Khan Shariq was a man who could light up a room with his quick grin and speckled blue eyes, a rare trait that made him stand out in the crowded corridors of G.B. Pant Hostel. Tall and effortlessly charming, he had a knack for spinning tales that left everyone in stitches—or occasionally in awe. Back in our postgraduate days, when we shared a room, Shariq was the kind of guy who could make friends with a lamppost and still have it laughing by the end of the night. Unlike our other roommate, Shameem Ahmed, a quiet, introspective MBBS student who preferred the company of books, Shariq thrived in the chaos of conversation, his extroverted energy a stark contrast to Shameem’s restraint.

“Arre, yaar, why so serious?” Shariq would tease Shameem, leaning back on his creaky hostel bed, tossing a cricket ball in the air. “Life’s too short to bury your nose in Gray’s Anatomy all day. Come, let’s go charm the canteen wali aunty for some extra samosas!”

Shameem would just roll his eyes, muttering, “Some of us actually want to pass, Shariq.”

Pass he did, though—always. Shariq had this uncanny ability to skate through exams with minimal effort, as if he’d made a secret pact with luck itself. While the rest of us burned the midnight oil, he’d be out making friends—many of them female, much to the envy and amusement of the hostel crowd. His stories of romantic conquests were legendary, delivered with a wink and just enough exaggeration to keep you hooked. “You see that girl at the ward?” he’d say, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “She lent me her sandwich*and* her number. Now, who says ENT isn’t a sexy specialty?”

Yet, for all his playful bravado, Shariq had a core of conviction. I saw it flare up twice. Once, when I got a bit too full of myself, showing off about some trivial achievement, he cut me down with a sharp, “Oye, hero, thodi si zameen pe aa, huh?” His tone was light, but those blue eyes held a glint that said he meant business. The second time was more intense. A bearded maulana showed up at our room one evening, insisting on “blessing” Shariq for his upcoming exams. Shariq’s usual grin vanished. “Thank you, but I don’t need your blessings,” he said, his voice cold. “I believe in my own hard work, not superstition.” The maulana left in a huff, and Shariq turned to me, fuming. “These people and their dogma—makes my blood boil.”

His disdain for bigotry and fanaticism was matched only by his resourcefulness. One story, in particular, became hostel lore. On a packed train from Agra to Etawah, Shariq found himself squeezed into a compartment with no place to sit. Most would’ve grumbled and endured, but not him. With a mischievous glint, he coughed dramatically, leaned toward the nearest passenger, and said in a hoarse whisper, “Bhai, just coming from Agra TB hospital. Treatment’s done, but you know… still recovering.” Within minutes, half the cubicle had mysteriously “remembered” urgent business elsewhere, leaving Shariq sprawled comfortably across a berth, grinning like a Cheshire cat. “Works every time,” he later boasted, laughing as he recounted the tale to a roaring hostel crowd.

Despite his antics, Shariq wasn’t just talk. He completed his DLO, aced his PG entrance, and went on to earn his MS in ENT, proving that beneath the charm and cheeky tricks was a man who knew how to deliver. He was a paradox—a carefree soul with a sharp mind, a charmer who despised pretense, and a friend who could make even the dreariest hostel night feel like an adventure.

At our 40th reunion, the air thick with nostalgia and laughter, Khan Shariq held court as only he could. Surrounded by graying batchmates, he leaned back in his chair, those speckled blue eyes twinkling with mischief, and launched into a tale from our Postgraduate Hostel days that had the room in stitches. “You lot remember Arun Kapoor, don’t you?” he began, his grin promising trouble. “That sneaky bugger turned tea-time into a full-on espionage mission!”

Back in our postgraduate days, Shariq had a ritual: brewing a cup of tea on his contraband electric stove, a rickety kettle that was probably older than the hostel itself. It was his moment of zen amidst the chaos of ENT textbooks and late-night banter. But every single time he’d pour the steaming water into his cup, like clockwork, Arun Kapoor would saunter into our room, all fake innocence and a maddeningly smug, “Oh, Shariq, tea banayi? Chal, ek cup mujhe bhi de de!”

“Every. Damn. Time,” Shariq recounted, slapping the table for emphasis, sending a few spoons clattering. “I’m standing there, kettle in hand, ready to savor my chai, and boom—there’s Arun, like some tea-sniffing bloodhound! I thought he had a sixth sense or some black magic. I even checked under my bed for hidden cameras!”

The room erupted in laughter, and Shariq, ever the showman, leaned forward, mimicking his younger self’s exasperation. “One night, I’d had enough. The kettle’s bubbling, the water’s about to pour, and I’m watching the door like a hawk. Sure enough, Arun strolls in, right on cue. I grab him by the collar and go, ‘Arun, yaar, how the hell do you do it? Are you spying on me? Got a tea radar in that thick skull of yours?’”

Arun, apparently, had collapsed into laughter back then, barely able to confess his secret. “It’s the lights, man!” he’d gasped, pointing at the flickering bulb above. “Every time you switch on that ancient kettle of yours, the whole hostel’s voltage dips! The lights in my room dim, and I know—Shariq’s making tea. Two minutes later, you’re pouring. I just time my entrance for maximum annoyance!”

Shariq paused his story, letting the reunion crowd cackle at the image. “Can you believe it? The guy turned a bloody electrical fault into a tea heist! And you know what’s worse? I had to share my cup with him every time! One sip for me, one for him—like we’re some broke chaiwallah duo!”

He shook his head, feigning outrage, but his grin betrayed him. “Arun made me paranoid, yaar. I started boiling water at odd hours, checking the bulbs like a detective. Once, I even tried making tea in the dark, but that idiot still showed up! ‘Nice try, Shariq,’ he says, ‘but your kettle hums louder than a qawwali singer!’”

The reunion roared, glasses clinking as Shariq raised his in a mock toast. “To Arun Kapoor, the only man who could turn a hostel power grid into a tea-time conspiracy!” That was Shariq—turning even a stolen sip of tea into a legend, his stories as bold and infectious as the man himself.

Years after our G.B. Pant Hostel days, Khan Shariq’s legend only grew, his charisma undimmed by time. One evening, he showed up at my Dehradun home, unannounced as always, his familiar grin lighting up my doorstep. “Arre, yaar, you thought you could escape me after college?” he teased, lugging a bottle of mango juice—his quirky substitute for the hostel’s contraband booze. We stayed up all night, swapping stories like we were back in our cramped room, with Shameem’s sighs and Anil scoldings echoing in our memories.

“Remember that ghost prank?” Shariq laughed, sprawled on my couch, his speckled blue eyes glinting. “Anil nearly had a heart attack! I swear, if he wasn’t so busy being Dehradun’s ENT czar now, he’d still be chasing me for that bedsheet stunt!”

The stories flowed—Arun Kapoor’s tea heists, the phantom alarm chaos, Shariq’s train-cubicle tuberculosis trick. But he also shared quieter moments, like how his brother, an architect with a heart as big as Shariq’s, had drawn up the plans for my house. “I told him, ‘Bhai, make it grand, but don’t bankrupt my friend!’” Shariq chuckled. His brother not only designed it for free but drove all the way to Dehradun to deliver the blueprints himself. I was gutted to miss him—out of town for a conference, I later found the meticulously drafted plans waiting at my doorstep, a testament to the Khan family’s generosity. “You owe him a chai at least,” Shariq said, winking. “He’s still waiting for that thank-you call!”

When we graduated, Shariq and I, as roommates, had our own ritual. In a fit of sentimental silliness, we swapped gifts. I handed him my old pair of pants—faded but inexplicably his favorite. “These are iconic, yaar,” he said, holding them up like a trophy. “I’ll wear them to my first ENT clinic!” In return, he gave me his tie, a garish striped thing he swore was “lucky.” “This tie got me through my DLO exams,” he claimed, straight-faced. “Don’t lose it, or I’ll haunt you worse than Anil’s ghost!” I still have it, tucked away, a relic of our hostel brotherhood.

Today, Shariq runs a roaring ENT practice in Budaun, UP, where patients queue up like it’s a rock concert. His clinic is a whirlwind of activity, with crowds spilling onto the street, all drawn by his skill and that easy grin that still disarms strangers. “He’s not just a doctor; he’s a showman,” one patient told me, echoing the hostel days when Shariq could charm a train compartment or spook a stickler like Anil.

Looking back, Shariq was more than the pranks—the tea-time ambushes, the ghostly sheets, the 3 a.m. alarms. He was the guy who’d share his last sip of chai, whose brother built dreams for free, who traded pants and ties like they were heirlooms. At the reunion, as he raised a glass to “broke, bold, and brilliant” days, I saw the same Shariq: the extrovert who hated bigotry, the trickster who aced his MS ENT, the friend who made every moment a story worth telling. “Here’s to us,” he toasted, “and to never growing up!” And with that, Khan Shariq—hostel legend, ENT maestro, and keeper of our youth—grinned his way into forever.