My Cubbyholes

This post is dedicated to all those (tiny) hostel rooms - my home through 4 years in Pilani and 2 in Mumbai. Too late, I realise I don't have snaps of them :( so the eye is the camera and the mind (heart?) the film..

It always started out with a clean slate - the previous occupants moved out before I moved in. I remember the feeling of an empty room waiting for a new chapter in its story - shafts of light entering through the dusty windows, footsteps and voices bouncing off the walls to echo around the space.
In time this space becomes "home", the shelter from the rest of the world, the shelter for my world(-ly possessions). It becomes cosy, inviting and familiar.

I will always miss...
In Pilani:

• Peacocks' cry outside the balcony
• Weekly spring cleaning :)
• Book shelf on the wall
• Movie sessions in the dark with the amazing CREATIVE speakers and with junta sitting on every available surface
  
• Trunk turned table-top, complete with table cloth and customized dressing table
• Treasure trove under the bed :D (resting place of dirty clothes, footwear et al)
• Steel almirah that screeched in protest everytime it was opened!
• Nylon strings that made it easy to hang clothes but earned our room the title "Dhobi Ghat" (2nd year!)
• Our very own personal courtyard - to watch the rain pattering down, to enjoy the weather (the few times it was pleasant), to celebrate birthday parties or to simply go crazy (2nd year again)
• The Mirror which made everyone look better than they actually looked (as quoted by several grateful recipients of my mirror's service! :P)
  
• Gate calls (which drastically reduced in number thanks to mobile phones by the time I graduated)
• Wing parties (usually starting late in the night and ending even later!)
  

In Mumbai:

• Non-matching curtains (red and orange against an off-white wall) :P
• Table overflowing with newspaper, books and clothes
  
• Pleasant smell that greets when you enter the room at the end of a tiring day
• Personalized dressing table on the lowest shelf of the wooden rack
• Makeshift shoe stand at one corner of the room
• Complex wiring system which brought LAN connection and power from one end of the room right to the bed (courtesy my roommate - an ECE engineer from NIT-Trichy, no less :-) )
• The shrill bell (signalling the arrival of someone's food mostly)
• The "dynamic" phone network (Have to stand in a particular spot in the room with the phone in a particular angle to be able to catch the signal)

@Whoever reads this: feel free to add to the list!