Due to menace of ragging the first year students or fresher’s as we were called were housed in separate hostel called “ family planning” hostel .It was about 100 yards(considered safe distance by college administration though I would recommend 100kilometers) away from junior boys hostel and senior boys hostel. Though we were safe here comparatively ,still ragging happened especially in night. There were 100 boys living in 50 odd rooms on ground and first floor . So one shared the room with his partner. My partner was Prakash Kulkarni aka PK ,a NRI student in desi avtar .He had his schooling in Nairobi and had been living in UK before he gave entrance exams for medical college. We hit it off first day despite opposite nature and lifestyle. For example I liked to get up early and study and sleep early and he would sleep late and study late in night. I was not careful where I kept my things and he had fixed place for every article. I preferred to complete the work first and relax later and he would relax till the end and do things at the last moment. Then there was difference in food habits as I was totally vegetarian and loved typical Indian food and he liked non vegetarian and other fancy stuff. Still we hit it off on first day and had a great friendship going in few days.
After gruelling day at college and more gruelling evenings at hostel due to ragging ,we had little time to know each other but humans can get used to any situation. So despite all the problems we slowly started to get accustomed to situation and relaxed ourselves a bit. Sundays were good . It was mandatory to eat out as the mess was closed on Sunday evening. On first Sunday we went for a movie and later had dinner in the city.
As I came to know more students of my class ,I realised that it was a motley crowd and we had come from different background and different socioeconomic status. Lot of non-social activities go on in each hostel which I became aware of slowly. There was room number G-16 where Ajeet and Khare lived, This room had earned the reputation of being the room where there was “AKHAND JUA” or uninterrupted gambling going on. You could go any time and join the gambling and could walk out any time. The game was teen patti or flash. I and my room partner PK had no interest in gambling ,so we kept ourselves away from G16. My room was G-1 ,the biggest room in hostel and many students envied us due to this fact. Ajeet was a bright student from Lucknow ,who had been wrongly paired with Khare. Then there was room number G14 which had earned notoriety for supply of recreational drugs. Most of the times Gopal and RK (Rajkamal) could supply any drug to you like Bhang, charas, Dexa(Uppers) or Metha(Downers) and many more. Since I and my partner PK were not into drug scene, we gave this room a wide birth. I had never played flash or teenpatti in my life and never intended to do so but fate had something else in store for me.
It was 7 Pm on Friday in August and me and PK were busy completing our anatomy practical copy ,when door of our room burst open and Ajeet entered .His face was drawn and it looked he had cried also. We offered him tea and listened to his story. In nutshell ,he was living in pure hell .His room was always full of gamblers, he had no privacy, Could not study ,could not sleep . The reason for today’s plight was that he had been cheated of his money which his family has sent him for buying books. So now he had no money , no books ,no place to sleep or study. In nutshell he was living in pure hell ,his life had been turned on its head and his dreams of joining medical college lay shattered.
After listening to his story we advised him to immediately report the matter to warden and get his room changed but Ajeet was not ready to wait even one day ,or go back to his room even for a moment. Ultimately we offered him that he could move into our room till alternate arrangements were made,to which Ajeet agreed happily.
We had to go with him to collect his luggage and his bed as he would not go alone. Ultimately by 9pm Ajeet had settled in our room and now G1 had 3 students. Then there was question of 5000/rupees which have been cheated from Ajeet. We listened to his story late into the night and got some clue how the cheating has been done. Many type of scams were being carried out in G16 –
1.Dealing from both sides of card deck.
2.You hid 1 or 2 aces and later on change the cards.
3.Set the cards so as to get better cards called card sharpening
4.Playing in collusion or as team
As I had no experience of gambling PK and Ajeet started to teach me the basics of flash or teenpatti. I caught on the concept fast. We would play mock gambling where Ajeet ended up winning most of the times. Then we started to plan to play as a team. We decided on set of codes and gestures to follow and soon we mastered the art of gambling in pairs or triples.
The time had come to test our new acquired skill. We decided to test it first after 12 midnight on Saturday ,as we thought that players at that hour will be tired and will not notice our antiques. So we reached in G16 and announced that we want to gamble. There were 6-7 students in room at that hour and everybody seemed happy by our presence ,thinking us to be novice ,who could be deprived of their cash easily. We settled down and the game started at20 minutes past midnight. Slowly we started winning and within an hour the smiles were wiped out from players faces. We called it quits at 2 AM and came to our room G1 and counted the loot. We had won more than 1000/rupees the first day or rather night. We repeated our journey to infamous gambling room after break of few days and this time showed no mercy on anybody and won almost 3000/ within an hour. Now the news started to spread in hostel about our winning but still no body had a clue how we were doing it. Players became cautious but we still managed to win 1600 Rs next time, thus wiping out the loss of Ajeet . After giving him Rs 5000/ we still had money left for partying and movie. Ajeet life came on track and we became very close friend and despite warden offering him new room he liked it in G1 and we lived in G1 till we cleared our first professional.
After that we would go to G16 once a while ,win some money and party .This kept on going till we were in Family planning hostel . Khare obviously could not clear the first professional and was left behind and we lost track of him.
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