Birthday goodies

Birthday bumps. Aah what a beautiful concept. The very thought of toasting the guy's ass for the unpardonable mistake of dropping down to this earth. Great right. Well not exactly. Not when it is your ass which is doing all the receiving. Even if you forget your own birthday, there would be a set of "loyal" followers who makes sure you don't so easily forget that you just completed one more year of burdening Mother Earth,each year, every year.

During my initial days in IIT, I used to hear strange noises coming from somewhere in the hostel corridor. The funny thing was that these sounds start coming soon after 12 am. And it was almost a daily affair. Later on I came to know that it is actually a birthday celebration. And this is how it goes...

The birthday boy is first made to "embrace" the wall. Before the "execution" starts the birthday boy is allowed to say a silent prayer

"May my ass rest in peace"

Others also joins him in his prayer, just that their prayers are semantically slightly different

"May your ass rest in pieces"

Then the firing starts.

"BANG"
"AAAHHHH"
"BANG BANG"
"AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH"
"BANG BANG BANG....BANG"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

Some people use their slippers to do the job while the "professionals" let their legs do the talking. In either case, the birthday guy is a gone case. The firing goes on and on. It stops only when everyone is satisfied that his round convex ass has turns red hot and flat. Soo flat that rotis can be easily cooked on it.

4 years of birthday celebrations in the campus and his future is in doldrums. With a flat ass after graduation, marriage is out of question. Depending on the degree of flatness, it is very easy to identify the person's hostel. Anyone with a concave ass should definitely belong to my hostel. That's for sure. With the number of good "friends" I have made, I have no hopes that I will live to see 2010. Maybe it's a good time for me to make my insurance plans.

The old man and the mess

The mention of hostel mess doesn't give me pleasant thoughts, atleast not when the food is concerned. It gives me nightmares even to think of having lunch or dinner from our hostel mess, though there are exceptions some days. But this post is not about how I feel about my hostel mess. It is about an old man in our mess. Since I don't know his name we will call him Mr Hero (since he is the hero of my post). Now our Hero is a mess staff member. As far as I have seen and experienced, he is not into cooking. His expertise lies in arranging washed glasses on all the food tables and to make sure the water jug on all tables is constantly full. So why is he the protagonist of my post? Well here goes.

Hero seemed to be have issues with other fellow staff members. At the rate of atleast 2 fights per day, he makes sure that he covers all the mess members in one week. But though his fights are, in general, not against any one person, he does have a special "liking" to a particular old chap. Let's call him Mr Villain (since he is the enemy of our Hero). He leads the fightback of the remaining mess members against Hero. On days when Hero is on a "date" with Villain, it is a feast for eyes for we students. It's not everyday that one gets to see a proper fight. Once they almost came to blows. If the students had not interfered, we could as well seen a great granfather fight. Never had a chance to see one till now.

Very often when we are having our food, our Hero comes near us, and starts blabbering about things which make anything but sense. If there is an empty glass on the table that no one is using he comes over and shouts

"Yee tumhara glass hei?"
(Is it your glass)

"nehi tho"
(No)

Continues in his loud voice.
"Phir yaha pe kyu hei. Andar kyu nehi rakha?"
(Then why is it here. Why is it not inside.)

PS: Used utensils and glasses are supposed to be deposited at the washing area after we are done with our food.

"muche nehi maloom. Mera nehi hei"
(I don't know. It's not mine)

"Kaha kaha se aate hei log"
(From where all does people come from)

Often it happens that even though mess timings for dinner is till 9 pm, we come five or 10 minutes after 9 pm. So what do we see when we go inside? All the food is over. But not so for our Hero. We see him leaving the mess with a bag full of something. We always had a suspicion that the bag must contain the mess food. In keeping with the supreme human tradition of blaming anyone other than oneselves for one's faults, we find it easier to put the blame on him for the mess food getting over rather than our coming late.

2 days back we were having our dinner in the mess.
Suddenly we heard some noise behind us.
Aha Hero and Villain are at it again. Great, let's see what happens...

Hero takes 2 ladoos from the sweet container and keeps it in his table.

What does our Villain sir do? He snatches those ladoos from Hero's plate and keeps it back in the sweet container.

Hero glares at the Villain. This time he takes 3 ladoos and puts it in his plate.

Villain gives a even bigger glare and snatches it back.

Our Hero being the typical bollywood type, doesn't give in. He stretches his hands to take "his" ladoos back.

This is when Villain jumps into action mode. He just lifts the entire container in his hands and starts running around the mess with our Hero in hot pursuit. Villain knows as long there are ladoos in the container, his life is in "danger" from our Hero. So our Vllainji goes to each table and asks the students to take one ladoo each. The students were more than happy to oblige. Usually we guys have to play hide and seek with the guy who guards the sweets container against anyone taking extra sweets. Today the very guy is begging us to take an extra one. Man, how times change.

Hero keeps following Villain. He will not be satisfied until he got his "heroines". As he keeps following the villain our poor Heroji keeps shouting

"Baaki sab ko 4-5 ladoo de rehe hei, muche ek bhi nehi de raha hei"
(He is giving 4-5 ladoos to everyone, but he's not giving even one to me).

This kept happening for sometime. Villain running around with the sweet container distributing sweets. Hero following him with a heavy heart. We students and other mess members were having a great time seeing this.

Even after giving an extra sweet to all present inside the mess, some sweets were still left.

"Now what?", thought the Villain.

Then someone shouted from among the other mess members
"Ab TV room mei jaake sab ko baato"
(Go to the TV room and start distributing sweets to everyone sitting there)

Our poor Heroji must have been devastated on hearing this. Now whether he really got his ladoos or not, I don't know. But we guys surely are looking forward to the next "encounter".

How to speak in Telugu

PS: Before I start my new blog, a small token of appreciation for my friend Akhilesh Ladha . He has been very enthusiastic about my previous post "Are we truly IITians" and has been trying to forward this message of resource conservation across as many people as possible. It includes posting the post on our Mtech newsgroup, orkut community and also to his hostel mailing list. Really appreciate your effort my friend.

How to speak in Telugu
-------------------------

There are lots of side effects of having a guy from a different region, talking a completely strange language, as one's roommate. The main (dis)advantage is that you get to learn (or maybe forced to learn) a whole new language. Well, mine case is no different either. And after around 8 months of sharing the same room with my roomie Sheiku, here I am , equipped with an entirely new language...Telugu.

My roomie is from a place called Guntur in Andhra Pradesh. So most of his calls are either from his home town or from his Telugu friends in the campus. So how did I get my advanced knowledge of Telugu? Well here's how...

Krrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggg....
(his mobile ringing)
He picks up the phone

"Endi"...
......
"Cheppu"...
...
...
"Endi..."
..
...
...
"hahahha endi endi"
"Cheppu"....

You guys might be thinking he speaks only 2 words. Nope absolutely not. The thing is, I can make out only these 2 words clearly out of all the of "akada" "chakada" "makada" "pakoda" that he shouts into his mobile.

Thus my 8 months stay with him enriched me with 2 words - "Endi" and "Cheppu". Now what this actually means, my guess is as good as yours. But the thing was I never had got a chance to use my "advanced" knowledge of Telugu with anyone. My roomie wud rather hang himself than hear me kill his mother toungue. But I soon got my chance.

One day my roomie had gone to his lab in the evening. But he had forgotten to logout from his Gtalk google messenger. After he had gone to the lab, I started using his system. After 5 minutes or so I suddenly got a message

"areyy meku firebird assignmet echara?"

The message was from Krishna, my classmate, and he too is from Andhra. He actually meant to ask this to Sheiku. But, as Sheiku was in the lab and since I received the message, my evil mind started thinking of many infinite possibilities. Oppurtunities knock your door when you least expect it. This was my best chance to test my Telugu.

The only thing I could make out from Krishna's message was the term firebird. It was an equipment in our lab on which we do our embedded design assignments. The other words were as good as Greek to me. So what to do now? I need to give this guy a good reply if he had to believe that it was indeed Sheiku who was replying. And that means some proper Telugu words needs to be typed in. Well, that's not a big problem. I have 2 good Telugu words at my disposal. And I decided to one of them.

Me : "Endi"

I waited anxiously. Did this work?....
After some 30 seconds of anxiously waiting, prompt came the reply

"maku assgn 2 echaru ra saying tht we need to complete in 4 hrs anta"

Aha first hurdle crossed. I got a reply. But now what? Well what else other than using my 2nd and last word of my Telugu dictionary.

Me : "Cheppu"

Now what will this guy reply now. And if at all he replies, what do I reply back. My quota of words were over.

Krishna: "see the message i typed above lab loo vunnava?"

Hmm some words english, some words telugu. Is this guy trying to say that he wants to go to the loo? Na it can't be. If he wants to go to the loo why would he want to tell Sheiku that.

But now what to reply. Suddenly I got a brillant idea. Krishna was typing lots of Telugu words right. So all I need to do is select some words from his own sentences and fire it back at him. Hmm so which one to choose. "Vunnava" looks like a very cute word. It reminded me of my Lonavala trip. So fine, "Vunnava" it is.

Me: "Vunnava"

Well no reply for sometime. I guess the game was up.

After 5 minutes or so...

Krishna: "anna sumairuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu kathalu paduthunava ra?"

Wow, game not over yet.

Me : "endi endi"

krishna : "hmmm"

His "Hmm" didn't feel like a good sign. Does he smell a rat? I have to do something...fast!!! That means my reply should contains lots of telugu words. So what's the way out. Simple. Ask him the same question he asked.

Me : "maku assgn 2 echaru ra we need to complete in 4 hrs"

Krishna : "areyyy repaye lab ra evalla epodo mail cheysaydu ra i think chadevayedhi challa vundhi".

Whoa whoa lots of telugu words in return. Well I just need to choose one or 2 and reply back.

Me : "challa vundhi vundhi"

Krishna : "abeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy"

Me : "endi endi"

But this time the game was really up. No more replies.
Later I came to know poor Krishna, on the verge of going mad, called up Sheiku to ask for an "explanation". But seeing the amount of time I held on during those "tense" moments, I guess I am prepared for a even more advanced course of Telugu.