Most of us been part of hostel life. It is inevitable that during the 4 years spent in a hostel, many incidents of varying degrees of humor and otherwise, are added to our archives. One such incident, after a small amount of reminiscing, comes to my idiosyncratic mind.
We were approaching the end of the fourth semester and thus had almost earned the tag of being “50% engineers” (That I managed to achieve a re in one of the subjects , thereby delaying my achievement of the same tag, is a totally different story :D). Anyways, without getting sidetracked, let me continue. Preparations for the exams had just begun (For the uninitiated, preparation for end semester exams in the hostel begins just about a week before the exams. You could say that may have been one of the reasons why I got a re and I will reply that don’t let me get sidetracked as that will cause a chain reaction of inquiries that will make Holmes proud).
Resuming our story, the three of us (me and my room mates) were grinning at each other with sadistic amusement at the formation of a beehive on the outside of the balcony door of one of our hostelmates (Yeah, we were a bunch of sadists) who lived just 3 doors away (I think you can guess where I am going with this). While the 3 of us went out to buy some books for the exams (Na aa aa! I am not going to be diverted again!!!), the aforementioned hostel mate called one of the mess workers to purge the beehive. Needless to say, the mess worker did so and with such efficiency that all the bees buzzed away and settled- not on the either of the adjoining rooms nor the trees just ahead, but, as we found out to our displeasure (which the bees obviously didn’t care about) when we retuned to our room – on our window which had been carelessly left open (the optimist in me did cry out that it was fate or destiny or whatever synonyms one may choose). So, there we were, the three of us, watching in disbelief as our whole room, not just the balcony, had been taken over by a colony of bees. That, my colleagues, was the reason why the Battle of Room 37 was fought!
We decided that we would fight till the very end to win back our room and thus began forming a battle plan for the next one hour. It was agreed upon that one of us would go inside to weather the initial storm and the other two would follow him within 15 minutes or when he gave a cry for help, whichever came sooner. For some reason, I was the Chosen One for the initial assault and was handed over my battle gear. So there I was, wearing a thick jacket, sports shoes and a Hero Honda helmet and holding a burning newspaper as two pairs of hands pushed me (rather forcefully, I might add) into the dark room no. 37. No sooner had I entered the room, the assault began. The bees attacked me from all sides and I am rather appalled at the thought of what would have happened had I not worn the helmet or the jacket. I attacked back with vengeance and many bees fell victim to the burning torch of revenge that I brandished. Still, the waves of assault from the enemy kept on coming; I was beginning to tire and starting to retreat.
Then came the moment that completely changed the course of the fight. Ashwin and Abhishek (my roomies), having seen that I couldn’t do much any longer, charged in with a cry that would have chilled the hearts of the bravest and strongest bees. Even I was reinvigorated and the three of us fought like we had never fought before. Paper burnt, bees fell, smoke filled the room and the battle continued. The wall suffered a lot as the three of us thrust our burning newspapers at the bees that were daring enough to remain on the walls. Time held no meaning for us as seconds turned to minutes and minutes to hours. We knew that we couldn’t afford to take any prisoners and we had to eliminate all entities that were few centimeters in size and had wings.
Eventually, a small group of around 20-25 bees, including the prized queen, was left and we knew that we had almost won back our territory. Only a small formality was left. Within a couple of gory minutes, we had tasted the sweet elixir of victory without suffering any casualties. With all the smoke, burnt pieces of paper and corpses, the room looked like the war field in Lord of the rings. The only difference was that Peter Jackson spent millions to create that set and we fought an actual battle for 2-3 hours.
And that was the day , the Lord of the Hives was born!
Hahaha
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