chapter 6

The board examinations of 11th were more fun than Anirudh expected. He was told that there would be hot chicks in most of the centers. And there always was a war between the different colleges. They threw eggs, rotten tomatoes and anything rotten they could buy, at each other. Anirudh had his examinations in Maris Stella College, the girls college of the city. He was elated, when his batchmates were giving him the jealous look. Well everybody forgot the fact that, as they had been assigned a different center, the girls of that college too would be alloted a different center. They realized that later on the first day. They were dropped off at the center one hour before the examination began. Most of them brought along ‘bags’ of books to study even before the examination. Anirudh kept to his two pens and a pencil.

To his delight, he spent most of the time looking at girls passing by the gate and on the streets, while others tried to cram up as much stuff as they could. The examinations were over in a couple of days and he had two weeks of vacation and had to report back in college for “IIT” coaching. “yeaaahhhh, it would be fun time” thought Anirudh.

It was the summer. Anirudh was happy to be in a quite deserted college, where there only some 200 odd people. While most of them kept themselves to the studying thingie, Anirudh and his friends and vela time. They sat under the trees and stared at the branches and leaves, till one of them was whacked by the passing by warden. The warden’s worked in shifts. When sun got high in the sky and when the heat build up, they move to the comfort of classrooms and fans. Well then again, he dozed off with the support of his hands on this cheeks, till the warden again whacked him on the head. Most of the times Anirudh would give a stern look and get back to his posture. And when the chief warden was not around he would pick up an argument with the warden over the authenticity of his posture, helping him to concentrate better.

While Anirudh was busy with his arguments, sleeping and staring; Praatik studied. Though he too had good time, he studied too, too keep up pace with the others.

One day, during his usual naps, the warden decided to have his time with Anirudh and whacks him hard. Seeing the chief warden go away before he slept, he assumed he wouldn’t have been back; Anirudh sternly denies sleeping and shouts back at the warden for whacking him too hard. The warden smirks and goes away. Feeling the sense of victory, Anirudh gets back to his nap. A few moments later, he hears the chief warden calling ‘Anirudhhhhh…’ from the door. For a moment he thinks he was day dreaming, before he realizes the chief warden was actually there. The chief warden was already fuming. Anirudh goes – ‘ewwww..i am dead today’ and the chief warden takes him out of the class into the corridor. And the rest of them in the class giggle, whisper and lay bets. The chief warden, a five foot guy stands on the elevated platform and pushes Anirudh down into the hot sun. Putting a hand on Anirudh’s shoulder, he starts his lecture and how to be studious and obedient and concentrate on studies blah blah blah blah blah blah……and goes on for a about twenty minutes. It’s already 5 minutes into the lunch break time, the chief warden then decides to end the conversation with these words – “Chudu, Anirudh, warden ante evaru anukuntuna…? okka student study hour lo nidra potunte, bujjam tatti lepi chaduvukomane vade warden, babu.” (“See, Anirudh, a warden is a person, who wakes up a student sleeping in a study hour and tells him to study”. Without a pause, Anirudh shoots back looking up into the eyes of the chief warden – “Sir, mari warden nidra pothe bujjam tatti nidra lepe vade chief warden a Sir ??” (“Sir, is the chief warden the person who wakes up the warden sleeping in study hours??”)

The chief warden’s eyes go firm and then angry and they his hand moves from the shoulder to the head and grabs Anirudh’s hair, bending him down and then – “Dhaaaad……….Dhaaaaad……”. Anirudh gets up – “Ouchhh….!! that hurts”. Jumping off the platform the chief warden leaves, shouting back to let the students to go for lunch. All of them rush out of the class, while Anirudh stands there, massing his back. Praatik passing him gives Anirudh a smile and asks – “Was that you??”, embarrassingly Anirudh nods and they both go to the hostel, laughing all the way on Anirudh’s debacle.

The summer passed. There was another screening test. When the results were given out, the chief warden looked and Anirudh and said, you didn’t make it. He looked back and said, I wasn’t expecting to. And the chief went blank.

And after a few screening tests, Anirudh made it to the third section in the hierarchy. He moved to another campus, a kilometer away from the main campus. And then again the final year of residential junior college started. It was fun right from the first day. Classes began at 6 in the morning. There were the regular study hours and in addition there were one or another type of objective tests. Weekends he played volleyball and spent time on the terrace with his new found friends. Sometimes, he used to get away to the main campus to meet Praatik. But, they had their bi-weekly quota of movies in the new campus.

Months passed by. It was January, most the students around Anirudh were already tensed about AIEEE and EAMCET. Well, it made him nervous and he started dusting his books and finally sat down to write the practice tests and solved every objective question he could find. Revised all the old test papers, picked up random stuff to study and went on for three months. The examination dates got postponed due to the central and state government elections. While the EAMCET was over my May, AIEEE was postponed to May end. And it meant a month more in the college during the summer.  He slogged and dragged away time. And finally, he was done with the system. He went back to Bombay, learnt to drive, caught up with his old school mates and then came the results and the rains of Bombay.

chapter 5

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.