Sania Mania.

Time: The Winter of 2002

Place: Men's Hostel A block, top floor, Room No.319

Characters:

PP: Cant reveal the full form of this acronym due to profanity related reasons...I can’t be sure whether kids are reading this with their parents or alone, so can’t recommend parental discretion and hence PP will remain PP...Rahul Dravid is like an unofficial father to PP, PP loves everything about the Wall, (Rahul Dravid-The Wall as he is popularly known...) PP knows everything about the Wall...every record the Wall holds, every match the Wall has played....where does he goes to shop, when he got married, when did his wife conceive...PP is a Wall database! 

Jeff: The one who hails from Fort Kochi, the same place from where Bilal John Kurishingal (the most stylish gunda Malayalam cinema has ever produced, Fort Kochi is a popular breeding ground of gundas) hails... that would tell you something about Jeff.

But the only visible similarity between the two is that both don't bath...invisible similarities couldn't be ruled out though, but since it was just the first week at hostel, none of us had seen each other in that detail and even though half of the bathrooms didn’t had  doors, me and PP would goto bath in the same time and that too during power cuts (thanks to the govt.of kerala, their unending support and encouragement in the field of higher education has many facets, the power cut they provide at night so that people can use the doorless bathrooms in Mens Hostels is just a humble example. And in ladies hostel, we never really got a chance to get that deeper into the LH, we fervently hoped that the govt. was impartial in its unending support in the case of doors!) at night and in the morning when the sun was still under those hills in the east...and as I said we never saw Jeff going to the bathroom...maybe, it will take time !

The New comer:  who was 3 weeks late to join the hostel fearing ragging, but ragging was in his destiny! He is a die hard fan of VVS Laxman, and not so fond of Rahul Dravid or-The Award Movie as he is infamously known!

'Sania Mania' is the new comer's version...

I was waiting for the college bus in front of MH... college was 15 minutes away by foot, so we had to be taken in the bus, as there were too many enticements in the way to college in the form of cinemas and eateries and Ladies Hostel, there was every chance that boys wont reach college in 15 minutes, or wont reach college at all in some days! And hence the bus service...

As I was waiting and it was my first day at the hostel, I hardly knew anyone...all new faces...cant distinguish first years from 2nd years and in some cases even from those nerds among final years....nerds never had the history of looks that suited their class, its the same in engineering college as well...All I have heard was to keep away from something called Bruson Harold...yes, his names itself symbolized terror...

The wait for the bus continues, he saw me standing alone, and he appeared to be little older than me, he approached me and smiled...I didn’t smile back, maybe because I was too frightened and smiling back at a senior was against status quo...

I asked him, "S1 S2?”

"Yes" he replied

I was relieved, it was kind of a feeling that occurs when a mallu finds another mallu in Punjab.

"Me, CS and you?”

"Royal Mechs" he replied

Mechanical Engineering fellows had this rare privilege of adding the word Royal as prefix even though they couldn't claim any lineage of that kind...infact the machines in their labs looked so royal that you start suspecting whether the king ruled Uganda or Zimbabwe? 

"Did you get any ragging yet? I couldn't resist asking.

"No one caught me yet" he replied lowering his voice

"Beware of this guy called Bruson, Bruson Harold, he is the most dangerous one among seniors”   I wanted him to be afraid as well. The mallu in Punjab would obviously warn the other one about the Pakistan which is near by!

"I have also heard about that bugger, will be careful...you have not seen him yet, right?" he asked.

"Yes, I have not seen him yet...have heard that he will rag first years from dusk to dawn"

"Not exactly dusk, from midnight to dawn, maybe...that’s what I heard” he replied

A shiver ran through my spine...But how does this guy know all this? By that time the bus came and my roomies also came running and sat next to me in the bus

PP: "what were you talking to him?”

Jeff: "How did you get the courage to talk to him???"

New Comer: "Why?  What happened?  He is 1&2 Mech. We were talking about Bruson and how to keep away from him, you guys only told me to be careful of Bruson..."

"Oh, yes but we forgot to tell you how Bruson looks, our mistake" they replied in unison.

New Comer: "Oh, common, I was just warning him to keep away from Bruson..."

PP: "He wouldn't worry about that..."

New comer: "Why?”

Jeff: "Because Bruson doesn't have to be afraid of himself unless he has got some psychological problem!"

New Comer: "Now, what does it mean? Tell me before I get some psychological problem..."

PP: “He is not 1&2 Mech, he was, 3 years back!”

Jeff: "You were talking to Bruson himself"...and Jeff laughed as if he was watching some Mr. Bean movie....

New comer: "I guess, then my problem won’t be psychological alone, it will be physiological as well..."

PP: “and it can get financial as well!”

Jesus...save my soul...what would I do now, go back home and not come back to hostel for...few weeks, maybe? Run away from college? not possible, dad will start ragging me if I do something like that...what to do ?...But why am I calling Jesus when we have countless number of similar ones in our repertoire itself...maybe because the Satan is appearing in the form of Bruson and Bruson Harold doesn't sound Buddhist or Brahmin...!

At college there was this meeting for freshers and few of the parents were also present...the leader of the anti ragging squad- this guy from S7 Civil, who looked anemic as if he had AIDS and was atleast a semester late for haircut, gave a lengthy and hair raising lecture about the activities of antiragging squad, the proud students union, activities of the non existent placement cell etc....

Apparently, freshers should learn to look beyond the hair and concentrate during such hair raising lectures so that they wont get distracted from the main idea the orator is trying to convey, also they should gain courage and return back to hostel after class...I said to myself.

In my room at the hostel I was expecting nightmare long before nightfall but nothing happened that night...no signs of the bloodsucking bruson, only his cousins were at work consuming our blood ...yes, there was no dearth of mosquitoes in our room...

The next day, post midnight we went through the ragging drills for 2 hours, and would you believe it, it was the same anemic-antiragging-orator who ragged us! Height of irony! Maybe this was to give us some idea of what lied ahead or what lied beneath, rather. Yes, the floor below had 35 rooms full of seniors!!! 

The next evening...

As every room in the hostel, ours also had four walls...two had shelves to keep our text books and luggages... ofcourse, texts were non existent in S1S2...the third wall was reserved for God , calendar , timetables and spiders which spun their webs in the photos of God. As God himself kept on weaving a web in our lives...we didn’t really restrict the spiders from doing their job...its Men's hostel of a Government college in Northern Kerala, let socialism prevail!

But now, it seems only chaos is gona prevail...in the remaining wall, PP wants to paste Rahul Dravid...The Wall should cover our wall....PP had a few kilos of The Wall's posters, he himself weighed only a few kilos more! and I wouldn't allow The Wall to cover the wall...I want VVS to dominate the wall like he dominates the bowlers in the field...The posters of the 281 by Laxman at the Eden Gardens, that alone was necessary for me to counter the Wall and his non biological son...so this verbal duel was going on between me and PP and suddenly Jeff signaled danger...

"What, is it the warden or princi?" PP asked.

But, then it shouldn't be a danger sign, it should be a sign of surprise! The warden, ever since he was given that post, made it a point to keep away from not only the hostel but from the very panchayat in which the hostel stood...if principal had to visit us then it would be part of some punishment meted out to him by higher authorities...

Jeff: "No, Bruson has come for some clarifications"

PP: "now the Gods in the other wall alone will save you"

And my feelings then...are beyond words.

Bruson came and started with an appetizer...it was the usual stuff, sitting in an imaginary chair for 15 , 20 minutes but he was kind enough to make PP and Jeff do the same along with me...time crawled like a snail....suddenly we heard a knock in the door....who is it? some god-sent angel to save us?...it happened to be the younger brother of Satan called Sahadevan, perhaps this is the season of satans and gods were suffering from loose motion like us(that was something the hostel mess offered for free. perhaps, things had to happen fast inside the toilets until the freshers got used to the toilets and the fragrance that emanated ...the hostel mess ,the toilets, the seniors, the gods...they were all part of a chain which worked in unison ! )...soon bruson was relieved of his serving-appetizer duties and it was time for the 5 course dinner...I cant mention the name of all the dishes that were  served in the dinner...however, we were made to... read news papers in the tune of some malayalam melody, demonstrate how hanuman would cross M.G. Road, Jeff was made vishwamitran with the drafter as the instrument to rest his hand and pp was made menaka and made to dance around viswamitran...but menaka failed miserably this time....perhaps a more seductive one was necessary to entice this viswamitran, we were made to piss on a steel glass which was given an electric charge of 2 Volts. As per theory saline water is good conductor of electricity, that night we experienced how good a conductor it was. Even Faraday wouldn't have dreamt of such creative use of electricity! The dinner went on till early morning with few more unmentionables and then bruson was back to serve the dessert...I had to get him 2 packets of Wills from the road side eatery that was open all night and then finish a 20 page assignment for him by Sun rise...oh, this was the financial problem that came after the psychological and physiological ones that PP was mentioning !

PP and Jeff utilized that time to finalise bilateral talks on the partition of the wall... and we finally decided to kick Dravid and Laxman out of the room...and let her come in....the wall was fortunate enough to house her in all known poses...playing and non playing poses. Wow!!! Dravid and Laxman could never have entertained us in such a dimension! She was Sania Mirza...and we named it Sania Mania.