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.