by Yash Vardhan Rajoria, BFIA’24

Students travel miles away from their hometown to hostel, and part of the reason is to experience the hostel life.

If you have consumed any piece of content around college, you must be familiar with the living away from home trope of college life. As soon as you move in from the small isolated haven of your home to a shared room, life throws a set of new challenges, and new faces at you. It isn’t rocket science to figure out that these new faces are as confused as you and before you realise it, these faces get more and more familiar with every passing day. That being said, living away from home is not an easy task. Allow me, A hosteller, to give you a glimpse of hostel life.

Expectations

As someone with a 5 minute commute time to classes, you are expected to be on time for every class but the comfort of a 5 minute commute blurs out your perception of time. The first thought at the start of the day is whether to skip breakfast or not because you woke up at 8:55 AM for a 9 AM class and this is the first stage where you will disappoint every teacher by being late to class, while living in the hostel. After living up to the expectations of your parents, and getting into CBS, get ready to shoulder the weight of disappointment from both teachers and fellow classmates travelling around an hour to get to class before you.

Utility as a hosteller.

You will often find yourself running back and forth between college and hostel during random parts of the day because every hosteller owns a pair of Doraemon’s magic pockets in their room to store random things including books, bags, society equipment and what not. Hostel life teaches you a lot and this is the part when you learn to say no. After a day of disappointing your teachers and classmates. Who are you left with? Well…

Hostel bonds >> Ionic bonds 

The hostel gives you a new joint family where you can just go to any person, and pour your heart out whilst expecting no judgements. A smaller, more wholesome community in CBS. The diversity in the crowd which DU is famous for, is very apparent in the hostel. You will find people from different walks of life around you which exposes you to different cultures, perspectives, goals, and a lot of (emphasis on a lot) inside jokes. You will share different connections with everyone. Like someone to walk around the college with, someone to have dinner with, someone to make all your outing plans with, someone to share gossip with, someone to ask doubts, someone to fight over BFIA vs BMS. 

Sharing is caring

When Munna Bhai said, “sab Kuch Apna samaj, bas mere underwear ko chhodkr” every hosteller cried and this is something you’ll get here not only in the rooms but in both the hostels, half of the time boys be taking things from girls or the pampered son of the hostel which has everything. From Volini to hair dryer everything passes from room to room and you know what you just cannot stop it. Just say “mere paas nahi hai bhai uske paas chala ja” and move on.

Khel Mahotsav

We have organised intra-hostel tournaments for almost every game. Till now we have had tournaments for Charades, Volleyball, Football, etc. These games are not limited to outdoor sports. We play UNO with as much enthusiasm as we play football. People who organise these tournaments work hard on it and the rage, adrenaline, and the dopamine rush it all results in is just mesmerising.

Where actual stories lie

You may find it difficult to understand but there are only so many movies and web series you can watch to cure boredom, and the campus being relatively small there is only so much we can do but one ‘ritual’ we all follow, The walk. This walk, though seemingly mundane, is something which makes the hostel life complete. In the daytime the classes suck the energy from us, in the night canva does it so in this meantime we get the opportunity to choose a set of people and get the gossip which you should be updated with. You will have a lot of walks with a lot of people here and sometimes it will also lead you to a situation where you are moving from one group to another but do not worry you learn how to skip that awkwardness. Some people walk with their roommates, some with their classmates, some with society friends, some with seniors, and some even with teachers. But that walk is something that will give wings to your time and make it fly.

Timings timings timings

Something which a hostel teaches you on a serious basis is how to make genuine excuses for being not on time for anything. The hostel timings are 8:30 PM so you should be in the hostel by that time or your parents need to talk to the authorities and if you somehow fail to do that, then you should be aware that parents talk so differently when they talk to authorities and then the next day breakfast for you will be taunts in your class (the college is small, and you should know sound travel at a speed of 343 m/s). So prepare a list of some excuses and be on time for every food, especially for the snacks and if you fail to do so, well you should have your food delivery apps ready.

Then comes the night

We started this article with the question “Why cannot hostellers wake up early?” The simple answer is that they sometimes don’t sleep or they sleep very late. “Ab Kitna Bhi try Karlo bunny hostel and jaldi sona mostly don’t go together”. You attend late night society meets, assignments, group project meets, etc. People watch matches in the common room, play in the corridor, dance in the lobby, and god forbid if it is someone’s birthday! This is the time when you share stories about the people you hate, the crush you have, the exes you had, and the songs you like, to your roommates and they do the same. Though if you are having a bad day and your roommate did not leave all his/her work to cheer you up then change your roommates ASAP. Also, here is your reminder to call home and get your daily dose of “Aaj kya khaya?”

And now you can make up your thoughts about the hostel.

Just like how CBS is not your average college, its hostel is also not your average hostel. The hostel allotment process is more competitive than the college allotment process so do not be sad and make hostel friends to have free lunch. Cheers.