Singin' in the sun

           Something was burning. I knew it. I sensed it. From the second, the Great Chimp's revered feet set itself upon Ahmedabad, the smell followed him everywhere. From the airport, in the taxi, into the campus, right upto my room, it faithfully sought after me like a trained circus elephant. Throughout the whole day. I was confused. As far my memory was able to fling itself and boomerang back, I knew that I had a bath. But the smell existed. It did not seem to be a hallucination because if it was then I might very well be hallucinating the hallucination which made perfect sense to me.
           Lunch came and by now, it was quite a flustered and tired Chimp that trudged to the mess, mentally solving complex equations, eliminating possibilities and calculating various permutations and combinations, trying to solve the mystery of the burning odour. I absently gobbled up the food, engrossed in my own mental machinations. I vaguely remembered somebody, with a lot of teeth telling me that an informal meeting of the first years was scheduled at the LKP in the night.
           Nine 'o' clock sharp, I started getting ready to go. I emptied a bottle of Denim cologne and some Domex as well, to unsuccesfully drive the vapour away. The AXE effect proved to be effectively effectless. Having torn out most of the little hair that I had, I accepted defeat and strode purposefully to the LKP throwing caution to the North-Eastern draught.
           And then only did I realise, that I did not have the faintest idea of what LKP means. I roamed here and there, trying to converse in broken Hindi with the watchman asking where LKP was. God knows what he understood, I wound up in front of the men's restroom. I just pulled in my nostrils and stumbled out, barely alive, when I came upon a huge open area with a small board at one end that bore the legend, Loius Kahn Plaza. Swearing at that Khan or Kahn or whatever, I proceeded.
           There, I found bunches of people who were assiduously standing, loitering, sleeping, scratching and grazing grass. I marched towards one bunch and dawdled around for some time, nervously saying hellos to silent lifeforms until I squished something soft. One of them got up and gave me a visual demonstration of the dental implants given to it by it's immediate parents. I took to my heels and bumped into another gang which seemed to be made of humans. I melted myself into the group, under the cover of darkness without a murmur hoping that none of them saw a handsome boy running and screaming around the LKP with a disgruntled canine at his heels.
           We simply stood staring at each other, for quite a long time, smiling away like men who were told that their wives had suddenly been jailed for apparently no reason. Suddenly, all them were juggled out of their lip widening performances by a voice that would have easily put a banshee out of business. The voice continued it's Arnold Scwharznegger style articulation and asked each one to introduce ourselves. We did obediently. And that supposedly broke the proverbial ice. After some time we again hit boredom and slowly ambled towards the flood lights. There again, under the pugnacious request of the Voice and it's newly acquired partner- Karaoke, we introduced ourselves. Then we settled down to pleasant conversations and once again just before we split, introduced ourselves to ward off the Evil Eye and broke up for the night.
           I walked back to my dorm in abject dejection. Me, the only genius in the Universe ever to have invented Bed Cricket, the only warrior to have gotten both his cheeks finger-stamped by a record, sixteen members of the infamous fairer species of humankind; I, Chimp, was dumbfounded. I was irritated that I was not able to do anything about the dratted smell and in my furious temper, broke an imaginary vase and an imaginary table lamp. That irritated me even further. Anger clouded my usually crappy judgement and I stripped the jeans which I was wearing and hurled it out of the balcony onto a male pigeon, unwittingly ruining it's mating plans for the night in the process.
           And then, suddenly the smell miraculously vanished! It was too good to be true! As I sat down trying to take it in, it struck me with the effect of a 600-pound dog pound van crashing into the Kanchenjunga.
           The question was simple and so was the answer.
           What do you get when you cross a 45 degree celsius weather and a pair of Denim jeans?
           So began my life at IIMA.