Layman's guide to Boy's hostel – Part 1

There are 2 types of guys in this world – Guys who have stayed in hostels and the guys who have (you guessed it right) not. As a Chemistry professor will put it, a hosteller is easily identifiable by the following characteristics -

- Hostellers are not finicky about food. Give them a rubber bladder wrapped around thermocol and they will happily lap it up thinking it is Aloo bhajji . A few years of hostel food and your stomach linings can be used to make bullet proof jackets

- They don’t mind scratching there arm pits in public. Private hygiene would be in public domain if they have there way.

- They have an eye for pretty girls. Both the eyes in fact. While the eyes follow the girl, the mouth curses the bend that the girl has disappeared into, nose smells the perfume she took a bath with and the ears cock up to listen to any sneering that the other hostellers have on offer. It is multitasking at its puerile best.

- They have a healthy disrespect for the establishment. If you happen to talk to them, they will tell you about how their bosses are screwing their lives (by forcing them to work full day on a Friday), how the principal of the college deserves to be thrown to the crocodiles (for not giving 3 days off to celebrate Sant Ghasidas Jayanti), how there parents are being terribly unreasonable (by asking them to come home before 3 a.m in the morning.) and other such excesses.

- Hostellers cannot relieve themselves inside the confined claustrophobic environ of a loo. Show me a person who is letting mother earth have it and I will show you a hosteller.

“Engineering hostels maketh the man” as one of those queer Victorian poets should have said. An economist would call it a free for all market.

I have spent 6 years of my life in hostels. 4 years with my engg hostel and 2 years in the B-school one. The B-school hostels are a refined version of the engg ones simply because the management does not allow you to show your true colours as it were. In my hostel we were supposed to be back inside the blanket before 11.30 pm. My engg hostel authorities did not commit such gross acts of human rights violation and we made it count.

There is something in the air of hostels which makes people do things they would never do after that period of life.

Your shoes are not yours. They would be open to the general public on a first come first wear basis. Goes without saying that your shoes may not be used to your feet. If you are smart enough you will have a plan B and C. This means your feet will snuggle into someone else’s shoes. As per Law of Conservation of Mass every feet will have a shoe, just that the ownership will change from one form to another.

The same goes for shirts, soaps, toothpastes, (hold your breath!) underwears and any other contraption humans have devised to make there lives more comfortable. One of my friend’s new shirts traversed 21 backs before it could come to rest on his own. All 21 of them were kind enough not to wash it. You see, washing means 2 days of turnaround time (rinsing, drying, ironing et al) which is an opportunity cost for 2 backs.

Classes were an unnecessary inconvenience and were treated so. Since everyone woke up 15 minutes before the first class, there would be a traffic jam on the way to the loo and the 3 washbasins would have 30 suitors ready to wash the sins of the previous nights using a toothpaste. Bathing was an activity that could be compromised upon. Many were not too narrow minded about brushing their teeth as well. That eased the pressure on the bathrooms slightly.

You see, with great laziness comes great responsibilities.

When your formative years are such a cauldron, it is difficult not to come out burnt… and hardened.

Misplaced aggro

India wins the series and so typical of us in India, we are already into the game of finding faults with the match that was drawn. The armchair fans are disappointed that Dravid did not go for the kill (yawn!!!!). As Dravid replied “If I was on an armchair, even I would be disappointed”. The fellow has a studious sense of humour about him but he was not too far off the mark.

Aggression in cricket, as far as I am concerned is an over rated concept. People insist on it because it looks good. It provides us with the goose bumps and makes us look forward to it. But so much of the cricket’s folklores are built around those gritty, nail scraping, inelegant but priceless knocks. For every majestic 281 by Laxman, there is that ugly 180 by Dravid. Take out that 180 and you will find Laxman stranded at 80 not out with no one from the tail to stand by him.

Tell Tatenda Taibu to be aggressive with his ragtag group of men (to call it a team would be stretching the meaning of the word a tad too far) and u will find that he will create a newer record in the margin of losses every match. Aggression for a team is a function of the kind of players there are in it. You can afford to have 4 slips for Mcgrath because he will land it outside off stump on a coin if he wants, 6 times out of 6. If Mpumelelo Mbangwa is asked to bowl to such a field the captain must have had a fight with his wife in the morning.

You can tell Sehwag to go and play his natural game because he has the Big 4 acting as props. You cant tell a Zimbabwean opener the same because the batting line up is one long tail. The former Sri Lankan captain Arjuna Ranatunga, considered a great strategist, used to resort to around the wicket negative tactics whenever the batsmen were attacking. The reason being that his bowling line up read Murali and the rest. He just could not afford to let the match slip away quickly as the only wicket taking option was Murali.

Its all good to beat your chest and say that we will be aggressive but its not a bad idea to just look around and see if you have the men for it.

Sree.... Shanth!!!

I have been following the India-England series from the very first test. And I was very interested in the antics of Shantakumaran Sreesanth. And I guess he has achieved his objective that way – to get people interested in him.

You never see him not chatting on a cricket field. He chats with the batsman he is bowling to, chats with the bowler he is facing upto, he chats with the slip fielders who he may edge to any time, he chats with the umpires and if that’s not enough chatting for the day, he goes to the boundary ropes and shares his reflection on the day’s proceedings with the crowd. Its impossible for the cameras to miss him. Which is the complete antithesis of the stereotype of an Indian cricketer. The typical Indian cricketer, goes to the field, looks for the place in the field with maximum shade, does some limbering up when he has to bowl, and plays some wristy artistic shots when he has to bat and throws his wicket away trying to outdo himself. But he never is the in-your-face kind of bloke who would try and get all the cameras to pan on to him.

Sreesanth is unlike anything that has happened to Indian cricket over its history. He dances when he gets a wicket and follows it up with a ‘namaste’ to the batsman to rub it in, and he sledges the fast bowlers while batting. Some think its aggro, doctors call it hormones going wrong, others call it showmanship. It makes for good television but the bigger question is lost amidst the flashbulbs and cameras. Isn’t he supposed to win a match for his country when he moves into the field and marks his run up? Is he doing enough of that? Even if he is doing enough of that isn’t he going overboard with whatever he is doing?

Journalists always give the example of John Mcenroe who used to fire himself up by disputing a line call and believing the entire world was against him. What looked like antics had a method about it. He wanted to tap onto his reserves of adrenaline and try and bring some needle into the otherwise tough job of beating a top 50 opponent. With Sreesanth it doesn’t even seem to be that. He beats the batsman with a good ball followed by a word of what looks like (on television) advice. He gets hammered and he follows it up with advice at higher volume. If he is respectfully defended, he collects the ball and threatens to throw the wickets down taking the batsman’s head on the way. Whatever the poor batsman does Sree has a response which is entirely non cricketing in nature.

Again it makes for interesting television, I am not sure if it serves any purpose greater than that. He could as well come on to the field dressed as Santa Claus and do Mohiniattam. He will get enough media coverage to last a lifetime. But when a bowler's bowling figures look like 21 – 2 – 105 – 0, nothing looks that funny. Matches are won on the ground, with performance. The last column should at least have 2 for any bowler to call it a reasonable day. If this objective is lost when playing to the gallery, you can as well join boogie-woogie as a participant.

Hope he proves me wrong in the next test. The amount of talent he has its not an unreasonable hope.