Holy in a Hostel

This was the 4^th Holi in a row when I was not with my family. I have  celebrated  (or spent?) my last 4 Holi in different hostels of Indian school of mines, Dhanbad. Each festival has got a whole set of memories for you and as the festivals come nearer and nearer these memories intensify. Those sweet little incidents start flashing before your eyes and your cravings to be at home with your family and friends increase exponentially. That’s what has been happening with me at every Holi and Deewali for last 4 years. So this was one of those days when I was missing my home badly. But thanks to the friends and inmates of hostel the situations did not get worse and I saw a very different type of Holi.

Hostel is like a fruit shop where you get different type of fruits of different qualities. The good ones, the rotten ones, the smaller, the bigger, the sweet, the sour each kind of fruits you can see at single place. In a similar way in a hostel (especially in an engineering hostel) one will find different types of persons and personalities. People from south, people from north, the white, the black, the one with high scholastic achievement and the one with high sports achievement, the topper, the average and the looser, the 9 pointers, the 8 pointers, the 7 pointers and below 7 pointers, the smokers and the non-smokers, the drinkers and the teetotalers, the highly loquacious and one with sealed mouth: each kind of creatures live under a single roof. Holi is the day when all these difference and all these boundaries fade away.

Holi gives the inmate a license to bang anyone’s door without thinking about its ramifications on their future relations. Everyone’s room is banged at least once (no pun intended).Some lucky one receives banging twice or thrice. I still remember last year when the inmates were hitting my door and I refused to open the door they threw a bucket full of coloured water in my room through the ventilator. All my books and bed got coloured. Thank god this year the hostel rooms don’t have a ventilator in their front. Nevertheless at 7 am in the morning on the day of Holy I heard a bunch of monkeys jumping around my door. The hitting continued and for the first 30 second I was reminded of my first year days when seniors used to bang our rooms on a daily basis and drag us out of our rooms to the ragging court. Soon I realized the present situations and the fact that I was in final years gave me power to shout back. But the rapscallions did not budge off. The social convention in hostels in these conditions says “you gotta come out of your room, show them your ass and then only they will move”.

When the coloured faces roam around the corridors of the hostel wings you get a feeling that they are planning for a bank robbery and they don’t need mask for that because their faces are unidentifiable. Some people take more than usual to answer the nature’s call on this particular day. They go to bathroom, toilets and stay there for more than one hour to avoid this “riot”.

In the colours of holi some of the inmates are trying to forget their abysmal life at this sodding place, some of them trying to avoid missing their families and seeking happiness amongst their friends and for some of them friends are all they have got. But all of them share a common feeling to enjoy their last few days left at this place and create unforgettable memories. Because 10 or 15 years down the line these memories are all they will have. These are the moments they are never going to live again and they all know this.

A legend has retired

The void will remain unoccupied.The wall has gone and No one can replace it.There is never going to be a 2nd Rahul Dravid.You have given us a whole set of memories to cherish with friends and families.You were a gentleman on the field as well as off the field.Thank you for being on the ground for 16 years.You might have retired but our hearts will always remember u.

Respect Women

You have not only been the great mothers,sisters,wives and daughters,you have also been the great engineers,doctors,scientists and politicians and above all you have that big heart.You have been raising this humanity generation by generation.The world is incomplete without you.On the eve of womens day this world salutes you.


Here is a Hindi poem dedicated to all the mothers.(not my original work;credit goes to whoever composed it)


आज यूही बैठे बैठे आंखे भर आई हैं
कहीं से मां की याद दिल को छूने चली आई हैं
वो आंचल से उसका मुंह पोछना और भाग कर गोदी मे उठाना
रसोई से आती खुशबु आज फिर मुंह मी पानी ले आई है
बसा लिया है अपना एक नया संसार 
बन गई हूं मैं खुद एक का अवतार 
फिर भी न जाने क्यों आज मन उछल रहा है
बन जाऊं मै फिर से नादान्
सोचती हूं, है वो मीलों दूर बुनती कढाई अपने कमरे मे
नाक से फिसलती ऍनक की परवाह किये बिना
पर जब सुनेगी कि रो रही है उसकी बेटी
फट से कहेगी उठकर,"बस कर रोना अब तो हो गई है बडी"
फिर प्यार से ले लेगी अपनी बाहों मे मुझको
एक एह्सास दिला देगी खुदाई का इस दुनियां मे.
जाडे की नर्म धूप की तरह आगोश मे ले लिया उसने
इस ख्याल से ही रुक गये आंसू  
और खिल उठी मुस्कान मेरे होठों पर

Passer Domesticus

My primary school was hardly 1000 meters far from my home. The 15 minute short journey from my home to school brought agony to me every single day. Every morning my mamma had to see my grumpy face and my unique excuses showing my reluctance to go to school. But no matter how much I tried I had to take that marathon route daily. Certain things made this detachment from my home too difficult and due to that the school seemed to me no better than Mandalay jail. The sight of house sparrows waving around my house when I left for school roamed around my mind for whole day at school. These sparrows used to tease me every time I left for school. I was envy of them for their good fate.

Remember those cheeky, little, chunky house sparrows. You might have seen them passing through your house ventilators, roaming on the floor, dancing on the roof or sitting on the electric wires. I am sure they have had played a very important role in your childhood. For me, my tryst with these sparrows has generated some sweet indelible memories. I had a very good bonding and attachment to them when I was a kid. Apart from the teasing (which obviously they never meant) they were my best companion to spend time with .During summer vacations, morning sessions of school and on Saturday and Sunday I had plenty of time to goof around. Whenever I sat on the wooden cot in my house verandah I could hear their pleasant, mellifluous chirping. Eyes automatically rolled towards them and followed their activities. The mamma sparrow would bring food grains, insects in her beak from some remote areas and would feed her babies. Those small liitle red beaks would open with a shrieking sound whenever there was a food arrival.

                                                                House Sparrow

Sometimes during a hot sunny day in the month of June when everyone was sleeping to avoid the deadly loo and I was the only one awake in that deserted area, I would come outside my room slowly without making any noise and sat in the verandah. In that silence and rumbling sound of wind the only companion I could find were these little sparrows. Their chirping in that silence seemed so pleasant and I would forget everything while observing their pranks.

On an extreme harsh and humid day these sparrows would find a way to entertain themselves. They would brush their peak and their body with hot, loose sand grains scattered on the ground. The elders would interpret this as a sign of raining. This scene brought happiness to everyone’s face. Sometimes when my verandah was beaming with presence of my family members and fellow friends from nearby houses these sparrows cuddled themselves like they were enjoying this social gathering too and made their presence felt in their own way.

The house sparrows had some privileges too. The descendants of Draco Malfoy who were roaming around the village with their catapult to kill all sweet birds were strictly prohibited not to touch these little sparrows. They enjoyed their immunity from these hooligans. But during the time of Dussehra these sparrows had to face a different kind of problem from their own community. A new type of bird Indian Roller locally called as Khirlich or Neelkanth would become the cynosure of all eyes and sparrows found themselves neglected. They found themselves ugly compared to the Neelkanths and would stop roaming around in that dejection. But as soon as Dussehra passes and these Neelkanths are gone the village is once again filled with these  sparrows.

                                                            Indian Roller (NeelKanth)

Now when I visit my house I hardly see any sparrows these days. It seems like all the good things in this world they have also decided to shun this place and have gone to some unknown places. The ornithologists have done a lot of research and have found certain factors responsible for this trend. The heavy use of insecticides, pesticides in farming, the increasing pollution, the use of leaded petrol, the absence of suitable places(like ventilators, dark and swampy corners) in new built houses, use of packed food grains( which reduces the chances of scattering of food grains) have made a very bad impact on these sparrows. This is a very shameful situation for whole humanity. I don’t want to add these birds in the list of “thing-that-have-disappeared”.

On 20th March, the World House Sparrow Day let’s take a pledge to preserve this beautiful creature. The use of organic farming, reduced use of pesticides and insecticides, increasing use of bio fertilizers, using unleaded petroleum, donating some food grains on your own roof, ceiling for these birds, reducing pollution in whatever way you can are some of the steps you can take to revive those golden days when the environment was full with the chirping of these sparrow. These are not the birds you want to shoo. Welcome them and let them be a part in the life of our children.