I opened the door and the room spewed dust on me as if it were a ritual of welcoming a new resident. It was approximately an 8 feet by 10 feet squarish room belonging to the era of baby-boomers. The room seemed to be painted at the first glance by visibly big stains of paint on the floor, but, a closer look revealed that the walls were left in the lurch of it. I wondered if the painter wanted to paint the floor instead. There was a fan attached to an extraordinarily high ceiling and there was some math attached to its working as it worked only on odd number of regulator. There was one bed and a table-chair. I tried various setting for each of them but finally settled down, tired, with the same position in which they were found. Not much is left to you when the room is of this size and the key word is space-optimization. I had come prepared with a couple of posters to make my room more lively and fixing them was no easy task as the walls were soaked in dust. By the time stars appeared in the sky I felt like a dead man walking and the only wish remaining in the heart was to slip into a deep slumber asap.
I believe that it was the best possible thing to happen to me in the last one year. A friend in times of joy, a mentor in times despair, a wall against prying eyes, an incubator for new thoughts. It allowed me to be me. It gave me the freedom to lie in my state of affairs and just be myself.
I will certainly miss my hostel room which was a home-away-from-home in an entirely unknown city.
