- Privacy And Personal Space: if you know how it is to be sharing a room with two or three people, you will know how it feels to have your privacy get invaded. When you have to talk on the phone (especially to your boyfriend or girlfriend) it becomes an extremely secretive process. And when you have to discuss uncomfortable topics or erotic stuff, it gets really really awkward.
- Home Cooked Food: when you have to eat chappatis without ghee or extremely greasy dals and sabzi’s you miss home cooked meals more than anything. “mumma ke haath ka khana” becomes the favorite cuisine of all times.
- Washed And Ironed Clothes: the luxury of washed, dried and ironed clothes is something which students living away from home do not have. To wash clothes they have to wake up early in the morning and reduce their precious time of sleep. Also many students like me develop habit of wearing un-ironed clothes, well because we’re lazy to go till the ironing board and do it ourselves.
- Conveyance: sitting in a car is nothing less than a luxury, when you’ve traveled so much using rikshaws, autos, buses and metros,cars seem like man’s greatest invention. Although I love the extremely effective air conditioner in the Delhi Metros.
- Money: once you start living away from your parents (who we all can call our personal ATM’s) you start valuing money more than you ever did before. You start living life like a miser and it’s not just you but everyone around you doing the same. Begging and borrowing for more money from parents or friends in not unlikely for hostelers.
- Comfort Of Your Own Bed And Bathroom: when you leave your own house you leave behind the comfort of your own bed. For me I can still adjust with the beds we are assigned to but adjusting with a bathroom is an extremely tough job. You have to make your peace not only with the bathroom you ought to use for the rest of the time but also the fact that you have to share it with about 5 to 10 other people as well.
- Parents: you miss your parents almost every day especially your mother. I miss her every time it’s time for me to take exams because in a PG or a hostel nobody would actually ask you what you would like to eat before or after your exam unlike how mothers do. Even if you fall sick you have to take care of yourself because well nobody else would take care of you like your parents do/ did.
- Siblings: you sometimes miss your brothers and sisters more than you miss anyone. Even though they drove you crazy while you lived under the same roof but they always added the element of fun in your life plus they were always there to protect you from the wrath of your parents.
- Get-togethers: you tend to miss the time you spend with your family as a whole unit. I miss the times when my entire family sits together in the same car and we drive to someplace even if that place is a grocery store nearby.
- Time: one thing that you learn for your entire life is to value time. You start valuing time spent with people you love, your family and friends because this time is limited to a few hours or a few days. You start valuing time in a manner that you become punctual, you have a rough estimate of how much time you require to do things independently. You start completing things on time on your own and thus become self sufficient.
