World War - Tyre raid

5th August 2007

The most exciting event of the world war was the tyre raid. Our hostel team had to dig out a 200+ kg tyre from the hallowed grounds of WH (White Hostel aka Tagore Hostel). Actually the ground was muddy and the leg gets buried till the knee as soon as you step on it. All the drainages were blocked by cement. The agenda was that our team (OH = Old Hostel = Ramanujan Hostel) had to dig out the tyre in the shortest possible time, WH team would make our task difficult by pouring 100s of litres of water from the hostel terraces through huge drums for the initial 90 minutes.

I was in the tarpoline team. My job was to hold the tarpoline above the digging grounds from one of the corners. On the corners the pressure was tremendous. Below the tarpoline the digging process had initiated already and the job of the tarpoline team was to ensure that no water enters the tyre area. When NH (New Hostel team, the third team in the event) had come to raid OH, we were able to destroy their tarpoline twice. We did a good job and our tarpoline was unbreakable. I have some cool videos of the water getting repeled through our tarpoline.

Enough of the tarpoline story. After the 80 minutes I assisted in clearing the drainage so that the water can be drained out of the area. There were more than 15 people involved in this process. Once 90 minutes were over, I came to the digging grounds and started helping the team with startegies to dig out the tyre. The instruments were too slippery to handle because of the muddy hands. So we initiated the clearance of the dug out material through hand. Once enough tyre was visible, we tried to push it from one side. But after some more digging, we attached ropes to the tyre and everyone gave an attempt to pull out the tyre. Unfortunately the sturdy rope broke and most of us fell on the muddy grounds. We immediately gathered together and without getting disheartened started pulling the tyre from another side and out came the tyre. We won .......................................... Our time was 2 hours 37 minutes, the next best team had ticked 2 hrs 45 minutes. It was a great satisfaction. We made our seniors proud and ofcourse we demonstrated great team spirit. Each member of the team had a role to play - some were involved in tarpoline, some in clearing drains, some in digging and some in refreshments. Everyone gathered their act together and made this win possible. Great show ...