Saturday 2 January 2010

The beginning....

Never thought that I would become one of those people who finally end up living out of the suitcase in one’s own house! Yet that has what it has all come down to. Four months of hostel life with frequent visits home has allowed me to stay somehow glued to my home and its surroundings. Well I better say that this butterfly never dreamt of coming out of the cocoon of her home. Though my brother gets quite irritated with the fact that I’ve not become one of his disciples to find a haven away from home in my college but I can safely say that I would sooner or later be ‘his sister’.

After what seemed like a lifetime of college life in s1(of 4 months duration) it does sink in now that I have just got 7 more semesters left!!!

I still remember the first day I came to my hostel- july 21. The previous days were spent in trying to coax my father to take leave earlier because I did not want to end up in my college on the last day of registration. But fate had it otherwise and I was here just on the nick of time. After completing all my registration details (once more after the 1st allotment) and having ‘puttu’ for the first time in my life I found myself standing on the doorstep of LH Block IV waiting to be assigned a room. When I was asked to sign the entry register, I noticed for the first time who my roommates would be. I saw Akhila(aki), Angelline( anju) and Asura( asu) entered under room 209.

From my fifth grade onwards I lost the ability to befriend anyone within a few minutes as dad came to stay with us and I never really had a deficit of friends in Trivandrum. Till then I was quite capable of initiating a conversation with anybody, yet on having forgotten that gift I was a little apprehensive of meeting my roomies. I still remember entering the place with dad and mom and I see that two of my roomies had already settled in and all that dad could think of was, ‘nice setup. Much better than BHU’ and I as usual, ‘Obviously, that was Varun’s college’. My mom settled into arranging my cupboard, as always, I got busy chatting with my friends from Trivandrum. Then I talked to Aki for the first time. Then our parents started talking. Suddenly out of nowhere a girl in a Capri and t-shirt enters the room, clearly an indication of how well-settled she already felt and that was when I realized that it was anju and all the while I thought it was asha( anju’s sister), who was perched on anju’s bed all the while, who was my roomie. Then asu entered with her sister, a senior in our college, and found herself amidst three crazy people( as she was to realize later). She keeps on saying now that kuthiravattam ( a mental asylum) is near and that she would have the privilege of admitting some soon-to-be mad people.

The usual confusion scenarios that haunt me in tvm did not intend to leave me even in calicut and infact it seems to have boarded the same train I did ( I know PJ). Inspite of dad wanting me to take south Indian mess I was forced to reconcile with north veg mess. And I was given clear instructions to switch to south Indian mess in august and nothing turned out like that as the food in my mess turned out to be much better than anybody could expect. And to date I have kept up the tradition of not changing my mess! Though I did go to south mess for a day, I ended up feigning sickness to switch back to north veg mess the very next morning. Even people who cannot live without non-veg gave thumbs-up to my mess with chole bhatura being the highlight of our mess. Being a vegetarian, I never had problems with eating just ‘veggies’, as my friends in tvm call it.

Meeting 211: Sudhina (sudi), who was one of the very few people I already knew, was in room 211 and it was she who introduced me to her roomies namely Nidhasha( nids), Marilyn( called anything that sounds plausibly close to Marilyn!) and Divya( divs). It was then that I realized that nids and anju where fiends from Abu Dhabi. There was this natural bonding between these two rooms mainly because marilyn, divs and me ended up in C-batch, nids, anju and asu in J-batch and sudi & aki in M-batch. Unfortunately there was the staircase and the Resident Tutor’s (RT) room in between our rooms but that never stopped us from having all the fun that 10 minds could come up with. It was only later that Garima(garims) and Monica( monics) entered rooms 209 & 211 and then there was no looking back for us from there!

July 22: I got up early in the morning; just my very sincere effort to try to start a new beginning which always ends up getting flopped and this certainly was not going to get any better in the near future. I had spent my first night in the hostel without much of any accidents or making myself a fool. Well at least that gave me a slight hope that life would not be so bad after all. The day was spent in orientation, a word I have come to dread every time I hear it now. Infact we were even telling that our college should conduct an orientation for us to attend an orientation (again a PJ)! That very afternoon mom and dad left me to fend for myself (so unlike the meaning of the words) and I never even thought in my wildest of dreams that I would spend a few tears at this occasion. I never thought that I would miss mom the way I miss her now. Since dad always used to be away from home it never was a big issue for me as far as both of us heard each other’s voice atleast once a day. The way I missed Varun was nowhere near to anything. Though we fought worse than cats and dogs both of us knew that our separation would be really difficult for both of us, crying and cringing yet letting each other in on other’s secrets! Dad and mom left to see Varun’s friend in IIM-K. From then on I knew that I would not have mom or dad the way I had and Varun on whom I could put all the blame of my mistakes, though in vain, though I still do it in spurts. The day progressed without any surprises.

From then on hostel has gone on without me missing any part of it but college still eludes me of the fun that it promises to provide.