After sleeping straight for 14.5 hrs., on the pretext of being tired, I (literally) woke up to the realization that I was missing home. And sleeping was just an escape.


I come hostel around 6.30 pm yesterday, after slogging my ass at the Surgery ward 18, since 9 am, gave my best today since it was the last day of my rotation and I will be joining Orthopedics from the day after.
It was a splendid day, did Blood collections, wrote some discharges and Revived a (suspected Cardiac arrest ? )gasping patient.
Since it was the final day here, I conversed for a long time with my patients (I pray that Krishna* cracks UPSC! He’s suffered a lot already), my nurses and my residents.

When you stay in a hostel you devise up tonnes of the reason for sleeping long, lying like a log of driftwood on the Arabian sea. Mine was, well, ‘I wasn’t feeling like getting up.’

slept at around 7.3opm, friends came bashing at the door stating for a dinner out, bleh, I declined, and went back to my heavenly abode, 10 pm Appa rings and checks whether I am alive or not, at 6.33 am I check whether I am alive or not, then at 9.3o finally, I am done, I am done with sleeping or the excuse of avoiding life altogether.

It hit me hard, all the while, I was feeling sad.
I was feeling empty and touchy, was hugging my bear the whole night, without even realizing that.
I was feeling as if a child has been locked at home, waiting for her parents return.
I was missing home.

It was the feeling of homesick that made me sick with sleep all night.

If you ask hostel people what are their dreams, what they want to do after graduation, contrary to what localite say, that being, Becoming the best Surgeon, Opening up an interior design company, starting up at startup, most humble hostelites, reply, they want a
good, happy, home.

When I used to be a localite I used to not give a second glance to it, but now, when I have become a full time hostelite, I realize the deep emotions, feelings, and hope attached to the latter responses and the word – Home.

“Only hate the road when you’re missing home”- Passenger

Like the way the English band Passenger has beautifully described in their song, “Let her go”, how, the absence of something makes you value the presence of it, only a hostelite knows the true value of the home.
Well, we, most of the localite, just take it for granted.

When you realise your home, is 1,655.7 km far, near the Cape Comorin, aka Kanyakumari, you literally start making plans to do when you get back home, you seek every opportunity to escape, you sketch how you want to get ‘settled’.

Nothing beats a good home when are done with your tough workday eh, maybe that’s why they taught us when
we were kids, ‘Home Sweet Home.

So for all of you out there, who are at the home, express and shower your love when you are still around.

And for all of us, who aren’t, fear not,
Apna time ayega.

[Also do let me know the crazy planning’s you have done to get at home in the comment section below.]
* – Names changed. Or are they?

Till next time,
Pyar Karo dil se, Jeeyo dil se.

Yours only,
Dinesh Raja.
A lover of life.
20th October 2021.