Hostel Part III

Hostel days are gone into the yellowed pages of my past now. And yet so near they are to me. All those bawals, ragging, teasing girls from the darkened hostel balcony, stealing food from canteen, night adventures to Bishu paji’s dhaba come back on idle afternoons. They still cheer me up and enlighten my day.

The other day on yahoo messenger we met. 6 of college mates. Two in London. The rest in the US. And 80% of them married. But all we talked about is hostel. And our life back then.

Lets look at some hostel lingo:

Bawal: verb | a fight, quarrel. Apparently for no good reason.

Magibaz: adjective | a guy who is always after girls and with girls. A rude word usually used for swearing.

Caora: adjective | a guy who is naughty!! Well that’s what I call an understatement.

Bedo: adjective | a guy who is an avid prankster.

Tomar bhai hoechhe: a phrase | usually used to sedate an opponent, a swear sentence meaning you have got a brother. Apparently indicating….. Mail me if you still don’t get the meaning.

*C: an adjective | this is equivalent to the English F word. Anything can be suffixed with a C word meaning you c like that adjective (prefix to C) or by that object etc.

So(n)te: adjective | A guy who is relatively well behaved and well mannered.

Jatha : adjective | A guy who looks considerably older than he actually is. Depending on how old he looks he can be also called kaka.

Kaka: relational adjective | A guy who comes to hostel to sell newspaper, breakfast, food, kabadi, or who is caretaker, who cooks food at canteen, who cleans the campus, in all a guy who is not a student or a teacher. Even a librarian once was referred to as Kaka.

Banka: Noun | the aspiring HOD of EIE (at our time he was aspiring and later on fulfilled his aspiration).

Dobka: Adjective | usually a girl with big boobs.

Pre-Historic Dadu: Noun | The legendary grandfather who looked like a dinosaur who has not been fed for 1 million years. Favourite trend was lighting a cigarette for 2 puffs and then extinguishing it to have it later. An IITian and a respectable figure.

Jackson: Noun | The most respectable figure around. The then HOD of EIE.

Toton: Noun | The Hod of CSE. Needed n no of attempts to utter a word correctly. Where N is his degree of excitement.

TechnoPakhi: Noun | A mate of mine. Nicknamed like this because of his exceptional figure. Needed two underwears to hold the jeans hang on to his waist.

Chhok: Verb | this is machination to get a girl.

KKD: Noun | Many believed he was some sort of relative to the JKD. But one of the most notorious and loved guys around.

Appo: Noun | this is Kolaghat version of Dating. Usually performed on the numerous culverts in the campus or deserted lanes in the township or in minimarket nearby.

Chaton: Noun | Ragging.

I think this much is enough for today. Will come back with more from direct heart of my hostel…

Hostel Part II

[This is a continuation of the earlier story I did about my hostel life. The same precautions and parental guidance are valid in this case too. ]

Hostel helped me to grow up. Our college and hostel was located in the same campus. It was far from the city. So there were hardly any time pass apart from playing football or cricket in the afternoon after college is over. We spent our time by going college, by not going college, by drinking tea at chacha’s shop just outside the campus, or eating the fabulous ghoognee(a chatpata dish made of chhola) with mudi.

Ragging days were over and it was time to befriend between ourselves. Freshers welcome was coming soon. Every college has its own heritage of giving fresher’s welcome. Ours was the fabulous choreography, of course by our senior girls. None admitted it but I am sure everyone loved it. There were really beautiful girls giving us a dancing welcome, something we had never thought we would ever get, not even if we someday win a nobel prize. And our mind raced. For seniors, whoever reads this post, “No, we strictly didn’t fantacise about your girlfriend!”. We were a bunch of loosers on the second floor. None of us were handsome, none of us ever capable of doing anything in life. We stayed in the anonymity of our second floor life. Ground floor and first floor knew that there are people who are there on top of them, but none really knew who are these morons. We became friends through this united second floor feeling. And there came a blow.

As soon as the ragging days were over, people came out with their own ideas of harassing other people. When I say harassing, it was not exactly harassment, it was simple fun but sometimes a bit overboard. At least the person on whom the prank is being played will definitely think so.

I remember one night after a tough day at college (having done woodworks at the workshop it was definitely one of those rare physical labour days ) I was sleeping hard. Suddenly a splash woke me up. I was so deep in sleep that suddenly it felt like a flood has come into my room. and I woke up, in the darkness I could figure out a guy moving outside my room through the open window. I woke up to fully to realise a dirty underwear hanging on top of the mosquito net of my bed giving that flash effect!

My friends and I retaliated. We invited those two guys who did this to play prank on two of the other guys from our floor. They agreed not knowing the gangster move we played beneath this. They had cocme to scare the two of the most peaceful guys of our floor. And the plan we had was, as soon as they come, we have to shout as if thieves have broken into. And then give those two a nice beating. The plan went on excellently and the next morning, there were cries of pain from two rooms.

These were petty hostel rivalries. These faded away as we grew up. Slowly there formed groups among ourselves.

1. Group A: group of nerds. Every college has them. They read hard, usually bespectacled, use a lot of PJs and laugh out loud at them. Some people considered me to be a part of this bunch initially due to good results in the beginning. As my results went down gradually, they lost all the hope they had about me and I was no longer (not even in ppl’s thoughts) a part of this.
2. Group B: group of Casanovas. These people were hugely interested in girls. From day1 they had their eyes set up on picking up girls. They talked about which girl to be picked up. They used to bet on who will pick which girl. They even went on to bet which hostel guys will have all the girls and all stupid stuff.
3. Group C: group of sports buff. A lot of my friend circle belonged to this group. This people ate, drank and dreamt of sports. There were people who used to play football after coming back from college then during the evening, there started the looong period of table tennis, carom volleyball etc. And if it was winter, we had our beloved cricket and badminton tournaments.
4. Group D: group of street smarts. The most respected group of the college. These were the people loved by all. They might be short on funda, short on their patience to study but they had a brain to overcome all. These people usually featured in all activities of college enthusiastically, scored good ranks and had a high CGPA.
5. Group E: group of addicts. By addicts I don’t mean cocaine or heroine though. But I am sure there were a couple of fellows regularly taking those. The most popular in thing in hostel was N10 tablets. Another spasmo tablet. Never knew what they are for or what pleasure they gave to these people. Some of them ruined their lives. Some, when I last heard, were on the verge of doing the same.
6. Group F: group of madhatters. I love to call them so as essentially these people never fit into any known types. They were a brand of their own. Some of them singers, some of them poets, some of them loners, some of them gamers and some of them most creative people on earth!

More to come on this…a lot more groups were there. Stay tuned…