They say history repeats itself. It did repeat itself in our class today, albeit in a smaller measure. What part of history was repeated? World War I.

It all started before the Eco102 class when Kanishka stole swiped Gautam's file. Now Gautam constituted a few preliminary enquiries, and by the time, the lecturer was in full flow, discovered who the culprit was. Kanishka sits about 10 feet away from him, so Gautam could not reach at him, neither could he get up, since the Prof was teaching. So Gautam started making tiny paper balls. His plan being to hit Kanishka with them and make him pay for his follies, a thought similar to one nursed by the assasin of the Archduke Ferdinand in 1914. However, unlike the assasin, Gautam does not have a great aim and he hit Kashyap instead. Kashyap maintained a stiff upper lip, but a few others noticed this. Usha, Sunil and Sonia saw an opportunity to enter the fray and started pelting Gautam and couple of others with paper balls. Gautam by now, was in full flow, though bulk of his ire was still directed at Kanishka. What happened was indeed similar to the First World War with the perceived victims joining in the fun. It might even be likened with the pie throwing scenes in movies where person A hits person B, and person B wanting to retaliate, has a horrible aim and hits person C instead. Now person C does not have Gandhi's non violent philophy nor Arjuna's accuracy, and hits person E. It soon involves everyone from A to Z and is not a very constructive concept.

The beauty of the whole thing was that the Prof never realised what was happening. The attacks used to take place when his back was towards us.

That's paper-fight in an IIM for you. The sophisticated version.