Shades of Green

  As I happily sauntered my way into college boarding house, in 2014, I made way too many friends. I often bumped into familiar, pleasant, sometimes grumpy faces along the corridor. But I saw them often and that made all the difference; I had never felt so lonely as I would in just two years from then. What changed then?  “The doors changed.” When prompted to picture what a hostel would look like, my thoughts were that of an old, shabby, building with dirty unpainted walls; rooms with no tiles, windows that were never cleaned, beds of steel (I pictured a bed and that’s a little too much to ask for, I know), ceiling fans that collected too much dust – the color barely visible - from decades of no dusting, and common bathrooms that one had to wait in queues for. During my first year, my hostel looked just as I had pictured it to be – or maybe slightly better. I made friends easily. Anyone could barge into anybody’s room anytime. Doors were mostly open. Now, there’s a funny reason why doo