Those were the days my friend...we thought they'd never end....

Spent the last four days with my roommates from college. Something I had promised I would do when I quit my job. Four days spent talking, head banging after a night at Hard Rock, shopping, checking out a new mall, eating cheesecake and drinking coffee. Through it all we argued about open source v/s IPR, working v/s creating meaning, the larger good v/s individual short sightedness...reliving what we did for two years in college and wishing we could do this more often. Discuss daily mundanities while being able to talk about things that really move us or make us think. Four days of company, conversation and the comfortable familiarity of close friends made me think of the funny ways in which we meet people who become so integral to our lives and how we live....

The first time I walked into the 40 degree centigrade dusty hostel room that was my assigned acco in design school, I thought I finally had the answer to why Ivy league design education in India costs a fraction of Ivy league management education. In a 9’x9’ room with li’l or no flooring I saw 3 metal cots and one forlorn looking cupboard with doors hanging off its hinges looking back at me.

I spent the next five minutes pacing around the corridor outside thinking of a logical line of argument to persuade my dad or the bank to fund my stay outside of this oven; in a place where I had a fighting chance of getting through the Ahemdabad summer. And that's when I met the only person on this planet I know who can walk huffing and puffing into a fourth floor room on a terrace with weatherproofing for flooring and hospital cots and see a place that had the potential to be transformed into a Mocha like hangout.
When they say Bharatnatyam dancers speak through their hands and eyes, they are not kidding. This pear shaped dynamo, who turned out to be my destiny designated roommate, in words and sweeping actions cooed in delight at the room and the ‘view’ which in peak summer framed the drain sized stream of water snaking its way through a sandy bed; the erstwhile path of the river Sabarmati. Against the backdrop of this view I was shown (in my head) visions of blowing-in-the-breeze blue curtains, fluffy beds, comfy cushions, rugs on the floor and paper lamps throwing warm light across the room. Sucker for fine living that I am, I fell in line. All thoughts of living outside campus having being abandoned, I turned towards the only other object in the room that I saw as a problem. A tiny 5 feet steel almirah...in a room meant for three girls!! My classical dancer future roommate saw this only as a tiny li’l insignificant hiccup in the larger scheme of the fun we were gonna have living together. With a grand wave of her hand she democratically decided to leave the division of that li’l piece of furniture till our third roomie arrived. I didn’t realise it then, but I had jus’ met the most resourceful, enthusiastic and cheery girl I was ever going to know. Neeru still has a sweeping vision for everything she comes across and an answer for every impossible situation....well, almost everything.

When we came back from the orientation, we saw why sometimes dictatorships work and why hostels have li’l or no room for consideration. The cupboard that was left to democratic division was now firmly shut and locked and bore the distinct air of being full of someone’s luggage. Enter my third roommate. Jus’ when I thought that at 25, I wasn’t gonna meet or make any new lifelong friends (a rather cynical point of view, in hindsight) in walked the girl who having lived in hostels all her life obviously knew the protocols that bound sharing living space. The undemocratic occupation of the cupboard that seemed like a territorial human right violation to me was to her simply a way of making her life convenient, roommates she hadn’t seen yet, be damned!

Since conflict seemed like an avoidable solution to the problem of two big suitcases and 3 smaller bags waiting near the door, we upholders of democracy reconciled to living in a suitcase under the bed. If our common dislike for our dictator roommate brought us closer, so did the fact that we were from the same city, studied in the same college, the same course and were jus’ five years apart academically speaking. It also turned out that no amount of visions of comfortable or fine living could move our roommate who saw no need for curtains, cushions or carpets. Things we were subtly told, only first time hostel dwellers thought of as priority. But nothing deters the one with a vision and I found myself shepherded through state handicraft shops, big bazaar and roadside stalls. Through the two initial weeks of ragging and classes, icebreakers and griping about seniors, hand stitched blue curtains went up on the big windows and billowed in the wind, li’l cushions robed in mismatched covers appeared on the bed and plastic mats on the floor. Our third roommate watched with interest alternated with disdain. But living together is a funny thing, it makes friends of the people we swear never to talk to in the first five minutes of meeting them. And by the time we had to invest in the quintessential girl’s room asset, the mirror, three of us were scouting around together. That was where it started. By the time first year was over we had joint assets in the areas of clothes, shoes, varieties of tea, sunglasses and a hot plate for making maggi.

Our dictator roommate, it turned out, was jus’ like us, a regular girl with talents in different areas. The fashion sense of a diva, the aura of a friendly glass of beer, the taste buds of a foodie and at most times the common sense of a man. Yup! thats her all right. Over denim deconstruction, improvised long island iced teas, sooji ka paani puri and the perennial advice to us about not getting worked up about the smaller details and always looking at the big picture, we got to know Pooja. She’d cry over soppy animation movies and refuse to read long pieces of text. (Which makes me pretty sure she is not gonna read this) She had a playlist for everything from waking up to going to sleep and from heartbreak to head banging. She’d shop for and eat the freshest most exotic fruits in the beginning of the month when the money was jus’ in and mess food towards the end of the month.

When second year gave us the option of moving out to single rooms, we simply opted to take the single room next to ours and continue living pretty much the same way, with just a li’l more space thrown in. The only people in our batch who chose to stay with their year long roommates.

Sure, we had our down days, days when each other’s tastes in music or having to listen to one side of long drawn phone conversations drove us up the wall. When one person had a lover’s spat or was PMSing and the others had to take cover in the extra room, still the upsides far far outweighed the flip sides. I came back late one winter night long after the other two had slept off and as I sat on my bed taking off my shoes I remember thinking that sometimes company is just someone sleeping in the same room as you. Through phases of vegan diets, organic food, yoga and smaller issues like projects, all-nighters and college crushes, we grew into each other’s quirks and idiosyncrasies. We spent a winter day under the sun unmindful of classes going on. We ran down the hostel stairs in alarm one spring night when a 6.2 richter earthquake shook the building only to discover we were the only ones who came without our laptops or cameras. One hot summer evening we danced in the sprinkler that watered the gardens and wound our way through two years jus’ talking, eating and talking some more. The room that we had reluctantly shared in first few weeks towards the end of our time in college had become a den, where we held court and endless cups of green tea and countless plates of maggi were made for people who came over for a chat, some gossip, some gyaan or to ask the eternal question, “What do I wear?” When fourth semester ended and they left college for the last time, they left a day earlier than me since I wanted another day to say my good-byes. And it was then that it hit me, that there was nothing to say good-bye to. We had sold the last of the old newspapers and bottles to raise funds to despatch our luggage home and all that was left was the metal cots and the lone cupboard. I knew it then, that my two years were a sum of our experiences together. That we learnt more from talking to each other all night than we did at class. That without them, the education that became a turning point in my life would have simply stayed an academic experience. Together, we had found a way to make it a way of living.