Before coming back home early because of Swine Flu, I decided to go to Vellore and visit two of my best friends from school, both of them studying in VIT ( Vellore Institute of Technology).
A long weekend ie. a two day holiday coupled with project submission just two days before the holidays presented itself with a perfect opportunity. I talked to my friends and apparently if I reached after 9 30 pm they couldn’t get me inside their hostel so I decided to either leave early on Friday so as to reach before 9 30 or Saturday morning.
With no bus leaving before 4 30 and Vellore being approx 4 and a half hrs away, I had to chuck the option of a bus and went looking for trains. Again a train at 2 30 or otherwise too late. With classes ending at 1 30 and possible attendance problems, I decided Saturday was the day. However, Lizzie was ill and the VC took a class and let us off and I found myself free at 12 20. I made haste to catch the 2 30 train and grabbed some clothes and ran to get an auto. I was there at 1 30 and went to the counter to get a ticket. “No Seat free, all reserved”, replied the old man at the counter .
Wondering whether to go without seats again( Recent Train journey did the same thing), after all I could stand for some 3 and a half hrs and the weather would be awesome( unlike my recent train journey which was also the most terrible train journey in my life).
But then he said, “ I can get you a ticket , give Rs. 100 to the TT and you’ll get a seat”. That old man also circumvented the line, got me a ticket from the back of the office ( I paid him extra for that) and I had a seat in a full train by paying some Rs. 200 extra. And then I realized money talks everywhere, and though I bribed somebody I felt incredibly street smart rather than guilty.
The train journey after that to Katpadi Jn.( Vellore’s station) was awesome. The weather was brilliant and it was raining softly and I could feel he spray on my face. Most of the time I read war and peace( which is pretty good actually), and when i looked outside I saw some weird rocky hills, they were hills as large as the Shivalik hills in Uttarakhand made entirely of rock with no vegetation on them. The people around me were mostly talking in a language( I’m assuming Kannada or Tamil) I couldn’t understand. I ate some nice Mirchi Vadas and soon I reached there without incident ( apart from the odd encounter with eunuchs). Met my friend at the station, and soon I was there.
VIT is well.... huge! It has some 15,000 people. The hostel I was living in had seven floors and around a thousand people. And there are some 10 boys hostels like that, or more. And only 3 girls hostels, yes engineering is sad that way. Of course, I wasn’t allowed there and was technically staying there illegally, but it’s pretty difficult to get caught, because there were so many people. It’s easy to blend within the crowd. In fact, when my friends introduced me to some of their friends, they asked me what branch I’m studying, assuming I’m an engineering student at their college. Another interesting thing was the blank looks I got from people on hearing the name NLS. My friend introduced me to them, saying , “ He’s from NLS, Bangalore, the best law college in the country.” And I’d prepare to give them the, “Oh, that’s nothing much” look. However, nobody had heard of NLS, so they weren’t remotely awed, and anyway I was an arts student, the lowest of the low to them. That didn’t mean that they weren’t friendly, however.
The room both my friends occupied was a little, or maybe not so little smaller than my 3 seater room with separate cubicles in my hostel. But there were four people in the room, with two bunk beds, not even a shred of privacy, and I realized having one’s own cubicle, and I was marvelling at how little space each one of them had. Then their rules had me shocked. Hostels closed, ie. locked from outside at 9 30 with guards at the door. At 9:30 the warden will come to take attendance in each room, and that goes for everyone, including seniors.
Apparently, for girls this was 8:30. On a Saturday, they are allowed to be out till 11 30. But for girls, it is 5 pm perm time on a Saturday just because the guys have it off till 11 30. The rules seem slightly perverted to me, as the administration seems to assume that the guys and girls can’t control themselves together if they’re allowed out at night!
During my 2 night stay, I had fun, talked a lot, played a lot of FIFA with them, watched a lot of CS being played. Apparently, gaming is ‘the’ pastime there as the WI FI is payment only, and all these guys do in their free time( they have weekends off) is play. I went out for dinner as one of them was giving a birthday treat, had really sweet butter chicken( South Indian can’t seem to make decent butter chicken) and generally had a great time. But the rest of my meals, I ate in their mess, where again I masqueraded as a VIT student, and nobody gave a damn.
So it was a really fun trip, but made me appreciate law school a lot more. The rules reminded me of how comparatively lenient our rules are, and that SDGM is great( Students should discipline themselves ) . Another thing was, how people in law school, are of the same kind, everybody here( almost) was a debater/ quizzer in school, has similar interests. Many people read(fiction). Here I remembered that maybe I’m doing something I’m good at and how much i hated studying science( which I was horrible at). Another very interesting thing, most of those kids at VIT were from small towns, for example my friends’ roommates were from Patna and Jaipur respectively. People were from Kanpur, Lucknow, Varanasi, Sikar and many other small towns across India. Most people were not really English speaking. In fact they were the kind of people I also knew in Allahabad. When i mentioned this to my roommate, he said, “that is real India, man, the kind of people we have in law school are the elite, English speaking crowd from public school with a few exceptions.” I also realized one thing, that i was actually a little happy to turn away from that real India to the place i was currently in. A place where they preferred to listen to English music as opposed to Hindi, where I wouldn’t be called ‘angrez’ because I spoke English well etc. I’m grounded in reality thanks to studying in Army School and living in that place for a long time but I wouldn’t want to go back. I feel a little guilty for thinking so, but at least now I am a snob and thus law school is perfect for me.
