The Holy(i) S**t

Well, finally a post due to maajar cribbing by one of my friends who persuaded me to blog and this one is just to temporarily stop his cribbing. This was my entry to TFE but dunno if it got published. All characters in this post are not fictitious and bear full resemblance to whomsoever referred to except the Holy C.




Note : This is an unbiased, carefully scrutinized opinion written by the Holy Monitoring Committee(HMC)1 urging people to read it for pleasure and not for criticism.

Well, the dreaded day had come for people to get drenched(you see, there are residents who got without a bath for a week and almost have hydro-phobia) and coloured; so much so that they would be in the pink of their lives, happily enjoying some drinks (they called it bhaang, but I guess there may as well be some amount of the hydroxyl group in it). The fact that surprises me is that there were seniors coming and knocking on our doors even before the alarm clock began to buzz, that too on a Saturday while on most of the working days , they would have been happily dozing of in their beds, clutching their pillows as though it were a you-know-what CD being confiscated by the warden(nothing of this sort has been reported yet, but keep your fingers crossed!).
For the first time after the “ ragging period ”,(sorry seniors, I couldn’t find a softer synonym), there were junta coming out of their rooms,(frequently to events ,that is) , asking students about their problems, interests, asking first years to interact with them more (but not to come too close either) and of course, enlighten them about the article of Universal Suffrage as stated in our Constitution. You could as well say, for the first time in many months were they asking us about our pains( not the ‘intro’ ones) and shortcomings and how they could apparently rectify them.
Coming back to the point of ‘Holi S**t’, let us look into the matter, being very fair to the students (though they may not be so fair after enjoying a great show of Rang de/le Basanti ), who after all need some change of air and some entertainment, other than their usual dose of watching the other descendants of our ancestors playing around with “their” clothes and hopping around cleaning the dustbins (probably a part of their NSS programme) .
First and foremost, in a country ,state, insti and hostel, where dihydrogen monoxide is considered very precious, there were many volunteers# filling up a so-called pond with water (which apparently had an infinitesimal leak so that the volunteers could do more work on Holi-days) , so that the junta can come and clean the Holi-S**t off their body or someone else’s body. But a careful observer* noticed that there were small amphibians who were having the time of their lives thinking we were doing some pro-bono job, happily swimming around and trying to escape the sun’s heat (now, isn’t that escapist attitude ? ) ; and this careful observer informed his seniors and Soc-sec about how he didn’t want his Holi-S**t to be cleaned by the Frog-waters House Coopers (the observer got his due when he was thrown into the pond and was later molested to the core !).
So the Soc-sec using his Fluid-mech fundaes , tried his best to allure the frog into a bucket (he resorted to FM only because , unfortunately, he couldn’t find a kind of its opposite sex due to the disappointing ratio of females to males in the insti). All said and done, the frogs and leeches were out and the buckets were in. Now if we estimate the amount of universal solvent used up in filling the “pond”, let’s assume each bucket’s capacity to be about 20 litres and since the volunteers were pretty lethargic fellows, they would fill up the buckets only up till the halfway mark in the first half of their session(where only two seniors were after them) and fill them upto 90% of the capacity in the second half with more seniors chasing them( sounds liked the effort of the English football team trailing 1-0 ) . So, in the first half since there were only 8 volunteers, they must have emptied their buckets five times(max) into the pond, that capacity comes out to be about 400 liters (do the math yourself and if there is any error of + δ ,please do not crib coz no value is reported perfectly). In the 2nd half, the no. of volunteers doubled to 16 and now two chains were formed from the bathrooms to the pond ( at last intelligence dawned on our seniors, who were initially too skeptical about accepting ideas of volunteers, coz they were supposed to know more being the co-ords). Now as I said , 90% of the buckets were filled up and there were 16 people, it was observed (once again by our careful observer) that every volunteer , if he had emptied the bucket alone, would have, on an average, emptied them at least thrice, which comes upto roughly around 860-odd litres. And add to the above mentioned values, there was a pipe connected to the pond as well, with water flowing in it at a decent speed to reduce the workload of the vols a bit( you see, the co-ords are also kind people who don’t want to pain their vols a lot) . From rough calculations (don’t ask how it is calculated as it is as tricky as the Duckworth-Lewis system), it was estimated that it would have added upto another 350-400 litres. Summing them up, we get a total of about 1600 ltrs (Holy S**t! That’s about 90 people taking baths). And since all the calculations have been done keeping the minimum limit, imagine the citizens (or NRI’s) of the future not practicing what they preach by the method of IP’s on bogs about saving WATER.

Another serious aspect is the affect of colours on people allergic to them (like our careful observer) who were d-ragged out of their rooms (probably a practice for the tug-of-war that was to be held later on that day!) and were asked to participate in it as though they were winning some LitSoc points for their hostel, by showing how colourful their characters were to the other hostels. Mind you, this is not written by a critic of Holi, as one of the members of the HMC also used to enjoy it a lot until 6 yrs ago, but unfortunately a bout of di****ria left him low and the doctors advised him to stay away from it to prevent a repeat of it, for otherwise he would sink even lower under the weight of this liquid, which contained no paint, only added colours and a whole lot of God-knows-what.

These were the only two aspects touched by the HMC as they thought the rest of the day was a peaceful, colourful and Holi(y) affair; as also one of the few times where the volunteers could rub shoulders with their co-ords/seniors and have a dig at them (there were quite a lot of Digs, anyway) and pull their legs, literally and figuratively. (The HMC also thought of discussing the idea of playing music in a 2-in-1 on the PA system but packed it since it would be too noisy an affair).

So, all in all, as they say all’s well that ends well, the HMC thought of scrapping the two aspects they thought were serious enough, as long as there was enough Holy-water to clean the Holi S**t off their bodies that day and the next day (you see, the profs wouldn’t be pleased to see the colourful side of their students who were expected to sincerely solve tutorials over the weekend).

Well, that’s all folks….Hope you enjoyed your Holi-day!



# Volunteers:- They were freshies forced to do voluntary jobs.

* Careful Observer: - was not the common man, but one of the HMC members himself.

Holy C --> short for Holy(i) Committee

1 HMC:- don’t confuse it with HM Cauvery. Its members consisted of me, me and me myself.

Emer Scored a Chink Stunt

Hajjar treat for the person who decodes this title (treat bills to be submitted to 145 Jamuna,IIT Madras, Chennai-36 on or before 30th Nov.,2007 )