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.