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5 Best European Restaurants in Delhi

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Tight budgets, extra classes, and pick up street food aptly sums up your life if you’re in the University of Delhi. An average day in a student’s life is constituent of meeting deadlines, pushing deadlines, and daydreaming about food. So why not take a day off and forget the budget to treat yourself at one of Delhi’s numerous culinary marvels.

The following list will take you on a journey through the flip side of sustenance with 5 restaurants to indulge your fanciful food cravings from.

Caution: These places come with the risk of making your already tight monthly budget, even tighter.

1.Cafe Dori (Dhan Mill Compound, 100 Feet Road, Chhatarpur)

The cafe venture of an already famous luxury leather brand, Nappa Dori, Cafe Dori doesn’t disappoint in terms of both food and ambiance. Hidden in the Dhan Mill compound on hundred feet road, this relatively new cafe is what dreams are made of. With a wide space constituent of Nappa Dori’s ideation center, shop and cafe, the minimalist setting and clean interiors are perfect for those who want an authentic taste of Europe.

2. Cafe Diva (N Block Market, Greater Kailash–1)

One of celebrity chef Ritu Dalmia’s many restaurants in Delhi, Cafe Diva is something straight out of the Sex and the City. Its modern interiors, sparkling Pellegrino and a wide range of wine will definitely be worth the hole in your pocket. Situated in the N Block market of Greater Kailash 1, this is the perfect place to rest your tired toes and nourish your famished soul after a long day of shopping.

3.FatJar Cafe & Market (Block A, Kailash Colony)

The new kid on the block, FatJar Cafe and Market is the place to be, especially if you’re in the mood for some of the best gourmet pizza in town. Located in a rather obscure part of Kailash Colony, this place is easy to miss if you’re passing by. Their wood fire oven defuses the delectable fragrance of fresh pizza before it even reaches your table. It has a dynamic menu that changes every day as per the chef’s new creations along with the option to purchase different types of meats, cheeses, and pastas among other homemade items offered in their wide range of European products.

4. Fig and Maple (Block M, Greater Kailash II)

From the owner of Ivy and Bean, comes Fig and Maple, the Continental and Italian, a restaurant in Greater Kailash II. The saying: we eat with our eyes first, applies perfectly to Fig and Maple’s aesthetic food presentation and it only gets better when you take that first bite. Breakfast has never looked better with their absolutely stunning pancakes and juicy pulled meat burgers. While stiff with their pricing, this place definitely delivers in terms of both food and presentation.

5. Andrea’s eatery (First Floor, Select City Walk)

Hidden in a small corner of the bustling Select City Walk, is this cosy European restaurant that serves Italian, Thai, and Indonesian cuisine. With a delightfully unusual menu in the form of a cookbook, the restaurant has a wide variety of pasta, risotto, and ravioli among other Italian delicacies. It’s attractive lighting, overall ambiance, and delicious food makes this a place a must visit.

While stiff with their pricing, these restaurants are sure to offer you an experience like never before. With Delhi’s culinary scene bustling with marvelous flavours and cuisines from all over the world, we’ve just scratched the surface of the numerous brilliant restaurants out there. Treat yourself to some luxury, it’ll be worth it.

 

Feature Image Credits: Redfoodie

Meher Gill

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Campus Central

Why the Delhi Metro is Every Student’s Lifeline

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The Delhi metro has helped students through hard times and good times. Snaking through the vast corridors of the state, it has become more than just a means of transport.

For students, the presence of Delhi metro has been a boon. We have now started to spend more time underground than above the ground, happy in our moleskins. No, it is not a place for Pritam and his band to sing romantic songs, and it is not a place for Amitabh Bachchan to let out his inner child in front of his ‘father’. It is our commute, our lifeline. The Delhi metro has served many purposes for the average student of the University of Delhi (DU) since its beginning. Despite helping students beat the strenuous Delhi traffic, the Delhi metro has many other amenities to cater to students. The Vishwavidyalaya metro station’s cheap INR 50 earphones become necessities; copies, books, earrings, and food are readily available right at the metro stations. Not to mention the utility of the bicycles for use on a leisurely day around the campus.

College students spend a substantial amount of time commuting in the metro. The average, broke DU student can hardly afford the luxury of an Uber cab. For the lucky few off-campus students, the metro sometimes serves the purpose of not just connectivity, but also as a completely acceptable excuse to be late to class, on the days the usually punctual metro is confronted with a technical snag.

For a few of us, the metro is also about chance encounters. We meet new people every day, whether it is that jhola-carrying cute guy who asked you what you are reading, or the aunty who threw you dirty looks for rocking out to AC/DC. The metro is a host of characters, and mingling with them is our very own capsule.

Recent expansion in the metro will prove to be more helpful in bridging the north-south divide. The 21.56 km stretch of the Pink Line which is operational now connects the North and South campuses of Delhi University, which would reduce the travel time to 40 minutes. The line also connects 12 stations and the Blue, Yellow, Red, and Airport metro lines. In December 2017, the Prime Minister opened a section of the Magenta Line connecting the Kalkaji Mandir metro station to Botanical Garden in Noida. The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) is hence slowly expanding and is expected to cover 700 kilometres in a few years as per the Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri.

 

Feature Image Credits: India Today.

Sara Sohail

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Fandom

Tinsel University: Cultural Icons of DU

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From theatre artists to filmmakers to photographers, the list of remarkable alumni associated with the University of Delhi runs into volumes. The article focuses on some such names for whom the university played a crucial role and who continues to inspire its students.

While researching for this article, I bumped into some surprising names I had no idea were part of the University, a humbling reminder of the generations of history that this place has kept hidden. While we have all heard of Shahrukh Khan’s Hansraj and KMC being called the “Bachchan College”, there are many others in the field of entertainment and arts who used to walk the same corridors as we do today. Here is our not-so-comprehensive list of notable alumni in such (and allied) fields:

  1. Deepa Mehta: The critically acclaimed director who shot to fame because of her films like Fire (1996), Earth (1998), and Water (2005) is an alumnus of Lady Shri Ram College for Women in philosophy. While some have called her a transnational filmmaker, Mehta’s films have often broken boundaries such as Fire, a fierce lesbian love story that hit a whirlpool of controversy with its release. The film stars Nandita Das, a Miranda House alumni and Khulbushan Kharbanda, a Kirori Mal graduate.
  2. Rohit Bal: A leading fashion designer in India, Bal hails from Kashmir and is a graduate in history honours from St. Stephen’s College. The city also saw him starting his career with his brother Rajiv Bal in 1986. Today, Bal’s collections are sought after all over Bollywood and many celebrities like Arjun Rampal, Kareena Kapoor, and Shilpa Shetty have walked the ramp for him.
  3. Anjolie Ela Menon: Veteran painter and Padma Shri awardee, Menon is a graduate in English honours from Miranda House. She is now considered one of the leading contemporary artists of India, her paintings beings showcased in major collections all over the world.
  4. Anurag Kashyap: The gritty, “director of the masses”, is an alumnus of Hansraj College. Kashyap’s films such as Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) and D (2009) have been both commercial and critical successes pushing him into the limelight.
  5. Manoj Bajpayee: National Award-winning actor Manoj Bajpayee studied in both in Satywati College and Ramjas College, immersing himself in the campus theatre scene during his college days. As he told Times of India, “Those three years of DU were life-changing for me. I went from someone who could not read the front page of the Times of India to reading George Bernard Shaw and Shakespeare.”

 

Feature Image Credits: 24 Update News

Sara Sohail

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DUB Speak

The Experience of a Transgender Woman in University of Delhi

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The society has built walls of non-acceptance, invisibility, and harassing transgender people. Studying at the University of Delhi while being myself openly, I recount my own experiences.

After much introspection, when I finally understood and identified myself with the “label” of a transgender woman, I realised that life is going to be tough. While you can hide your sexuality, it is hard to hide your gender expression. Gender expression is overt and apparent. Even though medicine and the legal system have developed in this matter, transitioning from male to female is not a cake walk.

Gender dysphoria is emotionally and mentally debilitating. Very simply put, it is the discomfort due in “phallic” circumstances. Beginning with, using the “male” washroom in college feels wrong and almost unsafe to use. Moreover, at the metro station, I have to be body-checked at the “male” security check. To experience this before coming to college every day becomes difficult and often prevents me from attending classes. Once I was wearing a  kurti and churidar along with a dupatta and the security guard asked me if I’m male or female, after which he proceeded to touch my genitals. I felt numb, angry, and violated.

After I found the right name for myself and became comfortable in my identity, I came out to my friends on Instagram. Visibility is important and telling everyone proudly and unashamedly, certainly made things better. The initial reaction was largely and overwhelmingly positive. My friends started using my preferred name and pronouns. After coming out, I encountered a series of ignorant questions like “Are you male or female?”, “Since you’re biologically male, that means you’re a trans-man, right?”, “Why do you have to be extremely feminine all the time?”, or “Have you tried being masculine or being with a girl? There is still time and maybe you’ll change.” I try my best to explain to those who genuinely ask but, often the sheer ignorance puts me off. For a generation that spends most of its time on the internet, this level of obliviousness cannot be expected, especially within the age demographic I spend most of my time with.

People everywhere face prejudices and stereotypes. A blonde woman has to prove she’s not dumb, a brown-skinned woman ought to prove she’s beautiful, but, as a transwoman, I have to prove that I am, in fact, a woman. Since I am not medically transitioning yet, people “misgender” me, and often perceive me as male which is extremely discomforting. The general understanding on transwomen is that “She is about to become a woman”. While I may not be physically female yet, I am a woman, naari , and larki through and through.

While I’m very comfortable in my womanhood, validating moments like being gendered correctly by strangers, being referred to as “ma’am”, or when someone approaches my friends with my birth name and surprisingly they don’t remember it, fills my heart with happy blood and I feel at peace.

Raabiya Tuteja

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DUB Speak

Think beyond 12th Board Results and Delhi University

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12th Board Results are highly unpredictable and it would be foolishness to allow something like that to control your higher education choices. Explore other colleges that admit students on the basis of entrance examinations and more.
Looking at the title, you might think, “Why should we take it from someone who herself studies in DU? Why would she understand?”The relevance and accuracy of board examinations are largely over-estimated in our country. Our XII board marks don’t stay relevant forever; they are a small part of our life, meant to ensure the smooth transition from one phase to another. Even Vineet Joshi, chairman of CBSE, admitted that Class XII scores are not the correct marker for selection for higher education. I have a disregard for the Indian education system and would not hesitate to voice my opinion that the XII boards only test an individual’s capability of answering a paper according to a prescribed answer pattern. Ever since my encounter with the disaster called CBSE English results, my question has been, how can an answer key dictate expression or knowledge in a subjective paper like English?
I don’t wish to delve into a rant about how marks don’t matter and why scoring decent marks in not only CBSE but any other state/central board is a matter of luck and mugging rather than deep understanding of the text. Through this article, I’d share with you my research on why XII board results are not the be-all, end-all for a student.
One of the grave mistakes many students make is that they apply only to the University of Delhi (DU) and ignore other universities and educational institutes in Delhi as well as outside. Jamia Milia Islamia, one of the best alternatives to DU, conducts entrance tests for admission into its undergraduate courses. A well-reputed university, its degree has value and respect equivalent to DU’s degree. Further, the students have the option of applying to government colleges outside Delhi which conduct entrances such as the Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, Loyola College in Chennai, Presidency University in Kolkata, Ramnarain Ruia College (affiliated to Mumbai University), some of which begin with the application process way before the central boards declare their results.
There is no doubt that Delhi University has a rich history and some notable names from the fields of Arts, Films, Journalism, Politics, and Literature in their list of alumni. However, for students who want to pursue specialised courses like design or multimedia, DU wouldn’t suffice even if you have the marks to qualify for the same. For instance, only a handful of colleges from over 64 provide Journalism as a course. And even for those which do, students complain of substandard education. For specialised courses, private universities like Amity University, Sharda University, O.P Jindal University, Ashoka University, and Symbiosis Institute provide meaningful alternatives.
IGNOU is clearly not the conventional choice, but the University is worth a shot for students who wish to complete their graduation while pursuing other interests. Correspondence course students can get access to the study material well in advance and can study at their own pace here.
As the XII boards approach, remember not to worry about the uncles and aunts who never wish you in March (before the exams start) but always uncannily materialise in May (when the results come out). Remember that outside DU, there’s a world of opportunities waiting for you to be explored.

Feature Image credits: NDTV
Vaibhavi Sharma Pathak
[email protected]

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Humouroscope

Life When You are in an On-Campus Relationship

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A great man once coined the term ‘on-campus relationship’ to describe sleazy couples, which reside within the capacious four walls of North Campus, University of Delhi, occasionally seen coquettishly enveloping hands at Sudama Tea Point or attending a certain act of worship of a certain tree on that certain occasion mostly dreaded by single people. From having Parathas at Patel Chest to being evasive when you run into each other post a painful breakup, here is a piece of research that people in on-campus relationships would relate to:

1. You have to be careful who you look at: In North Campus, if you think you’d get away with casually flirting with a guy you met while buying Surf Excel at the neighborhood general store, you’re wrong. Because North campus is like a well-knit community of people, chances are that friends of friends of friends of friends would also know that you’re dating a certain someone. For all you know, the boy you were casually philandering with, might be the same person your boyfriend’s roommate’s classmate practices dance with. Conversely, people would be more cautious of making romantic advances on you because they’d know you are dating so-and-so.

2. Frequenting the VC lawns: The Viceregal Lodge, now called ‘VC’s office’, came into existence in 1902 was handed over to the University in 1933. 0.67 seconds post that, the first couple entered the VC lawns that surround the office. These exaggerations apart, the VC lawns, which are known for its ambrosial greenery and prepossessing foliage, are a hit amongst nature-“lovers” and poets alike.

3. Cups of Chai at Sudama: In a parallel universe, if tea stall owners were to be Pop Singers, Sudama Ji would be Lady Gaga. If Sudama Tea Joint earns ‘x’ amount of money from regular ‘single’ students, it earns ‘x²’ from couples who spend lazy evenings sipping cups of chai at the joint. Because on practical terms, on a student budget, spending INR 10 under the beauteous foliage at Sudama’s seems more appealing than spending INR 1000 at Mc. Donald’s.

4. Going to fests together: In a hypothetical situation, if the first college fest of University of Delhi was inaugurated at 10:30 hours on the fated date of 23rd February 1701, we can assume that the first couple held hands in that fest at 10:31 hours on 23rd February in the same century.

5. Avoiding running into each other post break-up: Whether you go out to buy toothpaste in Vijaynagar or to buy Maggi in Kamla Nagar, there would be a constant nagging at the back of your head that screams, “Get out of those sweats! Dress well! You don’t want him to know that you’re not dealing well with the breakup!”. Moreover, things get weird when you see the ex-beau with a new boy/girl. And then things get weirder when you stalk that new person on Instagram and before you realise it, you’re scrolling through her/his aunt’s best friend’s baby-sitter’s graduation pictures.

6. Overlapping friends’ circles: Taylor Swift in her song “We’re never getting back together” had sung, “..you go talk to your friends, talk to my friends.. but we are never ever ever getting back together”. She isn’t called the Queen for nothing, for she could accurately sum up what happens when an ‘on-campus’ couple breaks up. When you’re in such a relationship, you tend to spend so much time with the significant other’s friends that you end up becoming friends, your respective friends end-up dating, and your friend’s circles end up becoming a confusing web of common acquaintances. As a result, when you break-up, the equations in the friend’s circle gets disrupted and WhatsApp groups are formed titled “Sheetal broke up with Sanjay, ab kya kare” (What to do now that Sheetal and Sanjay broke up?).

 

Feature Image Credits: Gewusstwie Lerntherapie

Vaibhavi Sharma Pathak
[email protected]

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DUB Speak

Importance of Summer Internships in a College Student’s Life

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An internship is a period of work experience offered by an organisation for a limited period of time. Here is a look into why internships can prove to be one of the most critical tools to succeed in a college student’s life.

When you take admission into universities that are considered to be the best in the country like the University of Delhi, Indian Institute of Technology, Indian Institute of Hotel Management, etc, you are grouped into a classroom full of students with more or less the same or comparable academic calibre as you. It is extremely easy to stand out during school days since most of the focus is given to academics. However, it is a completely different story when it comes to higher educational institutions.

When you enter the realm of the college education, you get a reality check in terms of your capabilities and how sustainable they are when you compare them to your peers. The social scenario completely shifts and you soon realise that only focussing on academics (though, it is an extremely imperative priority) will not cut it. Companies nowadays are looking for and give preference to work experience. Recruiters from big corporations pay more attention to your Curriculum Vitae (CV) instead of your academic transcripts and ask more skill based practical questions instead of syllabus oriented theoretical ones. Even higher educational institutions abroad that offer Master’s courses heavily weigh in your extracurricular activities when it comes to taking students into their universities.

One of the most effective ways to catch the eye of your desired Master’s college and/or your dream company you have wanted to work for is through doing summer internships during your summer vacations while completing your bachelor’s degree. Summer holidays are one of the best times to be productive and positively add to your CV’s, rather than lounging around in your room’s binge-watching TV shows on Netflix.

Summer internships are not only a great addition to the CV, but they allow you to gain hands-on experience and let you get your feet wet in a field you might be considering to pursue after the completion of your academic endeavours. Internships are a proven way to earn valuable knowledge and acquire the feel of working in an actual office, which most certainly cannot be taught in a classroom. Employers in status quo rely heavily on a good resume that displays a relevant work history. Partaking in an internship allows you to establish a series of networks and connections in your desired field of work that might prove to be extremely beneficial for you in the future. Despite these benefits, doing summer internships can and does also lead to personal growth and development in terms of pushing yourself in an official and professional environment, chasing deadlines, and managing your time effectively.

There are many online websites that compile a list of internships based on your interests like Internshala, HelloIntern, Letsintern etc through which you can apply for multiple companies offering long term, short term, and work from home internships. Another way to get hired as an intern is to connect with companies and offices via e-mail by sending your CV and expressing your interests to join their offices as an intern.
A practical work background carries a major significance when attempting to enter the job market or a higher educational institution. It’s all about competition!
Feature Image Credits: Study Abroad & Education Dynamics
Bhavya Banerjee
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DUB Speak

The Role of Student-Run Media Houses In Delhi University

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There has been a surge in the number of student-run media houses in universities recently. These outlets have an important role to play in the campus ecosystem when it comes to disseminating news and providing students with infotainment.

In the recent past, a surge in the number of media platforms has been observed in the university hemisphere. The mushrooming of student-run media houses stands as a testimony to this fact. To cater to the ever-increasing demand for information by university students, a lot of student-run media houses have been integrated into the campus ecosystem, and their work of student newspapers is to provide this public service to a university audience.

Many students go through distress about not having the official information at the right time. University offices have not been very effective when it comes to disseminating important information. Moreover, help lines issued by the administration do not cater to the students’ questions satisfactorily. More often than not, they are liable to technical glitches and fail to serve the students in the stipulated time frame. A university houses a huge number of students and it gets practically impossible to reach out to every student in person. This gave way to the proliferation of student-run media outlets in the universities.

The need got coupled with technology in the form of smart phones and easy internet access, which created a fertile field for the burgeoning of media houses in the universities. 

These media houses are fast emerging and students believe that it has a thriving market.  There is a steep competition among student-run media outlets, with each of these outlets delivering innovative content in a weekly cycle to outnumber each other’s subscribers. These media outlets are grooming entrepreneurs, writers, marketers, designers, and artists. Today, every student seeks opportunities to acquire practical knowledge by interning at myriad professional platforms. This compensates for the exposure that our university system fails to provide.

Student-run media outlets provide necessary information and promote democratic participation of the students. These media houses instill a sense of responsibility within students and inculcate leadership qualities in them. Not only do they create narratives and make the students aware of the issues around them, but also strive to be accessible to a larger audience.

Rather than just providing high-quality content, student journalists are also dedicated to connecting students, academic departments, alumni, and the world. Universities should acknowledge and encourage the student journalists with bubbling energy and should create porous gateways for the passing of information from the administration to the student-run media outlets to sustain such an ecosystem. 

 

Feature Image Credits: USA Today

Sandeep Samal
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DUB Speak

The Benefits and Importance of Extracurricular Activities in Delhi University

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The University of Delhi experience includes not just academics, but extracurricular activities as well. Involving yourself in the right societies can help you follow your passions, form friendships, learn new skills, and build imperative networks professionally.

A college student’s participation in extracurricular activities (ECA) acts as an integral role in a student’s life and significantly adds to the collegiate experience. Students become occupied in supplementary activities not only for entertainment, social, and gratification purposes but most importantly to gain and advance their skills.

There’s more to the college experience than just the classroom. From strengthening the brain to promoting more efficient time management skills, extracurricular activities help students thrive in much more than just their academic accomplishments. Extracurricular activities permit you to get a hands-on understanding in the field you will be working in, make associations with diverse people, advance your social skills, and it can really aid you in polishing your work ethic.

The University of Delhi provides a wide range of extra-curricular activities for its students. Each college has its own societies, which competes with the societies of other colleges and universities, time and again, across the various academic sessions, especially during the fest season. These activities exist to balance the university’s academic programme of study and augment the student’s educational experience. ECA teaches you the vital practical skills that you can apply when you enter the professional realm. The certificates and the enhancement of your CV through ECA assist you in preparing for the dynamism that follows you after your undergraduate degree completion.

These activities can also work to build professional skills that a classroom alone cannot foster alone. Being in a position of leadership in a society (society unions and student governments of colleges), for example, helps students learn essential skills in administration, organisation, and delegation. Being a part of a society in Delhi University most often has the effect of nurturing powerful team-building skills and guiding students in holding and achieving long-term goals. Extracurricular activities can smooth the progress of equipping students with many skills prospect or potential employers will be looking for. These programmes are also pleasurable and offer students the prospect to spend time with people of analogous interests. It helps students meet friends from different social groups and also acts as a de-stressor from the rigorous demands of their usual academic workload.

 

 

Feature Image Credits: Galin Education

Bhavya Banerjee

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DUB Speak

Life in a Metro…Literally!

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Jon managed to go to Bear Island, made numerous trips to and from Castle Black and even sailed far south to Dragonstone to meet Daenerys.

Just like Jon Snow from Game of Thrones, the students of the University of Delhi living in the NCR region are also used to traveling great stretches every day. While they don’t have to deal with the problem of living “away” from home, they don’t have the comfort of living in Karol Bagh or Chattarpur either. Students coming from the NCR region have to deal with daily traveling, security issues, and the resulting loss of productivity.

Here are 9 things that an average Delhi University student living in the NCR would relate to-

  1.  The traveling time: If X, a student of Delhi University, is living in Faridabad, she has to travel for an hour and a half in the metro to come to college. This means she would have to spend three hours every day in the metro alone. Add to that the time which gets spent in taking the e-rickshaw to the college, talking to a friendly face in the way, and waiting for the next metro in the hope of finding a seat. It takes an average NCR student four hours to just ‘travel’. That is life in a metro, literally, and figuratively.
  2. The lack of attendance: Halfway through the year, the class gets divided into three broad categories:
    (a) Hostellers
    (b) Those who live in the PGs and within the Delhi region
    (c) Those who live in NCR
    While the hostellers have the best attendance, the second category manages a decent attendance, and the last category just lets go of those five marks.
  3. The inability to join societies: DU societies are known to be very taxing, demanding, and time-consuming. Hence, most students from NCR, either, don’t join societies or even if they do join them they end up leaving midway.
    It becomes impossible to maintain a healthy schedule when traveling eats up important hours of your day. For example, if your class ends at three, followed by three-hour society practice, and two hours of traveling then you’ll reach home at 8 p.m.
    (Calculations: 3 p.m.+ 3-hour practice + 2-hour travelling= 8 p.m.).
    A regular college student cannot afford this tight schedule.
  4. You’re winning at life if you get to sleep even for five hours: Sleep is for the weak. Tell that to the NCR kid who gets up at five every day for his 9 a.m. class. The morning routine of NCR kid is as follows:(a) You set the first alarm at 5 a.m., the second at 5:05 a.m., the third at 5:07 a.m., and so on.(b) You FINALLY get up at 5:40 a.m.(c) You basically spend the next 20 minutes in bed checking messages and well, doing nothing.(d) The day finally starts at 6 a.m. and you get on with the usual morning routine for the next 40 minutes.(e) You get out of the house at 6:40 a.m., and it takes you about 20 more minutes to reach the metro station.(f) A 2-hour metro journey to your college. (With some luck, you might get a seat)
  5. Every day is a business day you have to “plan” for: An average day of an NCR kid requires more planning and plotting than any average Red Wedding.  You have to make a mind map every night. Say, if you have a class at 9 a.m. the next morning, you have to go through a battle in your mind about whether to get up at 5 or 5:30. And when every day is a “planned business day”, any aberration in the form of a teacher rescheduling class or a class getting preponed at the last moment can be a “disturbance” to the daily business of getting yourself to college and vice-versa.
  6. Not everyone wants to hear “Class just got canceled”: Class getting cancelled is not always good news, especially for the NCR students who spend their morning travelling from North of the Wall to Westeros (read: Noida/Gurgaon to DU colleges) risk getting killed in Castle Black where members of the Night’s Watch just can’t enough to killing each other (read: survive Rajiv Chowk), and deal with the wildling invasion (read: office goers in Delhi metro).  If you have to put with this struggle to get to class, you feel a sense of loss at having to see your struggle go to waste, even if you might not say it aloud.
  7. Studying. What’s that?: It is almost a universal fact that NCR kids HAVE to spend sleepless nights to make up for the precious time lost in commuting. If an average NCR student reaches home at 7 p.m., the average student living within Delhi reaches home at 4. You can pretty much gauge the number of hours lost.
  8. You need to spend days planning about the day you’d hang out with your friends: Chilling is no longer about impromptu meet-ups where you casually text your friend, “Hey where are you? Let’s go to Big Yellow Door”. Chilling involves a string of strategies like coordinating the “chilling place” such that it would be convenient for your different friends who live in different regions of the NCR, and coordinating the “chilling hours” such that your NCR friends do not have to reach home too late.
  9. You learn life skills: Like every dark cloud has a silver lining and every Night’s Watch has a Jon Snow, every great struggle that an NCR student has to go through is a life lesson to learn from. You learn how to stress-management, time-management, and coordination, despite the odds. Whether they help you in college or not varies from student to student, but these life lessons surely come handy further in life.

 

Image Credits: Rise for India

Vaibhavi Sharma Pathak

[email protected]

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