And So Life Began..

** FLASHBACK**

A sudden banging woke me up. It didn’t seem to stop as it was going on constantly. The first thing I wanted to do after opening my eyes was to find the guy who was making that dire sound and hang him upside down on the fan. I searched for the source of the sound and saw that it was our hostel warden doing something with the door latch. Finally what I could make out was that he was actually holding it and moving it left to right to produce that awful banging. For Christ’s sake! Who would come up with something like this? What’s gone into his mind? After a while it stopped and he went off to the other rooms to do the same.

I got up from the bed, and as told by the guy the previous night, I put on a t-shirt, shorts and wore my sports shoes. I went to the toilet to pee and after I returned back to the room I see that all the other guys are still asleep like babies. I was like- “Whatever!”, and ran off to the ground. My first sight of the ground was- Little boys walking here and there talking about new action series, some big guys dozing off on the ground itself. It didn’t seem to have many boys. I told my self, “Damn! Whatever happened to the ‘shakha’ shit and the strict regime.” I made five rounds of the ground and did some push-ups. The other guys at the ground now started making strange faces on seeing me exercise as if they had spotted their biggest fear building up muscles of iron and nerves of steel. Finishing up with the exercise I went off for another five rounds of the ground and thought of going back to the hostel after the last one. While going out, I see some familiar faces entering the ground. One of them is the guy himself who had warned me against being late. He’s shocked to see me too. “When the hell did you come up here?”, he asked. I replied, “I’ve been doing your god damned shakha since 5:15 a.m.!” He’s awestruck now. I continued, “What do you expect me to do now?” He patted me on my back and appreciated me for being so obedient the first day itself.

I returned back to the hostel and rested a while in the balcony. Hey! Wait a second. Did I tell you about the balcony that we have? Well, to let you know our’s is the only hostel amongst the other four to have separate balconies for all the rooms. Anyway, coming back to the rest that I was taking, the view from the balcony to the mangrove was worth watching. The cool morning breeze was equally enticing. And yes, there were still some guys sleeping on their beds probably dreaming about girls. On asking, they replied they were bunking it. They were pretty firm in answering it as if the next time I wake ‘em up for a question they would kick me out of the room. I thought it better to let them sleep.

I wanted to have a bath but I was still perspiring, so I had to wait. I roamed about here and there in the hostel exploring every corner in the absence of the other guys who were still out on the ground. I went into the other rooms to have a look and in the study room picking up books to read the names of the boys. Time passed by…

Suddenly there was a sound of many feet rushing towards the room. The first thought that came to my mind was that if the boys came to know that I had gone into their rooms, or picked up their books? I hurried back towards my room, but then I saw that they were dashing into each other to get into the bathrooms. At first, I wasn’t able to make out what was happening, but after I entered into the bathroom area to brush, I came to the conclusion that it was nothing but to be the first one’s to bath. All the bathrooms were occupied, but there were these guys who were constantly banging the doors and asking who was to bath after them. If they told them, they would move to the next door. If the guy inside says that nobody’s next after him, then he gets himself on line.

I was very surprised to see the whole system of boys putting themselves in number and then waiting for their turn. This was because, living in a house with an attached bathroom just for me was a very different experience.However, even I banged one of the doors and asked if anybody was to bath after him. He said no, and I told him my name. Incase he didn’t recognize me, I told him that I was the new guy to the institute. He replied, “Thik hai…(Fine)”. I thought to myself, there it goes… my first step in indulging with the school’s system.