Page 51 - January 2021: Hustle Mama Magazine

THE UNUSUAL FRIEND
In a big city where you know no one, it isn't easy to find a place of your own—an area which will be home away from home and will offer you a cozy corner. Being in Kolkata for almost three years, I still felt like a stranger. Among all the acquaintances, the count of friends is always a small number. So the journey of survival is, in most parts, a lonely one.
When I studied in the university, I lived in a hostel just across the road, which belonged to a government-aided institution meant for poor children named after a prominent social worker. It had a school within its premises, a hostel for the students studied there, and a dormitory for a few college students. The rent and the meal charges were modest, and so was the living.
The dormitory was shared by six girls and the caretaker, who was almost deaf, so it didn't occur as an obstacle in the path of parties, celebrations, and events, which entitled us to yell at the top of our voices. There were a huge study hall and a dining space, both in want of repairs and reconstruction. Though everything looked so dismal, there was a coziness about the environment, which metropolitan cities can rarely offer. There was a slow-moving tram line alongside fast-moving traffic just outside the hostel. I used to sit on the stairs outside the hostel building and dream away while staring at the advertisements on the tramcars' bodies. The university campus was smaller than usually expected and had four to five buildings.
In one such facility at the rear end of the campus was my department. Some classmates became good friends of mine
and could instill
belongingness
circumstances. After the classes, we would go to a small canteen just beside our building and have hot tea and delicious samosa accompanied by long discussions, heated debates, and lively chats on all possible topics under the sun.
Although a lot was happening around me, I felt a vacuum inside me, which never seemed to diminish. Sometimes I used to take a stroll along the sidewalk of the university campus.
There were vendors of street food, a cobbler, and also a small stationery shop. The last one was almost a tin-wooden cabinet where the pen seller seemed to be permanently installed with no way to exit or enter the shop. Most of the days, I used to stop by this shop and looked at and tested the various pens for hours together.
the illusion of to unfamiliar