The Hindu : Kerala / Kochi News : For a roof over their heads

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Saturday, Oct 18, 2008
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Kerala

Kerala - Kochi

For a roof over their heads

M. P. Praveen

Photo: H. Vibhu

Nothing like home: Students at Maharaja’s College hostel in the city. —

KOCHI: There is one thing that Karthik, a second year degree student in a city college, feels jealous about majority of his friends. The ‘luxury’ they enjoy of being a day scholar thus having the comfort of the home and good food.

The likes of Karthik, who stay away from home to pursue their studies, face challenges daily, both financial and emotional. “The very thought of returning to the dingy hostel room that serves sickening food is depressing,” says Karthik.

Though many of the colleges in the city provide hostel facilities, not all of them really bowl over the prospective inmates with its facilities—a reason why a good share of the students opts for alternative rental accommodations.

But that is easier said than done. The reluctance in renting space to bachelors in general extends to the student community as well. Moreover, in a city like Kochi, where being a landlord is no less lucrative a business these days, the rent sought is often astronomical making it unaffordable for non-earning categories like students.

So students look out for roommates to pool in the money required to pay the rent. “Often it is necessity that compels the choice of roommates over the level of comfort one feels with them. Not having the privacy one needs in itself is sad and then to come back and share the space with people you otherwise would not have tolerated is all the more irritating,” says Prashanth, an engineering student at the Cochin University of Science and Technology. He along with his five classmates, whom he reluctantly calls ‘friends’, share a three-room apartment at Kalamassery for a monthly rent of Rs.10,000.

Food poses another grave challenge. It is while staying away from homes that many of them realise how unfair they had been in complaining about the food served by the mother.Hotels and roadside ‘thattukadas’ are more preferred in the first week of the month when money comes from home. But in the later half of the month as cash in hand dwindles they are forced to return to the drudgery of cooking.

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