Finding a Family Away from Home
It was the month of June that year when I was preparing day in and day out to crack the entrance of a good film school in India. I was desperate to leave home and stay elsewhere in the country, live life like an adult. Manipal called me that month for a personal interview and I remember the joy in my parents’ eyes that I was getting one step closer to my dream of studying Cinema. That month I saw Manipal for the first time in my life and I remember falling in love with every bit of that tiny town in Udupi district. Situated on the Western Ghats, in the lap of the hills, surrounded by numerous small, pretty beaches it is the most beautiful picturesque university town.
We stayed there for three days, walking around the beautiful town, giving my interview and seeing the university main building. My college was Manipal Institute of Communication (MIC) under MAHE (Manipal Academy of Higher Education). MIC is inside a narrow lane towards the left from Tiger Circle if you stand facing the town of Udupi. Few steps after crossing the famous eatery called Egg Factory, there stands the quaint little campus of my beloved MIC. Cottage type classrooms, a rustic canteen, trees around the campus and bikes and cycles parked near the gate, MIC felt like it was straight out of a novel. When I saw MIC for the first time that June, I travelled back to my childhood days when I’d sit through the science lectures in school and dream about going to college in the hills with small cottages and narrow lanes and trees full of colourful flowers. Manipal was everything I had always dreamt of but never thought that any place could be as dreamy.
After my interview I went to Coorg, then to Mysore and then back to my hometown, Kolkata. By then MAHE had selected me as one of the candidates for MA Film Art and Filmmaking. My dream was coming true. I would be studying Cinema in the most dreamy town I had seen all my life. There was less than a month left to shift to Manipal and my parents and I started making arrangements. My friends bid me farewell, gave me Memory Books and Mona cried too. I was so happy and excited that I didn’t realize the gravity of the situation. I boarded the train on 12th July to Bangalore. Manipal is in Karnataka which is in South India. I’ve stayed in North-east India all my life, specifically in Kolkata. It took two flights and a cab to reach Manipal, quite a long journey, which I thoroughly enjoyed. We skipped taking a flight because we had a lot of luggage and the train ride was long, almost two days, but I loved it. We travel so less by trains nowadays in the quest of reaching places sooner that trains are a luxury for most of us.
I reached Manipal for the second time on 14th July ready to settle into the town. I was going with a friend from my previous college so I knew I wouldn’t be all alone in a new place. I was extremely happy and couldn’t wait to start studying Cinema. My hostel campus was just as beautiful and filled with greenery and flowers of many kinds. After the orientation we had our first lecture with Binayak Sir. He was a young Bengali professor who’d teach us screenplay writing and he was a native of my city, Kolkata. He was very easy going and we had a great first day with him. It was a small classroom of three with another girl called Trisha apart from my friend and I. After his lecture, I went to my hostel to set the room. My roommate was Shirin Gupta, a first year UG student at MIC. Her parents were already there setting her part of the room. They were Bengalis staying in Gujarat.
I spoke to Shirin’s parents for some time and they seemed like good people. They had a rather young son who was around nine years old that time. They called him Omi. I was very excited to meet my roommate and after mama helped me unpack all my stuff, I decided to spend the night in the hostel instead of with my parents in the hotel. They were going to stay for a week to see if I’d need anything else in the hostel and they could buy it for me while I attended lectures. Manipal is a funny place. Sunny this minute, pouring down the next minute. Everyone in Manipal carries huge umbrellas and mama and papa had bought me two such umbrellas, one as a back-up in case the other one broke. Apart from the university and the moody rains, strong winds breaking the umbrellas and umbrellas getting stolen were the other prominent affairs that the students there coexisted with.
The first night in the hostel was nice. I lay down on my bed comfortably. Shirin had come back from college and she seemed to be a little scared of me given I was four years her senior. I tried my best to be friendly with her but she wasn’t convinced.
“I thought you were an extremely strict woman and would scold me for everything.” She confessed to me later when we had become good friends.
She left the room and crashed in at her friend’s room downstairs somewhere. I was a shy person, perhaps I’m still somewhat shy, but the Reva back then was a different person. The Reva writing this today is much stronger, more confident and has grown up like three or four years in the span of some ten months. Shirin returned later that night after dinner and we talked for sometime before sleeping. Next morning we got ready to go to college together and it was nice, a different experience. I didn’t feel the homesickness kick in and went to college happily. I knew I had an old friend with me and old friends help make life a little easier.
Classes and life was going well until the next night when my friend, who stayed in Block 19, if I can remember correctly, called me out for dinner as he was feeling lonely. It was nine by then, pretty late for a small town like Manipal, but I immediately grabbed my shrug and wallet and left. He called me to the food court near his hostel. I didn’t know the way, nevertheless, I figured it out by asking the random people on the road. We had a nice dinner and it was dark, lonely and almost ten when we finished and he deserted me lying that he’d have to get back to the hostel although the perm time for us seniors was eleven. That night gave me a scare. Although in the hostel campus, the roads were lonely and I hung on to dear life while walking back. That was the night I knew I had lost a friend… a friend who was never a friend to begin with. Friends don’t leave you alone. They guide you home.
From the next day I started staying with my parents in the hotel. I wanted to be around them as much as I could before they left for Kolkata. Mama convinced me to move back in to my hostel and make other friends but I couldn’t. I tried hard but no self motivation worked. The last night with my parents still gives me the shivers when I think back. I was not only sad about losing a friend but I was scared of him. He had suddenly turned his back on me. One evening my father and I were walking down to our hotel when suddenly he fell down and it was the highway. Cars were rushing past us and an unknown fear of loss gripped me as I struggled to get him up. When I told my friend this incident, he didn’t care. He started misbehaving with me and fighting with me over nothing.
Binayak sir had a word with my parents and I remember breaking down in his office. He assured me that he’d look after me like an older brother but nothing could get me to stop crying. My parents left after ten days and I returned back to an empty hostel room. Shirin was very helpful whenever I felt too overwhelmed but she needed a little more time to come around. Now I was not only a senior, but a senior who had no grip over herself.
Probably the worst phase of my life were those initial days after my parents left me there. I cursed Manipal and hated her with all the strength I had. I cried all day long till I video called my parents and seeing them home, I cried some more. My laundry piled up, coursework piled up, study table and cupboard was a big mess and so was I. I ate almost nothing, walked to college like a zombie and came back to hostel only to breakdown. Arya, my senior from my previous college suggested that I see a psychologist because clearly, I was giving into depression and it wouldn’t help me. I felt too tired to walk all the way to KMC (Kasturba Medical College). I texted my friends back in Kolkata and kept on crying about how much I missed them and how lonely I had become. My brother called me and I told him the same after I finished crying over the phone. I just cried every minute of the time I was awake. This continued till I met an amazing woman one afternoon called Sakshi.
She stayed in the room next to me and was studying MA in Mass Communication from MIC. She was a beautiful, strong woman from Ludhiana, Punjab. I still remember that first ‘Hello’ she told me. There was something in her voice which was so welcoming and endearing!
“Are you okay?”, she asked. I came across very clearly as someone going through their personal worst. Sakshi has an eagle’s eye. She understands people better than most others.
“I don’t know. I don’t like it here. It’s so lonely.” I said almost in tears.
“Aww, don’t worry. Come with me, I’ll introduce you to my friends. You’re from MIC, right?”
“Yes, MAFA.”
“Wow! Come, I have friends who love cinema as much as you.”
“Really?” I said locking my room to walk back to college.
We walked downstairs together and she introduced me to Ramya, who’d later become my personal Clown, and Ramitha, who’d go on to become my cinematographer and go-to person for all cinematic questions, and Varsha, who became like a sister.
All of us walked back to college and Ramya and Ramitha couldn’t stop asking me questions about my course. That was the first day in Manipal when I smiled while walking to MIC after my parents had left. My zombie like walk picked up momentum and I didn’t feel like crying. We laughed and walked, talking about cinema and upon reaching college, decided to meet near the gate in the evening after our lectures.
“I’ll introduce you to Shraddha, Arushi and Shrishti, some more of our friends. You won’t be alone anymore.”, Sakshi told me.
That fine afternoon when it had stopped raining for about an hour and Sakshi asked me to tag along with her and her friends was one of the most memorable moments of my life. That walk marked the beginning of my most treasured experience in these twenty-three years, it gave me friends I had never thought I’d find in a place so far away from home, it gave a family when I desperately needed one, it restored my love for Manipal!
Reva.
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