No, this piece is definitely not about the movie 'hostel'...euww!! gory!
This is something I wrote when I was in 4th year of my B.E.(Electrical & Electronics)...and based on some observation....
Dear hostel-mates, hope you don't mind the things that apply to you because in some way or the other they do apply to me too....so here it goes:
Why is the hostel infested with people who don’t budge from their beds??
Is it Facebook or Orkut (Oops No! Orkut is banned in my college) or Gtalk? Is it the books or the movies on LAN or is it the series? Whatever is it, it is confined only to their room and shared only with their room-mate; like your room-mate is your only family in the hostel and you are the ‘I don’t speak with Strangers’ kind of school-kid (I would be wrong if I did not mention the existence of ‘I don’t speak Strangers but neighbors are no strangers’ kind of high school kids.)
So as you know it now, in my three years in the hostel, I’ve tried to visit everyone’s room, juniors, batch-mates and seniors and about half of them I have visited on several occasions: holi, diwali, (birthday not counted, even enemies visit your room on that occasion),movie-talk, tv-talk, sports-talk, girl’s gossip, placement-talk, cultural-day talk, technical-day talk, study-talk, news-talk, from painting to clothes, their problems, their friends’ problems, I’ve talked about everything imaginable. But alas, it’s always me in other people’s rooms, never they in mine. As far as I see it, there couldn’t be anything except either of these reasons:
My room is in a far away lobby and mine is the only room that belongs to a BE 2k6. Other rooms were occupied by MBAs, then MCAs and now by BE 2k8, so in general it would take another BE 2k6 at least 12-14 rooms or 6 rooms plus a flight of stairs to reach my room, where opening the door is a big headache who would take the pains of walking so much;
Or My room always has a in-progress painting or a in-progress eating dish or a in-progress electronics board or another in-progress project and loads of books and it portrays me as a person scary as hell;
Or I am so ignorant of discussion topics and their materials that people think ten times if they want to spend time in my room and finally drop the idea;
Or I am too boring!!
The first one has been cited by several guilty conscious hostel-mates when they bump into me on their way to the mess ( by the way my rooms on that way too) and the others were my surmises based on the study of hostel-residents. No matter how much I try to defend my hostel-mates on their isolated behavioral pattern, I know it very well that the basic reason behind their desertion is none of those stated above.
I fail to understand what stops them from exploring people and what they have to offer, what restrains them from mingling with people beyond that boundary they have drawn for themselves. Is it the attractions the laptop and internet has to offer, is it the newspaper, is it the phone and the world outside which is always trying to reach them, or is the never-ending room-mate gossip.
Newspapers have always been there, thin sheets of paper quick to read and full of eclectic articles, they were always a source of information and never a distraction or hindrance to the day-to-day life. Some years back when socialising on the net was not an IN THING, people were afraid they would lose touch with the outer world, posts,then phones and then emails were their prized possessions, now that social networking sites and the messengers are THE things to stay in touch with people are hunting after them like an everyday visit to these pipes is like checking in for their flights and how the world would go topsy-turvy if they missed a piece of the hottest gossip. Although they have adjusted their routines in order to facilitate their outer world connections, indirectly they have also adjusted their immediate priorities, the very people around them and the very people close to their hearts have been pushed hard by them to half way down their priority list, in fact their ranks have degraded so badly that for some list-owners this half way down numbered priority is a priority no more to the extent that they have never stepped a foot in their own batchmates’ rooms but definitely gained enough gossip about the outer world to do a thesis.
Its like fixing a pair of telescopes to your eyes with its lenses focused on a distant planet, observing the then visible life there, without realizing that you yourself live on Earth, the liveliest planet in the universe, and your telescope, your most important tool is more of a blockage to the nature around you than a passage to the imaginary world beyond billions and billions of miles away that its making you look at. And my dear friend you can see only what you look at.
