Hello there!
I don’t feel good about not writing here since a long time. However, this is not the only thing in my life that’s facing the wrath of procrastination, almost everything in my life is a witness to that.
I am a promise keeper though, I mentioned that I’ll do a post about my MBA campus in India before moving to Germany for the second leg of my course. I wasn’t able to write a post because the last few days in college went by super fast, before moving to Berlin, but I took lots of pictures on my last day in college, simply to save for this post. 🙂
So, here it is, MDI Gurgaon, India in all its glory. I should also mention here that campuses outside India are usually not very huge but then, I have a hundred more reasons to miss my campus life, definitely one of my most cherished times!
That would be ‘Gurukul’, the block where all the classes and lectures happen. Gurukul is a Sanskrit/Hindi word meaning the place of the teacher where people used to go for studies in olden times, the name of this block is quite fitting! That small pantry like canteen you see is always booming with people despite the fact that everyone hates the canteen guy in this particular canteen. After all, its the easiest way to grab a bite in the 15-minute breaks between lectures.
This is the garden in front of the block that you just saw and some set of hostels.
‘Change Masters’, fancy name for our mess and few hostels are also situated in this building. Since the girls hostel for my batch was a little far off, most of our time was spent in this particular building only. Oh, I miss having hearty breakfasts in the mess now! 😛
This is the customary campus picture, if you search for images of MDI Gurgaon, you’ll find prettier and photoshop versions of this block – ‘Scholars’! I cannot say why. 😛 This block houses library, auditorium, faculty offices and other such things.
This is the other side of Scholars and I believe that this side also deserves some love when it comes to the pictures on-line of our campus.
I really, really miss walking on this road. It was simply perfect, taking strolls on this road. It is the main road in our campus connecting all the blocks.
I consider myself lucky that the dual degree has given me an opportunity to have a taste of studying here in abroad, as it is an altogether different experience. However, even before coming here, I knew that nothing would be able to replicate the charm of campus life. Chilling in hostels all day long when you have so much pending work to do, going to places only because you have a discount coupon or a free Uber ride for that place, taking strolls at midnight in the campus or playing cricket ( 😀 ), checking the autowallahs right outside the campus smoking up, walking up to the tea stall right outside the campus and feeling immediately secure when you enter the campus premises after coming back from somewhere in the night. Every campus has some peculiar and fun things attached to it, one that is gloriously peculiar for MDI is ‘Jha ji’. He is a parantha (Indian stuffed flat bread) stall owner who comes to our campus only at midnight, say, from 12 am to 5 am. He probably makes the best paranthas I have tasted in my entire life, and a lot of people can vouch for that. Keeping aside the paranthas even, this guy Jha ji is so peculiar in himself. He is a super slow guy and probably a lazy one at that because he skips coming to campus many a time. Finally when he comes, the crowds outside his stall are huge in the middle of the night and due to his slow nature, people have to wait for hours to get a single parantha (no exaggeration there). Well worth the wait though. In the bone chilling Delhi winters, he reduces the frequency of his ‘campus visits’, so during that time, whenever he comes, a mail to all the batches is circulated by someone who sees him coming or whoever calls him to check whether he is coming. ‘Jha ji on campus’ is a celebration time.
Writing all this, I am now acutely aware of how much I miss the campus life. All kinds of experiences have their own charm but campus life is literally irreplaceable in the strictest sense. I wish I had lived more semesters in hostel during my engineering too because engineering life is anyway so different, a good hostel life on top of it would have been perfect. I really envy NITs & IITs people (two major engineering colleges in India) where it is almost compulsory for students to live in hostels. Not to mention that NITs & IITs have gorgeous campuses! I am sure for many of them, their engineering time was the best time of their lives. For me, it may be my post graduation time, the time that I spent in this campus! 🙂