“How the hell did it get there?” I demanded of Arvind, who’d just woken me up at 5:30 in the evening. I was not in a very great mood, what with having missed getting my mid term papers back and everything. “Dunno”, he said following my gaze to the top of the hostel roof. “Did you upset someone lately?” Even as I strained to think of an answer to his musing, I was trying to comprehend why someone would think of this as punishment, or even revenge in any way. My brown leather sandal was seated happily atop our hostel roof, with its pair on the ground, as though someone had tried to throw them both on the roof, but had only partially succeeded. I was quite annoyed at first, but then found the concept of a lone sandal on the hostel roof quite amusing to say the least. Not surprisingly enough, a small crowd gathered around my room as we contemplated on whether or not we should rescue my footwear from the roof. Deciding that it should be challenging to us Engineers, who were jobless beyond normal measure (this has been generously understated), we decided to go for it.
My buddies came up with, I should say, several very innovative ideas, some of which included “lassoing” the sandal from the third floor, throwing footballs, and waiting for the July monsoon to wash it down. Deciding that leaving it to Mother Nature wasn’t such an exciting proposition at the moment, we decided to try the first idea that was tossed around. At this point I would like to mention a certain rope that’s been taking residence in our hostel for a long time. I do not know if it still exists, but it was heavily and extensively used, especially by Harsha, to make birthdays memorable. A phenomenon our Hostel Superintendent Murali Sir used to refer to as “birthday ke din gaand pe maarna”. The special thing about this ordinary piece of rope was that it had a rubber slipper attached to one end of it, much like the ones used in Rome for torturing slaves.
The first idea involved some heavy upper body strength, so I invited Aatif bhai, on the sole condition that he wouldn’t speak any “Hyderabadi Hindi”. After what seemed like a year or two, we concluded that tossing rubber slippers on the roof wasn’t going to bring down anything other than the rather badly colored tiles of our hostel roof (analytical capabilities as Engineers, you see). The next idea was far more intellectual in nature-we were to work as a team (we exercise our brains while simultaneously working on our management principles-“work together as a team”)- the couple of us on the second floor balcony were to toss a deflated football to try and bring the sandal down. There was a man stationed on the ground (Walunj) to retrieve the football and toss it back up, and of course there was Shrikrishnan doing his bit to irritate the crap out of all of us. Once again (after some pointing and laughing at Walunj trying to make his throw reach the first floor) we abandoned the exercise as utterly futile.
A year later, when I returned to a rather mouldy and fungus-infested room after my summer vacation, I was pleasantly surprised to find my lone sandal lying on my previously barren hostel lawn, now abundant with thick grass brought in by the July monsoon. I guess it was Mother Nature who beat us to it.
-Cheers
My buddies came up with, I should say, several very innovative ideas, some of which included “lassoing” the sandal from the third floor, throwing footballs, and waiting for the July monsoon to wash it down. Deciding that leaving it to Mother Nature wasn’t such an exciting proposition at the moment, we decided to try the first idea that was tossed around. At this point I would like to mention a certain rope that’s been taking residence in our hostel for a long time. I do not know if it still exists, but it was heavily and extensively used, especially by Harsha, to make birthdays memorable. A phenomenon our Hostel Superintendent Murali Sir used to refer to as “birthday ke din gaand pe maarna”. The special thing about this ordinary piece of rope was that it had a rubber slipper attached to one end of it, much like the ones used in Rome for torturing slaves.
The first idea involved some heavy upper body strength, so I invited Aatif bhai, on the sole condition that he wouldn’t speak any “Hyderabadi Hindi”. After what seemed like a year or two, we concluded that tossing rubber slippers on the roof wasn’t going to bring down anything other than the rather badly colored tiles of our hostel roof (analytical capabilities as Engineers, you see). The next idea was far more intellectual in nature-we were to work as a team (we exercise our brains while simultaneously working on our management principles-“work together as a team”)- the couple of us on the second floor balcony were to toss a deflated football to try and bring the sandal down. There was a man stationed on the ground (Walunj) to retrieve the football and toss it back up, and of course there was Shrikrishnan doing his bit to irritate the crap out of all of us. Once again (after some pointing and laughing at Walunj trying to make his throw reach the first floor) we abandoned the exercise as utterly futile.
A year later, when I returned to a rather mouldy and fungus-infested room after my summer vacation, I was pleasantly surprised to find my lone sandal lying on my previously barren hostel lawn, now abundant with thick grass brought in by the July monsoon. I guess it was Mother Nature who beat us to it.
-Cheers
2 comments:
aha , i am sorry to tell u hari that the lone sandal tied rope that we used to cherish so much is no longer a part of the beautiful landscape of the bh7 lawn [:(]..allthough we have found other innovative ideas to torture people on their bdays!! hehe.
adios
harsha!
No need for any complicated NUCLEAR explanations - b'cause NUCLEAR explanations are George Bush's private privelege and we can't violate is . And BTW i think Mother Nature was telling indirectly - "Seruppu Pinjidum"(or rather tholanju-poidum) to u i guess
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