The School City : 3

There were two great things that happened in the first week at school, I escaped being ragged by three of the largest blokes I have ever seen and I fell in love, with my freedom. I was not a schmuck to fall in love with a gal, at least not for my first few days in DPS.

To be ragged or not to be ragged

On the third day of my joining DPS, during the lunch break, three of the most notorious seniors came up to me. I was a puny little creature in the presence of those towering brats. They asked me to come to the parking lot after the school. Now, there is this thing about notorious guys. I am wary of them if I get to know about their exploits only in the second day at school. They must be some kind of pirates to have that reputation. Though I had much intent of confronting them, I acted brave and slipped out of the school from the other gate.

The next day, I came to know one more guy from my class was summoned yesterday. But here the luck of the three musketeers ran out. The other guy, Aman, lived in a very big lodge (with some 80 odd seniors from our school) and he had already gone through the ragging ritual. One thing about ragging is after it is over your seniors own your ass and they won't let anyone EVER to play with their bounty. So, the threesome were properly shown their place by Aman's saviours. And I thanked God for his divine intervention.

A month or so later we came to know about the person who had "arranged" the ragging for us. The worst part about it was that the person was a "she". So much for the male female camaraderie in the class. Anyways, the story about this "she" is a very long one and deserves another post. Don't you worry I will come to that later.

The Pursuit of happiness

This was the first time in my life that I was alone. No one to fend for me, no one responsible for my decisions, no one to break my fall. Some might think of it as a very nasty proposition, but for me it was bliss. All my life, I had been shielded and protected from the bad bad world. But now here I was at loggerheads with it.

It was a time of discovery.

We as a species were genetically hardwired to hunt and gather. I first understood the enormous impact of this statement in my first week alone. Finding food three times a day was a daunting task enough, so I never worried about the edibility attribute of the food. For the first week, I constantly suffered from an ailment very fondly called in our part of the world as "loose motion". Damn! the motion used to be so smooth that I didn't even bother to sing songs to create the pressure. Anyways, my system acclimatised to the situation pretty quickly and thankfully, my record breaking dashes to the loo ended. It can be pretty embarrassing, you know, to rush to the loo when the teacher is busy explaining the mystery of vectors and kinematics.

If you think finding food is the most difficult part of a teenager's hostel life then you have missed out a very vital part. The girls. Welcome to the world of constant adrenaline surges where in every passing glance, every prolonged smile could be misunderstood as a sign of eternal love. We were young colts then, powered by the gallons of testosterone pumping in our body. Though I never got pass the glance and the smile phase, partly due to my ecstatic taste in gals and partly due to the beauty God had endowed upon me, but I have a very interesting incident to recall.

Mera pehla pehla KLPD

There was this girl, Ria, in our class, in a different section, who was in the fantasy of most of us lechers. She was not very beautiful but had that attitude and style which we all drooled about.

It was the time of appointment of the prefects in our school, a month after I had joined. All the interested students were asked to submit their applications. In a normal school, like the one where I came from, everyone would scorn at this and get ahead with their lives. We had better things to do. But... this was not a normal school. This was DPS. Everyone and their grandma was head over heels to impress upon the teachers that they were the best role models for students in the world. This was ridiculous.

One fine morning, after returning from the long monotonous assembly, I found one application on my desk. When I raised an eyebrow, Parul, my desk mate (there is a long and interesting story about how she became my desk mate) said, "Its from Gauri Ma'm. She asked me to hand it over to you".

Hand over a prefect application form to me? Did she even know of my existence? I smelt a rat but didn't say anything. I had never talked to a girl for 5 straight minute before in my life. Arguing with one was definitely out of question.

After the lunch while we were having the boring physics lecture by our beloved "Phaphua Sir", Ria knocked on the door and asked, "Excuse me Sir... Can I talk to Paritosh for a minute, please?". As was usual by the time, I was fast asleep in the class. Someone shook me up and broke my sweet-sweet dream. I heard my name being called and looked out of the door in a daze. There she was, beckoning me. Oh! I was in heaven. All of a sudden, Parul pushed me, "Kya kar rahe ho?". Dang! I was out of the dream and back to reality. Phaphua was staring hard at me and the guys in the class giggling like sissies. Someone suggested I should go out and let the class continue. I nodded in agreement and walked out.

I don't remember my exact conversation with Ria but, in effect, she said that she wanted the prefect application form back. I was confused and I told her Parul's story. She giggled and said that was her form and she had asked Parul to give it to me. She blushed. She BLUSHED!! Damn it man! I had hit jackpot. But then maybe I had not. I turned back, brought the form, gave it to her and went sheepishly back to my seat amidst the catcalls from my friends. She gave a big smile and returned back to her section. That's the story. We never met again. She tried a few Hi's but then I was not sure how to respond. Then the trail ended. Cold.

Should I have asked for her number? Should I have asked her out for a date? I dunno man. Actually now that I look back, I think it was for best for my ass that I didn't. Later that year, one of my friends was beaten up black and blue by 30 other guys. And all the 30 claimed to be in love with her!!