Memories from the golden years of my life (4)

What i saw was not very encouraging. The room was full of dust. It was a small room. There was a bed with a most dirty looking matteress on it. A table cum book rack was stacked in one of the corner. A chair made of cane was also lying there, covered up completely in dust. From the entrance I could see a door on the other end of the room and two windows. I was wondering if they would open or not, such was their condition. Just on the right side of the entering door, there was cupboard made of brick and wooden door. And furthur right to the cupboard was a small window which was inaccessible from all angles. God knows why was it designed in such a strange way !!

The room was painted yellow. The cupboard was also painted yellow. I have always liked yellow colour for the rooms. It gives a kind of glow to the room and the light appears brighter. Anyways, I pulled the luggage inside the room. And both myself and papa entered the room. Once again my interactions on yahoo group came to my rescue. I knew there were maids to take care of hostels. I went out to find out if any maids could be seen. Luckily I saw a maid on the other wing of the first floor. I asked her "Didi, ye mera room bhi clean kar dengi aap?". She replied, in what was her characteristic style "Ji Bhaiyaji". I told her my room number was 514. She came after 5 minutes. First she cleaned the room with a jhadu and later mopped it with a dirty looking rag. She also cleaned the table and the rack cum desk. I tipped her with Rs. 20 and entered the room once again with papa. There was loads to do, literally. I had to arrange all my luggage in room. I had to get so many things of daily use. And we had to eat something too! We were hungry.

I must confess that papa is really an expert at setting up things. Quickly papa set at cleaning the room once again while I set off to get items of common use from the commercial plaza. The commericial plaza was IIML's CP, our shopping centre. There were 2 shops at Commercial Plaza. One was a Kendriya Bhandar and another Sonu Singh, a sardar's shop who was ek number ka chor, again something I had learnt courtesy yahoo group. Apart from these two shops there was a canteen a.k.a. Faujji ka Dhaba and a Nescafe Coffee Shop. Anyways, I wanted to buy things from Kendriya Bhandar due to obvious reasons. There were many other people also who were buying their daily usage articles. However, as happens most of the time Kendriya Bhandar did not have most of the stuff. Anyways I bought whatever they had viz. a bucket, a mug, washing powder, brown sheets etc. and came back. I thought it would be better to keep this stuff in room rather than carry it to the Sonu Singh's shop.

As soon as I had kept the same stuff in my room, someone knocked. As I opened the door, I saw the person who made my life in hell, a heaven. He was slightly taller than me, well built, fair complexion and with few hair on his head. He introduced himself. Little did we know at that time that this person would be the most beautiful and essential part of the golden years of my life. He was Manish Peter.