MY HOSTEL LIFE

I live in a hostel... for the past 3 years. It had always been a wish of mine to taste the freedom of being away from home. I joined this hostel (its better to call this a ‘cell’) on October 6th 2006. It was a new experience altogether. New environment, new faces, new rules and of course there was the newly found freedom. I intended to enjoy each and every bite of it. My room is kind of a dormitory which can occupy 10 beds. In the beginning stage (the 1st year), there were 9 of us from the same class and 1 from another branch. After a period of 2 months, 1 of my roommates left the hostel due to some problems. And after a year, another 1 left to join a different room. Since then we have seen many faces occupying those 2 beds but none stayed long (I think there is some sort of curse in there!)

Life was always tough being under a set of nuns whose main hobby was finding faults in everything we do. (It’s still the same scenario!) But there was fun in those crude remarks from them also. It’s after I joined this hostel I learned that there are ugly ducklings among the nuns too. I always thought there were the messengers of God. But those in my hostel proved it wrong. They prayed 24x7. I have no idea what they are asking from God after crucifying us. Talking about the food, it was nothing far from worse. Every night, we found various types of herbs and plant parts on our plates. In the beginning, we just had to go to our mess hall and help ourselves from the platter of food kept on our tables. My roommates and I were always the first to go to the mess hall. One reason being the unbearable hunger and the other reason being we were the nearest to the hall. Well, there’s another reason. We simply wanted to get over with the Herculean task of gobbling down what they had in store for us.

After a couple of years, they changed the mess system to buffet. Buffet in the sense, now, the kitchen servants will serve the food. We just have to go and wait in the queue for our turn. Phew... It was tough for us in the beginning to adjust to the new routine. But now as I think about it I have a feeling it’s much better than the last.

Until a couple of months ago, we could wear our night dresses according to our wish. We could wear anything. But now the whole scenario has changed due to the weird fashionable sense of some of my hostel mates. One day, as we walked down to the mess hall, there was a new notice on our notice board.

“Everyone should wear only churidars and long skirts with blouse!”

The very notice ignited the fire of laughter in us. If we can’t wear what we like in the hostel what is the point in saying it’s a woman’s hostel. No one really followed the new commandment until one morning we found the notice laying burnt on the floor. We smelled trouble. As we guessed, some 3-4 days later, the warden appeared in the mess hall (as she always does whenever there was some serious matter to be discussed!). She was seething and radiated heat in all directions. She started pointing her accusing fingers on everyone and went around questioning. No one had answers and no one really bothered about her tantrums. Any one with a clue was requested to go forward and help her out. To this date, the culprit still remains in the dark. Hats off to her!