A Nasty Escape

March 21st, 9:54 a.m. Entrance of SH1, IIIT Hyderabad

Humph! Humph! Humph!
Gushes of hot air rushing out of my lungs... heart pounding fast... man! I wondered, what'll happen...

4 minutes, just 4 minutes ago I was fast asleep, engrossed in beautiful dreams, away from the misery that surrounds me in reality for some time... and that's the best part of dreams, they take you away somewhere different and yet familiar, you forget all your worries and start living a different life, even it its just for a small time, and that life has no restrictions, no laws of physics and facts of chemistry. Anything can happen in dreams, and the same anything might have been happening to me. Many people who have had the pleasure to be around me have mentioned that I smile when I'm fast asleep, probably because my other side of life is more like.. how I want it to be... well I have no idea because when I wake up, there's nothing like a solid memory, just a little feeling in my mind here and there that I have been happy recently, probably that's the reason why I like to sleep a lot...

And so.. there I was, lying in my cosy little bed in my dirty small room, when an unpleasant loud scratchy harsh voice reached my ears...

"Oye! Tarang, tu class nahi jaata aaj kal??"

I swung my head to see a voluminous and bulky Motlani standing on the doorway of my room, realizing I had pulled a muscle in the activity...

"Time kya ho raha hai??" I asked hastily...

"9:50 ho gaye hain..."

"Shit shit shit shit..." mar gaya main...


I looked at my mobile phone on my bed, the devil seemed to be mocking me, signalling that I have been happily dismissing all the alarms in my sleep...


"Abe koi baat nahi lite hai... he he he..." There was Motlani spreading his devilish laugh...

"Motlani hat raste main se" irritated me snorted back...


I got up, stuffed my bag with whatever registers I could find at the moment, and ran toward the classroom, about 350 meters away from the hostel, realizing on the way that it'll be better if I talk less today as I hadn't brushed my teeth, well never mind, as far as I get the attendance for this CSO class.

The prof wants us to be on time, once when I was 15 minutes late, I had to bear the torture of the remaining class of 45 minutes, to know that I'll be marked absent as I was patiently watched by him from my entrance till I had occupied my seat. So today I had to do something, to prevent myself being marked absent yet again, costing me a hard earned grade in the course. No I cannot let this happen, I though and ran towards SH1 'procured recently' (this is a reference to something which my batch-mates will understand ;) )...

So there I was standing at the closed entrance to SH1, after 4 minutes, peaking through a thin vent, as the door was not fully close, cool air was coming out of the vent signifying Air Conditioners were upto their work, nice work Meher I thought (Meher is our CR)...

What should I do?? Should I enter?? I stormed my mind for fake excuses but none came out explaining why I had a bag with me... Well I had to wait for an appropriate moment when sir turned his back towards students and thus the doorway...


As I waited each minute appeared as an hour, excitement rising as the prof. used to take attendance in the middle of the class around this time...

What'll happen if he decides to take the attendance now... shit! I couldn't afford to wait any longer... 


And then there was a power-cut, now he would come and open the door so as to illuminate the hall... man! what a luck... I stood there hoping and praying that he doesn't come upto the door, as I had no time to move away... and then all of a sudden the room was illuminated again, thank God! I was saved for the moment...


I waited for a few moments again, and I saw him approaching the board, God help me... and yes! he picked up the chalk, this was my moment, I had to rush to occupy the nearest seat... if I get caught... no... I didn't have time to think about it now... now or never...

I opened the door and sneaked in as quietly as I could, oh! no... the f**king door had signaled him... he was turning... I had to duck! shit shit shit...

After a second or so, when he couldn't see anyone, he moved back to writing on the board. haaa... I breathed a sigh of relief... and reached for the nearest seat. Now I had to appear very attentive, if he notices something suspicious... man! that was pretty easy accounted by my past experiences, ...

After finishing what he had started to write he reached towards his desk, towards the attendance sheet... my mind was dancing happily...

After few of the names he shouted Tarang Goyal

Present Sir... Yes! I had made it...

A Start with an Immediate End

03:30 am. 3^rd no actually 4^th January 2012, Boys hostel - IIIT Hyderabad. Deafening silence... Confused??

Well there you go...

Here I am... sitting upright with eyelids heavy, tired of watching 3 back to back movies after playing hot pursuit an hour... what a cool college life! Then why is the hostel absolutely silent at this time?? Let me answer it. As first years, we are supposed to attend the ‘pre-morning’ sessions of Yoga and PT. Yes, PT, “Physical Training”, about to start at 6, a mandatory course with 2 credits, failing to complete can make you stay here after getting a dream placement in a dream company. Yep you’ll have to stay here and complete the PT credits coz you know they’re trying to make your life better... yes indeed. Then why the hell am I not sleeping??

I too as anyone else thought I would do this and that in my college life, a preconception that any fresher has in mind, an engineering college is supposed to be a place where you spend the golden 4 years of life. As a JEE aspirant I thought golden implies were I’ll have freedom to do whatever I wished for, night-outs, trips, hang-outs etc etc. But here, these are a rare opportunity and whenever a person from this institute gets the thing, he cannot afford to let it go... these are the times for which we breathe, hoping that there is such a day forthcoming where we’ll have some time to live as we had hoped in our years at college. Now having overused such an opportunity, I’m paying by sacrificing the night’s sleep, well whatever has left of the night now... because I know that I’ll not get up at 6 if I sleep at - what is it?? – yes 03:45 am. Definitely not.

When you sit idle wondering over nothing, all sorts of bad memories rush out of your mind, and that’s what happened now... I remembered the conversation that I had with my P.T. teacher the other day...

PT teacher: “You passed, right??”

”No sir, I felt short of attendance...”

PT teacher:”You failed!!”

Common man!!! As if it’s such a big issue not being able to complete damn 85% of attendance for this stupid course...

“Uh! Yea... i felt short of attendance...”

The successively emerging frown on his face reminded me of the bitter memories of the past - encounters with a number of teachers – the look they all - most of them used to have when I used to appear with a request...

“I’ll see what I can do...”

Yes, I know you surely will... “Thanks a lot sir...”

Staring at my roomie for a while, after having accidentally asked the time from the corpse ;) I wondered what he may be dreaming about... The bulky volumes of ‘Linux Command lines and Shell scripting’ suggest that he might be fantasizing the release of the latest version of ‘his’ new OS... shaking hands will Steve Jobs while he admits that the OS made by Piyush has really overshadowed Mac by a mile. Jobs sir, may thy soul rest in peace...

Trying to keep me from sleeping is even harder watching the alarm clock tick in front of my eyes... maybe I should sleep... just a little... And yes, at this point your brain terribly starts supporting your body’s need by quoting extracts from the impressive conversation with a variety of people over the course of time, while the small quivering part of the mind still protesting at this thought... and as always like the bigger and bulkier part overpowers the small feeble one, I dozed off...

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

“WHAT?? F**king 6:20?? Darn it!!” I got up in a hurry, not to try and reach the Yoga hall (as it was no use, get late by a second and you’ll have a forced leave for a day) but towards the calendar, to check how many more leaves remained for me to atleast complete the course in this semester...

 I felt a terrible jolt of pain in my leg - which I had accidentally banged against the wall – and there I sat with me feet in my arms mourning over its broken ligaments... Oh yes! I now had a reason not to attend PT for ‘bout a week or so... and a very solid indeed (as it looked uphill the next encounter with my PT teacher). I would go, meet the teacher personally and ask him exemption from PT for some time...

No problem, I thought and yet again, dozed off...

“Oye Tarang, get up dude, it’s 8:20, I’m leaving... don’t get late...” My roomie cum alarm clock rang and went off...

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

“Oh! I’m so sorry, now you’ll not be able to do PT... efficiently...”

“wha... sir I’m not able to walk properly, and i think I need to rest my foot in order to resume early...”

“You can still do some light exercises; it doesn’t look so bad...”

“Sir, my leg pains very badly...”

“humph! Okay then, I think it’s time for you to utilize the 15% grace period...”

“The 15% what??”

“Grace period... The 15% grace period, you see, you people have already been allotted 15% exemption from 100% attendance for these kind of ‘mishaps’... you can utilize this. No problem with me”

Aren’t we supposed to have that “15% grace period” for the days when we could willingly not go to PT, totally leaving aside the granted leaves for these “mishaps”?? ... “no problem with me...” indeed...

“oh! Yes sir.. I just wanted to bring it to your notice... #$^%%^&$”

*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

The new semester resolution... or whatever you call it didn't even last a week... not much but i took one leave on the first week, and if you wanna hear about the second week, the whole week was yogaless. Yup, I decided to drop the course even for this semester. Nope that was not a sudden decision, but was verified and approved by many of my friends, (one of them suggested try giving a medical certificate, will cost you at the max. 100 bucks... you have been absent for a week... a good chance that they would consider but the possibility of them cross checking my attendance with that of the classes made us drop the topic ) who had already decided to drop the course for the sem... Man!! who likes their friend to complete the race when they themselves are out of it right from the start?? Seeing it as a better option so that I could concentrate on studies for the whole sem, i decided than it was really better for me... was it really the reason?? I asked myself... Oh yeah!.. my mind replied back.