A day in Hostel Life

,OLD BOYS HOSTEL  – OH BOY !!!

Almost all of us must have relished the hostel life as an undergraduate at MAMC. Some of us stayed all through the four and a half years and some must have shifted to the hostel periodically during exam days. I always had a room.

Some of the things that I would never forget about OBH (Old Boys Hostel) are –

·         The Indian Coffee House – located in the space above the scooter garage, opposite the hostel.

·         Pandit ji egg omelets & tea, whenever at night we needed a break from studies

·         Man Singh’s (on bicycle) Bun sandwich of Amul butter and boiled eggs – available till early hours.

·         The public phone – which was operated not by coins but by a contraption made of wire.

·         Lala’s mess.

·         Common room with TT table and TV to see ‘Chitrahaar’ on Wednesday evening and movies in two parts on Saturday & Sunday.

·         Badminton court – Ajit Nagra and I would go to play after midnight.

·         The scooter ride at night by picking any parked scooter in the garage with the ‘master key’.

·         Ravinder Rustagi’s privately distempered, green colored room, fitted with a tube light.

·         Deepak Yadav’s Air cooled room named ‘Diwan-e-Mughlai’.

·         Deepak Yadav, Charlie, L.R. Gandhi and I, sharing and tasting different food (dinner) sent by our moms.

·         Sleeping on terrace during power breakdowns.

·         Parantha & Butter breakfast in the Mess on Sundays.

·         Playing ‘teen patti’ with coins/match sticks.

·         Coming out of rooms into the corridor and do ‘lungi dance’ whenever ‘Tum jo mil gaye ho’ song of Hanste Zhakham was broadcasted on the radio.

·         Whistling at the Mata Sundari Girls from our balcony.

And the list is endless

Today I would like to narrate an incident that occurred when we were in third year and we were quite carefree and were not that much worried and concerned about studies. As a matter of fact this was the best period of the medical curriculum those days as there was no pressure of Prof exam at the end of the year. Today the semester system has taken away that charm.

Varun Saxena, Padam Gupta and I shared a room, a triple seater. All three of us were having our parents’ home in Delhi only, but ostensibly to study we opted to stay in the hostel. We would go back to home at weekends, only to get the soiled clothes of the week washed and ironed. At least I did not miss the home food as I used to get my lunch and dinner from home, Rati Ram used to fetch the ‘dabbaas’ on bicycle all the way from Safadarjang Enclave !!

Varun was the ‘perfectionist’ among the three of us. His neat corner consisting of the bed, a study table and chair would stand out distinctly. I remember clearly that once Varun took more than four hours to cover one newly bought medical book. Padam and mine were typical ‘bachelors’ corner. At daytime the heap of our belongings would be transferred from chair to the bed and at night the other way around. In lunch hour the room would be transformed to ‘common room’ and was open to all. Many day boarders would come and have their lunch there and even rest a while. At times we had to struggle to find a place for ourselves even to sit. Typically one would find Rustagi and Padam playing ‘Papplu’ on the bed. Whatever Khosla (Cow) would touch was bound to break.

Occasionally we would have a drinks party in the evening in our room and then go out for dinner, either to Peshawar Restaurant, Moti Mahal or Pandara Road depending on the financial status on that day. All three would ride together on one scooter. On one of these occasions our guest was Sudhir Sehgal. He was suspended from college and was not allowed to enter the hostel for a few days at that time. To be sure that no one notices Sudhir Sehgal we locked the room and four of us were enjoying our beers and as usual our

inhibitory centres were dampened. We were talking loudly and singing away. Suddenly we heard a knock on the door.

One of us shouted “ kaun hai bey”.

A stern voice came from outside “Dr. Vishnu Kumar”. We thought some one was playing a trick on us.

One of us said  “Kaun Vishnu Kumar- yahan sabhi apne aap ko Vishnu Kumar kahta hain” and we all laughed mockingly.

Then another voice from outside said – “listen guys I am Yash Pal Rana and this is serious matter. The warden, Dr. Vishnu Kumar, is on a round of the hostel and is actually here, so open the door immediately”.  

Hamari sub ki chadhi hui turant utar gayi.

Sudhir Sehgal immediately realized the gravity of the situation and rushed to the balcony and from there crossed over to the balcony of next room and from there to the next room and hid there. In the room we tried to tidy up the place by hiding the beer bottles by pushing them under the beds. I opened the door and saw furious Dr. Vishnu Kumar right in front of me.

Spontaneously I said “Good evening, sirrrrrrr”.

Dr. Vishnu Kumar – “Kya ho raha hai yahan”.

I said – “ Nothing sir, just listening to music”.

Dr. Vishnu Kumar – “do not fool me, I can smell whiskey”.

Varun – “no sir, we were just having some beer”.

Dr. Vishnu Kumar – “do you know having beer in the hostel is not allowed. You all would be rusticated from the hostel. Where is Sudhir Sehgal” ?

Varun Saxena – “Sudhir?? No sir he did not come here’.

Dr. Vishnu Kumar – “are you sure. Yash Pal go and search the room, Sudhir must be hiding somewhere, check the balcony as well. I am sure I heard his voice”.

After checking the room and the balcony, Rana did not find Sudhir.

Rana – “sir, Sudhir to yahan nahi hain”.

Dr. Vishnu Kumar – “ Theek hain, in teeno ke naam note karo aur hostel se rusticate kar do. Write letter to their parents”.

All three of us in a chorus- “sir, please forgive us”.

Rana is also a Maulanian and quite senior than us. He took aside Padam and  told him “ Sir ke pair pakad lo to maaf kar denge, he is a soft hearted person”.

Now it was Padam’s turn to dramatize the whole situation. He literally fell on Dr. Vishnu Kumar’s feet and held one of his legs with both of his hands and said – “sir, please maaf kar do. Aap humain hostel se nikaal dogey, aur hamarey baap humain ghar se nikaal denge. Aap hi batayen, hum bechare kahan jayenge?”

Dr. Vishnu Kumar – “to yeh baat tab sochni thi jab beer pee rahe the”.

Rana winked at Padam indicating him to keep on holding the legs of Dr. Vishnu Kumar who tried to free himself from the tangle, but Padam would not let go.

Padam – “sir, please keh do ki maaf kiya”.

Dr. Vishnu Kumar- “you all are not in right condition to talk, leave me and meet me tomorrow, when you all are sober, in my office at 1.00 PM”.

He and Dr. Rana started leaving. Now look at our audacity, I asked “sir, bachi hui to khatam kar de na?”

Dr. Vishnu Kumar gave an angry look, but I am sure inside he was saying “tum log nahi sudhrogey”.

Next day we woke up early and started discussing among ourselves how to get out of this situation. We decided that whatever Dr. Vishnu Kumar asks us to do or write, we would do that but we must somehow prevent him from sending the complaint to our parents.So we shaved, had nice bath, wore well ironed pants, white shirts, a neck-tie and shining shoes (as if  we were going for the final viva).

Exactly at one PM, Dr. Rana took us inside Dr. Vishnu Kumar’s room. We all wished him and again asked him for his forgiveness. He asked us to write an apology letter and mention that we would not repeat this in future.

Again we tried to be smart, forgetting that we were dealing with a professor of Forensic Medicine.  In the application we wrote that we were sorry for last night’s incident and that we promise not to repeat such incident in future and all of us signed and gave it to him. His legal mind straight away asked us “what do you mean by ‘last night’s incident?’ specify that.

Marta kya na karta. We had to write that we were sorry for having beer in the hostel room last night and that we shall not repeat it in future. Only then was he satisfied and closed the chapter there.

At the end Dr. Vishnu Kumar said that “I know Sudhir Sehgal was with you last night, lucky to have escaped”.

You can never beat experience that is my experience.

RUBY REUNION

RUBY REUNION - 2014

Ruby Reunion – what an event in our lives!!  It has been so deeply etched on our minds that it  shall remain in our memory for ever. It has also added a few years to our lives. After forty long years we the batch mates met once again. The emotions and the nostalgia that was flowing cannot be described in words, one can only experience that. Everyone was so excited and forgetting the creaking joints were seen jumping around and hugging and meeting each other. It seemed that the forty years had not elapsed at all. It was a wonderful feeling for me and I am sure for all of us.

Today, a few months later, when I was seeing the Video recording of the whole event and also the still photographs posted on the ‘Drop box’ by the great photographer of our batch – Ajit Nagra, I cannot believe that we could organize such an event. This was possible only due to the great support of very very dear friends like Bobby, Ajit, Poonam, Mridula, Charlie, Taneja, Seekar and Deepak and of course encouraged by you all.

I was wondering where to begin, to describe our Ruby Reunion. I think I shall start from the very beginning when the ‘seed’ of our Batch Reunion was sown and this seed blossomed into this beautiful and sweet fruit that we named Ruby Reunion. It was  November 2013, at one of our monthly lunch meetings, Bobby came out with the idea of holding a Batch Reunion. Everyone present there immediately agreed and in my absence gave me the responsibility of organizing it. The decision was conveyed to me the next morning firmly with no scope for my refusal. I had to go with the wishes of my friends and in the right earnest immediately started working on it. At that point of time I had about thirty odd email IDs of batch mates. I sent a mail to them conveying the desire of our Lunch group of holding a Reunion of our batch in December 2014 as that would coincide with completion of forty years of our graduation from MAMC. Even in the wildest of my dreams, I had not imagined that the response would be so overwhelming. Emails started pouring in and everyone seemed to be excited about meeting the batch mates once again after forty long years. People started sending email IDs of friends to me and also started calling them and requesting them to join the band wagon  Here I am reminded of an Urdu Couplet – Ghar se akela chala tha, log judte gaye aur karvaan ban gaya. This is exactly what happened and the result was that finally more than seventy batch mates were at Manesar.

Noting that I was doing all the communications alone, Ajit Nagra, although sitting in USA and being a busy Anaesthetist voluntarily offered to help in making the lists of confirmed attendees and later literally nagging them to pay up. His approach was totally different from mine, but someone needed to be strict and blunt to organize such an event. I had even equated him to ‘Gabbar Singh’ of the famous movie of our times ‘Sholay’.

Resort hunting started and almost all Sundays of January and early February, five of us, Bobby, Charlie, Deepak, Seekar and I, would bundle up in one car and go to the various Resorts. To tell you all very frankly, although we would have liked to relax and  complete our long pending jobs at home, but we enjoyed doing this, as a matter of fact this was more relaxing and rejuvenating . We took these trips as Bachelor Picnics. After seeing many Resorts and discussing the pros & cons of each one, finally we zeroed down upon Best Western Resort Country Club, Manesar. After negotiating and getting a good ‘Package Rate’ we decided upon a figure to be collected from batch mates. Nagra took up the task of making the various lists of ‘Paid’, ‘On the Way’ and ‘Defaulters’. This was a Herculean  task. Among the first ones to pay was Seekar Sachdev. He is a born prankster – gave a cheque of amount ‘Rs. Babaji ka Thooloo.’. And that started the ball rolling and I realized what we all were heading for – total fun.

Now on, every Saturday Club meeting had only one agenda – Planning the Ruby Reunion.  Ideas and suggestions started pouring in – some laudable, some laughable, some naughty and some very prudent. All suggestions were noted and then discussed at the Core Group meetings held at residence of one of us. We got requests from some batch mates that they would like to speak for a few minutes to the gathering, some wanted to sing/dance. In one of the meetings Charlie came out with the brilliant idea of taking all batch mates round the campus and he named it ,Walk in the Clouds. I suggested that we should have a Fashion show. Poonam Sachdev immediately latched on the idea and took the responsibility of organizing it. A rough outline of the program for two days was chalked out. Buses were arranged to take us to the Resort and back. DJ &  Audio-visual facilities were finalised. On the other end Ajit Nagra was relentlessly working on the various lists and also trying to contact other batch mates and very important & crucial job of collecting photographs from us.  I shared a thought with Ajit, Bobby and others of making a Collage of all the photographs collected,  and also designing a Backdrop. Ajit suggested that a friend of  his can help in doing so. I designed the Backdrop and  his friend, Rakesh Kappor , executed  and gave the final shape to it. I was  shown a short film made by some  Alumni association by Bobby, who knew that I had something similar on my mind when I said that I wanted to make a Collage. That gave birth to the ‘TRIBUTE’ and ‘NOSTALGIA’ the two short movies.

  

One fine day Sudhir Khandelwal rang me and said that his wife Chitra & he would like to host a Pre Reunion Dinner. I was delighted with the idea and immediately sent an email to all regarding this and called it ‘THE CURTAIN RAISER’

18^th December 2014

 

Braving the severe cold wave of Delhi, we had a grand Dinner hosted by Sudhir & Chitra Khandelwal. It was a typical Alumnus party with lots of nostalgia in the air and many trying to recognize each other as they were meeting after 40 long years. Among the NRI friends were Vimal Sodhi, Pamela, Neel Kamal, Sujan Singh, Ajit Nagra, Raj Rani, Bikash Bose, Sunila & Sushil Mehrotra  Bobby & Charlie were not present and I was sure that they were upto something and surely they were seen entering with a ruby colored Banner with ‘Curtain Raiser’ written on that. The spirit started showing its effect on higher centres, inhibition was waning away. Girls (now grown up mature ladies) who were so shy during college days that they  would not say a word in front of boys, were meeting them with open arms and hugging them. I even overheard a couple of them confessing  about their crushes. If they had expressed their sentiments then,may be the number of intra class couples would have been much more(we already hold the record of’ ‘most intra class couple in history of MAMC). One could see flashes of cameras at regular intervals. Ajit Nagra had a field day and we all obliged by being his subject individually, as couples and in groups. Many of us took ‘Selfies’. Suddenly a Sikh gentleman entered and none of us were able to place him. He introduced himself as N.P.Singh our batch mate, but we were not convinced. On having a close look we recognized the person. He was Deepak Yadav wearing a pagdi.  Sudhir and Chitra had laid delicious dinner – original & genuine cuisines of ‘Dilli 6’. Reminded me of my childhood days as I have been brought up in the walled city. The Program for 20 ^th December at the college was announced by me. Then the  two days program of the Ruby reunion to the Best Western Resort was also outlined.  We all thanked the hosts and with promise to meet on 20^th at the college we all reluctantly bid good night.

 

 Friends I have created this Blog site so that we all can write about anecdotes that we remember of our college days and also post some photographs. I am not sure how others can post on this blog. You can just mail to me and I shall copy it on the blog.
Happy blogging.