The First Year, Part I

The First Year

NIT Warangal is a beautiful place, and that was the impression on my mind until the time actually came to enter those big gates, which weren’t all that big. I was in NIT-W for my counseling, mind you, only counseling. With a very large rank of 11125, I was not a very hopeful person. My best hope was that a majority of the students blessed with similar IIT-JEE ranks would leave these seats for me to pounce upon. NIT-W was a good place, except for the heat and dry trees that surrounded it. I and my dad went to an office as a part of the procedure. This office, which had boldly displayed many honorary shields and awards, was in a pathetic condition, very similar to my level of confidence back then. Anyway, the counseling took its time and I was finally allotted an IT seat in a college called VIT. I thought, well at least this is better than another institute called Shastra. It was in the same place I met another guy, his name was Chetan. He was also not sure what he would be doing next. Happy with what I deserved, I and my father left for home. I was convincing myself hard that Hostel life is going to be easy, no tension, but deep in my heart, I knew I could not even travel alone, being the single kid I am, I was always dependent on my parents.

I had my first look at the college when I went there with my father for the whole admission process. VIT seemed friendly, but I was quite reluctant to check out the hostels on the same day. I had another look at the college with one of my friends from Bangalore. Anyway, it was just three and a half hours away by train. The railway track actually split the college into two halves, the Academic side and the Hostel side. Both of us checked out the crowd and returned by the 3:30 train back to Bangalore.
The D-Day was finally here. I had all my stuff packed in a huge black-suitcase and cross-checked it if I was missing out anything, everything was there; my mother had not missed out anything as usual. We arrived at a station called Katpadi, and it was quite a long station. I had been through this drill before with my friend so I immediately told the Auto drivers to move away and found one who asked a decent enough price to go till All-Mart, the super-market of VIT.
After completing the formalities, we went to the Hostel side into this building called F-Block. A stout “anna” was having a tough time convincing students and their parents about the room allocation system, which was never in place at that time; it was being done on a FCFS basis with lots of random rooms in the tray. Anyway, we were still quite early and my parents helped me move my huge suitcase into room number 518. Two guys were already present in the 18Ft X 12Ft room with three Double-decker beds and two cupboards. One immediately got up and said, “Inshu Bhatnagar uncle” and greeted my father. The other guy just stood up and introduced himself as Praveen Kumar. I also thought it would be quite rude if I don’t introduce myself, and did the same to both of them. The room was a bit dusty but that did not seem to bother Inshu who was reading “Abdul Kalam’s - Wings of Fire”. Strange philosophical guy, I thought; little did I know it was a part of my syllabus. Once settled, I cross-checked again, my water-bottles were there, the keys very much in my palm, and there I was, finally on my own. 
I always used to love playing a good game of Table-Tennis. Inshu told me there is a place he explored nearby which housed three TT tables. Suddenly my mood changed! I told my parents that I will be managing and they can leave. I still don’t believe that I did just that on hearing about TT, Absolutely nothing after that, no teary eyes, nothing. Just a casual “Bye” and “Take care”. My parents left for the station and I was soon back into my room changing clothes to go out.
Both of us went out to play TT and had quite a good time. One thing that was always on my mind was the dreaded Ragging. Will I face some senior? Will someone catch me and ask me to strip? I saw some guys there who looked pretty elder to me and I thought for sure I was going to get ragged. Nothing happened and I found out that they were also from the first year, one from Delhi (Rishab) and one from Lucknow (Tarun). I did not lose any matches that day. Later that day, I met Chetan again and we were quite happy to meet each other although we had just spoken to each other briefly in NIT-W. The chit-chat continued till about 9:05 and Chetan was in my room with me and Inshu when suddenly some guy just forced the door open and started shouting at us. The neatly trimmed guy was in his 30’s and we could make out that he was in his night-clothes. He sounded pretty harsh and scared the shit out of us. “Who all stay in this room? Speak up guys!” Chetan slowly acknowledged the fact that he belonged to another room, to which he shouted back “Pack up your luggage and get lost! Was it so difficult for you to hear the 9 pm bell signifying the silence hour?” “Sorry sir, I swear I won’t repeat it again” said Chetan. But Robin Rohit was not a person who would get convinced easily and he really intended to scare the shit out of first years. Following a small drama at the security, the petrified students wrote down apology letters. We turned off our lights and decided it was definitely time to sleep (9:30 pm)
I always had this feeling that I was somehow better than the rest as I had dropped a year and all those would actually be my juniors, if not for my drop year. Soon I found out that over 75% of guys whom I met were one year droppers. I thought to myself, Dropping is actually “that common”.
As my luck would have it, Inshu and I were in the same class, it was called “T-Batch”. To top it, he was also in IT. The first class was by a physics lecturer who sounded quite complicated. The classroom was in this magnificent building called Tech-Tower. I met a lot of guys there and noted down their room-numbers to meet them leisurely. Of the few people I met there were Amit Tyagi from Delhi, Abhishek Damani from Maharashtra, Ashish Ranjan from Bihar, Saveen Nair from Kota, Rajasthan, the two Mayanks from Katni and Mumbai, Moinak Dutta from Assam, Arnab Dutta from Kolkata and one “properly built” Amol Kamal Singh Randhawa from Amritsar. Almost everyone had dropped one year and were quite happy about it. I also met a couple of girls in my class and was quite happy for the fact that four of them belonged to IT branch. The rest of the day went quite smoothly and the ended with a no ragging note and I was quite happy for it.
A few days later, another guy came to my room with his father, the guy was of a dark complexion and seemed very quiet and we could hardly hear his voice from the top berth of the double bed alongside the two huge windows. Soon enough, his father left and all of us introduced ourselves. Venkatakrishnan, A.J. was an all-in-one pack. I soon found out that he was a fresher and had completed his plus-two from Hyderabad, a city I was quite familiar with. He actually lived quite close to where I used to live during my stay in Hyderabad.
Venkat, as we used to call him, was a serious bundle of contradictions. He could pass off as a typical Muslim student from Hyderabad’s Old city as he could easily don the role of a Goan Christian. The fluent Hyderabadi Hindi and Telugu combined with a potent mix of Tamil and English was what we both had in common. This particular strength in both of us basically meant we could easily meet and make friends, with absolutely no restrictions whatsoever.
The three of us including Inshu used to frequent the TT courts very often and soon became quite addicted to it. Venkat always used to fall prey to a particular side-spin serve of mine and used to get irritated for the fact that he just couldn’t lift “that bloody service”!
Everything was quite good except for the mess food. Initially it was quite good, but as I met more people who swore every time they entered the mess, I also fell in the trap and began hating the food for no particular reason. The mess was in the ground floor just beside the Badminton courts in the hostel. For the first time I saw people fighting over food when it was the “Paneer-Day”. Each of us was served exactly 5 pieces of paneer by the fat mess in charge. Most of us would meet over the dining table to make new friends and discuss girls in general.
I soon made lots of friends and got quickly adjusted to what I thought would be a really dreadful experience. Finally I met another room-mate of mine. Ram Prasad was a Telugu super-star, many guys used to frequent our room just to meet him. The “Chiranjeevi” craze that he had was exactly what his friends also had in common; and they weren’t just fans, they were devotees and that would be an understatement. Few days later, another guy came to the already packed five guys’ room and immediately asked for a bed change citing some reason. He was rather short than the rest of us and was in the Mechanical Branch. Pavan Kumar, as he was called soon became the butt of all jokes amongst Ram’s friends.
I had my first, rather silly encounter with ragging one night. I was resting on my bad, listening to Lucky-Ali’s songs on my Videocon Walkman post the silence hour when someone knocked my door and asked me to some immediately to the corridor. Terrified as I was, I was led into this group of guys, supposedly doing MCA, or in other words, seniors. “What’s your name? Speak up man! Where are you from? Do you know Telugu?” asked one fat guy with particularly high powered glasses. “Bangalore, but I know Telugu” I replied trying not to look tensed, with both my hands in my pajamas. “Bloody take off your hands from your pocket and stand straight” said a lean guy with unshaven beard. I did not like the way he talked to me and shot back at him rather defensively, “what’s wrong if I stand this way?” That was clearly not expected of me and he commanded me again “Dude we are your seniors! Is this how you give us respect?” Suddenly one guy in vests starts running toward us from the extreme end of the corridor shouting “Anna is coming! Anna is coming! Run….” All of a sudden the “super-cool” seniors were now running for their life and I had no clue what to do. I tried running with them and soon realized that Anna is actually on my side. I stood there as I saw two fat security guards coming hastily with sticks in their hand; they were clearly tired climbing up the fourth floor. I took advantage of the language factor and immediately talked to them in Tamil saying they were trying to rag me. He did not seem to pay much heed; I guess he just wanted to make his presence felt.