Ramesh’s blog This is Me!!

Monsoon Rugby, Wild cats and Balbir

My college, in the hilly peaks of Lonavala, (also mentioned in my earlier post The Marathon I ran), can get pretty dry in the summers and the rains when it pours it really pours. The big cats would come down from the hilly areas in search of water in summer and I have been particularly fortunate to have seen a wild one out in the open very close to the dormitories we used to live in.

In the monsoons on the other hand, those very dry football fields would get so flooded into  a swamp with numerous frogs and crabs. Monsoons were also when we played rugby ' of another kind. The rules were same only that we were expected to come dressed in white shorts and jerseys knowing fully well it would soon get dirty. Once the game was kicked off it was rough and had it not been for the depth of the water in the fields (to cushion each fall) many would have hurt themselves severely. We didn't use any pads or safety gear whatsoever as one might imagine from having seen an excess of the Rugby matches of the US on TV. 

For me personally, when I fell more than the mortal fear of 5 to 8 others landing on my back, the thought of an unexpected claw striking my nose or ears scared me more! It was such a FUN game and by the end of it we would all be so tired but one wouldn't feel it because of the pouring rain.

The institution was a government one that expected a high degree of discipline. Everything was done to a specified routine. That meant our waking up, breakfast, classes, evening games, night study, dinner and finally lights off were done at laid down timings. Ensuring all this were two of our instructors ' one whose name was Chanda and the other was Balbir. Now while Chanda was the softer of the two, Balbir was a man on a short fuse. One never knew when or where he would lose his cool and if by sheer bad luck you happened to get on his wrong side as he got back to his cabin after his game of Squash in the evening, you were sure to get trashed with the racquet.  

Balbir, when angry -  "F_ _ _ers .if you guys cannot understand and want me to make you understand" he would say in a threatening manner swinging his squash racquet in the air " I will make you understand" As a result Balbir was definitely a dreaded personality.

In my first year I spent there (1988) Lonavala received the highest rainfall in 60 to 70 years. I can still recall waking up in the middle of that fateful night and as I sat up on the top bunk of my bed, I could see in the dim light emanating from somebody's torch, slippers floating away past my cot and taking a turn to the right ' going along with the flow of the water. It took me a while before my mind registered the fact that the dormitory had flooded and from where I sat I felt like I was looking down at one of the cars from on top of a New York skyscraper.

For the next three days, the power supplies were disrupted, the food supplies were disrupted because a low lying bridge between Lonavala town and my college was submerged and whilst I was trying to figure out a way to get my clothes to dry others were bothered more about missing out on their weekly chicken dish at lunch. The college had cancelled classes for a few days to help us get our life back into some shape.

On one such night as we were recovering from Lonavala's worst floods, the dormitory had one candle burning past the Lights off time of 10 pm. And it was not 10 pm but close to midnight. The whole dormitory now stank of wet clothes and there were bed sheets everywhere hanging on the lines meant to tie mosquito nets. We could not see from one end of the dormitory to the other and unknown to us Balbir had strayed to our dormitory and was standing at one of the four doors and he said in his typical angry tone "F _ _ _ers put out the candle and go to bed " Not realizing who had said that one of my friends replied mimicking in the same tone "If you want me to put of the candle . I will put it off".

Just when the guys awake had a nice laugh, we heard was a more authoritative "Who said that?" and almost immediately, the flame went off and darkness and quiet prevailed.

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