Home sweet home.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Room no. 72 in a hostel in Delhi University’s North Campus has something many hostel rooms don’t. A fireplace. The building dates from British times, when fireplaces warmed rooms in winter and high ceilings cooled them in summer. This room has both. The hostel, Gwyer Hall, is named after a former Delhi University vice chancellor, and is the university’s oldest men’s hostel.

The room is presently occupied by PhD student Sanjay Kataria. While the fireplace goes unused even during Delhi’s super-brief winter, Sanjay has given it other duties. Its mantel holds framed photographs of his beloved poet Jaun Eliya. Elsewhere, Mona Lisa smiles from a metal cupboard.

The Mona Lisa magnet came from Belgium. Sanjay came from Haryana. A library science scholar, he is researching collection development in the social sciences. In his room, his own tastes are shaping another library. On shelves fitted into a wall recess beside his bed, the Bhagavad Gita stands alongside Bob Dylan’s Chronicles. Sanjay also reads Urdu poetry in Devanagari script.

This evening, a pack of cat food is lying on the desk, beside the laptop. The hostel has many cats, and its emblem bears a cat too.

“I like being alone,” Sanjay says. “I don’t like interacting with people. So I find peace in this room.”

A noticeboard on the facing wall holds a handwritten list of poets such as Rumi, Hafez, Kabir, and Khusrau. The list reminds Sanjay to read their works thoroughly. A Hindi clipping beside it cautions that unrealised desires give way to anger, while realised desires yield greed.

On the metal cupboard containing his clothes, a verse attributed to Turkish poet Yunus Emre declares that love turns sultans into servants.

Sanjay also seeks solitude in the nearby Nicholson Cemetery, where he might sit beside an old forgotten grave or under a tree. In his room, he sometimes lies still on his bed, looking up at the rotating blades of the ceiling fan, imagining what would happen if he happens to die that day. At most, he says, the hostel’s Dining Hall might not open that night, but breakfast would certainly be served the next morning.

Now Sanjay steps out of his room carrying the pack of cat food and makes a “choo choo” sound. Four cats, unseen until now, emerge from hiding places and gather around his feet in the corridor. He bends down to feed them.