A Fight

It was just a couple of months into our long RIT journey. We still were not acquainted with every body in class. One of my first friends was Sankar, because we traveled together from Trivandrum. There were other guys from Trivandrum, like Pothen, Pichathi and Poocha but they had to sit through the long journey listening to Oolan's 'Quarters' stories and vegudu was always getting ragged by mostly our batch mates and girls.

One day I and Sankar was walking to college and saw a couple of our friends trying to fight, like its done in films. One person was swinging his hand a mile away from the other persons face and the other would sway his head in the direction of the hand and cry out. This was supposed to look like a real hit to the face and I cant explain their facial expressions as they were repeatedly acting out the oldest trick in films. We walked on and saw a second group doing that. By the time we reached our block we saw many such groups. Every body was busy practicing the trick, in class, in front of the labs and a select few, even in front of the electrical class to impress the girls. We went to the nearest group and asked what this was all about. Somebody told us about how Oolan and one of his senior friends did this trick during freshers day and fooled every body. He told me that oolan is still going around teaching his newest trick from 'Quarters'.

On our way to class Sankar told me “ Da we will show them what a real fight is like. Its time we stop Oolan's Jada”. When we reached our class there was about 10 or 15 studious members of our class and Makru. Sankar looked at me and said “Lets start”.I pushed him on to the front desk were Makru was sitting. He fell over the desk. Every body was startled with the sound. Makru shouted and ran back. Sanker got up, jumped over the desk and pushed me over the teachers chair. I picked up the chair and threw it at him, but made sure that it fell far away from him. I threw him on the black board and it broke off from one side. Foul language and threats were exchanged all through out. In about 10 minutes a good crowd had gathered around the class, almost all the classroom furniture was in disarray, the black board was broken and Makru was crying. I was trying to hit him with a broken piece of furniture. He got hold of it and whispered to me “Da I think its enough, its better we leave now, professors may come soon”. I pushed him to the floor and stormed out of the classroom. Later we met up at Hobnob and laughed almost for an hour. We were happy that we fooled every body and this time it was better than oolans filmy trick.

The next day I got ready, caught the college bus and went straight to the hostel. (classes were obviously not the first in my agenda) . As soon as the I entered the hostel, a couple of 8^th sem Mech's caught hold of me and started asking me about the previous day's fight. I told them all the lies I could make up within that short period. Then as I was walking into a room, some other guys came to me and introduced themselves as Jesus youth members. They started advicing me on the importance of controlling my anger. I was fed up of all this and went to Hobnob for a cigarette. A couple of second year Mech students was there. They were trying to convince me that I should join Solidarity party and they needed people like me to take on SFI in the campus.

The excitement of the previous day had worn off and I was confused. I was sitting there alone and still smoking when Sanker walked in. He seemed happy and excited. He asked me how my day went and I replied that I was getting fed up with all the advices and we wont even have the fun of fooling any body now, since nobody is going to believe that it was a joke. and I asked him why he was so happy. He told me “ If advices come from the right places you can actually enjoy it”. He continued “ You should learn to cash in on opportunities. You are a fool, you went to the men's hostel after such a show and what more did you expect. I asked him “ where were you? He said “ I took a couple of rounds by the electrical class and the advices I got, was from those beauties. I am already friends with some of them . He continued “ OK I am leaving, have to meet ----- near LH. I hid my disappointment and said “ Ok good for you”. On the way out he said “ Da I am planning to continue the counseling sessions for a couple of days more, so we’ll not let anybody see us together for the time being. 'Pinne' u don’t have to get disappointed. Even if you had come to college today you wouldin't have got as much attention as I did”. I asked “ Why” and he replied “ninakku ente athrem Soundaryam illallo”. I wanted to kick his ass, this time for real, but by the time I got up, he was half way down the road to LH.

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.