BANG! BANG! I knocked at my wingees' doors at 8:15am in the morning. Irritated because of getting rudely awaken so early, they opened their doors to find a smiling me proudly declaring, "I did a night out!" Much to add to their frustration, I asked if they are attending classes that day. Little did I realise in my excitement that their minds would have been picturing me getting thrown out of the Bhawan bashing the grill gates and getting landed right on top of the redi directly opposite to our wing.
My excitement was short-lived, as I sat staring blankly at the question paper after sometime in the exam hall. Then there was a sudden rush of adrenaline inside me as I spotted a few theorems that I had sleepily encountered during the course of the night out. I started writing out the proof and a few lines were over. Then the internal machinery experienced a black out. Working my mind backwards, I had realised that a few hours back I was dozing by the time I was at the fourth line of the proof. “Nah, this is not gonna help”, I thought and moved on to the next question. There was some progress, giving some scope for more partial marks. But yet again it was the same story. “All right!”, I thought. “It would be a nice idea to look into the progress of my night out to kill time.”
It was the last day of Oasis 2010. The feeling of Insomnia which was the theme for this International cultural festival organised by BITS-Pilani was never going to leave the minds of BITSians. But, there was only one day before getting used to the usual college life and to add to my misery, I had a test the first day after the end of Oasis holidays. So, to keep the spirit of Insomnia ablaze I decided to go for a night out that day.
I actuallt set out to ghot at about 10am in the morning with Sandy. Not even an hour had passed when I declared, “Yaar, dimaag kharab ho gaya. I am gonna sleep.” Then it was a long break till the evening. Kesh, my ghot-mate returned from home on the last day of Oasis holidays late in the evening. “Man, we shall properly do a night out today”, said he. How like-minded we were! So, we started after dinner at around 8pm.
It went well till about 11pm. Then the inevitable started happening. Taking turns, as if in a yawning competition, we started opening and closing our mouths at regular intervals. The internal bell rang indicating that it was time to go to ANC (The All-Night Canteen). After having a light snack at ANC, we returned at around 12am. I took out my book and resumed staring at it in regular intervals in between short naps in sitting position. Periodically Kesh poked me to make me realise this. There was a great struggle going on between my eyes and the book. Strange things started happening around me. At one moment I would be staring at my partner keenly going through the study material. My eyelids would close. And when they open again, he would be lying on the bed curled up in one corner. Then I would open my laptop and sign into my FB account.
Then there was this stupid moth that was buzzing around my ears annoying me for a long time. I took time out of my study schedule to corner that pest and have it smashed under my broom stick. Motherjane’s carnatic rock music kept me awake for sometime until food resources came from Kesh’s room. Hungry as we are, we emptied all the packets of biscuits and chips. By this time, it was nearly 5:30am. Somehow, I stupidly opened my gmail account and posted on Buzz, “My first ever academic night out in progress...” By that time, I had lost all hope that I would be able to finish reading the syllabus for the test.
It was 7am then, time to give to a concluding note to the night out. I dozed off.... The fight between me and the alarm clock started at 7:45am and went on till 8:15am, when I finally woke up to freshen myself and wake my dozing partner up as well. I came back to reality and looked at my watch. It was 9:45am, 5 minutes before the test concludes. I scribbled whatever I crap I knew gave the paper and came off...
