Staying with Chiffordan

The Rest of Day One

I tried to ignore him for the remaining hour that he stayed with me in this room, I had to suppress feelings of disgust, that staying with him was gonna be a nightmare, and distract myself. He was weird, enough so that even then I had the feeling that it was actually him who got this room illegally, and that was why my roommate wasn't Kirti. I even thought that maybe he was a decoy, a sort of substitute, and that my real roommate would come in after some time. These thoughts didn't overwhelm me, I had just met him and didn't know any better. Soon enough my thoughts drifted off into whatever I was watching on my cell phone, and apprehensions of him drifted away as he did the same.

In the evening I had decided to go downstairs and explore the facilities of the hostel area of our college. I wasn't interested in tea, and instead headed over to the squash court. The seniors wouldn't arrive in the college until a few weeks later, so there were only first year students that day, less than half of them had bothered to take the evening snack, and despite the lack of senior students (Banking trainees were the exception), there were a few good squash players already battling it out in their intense game of whack-ball. I didn't have my own squash equipment, so I watched from outside the glass doors of the courts with the others. There were 2 matches going on side to side. On the left was one where the two playing were pretty good, I reckoned they had been playing seriously for the past few years at least. The right witnessed a game where two guys hadn't near gotten the hang of the game, squash is harder than it looks, and they repeatedly either missed, or didn't hit the ball hard enough. I started a conversation with a few of the others that were watching but didn't really take down any numbers just yet. We mostly talked about the entrance papers, how close in scores two radically different ranked people would be, how much higher the cut offs were this year, the guys I was talking to knew even less than me, they were surprised to realize that someone 10 points higher than me in the 360-point paper was ranked 50000 places higher. Though I would have guessed that on my own. After and hour and a half, it was still at least an hour till dinnertime. I headed back to my room.

This time there was a group of guys hanging out outside the room. Having fun with themselves. Chiffordan wasn't with them, but I could care less. I got familiar with some of them pretty fast. The most talkative among them was this Automobile engineering student named Satyam Bhardwaj. He was going on and on about religion and evil spirits and the like, emphasising that evil spirits float around undetected in the air, and that there was a 90% chance that an evil spirit had passed you if you felt an unusual fleeting sensation of someone following, being close, or sensing a strange small wave air akin to a person passing you for no logical explanation. He and another guy emphasised that all the superstitions in religious books were based off of some sort of exaggerated fact deep in the past. It was around this time when chiffordan exited the room. "These guys are talking about evil spirits and all that, I don't want to believe them", I said. "You have to believe them, evil spirits are real, and I feel like they have overtaken you", he spoke matter of factly, as if he believed with no doubt in his mind that I was possessed by evil spirits. "Satyam, you are a very smart person for knowing this, I have to tell you that the threat of evil spirits", he continued. "Ninety five percent of people over the age of 15 are possessed, and their only hope against spirits is to nullify or minimize their effect", explained Chiffordan. "This is a very serious matter", he said. Harsh Rathi, a tallish chubby light skinned brown haired guy from Kota, disagreed. He insisted that evil spirits are not real, and that he was only listening to Satyam for fun and enjoying how delusionally superstitious he was. Chiff' looked at this guy with a stiff gaze, acting really offended at this answer. "Why are you acting so irritated, this is just for fun", said harsh. "No-no its not just for fun", declared Satyam, "what I am saying about spirits and all is very serious". I saw Chiffordan shuffle away from Harsh and place himself next to Satyam. I heard him whisper out loud to him that he was a very brilliant person. Satyam moved on to the topic of black money, how he had huge stores of black money he had acquired himself, and how his house was filled with thousands of advanced books, many of his friends were doctors and lawyers and the like, and how he amassed a fortune by cleverly duping them.

"Do you actually read any of the books you have in your house", I asked him. "Come on, Satyam obviously only reads weird books about superstitions and all and takes them too seriously", said Satyam's roommate Daksh. "You should not say that", touted Chiffordan. He and Satyam walked away from the conversation. "Oh come on, I was just stating the obvious", mumbled Daksh.

"Yeah dude", I replied. The others agreed. The conversation continued til dinnertime, with Satyam Bhardwaj and Chiffordan agreeing on most of the nonsensical supernatural nature of common things, above logic. At dinner I accepted Daksh's offer to stay in my room after-words, I don't think Chiffordan heard this.

We returned to our rooms after dinner, and a minute later Daksh knocked on my door, I let him in. We talked about a lot of things like and soon enough got to the topic of our roommates. "My roommate is so annoying, and he seems really arrogant", I said. "Same with mine", said Daksh, "but add that to his crazed hyperactivity, and you get him". "I honestly wasn't surprised when he said he believes so strongly in all these evil spirits crap", he continued. "No way, my roommate is way more repulsive than him, and Satyam's rudeness is nothing compared to him", I explained. "I could actually handle staying with Satyam, but this Chiffordan guy disgusts me". Daksh was about to answer back when we heard a loud knocking on the door that just kept getting louder. I already knew that Satyam was a heavy-handed door knocker, I thought it was him, but instead I saw Chiffordan through the peephole. "Do you need anything?", I shouted through the door. "Just let me inside", he replied in an angry rude voice. I opened the door for him. About to ask him about Satyam and if he was ok with me trading him in for Daksh that night and all that, but he walked in looking really pissed off. "Why did you lock me out!", he shouted. "I'm supposed to stay in your room for the night because I'm your roommate", he continued. "I see, but I'd rather sleep with Daksh over here", I said, "you can be with Satyam for tonight right", I suggested. "Staying overnight with anyone other than your roommate is against the rules!", he shouted, "you will get a black dot!". "What the heck is a black dot!", I yelled back in response. "Why are you yelling at me!" "I am the chiefwar.." he hollered in a defensive tone. "What the fuck do you mean!" I replied. You aren't some authority or anything, just get away chutiya". For a moment I felt guilty as Chiffordan seemed to shrivel up and hang his head like I had really insulted him. I looked at Daksh, who seemed a bit surprised that he was insulted so badly, and even more confused than me. By the time I looked back at where my official roommate was supposed to be, he had already left as he closed the door behind me.

"Trust me, that wasn't as bad as you think", said Daksh. "You're not the only one insulted by him, but you should have been softer", he continued. "I know, I already cussed at him, but why was he saying he was the chief or something like that, it makes no sense.....".

It was then when I first got the right idea of who my roommate was, his attitude, arrogance, the way he spoke to others in even casual conversation, like he was higher than them. In a second, my mind thought of this idea as ridiculous, cringy, I shunted it out. There was no way he was chief by any means, he was just crazy. For tonight, me and Daksh agreed to stay together for the night, I would apologize to Chiffordan in the morning.