The other school of thought believed in sleeping for a while and then waking up for the class. The latter operation could be problematic. But the intrepid human spirit devised ingenious solutions. Setting multiple alarm clocks at five-minute intervals was common. Others bribed the night watchman. A solution that appealed to the caveman in us all was that of Danda and hisgirlfriend Gilli. Every morning she would trudge from the women's wing and coo outside his door. (They're married now, and the billing and cooing continues. You should see some of the bills she runs up.) Another solution, relying largely on the myth of camaraderie in management school, was devised by my friend-foe and fellow wing-mate, Chawal. (Who can fathom the depths of campus nomenclature? Danda's real name was Satyendranath). The wing's sixteen rooms conjured up possibilities to Chawal's mathematical mind. It stood to reason that a significant proportion of their occupants would be trying to attend the same early-morning class. Subtracting those who failed to prop up their eyelids and those whose alarm clocks let them down would still leave a number that would be in a position to wake him up.

Now if these people were to find a `Please Wake Me Up' note stuck on their doors, all would be well. At this point, Chawal discarded probability theory and stuck yellow Post-it notes on all 16 doors. He even leftnotes in the toilets. It was good thinking, and it worked for a while. You couldn't escape Chawal's ubiquitous notes. They spanned a wide spectrum of creative expression, ranging from the beseeching (`P-L-E-A-S-E wake up me up for the 8:00 am class. Please! Please! Please!') to the racy (`@#%&*! Wake me at 8:00 or live to eat #% * !') to the terse (`Class at 8:00') and the instructional (`If I don't wake up, pour water over me'). Many of us who didn't take the pink papers made do with Chawal's notes for our morning dose of adrenaline. The problem was not with the notes, but with the notable Chawal himself. It would have been easier to wake up a block of concrete.

Chawal awoke only when able-bodied men joined forces to shake, kick, and pummel him. Fifteen minutes of this treatment would elicit a scream, "Look at the time! Why didn't you guys wake me earlier, you @#$&*!!!" Or something even more insulting like, "Take notes for me in class, will you?" After which he would turn right over and continue tocrash. Well, the wing had better things to do than play nanny. Chawal's visibility in class plummeted.

The hostel office sent a man around to see if Chawal had quietly hanged himself in his room. Yet we refused to co-operate. Chawal turned 'senti', a term that is difficult to describe. Picture a ticketless train traveller pleading futilely with an incorruptible Ticket Inspector and you get the general idea. But his little yellow notes continued.

Epochs pass quickly in the life of a wing. The Post-it Age lasted a few weeks. It was over one late afternoon when Chawal awoke by himself. On his door he found two little yellow notes. The first said, `Please wake me at 8:00 am'. It was his own. The other said, `Dear Chawal, it's 8:00 am. Please wake up.'