Leaving home for the first time rarely feels heroic.
It feels quiet, uncertain, and strangely ordinary.

When I left Babra for Mumbai, I was thirteen years old a boy in the sixth standard, carrying more confusion than confidence. There were no speeches, no dramatic goodbyes, and no clear sense of what lay ahead. Only a small bag, unfamiliar streets waiting somewhere beyond the village, and the quiet understanding that life was about to change in ways I did not yet know how to name.

The school and the hostel stood on the same campus.
From that day onward, home and classroom became the same place and childhood slowly gave way to independence.

The interview

Before I was admitted, there was a small interview.

I still remember being handed a newspaper and asked to read the headline aloud. There was a cricket match that day, and the headline spoke about the result. I looked at the page carefully and began to read.

But instead of “cricket”, I read “chicket”.

In our village, that was how we had learned it C as “Ch”.

No one laughed. No one corrected me harshly.
But in that small moment, I understood something quietly and clearly: the world I was entering was very different from the one I was leaving behind.

Hostel corridors

Hostel life began without ceremony.

The school and the dormitory shared the same grounds, which meant that for most of the year, there was no going home. We returned to our villages only twice a year once during Diwali, and once around the summer holidays.

The rest of the time, the hostel was home.

Rooms were shared, often crowded. Bathrooms were basic. Hot water was rare. Privacy almost nonexistent. Dormitories were loud, restless, and endlessly busy.

Evenings were the hardest.

After study hours ended and the noise slowly faded, loneliness arrived quietly. Away from familiar voices, without the safety of routine, I began to understand what it meant to live on my own not in theory, but in practice.

There was chaos too.
Dozens of boys, different backgrounds, different habits, learning to share space, time, and patience.

And slowly, without realizing it, independence began to arrive.

Fifteen years away from home

What began as school life quietly became a long chapter.

From school through college and all the way until I became a Chartered Accountant, hostels remained my home. Nearly fifteen years passed in shared rooms, common dining halls, and corridors that changed names but never character.

Academics never came easily.

Progress was slow. Confidence is uncertain. More than once, the goal was simply to pass to move forward by narrow margins rather than by excellence.

But outside the classroom, another education was taking place.

I was learning to wake on time.
To manage small expenses.
To live with discomfort.
To handle failure quietly.
To wait patiently when clarity was missing.

Discipline did not arrive as a decision.
It arrived as a necessity.

What those years taught me

Looking back now, it is clear that hostels taught me far more than textbooks ever did.

They taught me independence before I understood its value.
They introduced me to loneliness before I learned resilience.
They shaped habits before I learned discipline.

In those corridors, I learned to trust slow progress.
To accept uncertainty.
To continue even when confidence was missing.

Long before I travelled across countries, I travelled inward there learning to live with myself, to manage silence, and to believe that ordinary beginnings could still lead somewhere meaningful.

A quiet gratitude

Today, when I look back from a very different city and a very different life, those years no longer feel difficult.

They feel necessary.

The boy who once read “chicket” instead of cricket did not become successful because of brilliance or speed.

He simply learned, slowly and quietly, how to be patient with life.

And that, perhaps, was the most important education of all.