done anything substantial since 5.00 am and start being serious about the exam. You read till 11.30 pm when someone from an adjacent room asks you, “Hey man, wanna have a cutting and a bun-paav at the canteen?” You have been waiting for that since 9.30 pm! You take a ten rupee note from your wallet and head to the canteen and order a cutting chai and a packet of Parle-G biscuits. You again discuss with your friends about the number of hours you are going to stay awake! While eating the last bite of Parle-G, you start feeling sleepy. But since you don’t want to insult the ten bucks spent on that little cup of tea and biscuits, you control your sleep and go back to your room and study till 3.00 am. Just as you are about to sleep, you will hear some hostelite walking and reading in the lobby ask you, “You still awake? Awesome man!” There is nothing else to give you a kick better than that! You get excited and keep your eyes open till 5.00 am and read something! Then the birds start chirping and that’s when you know that your day has come to an end! As a courtesy, your room partner might wake you up at 8.00 am for breakfast and you say, “Abey saale, I slept at 5.30!” “Topper hai is sem ka!” they say and leave you to your sleep.

And the cycle continues!

Is there any acid to test to know who is a true hostelite, you may ask. So, here is a list of what qualifies you as one.

You aren’t a true hostelite unless you have experienced or done at least half of the following in your four years at hostel:

1)     On your first day at the hostel, you look as scared as a beautiful heroine surrounded by twenty villains in a Tollywood movie!

2)     Mostly, your first suitcase full of clothes and stuff would be a VIP suitcase. In case you have more stuff, you will arrive at the hostel with a 3 feet X 4 feet aluminium trunk!

3)     In your first few days in the hostel Mess, you will love the food and curse abuses at the one who says “Mess food is so damn boring”. You don’t have to wait for more than a month to change your viewpoint!

4)     As a fresher at the hostel, you will be ragged. No matter how mild your ragging is, you will still have to introduce yourself to the seniors from your native place. I mean, juniors from Haryana will have to go and meet the seniors from Haryana and the same applies to juniors from other states!

5)     Out of three room partners, there will always be one whom you will consider very downmarket!

6)     During ragging sessions, the more you naturally enjoy the session, the lesser amount of time you will be ragged for.

7)     In your four yours at the hostel, you will try learning guitar at least once (and mostly to impress a particular girl)!

8)     After watching a movie starring Hrithik or Salman, you will plan to go to the gym in the hostel the very next day. Two days of heavy weights will make you realize that you are born to become an engineer and not an actor singing around trees and beating the crap out of villains!

9)     The khatmals in the common TV room don’t bother you as much as the ones on your bed.

10) In the common TV room, just as you change the TV channel to something of your choice, the rest of the viewers start shouting “Change, change, change”. This shouting may also be interspersed with a few abuses!

11) You will, at least for once, experience an “abuse-athon” just for the heck of it! And few years down the line you will recall those days with pride!

12) On every Sunday, there will be a delicious feast, post which you will sleep for five hours and be woken up by your room partner asking you out for some snacks.

13) Since you are a ‘good’ kid, you think twice before wasting money. A dinner at a hotel costs more than an evening snack done thrice. Hence, when you go out for evening snacks on a Sunday evening, you will tend to gouge yourself with inexpensive snacks like bhel, samosa, idli, etc., and kill your apetite for dinner!

14) Once in a while you find it okay to squander your money on a lavish dinner which includes a peg of vodka, rum, or whiskey which you start drinking when one of your drunk friends tells you, “You are my bro man! For this bro, just one sip man! Only this much man”. And then you tell yourself, “What the heck, it’s hostel life. If not now then when?”

15) At least one out of the six friends over a drinking session will have a tendency to cry after one peg! And then he will start belching out some sentences such as “I loved her even more than she loved me” or “These girls… shit man… they are just heart-wrenchers!” Some might even go on to tell you what all they did like, “I gave her everything she wanted. Money, evening snacks, movies… and that too!” Sometimes he will just cry and puke out all the Chicken Biryaani and Pomfret Fry!

16) Once in all four years, you will be caught by the rector of your hostel watching porn! At first, only the watchman would catch you in the act and then if you try to bribe him with a bottle of desi-daru or something, he won’t budge. He will promptly call the rector and hand you over to him!

17) Even if you are a pure vegetarian, you will try out non-vegetarian dishes at least once, just for experience.

18) Seeing your fellow classmates talk about books of the likes of The Kite Runner or A Thousand Splendid Suns, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Hungry Tide, etc., you will also go to your hostel library and borrow some serious fiction titles. You plan to complete it in a week. But, slowly you realize that you can discuss such books only when you have interest in reading. Just placing a book beside your pillow doesn’t help.

19)You will always know at least one fellow hostelite who has the habit of sleeping while reading during the PL days. During such sessions, he will suddenly wake up and realize that he has slept for fifteen minutes and start reading again frantically.

20) At the end of your four years at the hostel, you will click a gazillion pics with your fellow hostelites at every place that you think will remind you of your hostel life. You will also click pics with the Mess members and the watchmen guarding the hostel.

21) Before you leave your hostel after finishing your degree, the rector of the hostel whom you hated all those years suddenly becomes one of the most respected people on earth for teaching you discipline, limits and much more than you would have learnt staying in the comfortable walls of your home.

22) You will always know at least one hostelite who speaks in impeccable English after three pegs of vodka!

23) You will eventually believe in the meaning of “hostel” in the Boxford dictionary - ‘Hostel – A place where you live with happiness and love. And everyone can live in it. No matter what region, what nationality, what creed or caste.”