Living away from home can certainly be an experience, especially if you are doing it for the first time. So after making “that last check” for the umpteenth time, you finally bid adieu to the family, amidst all the “have I advised him enough” looking mother and “don’t call me for money” looking father and “your room is mine” looking brother.
So you reach the school you took admission in, well before time, only to find the entire registration process delayed by 2 hours. Turns out that this incident was an example of how NOT to manage time.
So after trying to make the awkwardness go away by cracking the poorest of all jokes, you realize that you are now on the “to-be-avoided” list for most people you have met in the past two hours. Especially that huge guy you made fun of by saying – “Swimming? Dude, if you go into the pool, either you stay or the water stays”. Turns out that people don’t like being ridiculed in the very first meeting itself.
You would, in all probability, go into a b-school with the thought of attending incomprehensible business lectures compounded with monotonous monologues from low pitch voices. But you are surprised when you are, instead, taken to an adventure camp. And you are even more surprised to find yourself unable to jump off a cliff. But slowly, your surprise turns into shame, when you see ALL the girls do the same with total ease. And to top it all, one girl comes up to you and says – “Oh it’s really easy. Once you see me do it, you will lose all fear.”
Ha ha. Won’t be seeing her anywhere close to you for a while.
So as part of the entire “orientation” program, you are put up in this posh (by your standards) resort, where you have to share the apartment with two other guys. You being the non-smoking, non-drinking, forward-thinking Southern Brahmin boy, are obviously startled to see your hardcore Punjabi and Mallu roomies order 3 cases of beer. Even before you had actually kept your luggage inside the room.
Soon, your room becomes the “hangout” for all possible wild-things that could have joined the school – drunkards, chain smokers, drug addicts – prompting you to request for a change of rooms, preferably with fellow simpletons as roomies.
So you choose these non-smoking, non-drinking, wimpy Southern Brahmin boys, who are good at laughing at themselves and bitching about everyone else. What more could you ask for? Except that when you wake up from that dream of some furry animal brushing itself against you, you see the hairy hand of one of your roomies’ on your cheeks. Thankfully, it’s the cheeks on your face.
And after a few days of vettiness, you finally move into the hostel – a room all to yourself. And all of hell goes into nitro.
As long as tragic-er things don’t happen, you are happy.
