Of Strikes and Protests

There have been quite a few strikes occurring happening regularly in some parts of India. Some feel it is a strong mode of appealing to the government to change an unacceptable decision. Every time I see some such news, I am reminded about the only time when I was involved (involuntarily) in a strike.

This incident took place just few months ago when I was in the final year of undergrad at NIT Trichy. Let me explain the situation to you first. The food in the hostel mess was pathetic and awful. Quite a few souls like mine had quit eating at the mess. Getting up late in the morning, we generally end up skipping breakfast and hurrying all the way to class in order to maintain our 75% attendance. During breaks we used to go to the bakery, juicy or snacky to fill our hungry stomachs. Then came the hot afternoons. Tired of walking all the way from my department to the mess, I end up eating lunch at the Buhari restaurant within the campus.

Dinner was almost always reserved for the roadside dhabas. Almost the entire college used to dine either at the couple of dhabas just outside our campus or at one of the restaurants in the city. We only visited the mess in rare cases when we were out of cash. Of course there were quite a few guys who found our eating habits too revolting. They too were dissatisfied with the mess food but simply couldn’t give in to spending so much cash eating outside. Even though we didn’t eat at our mess we had to pay huge sum of money which was eventually gobbled by the administration.

Coming back to the incident, it was a hot sunday, when a few guys found some insects in the food. Of course, this was a regular occurrence, but this time these guys were really in a rebellious mood and decided to forcibly enter the kitchen and inspect everything. They recorded everything using a mobile camera in the hope of showing some evidence.

Then they sent some really long text messages to everyone in our batch explaining what was happening and so on. The message was soon forwarded in bulk by the placement reps and the class reps. The news spread first among the mobiles and then among people.

So that evening we were all asked to assembled at the hostel lawn. Some guys went room by room calling every final year guy from their hostels. Of course, not many were willing to give up their gaming and movie watching experience, just for the mess, the mess where we rarely ate. The student council president was off for a volley ball tournament. There were large groups formed each discussing some random theories and coming up with the random-est suggestions. Uninterested people like me and a few others felt stupid with every passing minute just standing over there. So we formed a group amongst ourselves and started some small-talk. Soon some of the naive guys started merging all the groups and began explaining their theories. They drew up a plan of what was to be done and expected our cooperation assuming that the united force of the students would make the administration fall on our feet.

The wardens were taken aback by the turn of events and notified the admin. One guy even came to threaten us all off. Determined we were. We didn’t move and he eventually left. Soon after that, the discussion went into a further level of complexity where the corrupt administration was ultimately responsible for everything. Some suggested protest by not attending classes. A few of the guys didn’t want to lose their attendance fighting for the mess. Some didn’t want to create a bad impression in front of their profs. So it was decided and academics and hostel wouldn’t be intertwined.(duh!) Those who used to eat in the mess decided that they wouldn’t be eating in the mess till the issue was resolved and they allotted a new caterer to us. I personally would have loved to see some good food in the mess. I badly wanted to eat  in a good mess with a decent caterer because I was making a hole in my pocket eating outside all day.

The group dispersed for the night. We went back to our routine of movie-watching and gaming. Others were still out there discussing. I’m damn sure that a few of these guys even contemplated a career in politics after that day.

Alas! To our surprise, the next day morning there was a notice written by a few students asking everyone to eat in the mess! (Of course I saw it only in the afternoon). The reason was that these guys were seen by the admin when the discussion was going on the earlier night. They feared some harsh action and asked everyone to return to their normal routine. What seems to have happened is that the administration had shooed of all the allegations and even threatened students. Am not sure about these too.

There ended the only pseudo strike that I have been a part of. Basically nothing happened. I may have been politically wrong in stating the occurrences of the day. Some might have some strong disagreements with what I’ve said here. This is just my version of the story. If you know more, you are always free to correct me, reject me or whatever.

Life goes on

Another semester of my undergrad came to an end this week. It went past as fast as the preceding ones did. Semesters in NITT have always been very small. And within these few months we do a lot of non-academic stuff, keeping us busy throughout. And time flies so fast. People say time flies when you are having fun. We did have a lot of fun this semester.

The semester started with all third years moving to the Garnet Hostel which is one of the new hostels to be built. After getting settled in our rooms we started setting up the LAN within the hostel. The G-LAN is one of the best in the campus and is almost always overflowing with data. It has data starting from various Software to various sitcoms to hundreds of movies, books and almost anything you can imagine.

Then the gaming craze started afresh. We started DOTA n WOW within our hostel now rather than going all the way to Octa. (It would be known to all those gaming freaks like me. If you aren’t one, then do click on the links to know more). We guys played day n night like mad. Then came Festember- NITT’s Cultural Fest. It was one of the best ever.

Festember posts

* Day-0

* Kuraloviyam

We guys had dinner almost everyday in the Dhaba – the roadside food-haven. It was far more better than our so-called mess. The mess food was crap and was the worse than what we had in the previous years. So if one guy felt like eating outside he’d drag everyone around him to have a enjoyable time together having dinner.

I got my Laptop – ‘ACER – Travelmate’ this semester. Spent a lot of time ‘loading’ data into it. I also spent most of my time watching sitcoms n movies. Amid all these things, I lost my mobile too. My Motorola – SLVR L7.. It was one of the things which i could never have lived without. Lost thousands of phone numbers. But Life does go on in spite of all these incidents. So yet another wonderful semester came to an end. Hoping for a better one ahead.