So Far Away from Me

ONE small step off the train, and a giant step for their lifestyles. If college is a whole new world for all freshers, for 17- and 18-year-o...

ONE small step off the train, and a giant step for their lifestyles. If college is a whole new world for all freshers, for 17- and 18-year-olds leaving the comfort zone called home for the first time to study in an institution far away, it8217;s also the first year of learning to live with themselves, by themselves and for themselves, without the self-starting protective mechanism called parents.

8216;8216;Parents, of course I miss them, or rather I would if they gave me chance. Everyday, my father, who is posted in Lucknow, calls up at 6 am in my hostel and talks to me for one hour, and exactly at 7 am, my mother calls up from Chandigarh for another hour. It8217;s only after they are assured I have been given my daily quota of instructions that I can begin my day,8217;8217; smiles the pretty Ananya Sharma, an army officer8217;s daughter, who has trooped to Pune8217;s Symbiosis College after passing her 12th for the new five-year course in Law and is living at their international youth hostel Vishwa Bhavan.

8216;8216;My parents wanted to give me a mobile but I had the sense to refuse it,8217;8217; grins Kush Sharma from Delhi. For Kush, life as a paying guest in one of Pune8217;s student-dominated societies is a chance to live the life of a normal teenager. 8216;8216;My father, Sukhbeer Sharma, is a minister, chairman of the Delhi Welfare Board, and I was just too tired of being treated like a VIP all the time. Here you are on your own, doing your own cooking and making your own decisions and it8217;s great,8217;8217; he exults, even as Aditi Manchanda, having left home for the first time, admits to spending the first two days just crying and feeling homesick.

8216;8216;Basically, there are mixed feelings 8212; you feel happy you are away from dad when you realise that you don8217;t have to take permission to go for a movie, but miss mom when you have to wash your own clothes,8217;8217; summarises Deep Roy from Kolkata, a first year Law student.

8216;8216;But the best part is that most of us here are not Puneites, so there is that sense of understanding and oneness which, coupled with the cosmopolitan atmosphere of this college, does a lot to make you feel comfortable.8217;8217;

Except, of course, when it comes to the biggest survival issue outside home: food. 8216;8216;I can8217;t get green chillies here or chhole bature,8217;8217; groans the joke-a-minute Gagandeep Singh from Ludhiana who changed seven institutions before finally deciding that Symbi as all its denizens call it was the place to be. 8216;8216;Punjabi food is difficult to get and I miss the masala in Maharashtrian dishes. Plus food here is so expensive. The day the yearning gets too much, I go to the nearby gurudwara for langar.8217;8217;

8216;8216;Having seen vegetables floating in water that goes by the name of curry for lunch, I realise the best thing to do is to cease analysing the food and just gulp it down,8217;8217; advises Saima Mukhtar from Allahabad who, by virtue of being the first girl from her conservative family to ever step outside the home for higher education, is too grateful for her new-found freedom to crib about things like food. 8216;8216;I don8217;t know whether being away is good or bad but it definitely is a very essential experience if one is to grow as a person and have a sense of responsibility, right from looking after one8217;s own well-being to cleaning your own loo,8217;8217; says the sensible 17-year-old.

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And close on the heels of food appreciation is the crash course they all automatically receive on money management. 8216;8216;For the first time, we read menu cards right to left 8212; first the price, then the dish,8217;8217; grimaces Poorvi Chitalkar from Delhi while everyone agrees in a chorus that the bottom line about money is that there should be more of it, be it Kush8217;s monthly pocket money of Rs 4,500 or Ananya8217;s Rs 1,500. 8216;8216;Yesterday, I learnt to survive a whole day with just Rs 5,8217;8217; reveals Deep. And to everyone8217;s query of how he managed it, pat comes the reply: 8216;8216;Simple, by borrowing from a friend!8221;

With ragging being a non-event at Symbiosis, the only blow for the freshers comes in the form of the mandatory attendance of 90 per cent, a new rule. 8216;8216;God, that8217;s worse than school. In fact, the other day I reached 10 minutes late for the lecture and the professor refused to let me in!8217;8217; exclaims an incredulous Kush, even as he adds, just a trifle sadly, 8216;8216;We are fast learning that all the freedom we have is balanced by the duty and discipline demanded of us.8217;8217;

And so life has just begun. Caught between parents8217; letters and e-mails that they describe as manuals 8216;8216;as all they contain are dos and don8217;ts8217;8217; and their first shot at making their own decisions 8216;8216;Isn8217;t Rs 3 too much to pay for the ironing of one pair of jeans?8217;8217;, they are ready to take on the challenge called life. With 90 per cent attendance and 100 per cent zest.