Once, as a Paying Guest in Delhi University

I came to New Delhi for my Bachelor’s Degree, as a wide-eyed girl who had miraculously got admission in Lady Shri Ram College. The heart was beating like it had already got free entry into the hip and newly opened The Sugar Factory next door. Or received a proposal from the dark haired Darcy himself! The head was more cautious in its celebration. Delhi was the size of a Kingdom as compared to my home hamlet. One lady in The Doon Club had told me it’s full of cheats, cheap women and madmen. ‘Be careful, beta. You know what you need to guard.’ And she had looked at my belt. My own main worry was grades. LSR inspired and thus expected excellence. And being a hard-working, above-average girl may no longer be enough to hold my own.

But what pooped completely what was a half-party anyway, was the fact that I did not make it to the college Residence Hall. Utni bhi achhi rank nahi thee, I imagined Belt Lady (from above) telling her Bingo friends. I had to look for a PG accommodation. My father was silent as a mountain, and as supportive. Only the best had to be picked. Safe. Comfortable. No compromises! That another girl from Dehradun had booked one in National Park, right behind LSR, was enough to judge the book by its marble floor and bathroom tiles which no other PG offered for miles. Three months’ rent was paid and a two-seater booked. Diamond fingers pointed us to the various facilities which were being offered to the ‘girls who are like my own daughters’, as my parents and I followed our PG aunty much like Pip did Miss Havisham. 

Alas! Soon enough it was evident this aunty had three daughters and no room for more. All promises made to parents-with-wallets started dying till they became invisible like the rajma in the gravy. That is, before the gravy ran out completely for those girls reaching the PG late. Just plain white rice in the common room, followed by jam with Parle G in the room. Room? A third bed had been shifted in with a girl on top. Now we three slept so close we could share one quilt. After all, where was the cupboard space to hold three separate ones anymore? Where will the books go? And reams of notes? Cold drinking water would often run out, specially during exams, but never for aunty downstairs. Always positive, she would instead show us the 6 pairs of shoes she got for nothing from the sale at CP. We girls would be torn between requesting for a cold water bottle, or asking for the shoes! 

If life inside the PG wasn't exactly comfortable or conducive to studies, the walk to and from college was downright unsafe. With a shady Hotel V next door and a desolate nallah with pants-down men hissing and pissing inside, it wasn’t for nothing that the area was called The Rapists’ Paradise. So the “freshers” would wait in college for other PG mates to get done with classes, and then we would walk back together. It never stopped the mucky comments from being passed or random hits-n-touches by bikers, but it softened the blow a bit. Plus, running alone down the road felt worse. It was when a friend walking beside me got dragged by her umbrella down the lane one lonely afternoon, with me helplessly running after a screaming her, that all the leftover mirth and fun, of late-night gossips about who has a boyfriend or who wears a padded bra and whom PG Uncle winked at, went completely bland. Completely.  

I decided that day I needed to get inside that Residence Hall. Thanks to the powdered-milk water and cornflakes I had for breakfast for a year to help put my soul into getting the grades, and my hosteller cousin who pushed me to it, I miraculously made it. I topped the internal assessments! Our Victorian Poetry class was interrupted when a hosteller (always late!) sashayed in with the news. My name was on the hostel list. The whole class cheered like I had battled a crocodile alone. I cried big tears. It had felt exactly like that! 

By the time my graduation was done and I became a post-graduate student of Delhi University, Arts Faculty, with some library-cum-bank-cum-canteen allegiance to Hansraj College, I knew what to expect when I didn’t make it to the Post-Graduate Women’s Hostel in the first go and took up a room in Malka Ganj. Meanwhile, Belt Lady (from above) fainted over her Bloody Mary just hearing the name of the place, and Mill gaya kamra bahut badi baat hai, yaar, remarked a senior in college. 

But was I really prepared, still? 

No beds. Only string cots. Four girls in a room with a broken window which let in not just the bugs and bees but also the hoots of prospective suitors downstairs, night after night. One fridge, but use at your own risk. Eggs vanished as did Pepsi and rosewater. (There were whispers that it was aunty!) One phone charging point and two cupboards standing on bricks. And a rickety gate and staircase keeping us and our Maggi all safely in. Itney paisey mein itna hee, please, the seepage seemed to say. Where was one to go anyway? Any kissa that would happen in a neighbouring PG accommodation and uniformed men would come to make us fill up forms, ask random questions, and leave. That fine day we would see our aunty’s face, properly, without a face pack, even as we thirstily stole secret glances at the chilled Roohafza she served the cops, teasing us right under their noses! 

Only a month of it and so I lived to tell the tale. PGW's latest list was up and I was in! That same afternoon, even before the glue behind the list which was put up was dry, I moved all my worldly belongings to its D-Block. One rickshaw, one superman ricky-bhai, one kilometre and 50 bucks later I breathed. 

All this was more than a decade back. I am that much older today, and enough to acknowledge that whatever problems beset students in their life at the university also shape them. Chisel them. Give them extra layers of hide for survival, stomachs of steel and a confidence to ‘manage on our own’ where once we were like deer in the headlights. It is only when the shit starts flowing out of the pot to enter your room, and there’s no water in the taps for two days, that you scream the loudest scream. To ask for what is right, and your right. That's exactly what's making news today and reading which made me write this.

Girls protesting against regressive and discriminatory hostel rules, rallies against the lack of basic facilities in colleges and fee hikes are headlines. Even though I read about them on a chair far removed from the broken, shared ones I studied on, I cheer and support these students’ demands wherever I sit. I applaud groups like ‘A Room of my Own’, trying to get accountability in the PG business. And I respect that they found their voices, which are only getting braver by the day. You see, it's not just about 'managing on your own', somehow adjusting. College is about finding your wings for life. And nothing should come in the way of that!   

I wish I were still a student of Delhi University. This would be my postcard to the VC. One among the 10,000 which reached him recently.

P for pearl, for one

There were 10 huge tables in the mess, each seating 10 girls at a time. But there were 300 girls in this red brick hostel built around a central lush-green quadrangle. Which meant, different years ate in batches. Junior most first and senior most last. In between, the second year bachelor’s students came to finish their meals. Sandwiched, neither here nor there. Between a bell announcing ‘your turn’ and one which said ‘your time is gone’. For food. For desire for food. For more.

She always lingered longer than she needed to, that girl from Year 2. The girl with spectacles. Bony thin and fair as snow, with tufts of hair falling in gay abandon over her forehead. Refusing to follow the convention of the rest of her head. Almost as if in collusion with her mind, to hide those eyes. Eyes which intentionally sat longer in the mess. Way beyond the second bell. Way beyond the seniors walking in. Me, walking in to take my place. To eat. To see her stare.

Every meal she could she would watch me.

Playing with her food making it last longer. By design. I could never tell for sure exactly when she was looking at me. You see, the spectacles never made me see her eyes. Such reflections from surrounding light they shone with. Sometimes, I saw a shade of light brown over them. Where eye met eye. Naked. Hers and mine. As if conversing. A strange feeling of discomfort shot to my head, full of ‘why’s. Some words her eyes quietly saying in my ears, but I failed to hear them across those tables. Did not understand. Did not want to, maybe?

You know how you and your companions find designated places to sit, when you have to sit in them for days at a stretch. Like in a big hall with 100 chairs, 6 thick pillars and windows on two sides. We had found ours. A pattern to follow and sit by. But she by free will. Me? Just following my crowd, my friends. Diagonally opposite from that same pillar, with a picture of a god on it, playfully looking at us as we ate across two tables. Looking down at us, that picture. Almost as if reprimanding her for the thoughts in her head. Enjoying the confusion in mine. And in this communication, intruding. That intrusive god. Without shame.    

And just like pearls fallen from a broken string on to the floor, however lost, do find ways to show that slightest of glint – no matter how dark the corner or how unnoticed - so did she. On movie nights in the common room sitting somewhere around me. Till I could see. Saw. Her looking, again. Not watching the movie but me. In the queue for hostel library books or sick room or tuck shop and such coincidences which seemed not chance. Always in the quietest of corners. Till I would almost make up my mind to go speak with her and ask her what is the meaning of this and why have you been staring at me and it makes me uncomfortable and what have I done to deserve this unease? Till I would almost make up my mind and stop at that ‘almost’, always. Never talking to her asking her. The mind never made up enough. And months would go by.

I never did share with another friend, my confusion about P’s secret gaze, on me. It seemed her heart would break. Making this public. And trivial. Almost guilt-ridden I would sit whenever I was at the precipice of spilling the beans to a friend. Seeking answers was only right, yes, but shaming her in some sense. So my own thoughts I calmed alone, floating like cumulus clouds when in the confines of my private space. What is this that never seems to abate and am I encouraging something through my ways my silence my stares, right back at those spectacles hidden in the hair, or those eyes? Never saying this aloud. As if this was something significant. Hah! As if it was! But, what if it was? To P?  

It remained unspoken. This story. I did not silence her presence, ever. It was she who spoke when it was time for my absence. A little card slipped under my room’s door, on my last night at this hostel of 300. It said ‘I will remember you’. Not more not less. Spoken at last. Signed. The full name there. Like in parting she found courage to write it down. And so I did find too, my share of courage. When I admitted to myself for the first time - I wish we had spoken.

Spoken to understand what all that meant. To her. For me. Why?

Today I sit thinking, this must have meant something to her. And knowing well it could never have meant the same to me.

[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts. The prompt for today was - Unconventional Love - Over the weekend, we explored different ways to love. Today, tell us about the most unconventional love in your life. This is a true story. The narrator is me.]

Early birds and night owls

They say an early bird catches the worm. But it had to take more than a wriggly worm, not an object of my desire at all, to tempt me into becoming an early bird in my school days. It took my mother. 

By some divine coincidence I would always forget that exams were round the corner, as if they were one-eyed monsters dragging their many hands and feet towards me and my neck. Well, they were, but who wanted to believe that before the results were out, warts and all? So, for the most part of my school days, and especially for classes we hauntingly called ‘Boards’ (such a hoax!), my mother was more serious about our exams than me or my kid brother were. And she also believed (show me the person who told her this, by God!) that no time like early morning to study. Sometimes, very early. 5 am in those “crucial” days. It was almost like she was messing around with my whole genetic make-up, by forcing me to open those leaden eyes and mutating me into an early bird when my very genes were protesting to tell me (quietly of course) that you have been adopted, without doubt. I am sure I could sue her for this in a Court of Science. But I had my own science to study. 

So, with the valley stars still out and the gardeners and sweepers yet to come, the light in my room would be the only one switched on till all the way to Mussoorie, and me and my brother would be staring into the space between the two pages of open books. You know, the spine area. For it would be the safest place for the head to drop, without crushing the letters printed. Oh the tricks we tried! I would lie down on my tummy, rest my face between my hands with fingers in blinker-position, and snooze. Eyes tightly shut but ears totally open for footsteps coming to remind me of those monsters I had to pass round the corner, and with flying colours no less. My brother, the smarter one, discovered super smart angles to study. Where even closed eyes seemed open. I had a feeling one morning that he had painted his eye lids with black dots in the middle to confuse people around, but I can’t be too sure. My eyes were tucked inside my own lids, lids the inside of which I especially loved to admire those times. 

Needless to say, and since I am a safe distance away from those days, not a wee bit did we study in those wee hours. Or maybe he did, for now he’s a doctor, but I’m going to drag him into this without his permission. There is comfort in numbers. Plus, I know he used to sleep on open books. I know! If there is anything I could know in those days of sleeping with eyes open wondering why the ureter and the urethra look the same or why I need to know that ethyl alcohol cannot be drunk or how unfortunate that I cannot calculate my escape velocity, it was this it was this it was this. 

But college changes everything, this being one of the loveliest cliché. 

Add to it a hostel full of girls and every atom in your body gets a makeover, much like those black and white pegs in the board game ‘Othello’. Black becomes white. No, wait! White becomes black and the person in the mirror transforms into a being she would not have recognized one of those early-bird mornings from school. Here, she is a night owl. Here, all good things happen at night. All good things. 

You are productive soon as the sun sets, dinner had, mess exited and rooms entered – your own or another’s. Usually, another’s. A two-seater transforms into a train’s top with girls sitting wherever they find enough space for their derrière. And then discussions happen, serious ones. Warden and matron, princy and that-other-mahila-college. About cranky calling on the yellow hostel phone and who stands in a queue for receiving their after-dark fantasy calls. There is midnight hoot-hoot-twoeetohoo everywhere. Also, a no door policy, where you walk in and walk out of rooms asking ‘I need your iron. Is it still hidden in the bin after the last check?’ or ‘May I borrow a packet of Maggi? Promise, will give you a packet back tomorrow’ or even ‘Hey, will you put my bucket in the hot-water-geyser-tap line early morning? I have to study till late!’

Study. Or something like that, needed no mother-figure to enforce. Actually, needed, but there was none. So from 10 pm to 2 am we would be seen with books around us and 30 days to go before those badly-printed university question papers graced us with their presence. While we did not have mothers, we needed company – as constant support against the the mosquitoes, the sleep, the hunger and the heat (Delhi is closest to the Sun in university exam months). In the common room we’ll study as one, motivating others and getting motivated in return - was our motto! Some walked around at sonic speeds slightly swaying as they read, others closed their ears to the buzz turned their backs to everyone else. Some, sans books, would be seen mumbling to themselves and others borrowing papers, critiques, odomos, tea, pencil, tuck, tweezers, erasers, rubber bands, books. It was a Study Carnival, and one which promised us good hostel days to remember, if not university marks.  Ahem!

But that was so many years back. You see …

Oh dear, I just heard the ‘rise and shine’ alarm going off. I better go shake my lazy 3-year-old up. It's 7 am already. You see, next week he takes his exams in the play-school. Colouring, tearing paper, stringing beads, identifying means of transport, and the usual S for She-becomes-her-mother. And no time like early morning to learn it all up! 

Isn’t it?

P.S - Mummy, I can explain. Bhai, this is a test to see if you read my blog.

[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts aimed at posting at least once a day, based on the prompts provided. The prompt for today was - Your time to shine - Early bird, or night owl?]