Of Sharp C's and Missing Keys

I returned one afternoon from a Mathematics class to find the room in chaos. Not the kind of chaos you usually expect, though. In fact, an outsider would have considered an orderly, clean and habitable room as completely normal. But as far as deviation from the usual goes, the room was in chaos.

As it were, I was in no mood to tolerate abnormality after an hour and a half of being told why exactly my math teacher was the sole load bearing pillar of the college. The lecture had been frighteningly close to finding its way into a medical kit for insomniacs, and nodding off to sleep so many times had twisted my neck into some sort of complex, semi-quadrangular, obtuse shape. Pretty safe to assume my perspective would be skewed that afternoon, which the guys soon found out…

“What?”

“Speaker plug”

“WHAT?”

“The plug was loose… I think it fell under the bed somewhere”

That, of course, meant that there was a fight in the room, the speaker took the fall for it, and someone threw the plug under the bed in anger. So the unthinkable had happened, the music had stopped, and thus indifference had

died, the two warring dudes were placated, and the room was thoroughly cleaned to find the missing plug.

“Please tell me you found it!”

“Relaaaax… we did”

I breathed. If anything could make these lazy bums work, it was their beloved music. The times I had searched all alone for my missing key, had screamed, begged, bossed and fought them into cleaning… and all it took was a missing plug. It does wonders for self-worth.

But that said, Music and speakers are perhaps the single most important thing in a hostelite’s life. So many hours are wasted wondering if a syllable is pronounced ‘sa’ or ‘sha’, if the song was appropriate, if the hero deserved it, and what not. For all practical purposes, we are, for that short time, the experts of all we hear, with a thousand cameras trained on us for the next pearl of wisdom to drop. It elevates us from the morbid walls and the smelly toilets, like a whisky would to a homeless man. The smallest variation, the slightest errors, are dissected and ruthlessly dismissed. Horizons are expanded, new genres explored, and each compared to our very own desi music, the result predictable but soothing to the heart none the less.

There are, of course, a few negatives. Some of the less talented of us force our own, slightly less conventional voice on the rest, Siva being a regular offender. Some others are so caught up in the ‘moment’ that we exercise our poetic licence on the poet. The most atrocious and shameless of the lot, however, tend to leave the song alone, but attack the ending credits, the lead singers being the most affected. And with great unhappiness must I admit, that in this last category the writer does fall. The pit is deep indeed, but worse than staying on a plain, plane terrain for life.

Roses are red. Yellow and white, too.

Most days in college are pretty rosy. In the mould of rosy days… with bright sunshine, brighter moods and all things black and gloomy locked up inside the skeleton closet. These are the days which make you want to take out that flamboyant, fluorescent yellow shirt and pair it with those red leather pants you picked up under the influence of someone under the influence. Those are the rosy days. And then there are the rosier days, like Rose Day.

So t’was, with the smell of fresh roses and the wailing of a distraught wingmate, that consciousness called on my person that day. I stirred, but was not yet shaken by the events that had unfolded in the ungodly hours of dawn. Unlike most other such events, I actually remembered the significance of the day. It wasn’t that tough really, considering the conversation that two visibly excited friends had inflicted on me the previous night.

“Tomorrows Rose Day da!”

“Ya I know… who’re we sending cards to?”

“Not decided… but we’re allowed proxy cards too…”

“Hmmm…”

“…”

Now, I’m not one of those early birds. I mean that figuratively, not like one of these crazy gits who maintain they’re mammals, not birds. I have my share of late night fun, the music, chatter and uncontrolled emotion. There’s something about the dark blue sky that’s so conducive to conversations. But I have my limits… and though generally of extremely tolerant temperament, I somehow took offence to hushed, conspirational tones floating over my half-asleep self. A couple of broken chairs and one broken conversation later, I had finally retired in peace.

Rose Day is a pretty neat idea. If ever an economy could run on overworked hormones and underworked brains, it would derive more than a little inspiration form this set-up. Simply put, you could, for a very nominal price, send a card and a coloured rose to anyone in college. Every colour indicated some emotion, like friendship-yellow, enemity-thorns, peace-white and the oh so wonderful, love-red. The catch was, however, that you could send it AS anyone. The importance of that is lost on any person who has not spent days and days thinking of ways to utterly humiliate the guy next to him. That, in any case, was not the kind of person you would find in Agate Hostel. The wails that had greeted me in the morning were from a poor soul who in turn had woken to a call from a very disturbed girl, demanding the meaning of the poem he had sent her. Ah, realization dawns.

The aforementioned poem was very peppy… written by a friend of mine, who went by the mysterious acronym PKG. There was this particularly nasty line, which went,

“Her beauty next to yours, is like a molecule besides an atom,

Why one would ever love you, is something I cannot fathom”

There was another, interesting card that Bolo received. It was generous in its praise, and signed off by “Rachael” and “Phoebe”. A more mature attempt at humour than most, I felt, though Bolo disagreed.

Around this time, I came up with an interesting plan to send a girl both a red rose and a yellow one, asking her to keep one and send the other back. The idea was foolproof, I thought, and went as far as to draw up a list, titled “The Lucky Ones”. I had originally written "The Hitlist" but then, you have to feed your ego every once in a while. However, my wallet seemed to lack enthusiasm, and quite surprisingly, its ‘empty’ threats carried some weight. Thus it is, that though anticlimactic, I did not receive a single card that day. But something of note did happen, amidst all the self-proxies, thinly veiled flirting and miffed friends. A couple of guys, NSK and Venky, got really beautiful cards from the girls in their class. It was very touching, and if not for my arrogance and opportunism, I would have admitted the same. As it were, the yellow roses that arrived had soon been dyed red, and by nightfall the gang had all but rechristened the duo as heartless flirts.

Bluff, and other Stuff

Have you ever had one of those moments, when the Absolute Truth floats down with a double somersault, a couple of cartwheels and a full split, landing right on your nose, while the heavens open and glorious hymns reverberate, a moment that will define the rest of your life, and that of countless others?

Neither have I, actually. But I came close. As close as you can 17 km away from civilisation, anyway. We were playing Bluff, a small group of say 16 people. The weather had decided to play spoilsport, at around 5 in the evening, so you had a bunch of very pissed off young dudes, with energy to burn and way below ignition temperature, so to speak. The rain brought with it some very unwelcome little visitors, buzzing around the place and in general having a right ball. The music was blaring pretty loud… a stranger would even have thought the room was shivering given the weather. But then it would have to be a pretty strange stranger.

Bluff is a pretty simple game, really. It involves a great deal of nerve, risk management techniques and the coveted ability to lie through your teeth. In all, it is like the card game version of ‘Life’. Except that you didn’t have to decide if to send kids to the private school or buy a new car. And you didn’t have little, colourful plastic families (and their cars) around the place.

The game was going pretty much like most others. Genie and Deeps played a quiet, high risk game and got out quick, probably to scourge the room for snacks. Siva invariably got stuck with one card, almost everyone in the wing including the bathroom cleaners knowing which one. CV, of course, was making it a point to prove he could bluff. The rest were making it a point to prove he couldn’t. No prizes for guessing which side was winning. CV has the kind of poker face you see in one guy a generation. Eyes wide, eyebrows raised, a couple of gulps… and the absolute banishing of all eye contact. Some of us would swear that we saw his face arrange itself in the pattern of the card in his hand.

It was in such a condition that news found the entire gang, courtesy me.

“Guys!”

“…”

“We’re holding a cricket tournament da… my club”

“…”

“So form yourselves a team and get registered quickly…”

I should mention here that most of the guys are cricket crazy. In the fashion of most Indians. They loved playing, watching and talking about the game, with a passion most reserve for barroom brawls. The room would testify to this… Hanging Light – Sachin vs. Lara. Dent in Bed – Is Dhoni a phoney? Broken Mirror – Did Sourav score 183 or 183 not out. You get the picture. And me, being of saner disposition, would just sit there watching the ruckus unfold, playing peacekeeper.

Anyways, with a slight grunt, someone (must’ve been Siva, for some odd reason he didn’t like being picked on by twenty guys) put their cards down, the others quickly followed suit. Amazing though the game might be, we were all quickly boring of the sheer length of it sometimes. Besides, putting so much pressure on Siva n CV for entertainment pricked our conscience a bit. And so the team huddled, deciding the squad of fifteen. By my count, around eighteen were interested to play, which meant that some hard decisions had to be made, and the people concerned placated with some extra attention and numerous nods of the head. In around quarter of an hour, the squad was decided, and the team name was to be decided.

Since we were the first team to register, we stressed upon ourselves the importance of naming the team. The old school ‘PS XI’ was instantly dismissed, as It would spawn a ‘Northie XI’, ‘DAV XI’ and other similarly depressing names. Someone suggested ‘St. Mary’s Devils’, after the name of the ground the guys played in Chennai. The more conservative of the lot rejected it. The next was ‘Sarakku Irukku’, in honour of our very own ‘Sarukku’, NSK… he makes it a point to push any mattress he sleeps on to the ground, and then justifies it saying that all s fair in love, war and sleepiness.

Finally, we decided upon the highly innovative, “18 Till We Die”. The name struck a chord with most, seeing as we did make Room. 18 our joint… I did raise the slight problem of if we would be called the ’18 Till We Die’-ians or ’18 Till We Die’-ites or ’18 Till We Die’-anis. However, logic is misplaced in times of rapture, and as such, my words were drowned in the wave of emotion that was sweeping across the room.