Hostel Daze ft. Medical College

                                                                            -Dr Ripudaman Singh Bajwa

The stereotype engineering hostels are portrayed regularly in movies and on the OTT platforms. If I decide to write about the medical college’s boys hostel (like today), it would be your stereotypical engineering boys hostel + much more wilderness, ‘greenery’, Munnis who got badnaam along with some ‘organ trains’. Now if I kept you guessing on that train, then you need to grow a set. Of extra cerebral intelligence centres, you freaks!

Growing up in an Indian household, I always wondered what life outside the protective familial spell would be. Not protective, but proactive? For sure. Medical college hostels have an aura of their own and also, more often than not, a smell. As a med student, you learn standing for long hours, punctuality for assembly points and respecting the seniority hierarchy from your hostels (-50 for Hufflepuff for guessing hospitals). Sorry, Hufflepuff fans but introducing the word puff was necessary and anyways, is anyone one? *Alexa plays Manali trance by Neha Kakkar by default.*

All characters appearing in this picture are fictitious. Any resemblance to this nice state of affairs is non-existential in the subcontinent*.

No matter what your ideologies about swearing, labels of walking Johnnie’s or the Indian family act were, they change in an organised, free-flowing and subtle manner. Sooner rather than later, you end up adapting to the washroom ethics of spreading uncleanliness, eating while ridiculing the mess food daily or teasing anyone who starts with Guyton or Harrison’s. Pro tip: These snakes are also the blackest of black sheep and you need to stay away!

The Hostel’s daze fades but never to a colour lighter than the changes you adapt and unconsciously become a part of. Life will never be as simple as bursting crackers in your neighbour’s hostel room or eating someone’s birthday cake after ruthlessly beating them for minutes. I didn’t want to dwell into nostalgia but I still wonder if friends of friends* made it to the hostels in oversized hoodies and a lack of eye contact with the sleepy security guards?

I would end by suggesting that one should never skip the opportunity of becoming the Jalebi bai for a performance or two or holding the reins to make someone else the same a year or two later. Maybe it would be a brag to include the city of Lahore’s eternal quote of being unborn but you need to be in the water to start drowning.

Suggested further watching – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDgo_WAcPog&t=394s

(Make in India)

And I will leave the asterisk unanswered because I can. (Humerus or not? The DoE wanted no use of this word and that’s the sole reason for its inclusion here. You see, Hostel also taught me rebellion).

About the author

Ripu is a graduate of Government Medical College, Patiala. He enjoys lively conversations, serving volleys and relishing foods. Poetry is therapeutic for him and wishes someone would become his Spanish teacher. Gracias!

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