Life in Hostels

After my father retired from service, I was in the first year of my graduation. I had to continue my studies in the same college, in Odisha. And my parents had to return to the town where my father had finally decided to be back to the roots, I mean where our proposed house was to be constructed.

In the meanwhile, I had applied for a seat in the hostel. At first, I was given an accommodation in the dormitory of the hostel. I took a trunk and some necessities to the hostel.

My father had already vacated the quarter in which we stayed and were putting up at a rented house. My father told me to stay in the hostel to have a feel of it and get acclimatize. I went and found that I had to stay with many girls in the dormitory.

It was indeed new and a big challenge for me to adjust with so many, the beds lay one after the other without much space, and girls just jumped from one bed to another. However, I tried and stayed the night there; it was a bizarre experience for me. The next morning I got up to find a long queue for the toilet. It was hard for me to think of the situation and continue. I came back home and told my father, "How can I study in such a room where there's so much noise?" However, that was the initial stage in the hostel; thereafter, I was allotted another room where five of us shared.

I was sure by then that in the hostel, I am not going to get the comfort of home but will have to learn to adjust with others and make my stay comfortable. Gradually I learnt to adjust but one thing that I would do in the beginning whenever some other girls enter the room for chit chat, I would just act sleeping with a bedsheet covering my face. That's because I was a very quiet person, had few friends. A very closed person within.

Hostel food was also very different, quite hot and spicy, but that was okay in the long run. There were some delicious curries as well, and we had to take our own utensils like a tray where every item was served separately. And we would sit and eat.

For breakfast, whatever was available we would have that. As for homemade, my friend and roommate would bring homemade sattu that her mother prepared and she would also give me a share, since I loved it, she also got it when she went home.

Once it so happened that we stayed in the hostel, but the hostel mess wasn't functioning, and they just gave us 2 meals, lunch and dinner. For the morning tea, we went to the guard's house whose wife gave us tea and breakfast. It was a thankful moment for us.

It was the time of Mandal Commission riots that we went to the nearby bookstore to purchase books and suddenly we saw tear gases were released. The bookstore dropped down the shutter and we were inside. We were shown the backside door that led to their house, went there, and Aunty served us with cold drinks and finally as the situation got settled down we rushed back to the hostel.

Gradually, days passed; I used to attend class accompanied by my hostel honors mates. In college, I also had day scholar friends who would invite me to their homes.

The evenings outside the hostel were filled with visitors. They were either parents, brothers, sisters, or boyfriends of the residents.

I gradually started liking the life of the hostel, getting adjusted and making friends. One of my friends said that I had changed, and yes she said "changed for the better." That was indeed a compliment for me.

And when our honors batchmates started for a picnic, we hostelites had joined and my other friends also joined us. It was fun because for me that was the first-ever picnic I went on.

After doing my graduation, I left the hostel, so did other hostel mates. That was where we moved away from one another, some of us went to other universities, some continued in the same university.

In post-graduation, again I went to another university, this time. There was only one friend from the same college of graduation. Hostel life here was again different. Here, initially I had to put up with five girls in a room called the sick room. And later allotted a room in the PG Women's hostel, with just another girl and two of us shared. This girl was two years senior to me. And she sort of dominated me. We had a hard bed and a normal folding bed. So she made an agreement with me that for 15 days she will sleep on the hard bed and another 15 days I will sleep, and I agreed to that. That wasn't a problem with me at all. I had already learnt to adjust and that was an advantage here.

Being a university hostel, of the Delhi University, it was different. There was a Provost, a Warden. There was a TV room where girls would watch TV, movies that were allowed once in a while. Any visitors visited would make an entry in the visitor's record. And the name of the resident was announced there. There was a visitor's room also and chairs laid outside for them to sit as well. There was a small canteen where tea, coffee, snacks were available. In the final year, I moved to the adjacent Meghdoot hostel where I got a single room all to myself. And I was more than happy then.

There were musical nights programs, hostel nights were visitors were invited to the hostel.

 There was music, dance, dinner hostel by the hostel.

Hostels have always been a nice experience though. With rules and regulations to follow, following the scheduled time for Breakfast, lunch, evening tea, and dinner. One learns how to be independent in terms of responsibility, in studies, the daily chores of the room, maintaining cleanliness, taking care of oneself, interacting with others be it seniors and juniors.