Thursday, February 5, 2009

What’s in a name?

DISCLAMAIR: Censor Board has been very cruel to me and has asked me to edit a few lines in this post in exchange for a ‘U’ certificate. So friends, I have to edit a few things, which will be seen enclosed in “*”. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Long ago there was a guy called William Shakespeare who gave the world this famous dialogue “What’s in a name?” Well my answer to this is ‘everything’. We cannot imagine life without names. I am here to discuss about the names but not the regular or official ones.

Since childhood we have been giving Nicknames to our teachers, principals and friends. Some of us even have nicknames given to us by our parents and the family members call us by that name only instead of our official names but those nicknames are the pretty decent ones. The names that we give our friends, teachers are far from any sort of decency and are super hilarious.

Here I would like to mention about a few such names that I came across in my school and college days. To start with the school days, our principal was lovingly called as dinku, vice-principal as raka, our biology sir was luka, physics sir was lallan, mathematics sir was munshi (in his spectacular spectacles he looks like a munshi jii). Hindi and history ma’am were always together and we call them indu-bindu, music sir was raju tabalchi. Can’t write about this particular Hindi sir because the censor board was cruel enough to make me edit his name, two more mathematics sir were called gucchu and khujli, hindi one was bhaya, nagin was our English ma’am, carpenter sir was nanu, another geography fellow was charsi.

I remember only a few of my school mates like gheesa, dibiya, chahu, kauya, sanju-manju, sharp shooter, kaliya, angu, sheela (a guy bearing the characteristics of a girl, thus the name), udho dho dho, jhansi ki raani, chakka, labour, murda,hilla, hateli, tin-tin, dollar bahu (another guy), master jain. Sadly I haven’t met most of them since I left school. Where are you guys??????? I miss you people.

Now let’s come to the most important, memorable, exciting, thrilling and adventurous part of my life - the college life. Although it’s not at all fair to compare the college life with the school life which was an equally exciting and memorable one; I could have never imagined the same level of freedom that I had in college days to be there in school days. Till the time I was in school, I had to listen to stuffs like - come back home on time, don’t ride bike above 40kmph (40!! I can ride a bicycle faster than this), sleep on time, eat on time, don’t watch movies, study on time and hell lot of other things but in college-approx. 2300 kms from home, there was no one to say all this. I could do whatever I feel like. Also during the school days, at the time of examinations I used to get very nervous but in college during the exams I could see everyone equally nervous and that helped me reducing my nervousness to a great extent. Ok so without comparing the school-college life let’s get back to the topic which is about the nicknames.

The first day we met each other in hostel, we introduced ourselves with our original names and within two months (I wonder what took it so long) we all had given some nicknames to each other. These nicknames were based on our character, attitude and habits. Here I would like to mention about a few such names.

To start with I would like to mention about my roomy jhadu- his hairs were like a broom-stick so he got that name. Then there was tinka- he was a very lean guy, ravi ra**I - daily after dinner you can spot him at pmc (piya milan chowk), ganiya - as his favourite dialogue was ga**ya phad denge, paddhu- due to his farting habits, mutthu- censor board had asked me to edit this one so I can’t tell the exact reason for his name, taap - now there are many stories behind this; some say he copies a lot in exams thus the name, some say he flicks stuffs, some say he is a stalker. I don’t know the exact reason. There was Prabhu dada - because of his physique, palenda - because of his trademark dialogue “arre palenda ho re”, chucha nepali - as he was from India -Nepal border, joda - he was from some place which has this name, chowde - again censor board is to be blamed for me not telling the reason, pagal - he used to behave like that, atthe - again because of his peculiar speaking style, bbc - bi**y ba****d, chotu - he was a short statured guy.

There were other people also with the names like khan, boxer, chacha, mak, rathodi, main- la**a, up-maharaj, down-maharaj, chillar, bhai, la**ekant, gajju, chota gajju, keshu, dalla, monu, golu and DD bahi- his room was the hottest (wink wink) room in the whole hostel; thanks to the seniors who left the room without taking out all those posters and pics (wink wink) and also a few classmates like dhannu, mangu, miss jkr, patte, hero anna, dosti, fool, lambu, simha, chuha. And yes who can forget pande ji in our hostel because of who we got this famous dialogue “arre padhai-likhai to sab pande ** *** ** **** hoti hai”

I have never seen such characters in my life. I have done my schooling from my native place where everyone was from the same town so I never got a chance to interact with people from other places and ethnicity. It was only when I came to college I realized that there are such diverse characters in this world. But I feel that if such characters wouldn't have been there with me for all these four years, my life wouldn’t have been so rocking. I feel that those who haven't stayed in hostel during their engineering days are not true/real engineers.

Oh yes how can I forget to mention about this character? This guy will never share the sweets bought by him from his home but will hog like anything at the sweets bought by his friends, always ready to grab the sweets and ice-creams of his friends in the hostel mess during lunch/dinner, have done some setting with the mess staff of his hostel for some extra food items, used to eat chocolates at least 4-5 times a day, other people in hostel used to get sutta (cigarettes) to stay awake at night during exams and this guy will get chocolates for the night out which he will never share with any of his friends, didn’t even spared his classmates and used to eat their lunch during the boring lectures. Maybe his friends have predicted this, that’s why in the 1st semester itself they gave him the name “laddu”.

Enclosed below is the pic of this guy. You can see him hogging in the hostel mess.

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Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Addiction.....

Addiction to anything is bad. I have seen people getting addicted to lots of things and wasting their lives. When I came to this place I promised myself that I will not get addicted to anything. I was always scared because I have no self control over myself and I get addicted to things very easily and quickly. I somehow managed to survive without any addiction (my addiction to chocolates can be excluded) till now, but now it seems I am addicted to something. I am addicted to blogging.

Though it seems weird but it’s the truth. I don’t write much but these days I have been thinking about it a lot. While coming to office, working in office or even while going back home from office and even in my dreams I just think about blogs and posts. There was a time when I used to hate blogs. For me it was a waste of time. But now things have changed a lot. Now I am addicted to it and I blame two of my friends for my condition.

First one is nasha. Whenever I go to her desk I find her reading some or the other blogs. During breaks she tells us about the blogs she had read which seems interesting to me. I started taking some interest in the blogs and asked her to send me the links. I read the blogs referred by her and got amused. Once I started reading, I also read the posts written by Patchez-another friend of mine. Finally I got inspired and decided to write something on my own and thus came my first post in November. Then I thought of not writing anything more (I am not capable of doing so) but they motivated me to write by appreciating me posts. Not just that, Patchez also suggested me to change the name of my blog. Earlier I was having some crappy name and it was she who gave it such a cool name.

Thus I started writing. I write in office. That day I was supposed to work on my project but I was writing something and my TL caught me. Luckily my TL is cool enough so he just ignored it and asked me to work. These days I am thinking about the blogs all the time. Yesterday I realized that what the hell I am doing!!!! This is not the real me who is getting addicted to something and wasting time in blogging rather then doing other useful stuffs like orkut, gmail, youtube, movies (yes these are useful stuffs for me).
I have no self control over myself. I should get a little serious now and stop thinking about it. Addiction to anything is bad and I get addicted to things very easily.

Monday, February 2, 2009

The Hostel........

This post is the continuation of the post by dory.


We promised each other that night that this wouldn’t be the last of our tales. After a month or so, we again went to the hospital only to discover that the gates to the terrace had been locked and the windows were sealed. So there was no way we could go to the terrace now. We were disappointed that the terrace was closed to us forever. Now we were in search of a new place but we weren’t able find anything exciting enough. Life was boring. Only college-hostel-food-movies were left in our lives. We sometimes go to pmc (originally called pre medical college but had been renamed to piya milan chowk by the majnu’s of our institution) but there was no fun, no adventure. We want something different, something exciting.

One evening dory and I were in infinitiks hostel and I was telling them about a building that I accidentally came across (thanks to jhadu-another friend of mine). This was the old building near the college. This building was a very old one, and its 2nd floor was totally devastated and there was no light in that floor at all. Only level 0 and level 1 were in use. We were in search of something new so we just decided to go there one night. So after dinner dory and I went to infinitiks’s hostel. He joined us and we all went to that building. We reached the 2nd floor of that building and there was no one on that floor; it was dark. We purposely decided to go there at night because it’s easier to escape unidentified at night. There were many rooms in several rows. After observing keenly we found out that these rooms were actually ex-classrooms. Then we reached the end of a row and took a left turn. There was complete darkness; the visibility was zero. We couldn’t see anything, not even the floor. We weren’t even sure that there was a floor beyond. We started wondering if the floor was broken and if we fell down?? Finally we decided to go in and check out for ourselves whether the floor was broken. When we reached, there was absolute silence. We could even hear each other breathing. I was a little scared and was holding infinitiks’s hands. Dory was coming behind us. No one uttered even a word. We were all quiet and a little scared. We were walking very slowly and all sorts of random bad thoughts were coming to our minds. Finally after walking in there for a few minutes or so we reached the end and we saw a light to our left and we went in that direction. It was after going there we realized that the place where we had just walked in was actually a huge hall just behind those class rooms. We were so much thrilled by the experience of walking in the dark with zero visibility that we decided to go there once again. But this time it was a bit different as we knew that what was there in that place and we didn’t enjoy that much. So we moved on ahead.

On moving ahead we saw a staircase. We went up the stairs saw a gate to the terrace that was locked. We came down and began to look for other ways to go up to the terrace
(instinctively we’ve ended up at the terraces of a lot of buildings). The floor was incredibly vast and there were several staircases to the terrace, but all of them were locked and we were checking all the possible ways to go up in the dark. Luckily we found one that wasn’t locked (a major security breach which was good for us) and finally we found ourselves on the terrace. This terrace was even huger. So huge that it can easily accommodate 3-4 football fields. It was because there were at least 5-6 buildings sharing a common terrace. We were at one end of the terrace. Infinitiks and dory insisted on going ahead and exploring the whole of the terrace. I said “no”. Now this was the time when the semester was about to get over and exams were coming. As usual, I hadn’t studied anything and above all this it was cloudy and it could have rained anytime and was not in a mood of getting drenched or falling sick and losing some precious study time. So I protested but I guess my efforts were in vain. And I decided to go with them. There were a couple of small rooms on the terrace. As we were walking towards the other end of the terrace, we were recognizing the buildings in that area. By that time our eyes were adjusted to the darkness.

Finally we reached to the other end of terrace. We looked down and saw several rooms in each of the 3 floors. Then we saw a lady guard walking in one of the corridors and some clothes hanging on the ropes in the corridors and few girls busy with their cell phones. It took us some time to understand the situation. We were thrilled and couldn’t speak anything. We were just looking at each other and were feeling proud of the great discovery that we had just done, we were actually standing on the terrace of a girl’s hostel. It took us some time to realize this and a little longer time to become normal after this discovery. We could clearly see the rooms and the girls- busy studying, chatting on cell phones, watching something on laptops. We were wondering what to do next, it was then we heard a voice from behind. We turned back and saw someone coming towards us.

Our reaction to this was very obvious- we started running for our lives. (Later dory told us that while running he turned back and looked at that guy and saw him lifting a brick lying on the floor to scare us away). We thought of escaping from the same way by which we came up the terrace but we got confused and went down the wrong way. The gate was locked so we had to come back and look for some other way to escape. Luckily that man had stopped chasing us and we found the right way and came down from the terrace and then finally out of the building. By the time we were out of the building it had started raining heavily. We waited for it to get over. We kept wondering if the man who chased us was a guard and if he followed us to catch us?? It had started to rain more heavily by then. We decided to move on in the rain because it was of no use in wasting time there, waiting for the rain to get over. We took a polythene bag from a coffee shop nearby and put our wallets, watches, cell phones inside it and that went inside my jeans pocket. It was cold and we were completely drenched. It was around 1am and there was no one on the road. Something came to our mind and we took off our shirts and vests. If someone would have seen us that time, he would have mistaken us as drunkards who were walking bare-chested in rain, at 1am. Infinitiks went to his hostel and dory and I came to ours. We were so excited with that day’s events. This was probably the craziest thing anyone of us had ever done.

Then we got busy in our studies and had stopped everything but only for that one semester. Next semester we decided to go there again. So we reached that same old building, and we started to figure out several other ways to reach the terrace. We were also trying to guess from which way the man who chased us before would have come to the terrace the last time. This time around, we even found out a way to go INSIDE the girl’s hostel from the terrace (another major security breach). Infinitiks and I went down to the hostel and dory followed us closely. We had a mixed feeling of thrill and excitement when we actually touched the floor of the girl’s hostel. We were on the 3rd floor of the girl’s hostel and were just few steps away from the nearest room. We were so close that we can easily read the posters and the crappy slogans on the doors of the rooms. Infinitiks was on my right side and was blocking my view towards the right. I could only look towards the left where I saw a long corridor. Suddenly infinitiks ran back to the terrace and so did dory, and asked me to run. I turned to my right and saw 2-3 girls staring at us from a distance. Now it was my turn to run. Shit!! So we had been noticed. We thought we should have been more careful. From a safe distance, out of their sight we saw the girls had gathered on that very floor and were discussing something; obviously about our sudden appearance. Then we saw some girls going to the opposite direction. We felt that they are probably going to call the guards so the terrace wasn’t safe for us anymore. We decided to call it off for the day and left the place; came back to our respective hostels.

Next time when we went there we found that a lock had been put up at the gate through which we had entered the girl’s hostel from the terrace. Dory wanted to pee very badly and since we had just arrived at the terrace, there was no chance of going back, so he went on the terrace only. We saw a water tank at some distance. Then infinitiks and dory climbed on the water tank that was huge (not as huge as the hospital one though). I stayed back and was looking at the corridors and the rooms. It was around 2pm and I saw many girls busy on their cell phones, some walking in the corridors, some sitting in the corner. For a moment I wondered that whom were they talking to at this time of night but then I realized that if in my hostel the guys are busy whole night on their phones then obviously here the girls should be busy. I also noticed that their rooms were as messy and as dirty as ours. I felt very happy in seeing this because till now I used to think that only we guys kept our rooms dirty but that instant I came to know that girls too don’t clean their rooms. I went a little ahead to peep inside their rooms.

By that time dory and infinitiks had come down and were on the other side of the terrace. While trying to peep inside one room I unfortunately revealed myself and got noticed by one girl who shouted “hello!! Who is that??” I really couldn’t oblige her with the answer and started to turn away. By then she called few other girls and started screaming nonsense which none of us tried listening to. We had decided to return by that time. I was walking towards the exit and dory and infinitiks went back to have a last glance of the happenings. I turned back to call them and saw them running towards me. Then I noticed a guard coming for us at a distance. I started wondering from where the hell he emerged from because we had analyzed all the possible ways to the terrace and there was no chance of him coming from any of those directions. But then I realized that it was the time to run rather then analyzing the ways a guard could come out from. By this time we had become pros in running and escaping from the guards. See we loved breaking rules so we had to master in the skill of running from the guards. We escaped fairly easily and came back to our hostels. We did go there after a month, and saw a very narrow path form the hostel to the terrace through which the guard came running behind us. That day was a little boring for us. We realized that we had actually started enjoying the guard running-our escaping from him thing.

We have also done few more crazy things in the last two years of our college life like climbing the college gate and going to the college at night , stealing ice-cream from the college canteen and then sitting in the middle of the canteen and eating the ice-creams just stolen, going to an under construction building at night and then throwing stuffs from its terrace at the guard of the adjacent building and actually scaring him and making him run inside the building (it was dark and the guard couldn’t see us as we were on the terrace) but among the list of all the crazy things we’d been doing including the hospital one, the hostel really had to be at the top…………