Of chori and seenazori

*Lots of Hindi. The ones who have problem with Hindi can skip this one*

Well, if nothing, hostel life aapko chori zaroor sikha deti hai!.

Donno how it's possible, but we're all-time hungry here. "Jab jo milega, chalega!". Aur agar kuchh nahin mila to?... Well, to hum churaayenge!

I remember, it was my first year in hostel. We were six or seven 16-year olds. As usual, har raat humein itni bhookh lagti thi ki maangne ki naubat aa hi jaati thi. Then one day we thought we've had enough! We needed other sources too.

We held a meeting, and it was decided that we'd have to steal. Steal from where? Socha gaya, what better than the hostel store room? It had nothing but bread, and we knew it. But 2-3 packets of breads everynight will do. Plus, there was this adventure-factor, ofcourse! ;-)

The store room was at the end of our wing, and just in front of it was the warden's room. Risk to tha hi, lekin hum bhi khatron ke khilaadi the! Windows of the store room were kept open else the room would get too hot, jo breads ke liye achchha nahin hota. Khidkiyaan khuli hone ka fayda breads ke saath-saath humein bhi mila. The window had rods so that it'd be hard to get our hands inside. Moreover, packets of breads were kept at a distance from the window. So what we did was, we tied a knife at the end of a long wooden stick, and asked a skinny girl to be our partner-in-crime. (We needed her, humaare haath khidk ke andar ghus hi nahin paate) The idea was perfect, on the first night itself we were able to get away with 5-6 packets of bread. :-D

Bas phir kya tha, dastoor chal nikla. Hum har raat ko apni zaroorat ke hisaab se bread le lete the. Imaandaar the, kabhie extra nahin li! ;-) Raatein beetti rahin, warden ko pata bhi nahin chala. Anyway, negligence spells trouble. Ek din jaldi-jaldi mein, humaara auzaar (knife, alongwith the stick ofcourse) Ekta ke haath se chhoot kar us room ke andar gir gaya. There was no way out, hum sab jaake apne-apne rooms mein so gaye.

Next day- At the time of breakfast, the warden sat there on his usual chair, with the 'auzaar' in her hand, anger all over her face. (She looked just like a red-indian chief!). With every girl that entered the mess hall, she had the same question "Yeh tumhara hai?". Girls giggled like they do, everyone knew maajra kya tha! Anyway, criminal ka pata na lagna tha, na laga.

Ek woh din tha aur ek aaj ka din hai, store-room ki khidkiyaan band hi rahti hain.


(*This started our struggle for freedom. In a later incident, some more girls broke the lock of the other store room, and got 50 packets of Maggi and kilos of sugar which they (like true communists ;-) ) distributed among everyone. Equally.*)