By Prachi Gupta
A new settlement in a completely alien and liberated place, away from your near ones who had till date gripped you in the warmth of their love and care, has the tendency to leave you motionless for a moment. But then starts the journey (Shaan’s song “tanha dil” in the background) with your mind oblivious to the future. The first few days are passed into accommodating oneself into the room, to squeeze in all your stuff into one cupboard and checking out the market and places around. And then begins a new saga of learning, entertaining, experiencing and most of all ‘living’. The life as a paying guest in someone else’s home is an amazingly different experience altogether.
All what a person has planned, all the wise advice by “experienced” people gets whitewashed when one meets the roommates. Whether you are a very introvert person or an open book, it is almost certain that you will end up confessing everything to your roomies. Nicknaming the other one weirdly, exchanging all kinds of stuff (yes, all sorts of!), teasing by the crush’s name and bitching about the third one in her absence becomes second nature. It creates everlasting memories when you burn the midnight lamp and yet end up scoring almost nothing in the tests next day. And you religiously repeat it the next day too. You always cherish it; sneaking together into aunt’s kitchen secretly and cooking ‘food’ for yourself, no matter how raw, tasteless the maggi, coffee, soup or even halwa is. Excursions throughout the city, grabbing opportunities for free passes to a concert or fair, contributing money to dine in expensive places are some of the light moments that make your bond stronger.
Staying up till five in the morning or spending sleepless nights discussing philosophies of love, separation, marriage in the balcony with a coffee mug; ordering ice cream at midnight when one of the roommates suddenly craves for it; slamming away the prank calls that one of the roomies’ receives and sometimes trying it yourself; bursting into laughter about anything and everything; inviting the aunt to curb it, these are some of the fantastic moments of a life as a PG. Of course, it falls short of awesomeness without a nagging b**** as your PG owner who cribs about electricity, cleanliness, water and sometimes about issues that are out of the world (yes, my aunt got offended about not wishing her morning and evening)! Concocting stories about how to irritate the woman and scare her to the core terminates abruptly when the innocent one saves all the new contact numbers into the devil’s list.
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| Photo Credits - Indrajeet Deshmukh |
Staying up till five in the morning or spending sleepless nights discussing philosophies of love, separation, marriage in the balcony with a coffee mug; ordering ice cream at midnight when one of the roommates suddenly craves for it; slamming away the prank calls that one of the roomies’ receives and sometimes trying it yourself; bursting into laughter about anything and everything; inviting the aunt to curb it, these are some of the fantastic moments of a life as a PG. Of course, it falls short of awesomeness without a nagging b**** as your PG owner who cribs about electricity, cleanliness, water and sometimes about issues that are out of the world (yes, my aunt got offended about not wishing her morning and evening)! Concocting stories about how to irritate the woman and scare her to the core terminates abruptly when the innocent one saves all the new contact numbers into the devil’s list.
Another great part about staying in a PG is that you do all sorts of acts that you have never done before such as arranging for your roommate to go on a date, celebrating birthdays as vodka parties without alerting the aunt, bribing the gatekeeper, and assuring the parents’ of your roomies when she is out without phone. The facet that is most talked about, is living with a bunch of friends who are jealous gossip-mongers and create impediments in your work. It becomes a lot worse when you don’t share a good bond with your roommates.
However, a PG accommodation besides giving you a “fully furnished, air conditioned, three meals and well connected” room also provides you an exhilarating, cognitive and refreshing experience and a new improved perspective towards life and people. You tend to take or be redolent about the route that shapes your life and be more concerned. Or learn to let it be as it goes!
Prachi Gupta
Change is really the law that rules my life. A bit inquisitive by nature and a bookworm according to some people. Very straight forward and expressive, I am certainly not a person who could endlessly flatter people to get my work done.
Change is really the law that rules my life. A bit inquisitive by nature and a bookworm according to some people. Very straight forward and expressive, I am certainly not a person who could endlessly flatter people to get my work done.
