Inspiration comes from nowhere but people around you.
Starting a blog and expressing views has been my idea for a long time. But, the
spark was given by one of my seniors in my first year of college life at
SASTRA. She inspired me to document everything that goes along in life. Every
person has a different story and different view of looking at them.
Life of a girl at SASTRA:
Living as a hosteller at SASTRA has its own beauty along
with irritation. The first thing you think about when you wake up is ‘omg! The
bathrooms must be full. I need to be in a queueL’.
Standing in queue for bath is the most stressing thing in the daily routine.
You could have been waiting before the same door for 20 minutes and keep
knocking at it, and the person inside keeps saying 5 more minutes and once they
come out , you realise the person had been washing 3 buckets of clothes all
this time.
Then, the wonder food at mess. We keep wondering what the
menu would be that day, wishing it wouldn’t be pongal, samba upma and the bread
sandwich. The food here made us realise how awesome our mom’s cooking is. The
saying ‘one understands the value of it, only when you lose it ‘, comes to
existence at this stage of life. The worst recipe of your mom becomes the best
liked food in here. So, imagine how adjustments in life started right at the
start of the day.
The college bell rings at 8:40 and how much ever you try to
reach faster, you would reach only at 8:45 because we know which teacher comes
fast to class, and who is too strict with punctuality and attendance and, our
lazy walk depends on it.
Oh! Here comes the slow class hours, where you just sit
idly, sometime listening, sometime texting, sometime just scratching whatever
is there on the black board, and most of the time trying to keep your eyes
open. The 20 minute break is hell of a time. To buy a snack at college café at
this break is like an adventure to girls like me. If you don’t have a boy
friend (just a friend in boys I say), you will never be able to get the
precious golden puffs. By the time you reach the shopkeeper, it all expires
down to a cup of tea or coffee. Again.. classes.. blah blah..
The 50 minute lunch break!! The most tiresome walk for a
girl hosteller is the journey from the VKJ block to the girls’ hostel to eat at
the mess. 10 minutes to walk, 20 minutes to eat and another 10 minutes to get
back to class. The food given in this interval seems such a pleasure. Anything
given at this hunger hour is so delicious to eat. The phulka, rasam and fresh
curd eaten in any quantity is anyways exhausted by the time you reach back
class.
The classes after the lunch break is difficult to survive.
Keeping your eyes open in this period is all
your talent. Every person keeps staring at their watches for the moment
it turns 4:50.
You might wonder why the timings are so broad. It’s because
‘THIS IS SASTRAAA!! ‘And you might even find yourself wondering if you had
fallen into a school again after so many years of painful education.
But the fun part of college life starts soon around 5. The
bad luck is for the girl hostellers because of the dumb curfew rules that needs
them back into their hostels by 6pm. So, the thing that’s going on in our minds
is, ‘Where to go ?? KC, Canopy , Bank
,or temple ‘. For such a short interval and a lot of duties to cover makes us
go mad. Well duties range from creating a bank account to buying yourself a
lime soda which otherwise at home, your parents would do for you while you sit
comfortably on your sofa watching TV. OOH! And talking about TV. Every day
scholar I call makes me jealous of one thing of their possession, a TV. You may
feel at times, that you miss TV more than you miss home. SO, I can say there
isn’t really a place or time for girl hostellers to spend evening except for
the hostel premises.
Coming back to the hostel at 6 and rushing towards the
biometric scanner and the warden to shout out our name for attendance is the
most compulsory thing to do, or else we’d be in real danger. !!Back to the
rooms , the roommates have a brief description of the classes and the funniest
moments of their day- whether complaints, harassments, embarrassments, grades –
it all ends up to be funny while speaking it out. The cup of tea and a daily
snack also becomes a compulsory part of the evening start-up, except for the
nasty pani-pori where people just dip their hands into the pani and the same
into their mouths. Some habits really irritate us and there is no one to
complain it to.
Then comes the interesting part, ‘what to do in the evening?
‘. First thing that comes in mind is the enormous homework giving subject ED
(engineering drawing). The next thing in mind would be anything never relating
to subjects because all we have in mind is, ‘I am in college and I don’t have
to do any daily lessons’. But, the pile-up finally ends up with a huge mess and
we realise it only during the last week of commencement of the scary CIAs.
Washing piled up clothes is a stressful and a fun job to do
when you take along your friends and play some music and groove with it. At
last when the work is done and you find someone using up your hanging rope and
all your hard work seems to go waste, and with all your anger, you push those
clothes to a corner having an anger of just hitting the girl who hung them
there on her face. Well, this ceremony doesn’t happen every day, it takes place
so often and consequently it’s referred to as a ceremony.
Other evening activities include going to the Gym, which is
also an occasional field trip just to look at the equipment and its working :P
. The lawn is the best place without boundaries for our lives. We are allowed
to be how we want to be, make noise, sing, have fun, eat, tease and much more.
The SANDHYA juice shop is another attraction in the hostel premises, wherein
the darkness and the dim lighting from the ‘NEW hostel’ makes a beautiful
effect seducing you to sit for hours together which apparently is not allowed. After
all the sight seeing and the time wasting in the evening , comes the dinner
again in the same old boring mess.
We get back to our hostels by 9
and we find ourselves occupied with the most important thing of the day. Well,
you might expect sleeping – that’s a no because for hostellers evening starts
at 10. We start doing odd things only at 10 – like watching movies , watsapping
, facebooking , quarrelling , watching videos on youtube. This freedom of
waking up all night with no one’s restriction can be enjoyed only at hostels.
Only when I came here I realised, India is awake only at 11 at night. You will
find watsapp so busy at this stretch. You see the corridors filled with people
at night 12 listening to music, talking to friends, and some nerds reading ..
:/ .
It will almost be 2 in the
morning, you wish GOOD MORNING and fall asleep having your device in your hand
until someone guards it.
We have all imagined too much
about College Life. Well, movies have made an impression in all of us and this
college is nothing like it. Freedom in here is better than many colleges which
don’t allow interaction between classmates of opposite sex. According to what I
have observed, girls have come prepared and have a decision in their head on
what to do – and thus, their behaviour doesn’t vary much from first year till
the final year. But, we can see a drastic change with guys. They could be the
shyest people I have ever met in this world. They are so reluctant to socialise
in the first years that maybe due to language barriers existing initially. But,
by the final year, a guy without a girl friend is like a needle in a haystack.
WHAT A CHANGEOVER MAMU!!
College changes our behaviour,
don’t let it change your character and identity. Changes must come, but we need to be how we
are. Attractions and distractions are part of our life and as my father says,
‘Know everything, try something and practice only few things ‘, which means
know all good and bad, try the least harmful and be away from the dangerous.
College life is supposed to be enjoyed and we should not let anything or anyone
stop us from it. So, HAVE FUN, BE COOL AND BE SAFE!!
