Hostel life - Part 2 (Journey of fun begins........) ~ College memoirs

I started the hostel life away from home on a chilly October morning.. That evening as my parents left carried lots of emotions both happy and sad. I had waited all my life for this moment where I could be myself and where I had no one to question me except my own self. The saying always goes – Farther, the greener. I had definitely come a long way then, as an 18 year old…. proving the saying. - Growth is inevitable. Well so is destiny.…..Had a wonderful childhood with doting parents whom I adore and love a lot, got educated from a good convent where I was cradled by the loving and adorable convent sisters who constantly protected me and taught me to differentiate between the right and the wrong, who believed and preached that God is the supreme power and is omnipresent (Forgive me folks…Actually have been an agnostic, yet a pure advocate for mother Nature whom I consider God…..again no hard feelings….my opinion) , but somehow I still couldn’t get enough of my fairy tale life and craved for an outlandish freedom that I had not known or felt but only imagined. And the day I stepped into the hostel of my engineering college, for me it was a dream come true, away from the known world and entering the new one……
My hostel was a semi posh hostel with a well equipped mess. I had earlier interacted with my roomies but they seemed pretty reserved (probably were still drowned in an ocean of homesickness, planning when they could get back home the next weekend) and I was born a social butterfly…..Sigh! So I decided to dine alone as I had no one around. Being a non-regional initially created some problems but still it was a blessing in disguise. Yet, the initial days were intricate. After the dinner, I had gone to the STD booth to make a call to my parents. (Those days were the days without mobiles…..I din have one then, though I got it later ) I went there and found the booth empty. I was about to step in when a fat senior leapt in front of me and told me it was her turn. I learnt that day about the rule that seniors had the first word in everything. It sounded ridiculous. Being a rebellion by nature I found hard to digest the unwarranted situation. As I was about to retort, I could hear a sweet voice from behind complaining to her another friend that there were no non- regionals around and she wished she could find one. As I had turned back suddenly with a quizzical look, she approached me and I just held out my hand blurting “Hi!! This is Narayani” and then a soft reply came back – “U alone????? Hi this is Apurva and this is Swati“ and from that day onwards, undeniably we became the three best chums on earth, and the wonderful journey of fun and frolic commenced from then onwards..

Our group gradually grew in numbers from 3 to 8 forming a multi-lingual group with multi dimensional personalities - one from Bihar, one from UP, one rajasthani, one marathi, 3 gujaratis and last but not the least, a witty south Indian (Now thats me..). And that’s how our group octopus came into existence…. All of us, except a few were regionally from outside but had been born and brought up in the prosperous state of Gujarat and what tied us together was not the language barrier but the fact that all of us had left our comfy homes behind to build a successful future of which we din have an inkling of what that was all about and were not a bit serious at that time, as to what the future had in store for us .We had come to rock and we did steal the show …..