The Sundance Kids

(Warning: Slightly long and highly exaggerated post)

I was pleasantly surprised that people did not berate my first blog post and this has spurred my on to try further and write another post. Lately lots of authors and movie makers have been narrating their own or others’ (only 3% to 5% though) college life stories. Perhaps college life stories make for fairly interesting reading; in this post I am writing about some of the interesting people and events from my hostel wing during my MBA days.
















I joined by MBA college in June 2006; you get your rooms allotted in some random manner on the first day itself and with that you get your true identity, the identity of your wing. Maybe I am exaggerating, but what remains with you years after you graduate and happen to meet alumni and juniors from your college, is your hostel and your wing. So I joined my 10/12 batch mates who were going to spend most of the next 2 years in close proximity, not to close though as we had our independent rooms. Every wing has a name and a fairly convoluted story for that name; our wing name was hardly anything congratulatory but for the sake of a bit of decency and propriety (which I hopelessly lacked during my MBA days), let’s just say we were the “Sundance Kids”.

The Sundance Kids were of three types: the muggus, the beech-ka and the really cool guys (yes, it was an all male wing and almost an all male college as well.) There was a 4th type also, the wannabe Sundance-is, people from other wings, who pretty soon recognized the coolest wing on campus and become honorary Sundance Kids.

The muggus, as the name suggests, were by nature muggus. They all were the future Eye-Bankers who were going to save the Indian society from the scourge of blindness, blindness of money, love etc. They would either be found developing the latest asset valuation models or teaching fellow students the mass-low’s hierarchy hours before an exam. Like them or hate them, you could not ignore them as they pushed you down the campus hierarchy of RG.

The beech-ka people were mostly not sure of what they wanted to do. They wanted to get decent marks and then hopefully decent jobs and at the same time they wanted to be viewed as cool and fairly cultured people. I think part of the reason was that this category of people were Bongs who varied from being slightly to extremely overweight. They wanted to project their well-rounded personality, trying to solve game theory problems and hold discourse on Marxism and cubism with equal dexterity.

This brings me to the 3rd category of people, the really cool guys, the studs who actually gave the wing its life-line and sustenance. These people excelled at some thing or the other, be it drinking anyone under the table, or having the smartest lines for any occasion or being public relations champions. They perhaps knew the true calling and purpose of life and were never perturbed by the academic rigors associated with being the malai and in some cases the double malai of the society.

I have been slightly meandering over the last few paragraphs, but it was important to build this distinction among the different types of Sundance Kids. In the remaining portion of this post, I would describe one of the events which brought together all the wingmates across distinctions, caste, religion, race, sex being no bar; well on second thoughts, sex a definite bar.

The most important event of MBA life was definitely the inter-wing footer volley competition that was held in during our 4th term. The competition was held in honor of one of our hostel seniors, whose Yuvi radiations had permanently injured the eyesight of some girls from Jamshedpur; I sincerely hope that some our Eye-Bankers would be able to illuminate the lives of these girls in the future with love and care. Anyway footer volley is a game similar to sepak takraw, but with the ball allowed to bounce, so as to be not too inconvenient for the slightly un-athletic MBA students.

Our wing had a great footer team; it was not much fancied though, primarily due to the size of the important players but we were blessed with natural ability. We had a fairly easy draw and progressed to the semi-finals. But it was not all smooth sailing as the differences between our captain (Mr. C) and our best player (Mr. P) became all to apparent in our last group match. Our captain C was one of those cool guys, who by virtue of his coolness had become the captain of the side, but was far from being our best player. Our best player P was however one of the beech-ka guys, who would generally be absconding while his project-group meetings were being held in his room. P was not a great footer volley player in the conventional way, but he was a great disruptive force. He created paradigm shifts in the way the game was played by questioning some the mores of the game. He transformed the serve from being a Ramesh Krishnan types defensive lob to a Goran-esque attacking weapon, on which free points could be won easily. His influence on the game was like the Fosbury flop in the high-jump and since then his fast dipping serve has become the norm for more divisible batches.

The differences between C and P were simmering as P was hogging all the services of the team. In the last league match that we lost, P was repeatedly missing services and so C stepped in and started serving himself. But C was not too successful with his Ramesh Krishnan lobs and things came to a boil when P was again denied the serve in the next round of services. There was a major altercation between the two, with both addressing each other with the choicest Hindi terms of endearment. We lost the game, but still made it through to the semis, where we were going to face the much vaunted StudFarm, who were so studly that they called themselves studs.

The semi-final began well for us and we won the first set thanks to some enterprising net play from some of our muggus as well as consistent fast serving from P. In the 2nd set also we were leading, but a forced un-strategic time-out was enforced with the ball going out of the arena due to one of P’s rare wayward services. But that moment swung the game away from us. The StudFarm began to win points and the differences between C and P again reared up its ugly head. P was not allowed to serve anymore and things came to such a passé that P was substituted. We lost the 2nd set and then the deciding 3rd set by a huge margin. Towards the end of the game, captain C had become a nervous wreak and was almost making rolling substitutions within points. But being a true leader, he always led from the front and never substituted himself.

The Sundance Kids lost a glorious opportunity to win the inaugural footer volley tournament and thus create history. The final was an intense affair played over 2 days due to rain disruptions. But alas we could not make it to the final and were left to only officiate the match. Nevertheless, it was an important event from my MBA college days and hopefully made for an interesting blog-post.

PS: In an earlier post I had written about Ajit Agarkar literally being left out in the cold from the KKR team and reduced to practicing catches on the EM Bypass in Calcutta. Courtesy Rachit, I have put together some random Ajit Agarkar facts in the hope that it awakes our national consciousness and we can do something to get him back his rightful place, i.e. opening the bowling for KKR with fast swinging leg-stump full tosses.


Fact 1: Agarkar doesnt eat ducks; he makes them

Fact 2: Agarkar scores with duck-ettes

Fact 3: What did the fast bowler tell Agarkar after bowling a sharp bouncer to him?

Answer: Just duck it

Fact 4: What did the 10 year old Agarkar say when he realized that he didn't have a pen at the start of an examination?

Answer: Oh duck!

Fact 5: Where did Agarkar learn to bat?

Answer: Edge-bastion, England

Fact 6: What his Agarkar's favourite video game?

Answer: Siting ducks

Fact 7: What did Agarkar's school friends gift him on his birthday?

Answer: Donald duck