A hostel affair

There’s a party in room #126 tonight. We have Colby O’Donis ‘Under my nose’ playing in the background while I sit in the corner table typing these lines. I am not some random chick, clueless about the future; a happy-go-lucky type. I am a research scholar in, if I may say, a premier university in the country’s numero uno research city as revealed by a top magazine. “How lucky”, you must say. But the truth is that the myth of good education is shattered the moment you start living this dream.

The day was spent in the library. A whole lot of reading with snippets of facebooking thrown in between. You come back to your shabby room which has layers of dust pasted on the side walls, a room that has a hole in the wall pass off as a cupboard, years of cellotaping and untaping that speak for itself when you give a careful look to the unevenness in the paint and the smell of moistness in every corner and item in the room. And then you decide you want to take a refreshing shower to consolidate for all the disappointments one is putting up with at present only to discover that, just like the other nights, water is a no show in the bath and the loo tonight.

Cut to a class room atmosphere. The man on the right sits wearing a long kurti teamed with black jeans. Black; a gender friendly colour. A colour that hides extra flesh in all the wrong places for the fairer sex and one that signifies irregular cleaning for the other half. On the left is another man. He is in a checkered t-shirt and khaki pants. Both men wear leather chappals which are commonly referred to as sandals. Pardon my ignorance but, for me, sandals will always be a woman’s prerogative. And there are some ladies sitting across the conference table. All of them in salwar kameez, with a few sporting bindis. All this is being reported by a lady in white. Me. I am wearing a white shirt with a pair of shorts. I have a bit of bling represented in the form of my watch. Do I look the part? I’m obviously a misfit. But do I care? The answer is a straightforward no.

How does one go from being a pauper to an almost princess and back to being a pauper again? The question lingers in my head until I walk past the dormitory. I see girls flocked like birds in a large hall. At such high level of academics, no one deserves to be treated like kids. But here people are and what is more, they are actually okay with it. A hundred plus beds charted out in disarray. Some are already asleep while a few others are with their table lamps beside them, studying with small foldable tables rested on their thighs. What determination, I think.

After which I quietly walk to my room and lie down in the dark. I have some cockroaches for company. I’m not alone.