#83 The ultimate abode

The ultimate abode

 The first time I got a chance to embrace hostel life is during my graduation days. I’ve a number of experiences associated with it. Reflecting back to those days, when my parents dropped me at new shelter for the sake of attainment of educational qualification, I was filled with tears symbolizing the grief of separation. I had never imagined then that I would later start to appreciate living in hostel. In four years, I got to stay at two hostels; former presented a bag full of adversities and made me strong enough to survive in all situations reminding me of Charles Darwin’s hypothesis of survival of the fittest. I could conquer some of my fears, the most important being the fear of darkness. How can one be afraid of darkness by dwelling inside it? In other words, the erratic power supply helped me to befriend darkness. Earlier frequent power cuts bothered us but later we could find out that it signaled the commencement of end semester examination. Everything has its own importance let alone the challenges.  The regular crisis of water those days made me value each drop of water even more. The journey from being a junior to senior resulted in a complete transformation in myself for good.

One can enjoy life more when he lowers down his expectations from the surrounding. I learnt this slowly. I had never thought that I would ever be able to stay in that new hostel, but this fortunate thing happened. As student of 3^rd years, our batch along with final year batch got shifted to the newly constructed hostel and my life changed with new roommates. I found them more connecting and it seemed to have happened very quickly. From broken floor to tiled room, blistered wall due to seepage of water to smoothly painted pale coloured wall- everything seemed so magical and I started enjoying every moment. May be it all happened because we ceaselessly struggled in first two years and now was the turn getting the result of our struggle. This new hostel had everything that a hostel, in general, should have and the most important room being the Conference room with the provision of power supply during outage from inverter. Other good things such as better connectivity, cleanliness in maintenance, proper lighting facility, and delicious meal made each student contendent. I started to revert back to my old form which I had lost in initial years. I started enjoying my hobbies such as writing, painting and singing. The center of attraction for me in that hostel was the view of sun rise and sun set from terrace. How breathtakingly beautiful those scenes were! Oh! I was completely mesmerized. One can very well make out the extent of its influence over me from the frequent mention of terrace thing from other articles of mine. I fall short of adjectives to describe that divinity- at one side the vibrant red colored flag from the apex of the temple seemed touching the sky, other side the calm and serene river flowing endlessly, and another side green open fields beyond the boundary of hostel’s periphery, I would regularly climb up the stairs (with my mobile and ear chord) leading to terrace to spend time by observing the elements of nature. Terrace provided me perfect place for thinking and imagining the limitless, many also felt that the cool breeze, the night sky studded with little twinkling stars, the river side view from the terrace drove away their anxiety and restlessness.

The new hostel brought each batch closer. Our batch (3^rd year) resided in top floor. Each one of us felt the freedom of staying with own batch mates. The mutual interaction brought us close enough to strengthen the bond of friendship. I got to discover many with whom I had a limited interaction earlier. Each one of them was filled with uniqueness- someone was artistic while the other a brilliant dancer, when other impressed me with her non-flickering dedication, other was very confident and eager to learn each moment. The experience of staying in the hostel has made me systematic, self reliant, confident and determined. The incidences such as late night birthday party and celebration, the open dance, hostel functions, stressing over the result of examination, leg pulling of each other, searching for latest Bollywood and Hollywood movies and series( and audio tracks J ) , home theatre, addressing each other by self devised nick names can never be washed away from my memory. Not to forget, I had also managed to gain an appreciable amount of readers for my articles in the non-virtual world, before I publish any article , I always had a set of enthusiastic readers to scan my article thoroughly .All those tiny precious moments have left an indelible print in my mind. The hostel turned out to be an ultimate abode for me as I always looked forward to return back to it as soon as I was away from it.

Swati Sarangi

13.12.2014