Who was your LG?

The first person that I met in Rourkela after a thirty-four hour journey from Madras, through godforsaken towns and villages that don't find a mention even in railway timetables, was the person that would eventually sign up to be my "local guardian" (LG).

My LG, Dr V Prasad (name changed for his own safety), was a decent gentleman and a professor at a local college.

He, and his wife, were brilliantly hospitable people. They fed me well and took good care of me. Dr Prasad even drove me to the college, in his Bajaj Chetak, and helped me through the college enrollment.

Dr Prasad was related to our landlord in Madras.

"Behave decently with him, or the house owner will have your mother evicted from the house" Ramana mama, my maternal uncle, had warned me, before I left town.

The concept of LG (which had initially sounded like a brand of asafoetida) was intriguing.

Per college rules, every student had to have a person with a local address that would take responsibility for the student's conduct during their time at college. The college could summon the LG to complain about the students' misdemeanors, incomplete assignments, unpaid mess fees, unsolved police cases, and so on. The LG could be a relative, an acquaintance, "a temple priest, or a thug - so long as they had a local address, where nasty letters could be sent", my senior, RK Ramesh told me, during our first meeting.

It sounded like an ominous responsibility to take. I doubted if Ramana mama. himself. would have signed up for it, let alone someone seven seas and fourteen mountains away.

Most of us ended up piling on to a friend's LG or cooked up an imaginary name and address at a faraway sector in Rourkela so as to keep the communications from the college away from our parents. For the lucky few that did have an LG in flesh and blood, it often meant great food, a hideout to escape ragging (and pungas in later years), a potential marriage alliance, and what not.

But one had to strike the right balance and not kill the goose that laid the golden eggs, in a manner of speaking.

My friends, Ganesh and Naresh, did just that, within a few months into first year. Ridden with gastronomic temptation and famished by weeks of bland mess food, they ravenously gobbled up eighteen idlis and nine vadas each, accompanied by four katoras of sambhar and a large bowl of "getti" coconut chutney, and washed it off with one-and-half tumblers of filter coffee, at their LG's place.

The belching of the two satisfied stomachs was heard kilometers away, and was mistaken for sounds from the blast furnace at Rourkela Steel Plant.

The LG's household was so traumatized by the raid on their kitchen that they immediately packed up their belongings and transferred to another town, leaving no trail of their whereabouts.

I have heard of other stories where REC students overinterpreted the hospitality of the LG and sought to solemnize the guardianship with a marriage proposal to their daughter. They had killed the golden goose again. After all, the seamless conversion of "dosti" to "rishtedaari" worked only in Sooraj Barjatya's movies.

As for my LG, Dr Prasad, in order not to render my mom homeless, I maintained a safe distance from him and his two marriageable daughters. After my first meeting, I perhaps, met with him on a couple of occasions.  The sacrifices one had to make, in those days, to keep family safe!

Did you have an LG? What were they like? Did they help you traverse the tough world of REC? Feed you with good food? Or did you cause them to quit their job and leave town overnight?!

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Interested in reading my other blogs?

How about my ode to old Hindi film music? Which is here --> THE GOLDEN AGE OF HINDI FILM MUSIC.

The first episode is HERE.

Or my eulogy to one of the greatest playback singers of India? SP BALASUBRAHMANYAM.