Every student steps on the threshold of the new life which college entails with a lot of hopes and dreams brimming in her heart. There are the all too familiar apprehensions of adapting to a new environment, making a new set of friends, adjusting to a new course indeed, for most of us, it is nothing short of a new culture altogether. Perhaps the extent of change is even more incessant for those who choose to leave their homes in the quest for a more secure future. Who else but they can understand what it feels like to go on endless searches for PGs, adjust to new room mates, miss home made food and feel like packing back home on every phone call from parents. Yet, no more than a few months are required for us to make those very (initially irritating) transitions such an integral part of our lives that life becomes unimaginable without them after a point, and we start thanking our stars that we landed up with these kind of changes and not another!
I had similar qualms and reservations when I first came to the Delhi, goaded on by a very strong cynical temperament. Yet, from the very first day of college, something clicked and I fell in love with its atmosphere, simultaneously fascinated and awed by everything occurring in its midst. Because I was living away from home too, getting through SRCC was only slightly more important than getting through yet another institute, the college’s girls’ hostel. Shri Ram Memorial Girls Hostel or SRMGH (I admit, the name does not sound that fascinating!) was a faraway dream for me, knowing as I did fully well that it was extremely difficult to get through it, since it consisted of only fifty three seats and the cut offs, hence, tended to be extremely high. I gave the interviews but did not get through in the first list. But luck was on my side because two of the girls who had been offered seats in the hostel, declined and I got a phone call from one of the girls - who eventually became my room mate - saying that I was one of the lucky 53(well, those weren’t her exact words but that’s how I interpreted them).
The first few months weren’t all that great. The seniors seemed too bossy; we had a seven o’clock in-time and the mess duty (I definitely do not have either the will or the patience to explain what that means), by popular vote, sucked! Yet, I knew at the back of my mind that I was lucky to be here, because along with the costs came some very special rewards too. Besides gaining the special status of being a hosteller, I got to live within the college campus and hence became an ardent part of each and every happening in the college and did end up making a lot more friends than would have been possible otherwise. The daily evening walks with fellow hostellers around the beloved campus, the fights with my room mate and the consequent making up to her, the celebration of birthday parties in the middle of the night, being among the first ones to know each and every gossip in the college and owning our own hostel t-shirts - there are certain memories and activities the value of which can never be measured, simply because they are too precious for that. And as I have already mentioned, it wasn’t long before I unconsciously started liking these changes too and before the year was over, discussions began among the girls whether they would be a part of SRMGH the next year as well! But most of us did get through and one year and countless experiences later, I can appreciate the fact that I was lucky enough to get the best sort of home possible after the one I have left behind.
Photographs By: Satyendra Pandey
Article By: Jayshrita Bhagabati
