Four years, two rooms, countless midnights, and a lifetime of stories stitched between chai, chaos, and brotherhood.
🚪 The Night I Walked In
I still remember the exact sound my suitcase made when it rolled across the hostel lobby. It wasn't a normal sound. It was the sound of a door closing behind the boy I used to be.
Mom had cried a little at the gate. Dad gave that classic, "haan haan, sambhal lega" nod, the one that tries too hard to hide a lump in the throat. And then I walked into a building that smelled like rust, sweat, history, and a thousand boys who had already lived a hundred lives before me.
The first lesson arrived quicker than an attendance shortage notice.
I stepped into the lift. A senior looked at me and said, dead serious, "Knock kar panel pe. Warna balls baj jayenge." I stared. He didn't blink. So I knocked.
That knock wasn't about the panel. It was initiation. A stupid tradition that signalled, you are inside now . It felt ridiculous and sacred at once.
Hostel didn't change the world. Hostel changed a small man inside me, slowly and without permission.
The first rule was nonsense, the first belonging was louder than home. You learn that the smallest rituals sometimes teach you who you are.
🏠 B3 417: The First Home That Wasn't Home
Room B3 417 became my address and my argument with adulthood.
The first night it was awkward as hell. Three strangers pretending to be busy, half-unpacking, piles of clothes claiming corners of the beds like territory. But then the door stayed open, and everything shifted.
People began to drift in. For chargers, for gossip, for that feeling that somewhere else is making noise too. B3 417 turned into a railway platform; arrivals, departures, delays, reunions. We shared notes, food, heartbreaks, half-baked plans and full-bellied laughter. A tired roommate would arrive at 3 AM and leave with a new joke and a cup of chai.
I had always thought home was a place you returned to. Hostel taught me home can be where people return to you.
There's a different kind of intimacy in a room shared with strangers. It's raw, messy, inefficient. It has no filter, and yet it teaches you the value of being seen when you are at your worst.
Home became less about a roof and more about open doors. B3 417 taught me that belonging shows up in the small interruptions.
🎂 The Birthday Ritual Nobody Survives
Hostel birthdays deserve a manual.
The ritual was textbook:
- Spread the word, "Aaj raat uski gand pe laat."
- Roll up belts.
- Warm the legs.
- Execute the assault, followed by hugging like nothing happened.
Is it stupid? Yes. Is it violent? Absolutely. Does it make sense? Not at all. And yet, it builds a certain brotherhood you can't manufacture in a seminar room.
Boys bring the ugliest, sweetest cakes ever made. Girls bring pretty cakes that taste like regret. We don't eat the boys' cake. We wear it. Faces become frosting. Shirts become napkins. We laugh while sticky sugar drips down our chins and the bruises start to sting.
The madness is performative, the aftermath is belonging. You'll never find that logic in a self-help book.
We beat each other and then kept each other. There's violence and absurdity and then suddenly, you know you matter to someone.
🎭 The Everyday Tamasha That Became Life
Chai Runs, Paranthas, and Sunrise Philosophy
There were nights we didn't sleep, not because of deadlines, but because the conversations at 3 AM felt more honest than daytime civility.
We'd wait for Bulbul or Tiwari to open, walk half-asleep, half-existential and fully stupid across empty streets. Eat paranthas like emotional first aid. Drink chai like medicine.
Sunrise wasn't cinematic. It was healing. The sky would get lighter and so would we, with cups sweating in our hands and the city still quiet enough to hear ourselves.
Some sunrises wake the world. Some sunrises wake you.
Bakchodi as a Lifestyle
Bakchodi wasn't a hobby. It was culture.
You'd say "Chalte?" and five people would appear like losers answering a call. Memes were language, pranks were grammar. Laundry became LOONDRY. Words got weird pronunciations. We made grammar out of nonsense.
There was logic in that nonsense: it kept us human in a system that taught efficiency and forgetting.
The Academic Circus (Starring: Me and My Zero Attendance)
Attendance was a suggestion. Class was a timezone for sleepy people.
Our exam formula, sacred and simple:
- 1. Gather notes from five people.
- 2. Study the syllabus the night before.
- 3. Drink endless chai.
- 4. Alternate between hope and despair.
- 5. Somehow pass.
- 6. Act surprised.
We had codes, signals, proxy systems that could rival mission control. And ironically, in the chaos of bunking and mid-night group studies, I learned more than I had in any lecture hall.
Hostel life taught me that the curriculum of living is more elastic than the college syllabus. The tamasha is the classroom.
🎮 Games That Stole Our Sleep, Not Our Peace
Poker nights, Uno, shaans, Ludo wars where friendships died for twenty minutes and revived over chai. The cards were props, the real game was confession.
Around the table we admitted crushes, failures, dreams, lies. We hid, we revealed, we negotiated. Dice and cards became the language of vulnerability.
I watched men pretend to be fine and then fold into honest laughs when someone asked, "Bata na, kya chal raha hai?" The answer was usually messy, beautiful, human.
In games we gambled with hearts more than money. Losing a hand meant gaining a story.
😴 The Sleep Economy: Scarcity and Sanctuary
Beds were negotiable. Sleep was communal.
Two on a bed, three diagonally, someone on the chair, someone on the floor. You develop a crude geometry for human bodies by the second semester.
Every night I'd ask, "Bhai subah utha dena." He'd say yes. We'd both wake up at eleven, shocked and apologetic. Every time.
Still, sleep there was the deepest. It felt safer even when it was crowded, because you slept knowing there were people who would make sure you woke up if something really bad happened.
You learn there's a difference between sleep alone and sleep surrounded by people who will fight for you.
🚨 Crisis-Mode: How Boys Become Men Without Realising
When Someone Breaks Down
Someone spirals, someone cries, someone calls home and can't speak. The wing doesn't flinch. Roles will assign themselves.
One brings water. One tells a bad joke to distract. One sits in silence. One keeps watch.
There's no training program. There's no checklist. It's instinct, a network activated by proximity.
When Shit Hits the Fan
Friend drunk, friend in accident, friend caught by guards; chaos arranges itself into an ugly plan.
- "Tu parents ko handle kar."
- "Main hospital le jaa raha hoon."
- "Tu guard ko distract kar."
- "Tu room saaf kar de."
We were irresponsible boys, and slowly we turned into reliable men. Not because life handed maturity to us, but because life forced it.
Hostel is the emergency drill no one signs up for, but everyone learns on the job.
🏗️ The Spaces That Raised Me
There are sacred corners of any hostel; the tiny altars of memory that outlast the mess menu and the attendance sheets.
For me these were B3 417, the polaroid wall, the block terrace, and the window of G8 729. Each of them taught me something the syllabus never could.
Room B3 417
B3 417 was a portal. People didn't enter B3 417, B3 417 entered them. It absorbed heartbreaks, jokes, midnight projects, 3 AM confessions. The door stayed open, and the room held our mess like a patient friend.
A polaroid wall collected faces and moments, taped in crooked rows. I'd stare at it and think, kitni zindagi ek choti si wall par fit ho sakti hai? Turns out, all of it.
The Terrace
The terrace air is different. It slides through you. Nights up there were nonsensical and sacred; no forced advice, just presence. We learned how to hold and how to let go without ceremony.
G8 729 Window
There was a sill, trucks, highway lights. Music low, earphones in, the world moving far below. I learned stillness there; how to sit with my thoughts without being ashamed of them.
Onerios and Highway King
Fest nights at Onerios felt like permission slips. Highway King walks, three kilometres of cheap food and long conversations, became therapy. The walk fixed more than the food ever did.
These spaces taught me that architecture is nothing without the people who fill it. A terrace, a window, a wall become a map to who you were.
🤪 The Stupidity, The Innocence, The Joy
Hostel boys are gloriously stupid. We invent rituals that are absurd and then swear by them.
We interrupt each other's sleep for the tiniest reasons. We sleep three to a bed and call it bonding. We hold LOONDRY as a sacred subscription.
We recited memes like poems because memes were the only modern scripture we had.
Stupidity didn't make us dumb. Stupidity made us human.
In the smallness of stupid things, we found the widest versions of ourselves.
🌱 Growing Up in Ways Nobody Notices
You don't see it while it's happening. You see it when you go home for the first time after a semester.
Suddenly you wash your own plate, sleep without being told, manage an auto driver, negotiate prices, sit with silence without panicking, and admit you're scared without shame. You become someone you recognise.
Hostel didn't make me taller. It made me deeper. Not louder, just clearer. Not perfect, just honest.
The real education is not the degree. It's the set of small competencies you didn't know you needed.
💔 What Hostel Took From Me
It took the comfort of being taken care of. It took illusions of safety. It took my ability to avoid myself. Nights of quiet forced introspection, and some of the old safety nets disappeared.
That loss hurt. It made me lean into life in ways I resisted.
Growing always costs something. Hostel made the bill payable in pieces.
❤️ What Hostel Gave Me Instead
But the ledger balances. It gave brotherhood, real and ragged. It gave resilience; little muscles that flexed with every small disaster. It gave independence, the messy kind. It gave emotional literacy, the ability to sit and listen. It gave a second home, one I grew inside of.
Hostel gave me a set of instincts I continue to use without thinking.
🪞 The Boy I Met Inside Myself
Between B3 417 and G8 729, between chai runs and sunrise paranthas, between belt hits and quiet breakdowns, I met a boy I didn't know existed.
Not the boy my parents raised. Not the boy the coaching machines trained. A quieter, stronger, softer, confused and hopeful boy who could sit with feelings and still move.
You don't "become a man." You meet a deeper version of yourself.
Hostel didn't shape me. Hostel revealed me.
🌙 The Last Night
Everyone has a last-night story.
You sit in an empty room that used to be loud. Photos are peeled off the wall and the paint bears little scars. The bed still remembers the weight of three sleepy bodies. You walk the corridor slower than normal. Guards have seen a thousand packing bags and still nod like they are betting on which of us will cry.
You left as someone who finally understands. You came as someone else's son. The hostel breathed you out and in the same breath let you go.
Goodbyes are sudden, even when they were always coming. The final silence is loud with history.
☀️ The Morning After
The morning after the last night is cruel and honest. The building looks the same but everything internal has shifted. You feel full and empty at the same time. You pack, you turn, you breathe.
The hostel breathes back.
Leaving is a quiet ritual of collecting the pieces of a person you didn't know how to recognize when the journey began.
🧠 The Psychological Truth: Why Hostel Changes You
Hostel is a crucible. It breaks patterns, exposes flaws, demands vulnerability, sharpens instincts, births empathy. It forces you to learn to fail, to recover, to ask for help, and to give it back.
You don't just grow up. You grow inward.
The architecture of your mind gets a new wing in that place. It's not dramatic. It's slow and durable.
📚 The Hostel Curriculum
Forget credits. The real B.Tech syllabus is:
- Semester 1: Survival, homesickness, finding chai spots, understanding LOONDRY timings.
- Semester 2: Friendships form, traditions begin, bakchodi peaks.
- Semester 3: Identity experiments, clubs, confidence grows.
- Semester 4: Competitions, placements whisper, leadership tries to appear.
- Semester 5: Crisis, coping mechanisms, loneliness visits.
- Semester 6: Resilience builds, purpose peeks through.
- Semester 7: Reflection, noticing lasts.
- Semester 8: Acceptance, goodbye, starting again.
There's no repeat exam. No re-evaluation. That's the syllabus life teaches.
You pass out older and quieter, which is better than graduating louder and hollow.
🎒 What Stayed With Me
Even now: I knock lift panels because habit is sticky. I call friends "bhai" with the particular warmth that only hostels teach. I crave paranthas at sunrise. I say LOONDRY without thinking. A truck horn is a small memory trigger.
Hostel didn't give me things. It gave me reflexes; the ways I respond when things break or when people need me badly.
Reflexes outlive memories. They're the real inheritance.
✨ The Final Poetic Reflection
I entered hostel carrying a bag of clothes.
I left carrying versions of myself I didn't know were inside.
I came looking for freedom. I left finding responsibility.
I entered innocent. I left aware.
I entered with strangers. I left with brothers.
I entered a boy. I left someone I still meet on quiet nights.
The hostel didn't raise me. The hostel revealed me.
A room taught me more about who I am than any classroom ever could.
💬 The Baithak Ending: A Quiet Conversation With You
If you've reached this far, sit with me for a moment. Let the noise settle. Let the story breathe.
And now tell me something.
When you think of the word "home", what comes to your mind first? The place you grew up in, or the people who made you feel seen for the first time? I used to think it was the walls. Then one day I realised it was the hands that knocked, the laughter that spilled out of rooms, the chai cups passed without asking.
And you… how many versions of yourself have you lived without even noticing? The brave one, the confused one, the tired one, the hopeful one. The boy you were before life happened. The one who still wakes up inside you once in a while. Do you ever meet him anymore?
Think about comfort for a second. If you stepped away from it, even a little, what part of you do you think would show up next? Something stronger? Something softer? Something you've been avoiding?
Friendships, too. Some arrive with dhoom-dhadaka, loud and full of colour. Others sit quietly beside you and somehow hold your entire world together. Which ones carried you through your own hostel moments? Which ones made you feel lighter just by existing?
And tell me honestly… when was the last time you sat alone with your thoughts without running away? No phone, no music, no noise. Just you and whatever version of yourself needed attention that day. Did it scare you? Or did it feel like relief?
Maybe growth is not about becoming a new person at all. Maybe it's about returning to the self you abandoned somewhere between expectations, deadlines, and keeping up with everyone else. Maybe you already know who you are. You just forgot to look.
If something in this story touched a nerve, even a small one, let it sit. Let it ask you things. Let it open a window inside you.
Stories don't end. They pass the mic.
What would you say back?