10 years ago

A small snippet from my life during my Undergrad days. I was thinking about my undergrad friends and got reminded of my first room at Mandakini Hostel - 365 B. I was a very quiet freshman and I tried to avoid seniors as much as I could initially. As I got past the fears of ragging, I developed an awe for some of my illustrious seniors and tried to get to know them as much as possible. By the end of my first year, I had made some good friends. Unknowingly, I made friends with people who were either elected representatives or had ambitions of being elected representatives.

During my first year, I shared my room with two others as most freshmen did. Though I never felt the lack of space in my room, I always wondered what it would be like, to have a complete room to myself. At the end of the first year, the freshmen were allotted single occupancy rooms by a lottery system. Someone (I think usually the Social Secretary) made a list of rooms that would get vacant (as a result of final year students vacating their rooms) and allot them to the freshers. Now, as with most things at hostels, this room allotment is not without drama. You see, some freshmen have favorite rooms - the room that is closest to the stairs, or the room that their favorite senior stayed in, or the room closest to the common room (with the TV), or the room that is closest to the carroms room. You get the point. While some of the lesser fortunate freshmen just pray for getting their favorite room, people with "influence" somehow end up with their dream rooms. This is accomplished by getting to know the Social Secretary or some close friend of his. All this was news to me, and I never intended to use this system as I was not sure I was close enough to the secretary.

One fine day before the room allotment happened one of the guys in my neighboring rooms walked up to me and said "Hey Phani, a bunch of us are trying to get rooms next to each other. I will put in your name in this so that you can stick with us". As I do in most situations that Ia m not prepared for, I froze. However, during my first year, I ended up becoming good pals with a different set of people and I really wished to be located next to them. Amidst all this drama, one of the freshmen announced publicly that he was positive that he would be asked to pick the first room to be allotted. As shocked as we were with his claim, at some level we all knew that anything could happen.

On this particular day, we assembled to see how it all played out. We saw the Social Secretary sit down with a large container filled with pieces of paper that had our names on it. The Soc Sec was supposed to stick his hand into the container, pull out a paper at random. The person whose name appeared on this paper picked a room among the available rooms. I took as close a look as I could at this container and all the folded paper pieces looked identical. I was convinced that the Soc Sec would not be able to pull off anything. There were already people who had got wind of the potential cheating in this process. I assumed that the Soc Sec decided it was too risky to pull this one. So imagine my surprise when the very first name that was called out, belonged to the person who had claimed it would be his!! He walked with a broad smile, pumped his fists in the air and picked the room that he had sought! I turned to see the Soc Sec, who continued picking names with a calm poise. How did this guy do it ?? Everything "fell in place" and we ended up getting rooms next to each other, just like the freshmen said we would. The couple of people who did not end up next to us, swapped their rooms with someone and somehow ended up next to us.

The thought of how insecure we were, in wanting to be surrounded by familiar faces, brought a smile to my face.