A place called home - III

It was raining as we parked the car near a heap of road-metal. One would imagine the heavily pot-holed road(I refuse to call it so) will be repaired very soon, but the heap would remain there, for ever, till the last of the stones have disappeared, either going into the concrete mixtures of private construction sites nearby, or becoming insta-missiles in the hands of some really enraged/bemused school-kid.

“That’s the way”, I said, pointing in the direction of what looked more like a stream than a walkway. Becoming a little skeptic myself, I could understand the bewildered look on my uncle’s face. I rolled up my trousers, and followed the rainwater-stream. So did my uncle, and aunt and children, preferred to stay in the car. The idea was to see me off at my new abode, where I was to stay in the first year of my engineering. Bachelor accommodations can be such hazardous places you see, and no sane woman would dare to set foot within half a mile of those ill-fated dungeons.

The stream opened into a small clearing, and bingo! Appeared a concrete house- cracking roof, full of lush green moss and all that. We stepped aside into the courtyard and parted ways with the stream, which continued its course down the lush paddy fields below. The view was beautiful. I almost went into another one of those wonderful-greenery-induced delirium, only until I turned around!

There was a slightly flummoxed look on Unc’s face, and the reason turned out to be a score of multi-colored, multi-faceted, mutli-lingual .... undies, under multiple stages of disintegration, displayed proudly on the verandah!

“Ah, so this is the place for sure!!!” I said, gleefully. But my enthusiasm in our great discovery wasn’t returned.

“Shall I help you in getting the stuff inside….”

“Nope, I can manage!” I was quick to cut him off. Right now it was manageable, I didn’t want the situation to get any worse. Can’t really blame him if he felt a bit of local-guardianesque concern about the entire affair. In hindsight, my foresight wasn’t wasted.

There were eight guys staying in that 3 BHK house, five seniors, and three of us freshmen. And then there were the girls! Two of them permanently in my room, in the rest of the rooms, they kept coming in and going out all the time. Nah, I am talking about girls who occupied the walls, you pervert! The posters! You see I was this huge fan of Aish Rai at that time and and all, I wont have anyone else in my territory, and my roomie, was equally stuck up with Kajol. In the other rooms, there were posters of apparently anything and everything that looked female, in jeans, skirts, sarees, bikinis… you know where it leads to.

The bathrooms were built and maintained with only a single purpose in mind, utility! Meaning there were some really nice pictures in there, and a door was always considered a luxury! As a matter of fact, there was only one door for two bathrooms, and it was very convenient, you could just lift it off and keep it in front of the room of your choice before starting the activity of your choice, unless you hear a very loud and angry scream! Either from one of the inmates or the servant-maid! Man, really, I was always of this opinion that these maids are grossly underpaid! There’s no account of the amount of torture they have to undergo each day, so much that it will follow them to their graves, and to their afterlives. Or else she must have been some kind of really cold-blooded tyrant in her previous birth. At the gates of hell, devil himself was appalled by the amount of atrocities she/he had committed, and yelled…
“You have done such grotesque things in your life, even hell is not fit enough for you! By admitting you to hell, I fear that the last trace of sanity left in here will be compromised, so I condemn you to suffer eternally, working as a servant maid in an Engineering college host…”

“Naaawwww…….” THUD!

She took it out on us by cooking us some of the most horrible stuff I have ever put to my mouth. Anything, was welcome in those days!

I have often heard that the vicinity around where we lived had the highest density of poisonous snakes anywhere in Kerala. But I haven’t seen a single one. Neither have the snakes seen me, apparently. They’d prefer their holes, any day! The paddy field would dry up in summer and we would play cricket there. In monsoon, we had other jobs, like praying the roof don’t collapse, for instance. And yeah, occasionally, studying, a sacred act performed when you are really cornered, like - “Man, I hate that [expletive]!! Despite making it to all his lectures within an hour of start and submitting every single assignment copied/Photostat-ed/got written by juniors/girls, he gave me a measily 10 marks for sessionals, shucks! Now I have to slog my ass and get 50 for university or be damned”. Those were the days when sanity was hanging by a thread, literally!

I stayed there for a year, till the seniors passed out. Finished their courses, I mean. Then went looking for greener pastures! (Read near the women's college, yeah believe it or not, there was one right in front of the Engg college. And it was a good college… you know, good repute, run by nuns, really good courses and all that… ;-D)

That and more in next...