Golden days in Allahabad -Part II - The Naini Days and our routine

Hmm. how should I start this? Let me begin by saying that our first ride to Naini in Arun's bus was the longest ever bus ride. The anticipation of how our hostel would look like was so much that the journey from Jhalwa to Naini seemed to me like traveling from Kanyakumari to Delhi.

We reached Naini and we could see that the so called ' hostel' actually resembled a Jail. The irony to this was that fact that we never enjoyed and will never enjoy our freedom as much as we did there. After fews days at Naini and making lot of friends there this is what a normal day at Naini looked like. Just try to compare this to with what we currently do.

Early morning at 7 am , the fresh smell of the chemical factory enters ours nostrils :) Few wake up and rest are woken up by the sound of the metal pavement on 1st floor(most of the sound was made by Bhau :-p ) .
8am is the time when the first bus will leave for NSC. A long queue outside each of the bathroom and restroom.
Few guys are seen strolling with chai n biscut in their hands and are already dressed up and ready. To this date I don't know how they managed to do that..be ready by 7:30
Another bunch of late 'latifs' were seen just outside the washbasin with oodles of toothpaste in their mouth.
For few guys like me, bathing each day was a luxury which we tried to avoid. So, wetting out hair and washing our hands and legs was enough for us. And within 15 mins we were shining as black shoes polished with cherry blossom and our teeth as white as ebony. Pun is intended in each and every word I say here.
Arun Bhaiya sends out a horn from his bus. This triggers the guards to start yelling ' Bhaiya bus nikal rahi hian...Jo log haastel mein rukenge unka naam likha jayega'. Subi's bus started a little late at 8:15am. So, at 8 we would enter the mess and would see every leaving from the exit and on the other side could see the dirty and smelly mess workers frying 'paranthas' in huge aluminum crock-pots. After attempting to eat atleast one of those delicious beauties, we would give up on it and enter the congested buses.
I would usually somehow get into Subi bhaiya's bus. Half of the Janta slept in the bus and the rest of them would be making noise and few of us would be cursing the mess-walas and had their hand on their stomach. Still, I would enjoy the fresh breeze while crossing the Naini bridge.
By the time we reached college , the feeling was like 'frodo reaching the mountains of Mordor after so many hardships'.
Now,we had two sections..Section A and Section B. I will be biased here (as I belonged to Section A) . The hard working students and the less noisy ones were in Section A. The toppers filled the front benches and provided us ' the back bencher' as perfect wall to hide ourselves and sleep without disturbing others in VP sir's class. He was a wonderful man and would understand our need for a good nap.
Section B on the other hand were a bunch of noisy brats. All the girls were slotted in that section and were noisier than the boys. They were lucky and didn't have to attend much classes. And we would see each other (referring here sec A n B) sometimes in 'The Library'. All of us would rush to the AC in one of the corners to get some cool air. This AC was special and cooled air just to distance of 1/2 feet and few of us would have their hands in the vents.
Coming back to the library. It was like the library at the Vatican. Only a few privileged were allowed to read a books from those tightly secured and locked racks. The relevant books would be taken by the active ones at the very start of the semester and the lazy and dumb guys like us would be looking for a book to be returned there for the entire semester.
Ah I forgot about our 'costumes'-the dress code. Man.. I must tell you those were the best things we ever wore. For boys the dress code was white shirt, pleated black pants with a 3rd button on shirt being red in colour. We wore white canvas shoes and had black laces. And we would carry them off proudly as if we were wearing military uniforms. Some of us had their heads shaven off and I sure looked like Vijay raaz from the movie 'RUN'.
Girls on the other hand had to wear some green and blue salwaar kameez with two chotis and would look like cartoon characters. hehe They would laugh seeing us and we would return the favour.

Now coming back to our routine. 1 clock..time for lunch. Initial days we would try to eat the horrible food. Initial days seniors would be coming to NSC for PDP (personality development programme ) during lunch time. And we juniors we scared of them and it would remind me of a common scene from films of 80s where all the jail inmates are in a queue ready for their meals and some 'jaggu dada' come and eats their food and rags them.
In our later days at NSC we would skips lunch and roam in Katra--the famous allahabad market or Civil lines- The Hang-out place in Allahabad. And we would do so wearing our funny costumes and we didnt care.
We would reach NSC after some time having our lunch and would try to be awake during next few classes and finally at 6pm would leave NSC in Subi's bus. Arun's bus would wait for the few who wanted to explore beautiful cow-crap smelling katra market. Now around 100 odd boys filled up Subi's bus and we would enjoy our return to our den-Naini. We surely felt like lions there. The bus journey used to be awesome with everyone cracking up jokes and we kept on singing and we would yell.. 'Bachha ooo bacha ooo' while crossing the naini bridge.
The time we reached Naini we were all tired and exhausted. Before stopping we would ask subi to do a final circus trick . And subi schumacher would do a complete circle with his bus on the Naini field. Then again 4(monaco) biscuts or 2(parle G) biscuts and chai awaited us at the enterance of the hostel mess. I would again curse the filthy mess-wallas. We would have our share and would retire to our rooms.
Within 1 hr or so we would again charge up and start enjoying our freedom.

This blog seems to be going very long. I will continue this in Part-III of this blog. And don't think I forgots the shukla's , the gaurds and the doctor. More on our golden days is yet to come.