The one with The Khadadi

All the hostels in IIT had their personal canteens which were open almost whole day in order to facilitate people with edible items even when mess is not active. H7 also had a small canteen with a whole lot of things to eat. I wonder how the canteen staff used to keep all the items as well as cook all the stuff with literally just 10 X 5 sq. ft. room to roam around. But, they somehow managed to maintain the food quality well. They kept a variety of items like biscuits, fruits, packets of all kind of "Haldiram" stuffs (Unanimously voted GOD of favorite timepass throughout IIT....IIT ke har student ne Haldiram ka namak khaya hai :D), an all time supply of milk, tea and coffee, a variety of fruit juices and coldrinks, and apart from all these, a long list of freshly preparable items like noodles, maggi, rice, parathas, chapati bhaji etc. The hostel inmates used to hang around in the canteen area all day ordering tons of items from the menu. In all, this parallely running mess was the lifeline of our hostel.

The six of us also used to eat and drink a lot in the canteen whenever we got bored of the mess menu. And when it came to canteen, our demand of food usually went out of control and every time, we ate almost triple of what each of us used to eat in the mess. Kedar and vinay usually ordered parathas, Kaustubh went with the noodles most of the time, I used to order cheese maggi and sandeep always used to go a step ahead and order "DOUBLE" or "TRIPLE" cheese maggi (God knows how much cheese sandeep ate during that period :-o). Sachin wasn't able to decide what to eat and usually joined with anyone of us. Sandeep was the king of all times when it came to eating at canteen. His monthly bill alone used to be equal to the sum of all our monthly bills. So, we all were enjoying our lives at hostel - the runtime tea/coffee sessions, the lunches, tiffins and dinners in the mess and the khadadi at canteen - yup!!! that's what we used to call it - THE KHADADI.

One day, the mess was closed due to some maintainence work. It was not a weekday but some submission deadlines for assignments were close. So, all of us spent the whole day in the department lab completing the assignments of scripting and latex having no idea about lunch and dinner arrangements without mess. After eating things like dosa, wada and stuff like that at lunch time, none of us had eaten anything for a long time except some tea/coffee breaks in between. We all tried hard and completed our assignments till around 9 PM. We were exhausted and in full enthu at the same time. We came out of lab and started cycling towards our hostel. Suddenly, vinay came out of the nautia of overwhelming joy of assignment completion and yelled in full sound - "Arreeyy!!! Mala bhuk lagaliye!!!". With the end of his sentence, the air around us changed and each one of us felt a very strong irresistible appeal of hunger from their stomachs. With God Speed, we headed towards the hostel and came to realize that the mess is closed. So, it was unanimously decided it was Khadadi time. We went to the canteen to have a look at the menu and started ordering the first time that eyes could read without even thinking how much we are actually ordering and whether we will be able to finish it or not. The canteen staff felt as if they have got and order for marriage reception or something. They hurriedly started preparing all the ordered items while we sat in the TV room consoling our stomachs to wait for a while. Finally, when the canteen manager shouted that our order is ready, we all ran towards him like hungry wolves ready to attack. What happened then is now an unforgettable one hour in my IIT life. We ate and ate and ate and we realized it wasn't enough and ordered again, then ate the second order but still we didn't feel satisfied so we ordered for the third time and ate all that too. I bet the whole canteen staff must be thinking of us as middle age beasts who haven't seen food for a century. This khadadi session was written in Golden letters in the memories of lives of all of us. I am not able to find words to descibe the amount of food we ate that day. Let's have a pictorial view of what actually happened at that khadadi (Only half the dishes are present :D).

The one with all the Carrom

It had been about a month that we all were in IIT. It took a while to adjust with the system here. The lectures, the profs, the schedule, the night outs, assignments, quizzes and all those student life nightmares. We also utilized this 1 month period to adjust with each other as a group of friends - to understand each others' likes and dislikes, interests, fav sports etc. But we never got a chance to do something sporty as a group because of all the inital load (Courtsey IIT B).

One day we all were sitting together in my room doing some Algorithm problems. It had been around 2 and a 1/2 hrs straight that we were dealing with this algo thing (Enough dose to make a mature human being MAD :D). All our brains had fallen out of frustration. It was Tiffin time; we all decided to take a break from studies and get out of this "Greedy" and "Dynamic" nautia. We all went to mess, ate hearty and then went to TV room to relax a bit. Suddenly from nowhere, Sandeep came up with a brilliant idea - "Hey!!! Why not try playing Carrom for a while?" Oh yes!!! We all liked that idea instantaneously. Sandeep hurriedly went to the security to issue to carrom discs but alas!!! Security was on a regular vigilance round of hostel. We all thought it would be late till the security returns and were about to drop the idea alltogether. But, this idea was so deep into sandeep's mind, he refused to give up. He scanned the whole hostel like a search party, brought the security with him, issued the material and showed so much enthu that we all again counted in on playing. So, finally we all sat to play a game of carrom.

Now the question was which 4 out of the 6 of us are going to play first. Vinay and Sachin luckily dropped out voluntarily as some Cricket match was going on and it was something really precious to them. So, me, kedar, kaustubh and sandeep started playing the game. It was around 5:00 that we started. We were so involved in the game with every one of us exploring hard the carrom player within, we discarded the complete concept of "Time Never Stops" from our minds. As vinay and sachin were also busy in the cricket match, there was no stopwatch around us to make us realize that we should stop playing now. So, we went on and on and on...for more than 2 and a 1/2 hrs when finally Vinay and sachin came to interfere because the first innings of the match had ended. Suddenly from nowhere, it striked to us that its almost 8 PM and we are playing for like 3 hrs straight. So, we decided to record the Game progress and halt playing right away. All agreed to continue the same game next time we sit. No one knew that time would come way too soon than expected.

We winded up the game, returned the disc set to security and went straight to mess. At the dinner table, Everyone of us was excited about today evening. The 4 of us for the carrom game and the rest 2 for their cricket match. So, we started sharing all the funny and memorable moments that had occured in the past few hrs in carrom and cricket. Vinay and sachin shared some magnificant straight drives, unique cut shots, brilliant wickets and extraordinary catches. We, on the other hand, had our own magnificant Straights, Cuts and world's most unique carrom shots to laugh on. It was so much fun sharing these moments that our enthu of enjoying life at IIT apart from studies, reached a monsterous height of Mt. Everest and then there was no coming down.

We hurriedly swept through our dinner plates, washed our hands, issued the carrom disc set and within no time, the four of us were back to our game while vinay and sachin were back to their match's second inning. There was a silent approval from everybody's side that there won't be any further study tonight. Sandeep couln't recover the previous state of game from his brain's database, hence it took us a while to kick start with the game. So, we again confined ourselves within the four corners of carrom and started playing. It took us about 30 - 35 mins to finish the previous game. But, things didn't stop here at all. The losing team was now replaced by the one reserved team watching the match and waiting anxiously for their turn at the discs. So, now it was a new game with 2 new players and I was quite sure it would take us past midnight to finish this game.

And it actually did cross the midnight barrier by a large distance. It took us all about 3 AM to finally give up with the idea of playing more carrom because some of us had lectures in the morning slot. So, we packed the disc set and gave a final satisfactory look to the now empty carrom board where we discovered a new face of each other - the face of enjoyment. We returned the set to the security and receded back to our rooms to go to sleep where in our dreams, ANOTHER GAME OF CARROM WAS WAITING FOR PLAYERS TO BEGIN...

Is he in H6 or H7???

Out of the six of us, only vinay was allocated Hostel 6. Rest of us were together in Hostel 7. Initially, he found it quite difficult to be in sync with our plans and couldn't hang around much with us. He felt quite lonely there as the only one left out of the group living in a separate hostel. Then, as the bonds of friendship gradually strengthened, he gradually sorted out a way out of his loneliness and somehow managed to sync with our rountines at hostel 7.... And it was then, Vinay's unofficial transfer process from H6 to H7 began. He started spending more time at our hostel, used to stay all day at rooms of one of us. We studied together, played together and partied together. He even used to eat all his meals with us at our mess (Which was illeagal in a way :P) rather than eating alone at his hostel's mess. He was so regular at our mess that even the mess workers took if for granted that he is a hostel 7 inmate :D. People got so used to seeing him in hostel 7, they actually asked doubts about whether he is allocated Hostel6 or Hostel 7!!! Soon the time came when only at the peak hour of midnight, he used to realize that he has a room in hostel 6 where he should go and sleep comfortably (He even sometimes skipped that and slept at our rooms :P). And so, vinay was soon declared "a visually confirmed" hostel 7 inmate while Room no. 21, Hostel 6 kept waiting in darkness for his owner to reside.