Room 206

My thoughts and memories are kind of juxtaposed right now and hence the chronological order of these posts will probably not make much sense, yet my goal is really not to document every single detail but rather those that are worth capturing and of course if my mind lets me. If I had to write about every single event from my four year stay in Manipal, I would probably have to quit my job which pays me to live here!


I don’t think I’ll ever forget that Sunday, a couple of bags were packed and we hauled ourselves into the cab that took us to Manipal. It was a day that will be etched in history forever, okay I agree, in my history only! On getting to the hostel blocks, it did seem like I was put up in a nicer looking block than the person I traveled with. The dinghy room, the fact that the best bed in the room was already occupied, the knowledge that my roommate was a keralite (call me racist if you may but this was my first time out on my own and familiarity does not breed contempt, although I did know that the third roommate was a school-mate) did not improve my mood that was slowly plummeting into an abyss faster than the elevator ride to the top of the tower of the Americas. It was only in the II year that I realized the true meaning of dinghy, we’ll probably get to that or not.

                                                                                      A view from outside, that corner room was ours.

The ‘how I came about being allocated Room 206’ is an interesting back story too. The nuance of room allocation was something I learned only after spending about two weeks getting to know the girls, including religion and region. And yes, I do believe those factors played a significant role in determining your room-mates. Our floor was pre-dominantly occupied by Konkani speaking girls, all speaking it with different accents, the GSB Konkanis from the area, the GSB Konkanis from Kerala and the Mangalorean Catholics. Most of the rooms had all GSB Konkanis, all Mangaloren Catholics, a couple of NRI girls with a girl from Mumbai and some mix and match like in our room.

Back to that first day in the hostel, I decided to leave the bed in the middle for the third person and plopped onto the hard bed in the corner facing the door opening, there really wasn’t anything to look around for, the custom desk and chair for each of us, the steel wardrobe and the whole row of bathrooms on the corner of the floor certainly did not look inviting. I unpacked the bare necessities and joined the others who were looking for a store to buy some more other bare necessities from! Trudging back from Kamath’s, which was right opposite the basketball court, I found more familiar faces and then ended up in the mess, it was called Ananya (it means single or unique). Rows and rows of wooden benches and tables lined the mess, aloo paratha and tea/coffee was on the menu and it was something I’d never eaten before and for some reason with the whole first day in hostel mood, I have always considered aloo paratha to be something I do not like! this is my probably my opening to mention that aloo was the staple diet in all our hostel mess's right upto the fourth ;') I promptly traveled back home the next day as we did not have a few hours! And that was just so classic of us from around the area, we could go back to our comfortable beds into familiar surroundings while the rest of the girls had to tolerate missing home, some bit of ragging on the weekends and could never complain.

My keralite room-mate was the sweetest girl I knew back in the first year.

MIT and Manipal was the place where the transformation happened, from a teenager to the twenty-something’s.