good bye sastra!!

A couple of days from now, I will pack my bags, and bid good bye to the hostel..This post is intended as it is very difficult to guess, about my days in college, not that I will never study after this. But well, life in an engineering college is just one of its kind.


I profess I am the emotional kind you see in bollywood movies, ( for the ones who know me, duh!!), so I felt there had to be a write up at least, plus am done with my project report and exams for now and hence jobless. So here it goes.


I never knew there would ever come a day when I would say, gosh! I am going to miss this. But well, I am! The first year was a hazy blur. I whined, was a show off and did nothing. Came the second year, I had new friends. Except for bunking classes and coffee and samosas I did nothing much. Then came third year. I moved into the hostel, and still did nothing. And now the final year, I am about to leave and suddenly i realise, I loved it all! Till almost a semester from now, I would have gladly taken the degree had they given it to me anytime. But at the very fag end of these amazing four years, I only yearn for all that magic to come back!!


The hostel, the mess food however bad it has been, the gym that I always wanted to go but never went to, the Sunday magazines, watching movies back to back, samosas at eleven ten break, endless cups of coffee, making maggi, sniggering between lectures, mocking professors, bunking the first hour to get some extra sleep, finishing a novel in a day, the afternoon naps that never were naps (they would eventually last for atleast two hours), chatting with friends well into the night, studying for mid semesters, eating during classes, sleeping during lectures, blankly staring at the board, reading the newspaper from under the benches, texting, the slang I picked up (gaandu, gethu, appatakkar, machi)….
Never again will I be so jobless, get away with being rude, go with barely twenty paise balance in the mobile or borrow six rupees for a coffee or samosa. I have had coffee when labs got boring and I didn’t get the output, when I was hungry, when I was happy, when I was sad, when I was simply bored, when I was excited, whenever I got nervous, well you get the idea!


Here is an interesting observation by a parent who once visited the hostel. Any time in the day, except between 3 am and 6 am, there will be at least one person talking over the phone, sleeping, watching a movie, eating, washing clothes or bathing. That sums up life in hostel.


I literally got away with everything in college, special thanks to my department, I took everything for granted. The marks, the subjects, the classes, the labs and the grades!


With all the fun that I had, I also learnt some hard lessons that I shall always remember. I am much better off than what I was initially and I owe all of that change to this place. It taught me to be tolerant to differences. Everyone need not like what you like. And just because they don’t, doesn’t mean they are dunces and you are better. I have met such amazing people, prodigiously talented and yet perfectly down to earth. The amount of talent that pools up especially during the technical and cultural festivals is mind blowing. If you are the jack of few trades, there are people who are masters in more than one. College humbled me. It taught me to see beyond just marks and prizes, that there are qualities much more priced than all the talent that is there. I do not know how much of the instrumentation I learnt in these years I will remember, but these are some things I learnt and will never forget.


So, thanks to all people who have tolerated me, known me and the ones I have seen but not known  in these four years!! Good bye!!