One Night In The Capital

“Desperado... Why don't you come to your senses?”, I crooned for the nth time that night, much to the chagrin of the Bulk and The Hairy Hick who were seated beside me. “I'm trying to catch some sleep here, you ass,” the Bulk cursed, and gave another of his huge, Neanderthal yawns. My habit of singing while travelling has gone down badly with quite a few people, which I must say, is not too surprising. Not that I sing badly. Out of touch, I guess, would be the right phrase. Sixteen more yawns, five 'chole'-vendors and four hours later, we found ourselves in the capital, thanks to a bumpy ride on the rickety Uttarakhand Parivaahan that we have all come to recognize. A bumpier ride on an auto-rickshaw and we finally arrived at our destination- IIT Delhi, and the occasion was their cultural fest- Rendezvous, which, for some reason, is attended (and mispronounced) by most of R-land.

Picture this- you are exercising your bowels early in the morning and halfway through, the taps run dry. Nonplussed? You wouldn't be, if you were an IITD student. Four years in a place like that, and you'll never find any situation in life complicated, thanks to their water-for-an-hour-a-day system and the weird nomenclature of their blocks (A-long, A-short, A-perpendicular, A-parallel, A-tangential, to name a few.). “It's 10, right? Hurry! 'The Best Chick in Town' must have started,” advised the annoyingly huge first-year localite whom the Hick knew beforehand owing to the fact that they were both from the same village. I say annoyingly huge because his 6 foot something height was giving me an inferiority complex. I looked like a schoolboy next to him. I look like a schoolboy next to most people, but even so, a first year?

Anyway, getting back to the point, 'The Best Chick in Town' was picked and awarded. What do you do when some of the hottest girls in the country stand right in front of you? Well, nothing at all, if you are either Dela or the Bulk. True to the spirit of LitSec, all we did was gape at each other. (Oh my God, there is something wrong with me! I must see a doc about this.) “Now what?”, we asked the first year, to which he went on to name a dozen other voyeuristic events. “Isn't there a quiz or anything of that sort?” I asked. “What sort of a geek are you?” came the reply. Proving that I wasn't a geek meant I had to endure a 4 hour long ramp show. Halfway through it, the Bulk fell asleep. “Lets get out of here,” I suggested. “No way! We have bunked classes to come here. There are events for two more days. We can't go back now!” is what I thought would be the Bulk's response. But I was wrong, though. All he said was, “Yeah, sure. Let's go.” In order to ensure that our trip to the capital wasn't entirely fruitless, we had a couple of pav bhajis and half a dozen chuskis just before we left. (And after all this, the Bulk still claims he's on a diet.) An hour later, we were in the same rickety Uttarakhand bus again.
“Desperado....”