A real episode in my life which I would like to share with you
My first night in the hostel, 1952
Don't let your imagination run riot. This is just a narration of my experience on the first night of my stay at Clive's Hostel at Thiruchy, which is an out and out Agmark men's hostel. When I got admission for my intermediate at St Joseph's College, Thiruchy, I was offered a seat at Clive's Hostel. The college and the hostel were well known for discipline and students of our time in the fifties didn't have even a ghost of an idea of going on strike or protest as we witness today, even though there might have been genuine reasons for that. 'There is no question why, there is but to do and die' was the type of discipline that was expected. Implicit obedience was the only thing known to these St Josephians and even a semblance of disobedience by students would be viewed seriously, severe warning would be issued and at times ( not just at times; more often) fined with a notice sent to the parents of the trouble mongers with threat of dismissal in extreme cases. Clive's hostel had its own set of rules and the principal of the college was the warden. Silence hour extending from 8:00 P.M to next day 8:30A.M was strictly observed and any body indulging in talking with his room mate or his neighbour during the period would be warned and fined. No hosteller was permitted to stay outside the hostel without the express permission of the warden. All the hostellers should be back in the hostel before 8:00 P.M. Any late comer stood the chance of expulsion from the hostel. In spite of the strict enforcement of discipline, during the non silence and noncollege hours, the students however ventured to indulge in jibes silently within themselves and one such joke was that the buildings at the college were fine buildings because they were all constructed using funds raised from students by way of fines!
When the bell rang at 8:30A.M , it meant that the silence hour was over and within the next one hour the wards could get ready and go to their mess for morning food or breakfast as the case might be. Similarly the bell at 7:00P.M was to draw the attention of the students that it was time for night meals. But as a fresher, I had some misconceptions about these rules and regulations but as one, very docile and disciplined, I didn't have anything to fear. I was allotted room number 90 in the New Block which was a 6 seater room. There were some seniors with me and one was my classmate from my native place Ariyalur. That night being the first night, I finished my meal and from 8:00 P.M, I didn't have anything to prepare or study and so didn't know what to do. My seniors had already warned me that the warden would come on a roll call at 10:00P.M and till then I had to keep myself awake. Nobody was allowed to go to bed before then and if any one was found sleeping, the warden would pull him up, warn him and then ask him to go to bed and sleep. So I was waiting for the roll call and when that was over, for some reason, I didn't get sleep and so started talking with my Ariyalur friend thinking that once the roll call was over, we were free. As the talk proceeded unhampered, I put a puzzle to my friend and asked him to give me the right answer. He thought for a while, blinked for a while and then gave up. When I gave him the answer, he said that it was silly. Then the argument grew, me calling him silly and he calling me silly. Normally even if I whisper, people hundred feet away from me could here me ( not now). But during the argument my voice gradually picked up decibels and became so loud with the tempo increasing minute by minute that the warden who was in the old block some five hundred feet away came to my room and knocked it loud, but that got subdued in the den that we created. Meanwhile my other room mates who could hear the tapping of the door opened it only to see a fiery red eyed warden losing his temper with his already red face becoming redder (!) like a red hot iron and in all his fury started bombarding us for nearly more than fifteen minutes, but one good thing was that I couldn't follow anything of what he said. I could only guess that he was furious and admonishing us in the strongest of terms with a warning which I later on understood from my other friends and seniors that it being the first night we were excused and if a repeat performance occurred we would be summarily dismissed from the hostel. There was dead silence in the hostel thereafter while many inquisitive heads were found outside their rooms eager to know who those dare devils were who made history in the hostel. The next day morning once the silence hour broke, a whole lot of people from the old, middle and the new blocks came, some to condole, some to console and some to condemn me wondering all the while how such a small fellow could make such a big noise, while even the diehards in the hostel dared not make noise during silence hours. ( It was at that time Abdul Kalam was staying in this hostel)
That was my first night experience and thereafter I became warden's one of the pet students.
probably, people of my days who stayed in Clive's hostel may have similar experience. I do not know whether the hostel follows these rules even to day.
