hostel life and the bra story

There was a girl in the hostel. She was a Dubai returned and wore a lot of gold, which screamed Dubai Dubai. She earned the nick name baby elephant because of her size. Those days, mobile phones were not yet popular. This girl used to kiss her parents on the phone while others waited for their respective calls and smirked at her. She was the only child of her parents and was not comfortable with the idea of sharing anything with her room-mate. Now, this is not allowed in a hostel especially when it comes to food because once you enter a student’s hostel, you start to act as if you have never seen food (other than those served in the hostel) So, this goldie baby elephant as she was known, hid her cookies and ate it under the quilt away from the gaze of her room-mate, but her roomate saw it and spread the news in the hostel. After a week, she started sharing and after a month or so, we came to know her name too.
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Suddenly people started losing bras. Initially we laughed at it but it became serious. People actually started losing them, from the strings, from the corridors, especially from the corridors- the strapped ones, the strapless ones, the plain ones, the lacy ones, the padded ones, the reds, black, blue,white,skin and pinks, raising the eyebrows to the collective hairline. Complaining to the warden did not help as the warden scolded those who lost it saying, ‘Please don’t talk nonsense.This is ridiculous’.

But those who lost it were angry and they decided to act. They started recollecting events and zeroed on someone. The suspect changed her room and suddenly, the bras of the new section met with the same fate. One day, someone screamed at the corridor while the suspect was inside her room. ‘Who stole my bra? It was hanging here a while ago. People from that block lost their bras and now people from this block are losing theirs.’ Those who heard giggled in their rooms without saying anything. We went for our dinner to the ground floor and when we came back, lo! the bra was hanging where it was.’ Perhaps the dialog about the two affected blocks worked.

The funniest part was that all of us flocked to see the lost-and-found bra hanging right there as if it was some archeological find of great importance. The owner spoke to her bra,’my naughty bra, where did you go?’ to the laughter of all. After that nobody lost their bras.