Life-A Short Story#9 

My College Life starts

Both school life and college life is the most memorable time of a person’s life, but both of them are quite different from each other. While in School life, we learn everything in a protected environment, College Life exposes us to a new environment where we have to learn new things and face new challenges by ourselves. We spend half of our young lives in school, and thus we get comfortable living in that environment. 

But College Life is for three years only,(graduate level) where every year introduces new challenges and lessons to us. While in school, our teachers and friends always protect and guard us, in college life we form a relationship with our mentors, and they don’t protect us all the time as our school teachers did. 

After getting excellent marks in high school, I was hoping to get admission to a top college at the time. Mathematics being my favorite subject, I wanted to pursue a bachelor’s degree in Economics or math.

I dreamt of education in Miranda house or Lady Shree Ram college.  I had the marks for it but my parents didn’t give me permission as these colleges were represented as posh colleges and girls from rich families came to these colleges.

The girls in those colleges were considered stylish as they wore modern clothes and spoke English. They were perceived as more forward, who had boyfriends and went out on dates. When I gave a thought to all of this, I convinced myself to get admission to Gargi College or Kamla Nehru College.

My name was on the cut-off list of a few colleges. I chose Gargi college and got admission to B.com. Gargi College is a college affiliated with the University of Delhi. It was established in the year 1967 and offers education in Arts and Humanities, Commerce, Science, and Education for women.

 Gargi College has been honored with Star College Status by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India. Gargi College was named after an enlightened woman named Gargi Vachaknavi, figuring in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad of the Vedic Age.

Gargi College in South Delhi is considered a reputed college of “Delhi University.” Most of us were from middle-class backgrounds. A few of them were from wealthy families also but we had our group of ten girls. All of us were from more or less middle-class families and we had our set of boundaries. Not getting late from college in the evenings and staying away from boys were a few to mention.

After getting admission I started my new journey. It was a girl’s college and there was no chance to have boyfriends but still, my father warned me of doing anything like that. I was so scared to do anything which could be wrong in his eyes and I felt that he can see me if I do anything out of my boundaries.

Our college started after summer vacation

I became the unelected leader of the group as always. All of us used to enjoy our college days and participated in most of the activities. 

Apart from dance, music, debate drama, and other extra-curricular activities our college had an NCC wing. Any student desirous of joining it had to enroll in NCC(National Cadet Corps). The NCC is a responsive, learning, and continuously evolving organization. It encourages cadets to have a sense of patriotic commitment, contributes to national development, and respects diversity in religion, language, culture, ethnicity, lifestyle, and habitat. 

To instill a sense of national unity, social cohesion, and the ability to participate in community development and other social programs. It also inculcates the values of honesty, truthfulness, self-sacrifice, perseverance, and hard work. It exposes cadets to a regimented way of life which is essential for inculcating the values of discipline, dutifulness, punctuality, orderliness, smartness, respect for rightful authority, and good and correct work ethos, and self-confidence.

The NCC provides exposure to the cadets in a wide range of activities, with a distinct emphasis on Social Services, Discipline, and Adventure Training. The NCC is open to all regular students of the colleges on a voluntary basis. The students have no liability for active military service.

NCC is a highly reputed body that is also a second line of defense. Other than just military training the cadets also learn several other valuable things such as selflessness, honesty, discipline, hard work, and ways to build confidence and gain leadership quality.

Students get extra points by which they get leverage in NCC, CDS, and similar Army qualifying examinations. Students get trained for shooting just like professionals. The cadets get to gel along well with peers of the same interests. In a year session minimum of 32 NCC parades were compulsory. 

I also filled up the form and joined it as an NCC cadet.

We(my group of ten girls) were in NCC(National Cadet Corps) group and went for rifle shooting at Tughlakabad fort. We enjoyed it a lot and felt that we were important to our country.

Every time we had our NCC parade, we were given a refreshment coupon for 40 paise which we could spend in our college canteen. I liked South Indian food so much that every time I got that coupon I relished masala dosa. I never had any hot or cold beverages despite my friend’s insistence that I should drink something.

After school life, it was a significant change that all of us were enjoying. Maybe that age is just like that…we were always cheerful, happy, laughing at small things and really and actually enjoying life. Like we had nothing to do with anything in the world.

The freedom, the sense of maturity, and many more things are beyond explanation. Those memories still make me happy at this point of my life where I have seen so many ups and downs in life. But those days are still unforgettable and I cherish those memories to date.

To be continued…