The incidents in this story happened to me while I was studying in IIT Madras.
My IIT life can be summarized as an amalgamation of assignments and exams, with some occasional excitements. During the final year of my studies, I was once sitting in a computer lab. Don’t assume that I was working for my project. In fact I was checking a girl’s profile in facebook, as usual. Just then two of my seniors, a Phd scholar Robin and an MS scholar Vipin entered the lab. Although they were my seniors we were good friends. From the look on Vipin’s face, I realized that he had some crooked plans. Vipin can be described as a man of crazy ideas.
Vipin started the conversation in a grave tone “Da Sujithe, I’m feeling that we are getting separated from the life of the common man. We just sit idly inside the campus studying some useless equations. We should do something different. We should not end up living ordinary lives. I sincerely feel that we are losing our social awareness, nowadays. We are blind to the problems in real life. We should do something to open our eyes.”
I replied in a mild manner that the story of life is the same everywhere. “What difference does it make whether we are inside the campus or outside. Everyone has his own problems”, I added.
As soon as Vipin heard this he lost his cool. He started screaming “Do you know how the common man lives in Chennai city. They may not even have money for food. Half a million Indians are living under the poverty line. Are you aware of that?”
What a sensible topic!!! I agreed with him. “What can we do for this? We are the not the only ones responsible for this!” – I commented.
Vipin came up with a whacky plan “I have an idea. Tonight let’s roam in Chennai city without our wallets - no money, no I.D. card. Let us observe the life of the common man Chennai. We’ll study them closely and through that we can learn some real life lessons. As you know, experience is the best teacher.” He emphasized his point by reminding us of Che Guevara’s life story from the Motorcycle Diaries.
All three of us agreed with him and Vipin felt proud of his idea. He made a detailed outline of the plan. We would leave IIT after dinner. Go to the beach first, spend some time there enjoying the mild sea breeze and then roam in Chennai.
“Good plan”, me and Robin agreed.
All three of us assembled in front of the college hostel around 8 PM. As soon as Vipin saw me, he enquired, “Do you have your mobile phone with you”?
“Yes, it’s with me “ - I replied
“Damn it, who told you to take the phone? We are now common men! Leave that phone somewhere. And one more thing, we are not going for any interview. So don’t come like this with us. Change your clothes and dress like a common man!” They were my seniors, so I was obliged to follow their instructions. I ran to the room and picked up the worst looking clothes from the laundry pile. Without phones, identity cards and money, the three of us left the campus, dressed just like the homeless on the streets. At around 9 pm we reached Marina beach.
The beach was calm and mostly empty. We sat there for around two hours enjoying the cold breeze and some hot gossip about the latest beauties on campus. Two hours into the conversation, we were losing interest and running out of topics. “Let’s move”, Robin suggested. As we were entering the road, a police jeep appeared out of nowhere. The cops jumped out and started off with a long list of questions. “Who are you? What are you doing here? Where are you going?” We told him that we were students from IIT Madras and that we were just roaming there. He didn’t look convinced. With a serious face look he asked us to get into the jeep. We all got in.
“ Where are we going”, I asked Vipin.
“They are taking us back to university. What nice cops!”, Vipin replied
“But what route is this”, Robin asked.
“Come on guys, they are the local police! They know Chennai like their own palms. Be cool!”, Vipin replied.
So the cops are really taking us back to our hostels, I thought. It felt good to be an IITian.
But the jeep didn’t reach the campus. Instead, we ended up at the police station.
“Why did they bring us to the police station?” I whispered into Vipin’s ears, slightly worried. That was my first time in a police station. Naturally, my heart started racing a bit.
“I guess the sub-inspector feels that we are tired. Probably he is going to offer us some tea”, Vipin replied.
No words to describe my happiness. How nice are the cops in Chennai!!!
But in another couple of minutes the mood changed completely. The cops started acting like they had caught some thieves. When Vipin tried talking to them, they demanded our ID cards. We explained that we didn’t have anything then and that we could bring them the next day. The SI was not happy. He asked for some proof that we were students. Vipin said, “ Sujith, take your mobile phone and give him the number of one of our professors.”
“I didn’t take the phone!” I replied.
Vipin was not happy. “Haven’t I told you that whenever you leave campus, you should keep your phone with
you. My phone is not working, else I would have had it”, Vipin shouted. It was just three hours back that he had shouted at me for taking my mobile phone with me. All that was forgotten by now!
Just then I remembered that my shirt had the IIT logo on it. I turned back and showed it to the inspector. He was not convinced. When Vipin tried to explain further, he got the first slap from the cop. That was when we realized that the things were really getting out of our hands.
“Remove your clothes and sit in that corner”, the inspector ordered.
Reluctantly, all three of us removed our shirts and pants and sat in the corner of the inspector’s room. The prison inmates started peeping out of their lock-ups, eager to have a look at the newcomers.
A quick description of the jail - even today in my mind the Chennai gutters are cleaner than the jail. I haven’t in my whole life time seen mosquitos as big as the ones that were there that day. I can still feel the pain of their bites.
None of us knew the phone numbers of any professors/ persons in the university. “How the hell do we get out of this?” we started wondering.
After a while the sub inspector left and we got some relief. We spoke to the constable about our adventures, but he was helpless.
Our fortunes were brighter the next morning. The person who brought the morning tea to the station was a Keralite. The constable informed him that they had caught three thieves from his state. In an irritated mood, he approached us and started enquiring about the happenings. He had a feeling that we are some unemployed people wandering in Chennai in search of jobs. We explained to him that we were all students and described the events of the previous night. Thankfully he was convinced by our story. With his influence, he helped us get out of the police station with some fines. (The tea shop owner paid the money and we promised him that we will reimburse the amount as fast as possible). We finally finished our six hour long stay in the police station and headed back to the university at around 7 am. We reached the university by 7.30 am and at that time our friend Shinto was brushing his teeth in the corridor.
“Where were you kids yesterday? I came looking for you guys. Where did you go?”, Shinto enquired.
“Ho! We went to study the life of common man in Chennai. Its interesting,” Robin replied with a yawn and a tired look. The three of us returned to our rooms. Shinto looked perplexed.
