It was a restless night, the thought of the first day at college kept me awake, the new people I would run into, enrolling into a course I was clueless about and more importantly the fact that my parents would be leaving me and going back home around 600 km away. I felt a pang in my heart and silently sobbed, already feeling a bit homesick.
The next day, I paid a visit to the Padmanabhaswami temple, one of the most famous temples in kerala, before I headed for the college and offered my prayers (the convenient religious sentiments that typically arise surrounding exams, new ventures)
As soon as we reached the college, we were all directed to the architecture department for our first meeting with our HOD. The department building was pretty impressive, it stood out from the rest of the buildings in the campus, someone had put in a lot of thought into it in order to set a unique character to to its design and layout. We seesmbled in the seminar hall on the basement level one along with our parents. There were about 38 of us students and our respective parents, the only familiar face belonged to Divya whom I had met the previous day. We exchanged smiles while all other eyes were focussed on the podium, where the HOD was expected to deliver his welcome speech in a few minutes. After a good ten minutes our HOD appeared. She seemed like a pleasant character.
“Welcome students. First and foremost let me congratulate all of your for selecting architecture, the most creative of the engineering disciplines. We are proud to tell you some of the leading architects like N.N Salim have graduated from this prestigious department. We believe you too have the potential and will one da become leading architects yourself. Another important aspect about the department is our discipline. There is no fooling around when it comes to your studies and assignements. We adhere by strict deadlines, we have a negative marking system for delayed submissions. And also let me tell you this is bit of an expensive course, for eg a rotring pen costs around 250 bucks, now that’s just a preview, but at the end all of it, it will be worth it (so much for giving up the payment seat). So, today is just an officail onboarding sessions. Your classes will begin tomorrow, you will receive your timetables shortly and a list of items you are required to purchase. And make sure you all come in jeans for your survey class and the girls will be expected to plait their hair or tie it up in buns. That’s all from me now. You can come to my room any time of the day, I will always be available for any guidance your require. Good day and best of luck”
Plaits, my my, I had trouble tying my hair in school, and now I was required to do that in college. I was thankful she didn’t ask me to use white colored ribbons. So as promised, we were handed copies of our timetable and a never ending list of items to buy from the stationary outside the college. It cost a small fortune to get the things from the store and I’m sure the overenthusiastic shop owner had made sure to markup the prices a bit to cash in on the innocent freshers.
There was only one thing left to do, move into my room at the hostel. We shifted all the stuff we bought and my luggage into the common room. In between the shifting we came across two other freshers in the room, Sarada and Cynthia. Sarada was from applied electronics and having picked up my Kannur slang, she was quick to rejoice the company of another Kannurite like herself.
Once the shifting was done, I went down to bid my parents farewell. My mother was already in tears, I told her not to worry and take care of achan and herself. My father appeared cool but I could see his eyes had welled up too. We were just two children and with my elder brother away in Mumbai they were now feeling lonely. Slowly they pushed off towards their 12 hour journey back home while I returned to the room.
Around evening, two girls I had seen at the seminar hall checked into the common room with their luggage. Their names were Susan and Reena and they hailed from Kottayam; Susan came across as timid while Reena was your typical tomboy. We introduced ourselves and the few of us in the room hit it off soon. Some more interesting characters would join in the coming days. More on it later. Some early admissions had already been allocated rooms, we paid them a friendly visit.
A meeting was called at 9pm in the common room by a few seniors from the adjoining corridors. Hmm, a ragging session this soon? The anxiety levels were high as we awaited the cursed hour of judgement (ok thats a bit melodramatic). Anyways, it turned out to be a false alarm, the seniors merely wanted to give a brief introduction to the rules of the hostel. The senior rep instructed us on the rules of use of the hostel bathrooms, the mess hall etc etc
The bathroom instruction was an interesting one though. In order to book a bathroom to take bath we would have to get up at 5 AM and lock it from outside. Not earlier than that. We could then choose to take bath immediately or hit the bed while others who needed to take bath would call out the bathroom number and request for permission to use it. Basically you lock it and lease it out until you feel like taking a bath. And if you fail to answer to the calls of a hostelmate more than three times, the ownership of the bathroom is transferred to latter and you may have to then queue up just like others. Since I was no early bird I was confident that I would never have to go through this ordeal. By the time I got up all would have had taken bath and left and I could cherry pick any bathroom I wanted. Being lazy has its gifts.
The common room would be ours for at least two weeks. Initially we felt like the outsiders, the outcasts, who had to make the best of the little space, all of us lying on mattresses on the floor, and it became a bit overcrowded as more and more girls joined, while others in the same batch enjoyed their private shared rooms with a max of 3 people in each, with cots and study tables and cupboard space. However, soon it became the most memorable experience, our camarderie would go a long way over the years, the jokes, the late night discussions, the minor arguments, the common room was a sentiment we would treasure forever.
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