It's a contraction (corruption) of 'Elephant stoned', in memory of the feat of some of our more enterprising students who fed two kilos of 'good Manali grass' to a pachyderm. Others later tried to lynch them for wasting all that good stuff, but lost interest halfway through when they got the munchies.
Seriously, though, Elphi (as we called it) had a reputation for drug-taking (and strongly left wing views) though the '70s and '80s, and many's the time when others heard where I was from, they'd say: "Oh, Elphi-stoned..." and tell their daughters to avoid me!
cheer
the sunshine warrior
ps. If you really want to know - Lord Mountstuart Elphinstone was Governor of Bombay for a while, and the college (now some 135 years old, and housed in a beautiful, if filthy, neo-Gothic building) was named after him. The Raj is dead - long live the Raj!
