Chapter 5

But the Faculty did not escape our vigilant efforts. One of the bright ones from the criminal law courses found out the phone numbers of the entire prof’s brigade and when one of them would give us a hard time with too much assignments, we would get started. We would take turns calling the prof’s phone number; obviously disguising our voices.

When the prof answers, we would try to leave a message for Jai Singh (or any name that sounds real). We would insist that we had the right number and even read their number to them and so on. We had quite a bit of fun here, and stretch this on as long as possible. After being repeat several times, once or twice every half an hour and letting everybody have a turn at calling. Just as the party is breaking up, one would place a call one last time. And once the poor soul answers the phone, the caller would identify himself as Jai Singh, and ask "Are there any messages for me?" This was sure to get a heart-breaking groan and a wracked out prof the next day.

My roommate was (and is) rather inventive and could be quite nasty. He buttered all of the toilet seats in the faculty toilets once posing as a janitor and later once wrapped cellophane over the girl’s commode. He also buttered all the classroom doorknobs and latches at one point. A man who could make the prof’s try to climb the walls when he passed, commanded a rapt audience in the hostel premises, as you could imagine.

According to my roomie, inside every sane person, there's a madman struggling to get out and there were plus points in being a madman. People hesitated to stop you, in case it made things worse.

Another celebrity lived in the hostel in my time who was an amateur chemist and by our standards, a brilliant one if slightly quirky. But then Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up, or so we believed.
One of his famous inventions was exploding powder, which was very effective during anytime anyone thought was boring. The ingredients of exploding powder were simple. First you need: iodine crystals and some ammonium hydroxide. Mix the two together and a brown sludge will form. Drain off the excess liquid and let the sludge dry. The result? Snap powder, a pressure sensitive explosive. Just sprinkle this on the floor and watch people's reactions. It’s quite amusing, to give an understatement.

Another of his discoveries was Neutral Red, a water soluble, crystalline, red dye with barely any taste. Mix some into a person’s glass of rum or cola and wait for them to take a leak. (Neutral Red comes out as red as it goes in, and people have a tendency to get really nervous when they start pissing what they think is blood!

Boy, did the doctors in town make money after any function, which involved the faculty and us, partaking of any refreshments.

Last, but certainly not least, was a great stink bomb invented by this mad hatter of a chemist. This one takes a bit of time for preparation, so it's not too good for spontaneous revenge but it's worth the time. Get a jar with a rubber seal. (Airtight jars work quite well.) Pour about 1/4 to 1/2 inch of crystal Drano along with about an inch or so of warm water into the jar. Place the lid on the jar and allow the mixture to sit in a warm place for about an hour. Take the lid off and add six egg whites, (no yokes). Add a quarter cup of Methylene Blue, and then fill the jar to within an inch of the top with water. Seal the jar tightly and allow to sit for four to six weeks.

When the 'bomb' is ready to use, you can either throw it like a Molotov cocktail, or shake it up and pour the contents out, making damn sure you don't get any on yourself. The results have to be seen, or smelled, to be believed.

It took a whole cleaning and painting crew more than a month to get rid of the smell out of classroom where it was first demonstrated. The latter attacks on bars and pubs, which gave us a hard time, became the stuff of legend around town.

One time the college gardeners and grounds keepers gave offence to this gentle chemist about sleeping off the excesses of the grapes on the cricket pitches and much aggrieved, the chemist went into consultation with my ex-roommate. They got hold of some grass and weed killer and stuffed the garden hoses with the stuff. They even managed some form of liquid, which they filled the sprinklers mains. Do I need to draw a picture of the ensuing events?

The last prank played by our mad chemist caused his expulsion, but by then he had already gone into business with my erstwhile roommate to start a novelty and joke items shop.

Apparently, the principal found out the instigator of the various chemical explosions and occurrences though stool pigeons. She lacked evidence to do something conclusive about the other partner in crime, so the principal for once just handed out a tongue lashing to the poor unfortunate chemist on his sad scores. Much hurt and dejected, the man decided to go down in flames.

He stole into the Princi’s office early one morning with a few large buckets with hot water and emptied some bottles of dishwashing detergent into the buckets (Brillo it was, I think) and garnished the whole by dropping in a few kilos of dry ice that has been crushed to small pieces.

Then, he coolly closed the doors, windows etc. walked back to his room, picked up his packed belongings and walked off into the sunrise. Later on, we were to understand that the said recipe was enough to fill up a large hall with enough foam to the ceiling.

We could hear the anguished screams even in our drunken stupors and hung over ears. College guys learned to be good at screams. There was to the connoisseur a world of difference between "I'm drunk and I've just trodden on my fingers and I can't get up!" and "Look out! Princi’s on a rampage!" This one was incoherent with rage and the only thing that escaped the lips was a form of compressed, suppressed and super concentrated steam of pure anger.

This scream went to make a new record and labeling. Now and again screams of rage rose from between the buildings with subsequent discoveries of destruction, but mainly there was the terrible numbing silence of the human brain being reduced to cottage cheese from the inside out. This created a form of feeling, the sort of fear and awe and not knowing whether to laugh or cry or wet their pants with whoever heard it. But the hostel boys were not stopped; after all they never feared anyone, especially enemies. In fact the hostel welcomes enemies, provided they are enemies with money to spend on the beer to wash the taste of defeat from their throats and minds. Their eyes said that whatever it was, they had been there. Whatever it was, they had done it, sometimes more than once. But they would never, ever, go near the college hostels now. And they did know the meaning of the word "fear." It was something that happened to other people.

The rest of the college populace were a God-fearing people. They had a great deal to fear. Although assured that they had nothing to fear, the news that they have nothing to fear is guaranteed to strike terror into the hearts of innocents everywhere. Indeed, there were things to suggest to a thinking person that the Creator of mankind had a very oblique sense of fun indeed, and to breed in their hearts a rage to storm the gates of heaven.

On being asked for a repeat performance, the chemist and his partner complied and did it on the bed of their TATA pickup with the rest of the hostel following behind on their bikes to see the fun. While stopped at traffic signals the whole bed would fill up to the rim with suds. Then, as we would accelerate away from the light, large "chunks" would break loose and waft lazily through the air, causing much consternation to the traffic behind. On the highway the result was much smaller pieces of suds billowing out of the back of the truck. It looked like a snowstorm! It's funnier to see than the description sounds. We were hysterical.

The chemist never had to pay for anything in the college canteen till we were there, but coming to the canteen was akin to slipping into no-man’s land for him. The last I heard of the feud was the Princi taking shooting lessons and the chemist building some form of rocket propelled stink bomb.