Back to Normal

It’s been more than a year now that the COVID-19 pandemic affected the world, and our college campus closed to prevent the pandemic from afflicting the students and other residents on campus. All the residents were asked to vacate their hostels and go back to their homes. This led to nearly everyone missing out on a whole academic year of offline college life. For the batch that joined in 2020, most people are yet to experience what campus life feels like. However, recently, the campus started calling students back in a phased manner so as to make an attempt to return to normalcy. Now there are a lot of students and even staff on campus, and things are starting to return back to normal now.

The first event that I, as a student who has come to campus for the first time, saw, was the Garba night during Navratri. Everyone was excited because it was our first event on campus. On that night, it was kind of empty in the beginning, but then people started showing up, and all of a sudden everyone was just dancing and laughing. It wasn’t very big, it wasn’t very small, it was just the right size – you could just have fun, irrespective of whether you knew garba or not. To be honest, there were so many people just vibing and enjoying being there, even if they weren’t dancing. It was a good time.

The other major event that happened since the campus has opened would be the opening of JC. No, I’m not talking about GHC opening and VC setting up shop there, I’m talking about Dinesh bhaiya coming back and reopening JC, back to the way it was. That had to be the time every UG2 person on campus was waiting for. Finally, all the seniors who’d promised us Oreo shakes and JC treats, and even our batchmates who’ve got work done with promises of “When we’ll reach campus I’ll surely give you a JC treat,” now we could actually wring them out. And when it finally opened, the response was pretty huge. I’m pretty sure that on that one day, more than half the people on campus must’ve visited JC at that time. Social distancing might’ve taken a hit, but at least some people had their masks on.

There have been several sports events that have been organized by the students such as Basketball, Football, Volleyball, Badminton, Hockey, and very recently Cricket, tournaments. Not only the students, but even the staff on campus took part in these events with their own teams. The energy during these events was on a completely different level, filled with an electrifying aura. All participating teams gave their all to try and win, whilst also having fun in what can be assumed as a long, long time since quarantine was imposed on all. Even the spectators added their own flavour by cheering for their favourite teams with slogans. There were some absolutely stunning spikes that were to be seen in the volleyball tournament, and some hidden talents were found in the football tournament as well. The hockey tournament went by quietly but with ample participation. The cricket matches were filled with cheer and laughter by the flavourful commentary by the talented students on campus, and the “band” that was at work keeping the air energized.

At the end of all this, I’d say the campus is slowly getting back up on its feet in the midst of this pandemic, for better or for worse. Let’s hope that with the rest of the students coming into campus, the campus memories we all hoped we’d make with our friends online can be finally fulfilled.

Editor: Abhinav S Menon