Hobnob Uncle and Rumboys

Hobnob – the not so modern yet the only decent coffee shop near RIT was our frequent hangout place. Be it after class, end of a ragging session or after a boring lecture we fell onto Hobnobs’ ambience to unwind ourselves with the coffee, puffs and wills served there.

Hobnob was managed by a man of about 50 years old (I forgot his name) and his son roughly of our age. Though friendly with us he never allowed us to take juniors to his shop and never promoted our ragging affairs in hobnob. He was a typical old man with lots of ego and self esteem that sometimes he forgot that we are his potential clients and the very reason of his existence. He never allowed us to raise our voice beyond a particular decibel and such atrocities of this man made the college union decide to put ‘ban’ on the use of hobnob. This caused us not to avail hobnob facilities but its ambience and the taste of coffee took us to hobnob after two weeks of all such ‘ban’.

Though we returned to hobnob lured by its ambience and coffee, we were longing for a chance to repay him for all his bestial deeds and all the think-tanks of our batch were weaving out plans to make it true. Nonetheless we wanted to do the biggest prank we ever did, inside hobnob.

One day at around 4.00 pm, we were at hobnob with the usual wills, coffee and puffs. Oolan put in the topic on how to retort on our Hobnob uncle. Though everybody contributed positively, Kurumadi wrapped in his short white shirt and golden lined white mundu (dhothi) resembling a ‘Nair groom’ fall into the side of our enemy uncle and advocated for him. According to Kurumadi, all our uncles’ actions were justified with his intention of maintaining the decorum and ambience of his coffee shop and to establish a title of “ragging free zone” for his shop. Moreover Kurumadi opined that though uncles’ behavior hurt us, it should be nullified by his generosity in giving us credit for more than 30 days and keeping all our accounts till the bill is paid.

Though there was a point in what Kurmadi said no one was ready to agree with his views. Moreover, all vengeance we had towards hobnob uncle got channeled towards Kurumadi also. Everybody gave disapproving and fierce glances to Kurumadi. Suddenly Poocha jumped from his chair, advanced towards our uncles’ advocate, caught his mundu in his right hand and ran towards the exit door of hobnob. All these happened within a fraction of a second and even before kurumadi knew what has happened he was deprived of his mundu. All of us got the plan. Even though the plan was not briefed, we all knew what our part was and how to execute it.

Poocha threw the mundu as high as possible into a nearby tree. We all started walking towards the volleyball court as if nothing has happened. Our puzzled uncle peeped into the shop to see his advocate sitting in the corner chair with hands between his two legs as if to stop something from falling down. While we reached volleyball court we could see the old man with a long stick trying hard to take the mundu from the tree. Mundu unlike his master displayed a high degree of loyalty towards us and preferred to stay at the top.

It was the peak business hour for hobnob as the students and teachers came out from college after class and our poor uncle in the midst of his efforts to take the mundu down, need to stop his other clients from entering hobnob. This continued for 10 minutes and Oolan standing at Volleyball court offered free coffee from hobnob to all he met in the road so as to make this drama continue. Seeing the flow of students to hobnob and the uncompromising stand of our loyal mundu, uncle yelled for his wife and asked her to bring a mundu from his wardrobe and handed it over to kurumadi to end the drama.

Though all were happy with what we did at hobnob, everyone was sad on the fact that none could see the pose of kurmadi sitting inside the shop. Uncle later told us that though he was angry that day, he laughed a lot whenever he thought of karumadis’ posture in that corner chair.