The DD/MM/YYYY When Everything Went Wrong

Date: 28th February 2020

Time: 0000 hrs

Place: G-411, SD Hall of Residence, NITR

Tragedy struck at the beginning of the disastrous day itself, at midnight to be exact. My plans of filling the application for the IITR’s SPARK saw a dead-end when I received a message in English and Odia (local language of the SIM) that my data pack was over. I couldn’t recharge my data at this hour because my debit card's OTP came on mom's phone and she would have been fast asleep

I grinned when I remembered that I still had LAN. But I knocked off my roomie's bottle while connecting the LAN wire and then all hell broke loose. My roomie, who I had assumed to be in deep sleep then, woke up in a flash when I was picking up his bottle. He scolded me for being up so late and told me not to touch his things before I could even clarify why the bottle was in my hand. As it often happens, LAN leaves you hanging when you need it the most. So I sent a query message in the SD group. I waited for the clock to turn into a tick but that never happened because my data pack was over. I then thought it's time to sleep, and postponed the application to the evening of 28th, after classes.

The only good thing that happened to me that day was sound sleep.

Good sleep. Yay!

Too much good sleep. Boo…

I woke up and realized it's too sunny outside to look like a February morning. I picked up my phone to check the time but….

Shit! Despite pressing all buttons, I could just see my own reflection on the screen. My phone had died. And then realization struck me when I checked my wristwatch; I had slept through my first two classes and was on the verge of missing the 3rd. I then hurried to get ready. My clothes outside were still not dry thanks to the unseasonal rain last night.

I brushed quickly. ‘Why does the toothpaste taste so weird…?’, I thought. Because it wasn’t my tooth paste. It was my shaving cream!

No time to bath and No deo as well…

I had no other choice than to keep on wearing my crumpled smelly tee and wrinkled trousers. I then connected the charger and kept my phone to charge while I was away. I locked my room and came down but couldn't find my bicycle. I then remembered that I had given it to a friend.  I didn’t even have my phone to ask him. Finally, as I was about to give up and walk to LA instead, I found it. As soon as I started cycling, I found the ride unusually bumpy and realized that my cycle was punctured. That rascal who I had lent my cycle last evening had betrayed me.

I therefore walked to my department and entered a class carelessly. The prof. was writing something on the blackboard with his back turned towards the class. I quickly crept in and sat in the vacant second bench. I opened my bag and took out a random notebook. My whole college life had been a do or die game. It was either a no-notebook sem or an all-in one notebook sem. This sem happened to be a no-notebook sem (no-shave November inspired). I turned towards the blackboard at the very moment the prof had turned to face the class. I realized that something was amiss. I first thought that either my prof had probably shaved or I was half-asleep. Then I thought that he might probably be a substitute prof. That’s when I looked around and realized that it wasn't my class. The prof gave me strange looks; yeah, the one which profs terrify irregular students with. I had to leave… But now wasn’t the moment. I waited for him to turn towards the board once again and slowly crept to the bench closest to the door (thankfully it was vacant). I then looked at the prof. once and took off. Phew! Lucky escape. I checked the time, and realized that the 3rd period was about to get over; It was time for lunch. Walking to the Department had gone in vain, with the day’s attendance still sitting at 0.

I started walking back to SD. The NITRIS attendance page flashed in my mind and unfortunately, it already had two yellowed subjects. I didn't cry over spilt milk; I did something worse. I did the thing which most people do after the midsems. I started calculating the minimum marks I needed to pass the subject and remember this was even before midsems. With that, the probability of achhe din this sem had just dropped to 0. Meanwhile I reached the mess. You might be thinking what could possibly go wrong here. After taking my plate from the counter, I walked to the sugar bowl to add some sugar to the plain curd. As I was doing that, a rascal friend of mine (I did avenge the defeat later, though), sent a spoon of sugar flying across to my plate intentionally. I saw my whole lunch turning into a dessert and with that, my hopes of having a satisfying meal were gone. After lunch, I had a lab and there was no room for any error there. I quickly went back to my room and copied the readings which we had taken last week and then drew the graph. All set, I walked to the lab .On the way, I saw that that idiot, who had punctured my cycle, on another cycle. Never trust these guys (or girls), I tell you.

I submitted my record, and started the experiment with my group. Our group consisted of a studious guy, an inquisitive one (yeah, that's me!) and a hasty one (all he wanted was to leave the lab as early as possible). I had prepared well for the viva, at least I thought so. But vivas at NITs are never predictable with the TAs asking out-of-syllabus questions as often as RCB losing in the IPL; yup I mean always. So yeah, I screwed up my viva that day. That wasn't the worst part, I got an F in my record, as I had copied the wrong table. By the time I left the lab I was sure that the day was by far, the worst day of my life. I had a strong urge to go back to my room and sleep, as only that could save me from the wrath of the remaining part of the day. But I didn't want any more yellows on NITRIS. So, I overcame my emotions and went to attend the HS class. Big mistake, again. I sat on the second bench as I thought the prof usually asked questions to the ones sitting at the back. But that day, the tables were turned, literally. So much so that out of a class of 120 students, he asked the first question to me. I told him to repeat the question which at first seemed Greek and Latin. But the second time he repeated, it was worse; it sounded like Russian and Mongolian to me. I stammered, tried to cover up for my negligible subject knowledge with ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ and failed miserably. Humiliation in front of the entire class pl I became the prof's principal target for the whole sem. I went back to my room and decided that I would stay put, at least till 12 AM (when the worst day would technically end). I decided to recharge my phone's data pack and went to my friend's room to get it done through his phone. I logged into PayTM on his phone, entered all the details and then called mom for the OTP. Entered it and clicked on pay. I waited for a confirmation on my phone, but I didn't receive any. Sometimes, it did take time so I decided to wait till dinner time.

Dinner was uneventful, but what followed was my realization of the worst mistake that day. The confirmation message never came and when I opened my browser, it timed out. I went back to my friend and checked the transaction status again. To my horror, I had mistyped the last digit of my number (8) as 9. I quickly called on the number who would have received the data. The call was picked on the first ring itself. A harsh voice asked in a heavy Marathi accent 'Kon?'. Luckily for me, I had lived in Mumbai before and identified the accent in a flash. I started telling him the sequence of events but got a grunting 'Thik Aahe' halfway. He added 'Abhi majha 9.28 Virar local ala... Apun nantar call kara' (which meant that he had to catch his 9.28 local train and will call later). I knew how crowded Mumbai Locals were and he was probably traveling from Churchgate to Virar which would take at least 1.5 hours if it was a fast local.

I went back to my room and slept till I was woken up by my friend who informed me that the man had called back. I explained to him the whole situation and fortunately he agreed to recharge my data pack. I soon received 2 notifications (one English, one Odia) of my phone being recharged. It was 11.30 pm and as I was going to sleep, I checked WhatsApp as I hadn't done so for the whole day. There were dozens of notifications. I scrolled the messages and found that I had been removed from a club group. When I read all the messages of the group carefully, I realized that I had been given a task the night before and had failed to do it (for the 3^rd time). Worse, I had not even replied to any of the messages. Setting my alarm carefully and checking the battery level which was at 69%, I turned off the lights at 11.59 pm. What a day it had been... I thought as I slowly drifted towards the calm ocean of sleep.

But in a few moments, I was woken up with a loud thud. My room had just been opened and the door had been swung open with a bang. My room had a small window at the top of the door and one of the guys had scaled my door and put his hand through the window and opened the bolt. I woke up suddenly to find a group of 12 guys enter the small room. As I was gaining consciousness, 4 of them caught one limb each and lifted me. Holy shit… I cried out in horror, as I realized that it was my birthday. As if the bad day preceding the birthday wasn't enough. Wingies being wingies, had a gala time as I became an absorbent of frustration. I realized later on, that the attendance for the GPL was more due to posters being circulated in my hostel group. Guys who never put any effort into completing their assignments had put in so much effort into the poster. More so, with the midsems approaching, the intensity of the blows was higher than usual. The end of the worst day also meant the start of the worst hour. Well, I don't think I am in a position to narrate anything more now. Ouch! It still hurts… 

P.S.:  Yellowed subject refers to a subject in which you’ve got a gradeback. Yellow is the color-code for ‘gradeback’ on NITRIS. It’s something like a yellow card, the prequel of a red card (which at NITR is getting ‘debarred’). SD is Satish Dhawan Hall of Residence, sometimes referred to as Hall-9.

P.P.S.: Never lend your cycles to vicious friends. I repeat, never.

P.P.P.S.: Beware of GPL; plan in advance.

Signing off,

Yours sincerely

Debabrata Malik

A meme-connoisseur who does everything but studying