When Kishore Kumar died a hundred deaths

"There are still 8 chapters remaining.I think i will night out today."
"I haven't even tried out any 'problems' as yet. App-Mech really sucks."
"Can i leave those last 2 chapters in option. This year they might not come.What say?""What did they ask in your Viva? Is the external strict ?"
"Forget it. Lets have a fag. Is Ganpat's tea stall still open?"

Flashback to the world of irrelevance. Flashback to the hostel life.
A virtual universe of 24 X 7 chaos, where events waited for mid-nights to occur - nay explode.

If you have ever seen a hostel life, then it's hard to believe, you have not been a part of these seemingly mindnumbing conversations.

For the unitiated,these coversations may sound silly or hollow, but they meant a world for a hostelite. For example , what if the Viva external was really strict? Would that person skip the orals altogether? Or what's the point of having a fag & a cup of tea ? Would it have solved the problem of last 2 chapters? But i bet you listened to these questions as a religious routine every semester.

Those conversations were worth every unsuccessful smoke ring coming out of your lips.
Every tea stall owner fancied his chances of making big, thanks to the relentless customer line all through the night at his stall for a tiny cup of tea - the lifeline of every hostelite. As a rule who has to be awake all night, before the exam.

But it was fun. Fun that everyone from the topper to the repeater would some how find himself in those fruitless conversations before every exam.

Then off course those visits to the temple , asking God for somehow clearing this exam and promising him of being sincere the next time. "Just this. Just this exam, please. !!!". The cry of the "inner voice" bigger and louder than Sonia Gandhi's.

By the time we were in the final year, the "beer" was the defacto thirst quencher relegating water to distant second place. Even during the exam period some of us were audacious enough for going to have drinks in the evening just a day before the paper.Yours faithfully,included.

"Phir bhi theek nikle yaar"... those priceless words from one of characters of the movie "Hyderabad Blues" says it all.Yea,we just managed to squeeze through those years & yea some of us even came out with flying colors.
(One might blame it on the paper checker or the examiner. Oh Whatever !)

And dig this;There used to be a study room in the college premise where all the sincere amongst us would come over to study. Believe it or not,i too visited them often. Not because i was sincere or something.Those four years i had divorced sincerity.
It was just that the canteen (cafetaria for the US walas) was very close to that room and hence i could frequently go for my regular dose of wada pav & tea.

Barring those 15 days of exams & some part of the so called 'preparation' leave (where nothing really got us prepared), the rest of the life in college was bliss. It was divine. Oh yea, also there was a brief "submission" period preceding every semester exam and it had its own share of ordeal.But atleast during the submission period, the window glasses, the bulb and the bucket came in handy. Also the journals of the sincere ones could be used.

Do i miss that? You bet i do. But like all phases of life, that carefree phase of life had to come to an end. A phase where you never knew who would be lying on your bed when you entered your room.
Or a phase where someone would wear your well ironed shirt for playing a game of cricket; a shirt that you had carefully kept in your trunk for some special occassion.Your sleepers would be found under some distant bed in a hostel room just because one of your friends did not want to wear his shoes in the morning before leaving your room.

If your room mate made an impromptu decision of cleaning the room, there were two possible reasons. Either his female friends are paying a visit or someone's parents are expected. Else the room will be a dumping yard, for all those who cared to live in it.
But yea, the definition of cleanliness was limited to all the clothes being dumped temporarily in the shelf. It was all about 'pushing under the carpet' literally.

The girls were a constant and only reliable source of revenue during those economically tough times; needless to say they were given special treatment. And yea they were particularly helpful during the days of submitting journals, as their journals were always up to date.

During hostel days,clock or watch was an entity people did not bother much of; almost as much as that journal itself. It meant very little. So if you happened to visit your food mess at let's say 00:00 am after watching some non-descript hindi movie in an equally shady theatre, you were more worried about someone being in the mess at that time, rather than whether any food was left. Because food was always left. We practically lived on 'left overs'.

There was neither a routine nor a road map. You could have your lunch between the time range of 10:30 hrs to 16:30 hrs and dinner between time range of 17:30 hrs to 2:00 hrs. No questions asked.It was an accepted norm. It was a natural way of existence.The only issue that bothered us about the mess was the bill. Because every one felt that he did not eat enough in the mess to justify that payment. The auditor of the mess owed greater explaination than the defaulters.

Self analysis was a futile excercise. You are just what you are. You are taken as you are. Even if you try to put a facade and impress some crowd, you fall flat on your face and get exposed pretty much within a short span. Practically no one's interested in what you are as long as you join him in having a fag and share a bottle of beer.

You are not known by how well you performed in your last exam (and mind you lot of them perform well), rather how many times you have had drinks this season. Or were you able to befriend a girl from your class. Then even if you have had three ATKTs (back logs) in your cart you were still a hero. Career be damned. You can always recover.Those days you were judged by very different parameters. The rules of the game were different.

Of all the phases that i have encountered in my life and I am likely to encounter in future, this phase, which constitutes and represents four continous years of nonsense (as in things not making sense at all), stand out as the most enjoyable.

I would like to re-live those moments and days, when i was making no positive contribution to the society or my family for that matter. Atleast now when i am earning, i am sort of directly helping my family and my employer and may be indirectly helping my country's economy. Whatever !

I have enough money today to have beer everyday but I still miss those days when i needed to take loan from my friends to join my other drinking friends and have a blast. I miss calling my father for sparing some extra money, 'only for this month'.
I miss those songs that we sang, bereft of any inhibitions, the whole night, intoxicated more by the camaraderie than by the beer itself.When Kishore Kumar died a hundred deaths and when Jagjit Singh was the demi-God of every broken heart.

When smoking was not about making hole in your lungs or pocket, but a neccessary evil to have your rightful place under the Hostel sun. When a game of Flash could extend well into the early morning hours.

Those four years when vices were your friends and decency was delt with contempt. Those four years when you did not need to plan to meet your friends and could hijack one's privacy without giving a call, because privacy was a concept , alien to us.

Those years when our parents merely lived on hope rather than any concrete evidence that their son will somehow get on the career road. Those years when abusive language was not so much of a pariah, but the defacto lingo.
A phase when bordering insanity was not an exception, it was almost a virtue.

Those years when nothing worthwhile or fruitfull was achieved, yet life gave so many reasons to live for.