First day in the hostel. People were excited, sad and afraid. But, Anirudh wasn’t like any of them. He was expressionless. Each room had 12 occupants and around 20 rooms in a wing had a set of common washrooms. There were quarrels among the parents as to whose kid is to occupy the bed under the fan. Well luckily, Anirudh got the last bed near the window and he was satisfied with it. Everyone had a big metal truck to put their things. His grandmother knowing that everyone would have one, she got an old one from the store room for Anirudh. She got it cleaned and painted blue for Anirudh. Which he was emotionally persuaded to take along with him.
The first morning, others in the room were long awake even before Anirudh woke up. They already got washed up and tucked and ready to rush to the classrooms and staring at him for getting up so late. While Anirudh was dragging along his bucket and his brush, to the washrooms. By the time he was back, the wing was almost empty. And those who were missing were rushing to the classrooms, thirty minutes before the class time. Anirudh rushed up to the classrooms. Well, he belonged to the elite ‘Central Syllabus’ kids and so he belonged to one of the elite two sections of almost his type. Well to his horror, all the first benches were occupied by atleast six on each of them, while the center ones had reservations too. He was happy to find the last benches left out and had one or two on each of them. He chose the row next to the window and thought that the last bencher’s were his only shot of getting some good friends.
The study hours began, and they slowly extended into late nights. Well, ten was late night for Anirudh and nine in the morning was too early. The concept of the study hour was alien to him and a handful of others. And then finally one week, the tests began. Every weekend there was a test on every little crap they were taught. A syllabus and a timetable was give out at the starting of the week. And then started the tough times.
Anirudh answered in his own way and laid out proofs and stuff in the way he understood, while the chief warden and others insisted it to be the way it was taught in the class. Because they preached that that way is the only way to stardom. Well, that was something in-digestable and so was the ways of Anirudh for the chief warden. And so was he whacked every time the test papers came in after corrections. Just because the ones who corrected refused to give credit for any other method other than those in the text book and the study materials. That was only 70% of the problem, other 30% was – Anirudh couldn’t stay awake after dinner and slept off in the chair during study hours, and there again was whacked again for sleeping during ’study time’. It went on for a couple of weeks and it became routine for him. The chief warden was hardly five foot tall. He got onto a big pipes or a platform and then used to hit the students with his bare hands. But, most of the time, he stuck to the cane and whacked anywhere below the waist.
Meanwhile, Anirudh made a friend-Praatik. He too used to sleep along , but rarely used to get whacked, because he was the intelligent one. Always found his way with the chief warden and somehow the chief warden too was found of Praatik. After a couple of months there was a screening test to compartmentalize the good muggers from the bad ones. Well, Anirudh remained in the better section. And there was again one more, this one was for getting into the coaching for IIT-JEE, Weird !! Anirudh clear this too, he scored the cut off 
and so was send to a section named – ‘IIT-B’. While, Praatik landed up in the first section with a very prestigious roll number too. The hierarchy was something like this – the best kids in the college were in ‘IIT-A’ the second best belonged to ‘IIT-B’ and then came ‘JC’ and then ‘J-1′, ‘J-2′ and so on. Anirudh has the feeling of pride of belonging to the elite, but he knew it himself, he was no good to appear for IIT. He was there, to feel the heat.
And there he felt no heat. There wasn’t anyone to push around, there was the same old chief warden, but his right to whack and hit were revoked. There was a huge guy who was the campus in-charge who was particularly not fond of Praatik and Anirudh. Tough Anirudh faced down, while he was around, Praatik used to lift his head high up. Praatik furious on loosing his books, was shouting at the roommates. The in-charge was passing by Praatik’s room, after getting drunk. And there went Praatik for a six, he was called out and was hit and slapped. That was just an excuse for the campus in-charge to take out his grudge.
Anirudh and Praatik always stuck together. There was this , whom Anirudh thought that was jealous of his friendship with Praatik and tried to pull away Praatik from him. Atleast, Anirudh felt the same way. He, was kind of allergic to a few guys who had all the branded stuff right from their head to toe. But, he didn’t care much.
