College Diary: When weirdness made something special
‘College is a refuge from hasty judgment.’ Robert Frost had said. But if you ask me Colleges, at times, need
refuge from hasty judgments themselves. The not so young and naïve me always
imagined my engineering college to be like some old castle in Dehradun; a
shadow of Hogwarts would have done, but it needed to be a huge, old, artistic,
bricked palace on endless verdant ground. Later I decided to settle for a
remote huge campus by a peaceful lake or river, away from the busy world. To be
reasonable, God was generous, very generous but in a quirky way.
My engineering college
was in a huge campus that is 50+ years old. For people who have studied outside
Mumbai, this might seem weird, but in Mumbai colleges hardly have grounds,
campus is asking for way too much. But this one was different. There were no
castles in my campus but huge green fields and canopied roads connecting the
various ends of the mini forest in the heart of a concrete jungle. I called it
a mini forest because the day I went there for my admission, it was early
monsoon and the grass grew like wild bunch everywhere, trees stood like their
shape and size had never been restricted and the dull roads were strewn with
fallen leaves, stuck to the ground, refusing to move. Every car that came in seemed to stir the calm
of the quaint place. And guess what, it was situated in Juhu – a place where
half the Bollywood stars reside (should not have been quiet!). I got another wish fulfilled too – water body
close to campus, though not peaceful. My college was right next to Juhu Beach.
After college started,
for months I didn’t like the place at all but one winter morning changed something. Reaching early morning was a ritual for me, but that day my friends
and I decided to walk to our college from Santacruz station as we had broken our own record of being early birds. It was 7:30 in the
morning. The mist (mostly of dust) was slowly rising but the sleepy lanes of
Juhu were anything but dull. While we walked through a shortcut we had heard
about, it echoed with hypnotic chants and chiming bells from a nearby temple.
Hidden in a corner, it was beautiful and peaceful and big. We went in without a
second thought but little did we know this temple would become our must stop
place for the next four years. I still remember there was a peculiar tree right
in front of the temple, almost dead but every morning it was a sanctuary for
hundreds of crows – weird 1 (a puzzle I couldn’t solve).
After reaching college
that day, I still had an hour before the first lecture and decided to explore
my campus. There was an old, half burnt building in our campus that people
hardly visited, but I decided to go there that day only to find out that it was
an old auditorium which was burnt down by an ill fate short circuit some years
back. From there I headed to the University library, which is apparently one of
the oldest college libraries of the city. I loved that place. The smell of
books, the quiet hall flanked by lines and lines of books and a small pond next
to it with lotuses – Library was my happy corner in the campus. But that day I
met a chatty home science final year student there.
Final year meant
infinite hours of campus expeditions and hostel stories, and she was more than
willing to share them with me. She started with how our campus was a Bollywood
favorite earlier (Dil and Kya Kehena were shot here) and how only the auditorium was the most prominent building of
the campus. I took the opportunity and asked her more about the auditorium. She
confirmed the story about the auditorium but also added that a lot of people
consider the place haunted. Being a glutton for paranormal I asked her if she
knew more crazy stuff about the campus. She told me there was a door in the
hostel that was never opened. And there had been an “incident” in the hostel in
the past which resulted in muffled noises in the corridors of the hostel,
though it has stopped now. Couple of years later I also found an article that got me
really intrigued. I tried confirming the stories from my classmates but other
that the door part they never confirmed a thing.
Library
Irrespective of the
authenticity of the stories, from that day I kept going to college early every
day for almost a year. Early morning walk, a visit to the
“Khandar”(auditorium), and then library in hope of meeting that girl again.
(Yes, I never asked her name and finding a student in a crowd 5000 was nearly
impossible. I never met her again. Over the four years, the place grew on me.
Friends, festivals, crazy stuff like picking mangoes and running away, hours of
exams prep in library, IVs and many more memories. I started liking it. But no
other day could match the significance of that winter morning. The memories
made the campus an important part of my life, but that winter morning had made
it interesting for the first time.
The pond near Library
P.S. - The link to the article http://www.prepsure.com/news/4-most-haunted-college-campuses-in-india/ .
'This post is my entry for 'My College Diary' contest held by travel blog My Yatra Diary in collaboration with Collegedunia.com' I would like to tag - Manjulika, Roshan and Ragini for this contest! :D
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