The Funnies

Disclaimer: 

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Purely Co-incidental. Names, though may seem like known ppl, are totally figments of my imagination. Stories, though may seem like something happened to you in your lifetime at XL, are totally made up (m a genius at making up stories- can't help it). Places, though may sound like common XLRI places like Bishoo's or some of the hostels, are in fact not what you think it is. People offended, esp those referred to as Trolls, Piggies and other such monsters, esp heads of various committees (that apparently don't exist according to the story) are advised to not kill me...... Please... (On the plus side- no one reads my blog- so that's some consolation....:p....)

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Preface

And now a term goes by. The first term has seen its highs and lows. The end of three months has never been so fast and so writ with memories. So much so, that i feel that if some "shit" ain't documented, two years will just zip by and no one will remember what happened when and worse people won't know "what" happened. Period. So here i go writing about it on a crappy blog (not that my blog is crappy- au contrair its awesome, like me. Its crappy cos i have "six" followers, that can even make Shakespeare feel crappy, like Chetan Bhagat after his next book) for the rest of the world to follow too. For i know someday that as i look back at this blog, i'll be wrought with memories from these two years. We have had amazing times- there was this one time when Abby got high and created a nuisance. Then this one time Dee-pain-moron-tee got high and created another nuisance. And another time when everyone got high and did some shit. (I don't recall. Was pretty high myself and i'm obviously not going to blog about that...:p..). Basically, this blog is about all the "highs" in the past one term. The highs figuratively. And literally as well.

Abby's Day Out

So we have this one time when Abby got high (on roofies apparently) and went berzerk in the girls hostel.That particular night started off with Abby coming back from his fake committee (Senseless Amateurs Pretending to be Professionals HRs  and Inadvertently  Ripping Every student n company in sight) night out and into our abode, brandishing a stick at everyone that came his way. How he got hold of that stick is still a matter of speculation, but as of now it is safely stored in my room, out of his reach. We only realised that he'd lost it when some of the blows struck by him were not playful, rather really hard and painful. "Navy Single" wrenched it away from him after a close wrestling match and I had to go for my "Pain-in-the-ass, Life-sucking, Awfully Cranky and Emotional Meeting of Enthusiastic Night Trawlers" Committee meeting (yeah- its a committee on campus- very secretive though and shall be hence forth referred to as the secret committee), so i told our ol' Navy Cut to take care of the drunk kid that we felt responsible towards and texted Abby's chaddi-buddy - "Nash.avi" about the situation and I left the room. I was filled in on what happened next from various sources- "Piggy Stunt-Bag", the girl Abby plays doll-house with, Nash.avi, Abby's secret crush (Oops!! It ain't a secret anymore..) et al..

So here's the low down of what happened in my absence- Seizing the opportunity of baby-sitting a drunk kid, Navy Single and Nash.avi took him to Bichoo's (yeah that's like a food joint started by someone with a Scorpion fetish) and then after amusing the junta with Abby's antics, they led him into the TMTWR (The Massive Trolls and Witches Residence) and our drunk child hero- Abby started shouting like crazy and having learnt that his sworn enemy, the villain of our story - "Sour, rubbed Bum-shell" was in one of the rooms (henceforth referred to as dungeons), he started shouting and threatening him to come out. Our villain's lethal superpower being SLEEP, (and by sleep i mean not putting others to sleep, but going off to sleep himself at the drop of a hat) he found himself rather helpless. But for the intervention of our very attractive damsel named "Peas" that the hero fancied (or so we'd like to believe and love to tease him for it too), Mr Bum-shell would have been in some real trouble. The hapless soul just found an easy exit and left the TMTWR, thanking the heavens for saving him from a near-death encounter with Abby. Abby also managed to disrupt the sleep of many trolls living in the adjacent dungeons and a particularly nasty one too named "Near-wrecker". Mentioning this particular one takes me back to another story- again involving Abby and Near-wrecker. One that happened much later.

It was a clear night sky. Abby wanted to stroll with the trolls, play a little doll-housie with Piggy Stunt-Bag so he pulled along Navy Single to go with him to The Massive Trolls and Witches Residence and keep guard while he did his business. After his rendezvous with Piggy Stunt-Bag, he and Navy Single began to make their way back to the hostel and then out of nowhere as they were passing the dungeon of "near-wrecker", Abby felt a bit adventurous and banged heavily on the dungeon door and ran away. Navy and Piggy looked here and there helplessly for a place to hide. Piggy ran into her sty, leaving Navy no choice but to just jump into the nearest dungeon available before the nasty troll came running to suck his blood. Well, this rude interruption into the troll dungeon wasn't taken lightly and before you know it, the word spread about Navy's brave encounter. Well i guess it was Navy's lucky day, cos u don't find many people who enter these dungeons without permission and then live to tell the tale. That's my boy Navy. And as for Abby. Well he's now developing quite a reputation among the trolls especially one of creating havoc every time he steps into the troll residency. And now people actually wonder whether he was really high during the first encounter- the one in which he scared the living hell outta Bum-shell, cos he created a similar ruckus by awakening the troll "near-wrecker" that too without being drunk at all.

A brief introduction to DPMT

Both these random yet awesome encounters were not witnessed by me firsthand, for my life in general is devoted to the services of this secret organisation that i mentioned earlier. And its true- we do a lot of boring, secretive stuff behind the four walls of our "office" on campus (top-secret stuff like convincing Batman that its ok to come out of the closet with his feelings for Robin, assuring Superman that his red-cape by no means makes him look like a little girl, to be specific- Lil Red Riding Hood). But on a serious note, we do have our own "days", you know, like days when some incident happens that people tend to remember for years on end and especially at re-unions when they start off with- "You remember the time when....". But, the nature of this top-secret, non-existent committee is such that i just cannot divulge much information (not now at least- rest assured we'd be laughing our asses off during our re-unions). But the story involves a certain "Dee-pain moron-tee". Names can be deceptive. This guy is a friggin genius. Makes work "fun" for us committee members. But that's another story for another time.

Of Colonel Briggs v/s the Navy

Then there was a time when "Navy Single", my dear roommate, got high and started jumping about and then after being totally drained, slept off to wake up to his clean clothes being tossed all around the room (boy was he pissed!!). The story goes like this. It was the night of celebrations. The results of the audition of a famous band on campus was out. A band named after a famous historical tree. I won't divulge much info though. M so glad that the XLers reading this are so "in-the-dark" wondering what I am referring to. (Ha Ha!! Suckers!!). And I was selected to be a part of this band (no surprise there- I'm awesome!!) and with me selected was Murdered-in-jail Sandy-Brigg-haha (the haha at the end clearly for those who don't get it) who'd i'd like to call Colonel Briggs. so Col. Briggs and I decided to throw a little party for the good folk of TNAMR (The Naughty and Amorous Macho-men Residency) the two-story building that accommodates the both of us and a lot of other goofy bastards. (rfr earlier blogs for the scoop on TNAMR and its historic significance). So we got hold of some premium liquor for the party.

In case i haven't mentioned it- the liquor biz in Jamshedpur is dependent solely on the young and virile livers of Xlers out here. Many a businessman has made a fortune by supplying hooch to XL. XLRI is seen as a haven for young and fresh talent by stalwarts in the industry and even by the behanji next door that moms brag to. Even MBA aspirants all throughout the country salivate when they come across people from XL. But, in the eyes of the liquor vendors, resto-bar and pub owners, we are the "BND" (no, not boys next door, rather bevdas next door) who don't hesitate to ask for "XL discount" while even buying a quarter of their favorite brew. Yes! Cheap we are. Who cares that our packages touch the sky? Who cares that on an average we'd be earning over a million and a half in Indian currency per year? If it comes to saving 25-30 bucks on a full bottle of our favorite brew, the heck we care about protecting our identities. Out comes the i-Card with the XL badge on it flashed with such pompousness that it seems we're doing the world a favor by disposing off the excess liquor. Only these lucky ones get to see our true colors. And this is a ritual that happens every weekend and daily for some seniors who've bagged some high-end job offers already.

So, back we go to the story. Col. Briggs n myself decided to throw one heck of a party. Since we both were also in secret service (of the secret committee of course), we had to attend the nightly ritual of saving the world before bedtime. So the party had to start late. It was decided then- 1 am. All that had to be done was to wrap up the secret meeting before that and attend the initiation ceremony of the band before 1 am. So the invites went out and all were asked to assemble in my room, which by the way was decked up to resemble a party hall with the dim lights and the soft background music. All seemed to go well. We talked our way into leaving the secret service early that night (and by early I mean 12 midnight), but the only hitch that remained was the initiation to the band took longer than expected. The newly-formed band decided to get to know each other better and thus hung-around for longer than expected. The clock was ticking.

Going back in time a few hours, earlier that night, Navy Single, the hero of our story, had gone for HIS committee party (boy do we have serious trouble every time somebody goes for a committee party!!). Navy was a part of this uber-cool committee called Socially Awkward Clouts. Uber-cool cos of the fact that these committee people had like the power to spam people. There ain't nothing cooler than imposing your mail into the mailboxes of a classroom of chronic internet-addicts who actually run into panicked frenzies the moment there's little or no activity on their various online accounts and go about hitting Ctrl+R from time to time expecting God-alone-knows-what to happen every time they do so. So, as i was saying, our hero and his cronies were discussing "how much fun it actually is to keep spamming people who check their BBs everytime they get a mail only to discover that it's a false alarm". And they were discussing this over a few drinks which eventually turned out to be a few-too-many for some to handle. Cos according to reports, Navy Single came home high as the high hopes of Pink Floyd and was apparently jumping around like an ecstatic tweety bird. (Again i missed the fun cos I was "doing time" working for the secret service). I got a phone call from Abby calling me to my room immediately to witness my drunk roommate's wild antics. I muttered a few curses under my breath for having to miss this event (again!!). I rushed through the entire process of bunking secret service for that night and also rushed to the band initiation ceremony hoping it got over soon. As we all know- that didn't happen exactly the way i wanted it to and the time was now 2 a.m.- an hour behind our partying schedule. The drunk hero of our story was now drunk AND pissed that we didn't start on time and just decided to take his protest to a different level by plonking himself on his bed (which was in the party room- he's my roommate of course) and then dozing off and refusing to wake up for the love of anything.

Anyways, the party went on. Our so-called guests did arrive (they didn't mind it being an hour late as long as we had lots of good booze to compensate the delay) and sat themselves respectably and poured up a couple of drinks. Neither did they mind sitting on the very bed Navy was plonked on and chit-chatting without concern. A couple of them did try innovative techniques to wake the sleeping beauty, but it seems Navy was too adamant even in his sleep. Everything seemed to be going like the way quite and respectable parties do. That was until approximately "three down". After that- all hell broke loose. It turned out to be one of the worst nights ever and one of the best too. Somewhere down the party, they caught hold of Navy's clothes from the clothes line and started chucking it on each other. It started off with my jockey actually and then they somehow found the idea of lunging underwear at each other very attractive and began meting out the same treatment to Navy's clothes. And thus began the game of "toss the host's chaddi". I did my best to stop them- honestly. But it was a mob that night. Agreed, we were just a dozen people crammed into my small room, but it was still a crowd. A crowd of drunk Xlers. Other highlights included Abby getting really drunk (as always) and then lashing out at people from Bengal and Orissa. Our esteemed chief-guest, a person I mentioned earlier in the blog, Mr. Dee-pain moron-tee being from an odiya background found his life in grave danger after this threat from Abby and scampered for the door. That was the last I saw of him that night. Apart from that, we had a loud karaoke, with a dozen odd drunk guests swaying (not because they could actually control themselves from doing so) and singing (for the lack of a better word) together to the anthems of Pink Floyd. In the commotion, a couple of esteemed guests did manage to break their spectacles- Mr. Mayflower and Mr. Shivery.

The sight of her sends a "shivery" down my spine

Here comes Mr. Shivery, the hapless guy who lost his spectacles to a mob-fight. And the worst part was Mr. Shivery was quite sober that night, but had just joined the group for some fun. Poor chap didn't realize that the joke was on him. And as a matter of fact, not just the joke, but also the "jockey" was on him. MY jockey. You see- somewhere during the game of "toss the host's chaddi", the esteemed guests found that a better alternative to the game would be to actually make a garland of the jockey and ring it around the neck of some unfortunate soul at the party when he wasn't looking. Mr. Shivery had the jockey around his neck for quite a long time, and i could have sworn as i browsed through the video the next day (yes i had my video camera working all through the night. I do it always- BIG DEAL!!), that Mr. Shivery actually didn't want to take it off. Was he mourning the loss of his now-smashed spectacle? Or was he just getting a high out of wearing the jockey around his neck? There are some questions in life that have no answer. All in all, it was a memorable night. We partied till sunrise (actually we ran out of booze by then, or else no one was in the mood to stop). And then on an impulse, we all decided to go out for brunch. Apparently a party is never complete unless you go for an all-you-can-eat-buffet. If you ask me- its a clever way devised to make people puke. Thankfully no one did puke that night. It was a good day all in all. We all had fun. All except Navy, who was in a state of shock as well as mourning when he saw the state of the room the next morning. (Funny story- in the middle of the mad party, Navy woke up to go to the loo and take a leak or smth and before he knew it he was locked out of his own room. Of course, someone locked the door on purpose. He spent the whole night in Abby's room where he slept peacefully. It was a win-win for everyone. He got his much need sleep, and we got rid of lil bo-peep). So as I was saying- the room was a mess. Everything that could be moved had been moved. Thus ends the story of "The time when Navy Single got really pissed". All in all it was a good day and a memorable party. However, I was mildly pissed too- they fought like crazy over my jockey and tore it into tatters. Apparently "toss the host's jockey" is very much like cricket cos it involves a lot of "wear and tear" of the game equipment. Cricket balls face "wear and tear" when it comes to the game of cricket and Jockey branded inner wears go through the same in this particular game. Luckily for me- there was no "wear" involved in the whole process, just the "tearing" bit. The "wearing" element would come to play in the "pervert's version" of the game i guess. But, i was nonetheless sad at having to wake up to a torn jockey the next morning. (The joke's on them though cos the jockey was by no means clean...;)...)

Pat yourself on the back if you could read this epic saga in one sitting. I hope after reading this blog, my "six faithful followers" don't just decide to ban my blogs for life. I really wouldn't blame them even if they do.....:):)

Cheerios!!

The week that wasn't (Part 1)

Well time sure does fly. And here i am, at the end of another week at XLRI. But its not just another week at XL- it has by far been the best week of my life. One that i won't forget till my dying day. But since i don't have much confidence on my mental faculties to register every possible feeling associated with the past one week, and the way it has just zipped through without giving us a chance to ponder about it, I've decided to "immortalise" the last one week by just blogging about it. (Those of you sincerely wondering whether i have better things to do in life- i DO...:p... I'm crunched for time even on this weekend, but in the larger interests of the society (lol.. who am i kidding???).. i've decided to jot the happenings down). Another Disclaimer to XL folks n my batchmates and seniors: In the event that i may have to utilise a specific example for ease of reader understanding and may have to take a name, i'll try managing with "initials", but even then if anyone is offended, don't kick my ass- just ask me to edit my blog. And the characters in this blog are anything but fictitious. And at the same time i don't wanna leave out important facts that is nothing but "history in the making"- For me and my batchmates at least. Anyways here i go, setting the time back to a week ago. Happy reading.

P.S. : grab some popcorn - i must admit- its looooong. Or keep some glucose at hand. I don't want anyone passing out before they're through.

16/6/2011 (The S.S.B.):

"Dude, i read somewhere that they're gonna throw water on us and drench us after we wear formals", blurted MJ. He made sense somehow. And i picked out from my wardrobe the crappiest shirt and trouser that wasn't even ironed- it didn't matter to the water if it were falling on a Louis Phillipe or a crappy "Shanivari bazaar" shirt. Well, we did look like a bunch of idiots dressing up in full formal fashion, tie et. al. at 10:00 pm to go for a supposed GBM (wat the heck was a GBM now) at FPH ( the Father Prabhu Hall, a big enough rectangular hall to accommodate 250 odd poor souls time and again for all the various wrong reasons. Examinations and boring diatribes to name a few. The place has more security cameras than the PMO continuously monitoring GOD knows what. ) Entering the FPH, i half expected the seniors to be loafing about in short pants n laughing at us lame-o's as we entered in full business attire, but was surprised to see a grim atmosphere in FPH. All the seniors meant business. The projector was started and then we were shown a ppt and bombarded with abbreviations from all sides: SSB, ILF, LDC, GBM and though i don't recollect exactly- all that might have stuck on was WTF and GTH. We were then all made to stand up and greet a Prof. who was the faculty head of this thing called the S.S.B. (Students' Steering Body. Remember this name. Its gonna have some say in the end). All of rushed to our feet as the harried prof. walked past in. We could tell he had better things to do this part of the night than to be addressing a bunch of students, and if he was trying to hide it, he didn't do it well. Now the "President" of this SSB, a senior of ours, kept describing the activities of the said SSB. One glance at the President, and we were taken aback. The heroic face of an Obama or a Bill wasn't what greeted us. He asked the prof to say a few words, being the faculty head of this SSB and so forth. Prof. walked to the podium to address the junior batch, starting with, "Its my pleasure to introduce you to XLRI, as you all know I'm here to inaugurate the first GBM of..." He turned to the president, "what's it now??". "The SSB. The SSB", shot back the embarrassed president. "Oh yes! The SSB. The SSB.", continued the prof., as a very amused junior batch looked on wondering really how often this SSB met up all year long. He wrapped up the speech surprisingly fast and then excused himself out. What followed was another session of random alphabets, in the form of organisations, being tossed about us. We were also informed that we'd have sessions every night to cover up the subjects that we were clueless about. The president, bringing his right hand, palm down upto his chin to show that we were "here", then raising it as high as he could over his head, told us the professors who taught us were "there" and they were trying their best to bridge the gap. Fine. So this wasn't an elaborate ragging session. Another thing in my life that i haven't experienced, and by the looks of it, probably won't. The session lasted about an hour so, no one actually remembers, and then we headed to our hostels. Another day at XL over and out. Buzz abounding from all sides about this new turn of events.

17/6/2011: (The GRIND):

The morning saw a rush of people grabbing a last minute bite as they hurried to their classrooms. Another day of preparatory lectures to transition into life in a B-School. We slept through a special yoga session arranged for us at 7 in the morning. A wise, harried looking soul, came up to us later, telling us we were really lucky we weren't there. Unfortunately for him, he was right behind a mammoth of a guy in the yoga session, blocking his entire view of the "xl ki kudiyan", and if that wasn't bad enough, the guy almost passed out in the "pavan-mukt-aasana"- a green signal to all "farters" to do what they love the most publicly without anybody having to judge them. Well, now THAT's a crappy start to a day if ever there was one. All these years of laziness was finally paying off for me- at least i didn't get "skunked" on. The day lectures taken by a particular prof seemed reminiscent of my engg days, for we had 3 hours worth of "matrices". Yes Matrices. Who thought the crappy thing we learned in Engg school, which was, if u got to see, the closest we engineers ever got to arranging numbers in "pretty" little square that was aesthetically appealing as well, was actually going to be an important tool in Business schools. I'm still not convinced of its B-school utility. I mean i can't see Kotler or Covey or Buffet sitting around in a circle in a team poring over a funny looking square trying to arrange numbers to look pretty enough and at the same time worthy of predicting the next global recession (Boy have we had enough of that already!!!)

In the evening we were informed of our next rendezvous with the seniors- this time they meant business. At about 10:00 in the night we all gathered in the FPH and had some serious kick ass stuff on economics and accounting. The clock ticked slowly by- 1 am. Then 2am, then 3 am. Here we were, after a hectic day, getting our asses kicked kindly by the supposedly helpful seniors' lectures. Somewhere between counting the o'clocks, happened an incident that i'm not very proud of, but m still blogging it down, just to prove a point to Garry Podder. (Garry Podder, or GP from now on, is my padosi living below me. We clicked on the first day itself. Its but obvious, Garry Podder ain't his real name, but hence forth i shall refer to him this way. On an unrelated note - GP is the roommate of MJ). SO, GP challenged me to blog this if i had the "things that we play with on the sports field" to do so. So, GP- here- i DO have the "things that we play with on the sports field". Ok, so here's what happened- GP was sitting to my right. Nygil (my roommate) on my left. In front of Nygil sat this PYT ( XL term for pretty young thing), let's call her KalSiUmmm (pronounced Calcium, and yes the "ummm" at the end says a lot about her), who kept fidgeting with her pen and in one maneuver, sent in flying to her right under the chair of the girl on her right and it lay just in front of my feet. After a few seconds of unsuccessful attempts to retrieve the fallen pen, i decided to be the "nice guy" and help her. So i ducked under the chair of the gal in front of me and locked on to the pen, which, to my bad luck, was, at the same moment in her grip too. Call it the weird stupor that keeping awake for 20 hours a day does to you, or watever you want to, i grabbed the pen from her hand under the chair and then handed it to her (after taking it from her in the first place) over her shoulder. Yes- her expression wasn't very sweet, and my loud and nervous chuckle to ease he situation didn't help as well, and all i got was a "don't act smart" stare in return, much to the entertainment of my friends on the right and the left who left no stone unturned in letting the whole TNMR know about it that night. I could definitely conclude that these guys didn't need to learn marketing. The way they marketed this incident throughout XL, each time making me look more and more evil, right upto the point where i swear, the story went something like I was the guy who dropped the pen out of her hand in the first place and tried to snatch the pen and bite her. Garry Podder had a lot to do with this. I'm gonna get back at him someday...:D:D

Just a little over 3 am, the session broke off. I made a sprint for the door. I was exhausted. Drained to the core. Just a little sprint for half a minute and i'd be in my room, in my bed, snuggled and cosy. As i reached the final bend for my hostel, i happened to notice something which i should have but it didn't strike me initially. There were groups of people standing under a few tress on the route and as i reached closer, a few of them rushed out from the trees, blocked the path and said- "Go to the small auditorium. Hurry!". I was livid. The night wasn't going to be over that soon after all. Here was a group of seniors who wanted to "rag" us. My dream of being ragged was finally going to be true, but instead of being happy, i was cursing the timing of this adventure. I headed to the auditorium, resigned to my fate at what was to happen. I waited for Garry Podder, took him aside and told him, "Dude, we're in this together. Just so that we don't make an exhibition in front of our batch, let's wait for some other "bakra" to get shaheed before we do. Since we are compelled to do it, we may might as well have a laugh out of it all"

(we then proceeded towards the auditorium, not knowing what lay ahead of us that night, the following day or maybe the week to come. This was the first thing we learnt from here. Lesson #1: Live life as it comes, without worrying about what was or is to come. Stay tuned to know what happened in the auditorium that night. And the more amazing stuff that followed in the week to come, is definitely gonna make for amazing reading. Signing off for the night. Stay tuned.)

Oriented blues

16/6/2011

If the orientation/ preparatory session is any indication of what the next two years is going to be, then well we are all in for a sorry surprise. Neither is it helping my "blogging resolution" in any which way. Yesterday the server was down the whole evening for some reason. Thanks to the jam-packed schedule on day 1, i couldn't manage to get a new local number and since Vodafone has no network (none watsoever) in XL, i felt, for the first time in wat seemed like ages, isolated from the outside world....:(:(

But thnx to some new-found frnds from BM, it wasn't that bad. Yesterday, for the second consecutive day, my room was turned into the XL version of the COKE studio, audience included. Another guy from my class, a good guitarist, helped me entertain the folk from not just the TNMR (rfr prev post for the TNMR story), but also the adjacent hostel too. The so-called "jamming" lasted over an hour, after which we hungry souls hoarded into the canteen in such a hurry, as if someone had setup an actual COKE studio downstairs. Food again- homely!! (My mom has one more reason to fret. As it is she thinks that all i miss about home is the food. Well. not anymore)

In a surprising first- i for the FIRST TIME EVER did my own laundry. Well, i took help, and plus the front-load washing machine seemed even more complicated than it looked. Taking well over 90 mins to wash a single set of clothes, i was obliged to keep-awake right unto 2 in the morning. Totally worth it!! Job done successfully with minimal "attiral" damage. all smiles.

The first day of the preparatory course: 16 June, was the first time i entered into my XL classroom. Lecture Hall 8. The HRM and BM batches are divided into two sections- A and B, with me in HRM-B. The classroom is not unlike the "well" at IIM-A. Only difference being the rotating chairs fixed to the floor. U feel partly like an executive sitting in them, swinging round and round. Partly so, cos unlike the "real" executive chairs, these are still wooden...;).. The first lecture on case-study analysis and the last lecture on "Labor laws, PM and IR" were quite absorbing. The latter taking up almost the entire alloted session of 90 mins, w/o me, (yes ME) looking at the watch even once. The work-ex guys seemed to get thrilled after learning about a few laws and kept asking doubts after doubts, seeking a way they can get back at their former employers. The proffessor, though being of a very obliging nature, kept the discussion super-ficial w/o getting into the intricacies of every doubt. The guy was right. This was after all a preparatory course. Not "solve all your former corporate problems in class" day. Inspite of this, we freshers still were hooked on like a 2-year old kid to "kinder joy". I might actually have found my to-be interesting subject for the semester.

Anyways, got time to get a new sim card today. Not surprisngly a TATA Docomo- it was TATA's nagar after all. Rains maintained an on again-off again relationship today. Rubbing us the wrong way and hindering every possible plan to escape the XL campus for a while. That didn't stop us - me n my roomie- from taking a rather wet n uncomfartable ride to the city- to an area called SAkchi market. Grabing hold off all the necessities on our "list", we drove back to campus leaving me an extra half hour to go n blog about my life out here.

A noticeboard on our mess seems quite intriguing to me as of now. Though i'd like to mention in this blog that the day has ended and now m off for the day. But the "intriguing" notice stating that-

"the seniors would like to "interact" us in the "Father Prabhu Hall", so we ought to report in "full formal attire" at 9:45 pm tonight" has gotten a lot of tongues wagging. Let's see what fate has in store. And i hope that whatever is to follow is not too embarrassing to post in my next blog...:):)..

Let's hope there IS a next time to blog about my life here.... Signing off (temporarily).

The Beginning

13/6/2011: (Day1.. Jo hoga dekha jaaye ga)

The morning started with a very groggy, one-eyed look at the time on the cell phone. 10:33 am. After the elapsing of time equal to what my brain took to process the information, I surprisingly found myself in the bathroom, brush in hand, frantically getting ready for the day. And the rush was justified too. It after all was not any ordinary day. It was the first day of the rest of my life. Correction. The first day of the rest of my life at XL. This day forth, I shall be looked upon as an XL-ite. Whenever I’m in the middle of a conversation, I can start something like, “When I was in XL, …blah blah blah…” or while chatting with anonymous strangers and they ask where I’ve studied, I can casually blurt out, ”Nothing per se. Just an HR degree from XLRI” and then stick out my teeth in a wide grin. After all, the person at the other end has no chance of noticing the “smirk”. And suddenly I was jolted back to reality. 10:55. And I was yet to open the cap off the tooth paste.” Damn!!”, I thought to myself, “You just gotta stop doing that.”

Things were moving slow. Got one of these huge ricks from here. Back there in Gujarat, I’d have called them “chhakdas”, but not knowing what reaction that term will have on the local townsfolk, I decided not to get vocal about my knowledge. The good thing about one of these is, that people travelling with luggage, and I mean loads of it, as much as 99 Kgs in my case, can lug their “luggage” around quite comfortably.

The Jamshedpur near my hotel was, to put it lightly, dis-spiriting. With people on either side of the road fighting for every inch of the footpath. The aforementioned ricks a.k.a “chhakdas” hogging the most of the road and vehicles behind it inching along while the hot Jamshedpur sun cruelly toasted their exteriors. The roads, not very promising too, with potholes strewn randomly to give the extra “Indian-like” feel to those visiting from abroad. The moment you cross a particular round-about in the city, it seems like you’ve secretly touched upon a portkey in a Harry Potter book and have travelled into another city. For across this particular round-about, there’s greenery as far as the eye can behold. Not to mention spick and span footpaths and vast regions of lush green lawns, with buildings thrown about sparsely. The roads- broad and clean and well maintained. (So, THIS is the supposed Jamshedpur that holds the record for the “seventh cleanest city in India”). A vast expanse of green lawn, as big as a small village in rural india is actually the famous “Jubilee Park” that surrounds XLRI on one side. Touching XL at another end is the “mother and father” of sport gymkhanas in the country- the Tata sports complex Jamshedpur. An Olympic size track with almost all facilities I assume. The view picturesque. Even as we enter XLRI, it is nothing like the the website. Nothing like the photographs you see out there. Its bigger, in fact much better than what you imagine seeing the vast collection of online photographs. My room, nt too bad. Being on the first floor is an added advantage- you don’t feel the heat top floors feel. The rooms are spacious too. Even though you have to share it with someone, (in my case a genial Punjabi guy, born and brought up in Calcutta-Navjot) you still have ample of space. And coming from me- a guy who’s lived in penthouses all through the engineering days- its not that hyped up after all. Each floor has about 8 rooms. Ofcourse, like all hostels, there is a common washroom- not too bad, not too good either. The good thing though is that each floor is equipped with their own washing-machine. And on our floor- a front loading one. (all smiles… cos, front load = dryer clothes = lesser time hanging them like decoration in your room… ie. Hostel room doesn’t end up looking like a cheap roadside clothes sale)

Another tech-savvy thing worth noting is this weird apparatus outside every door, actually just above the niche where the door is bolted into, which looks like a remote control, but only because there are numbers on it from 0-9 and a large doorbell shaped button in the bottom center. Many ideas were pitched, some said it’s a door intercom. Some said it’s a device that counts the times you enter and leave the room. (weird!!!). Some even said its an automatic shutter that locks you in if you don’t leave the room on time (weirder…;)…!!!) To top it all, someone cracked a joke about faculties locking us in, in case the assignments weren’t submitted. And then the laughter turned into a frightened grin at the thought of such an even actually happening. Only later were we to learn that it’s an electronic lock. The number which unlocked it, was known only to the two occupants that shared the room. This saved the hassles of locking and making sure the keys aren’t lost, or worse still, locked inside with us standing outside. Man, XL had some perks- though an A/C in each room would have been a much better way of showing their tech-savvy-ness, it was nonetheless a welcome gadget.

14/6/2011: (Day two of the honeymoon period)

After a harried day spent in the loan process, with a surprising amount of success, I left my dad off at the station. So, it was for the first time- a totally new city and me alone. I drove back to the hostel. First things first. I’d been dying to log into facebook and plus the connection speed at XL- always been much hyped about. Starting the wi-fi, I wasn’t disappointed. Hmmm… so this is wat it feels like to study in an Indian ivy-league. Again, I was jolted out of my reverie with a knock on the door. In came a troop of people, hardly seeking an invitation, introducing themselves one by one. My head felt tizzy. All I heard was the first one and the last one, the “in-between” ones were more of a rambling. Even now I can’t remember the exact number of people OR even who was in here. Damn!! I really need some “Human Resource” management. It’s a good thing I’ve come here. So, the story goes something like this- the entire last evening, the entire inhabitants of “The Nilima Acharya Men’s Residence”

(Now there’s an entire story behind this. Apparently, this was formerly a women’s hostel by the same name, and due to some modifications on campus, this now has been converted into a Boy’s hostel. Hence the name. It was so convenient for the XL management too that all they did was to drop the “W” and the “O” from the entrance mettalic hoarding which read “The Nilima Acharya Women’s Residence”. Needless to say, the inhabitants, me included, were sort of irked by the name. After all, try comparing “Fr. Enright’s Men’s Residence” to ours. We sounded like a pansy little dude in half pants standing in front of a macho man ready to beat the crap out of us. It was thus renamed- TNMR. Abbreviating it somehow calmed our insecurities, if any, and from then on, we reffered to our hostel as TNMR”)…

Had come hunting for me yesterday. Apparently someone had established that I was some sort of a musician (I know- stupid ol’ me… what did I expect carrying my entire musical paraphernalia along with me to XL) and they wanted to hear something. I left my un-packing halfway. (… That’s another thing I suck at. I have known times during graduation where I’ve come to college from my vacation at home and then only months later realized that there’s still a bag left to be unpacked…). Anyways, I had to accede to their request to see my “synthesizer”. Another dude across the hall- a Ravi seemed to be ecstatic at the fact that I had got this along and tried his hand at it too. It was bonding at the most elementary level.

8:30 is when the mess opens for dinner, and is when we precisely went for our. A hungry bunch are we, cos there was talks about dinner about an hour before mess even opened for business. Anyways, with the food out here, I doubt I can ever lose weight in these two years. Excellent by “bahar ka khana” standards. It was a motley crowd sitting there at the jam-packed table. People from various parts of the country. A particular guy very vocal about the “xl ki kudiyans” and even pointed at some of them. While we weren’t having a dig at his “enthusiasm”, we were busy trying to make sense of a particularly weird accent on one side. While I turned to the person on my right and smiled and asked him his name and from where he was, he looked aghast for a second and said- “dude!! I was just in your room. Remember? I was the guy who cracked so and so joke”.. and then he began recalling whatever joke it was that he cracked, while I tried to hide my embarrassment and also trying to memorise his face and his name. And now as I write this blog, just hours later, I am still trying to recollect his name. I’d better think of some non-offensive nickname to address him by tomorrow, or else I might have to face something like, “Dude!! C’mon now… Remember that joke??...”. I guess this time round, I just should pay attention to that joke, for I might remember his name that ways.

Our dinner ended and the gang (lets call it this for now, as I don’t know names yet) decided to just sit on the lawn and just muse a while. Random musings about movies ended drastically for a particular “Ravi”, who ended up recalling a funny incident, after which he was permanently nicknamed “Kilimanjaro” (Yes it’s the very Aishwarya Rai Kilimanjaro). The circle kept getting bigger and bigger as random people decide to sit and listen to what they thought was a highly intellectual and deeply gratifying conversation, as a result of which people began getting all the more subdued and silent. They did bring up “Kilimanjaro” again and again, but it seemed to wear off after a while. The random talking and silent conversations continued to fade off upto a point when there was not a single sound from the group for about one long and killing minute. Imagine 25 guys sitting around in a circle with nothing but silence between them. We ended our intellectual conversation by breaking off into smaller groups, thinking of some excuse or the other to justify doing so. Our group decided to walk around campus- and I must say- I was impressed even more, if possible. The GMP residence resembled some swanky uptown society in a metro with a couple of apartments well lit and maintained. We walked and walked. The XL campus, though not as large as many NITs or IIM-A for that matter, was definitely a huge one. Well equipped. Well maintained, and the best part- NO SUPERVISION. We didn’t bump into a single official from XL, not even a faculty on the first two days. The orientation is slated to start tomorrow and definitely there’ll be no escaping faculties there, but apart from that- we’re Lords of our kingdoms (Just one kingdom infact- the aforementioned XL campus). But still, it’s a welcome break from Nirma Jailhouse. Where we had more DON’Ts that DOs. Life in an ivy league was suddenly looking to be a good thing after all. Let’s see how far my optimism and smile lasts. Signing off for today with more twists to the X-Files coming up shortly.