A rooftop party

The roof of our hostel was our favorite place for spirited get togethers. Since there were partitions on the roof, 4 or 5 groups could easily hold there own individual sessions with out disturbing the others. The cool air and moonlight provided excellent bar like settings. The roof top parties were regular and mostly dutch.

One night about 10 of us gathered in room 407 for a party. The room was the farthest on one side from the common activity area. After the bottles arrived we decided to go to the roof top. Chatting , singing and all the drunken antics went on till about 11:30 P M when we decided to pack up and go down. Oolan and poocha were cleaning the terrace when we walked down. We all reached the lobby on the second floor and were walking towards room 407 when karumadi stopped and declared “ The professor from electrical who made fun of us in the lab today is sleeping inside. lets bang on his door and we’ll at least get the satisfaction of disturbing his sleep. We all volunteered, but Karumadi wanted to execute the idea himself.

We all stood ready to run and karumadi dashed towards the professors bedroom door. We expected him to bang on the door a couple of times and run back to us. But he ran towards the door in full force, jumped up and gave a flying kick to the door. The door was not bolted. In a split second the door opened and karumadi disappeared into the darkness inside the room. He flew through the door and landed on the professor who was sleeping. The professor must have got the scare of his life. We were all dumbstruck and couldn’t move a muscle. Frightened shrieks of both the professor and karumadi could be heard. We all stared into the darkness beyond the open door. Suddenly karumadi came dashing towards us covering his head with the professor's blanket. He left the blanket in the corridor and sprinted to 407. It was only after karumadi dashed past us that we came to our senses. We also ran behind him. The professor came out and just had a glimpse of us running into the room.

At that time, nobody used to lock their hostel rooms because hardly anybody had valuble possessions like mobile phones or purses with money. We could have run into any of the nearby rooms and sir would not have seen us but in the panic we followed karumadi to the farthest room from the crime scene. Oolan and poocha were seeing all this from the steps and they ran back to the terrace.

The professor was angry like hell, He could make out some of us but since he was sleeping and all of this happened in a split second he wanted to make sure. He walked to 407 and tried to push open the door. We had just bolted the door with difficulty when the professor banged on the door. We all remained quiet. The professor shouted “ Open up, you rascals. I know you and I want to kick you out of college this instant”. KD whispered “ We should not utter a single sound, he might identify us by sound” We all huddled in the dark, frightened. The professor banged furiously, he was venting all his anger on the door. KD whispered “take care that you don’t cough or sneeze. Be extremely quiet”.The professor banged again. That’s when we heard somebody shout “Ethu thendiyada rathri manusyane urangan sammathikkathe”. The sound was coming from our room. The professor banged again. “Iniyum Kathakel muttiyal pulle njan ninne kollum. Eda m..” before he could complete the dialogue we all jumped on top of the bed from where the sound came. We covered his mouth and tied him down with our bodies. That was vegudu. He had got drunk before everybody and was sleeping in the room when we ran in. He was unaware of all that was happening and he woke up frightened when we fell on top of him. He might have thought that somebody is trying to kill kim so he tried to shout and wriggle out of our hold. The next half hour was a night mare. We were struggling with vegudu and the professor was still banging on the door and shouting. We were struggling to keep quiet and hold vegudu down. After sometime the banging ended. We waited for 10 or fifteen more minutes before we released vegudu. The moment we loosened the grip, vegudu sprang up and dashed out of the room in his underwear. His mundu had fallen off in the struggle. Since he was drunk he ran into some other room and slept there. Oolan and poocha were watching all this unfold, hiding behind the staircase. They came down after the professor went back to his room.We also walked to our rooms, switched off the lights and fell on the bed. We just wanted to sleep and cut the world out of our thoughts. We were settling on our bed when Poocha asked

“ Da enikku oru karyam manasilayilla. Nee ellam kudi a pavam vegudune entha cheythe, avan jetti ittondu irangi odunna kandallo”

I did not have the strength to speak. So I pretended I was asleep. I slowly slipped into sleep thinking about the person, who is going to get the scare of his life when he wakes up the next day and finds an underwear clad vegudu sleeping next to him.