The 2 'o clock madness

One of the great advantages of living in a boy's hostel is that you get to see the kind of madness you obviously wouldn't be able to be witness to in your own house. Don't believe me? Well, read on.

Two o' clock in the morning is when the chai-waala on the first floor of the boy's hostel shuts his shop. Hence, like a flock of migratory birds, most of the batch descends daily on the first floor at around quarter to 2 and shouts of 'Chotu ek chai', 'Chotu ek coffee', 'abe Chotu, zyada veg. puff kyun nahi mangvaate ho?' reverberate in the halls of the first, second and third floors (talk about MBAs with loud voices).

Today, there was a small difference. Well, a 5' 5" difference to be precise. One 'Don' of a student was at the scene of action too and was God-knows-when challenged to a Pepsi drinking competition by one of the guys.

Glug, glug, glug...even before we knew, the first 200ml Pepsi bottle was emptied. The bet was to finish 15 such bottles at a go. Although the guy was downing the drink at a good pace, it wasn't as if he were attacking the bottles with the same intensity with which, say, an American soldier would attack a bottle of beer in Iraq (is beer available in Iraq?).

Anyway, the strains were clearly visible on his face by the time he'd downed the first 5 bottles. As usual, a crowd had gathered and there were voices of encouragement as also shouts of "Idiot", "Gadhe" and "C********, kya kar raha hai?". All this, I guess, just added to the fun and the adrenalin rush which helped the guy drain another 2 bottles.

However, the shouts were loud enough to awaken the watchman sleeping on the ground floor. Up he came to the first floor, thinking there was trouble brewing. On being told that this was just a bet that we people were witness to, he too had a grin of uncertainty on his face. Of course, by now, the 9th bottle had been emptied (go five and a half footer!!!).

Good ol' common sense prevailed, and the security guard quickly stopped the show. Fortunately, there was a rush of practicality back to the Marketing Research stuffed-brains of the guys and we too stopped the guy from going ahead from completing his bet.

Although the bet was lost, the atmosphere that it was able to create was absolutely DHAMAAL types. All 9 bottles of it!!

The 'Don' in his 'Dil Mange More' act...