Boys to Men –Part 4: The Many Uncomfortable Truths

Anyone who has travelled on trains will know that clean toilets are a privilege. My hostel lavatory was no less than that of a train’s.

My side of the hostel had 3 toilets... for 25 people. That number would rise exponentially during peak hours. Because if the toilets in your lobby were occupied, you could promptly check your luck in the other lobbies. You can imagine the massacre once everyone was done. Apparently, many people don’t really understand or follow toilet hygiene. They are ruthless, and often leave behind a trail of mindless destruction (quite literally). My hostel had many such monsters. And you could never tell by just looking at them. Such unassuming people, with deeds of a psychopath.

The only way you could have access to a somewhat cleaner toilet was if you woke up at the crack of dawn, before anyone else. So if you were used to going to the toilet at a specific time (you know for better performance), or needed that sip of tea to deliver the goods, you could very well forget all that. In a hostel, its mind over (faecal) matter.

Winters presented a new problem. Now the hostel authorities have a knack for assuming that guys in the hostel can survive hypothermia. Which probably is why our hostel didn’t have a water heating facility. Which made bathing a challenge. So we made the hostel authorities privy to our concern. Who like all responsible and proactive authorities calmly snubbed our request; their logic being that since we were young we should be treating the hardships as a lesson in life. So we avoided bathing altogether. Coz you know...rebels!

We did have a water cooler in our hostel though. It was the most basic of facilities and yet somehow we felt rich because of it. The fact that it was the only cooler for approx 200 guys didn’t reduce the richness in any way. Until one day the supply stopped. On enquiry we realised that during the last clean up, the worker had found a dead lizard in the tank. I don’t know what was more disgusting; that we didn’t have access to cleaner water, or that we had been consuming an exotic lizard cocktail. We realised something funny about the human body that day. As long as the mind isn’t aware of the contents of the food, the tummy would happily gobble and digest anything. But now that I was aware I needed to get out of this hostel which was plotting ways to kill its inmates through hypothermia and lizard laced water.

It was just the first month of my hostel life. And I was determined to get out of that place. Every other day, I would concoct horror stories to my dad, in the hopes that it would melt his heart and maybe put me in a private hostel which would have had much better facilities (read luxuries). So in high hopes I called my dad from a local pco. I narrated the lizard episode and also fake jaundiced a guy.

“Hmm...” he said. 

Any moment now, he would ask me to pack my bags and move to a private hostel. But his Hmm should have been my first clue. Any response that starts with a hmm...is never going to be in your favour.

“Don’t mess with your health. Buy those big cans of mineral water. So how are the classes going?” was all he said.

And you know at times you can hear background music in real life too. As I hung up, I realised a feeling of being abandoned. Being the rebel that I was, I meekly accepted the situation. 

Thankfully I had friends who were much better prepared to deal with the situation than I was.

To be contd...

Boys to Men –Part 3: The Many Uncomfortable Truths

Recently I stumbled upon a stand -up by Anubhav Bassi on hostel life where he narrates a day in the life of a guy living in a hostel. Hilarious as it was, it reminded me of my days in hostel as well. Anyone who has lived in hostel goes from phases of ‘pure disgust’ to ‘pure elation’.

The initial days at the hostel are nothing short of a nightmare. Having spent your early days in a comfortable and protected environment, shifting to a hostel can be a real shock. So it was for me. It was self service from the word go.

It was then that I realised that clothes do not magically wash themselves (not literally though. I knew moms did it, but they do it magically don’t they?).

I reached the hostel during the peak summer of June. Blessed with extra perspiration pores, my well ironed clothes quickly started smelling like a corpse. Not to be deterred, I took them all to the nearby laundry shop. Because that’s what rich people do right? When the clothes came back, my wallet was considerably lighter. So I did the next rich thing. I invested in a washing soap, and an annoying plastic scrub (the annoying bit comes second only to the ‘clawing on a blackboard’ sound). My roommate invested in a washing paddle (which doubled up as a cricket bat once we were done with the washing).

Pretty soon we realised that washing clothes required more patience than skill. And once the rains start, even skilful washing wont save you. Because those of you who have tried know that a half dry cloth smells like death.

So like every persevering/perspiring man, we too quickly gave up. We took refuge in talcum powder and deodorants. To all those people who are about to start hostel life, the following steps can be helpful on how to escape one week without washing.

Day 1: Wear clean shirt

Day 2: Wear it again if no considerable smell emanates (or if the person standing next to you isn’t staring at you in disgust. Or has fainted.)

Day 3: You would now be unable to bear the stench yourself. So lay the shirt out on the bed. And spread a liberal dose of talcum powder on it. Particularly around the armpit area. This should help you get through the day.

Day 4: Repeat step 3

Day 5 and 6: You must have now reached a point where even talc won’t work. In such a case, just wash the armpit and the neck area. And you are good to go.

Note: Unwashed socks are deadlier. So once you have worn them inside out as well, you must ensure to wash them once every three days. Same goes for the underwear. No one washes jeans anyway so no issues there. Jeans are genetically destined not to be washed. So that makes it a time saving garment. Invest in them. Or just borrow from fellow hostel mates. Because one thing that I noticed was that everyone in a hostel wears clothes that have a universal fit. So it doesn’t matter that the person from whom you borrow is fat or thin. If he has a wearable garment, it will fit.

Washing clothes is just one of the many problems that a guy faces in the hostel. But he surely overcomes them, one problem at a time.

To be contd...

Boys to Men--Part 2

Boys do not have a fixed definition of fun. But it has to be full of action. And I mean raging fires, exploding buildings, crashing planes type of action. So my kid’s idea of fun isn’t sitting quietly and playing with his building blocks. It is to make a big tower with those blocks, and then aiming his toy car at them to knock them down to the remotest corner of the sofa (which I will later have to sweep out myself).

One risky idea of fun happens in school (which am sure most of you have done at least once. most of guys at least, because girls are civil). And it involves impaling the one sitting in front of you with a compass. It all starts when a kid stands up from his seat for some reason. And the kid behind him produces a compass out of nowhere and places the pointed end of the compass on the seat, for no reason. He then patiently waits for the kid in front to sit on the pointy end. The sadism takes a turn for the worse when other boys nearby don’t prevent this from happening and in fact await the needle to pierce the buttocks of the poor lad.

As dangerous as it sounds, I have never heard of an incident where this prank took a turn for the worse. Its almost like a rite of passage. I’d really like to know about the origins of this prank. I mean which sick mind would look at a compass and think, “hey you know what, just for fun...let’s pierce some buttocks today”?

For me, one of the most annoying things in school used to be the MD (mass drill) period. My school used to start at 7.15 in the morning, and once a week all the students would march towards the school ground to spend the next hour and half dancing/exercising to the drill masters whistle (or a drum depending on how adventurous the instructor felt).

Everyone hated it. Including the drill master I believe. Back then and even now, I am unable to grasp at the utility of those physical movements. No one in my life has once come up to me and said “You remember the mass drills we did in the morning?  It changed my life.”

You also needed to show just the right amount of appreciation for the drills. You showed too much enthusiasm (or too less of it), and the instructor would make you lead the drills. Which meant that you had to do the exercises and the other kids would follow you. Now most of the kids just followed the kid in front. I mean no one really remembers the order of the exercise (or the exercise). You made a mistake and ‘smack’...out of nowhere the drill instructor appeared behind you and slap your buttocks into oblivion. He actually would appear out of nowhere. He would be at a far corner getting all cheery with my young science teacher, and the moment you messed up a movement he would magically appear right behind you to slap your behind (which is already sore with all the compass piercings).

The trick was to remain inconspicuous; just show the right amount of enthusiasm so that the DI would spare you. Morning drills were especially unpleasant in winters. In my school, only the higher secondary boys could wear pants. The rest of us had to wear shorts. And I am all for rules. But 8-9-10^th standards are when many embarrassing changes happen to our body; body hair being just one of the problems. While the torso is well protected in the chilly morning wind, the lower part is however quite unlucky. And its no fun to feel the wind creep up your leg. Not to mention morning wood. Imagine standing in front of everyone, students and teachers, in your shorts that often does little to hide your unwanted boner. You will quite literally be standing out.

At that age (and I guess even now) kids tend to get embarrassed easily. The other kids on their part will ensure that you stay embarrassed. They will never let you move on. Because the screw ups you do in school stay with you for life. Years later, when people meet on school groups on FB and Whatsapp, you will still be known as ‘that kid who screwed up’ in the group.

But that's the fun of school isn’t it? The fun, the ink pens (and the promotion to ball pens), the geometry sets, the mass drills, the crushes, the embarrassments, the failures, the conquests, the fistfights after school, the arm wrestling coz she is watching, the chalk projectiles, the one hand distance, the head downs, the finger on your lips, the standing out of class as punishment, the pride in carrying the books to the staff room, the tiffin cricket, the flames, the group photos towards the year end, the proposals, the occasional slaps, the few moments of glory, and many moments of insult, the jealousies, the contempt, the love, the hatred, the friendship days, the rakhi days, everything keeps adding a small layer to the personality that is the now you. In fact, I’d like to change my above statement. Remember those mass drills in school that we used to hate? They did change my life a bit!