End of college life | Experiences from last few years and more

It has been few days since I am out of college. Was trying to put this blog post but wasn’t getting time for that. Earlier this month I visited Radaur with my father and vacated my room. It was an interesting experience of staying in that room for a while and working on so many things from there. This is how my room used to look like: Overall time was a long time and an experience full of surprises, fun times, bad times, very bad times and more importantly learning about life. In terms of learning - I learned bit of technical stuff related to networking, along with non-technical learning like understanding how world works, what makes people work, what makes people not to work etc. :)

Some thoughts on college…

In terms of college life I don’t have much to say except that JMIT is just like other colleges we can find around the state and one should not be super hopeful or depressed if getting into a state college. The best part is that you get huge amounts of free time and while the worst part is that you will have huge amounts of people trying to mis-guide you and waste your time. Other bad part is that Kurukshetra University has pretty bad & outdated syllabus (specially for CSE/IT) and even if you go with it sincerely there’s no guarantee of a good future. There is some “strange energy” around which keeps on forcing one to follow college system even when one has a clear logical idea that it’s not useful. Students, teachers and other people around are good and bad in similar ratio as we find in real world.

Some thoughts of life in rural area…

Life in rural area was fun. I had chances of getting admission into Delhi/NCR area based colleges and I am glad I went for a college out in rural area of Yamunanagar. Life in rural area is full of fun, surprises and frustrations. One of major fun fact is that less people bother you with stupid discussions about degree, job and so on. Another fun point is that it’s very cheap to stay in rural area. I used to pay around $15/month rent for my room in Radaur and overall adding costs of food, electricity & internet etc it wasn’t bad at all. The biggest problems in rural area in India is very low quality infrastructure. I always had issues with electricity (high cuts + very low voltage), water, etc. Apart from that I chose a classic room which was on top of a shop. Advantage was that I was alone and could sit there on my ultra long working sessions but disadvantage was that it used to heat to terrible 42C/107F during peak summers while as low as 4C/39F in peak winters. To add to problems - dumb Kurukshetra university helds in examination in Jan (peak winter) and June (peak summers). So I can’t deny it was very  painful stay especially during exams.

Another thing which strike my mind was the fact that people in rural areas don’t work. Seriously majority of people do not work. Land prices have sky rocketed and most of people here enjoy a comfortable life without much of work. Even people who were not “land rich” used to sit idle most of time. So surely after looking at life in Delhi/NCR, South India and even overseas - life in Radaur was pretty much surprising for me. Most of “Indian working class” can’t afford buying a decent home in any major city out of paycheck while non-working class of land holders make ton of money from that land that they don’t need to seriously consider working. It’s purely an utter result of failure from Govt. side in managing economy. Big land bubble, let’s see what it will be bursted. Back to my story… :) Staying in hostel is useful as there is a guarantee of power + cleanliness but problem is that one just can’t make use of time while in hostel. Atleast I failed to do that in first few months of my stay in 1st year hostel. So yes I did stayed in hostel but for very few initial months.

Here’s how that room used to look like:

Yes room looks bit weird but all I can say is that condition of people around me was even worst and so I decided to leave hostel pretty soon. It was hard decision and I remember talking to many good friends about it. Basically the way in which “hostel life” is pushed in minds of young kids - it appears as if “struggle for existence” comes from hostel while that is not true. You do learn how to fight and keep fighting but that is not for what one is there. I think I made right choice on advice of some very good friends about leaving hostel and staying outside. Life outside was painful but worth it. I used to walk around slums around during early early morning & late nights and got chance to interact with people around there. Quality of life was miserable and they always struggled because of mis-guidance from outside people on number of issues ranging from health problems to work related cheating etc. Here’s a pic of a stranger I saw at Pipli bus stand who was so ill that wasn’t even able to stand. We used to talk about UPSC and IAS officers - the powers they had in hand, and all that. While after looking at people in so much pain I always wondered where the hell was Government around me? Where the hell were those “genious UPSC toppers” ? About weekly travel: So it was always an interesting experience to travel between Rohtak (my home city) and Radaur - meeting people around me, talking to them about local issues and trying to reach core of their problems (though I mostly failed in that). Another interesting thing around Pipli area was looking at Delhi-Lahore-Delhi bus every Monday. With all those random thoughts, time to end this blog post. :)