FREEZE! You're charged with the offense of celebrating your birthday!

That's pretty much what I was told by the guy who's supposed to be the "Resident Tutor" (or RT) of the hostel block I reside in. Let me explain...

WEDNESDAY, JULY 27th, 2005, APPROX 3.00 PM

(Which happened to be a holiday. A study holiday - there was a test the next day)

I enter a friend's room, which had become a common room for my friends at the hostel, for a variety of reasons. A variety. A variety so variable you wouldn't believe it. In fact it's so variable that you would never guess that there's only one reason we hang out there.

This room, being the common room now, was quite obviously filled with my friends. No surprises there. I take a seat, and watch one guy play GTA San Andreas with a blank face. No, not his face, my face. And then, while I was watching this guy playing GTA San Andreas with a blank face (On the PC of the guy whose room it was. I told you - a variety of reasons), another friend enters the room with a box. He then placed the box with which he entered the room in front of me. He opens the same box, revealing quite a delicious cake inside it. It was a birthday cake. Now that was a surprise. The guys had got me a cake for my birthday. And so, we "celebrated" my birthday. It wasn't exactly what you'd call a celebration... There wasn't any food other than the cake, no music and no Pepsi. All we did was cut cake.

All this was being recorded, by the guy whom I had earlier watched play GTA San Andreas with a blank face, on his camera phone.

MONDAY, AUGUST 1st, 2005, APPROX 7.00 PM

I'm home for the weekend. I call it weekend even though it is not because it is a weekend for me. The college gets kicks by making Computer Science students come to college on Saturday and stay away on Monday. We have a Sunday-Monday weekend.

I get a call from a friend of mine who doesn't go home every weekend. He tells me that the guy whom I had earlier watched play GTA San Andreas with a blank face had been found using his camera phone and it was confiscated from him by the hostel clerk, who incidentally happens to be the same hostel clerk I've mentioned in an earlier post, whose name was emblazoned next to a very foul adjective that suited him perfectly.

Why was the phone confiscated? Camera phones have been banned in our college ever since the infamous DPS incident. You don't know what the infamous DPS incident is? Try googling it.

While checking out the videos in the phone, the "authorities", quite obviously, found the birthday video as well.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 2nd, 2005, 9.30 PM

(I'm back at the hostel, and it's study hour. We're supposed to study from 9 to 10 PM)
The RT, whom many believe has the proverbial ant farm up his rear, enters my room with a look upon his face which made me want to puke. He looked as if he was about to puke. He then asks my roommate to shift himself so that he can sit on his bed. Incidentally, this RT also happens to be from the Computer Science department.

He talks to me.

"Were you celebrating your birthday on the 27th of July? I have evidence that you were."

"Yeah, I was. It was quite a surprise. I never expected these chaps to get me cake."

"You're talking so casually! Do you know what you have done?"

I nodded.

He continues, "It is against hostel ethics to celebrate anything. I'm not giving you a first and last warning or something like that. I'm simply asking you to find elsewhere to stay."

He looks at me, expecting me to say something. I just look back at him, wondering when he would leave, hoping that I wouldn't puke. I guess he was expecting me to say sorry or something. Not that I would have if I hadn't feel like puking at the time. He then left the room.

Ever since that day, this guy's been on my back, reprimanding me for something or the other, though nothing as bad as cutting cake.