Chronicles of Kaliyapuram- I

DISCLAIMER: The following content contains mature content, strong language, comical nudity, and profanity. Not suitable for people who have offensivitis. Reader Discretion Advised

The welcome ceremony in college was grand. We were in a huge auditorium and the Late P K Das (the man with the entire alphabet as his suffix) gave us the welcome address. He never spoke to public gathering again as he passed away a few weeks after our classes started. During this ceremony is when I met Kindi. A studious "looking" bloke with spectacles the size of the medieval stained glass. Once the ceremony was over, we were asked to visit the hostel. We were escorted to the hostel with a plethora of students, some in buses and some in their own vehicles.

With great expectation, I traveled behind a bus to our hostel. The buses traveled through a barren wasteland to what looked like a run-down building. Our hostel. The great Kaliyapuram Men's Hostel. From here, if someone needed to see a vehicle, they had to walk 3km through nothingness to reach the highway. It connected to Ettimadai (the official bus stop for folks at Amrita, and now us)

The hostel was being built, so we had to do a simple adjustment. Eight of us had to cram ourselves into one room. Ironically, there was no room in the room. Just 4 bunk beds, and 4 tables. The room allotted to me was G03. This is where I met an unpretentious chap on crutches. The fellow had met with an accident before his college entry and used that to his bloody advantage. Yes Mr.Pezha, I am talking about you. Bugger escaped from all the ragging sessions from our seniors as they felt sorry for him. If they knew his true self, they would have rapped him anally.

Before I start complaining about the hostel, let me say a few good things. The hostel was a synonym for freedom. Even though it was a management institute, the hostel was like one the Government colleges had. There was no entry time (they tried to enforce it, but the attempt was vain), attendance was a joke, nobody told the warden they're going home (we just took our bag and left when we left like it).

This is more of an anthology rather than chronicles but, the name sounds much cooler with the latter. No real names will be mentioned here as the nicknames are much cooler, too. So here we go.

Food Food

Hostel food sucks. Everyone knows this. It's not an opinion. It's a fact. Our hostel food sucked donkey balls. One fine morning, on our way to college, we went for breakfast. It was idli that day and we were given the ration of ours. That was the first time in my life, I ever had cream-filled idli. As I parted my idli, the mix started to flow out like I poked a hole in Choco Lava cake. I truly wished I was Moses that day.

Buttermilk was provided every night. It was a super-fluid. It had a mind of its own and could crawl out of the plate and work against gravity. Evening tea was the only thing everyone came to eat. But the snacks were given to us looking at our sizes. As a tall slim chap, I would usually get a slim bajji.

Non-vegetarians cried almost daily. A piece of chicken had become a distant dream to many. Finally the day arrived. It was Eid al-Fitr. A flock of meat-hungry carnivorous animals swarmed into the kitchen. Each was given a single piece. Veggies were treated as Gods that day. They could get an extra leg piece for us meat-eaters. Kindi a vegetarian Christian and I a non-vegetarian Brahman was a wonder for many. The way I tore into the meat like a hungry wolf gave chills to Kindi, who was munching on the pappadam I gave him in exchange for another chicken piece.

There were two "hotels" in Kaliyapuram to "save" us from the evil concoctions they cook up in the hostel. It is here in these tiny hotels (which was mostly the living room of their house) that we were introduced to the greatest hunger buster of all time- Kothuporotta. Mr. Pazham's discovery of the combination of kothuporotta with lemon pickle should be marked down in history.
Most hostlers must have tried to cook Maggie, the bachelors' elixir of life. We cooked it in electric kettles. The fucking spoons used to never touch the bottom of the kettle and we used to get burnt Maggie in the end. The struggle for survival was very real.

Ali's Dhaba

Ali's Dhaba requires an honorable mention. Far away in the distance, Ali's Dhaba provided the best food (which is still crap) in the area. There was a time when almost every day's dinner was from Ali's Dhaba. A German Shepard named Kaiser was the biggest nuisance there. It never allowed me or Gona to sleep in the backyard of the Dhaba.  

Mischief Managed

H shaped hostel. Four Floors. This is how our hostel was built. During the initial stay there we did some unspeakable things. Water supply was cut off one morning and the only source of water was a pipe outside of the hostel( which was connected to a bore well). It was located on the top left corner of the H, let's say. It was very difficult for us to take a bucket of water all the way from there to the front entrance and then into the room. The students there found an easier way. Tear down the fucking wall. The wall between the two corridors (let's say the bridge in H) was literally broken down, for an easy access to this particular pipe. After that day, this pseudo entrance became the main entrance. Some of us didn't even know where the main entrance was. 

Washing clothes is one hell of a job for anyone. especially for lazy ass students. Not for a gang of us. Every Saturday, we would walk with a bucket of dirty laundry, in the scorching sun. Half a kilometer away from our hostel was this stream of water (which was known as aruvi to the visitors there) that had good water. The only source of good water in the entirety of Coimbatore, I think. It was not a very accessible place, yet we would go there. Spend around an hour or two, playing in the shallow waters and then head back.

 During the evening we would do something really stupid. A quarry lies adjacent to our hostel. Again, no straight road that leads to this place. Some of the hostlers had torn down a wall to our hostel compound. Through this, we could get to this quarry. It had water. Kanthappan, Dasan and I were the crazy buggers. We would jump from the rocks above, which was more than 20 feet above the water level and dive deep in. Much later, after this escapade did I come to know, that the waters were more than 50 feet deep, and people have actually died in those waters. Hostel warden was notified of this much later too.

The quarry trips were later banned by the management, upon hearing that more and more students were risking their own lives, just to take bath. The aruvi trips were also later banned, for no apparent reason.

As construction of the hostel was going on, steel bars were very commonly found on the premises. Dassappan comes to me one day, saying he found a scrap dealer. Bulbs lit up in our head. Each day, we would pick up two-three bars, walk 4 kilometers and sell this. It usually gives us money for one good mel, and an auto trip back to the hostel. This became a routine. Every week this would happen. Upon hearing our story, many others did the same. The funniest part was, nobody, absolutely nobody was caught in the act. Yes, the hostel management suspected a few of us, but they had no proof.

Power failures was very common in the hostel. Sometimes even the generator failed. I was in Pazham's room that day, and the power went off. A few minutes later, I could smell a public toilet in the room. I asked Pazham if he didn't flush the toilet. Laughter was echoing outside. We stepped out and went to the next room. Everyone there was cursing. Poison Paul had fucking peed in the corridor. He stood there, in the middle of the corridor, took out his poisonous appendage and peed on to the walls like a racehorse on steroids. And it stank, stank like a skunk who ate asparagus. The whole floor came down to kick his ass. In the end, he himself had to get a bucket of water and clean his own piss.

The bathroom doors in our rooms were very feeble. The locks used to break all the time. Two similar stories happened in hostels, one because of a broken lock and one because someone broke the lock.
Because 6 of us shared a room, it was a common practise to keep a bucket of water outside the bathroom for the other to brush. I used to wake up very late. Thullu and Pezha were brushing outside the bathroom and Ponikkara was in the toilet. Ponikkara was an amateur body-builder. I was unaware of the fact that he was in the toilet. I woke up, jumped down from the upper bunk, walked towards the bathroom in half sleep and pushed the toilet door. What Thullu, Pezha and I saw next can never be erased from our memory. It was Ponikkara, completely naked, slightly squatting in front of the crapper, with a mug in his right hand, and the other hand on his ass, looking at us with the most awkward confused face. He took a second too long to realise what happened. I screamed; he screamed; Thullu and Pezha almost died, because they could not catch their breath from laughing.

The other one happened because Kanthappan got drunk. Kanthappan had to pee, and he was drunk. Kalari was in the toilet. Kanthappan walked like Jackie Chan from The drunken master and kicked the door like him as well. The lock on the other end couldn't handle his force. It shot across the bathroom and the door flew open. Kalari jumped up from the crapper, ran towards the door to close it, but Kanthappan wouldn't allow him. What came next was a historical scene. On the way to the door, Kalari forgot to clench his pelvic muscles. Shit, literally few in every direction and it was on the floor, the walls and, I'm not kidding, on the ceiling. From that day, Kalari got a new name- Parannuthoori, the Flying Shitter.

Refugee

After the hostel got built we were all allotted a room for four members each. Except for my room. We had a refugee. Kuth. This happened for a reason. There was always someone in my room. It was only during long vacations that the room would become empty. Kuth had roommates who never used to be in their room. So he camped in our room. It was only during the hostel warden's round for attendance that he used to go to his own room. This became a habit for the bugger and he stayed with us most of the time. 

It was during this a rumour spread in the hostel. The hostel warden tried to sexually harass a servant lady there. Pezha curious as fuck, had to figure out if this is true. During one of his visits for attendance, Pezha asked him, straight to his face. "Sir, did you try to rape the servant lady?" The expression that bloomed on his face was priceless. The face that Batman had when Supes punched a hole through the Joker's chest (Google it). I could see that. He fumbled for words, which kind of confirmed that it was not just a rumour. 

Physical  Director's MP4 player

I was the first one to bring a laptop to the hostel. My room was the official theatre of the hostel. Our Physical director used to stay in the hostel. He called me to his room, one day, and asked me to see what's wrong with his MP4 player. It was not working. Jairam, upon hearing this said, all we need to do is format the player. He connected the MP4 player to my laptop and opened the folder. I looked at Jairam like 'What the fuck' and he looked at me like 'Fuck yeah'. There was so much of porn in there. I mean the amount of porn in that little bit of space was astonishing. Jairam suddenly had an epiphany. He said to the PD that he will copy the files to PC format it and paste all the files back. Sleek way to get his stash of porn in our hands. Because the PD was a dumb fucker he didn't realise our plan and readily agreed. So we stole his stash of porn and spread it all over the hostel. To be honest, it was the worst collection of porn I have ever seen. Shitty porn. fucker needs to be introduced to some Brazzers and Naughty America and shit.

Thiruvenkadam Velupillai Prabhakaran

Most of you will be wondering what a late leader of a militant organisation has to do with our hostel life. Everything. May of 2009. Our semester exams were just around the corner. On 19th Indians was in the news, the death of Prabhakaran. Tamil Nadu burst into flames. So did a student in Coimbatore. He lit himself up in the middle of the road. This created a commotion all over Tamil Nadu and especially Coimbatore. We in the hostel were busy preparing for exams. Study rooms were packed, though most people went there to chit chat. Power failed and we heard screams. I was in Pazham's room. We locked ourselves in. We heard more screams coming from outside. We hears tubes bursting, glass breaking. Most of us almost shat bricks in our pants. We had to run away from there. Our safety was under question. Power started to fluctuate, it went off and on. During one interval of the return of electricity (sounds like a Star Wars movie), my room-mates and I ran into our room. Packed our stuff and decided to leave. We gathered up a bunch of people to flee the hostel. Once the power was back, we were ready. Our bodies were ready to run like a motherfucker on the sound of next danger. On our way, we picked up a few steel bars, this time not for food, but for defence. Kindi, who somehow was in there, called up our class teacher and told him, "Sir, if you want, you change the exam dates. Don't expect us. We fear our lives. We are leaving". We fled our hostels. Not saying it was like Syrians escaping from IS, but that's what we felt. 

Coimbatore was totally calm, unlike what we expected. There was nobody on the roads, no one protesting. But that incident and that trip home was something I'll never forget.

The Chronicles do not end here, but every story needs an end. So I'm ending this with a hope of a sequel.