That’s yet another one of those standard rules laid out for college goers…especially for hostellers(night-schies???).To be frank, I came across this word for the first time only after I joined the college—that too from an ol’iit pal of mine that too while chatting. The first time that she mentioned she had a night-out, I was like……. er..nite-out???....she???....she was out the whole night? OMG!!! what was she doing? Naaa…. but I never let her know that I was sooo ‘low funda’ed on such ‘technical’ terms. By yet another one of my ‘ingenious ways’ I extricated out from her that piece of info. At last I became enlightened of this new ‘collego-technical’ term. So night-out means….well it’s just another name for ‘burning the midnight oil’---the only difference being it needn’t necessarily be for studying alone. No.. no rules like that. It can be for doing anything ranging from serious studies to chatting, blogging or just chattering away through the whole night.
Thus being enlightened of this new term I realised that we’ve had many a night-outs… a looot many. The very first of our(or rather my) night-outs…. we were literally outside. We were in the audi; it was the LH farewell. The farewell party extended well into the night….way till 2:00 am. The party was…er….(cant comment on it in public---danger of being spied by the seniors who organised it). Well the only worthwhile part of the party was after 2:00 am when the party was over…and we made our way back to the hostel. We had to pass by the AH(1st yr guys hostel)…and guess what we did??? The girls howled and hooted and screamed their lungs out….in the dead of the night…at the AH. A few heads appeared at the balcony, whose unfortunate eardrums had to endure the horsepower of the gals’ vocal chords. Well!!... so that was something..….
The 2nd sem witnessed night-outs at almost regular intervals of time---the period of interval being 1 week. Being in the ‘rocking D-Batch’ these are unavoidable weekly circumstances. Come Friday evening, all the books will be closed(ie…if any were open by then). The next two days will be that of blissful enjoyment, completely unaware of the burdensome realities of the remaining 5 weekdays. As though fast-forwarded by some invisible remote control, the two days pass away at lightning pace. Sunday evenings come like a blot from the blue. Along with it comes the great realisation of the next day’s assignments, submissions, tutorials, records, and what not??? But still we don’t start the work…there is always a time for it…and that time is at around 11 pm(literally the 11th hour). The next few hours are that of searching frantically for the long lost books; scurrying from room to room in search of completed copies; racking our brains over Shames and Theraja problems, and where one head alone doesn't work, gathering in the common room with a packet of Parle-G, to put our heads together (….. and also to fill our starving tummies). By then daylight would have set in. So when do we sleep? Oh yeah…there is always time for that in the class, listening to the not-so-melodious lullabies of the faculties.
Night-outs have now become a part and parcel of our NIT life. The last of the night-outs that I had...it was a proper night out…didn’t sleep at all for over 44 hours. It was the last day of our first year in the campus. We were supposed to be dead tired after a mind boggling mechanics test, but the extra energy pumped in by the excitement of the forthcoming three month long vacation drove the sleepiness out from us. Sat through the whole night---packing, chatting, orkutting, watching many movies at a time in a number of laptops….that was a real night-out. The next night too, I had to stay awake till 3:00 am(poor me) to make sure that certain people get down at the right station at the right time in the right way……. (but… psst…psst don’t tell anyone…. I slept off just 5 minutes before they alighted the train).
PS: I had to take yet another nite-out to write this nite-out. It’s now 3:33 am local time.
