HOSTEL LIFE : CHIMNIBAI DHARAMSHALA

I can’t think of my blog without mentioning about my hostel life. I think who ever has been through hostel life would know what exactly it felt to be a part of it. I do agree most of us have to go through the hostile ragging season. Pre ragging period is like watching Krishi Darshan in DD and post ragging is watching Friends or Baywatch, know what I mean ?!!

My hostel life started with a 2-month stay at a private hostel in Guwahati right after my Higher Secondary exams for some medical coaching. Never got through it but I sure enjoyed my freedom 100%. From movies, to late night hangouts with friends, to teenage love experiences, I had it all. This was my golden period of freedom-hood and rotten period of my career-hood. Ha ha ha but no regrets. Since it was a private hostel so there was no ragging so it was a smooth journey. I also had my first adult movie experience (not the hard core one!). The hostel seniors forced all the juniors to come along with them. It was some small shabby looking movie hall called Urvashi, if I am not wrong. I was with all sorts of possible nightmares occupying my mind throughout the movie. What if someone I knew saw me, what if the police raided the hall and I ended up in a police lock-up and my parents were intimated about it, for which I had planned a fake nervous breakdown. Worst case scenario, I would have swallowed some calculated amount of sleeping pills making sure I don’t jeopardise my life for this silly reason. More than enjoying the movie, I was sweating and thinking when would the movie end. But I must accept I did enjoy the movie too. You see “Boys will be boys”. :)

But my real hostel life began three years later after that brief 2-month stay in Guwahati. Along came the great CHIMNIBAI (our hostel). It was a Dharamshala I must tell you, which is very shabby looking, but we enjoyed like hell. Looking over my past I was never very studious. It’s not that I did not try, every exam time I am over burdened with studies and my next semester starts with a promise of regular studies, but where!! I could rightly compare my resolutions with the movie title “Gone with the wind”.

My good friend Tridib and I went to the hostel on the same day. We were all chimpanzees in the zoo of new comers. On the first day itself Tridib was stripped down to his briefs just covering his genitals and was asked to sing a song and another victim of this situation was asked to dance on Tridib’s distorted noise in the same piece of ultra modern fashion clothing except that he was wearing a cutting edge one revealing more of his manhood. To make matters worse, Tridib was singing “Tujhe dekha to ye jana sanam”, trying to do justice to the song with his divine voice and the other chimp was asked to do a disco step to it. Dude now that’s what I call a deadly combination. I swear I had to hold on to my breath to stop myself from laughing in that dangerously precarious situation where I was likely to be a similar victim. Luckily I was the only one standing with full clothes downtown. Sorry Tridib can’t help it.

Here I came to know that Cricket could also be played indoors. We played it in a narrow corridor in our hostel and it was fun. It was not only hard to score runs but we always had to be alert that the man-made ball did not hit the god-made balls, cause one deadly smooch of the two and #$%&% well you can visualise the rest. I remember this one particular match where I was the only one standing in the crease from my team and I played till the end scoring 45 and won the game. I can compare it to the movie title “One Fine Day”. I will always remember that match.

We used to go to movies in groups of 10 to 15 people. We used to scream our guts out at the movie hall. Once we also stole watermelon from the roadside seller. I personally did not do it but I was also involved in it. Not that I boast about this but it would remain as a cherished memory. We cribbed about the hostel mess food all the time but also relished the food at the same time, maybe because we all sat together and cracked joke after joke that we literally forget what we were gulping down.

Oh one more thing is that, Dharamshala was also booked for marriages and there were some dare devil studs in our hostel who sometimes attended the marriage parties one after the other, have food and come back. One thing, which is common to all of them, was the single coat which all of them used in turns. Most of us used to have a gala time watching the chicks from our hostel rooftop. :)

I guess I should stop now. There are so many memories to write about. Some sweet, some bitter. We had hard times sometimes but managed to enjoy all through. But then the hardest part of all, the good bye bit.

I believe everyone should stay in hostel once in his or her lifetime. Sometimes you make friends there who become friends for lifetime.