The Kremlin, the Darkness and the Frogs

Kremlin was a room right in the middle of the corridor connecting the left and right blocks of the Men’s Hostel. It was also next to the stairs and to the doorway that led to the Mess. The strategic location was one of the probable reasons why one of the oldest civilizations in my college hostel had born, thrived and flourished there.  Like the ancient civilizations that thrived near rivers, civilizations in hostel thrived at strategic locations like that of Kremlin.

Kremlin was an establishment, “A place where you find drunks at any given time’, hang out place , hide out place, civilization and a hostel room all at the same time.Kremlin was obviously not that from prehistoric times, at first it was like any other room in the hostel with green enamel painted doors (that was fun to peel off) and white washed walls. Room number was neatly stencilled in white paint and was painted over and re-stencilled every year, but that was of course before the frogs came. Kremlin was never painted after the frogs occupied. Like all great revolutions and civilizations (really !!) Kremlin was born from a single person, he was nicknamed the frog partly because of his facial features and mainly because of the want of a better name.

Frog moved into room number 111 on a rainy day in October and closed the windows and shut them up with crossbars forever, not to be opened ever again by any of the subsequent occupants also known as frogs. Story goes that once a friend of the Frog had had tried to get out through the window, thinking in the fading light of his soberness that it was a door, the Frog picked a fight with the drunken wretch and broke his right hand, nobody ever tried opening the windows again. The most salient and unique feature of Kremlin was not the empty rum bottles or the stench of dirty laundry or the closed windows, all that had been replicated in parts and full by others , but the darkness. Kremlin was dark all the time and the quality of the darkness was what set it apart. Kremlin’s darkness was as old as the name itself and the age seemed to give it a smoothness and silkiness that only age can.Darkness of course is a great leveler, it makes everything look more like everything else with nothing standing up or lying down. It turns a gray world look black and sneers it at as only the last flag post of darkness in a gray world can. Like in the case of wine, likeness towards darkness is an acquired taste that one can acquire or act to have acquired.

The only light source in Kremlin was an old table lamp that was a broken in the back and propped up by a short iron rod, bringing the bulb about 10 inches from the table top. It could be said that the short iron rod defined the amount of light in Kremlin and thereby defined the amount of darkness in Kremlin.  In Kremlin a sober man of normal eyesight could see the silhouette of the person he was looking at, but not the facial expressions or other subtle movements that people are habituated to make. Like life and may be the universe itself, it could be argued that this extremely advanced feature of Kremlin was a chance occurrence determined by the length of the only iron rod the Frog could find or by some greater designer who decides the length of iron rods that lie around.