Birds of Autumn (Chapter 2 - Booze)
Birds of Autumn (Chapter 2 - Booze)
Chapter 1 (Railway Station) https://storymirror.com/read/english/story/birds-of-autumn-chapter-1/l2foru5q
Chapter 2 (Booze)
It was a Diwali break but the four of them had not gone home.
Instead, they had decided to stay back in the hostel and use the money meant for travel on boozing.
They drank for three straight days.
First, they drank at the pub at Connaught Place, then the shack near the campus and finally smuggled the liquor into their hostel room.
They drank so much that they lost appetite. With frequent bouts of vomiting, eating became difficult. It wasn't a priority either. Savouries they consumed with alcohol sufficed.
They would drink till each one of them pass out.
Wake up and start all over again.
Eventually, they ran out of money on the third day.
All four of them belonged to lower-middle class families. Their families were paying for their studies at the prestigious engineering college with much difficulty, sometimes borrowing from loan sharks at astonishing interest rates.
Though it was tough, their families always managed to come up with enough money to sustain them in the city, hoping the boys would take them out of their lower middle class existence into luxury, once they pass out of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT).
The boys had spent most of the money on the quarterly fee including hostel charges and also the pre-Diwali parties they attended to impress their peers and girlfriends. What was left with them was for travel back home to celebrate the festival and spend the break with their families as they had done every year since coming to Delhi for coaching after 12th class.
There were still two more days for the classes to resume and almost 2 weeks for the month to be over and they were completely out of money.
The fourth day was tough. They have not drank a pint all day and haven't eaten properly in four days now.
The hostel was usually lively with booming laughter, shout outs, chatter and occasional singing and sometimes loud cursing now felt haunting.
Sobering up made them lonely. They were now struggling with festival blues also.
The colonial architecture of the hostel further accentuated the feeling.
Thou the four of them were together and it was always only the four of them since their engineering entrance exam coaching days, by midday it was impossible to stay put in their room.
It was their conscious decision to not go home this year on Diwali.
The decision which was partly inspired by the fact that in one year they would pass out of IIT and ride off on their individual destinies.
And also due to burnout which they had been experiencing. The burnout that the rigours of striving to enter and succeed in a coveted institution like IIT bring with it.
They had lost the best years of their life, almost their entire adolescence chasing the IIT dream.
Success in IIT entrance is believed to change the fortunes of the family, probably for generations, often at the expense of ruining the life of the individual.
They were the victims of the mad rat race
of the Indian middle class.
They were at the cusp of winning this lap of the rat race and could sense that even tougher lap was ahead.
They wanted to celebrate winning the previous rat race and also brace themselves for the next.
By dusk, they couldn't take it any longer, they needed a fix.
They had been working on various options for either free booze or money to buy booze. Everyone they could think of borrowing the money from had gone home or would be busy celebrating the festival with their family and may not be very sympathetic to their situation.
Now, besides the craving for booze, the hunger was getting unbearable. And so they set out in search of food, booze, money, whatever they can get.
Staying back in the hostel was not an option any more.
They finally stepped out of the campus by the main gate instead of jumping the wall, a short cut to the booze shack.
The security at the gate was several notches lower. Due to the festival and also the fact that there was hardly anyone in the hostel, the authorities must have given leave to as many guards as they could.
The two unfortunate souls on duty at the gate today were sitting around a bonfire, they had started, from broken furniture collected from the classes.
"Happy Diwali !" they shouted in unison as they walked up to the guards.
The guards looked up in surprise and one of them said "You guys didn't go home?".
"Nah!" Ashutosh said, speaking for all four of them.
They were now technically out of the campus and walking on the road leading to the main road. This road had bungalows on both sides, mostly rented by the IIT staff. Some retired bureaucrats and defence personnel also lived in some of them.
They knew they had no money to hire a cab or go anywhere and so there was no point in going up to the main road.
They took a turn into a side street and for next one hour, they roamed aimlessly in the streets of the colony adjoining their campus.
The houses were lit up with decorative lights and diyas, creating a lively ambience, lifting up their spirit considerably.
The streets were deserted. People had managed to reach home in time to spend the evening with their families.
"Daru !" suddenly Majeeta spoke up.
" We will have to do something" Abdul spoke as if on a cue.
"Let us request the shack guy to give some more on credit" Ashutosh suggested.
"I need food. I am very hungry, Daru can wait" interjected Adam.
"Didn't the Shack owner said that he would be closed on Diwali" Abdul continued, ignoring Adam's plea for food.
"We need cash" Majeeta proposed.
"Somehow we need to arrange cash" Ashutosh seconded.
"Yes, somehow" Adam concluded.
"Did you guys noticed that not all houses are lit? Some are completely dark" Abdul pointed out as they continued walking the streets of the residential colony.
"Completely dark, as if no one lives there" Ashutosh had also noticed the dark houses and provided his take on it.
" Do you think there will be cash in these houses?" Adam asked causally.
Adam asked what seemingly was a normal inquisitive question, but it froze the four of them in their steps.
Chapter 3 (Dark Houses) ....coming soon.