Rat in the shoes.

The Muser had two other friends (shift mates) in the Hostel. They were occupants of a room diagonally across and two such rooms away. They generally took part in extracurricular activities such as climbing, trekking and 3 show cinema stints.

Sreeni and Kumar always came together – the double antennae. They can ferret out buried information but they had no ulterior motive.

Satire and wit was their forte. This had an undesirable effect on some of the inmates. Wit & satire everybody liked but when used on someone else.

Needless to say the aggrieved person waited for his turn, in case he was not able to redirect one at them , his own brand of wit or satire then and there.

But for this minor infringement on personal sensitivity, they were gladly welcomed to be part of any group or activity. Though friendly, the hostelites did not visit the duo by going in to their rooms.

Somehow this culture had taken root and all the friendly discussions took place either in the mess hall or at the hostel entrance.

Friends gathered in a particular room if a music session (singing or listening) was on or for playing cards without stake. During festival times, the hostel wore a deserted look. The aftermath of festivals meant exchange of variety of homemade eatables.

After one such festival, Kumar came back with a pair of new shoes. It was a bit costly, on our salary (which in reality was a stipend). He displayed his shoes happily, must be due to the sheer joy of owning a pair of such shoes.

Days went by, and the hostel inmates smelled a malodour in the air. Many times in the past, such malodour had wafted through the hostel ambiance. More often, it turned out to be of chemical origin from nearby processing industries. The air clears after an hour or two.

But what perplexed the inmates, in the first floor rooms, was that the odour was persistent and gaining strength day by day. The odour cleared off in a week’s time, bringing relief to the inmates.

After ten days, that mysterious odour stared to waft again through the corridors like a “ghost who walks”. Within a week the odour was categorised as ‘mild to severe’. Finally, one of the inmates hailing from an agricultural family sniffed and identified the cause of odour – a dead rat.

This sniffing posed another puzzle instead of answering the earlier one. The questions that remained to be answered were ‘Where from the rat had come and where it breathed its last?, Why it should come here to die? Where exactly its demise had occurred? Why at a periodical interval?.

Among the hostlers, a few were inquisitive.  They took upon the task of finding the origin of odour as the sniffer’s theories had gaps in it. This inquisitive nature led me to think about the adage “Curiosity killed the Cat”.

The investigation started off by forming a search team. No corner was left out in search of the rat, in the ground floor. This was based on the assumption that the rat also could have lived in ground floor or in a hole in the ground around the perimeter of the hostel. At that time they did not suspect a dead rat in any one of the 20 odd rooms spanning across two floors.

One member of the search team, made an accidental discovery. The smell appeared to emanate from one of the rooms in the first floor. His nostrils picked up the odour as he was crossing over the corridor/aisle. He had a strong suspicion on the left hand side row of rooms.
He could not pin point the source 3 doors of the 5 rooms were ajar. He convened an emergency meeting with the search team to disclose his findings.
The team had some firebrands, who did not stand on courtesies when it came to business. The “sniffer” in tow, they knocked on all the doors and entered inside for a field study – like contestants canvassing for votes.
The first and second doors they knocked upon were clean. The team entered the third room (remember the earlier adage about cat getting killed), fought the stench and came out gasping for fresh air. They were in no condition to continue the search there after, hence abandoned it.

The real culprit for the putrid stench was the unwashed nylon socks soaked in excessive sweating of feet.
The search team was very happy on two counts - mission completed and the culprits (the satire duo) were nailed.

Next day, the Team cornered the duo (wit & satire) and sarcastically said “Having given a demonstration of what your wit & satire could do to a field rat, why not market this technique?”

The Investigation team presented them with a rat trap and a packet of rat poison. Wit and sarcasm had been paid back in their own coin.

Needless to say that Sreeni & Kumar vanished like a rat chased by a cat. The hostelites coined a new adage “curiosity killed the rat too!”