Monday, April 6, 2009

Ye olde Hostel Knight

What was the question again?
-Oscar wilde

After being told by a number of people that my previous post sucked, I've finally removed it. This post is about my hostel night which was yesterday. About the title, when some freshie girl was told the name of the latest bat-man movie that was going to be aired in the Open Air Theater, she replied saying "omg! Do they screen such movies in public?"

A hostel night is basically a night where arbitrary people from their hostels go to a hostel in search of food and shelter and to listen to the song 'Gasolene'. That is how I would describe it, other people have other views. It also involves socialising like guys inviting girls over to their hostels. For strategic people like Barney ( My computer science friend from my hostel), a hostel nite involves calling one guy from each hostel so that you get called back. For some, this is the only time of the year where they get to visit Sharav, well for the lucky ones :( :'( sob!

:) A hostel night generally involves a theme, except the hostels for the elderly (Krishna, Cauvery ... ) where they are too lazy to think of a theme; and some hostels like Pamba, where they don't have enough man-power to think of a theme. Some hostels like Brahmaputra don't have a hostel nite at all! They consider it an inauspicious activity. Legend has it that in the Brahmaputra hostel nite of 1933, monkeys invaded their hostel and borrowed all the food that had been prepared for the night, and eventually died eating human food. Sindhu doesn't have a hostel night because people there are too old to stay awake during the night, they have a hostel day instead during Yugadi where they serve food from a local Mutt ( Matha in Kannada). Mahanadi tried organising one but no catarers were ready to cater just 13 people. Mandakini is flooded through out the year so they don't get lucky either. They organise their hostel nites in Taramani, the guest house.

Back to the theme, the theme of our hostel nite was boats. Half of the 2nd year naval-arc junta are found in Tapti and hence 'boats' was chosen as the theme. Decoration included having a huge picture of a boat in front of the hostel, a part of it had to be eventually torn to let people in, although the monkeys could enter from the top. Inside the hostel you could find the picture of a steering wheel stuck in the noticeboard, just like its stuck in a real ship. There was a picture of a zombie at the front, which was intended to scare people. There were empty bottles hanging from above just like they show in the movies. The hostel also had the red-carpet, found in the modern fishing boats.

After entering the hostel, one would feel as if he is in a real boat, with caterers dressed like boatsmen, one leg shorter than the other, with parrots on their shoulders. Food was kept in barrels and served with swords. There were lots of chairs arranged, just like in a boat. A ramp had also been setup, where people sang and danced. Captain Jack sparrow was made to walk the ramp and sing a song from 'life in a metro' at knife-point. He cried and cried and people cheered. Of course, there was some excellent food from the 'excellent' mess. Since the day was auspicious, we had to pay thrice the usual amount for the food.

Then there were RGs that had been put up. In Tapti they were so early that they got drenched in rain the previous night. They were then dried in the washing-machine drier on that day. They finally brought it at around 10:00 IST and hung in our garden for drying. Not all of the RGs dried in time. 1 of them couldn't make it.

At the end all boatsmen did what all they do best, and ended up waking in a hangover the next day.

The hostel nite was quite good. Our hostel nite affairs sec, Muvva had done a great job. The 60 lacks we spent was all worth it. 15 lacks out of the 60 were spent on the ambiance.

Old glass bottles that were hanging at the veranda 1 lakh rupees.
The Pink coloured paper that covered the tubelight there - 50 thousand rupees.
Pieces of thermocoal for the steering wheel / zombie - 3 lakh rupees.
The picture of the boat at the hostel entrance - 7 lakh
The tailor who was hired to cut a part of the picture - 30 thousand
Pirate masks, parrots, barrels, swords, captain-Jack-sparrow - rest of the money
The bamboo stick and the dirty old black cloth meant to look like sails stuck outside the hostel - priceless

There are some things that money could not buy. For everything else they have the hostel general budget.

On the next episode of the Hostel Knight, we will give you a review of Jam, the theme is expected to be one among hello kitty and the teletubbies. We will find out only tomorrow.

Oh hostel nitaa? Appadiya? Naa kuda varuve!
Rajaanie Konth

8 comments:

sporadicradical said...

hostel night affairs sec? really ? *censored* !@#$%^&*(!

Jagannath said...

too sarkashtic

Vinay Hegde said...

@Kash,
Lol! :D

By the way, Pampa does have a theme, 'The Dark (K)Night'..

Lol only at RGs :)

Arun said...

Whats so funny in this da ???...:P

Kashyap Puranik said...

I surrender to your blog, the funniest blog ever! Mr kj.arun.kj.blogspot.com

PVSG Raju said...

:)

Unknown said...

hehe.. good post.. quite funny must admit :)

Unknown said...

lol stuff...!!! keep writing dude...