No Place Like Hell

Raghavendra Hall is not the conventional movie theatre you visit with family on weekends, with a bucket of popcorn in one hand, trying to shield your ears from the earth-shaking sound effects that accentuate the brilliance of a Van Damme action scene or an Al Pacino dialogue, commonplace in multiplexes nowadays. Quite the contrary, really. It is a place you'll never visit. Definitely not with family. Forget about the popcorn, and damaged eardrums are never a problem as audibility is practically zero. Yup, if you could picture a massive crowd of south Indian students on the moon, seated on wooden seats and craning their necks to catch the words emanating from the static-afflicted speakers hanging from the walls (as I said audibility is zero) ,sweating profusely at a temperature of 50 degrees celsius instead of something near absolute zero, you've got the picture.

This is the place that I was destined to visit last Saturday with a bunch of friends I was destined to meet at VIT. At 30 bucks a ticket, the place is dirt-cheap. It is definitely dirty and really quite cheap! I mean, coke bottles here cost 15 bucks! Double it and you've got yourself a movie ticket. Autowallas here (thankfully) are more human than those at Bangalore, but I guess the inherent quality of thieving college students still wins out among them. Anyway, Raghavendra is this massive tin hut that houses a digital screen(surprising?) and some goats and a few cattle grazing peacefully outside. It is the chief hub of the town and the crowd mostly comprises my fellow students. Actually the crowds almost anywhere in this half-assed place comprise my fellow students. It's enough to make you wanna tear out your testicles and roll around in a heap of mud! Why such a surprising act, you ask? Why, because the authorities here have solemnly sworn to uphold the policy of celibacy, yeah...so not much use for my testicles for the next 4 years. And well this place had grass growing almost everywhere, that and it being rainy season...basically there's a shitload of mud here! I don't feel like describing 'Bachna Ae Haseeno' here, as you've probably guessed it's a lame movie with the three Haseeno the only thing worth watching the movie for. ( I must mention that Deepika and Bipasha were like a breath of fresh air, as it reaffirmed my fading belief that humans of the female kind still exist and they look...well, like humans of the female kind!)

So if there's anyone from VIT reading this ( which I doubt), you know the place to go on weekends or if you have a proctor period. What's a proctor period? Well, it's basically a free period, unless you have actually been assigned a proctor, who's inevitably a short, stocky bald guy asking you about any difficulties you might be facing in the college. yaddy-ya-ya! It's bullshit. I find it amazing that a word like 'proctor' could be an abbreviation of pro-curator. I mean, this name makes me feel like someone(generally a short, stocky, bald guy) is gonna shove a handful of iron rods straight up my ass just for the heck of it. I don't know, maybe it's because it sounds like 'probe'. Get it? Probe? Sure you do. Does probe make you feel the same way. I'm skeptical about that word being used in any sense nowadays. So what I wanted to say is, if there was ever a word with as many pedophillic resonances as 'proctor', I definitely would not like to hear it! It would give me the creeps.

Another thing that gives me the creeps around here is the ungodly confusion I experience when I am unable to comprehend something when a teacher says it. More often than not, it will be because these assholes mispronounce 'V' as 'O' and vice versa. So, voltage inevitably becomes 'oltage' and 'original becomes...well, 'virginal'! Don't believe me? Well I'd like to tell you it took me exactly 7 minutes and 54 seconds trying to explain to the guy at the admissions office that I do not possess any such documents on me, and hence I can't submit the same for safekeeping!

AO (admissions officer): "Please submit your virginal documents."

Me: "Sir I don't think they issue any such documents..."

AO: "The ones given to you by your school."

Me: "err...sir I don't think the school was ever concerned about such actions on my part..."

AO: "You didn't sit for your board examination?"

Me: " I most certainly did sir!"

AO: "Then where are your virginal documents?"

Me: "LOOK I'M SURE NEITHER MY SCHOOL NOR THE GOVERNMENT CARES IF I'M A VIRGIN OR NOT AND HENCE, I DO NOT POSSESS ANY SUCH DOCUMENTS AND EVEN IF I DID I WOULD DEFINITELY NOT DISPLAY IT PROUDLY IN AN ADMISSIONS OFFICE STACKED WITH MIDDLE AGED PARENTS WAITING TO ADMIT THEIR CHILDREN AND I WOULD DEFINITELY NOT HAND THEM OVER TO YOU FOR SAFEKEEPING!"

................

This has been my silver jubilee post as I have successfully survived 25 days in Vellore. Hence I have thought it right to spend 57 bucks on iway to compose this post (although I'm probably gonna regret it later).

And now for a word on the environment.......screw it!

And yeah, apparantly I look Chinese.