Living out of a suitcase

The end of my stint as a student will also bring to an end, another aspect of my life, which, I must confess has become quite close to my heart. Life in a hostel. It is close to nine years that I have been living in hostels. Various hostels. Different states. But somehow the vibrancy does not seem to change. It looks almost the same everywhere. Except may be the walls which stare back at you as you wonder, every morning, how much more you can sleep till its too late. Except may be the shit pot which awaits you as you bang on the toilet door cursing under your breath. The food is bad everywhere. The toilets are dirty everywhere. The water supply is always exhausted after 1 in the night. And yes, no hostel ever sleeps. Any time of the night there will be at least one room in which the lights will be on.
I still remember the day, when I began living out of a suitcase (so to say). Though, I had desperately wanted to move out of home before that, the hostel, more so, the residential nature of the course I had enrolled into, provided me a perfect alibi for the same. I did not miss the comforts of home. I did not mind the change in food either. Neither did I miss my study table or my bed. I was actually worried. How to get up so early in the morning? Hell, why did they have classes so early? That too in Gujarat where even the sun takes it own sweet time to rise. At home, it would always be my mother who would wake me up and I had never really conditioned myself to wake up to the ringing alarm. But, I must say, God had been kind to me. My roommate in college was an early riser and his religious ways would wake me up just in time for the 8:10 AM class. Having food in a hostel mess, surely has its own advantages. Especially for those whose motto in life is “I live to eat”. Have it for a week and the motto changes to “I eat to live”. Somehow, the cooks devise every possible way to make the food as inedible as possible. But as the saying goes in Hindi, ”bhukhe pet bhajan nahi hota”, one is forced to gulp it down. A good alibi for the fitness freaks to go on a diet, I must say.
But this life does have its fair share of fun too. You never seem to have a dull moment. More importantly, everyone seems to be having the same problems as you are. Exam time, everyone is tense about passing. Because, like you everyone has made studies take a back seat all through the semester or the trimester. A new movie in town? Almost the whole college (in various groups of course), throngs the theatre to watch the late night show. The entrance exams for M.Sc. just a few months away? Well, the hostel ceases to sleep. You feel hungry dead in the night and bang on a door randomly asking for some biscuits. Or better still smuggle them out and have them in the comforts of your room bribing your room mate to keep his mouth shut.

This life also provides you with a new found sense of freedom. A freedom to spend. Though, most parents never, as a rule, desist from asking you about the accounts and detailed expenditure statements, the phone bills on their side, do force them to stop probing you to the extent of your banging the phone down in exasperation. Quite justified. How can you account for the number of cigarettes you smoke everyday? Or the number of bottles of cold drinks and number of packets of potato chips you consume every month?
Another very good thing about staying in a hostel is the rousing welcome you get every time you come back home. It sometimes becomes unfathomable, as to how, the same house where you were looked upon as a pest, not very long ago and that very set of parents, who seemed to regret the day they conceived you, can throw the red carpet in welcoming you. Probably, for the first time in many years, you are asked, what would you like to eat. For the first time in your life, your father will not make faces as you ask for an extra helping of the pickle. And may be the only time in your life (especially the first homecoming), when your mother will fret at your losing weight, despite the extra inches clearly visible on your waistline.
Few months from now, I will start living in a “house”, still sharing it with others unless all of them decide to move out or one of them decides to tie the knot and continue living in the same “house”. But that will never give me the fun I had in the last nine years, come what may.