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July 13, 2005

Meera Bhawan, Gatecalls...and a lot of nonsense.

Sagnik's post reminded me of Meera Bhawan (girls hostel at Bits) and in particular the gates of MB that closed exactly at 11 PM. We had to be in before that or we had to write our names down along with the names of the other culprits in a small book just outside the gates...somehow, I felt the need to talk more than anything else exactly at 10.50 PM and several animated conversations would begin exactly at 11 PM and the chouki would start closing the gates and we would run inside the gates just before they closed...if only I could go back to being a silly teenager rushing back to MB gates, fighting over who would sit next to the cute guy during Apogee movies, wondering if x~ would give me a gatecall or would he give a gatecall to the girl whose shade of nailpolish I hated even more than her and other such mind boggling trivialities and eventualities.

Gatecalls refer to the silly business of guys having to stand outside MB (they were not allowed inside MB, ofcourse) and asking the chouki to announce the name of the girl they wanted to visit - the chouki mostly mis-pronounced the names and the speaker made the remaining part of the name indistinct with the result that a bunch of girls with similar sounding names would quickly touch up their makeup, change into something "not so fancy" and would come running outside and all but one lucky girl would walk back in disappointed and swearing never to give the guy she thought was giving her a gatecall, a gatecall!

Well...I cannot be a teenager but I can be silly still and I can certainly write silly stuff, so here goes...

An ode to you, O hallowed gates of Meera Bhawan!
you welcomed me with open arms as I walked in with hesitant steps,
you demanded my presence well before the strike of midnight, everynight,
you hid me away from cruel boys giving gate calls to all others but me,
you consoled me when heartless girls talked outside, endlessly on lonely nights,
you greeted me with a smile as I walked into your arms smiling some days,
precious minutes and hours wasted carefully in idle talk about adolescent fancies,

Ah, for the gates of Meera Bhawab, I yearn, for my sweet haven, I yearn...

And to end this misery, I yearn :))


Seriously, did you actually spend time reading this nonsense? :)

15 comments:

Agnibarathi said...

No I did not!! ;)

Sagnik Nandy said...

a thousand memories brought back - at least :)

expertdabbler said...

Hmm

I have one friend priyamvatha who was in BITS and consequently meera bhawan.. she had quite a few things to say abt that hallowed place:)

she passed out in 95. too senior for you to know. Or do u by any chance?

The Doodler said...

RS,
The other day, I gave a huge lecture to a friend of mine on the virtues of talking nonsense. I got so carried away that I pulled in entropy, chaos, Newton's laws blah blah blah..My friend mutely agreed to my views partially because I think he couldn't understand anything..It's fun to write nonsense at times..:) Making sense all the time is a strain on the human consciousness..what say?

IBH said...

yeah I did! and it was fun ! :)

Anonymous said...

Ok, Kamal's not listening, seriously how many "distinct" gatecalls did u get? :)

KP.

RS said...

To agnibarathi: :)

To sagnik: thanks to you :)

To p~k: me 96-00 batch, dont remember priyamvatha tho...

To subha: entropy and chaos and nonsense? There might well be a connection :) Yup, am all for nonsense!

To ibh: :)

To kp: hmm...now, that's a very embarassing question considering that I don't want to say too many at the risk of sounding "not goody goody" and I cant give you a very small number and sound all "unpopular" :)

kamal said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
kamal said...

I can't hear a thing :)
What are people saying on here?
This is all gibberish ..
I'm outtie...

Nimbus said...

Wonderful post! Can't say I relate to it, having not experienced the kind of hostel life you talk about, but it still paints a warm and fuzzy picture of the simple joys of being a teenager!

By the way, I hope you got my response to your question about the categories I've created on my blog? Do let me know if you need any help! :)

Cheers!

Shiva said...

:)

I was one of the guys who used to give gatecalls to girls in the LH of our college.. Now I understand the reasons for the delay, the suddenly changing faces on coming out and looking at me :))

RS said...

To kamal: glad :)

To megha: Thanks :) I racked my brains trying to think of categories I write on and decided they were too small to categorize :)

To shiva: ah...I have let the secret out :)

సतीsh said...

priyamvatha

priyamvadaa - she whose speech is endearing.
priyamvadhaa - she who kills those dear to her.
priyamvatha - vaataapi's priya?

/me decides to stay away from Meera Bhawan.

.oO ( Lame humor at 3:00AM. Bleah. )

Celia said...

They allowed you to stay out till 11.00 ??? Thats great!! IN GCE, we had to be in by 6.30 and anytime after that got us into a damn enquiry thing :( ..

RS said...

To ANM: Priyamvatha? Is this a metaphor? allegory?

To bindhu: yup! and we wanted it pushed to 12 am :)

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