LACHRYMOSE LACHRYMARKS

It’s funny how exams affect us hostellites in ways unimaginable. For people living at home the seriousness of the exam time is imposed upon them with parents breathing down their neck reminding them of the seriousness of that A , and the possible ramifications of having a good career with the help of that A. It’s hard to imagine that such a innocuous looking letter can be of such importance. For hostellites the exam time is a frantic rush to cram as much as possible,sacrificing a good night’s sleep,consuming ungodly amounts of coffee and grappling with mind boggling amounts of photocopied paper,mostly done at the thirteenth hour.Come exam time and there is a queue of boys in front of the girls hostel,the supplicants waiting in tense anticipation for that notebook from the girl who has taken immense pains to maintain her notes all year round.And as the girl proudly dishes out her notebook replete with pencil and colourful margin notes she even dishes out some free advice about what to study and what not to.Mother Teresa would have been so proud of her she feels.

All year round the very same girl would be the victim of caustic remarks from the boys who have labeled her as a teacher’s pet and roll their eyes whenever she chooses to answer a question in class.But come exam time,she would be the savior,the good Samaritan who chooses to lend her painstaking efforts to the work shirkers.And the boys happy with an easy way out,religiously study from the notes and manage respectable grades and satiate their parent’s marks lust.The girls get better grades and the guys manage something of lesser envy and everyones happy.

But scratch the surface and the rust is exposed.Few people pay attention to the real reason why a girl producing a same answer on her answer sheet is entitled to more marks than a boy.Of course such a subtle difference may escape the average boy, so I am not offended at the poor attention span of my male readers and thus choose to enlighten them at the blatant discrimination that goes on in the marking system. After nearly four semesters of careful scrutiny and analysis coupled with insights from various male eye witnesses I finally came to the conclusion that most of the marks that are bestowed upon the Venusians come from an unusual and subtle coercion method that plays on the very human psyche.Although they sometimes choose various methods like producing the same answer in active as well as passive voice ,they rely on a tried and tested technique handed down from generations.Girls choose to exploit a very fundamental flaw in the mind set of a guy…All they do for a few extra marks is….. CRY.

Yes,no man in history has acquired considerable success in consoling or pacifying a crying girl when things are not going her way.The male brain simply runs out of ideas when the eyes of a girl brim over.Of course the lachrymal coercion used in college is a touch different,but the results are the same.And this time tested technique never fails them.Be it a wizened and grizzled professor or a fresh young teacher just fresh from college,all of them fall for the same ploy.At first when there is a huge crowd in the teacher’s cabin the habitual criers stand idly by patiently biding for their time to go in for the kill.And just when the teacher is in a state of utter frustration they home in to the target.At first they try for the cajoling strategy,when that fails they once again repeat the cajoling and now the sniffing adds to the cajoling.Almost akin to the delay of a time bomb sounding out its warning before the final blast.And then when the teacher is absolutely adamant that he wont even think of giving extra marks,the girl bursts into tears. Tears that flow fast and thick smudging the answer sheet and the report papers of the teacher which has been meticulously arranged.Seeing no way out the teacher is forced to scribble a few more marks on her answer sheet.

You would think…end of story..objective achieved.But NO,the girl seeing that the teacher has taken the bait wishes to dupe him hook, line and sinker.She is still on the teachers side pleading for more.This time she spins up a cock and bull story about how she had taken ill the night before the exam and how a few extra marks would really augment her career prospects.To add to the story she paints a sordid picture of how she had religiously studied the concerned teacher’s notes fully trusting him but the exam question paper begged to differ.If the teacher has’nt fallen for the ploy till now,this frontal assault on his ego does not go unnoticed.His inflated ego takes a beating when he hears this statement.And the knight in shining armor swings into action.

Finally the teacher wishing to salvage his reputation and with a flourish adds a few more marks and signs off with a flourish finally placating the sobbing girl.Now there “Are you happy”?, he asks and the girl who has so far been hell bent on flooding the room with her tears suddenly ceases her lachrymose assault and gushes in happiness.”Thank You”…You are the best..she utters and runs out of the room in sheer ecstasy.For a moment the teacher swells up a bit for having placated a crying girl before he returns to his mundane world of exam papers.
And the girl who is now bragging about her stellar performance in the exam to her friends and nonchalantly mentioning her inflated marks to all and sundry,mentally makes a checklist to improve upon her performance next time that would warrant even more free marks.She silently sends up a prayer thanking God for making fall prey so gullible to the charms of women.And she also is thankful of the fact that most of her teachers in the college are male.

Thus careful observation has given me an idea on how to get a few more marks too.Next time ill come equipped with a glycerine bottle to the teachers room and cry my heart out, just hoping that a crying guy would be as torturous to the teacher as it were for a crying girl.For I too wish to exploit the teachers basic flaw….his FEAR OF THE TEAR. So next time you see a girl brandishing her near perfect marks..be sure it was just TEAR FACTOR that helped her.And as I mentioned earlier she is no more the Mother Teresa ..rather she is just “ANOTHER TEARESA”

LOO-NACY

Hostel life is never replete without stories of your hand-to-mouth existence , your shenanigans after a belly full of alcohol,the late night card games,the gnawing hunger pangs just when you sit down for studying,the all night phone call..and the list goes on.We go through the formative years at the hostel mostly cribbing about the quality of the food(rather the lack of it),discussing arguing and killing your friends(figurative never literally) over divided loyalties on your favorite cricketers.And at the end you shed that proverbial tear reminiscing about the memories.

But the subject you never acknowledge,never in front of family and friends for the fear of being looked down upon as scum.The subject you never mention in polite tete-a-tete with those nosy aunties and uncles who badger you about your hostel life , who want to glean as much information about your college for their daughter who is just starting college.And you don’t even raise the hint of this subject for the fear of turning away the pretty young thing and opting for somewhere else.The subject you would never raise when dining in your hostel mess for the fear of getting not only murderous stares but also a flurry of kicks to go with it.The subject that makes you shudder even after passing out from your alma mater.

The condition of the hostel “LOO”..those loo-natic days where your whole morning life was governed by your skill in getting in and out of the loo in the right time and turning a blind eye to the surroundings.As a hostellite myself let me give you a sneak peek at the hostel loo,the inside story of what engineers go through day in day out.Leave aside the idiosyncratic teachers,the maddening labs,the frustrating assignments,the pesky girlfriend(frustratingly pesky),the real trial that an engineer goes through is really a tragic experience.

Imagine waking up in your hostel room on a fine sunny morning,rudely awakened mainly due to the horrendous smell that is planning a systematic assault on your olfactory senses.Your brain is in overdrive and your lungs are screaming for clean air and is readying up for shutdown.Half of the insect kingdom of your room is squirming on the floor having suffocated by the repulsive odour.You remember your history lessons and think that Hitlers gas genocides were a cakewalk in comparision.You wake up shocked and choking, spewing out the most colorful of all the choicest adjectives you have picked up in hostel life, all directed on your roommate. Frantically searching for the nearest ventilation site you somehow manage to open the window.Heaving a sigh of relief as you turn to castigate your roommate for his foul deed.Suddenly your tummy grumbles akin to the starting of a malfunctioned tractor engine and then lets loose a swift yet deadly stream of gas.One that unfortunately you have little control over.And then you realize you were the culprit all along.

And thus starts the morning,on a perfect note with you desperately rummaging through the shelf searching for the soap that you had borrowed from your next door neighbor especially in case of emergencies like this.All sense of decency flies out of the window as you wrap yourself in something that resembles a towel,Tarzan would have been ashamed at your Spartan dressing habits.And you reach just in time to find the last toilet door closing in your face.It is at these moments in life when you wished that your dad was Bill gates and he built a separate bathroom just for you complete with golden bathroom fittings and automatic rear wipe.Just as you feel ready to let loose the remains of your last night’s ingested dinner,suddenly a door opens and you get a free toilet.Thanking the person who just left just as you get ready to get cosy,what greets your eyes is so repugnant it makes me want to vomit even as I write about it.

Sitting in the shiny white pan is a …….am at a loss of words so let me give you an analogy to better describe the scene.First there is the base of the cake of a mild yellowish tinge.Due to lack of general cleanliness or due to the unavailability of water the next guy preferred to add one more layer to the cake,albeit this layer having a nice sepia tint to it.And the third guy preferred to add the icing on the cake with his own small brownish-yellowish contribution.This sight in any other situation would have given you a mild heart stroke.But owing to the severity of the situation,you turn a blind eye to the situation and you become a new member to the cake makers club.

Finally relieved after your visit to the toilet as you approach the sink, your eyes are treated to a sight that makes sore eyes.Floating in the basin next to you is the vomit remains of some guy after too much of booze.There in the basin as the odour starts to choke you, you can make out the small chicken pieces swimming around with the little tomato strands giving it company.Once again the lack of time (you are already late for class)keeps you from passing out on the bathroom floor.Reluctantly you brush your teeth periodically gagging on the toothpaste when you think about the condition of the basin.And somehow you manage to finish your morning ablutions and get ready for a bath when to your dismay, there is not even a drop of running water.

As you resort to drawing out water from the tank, you peek inside to find that the water has turned into a formidable greenish hue and you are absolutely sure that the insect life has bred in these waters and have started mutating into larger crustaceans. You are so used to turning a blind eye to all these stuff that after a few days you wouldn’t even bat an eyelid if you were given nuclear contaminated water to bathe in. Finally you manage to reach class, all smelling of roses,thanks to the perfume your mom gave you on your birthday(God bless her for always giving you the right stuff).And thus creating an illusion of having a great H2O adventure in the bathroom.And as you pass out from college and someday you sit back wondering how fun college life was,you suddenly chance on your memories of loo misadventures and you thank your lucky stars that you wont have to go through such a torture again.

To all those people who have locked away these loo-se memories I am sure after reading this you will once again turn LOO-NATIC.