The First Festival At Hostel...

Yaar, I never imagined I would be out of home on a festival like Dussehra!
Was my exclamation to Manu. It was Navratri just started when we first went to the college and so going home just in a week was not possible. We were, thus, there at our hostel on Dussehra. It was yet another silly but hard reality for us to accept that we had to celebrate festivals away from home. I don't know what makes festivals joyous only when you are with your family, or perhaps its just a subjective thought.

Well, I woke up early and compelled everyone leave bed to get ready for something interesting I had secretly planned out. I was done with offering my prayers to Lord Rama and then announced to my colleagues about the cricket match we had organised as a mark of the holy fight on Dussehra. At the same time I advised everyone not to take the match by heart and just play it for fun. But I somewhere knew that was not going to be the fate of the match, because the two opponent teams had actually been silently opposing each other since the very first day of the college. God! Let not holding this match become my mistake!! I prayed though I knew none of them was going to know who was behind organising that match. Still, I didn't want to get defeated, nor did I want any actual fight.

In the very early days, we had this loudspeaker for announcements in the hostel. We took it out and gave it to a staff member Abhishek Singh (whom we now better know as Dabloo Bhaiya) to carry out commentary in such a way that would try keeping the game spirit high and keep them off any possible quarrel. Dabloo bhaiya did that well. I cheered up both the teams and requested other viewers also to do so though people knew who supported whom. Heading towards the end of the match, my team was short of two runs and the last wicket was left. The last batsman was (I didn't knew how) declared 'run out' and they won the match by one run. I was glad all took this good at heart and nothing bad popped out of that first small secret event planned by me.

Cricket matches, since then, became a regular battlefield for the boys at our college though, by God's grace, no quarrels ever arose apart from the game. And of course, I was never ever a part of any cricket match since it was not my cup of tea...