Diary of a living Hostelite !

Apprehension- that was the first emotion that surfaced within when I digested the fact that I was going to be a hostelite. No, actually 'terror' is more likely to be the appropriate word. Worries were aplenty,

solutions rarely forthcoming. Eating Maharashtrian and Guju food (yuck!), washing your own undies in the filthy bathrooms (yuck! yuck!) And performing such chores again and again (yuck!) And more yucks!

Hardly sounded like a rosy proposition to me. How silly I was. These things were my least botherations for the first month in the hostel. I had bigger worries RAGGING! For countless days and nights, my considerate seniors who assumedly had taken a liking to me because I was pretty sporty and had a good sense of humour, eked me out. Talk about differing perceptions! But after some time, I was so used to it that from the moment I entered the torture chamber, I used to strip down to my undies quicker than Demi Moore in 'Striptease'. After all this there was no way for things to go except up. And better it became. I opened up, my initial ghost disappeared, my taste buds were neutralized, got used to sleeping late at night. YES! I had become a hostelite! People from all over India, from different cultures, different education streams, different personalities were present in this hostel.

New things were learnt, understood, respected, hated. Personalities underwent major changes, I started growing up. Now it wasn't exactly a "Gaaon kaa Chhoraa" coming to a big city to make it big but still Jaipur isn't Mumbai. This place exposed me to so many different circumstances that I had no choice but to grow up. In the hostel I formed friendships with people from places which I hadn't heard of before. But what the heck! They have been the people who have supported me at every step for the past 3 years, shared secrets and best of all shared "Tuck" (home food for the naives). If somebody has not seen hyenas snatching food from the actual predator, this particular food orgy would have come close. Man, they used to be something else and everyone has been on the receiving or taking end. Most of the first year was spent in acclimatising and

only from the second year did I realize the true value of G.C.H... (Government Colleges Hostel) when I discovered the grind called

Mumbai.

Where people don't have places to live and the luckier ones travel two hours everyday to reach their destinations, huge families eating into each others privacy in cramped homes(?). In contrast I was living like a King with my own private room at Marine Drive and still paying just about Rs.5K a year for a room worth Rs. 25,00,000 !

Now the emotion changed from Terror' to Attachment'. All of a sudden I saw juniors quivering at the sight of the seniors. How quickly the place had changed. I didn't rag them but chose some of them to do special jobs. One was my personal alarm clock waking me up with a very polite "Good Morning, Sir Kapil, it's 8 o' clock".

Another was my personal flunky, bringing me my breakfast of three bananas and a glass of milk at 8.00 am sharp. I also had a personal masseur (a daily 45-min. massage can make your tensions melt away like nothing else). The fourth one used to get my movie tickets. That one month I enjoyed myself to the core and then back

to the same old routine of doing things yourself and waiting for next year's juniors.

The hostel has always had some peculiarities. Bedtime at 2:30am, watching cricket matches with 200 people in the same room (awesome fun!), at least 75 hostelites going to the Navy Ball every year as if it were a sacred duty, dirty rooms, dirtier rooms, inter hostel matches, awaiting the holidays desperately to meet up with the family and so many things that peculiar only to a hostelite. They just grow onto your personality !

Anyway, T.Y. (Third Year) flew by in acads and it struck me only late that these were my last days in the hostel. Yes, I have been away from my family for 3 years, I have met bad people and gone through the worst of experiences, been hurt physically and been ill with no one to care, eating food and other things categorised as food. But then when the pluses are greater than the minuses and you are leaving it all behind, you are bound to feel lower than a grasshopper's knees. I matured here, I spent some of my best years over here, made friends for a lifetime, being called as a Sydenhamite and becoming an adult. Not only did I change as a person but even my emotions continued changing. From Terror' to Attachment', which has finally paved the way for the word "Cherish". Yes, I'll cherish these years in the G.C.H for the rest of my life. Bye G.C. H, Bye C- Road, Churchgate , Mumbai.

By --

Kapil Goenka