“Is that it??”
All four of us stared in disbelief at the brown gate that our car passed through. The words ‘BITS Pilani’ were written across it, and a banner saying ‘Welcome to BITS Pilani’ hung over the road. Two security guards in dusty-looking uniforms stood at the gate. Trees lined the road on both sides, and the walls beyond them were plastered with dirt. The hostel buildings beyond them looked somewhat run-down. It was quite clear that age lay somewhat heavily on this place.
One hour inside a cab stuck in traffic, eighteen years inside a train that rocked like a boat, six hours inside the luggage compartment of a car, and two years of slogging were behind me, and here I was, in the middle of the desert, facing the prospect of four years at BITS. And if the taste of Rajasthani food that we’d had at a roadside eatery on our way here was anything to go by, it was going to be a very long four years.
Our cars ponderously made their way to the registration room, which turned out to be the common room of one of the hostels. Two of my friends, Harold and Tom, were allotted the same room, while I got the one next to theirs. I stole envious glances at the relieved looks on their faces. Why couldn’t I have been the one to share a room with one of them? Who knew what monstrosity of a room-mate I might end up with… Knowing my luck, it would probably be some kid with thick glasses and a runny nose that he would periodically wipe on his sleeve. And he would probably call his runny-nosed friends over, and they would spend hours on end guffawing about something geeky and stupid.
Shaking my head with sadness and a lasting feeling of disappointment, I made my way to the ‘Photograph Room’. This was a room with a bed, a chair, a computer, a webcam, and a decent-looking female. While this might have stood for something else under totally different circumstances, over here it was just a room in which they took our photos for making our identity cards.
Now, if that dame had warned all of us that moment that the photos she took would end up on our identity cards for the rest of our sentence at BITS, we would’ve tried to look a little better. However, since no such warning was given, Harold ended up looking gay in his photo, while I ended up looking constipated in mine.
That being done, we moved out of that hostel and made our way to our respective hostels with our parents in tow. It was decided by mutual consent that we would wait till the next day to tackle the bank representatives who had set up camp right outside the hostel. Harold, Tom and I were in ‘Gandhi’ while Andrew, Shawn and Vicky were in Krishna. We lugged our suitcases (Harold had seven of them, my mom counted) to our hostels, and made our way to our rooms.
[to be continued]