Hostel life - Part 1(A day of mixed emotions) ~ College memoirs

I still vividly remember the day of mixed emotions when I was put in hostel of my engineering college by my parents as the college where I had to study was 3 hours from the place I lived. It was 10th October 2002….and we had just started from our place to the destination where I was going to spend the next 4 golden years of my life. I was pretty ecstatic while I was travelling and was feeling rapturous at the thought of the freedom I would be reveling in, during the hostel life. The hostel stories were pretty persuasive as had heard from my senior friends. The only thing that bothered me was RAGGING. But still I was very eager to see new faces and make new friends. We reached there in around 2 hours and then the rest of the day passed at a snail’s pace as we were exploring each and every place apart from college - the mess, the playground, the tea stall, the departmental store and so on…. The place I was going to stay in was a mini township kind of place with the college in the same campus. I was delighted……Then I met my prospective new roommates and we had a good time introducing ourselves and exploring our room in the hostel..

Finally it was 5 pm. And then suddenly the reality struck me like a thunderbolt and it jolted me out of the fairy tale world I had been enjoying so far. My parents told me that it was time for them to move on and then all of a sudden I could feel hot tears gushing down my cheeks nearly making my vision blurry... I had not anticipated this moment that there was an end for every day and all good things eventually come to an end (din analyze much then as whether it was going to be good or bad) and had not thought about how I would be able to stay away from my comfy home and my doting parents….as I had been busy enjoying only the pros of what I thought was called freedom. As I saw my dad driving away his, away from me and my parents waving their love filled Take care-Good bye…, the vision became hazier and then suddenly there was a flashback in my memory - My first day at school. But at that time the situation had been slightly different. It was for sure that mom would be coming to pick me up. The only difference made was by the time. The situation did appear to be similar but was not. It was then I realized that now I was not only the master of self but also the servant. There had been a sudden transition from a euphoric state to a melancholy state. For the first time I gazed around me and I could see mirror images of myself with eyes gone red. Only then did a thin line of smile spread across my lips and my eyes brightened up a bit and I could hear a voice inside my head – “YOU ARE NOT ALONE”…..