Out on the open terrace ...

I guess this is one of the best part of my student life that I can ever remember.... sleeping on the hostel terrace. Somewhere in the beginning of the academic year, a couple of our batch mates got together to paint the floor of the terrace with a special white powder which would help reflect most of the merciless heat of the scorching summers. The terrace is a wide expanse of open floor with no impediments save a few dividing mounds of water pipes hidden in cemented dividers.

We go to the terrace (some of us) to trick the stuffiness of our rooms. Once there on the terrace underneath the open sky it is a world apart. There would be the brilliant canopy of dazzling stars studded against the backdrop of the ink black mysterious night. Often they would seem like sparkling diamonds strewn across the sea shore just waiting for us to walk up and pick them up. And there would be those sudden bouts of unpredictably naught breeze that would hid behind the dark green branches of the silent trees waiting for the moment when you could be best taken by surprise, when they would blow across making the most gentle of caresses and ruffling of the neatly combed hair.

We would lay our beds out in the open, and sit chatting for hours together.... late into the night. We would talk anything and everything that managed to hold our interest. When the night breeze blew cold, we would get into our sleeping bags and lay there continuing to chat. Somewhere well past midnight ... stomachs start grumbling and we would decide to sneak down into the kitchen to find something to eat. When we don't find much, we would wake up one of the guys who have the keys to the hostel general stores and buy a few packets of noodles, some cream biscuits and a couple of soup or juice sachets. Then for the next half-an-hour or so we would busy ourselves making a fine second dinner. Oh... we really loved those eats.

By the time we are through it would be around 4:30 in the morning and we would begin to feel the exhaustion of another eventful night. And so would quietly get into our beds and slip into a child's slumber. It would be around 7:30 when we are woken up for the day ... by the crisp morning air and warm golden rays made more beautiful by the accompanying bright bird twitters. Wow what a way to live life!

Cold Coffee Delight

It was a beautiful star filled night sky above us, on that cool winter night. We were three of us, Shibu, Venkat and myself. We used to sleep on the hostel terrace every night. Normally we chat till 2 in the morning and then fall asleep. If in the course of our chatting, we get to feel hungry, we would run down to another class mate of our, who is incharge of the hostel stores and wake him up from his sleep and drag him to the stores and buy a few packets of noodles and some cream biscuits. We would then run about to produce a quick and delightful dinner, spiced with the month's most favoured drink.

The month's drink was cold coffee. So we got the milk cold and the coffee powder. Now we needed sugar and that would have to be stolen from the hostel kitchen. So .... sneeking quitely we went into the kitchen store room and found the sugar box and filled our cup.

Noodles cooked, biscuits opened, we began mixing our cold coffee .... all on the terrace, out in the open, pitch darkness, save for the faint light of the fading moon. I was to take the first sip and pass my comments.

However, with the fist sip .... came no comments, but a streaming jet of what went in (just couldn't call it a normal cold coffee). I had burnt my tounge to bloody red boils over a sip of cold coffee..... I stared in disbelif. The other two watched me with googly eyes with horror writ on their faces.

Reproaching me for wasting precious resources and paying no head to my warnings Venkat took hold of his cup and gulped a big mouthful of the sinful fluid. And what followed was an hyperbolated version of my reaction (a gulp is, I guess, a wee bit more than a decent sip).

When we did find out, what turned a delightful cup of sweeted cold caffined lactose product into an acrid brown poison, we were rolling on the floor holding our stomachs with are side splitting with laughter. We had added baking soda instead of suggar!!!