On the back cover of this book, among the various praises showered upon it, there is one comment by sports commentator and columnist Harsha Bhogle that aptly describes the book and everything about it. ?Anybody who has lived in a hostel has a story to tell; if you have lived together for five (years), you have a book to write!? Madhouse?True stories of the inmates of Hostel 4, IIT-B is just the kind of book that would make anyone crack up with giggles and uninterrupted laughter, and would seduce you with the idea of writing a book about the best years of you own life. These stories are from the late ?70s and early ?80s, and surprise you with incidents, anecdotes, accidents and just about everything in an IITian?s life back in that day. These are real stories of real people, and if Chetan Bhagat taught you what not to do at IIT with his Five Point Someone, this book tells you exactly what happens at IIT, mostly in the context of fun, which was occasionally harmless.
In those times, sans the technology, Internet and social networking and with the country still crawling in the pre-liberalisation Licence Raj, things that these guys describe are by all means outrageous, even by present-day benchmarks. Be it a wacko going to lectures on a horseback and actually parking the horse in the cycle shed, or another being detained by the police in skimpy swimming trunks for splashing around in the campus lakes and then travelling all the way back to campus in nothing but the trunks on board bus route 396, or an incident which involved uprooting the bus stop by rival hostels for commuting convenience, as one often says, the list seems endless. And, of course, it carries those trademark stories, which any hostel witnesses on a daily basis, like bad mess food, drunken revelries, unwashed clothes, cash-strapped students switching to bidis from cigarettes and the like.
Written, or rather compiled in an interesting ?information exchange? manner, the book contains short descriptions of incidents worthy of description by those involved in or those witness to them. And before you can get over the laughter fit induced by one, you are already on the verge of savouring the next. Of course, having so many people writing small parts in the book means some drawbacks and occasional drab flip-through pages, but it still manages to keep you engrossed, making you guess where the next ounce of laughter would come from. A commendable job there for just being able to coordinate with so many people and so many of their inputs. Yes, occasionally, you do feel alien to some episodes and descriptions on the account of not being from IIT-B, but that is just a minor irritant.
Overall, Madhouse does well to thread most of the stuff in the book together, even for a non-IITian?s reading pleasure. And if you have ever lived in a hostel, this book is dripping with nostalgia of those days of recklessness, camaraderie, friendship, pranks, and the resistance to grow up. Even if you haven?t ever lived in a hostel, this book still drips with the aforementioned things and emotions. The last few lines of the book sum up its motivation quite well. ?A big group of H4ites all waited for the bus to arrive. Someone said, ?Hey, God alone knows when we all will be together again.? And that was it. Guys who had spent the best part of their lives together with one another through thick and thin and sick and sin and tests and quizzes and matches and competitions, through mugging and cogging and ragging, ponies, beer and mosambi and narangi, were last together at the 396 Bus Stop.?