THOSE WERE THE HOSTEL DAYS: Part II: College Life (My Experience)

College life is completely different from school life. School days are full of innocence and pranks while we get into college we are mature and serious. The hostel life in school has its own charm and beauty. I was allotted accommodation in G.P girl’s hostel by my college Jamia Milia Islamia and I stayed in a room with two more freshers. According to the hostel rules, with one or two freshers, there has to be a senior. But ours was a lucky room where all three of us were freshers. In a gap of two months one girl came as a roommate but within a month she left the hostel, then another roommate came and she too left the hostel. The Hostellers had an impression that we torture our roommates that’s why they left the hostel. But it was all wrong!!

Our first roommate was shifted to “Womens Working Hostel.” Another roommate was too homesick so she couldn’t adjust in the hostel and she left it. But our third roommate was a troublesome. She used to keep her lights on the whole night with an excuse that she wanted to study. But at night she used to doze off on her open book. Whenever we saw her sleeping we would stretch our hand to switch off the light, but she would suddenly wake up and tell us to keep the lights on. Her name was Kahkasha, but her friends called her “Kaks.” Her another bad habit was, she would stand in front of the cupboard, hide her face behind her cupboard door and eat her snacks. She was one of the amusing characters in our room.

Another source of entertainment were the two greedy Kashmiri sisters, Rehana, Romahana. Without asking they would snatch the food sent by my mother which we used to heat on the heater. We had to hide our food from them. When we used to have jam sessions and farewell parties till morning 4 o clock were the other good memories of our hostel. I was always ready with a script of a play. Daily, during evening we used to have tea party. Next to my room was our caretaker’s room and her son, must be about 8 or 9 years old, was an eve teaser. He had the habit of giving flying kisses and eye winks at girls. Our provost office was located at the entrance of the hostel. Many times I had noticed a dark middle aged woman, with badly worn dull colored sari, and slipper, coming out from the provost’ office. I had the impression that the woman was a worker. We received complaints that we did not wish her at all. Like me, many freshers were curious to see the provost because none of us had seen her before. To our shock the provost was the same middle aged woman who often came out from the office. Whenever she called us for hostel meetings, she had the habit of giving long lectures which were off the topic. She had the habit of shouting too much at girls because according to many girls she was unmarried and she takes out her frustration on hostelers. It was winter, when I bunked the hostel with a group of six hostel girls just because I wanted to play basketball in my college. The college was some distance away from my hostel. But this could not continue longer and I was caught, and we all got a good bombardment from our provost. But by the end of our third year we wished to take revenge on our provost. We sneaked into our Vice Chancellor’s (V.C) office with a long list of complaints. When our V.C entered the hostel premisis he just taunted “Why don’t you record this whole incident.” We took it seriously and students from Mass Communication Research Centre, recorded the whole incident in their camcorder. It was an unforgettable incident of my life. Bunking hostel, loud music, birthday parties and wild behavior was one part of my life. When we are in the hostel we criticise everything but when we leave then we miss each moment that we spent there.