Memories from the golden years of my life (6)

Papa had left the campus ... and I had to move forward. As rightly put by Manish ... I had mixed thoughts and emotions at this time. I was anxious for the future, I was excited to discover a new world, I was sad because I was all alone ... away from home for the first time in my life and I was apprehensive, not so much for what lay in store ahead ... but for the ragging. I was actually very scared of ragging ... as I always have been (perhaps Shounak can elaborate more on this), althouth i had not heard of any bad kinda ragging (you know what I am referring to) in IIM Hostels. (There was this blog written by one of our seniors in IIML, who had written about day to day life at L. This had been sent to us on yahoo group before we had joined. I had gone through the entire blog and it had given me no sense on any serious ragging)

Anyways ... I just set up some remaining stuff in my room and ventured out. I was thirsty. There was a water cooler in our floor at the intersection of the two wings I had mentioned earlier. I filled in water in the bottle I had got from home (now you can imagine what a detailed preparation we had done :-) ) from the cooler and got back to room. Next I located the washing machine. It was just below the water cooler on the ground floor. So ground floor had the washing machine and first floor had the cooler (At that time I had not visited second floor. In fact it was after quite a few days stay that I came to knew that there was a washing machine at the second floor also).

Having nothing else to do ... I thought I might as well visit the only person I knew on campus at that time. So, I went to hostel 3, to visit Tarun Maheshwari. I was a bit surprised to see him studying!! We had just only arrived in campus. We had no clue what was there in course / syllabi ... and this guy was studying already! In fact ... at that time I did not know the book, but if I am now able to recall correctly, he was reading Prasanna Chandra! (Thats the basic book in financial management). As anyone can guess what the answers could be when I asked him what was he reading and why, he just said ... for timepass :-) ... At that moment only I realised its gonna be a lot more tougher that what I am prepared for. As we had nothing much to talk, I came back to my room. As I was just wondering, what to do next, papa called ... he had reached station safely and there was 4 hours of wait in front of him (all thanks to me). After that I called home and spoke with mummy and Dhiraj. After that I needed something (I cant figure out what it was now), so just went to Manish's room to borrow it. There I met Arkaj Agarwal. Hw was in room 512, just next to Manish. So, Manish had met both his neighbours, I was yet to meet one more. Arkaj was of good height, slightly dark complexion. He introduced himself from BHU. I actually for the first time, did not form any impression about him ... maybe because our interaction was dtoo brief ... Manish welcomed me .... and I sat there for about 5 min. But since Manish and Arkaj apparently knew each other ... they were talking quite freely. Stupid person that I am I started feeling uncomfortable, took the excuse of setting up my room and left. then I just fiddled around with my room till it was time for dinner.

At 7:45 sharp, (this was the time we used to have dinner at home), went to mess for dinner. In my first term at Lucknow, I did not had non veg in mess. (Okay ... now this seems to be absolutely absurd, but my thoughts were, my parents are spending so much on me ... and they had not even allowed me to take a loan (which is a different story in itself) ... so I must try and keep my expenses to a minimum. One had to pay extra for non veg in dinner .... ) The mess was quite empty at that time with very few people having dinner. As I knew none, had my dinner alone. I ate well ... (Not that the food was great ... but I was thinking of all the things that mummy had told me ... most of which were about food and she was sure to ask what all had I eaten ... when we talked next ...).

After having food ... I went to Computer Center (fondly called as CC) ... to chat with Dhiraj. A kind senior there (no, i don't remember ... any of them) told me how to login ... and how to do settings for yahoo messenger .... (yes, it was quite some time before gtalk stormed our lives). I chatted with Dhiraj and mummy about all things .. campus, people, room .. and especially about food :-) . Around 10, went back to my room .... prayed to God .. and tried sleeping (though I had a nagging feeling about ragging) ... No one knew what was going to happen next ...