Saga 1 Continues:

The morning light was painful to my eyes those days, as my morning started only after 11. So being in a new place, that too with terrible loss of sleep the previous night made the morning  wearier.

But hurray….I should be feeling happy. For it was the first day at brilliant (I didn’t like the whole idea. NOT ONE BIT…). So I chewed up my words and put up the best smile I had and departed for the college.

So with a freaky blue colored folder, I was inside the campus of the prestigious Brilliant study centre.

Primarily, before evaluating any place we have to get some of its most inevitable features. The first feature that caught hold of my attention was the ‘Gents Toilet’. Boy, they had one in each floor. That was kinda cool. If anyone can judge a man by his shoes, then definitely a firm can be judged by the quality of its toilets.

Fact File 2: Gents Toilet  A.K.A  Tharavaad:

Gents toilets at Brilliant had a very significant role in shaping its students. It was neat and civilized, but those were not its highlighting features.  First of all it was the pinnacle of all those intellectual thinking, reasoning and accountability displayed by the students. There was a unique relationship building up between every student  and the Tharavaad (coined by none other than Harimohan..). every Monday before going for exams we went to the tharavaad just to get some blessings (literally we peed in the toilet before peeing onto the answer paper). We had a variety of topics to discuss inside the toilet. From screwed up lecture classes to Avogadro’s number, everything under the sun was a discussion topic. I still remember us gossiping about IIT bigwigs and egoistic Venuses, inside the toilet, facing the wall. After giving tributes to the godfather ( :) ), we made our way to the sideward wash basins. Still those memories are fresh inside my head.

So I did my first visit to the Tharavaad and went to the class assigned to me. It was G1, and I didn’t know the a,b,c,d… of G.  And it was kind of a ritual to get lost in a new place like this. So after getting lost a couple of times there I stood before a well ventilated classroom with somewhat a 100 students inside. It took a minute’s preparation to enter the classroom as I was analyzing the worst case scenarios.

Ok here I took the small step for Ajith and the giant leap for…….(practically none at that time). I was confronted by many a familiar faces. Some from Pala house, some from the old school and every eye gazing desperately at you. I quickly spotted Amal Philip, whom I befriended the other night at Pala house. Beside him, I sought asylum from all the onlookers. For the next half an hour we were discussing about the Do’s and Don’ts at Brilliant. And then came our class teacher Mr. Lijo George, a small plump little man, carrying a long list of refugees (I mean students).

He started to call out the names in a flat husky  voice. It took him a while to finish the entire list. And before he departed, he gave out another list of instructions for the survival (of the fittest, though) inside Brilliant campus.

Followed by him was this one hell of a hilarious class by Sanal sir. The class was about Magnetism. But the man was a genius at cracking jokes, that after 2 hours of class all we could note down was a few anecdotes.

Boy this place was crowded as a carnival. The lunch break came quickly. And everybody was running towards the canteen. People who had mess facility at hostels were messing up bad to get out on time. There was this system of Tiffins, wherein you can pay for Tiffin and it was brought in your own Tiffin boxes. Girls mostly depended on this Tiffin system.

And here I was ‘Tiffinless’ and ‘messless’ staring into the infinity as if god almighty is going to drop a food platter onto my hands. Well after enough staring Mohammed dragged me into another relief feature of Brilliant. The canteen.

Fact file 3: The Canteen:

Brilliant had a well furnished and well run canteen. There were all kinds of trifles and soft drinks available and there was some sort of love-the-place-at-first-sight atmosphere. The food was normally ok and occasionally wonderful. The people running the place were friendly and kind. All those Chechis at the canteen with their gracefulness made us feel at home. Along with all those Dosas and porottas on our plate they poured in lots and lots of care and love. It was their presence which drove us there at least once every day.  We had the liberty to discuss anything with them. From family matters to bad ranks, these Chechis at the canteen were more like a grievances cell for us. At those points of my life I was particularly grateful to these people who made my life worth anything. Never in my one year of life have I felt out of place when inside the canteen. Even with a not so good rank in those cursed weakly exams, a cup of tea and a vada could fix all the melancholy. After all who can cry when our “Ammachy”(as we called her) pouring us tea smiles at us? She was more like a mother to all of us (And occasionally we got extra banana fries as the tokens of her love)

Another attraction was a television which occupied a balcony position in the canteen and can be viewed even from outside the canteen. This television was our only link to the outside world apart from the occasional newspaper reading. If there was a cricket match or news bulletin you could find a huge audience inside the canteen. There were evenings when you could find yourself eager before that TV, watching some movie climax or a thrilling cricket match with partially opened mouths and mechanical hands holding tea and banana fry and a mesmerized mind roaming alongside the sprawling hero or the devastating batsman.

The food was not tasting so good. My mind was roaming somewhere far from the plate.  Somehow I managed to finish my meal and get back to the class.

Let us cut the details and jump into facts. Altogether the first day at Brilliant was not very brilliant one.

When I got back to hostel, I had this strange drive to study in the study room in our floor. Being the top floor, I found it to be irresistible to discuss and study. The room diagonally opposite to mine along the corridor was occupied by our warden Manjesh sir. I saw him a couple of times on the previous day. A short statured boyishly looking man with absolutely no facial hair.  At first site I mistook him to be a fellow student.  When I first saw him, I thought of throwing my arm around his shoulders and have a friendly chitchat (a bit informal to a hostel warden…..eh?). Luckily Mohammed pulled me back and saved my butt.

Ok…back to the story. So here I was in the study room for the first time discussing the periodical table with Kesavan. We were practically screaming at the top of our voices at that time, that we didn’t notice the short shadow by the wall at the end of the corridor. Fortunately and unfortunately I was the person who happened to talk at that very exact moment when that apparition came into the study room.

Have anyone of you ever been stung by a wasp, the pain is excruciating and you feel burning like a furnace. Well I was stung. Not by a wasp, but by Manjesh sir. When he drowned me in his anger, I was feeling terribly out of place. Damn it…Why it has to be me?

I still wonder how anger emitted out of Manjesh sir’s small form. He practically ate us up with his wrath and none had the guts to disobey him. So this poor narrator was shredded into pieces , for the crime of talking  in the study room. Manjesh sir ordered me to return to my room and remain there for the rest of the day.

I was inside my room and he was inside his. Did I cry that day? I really can’t remember. 

But I sure as hell remember telling to myself “ I am not going to make it. I am in the wrong place”