Page 42 - Resurrection Magazine

Away from friends and parents for

more than 3 months......

n Parwathy S
taying away from parents and loved ones is not a new thing for me. It has been more than
S5 years since I started living in hostels, and it has become second-nature for me. Being
in different hostels in different cities as part of my education has carved me into a better
human being, adjusting to new places, new lifestyles and new people. My life in the capital
city of Kerala began last year after getting admission in the Department of Communication
and Journalism of Kerala University. This one year got me a new bunch of friends, both in the
class and hostel and new teachers. Life was going smoothly and we were eagerly waiting for
the second-semester examination in the mid of March when suddenly Corona revisited Kerala.
On March 8, five people from Ranni in Pathanamthitta tested positive for COVID-19
after they returned from a vacation in Italy. March 9 was a big day in the capital city as
it was witnessing the Attukal Pongala which happens every year. For this religious occasion
lakhs of women devotees from different parts of Kerala and other states had already
converged on Thiruvananthapuram. The state government was caught in a dilemma as it was
a conflict between belief and scientific prevention measures – eventually, they decided to
let the festival happen with strict protocols. The day after the festival, Kerala Government
announced a complete shutdown of religious places, educational institutions, theatres and
malls for 21 days to prevent further spread.
I come from a border village of Alappuzha district which only has a local bus service - all
of them touch the Pathanamthitta district. Due to the cases reported in the district, all
buses were cancelled and I couldn’t go back to my home. By the next two-three days, almost
all my friends had gotten their buses and trains and I was all left alone in the hostel with
few unknown hostel-mates. Some among them were from far away districts, some decided to
be here as they had work to do and none of the facilities they needed was available in their
remote homes. We all were in that belief that everything will be back to normal after 21
days. The first week of lockdown was uneventful. I spent the day time in the campus hostel,
then taking tuition and night by watching films. But tragedy struck a week later when the
central government announced a countrywide lockdown on the third week of March.
We were in a situation that no one could help us in coming out of the hostel. Two of the
five hostel blocks were taken up by the Municipal Corporation for making it into quarantine
centres and the students from those blocks were moved to the other blocks. A total of 30
students including Research Scholars and PG students were strangers. For me, it was a new
situation which I have never experienced in my last twenty years away from all dear and near
one completely locked up within two hostel gates.
As it says human beings are made in such a way that they get adapted to any circumstances
in no time. This happened in our case too. Lockdown extended from one week to two then to
three and then to months and along with that, we became a family. Although our sleeping and
walking timetable never crossed each other’s we spent a part of our time together. It could
be either while watching TV, eating food, helping in the hostel mess in making chapattis or
any other food items, spending the evening hours in the terrace of the hostel or anything
else. It was completely a different phase of life for all of us who were strangers for each
other a month before, now we all even knew each other’s favourite films and songs.
Sitting together for having a big feast on Vishu, waking up in the early morning for
taking Roza during Ramadan month we not only shared our part of food but also our beliefs,
happiness, sorrows and many more in this period of crisis. We realized that it was a good
decision that we made to spend this time here. It made us realize that time can make us
through anything, in that very uncertain situation where we couldn’t even predict what
happens the next day, when will we meet our parents, when everything around us will be
back to normal and sometimes making us feel hard to make a day pass thinking all these. But
the reality was we were happy even amid worries. In these three months I watched more
than 120 films of different genres and different languages, my friends made me watch
television series for the first time in my life and many more new experiments. But the most
important realization was that THERE IS NOTHING MORE IMPORTANT THAN BEING
TOGETHER…..

42 RESURRECTION