Long before IT, BT and BPO became household names and Bangalore city towards Madiwala ended at the diary circle, I was doing my final year BSc at the then males only Christ College and was the treasurer of the students union. Every year during the 2nd week of February the college conducted a three day carnival called Spring Festival in which colleges from and around Bangalore as well as some from Madras participated.
We came to know that the hostelites of our sister college Jothinivas were not being given permission to attend the evening session citing lack of transportation facilities and security concerns. The transportation problem was solved by arranging with the KSRTC to run a few busses from the college after the programme ended, agreeing to their condition that the last bus would leave the college at 8.00.This was conveyed to the hostel warden of Jothynivas and permission for the hostelites obtained. Mother Mary of Jothynivas was particular that I would be personally responsible for the safe return of all her inmates which was readily agreed and off went the Spring Festival to a colourful start.
Every thing went according to plans for the first two days but on the last day by the time the western music competition ended and the prize distribution was over it was well past 11.00 and the pre arranged KSRTC busses had already left. The Jothynivas girls were left stranded (in 1980 the stretch from Christ College to Jothynivas was a deserted patch with hardly any building). As Mother Mary had entrusted the safe return of her wards to me, chivalrously I volunteered to escort them to the hostel and we started walking the one km. stretch with no dearth for guys accompanying the group. On reaching the hostel the girls went straight to the dinning hall for they hadn’t had their dinner I went in to personally apologise to Mother Mary for the late arrival. I was about to return to the guys who were waiting at the gate when one of the girls told Mother Mary that I too hadn’t had dinner. The ever courteous Mother invited me to join the girls and the unbelievable happened- dinner at Jothynivas hostel at midnight 12 O’clock, probably the one and only guy in the annals of a girl’s hostel to have had such an opportunity!!
Fast Forward to 2003:-
When my son was in the tenth standard, one day we were summoned by the school principal to counsel us about him bullying his juniors, making them do errands and punishing them for refusing to comply with his orders. We agreed with the principal to take any punitive action that she considered fit. As he was bullying the boys in the junior boy’s dorm he was made to stay in the girl’s dorm for a week!!!.
If the father had midnight dinner at a womens hostel the son improved on it by staying in the girls dorm.
