Hostel life truly represents the commune nature of human beings. Even though it can go both ways, one describes the similarities in its structure and jails. Hostels are just voluntary jails with much liberty. If we follow a day of hosteller, it does resemble a survival routine.
You wake up, do your business in community washrooms, line up for breakfast, argue with a server for not serving you enough curry, and complain about its taste while eating it. Then you and your friends leave for different locations/departments to attend classes or do the assigned work.
Another represents the innate romanticism of hostel life. Time we spent in the hostel becomes a core part of our memory. The routine becomes so ingrained in us that we fail to differentiate one day from another. A hostel is a collection of cultures.
Every floor, every corridor, sitting place, group of rooms, and single room represents its culture. The idea, customs, and social behavior of a group of people or a society are considered culture. The hostel’s walls play a vital role in developing these cultures; that’s the motive of this piece.
Why Should Hostels Not Be Renovated?
Renovation of hostels is a process of cultural genocide. The term comes with much responsibility concerning the current topic. If taken literally with the given context, it does make sense. The commune system, which Marx was particularly looking forward to, is represented by hostel life, as was previously said.
Hostel walls play an essential part in the sustenance and representations of these cultures. Why so much emphasis on walls? Because walls have always been symbols of free speech and dissent. We still go to our Facebook wall to express our opinion.
Historically, walls have been the prime source to disseminate information to the masses. Walls are accessible to everyone, especially in public spaces. So, what is so different about hostel walls? It is hostel and hostel life where we understand the commune and constructively learn to write on walls.
All those who have been to hostels at some point can relate to how much these walls tell about the place and people. Every commune has its ideas, rules, taboos, histories, code of conduct, and whatnot. Wall is the first representation of these attributes.
On Hostel Walls, Personal Becomes Political
Some are artistic, so they put much effort into creating masterpieces on hostel walls with sketches and paints. Some like to scribble with something sharp, only large enough to read by themselves. Some are not artistic or introverts; they want to take their anger out, which is okay.
There is no end to how many ways people write on hostel walls. It is a space for political statements. We are not talking about campus walls, but hostel walls. It is not a public place; only people assigned to a particular hostel have autonomy over its walls.
Entering hostel rooms, the political expression becomes more personal. Hostels are pretty conscious about inclusion and exclusion criteria for their inmates; after all, it is a culture. Universities are complex frameworks of overlapping cultures.
Hostel walls mainly provide liberal space for the expression of gender identities. The basics of ‘reclaiming the spaces’ begin at the walls of hostels. Those scribbles, marks, and paintings on hostel walls turn hostel into homes. It provides a timeline for the people who are staying.
Hostel Walls Represent People’s Memories
It carries memories of events, people, and nostalgia. I never encountered such a space anywhere; even at home, we think twice before putting anything on the wall, let aside angry scribbles. A non-judgmental canvas meant for expression. It is terrific when given a free canvas, it creates a system of its own.
So when the renovation happens, all the ideas, memories, codes, and symbols diminish with a stroke of paint. It leaves no trace of the earlier culture. Memories of people staying earlier vanish. A colour bulldozer runs all over the emotional, happy, sad, angry, and collective outbursts.
If two generations pass through the same hostel, it guides newcomers’ way. But in the case of whitewashed walls, newcomers have no idea or sense of earlier present culture. It sounds brutal to earlier residents, but it is a space meant to prosper new cultures and memories.
It becomes a fresh canvas for newcomers, an invitation to claim the spaces. Unlike how things work in the outside world, acculturation happens; cultures assimilate, new, dominant cultures replace the existing ones, and we become part of new cultures.
People Will Come And Go, But Some Symbols Should Stay
But it takes years for that to happen, and unless you are not conscious enough, you won’t even notice it. Hostel walls make it smooth. People come and go, and new cultures keep on formatting.
In his book ‘Museum of Innocence,’ Orhan Pamuk narrates a story of a lover who collects all the material things related to his lover over the years, and later it becomes a museum. It contains cigarette buds, coffee mugs, almost everything carry able by him. The museum represents memories.
On the same line, if given a chance, all of us would have loved to carry a piece of our hostel wall with us to wherever we settled afterward. It’s difficult to accept the neutrality of hostel renovation if you are still a part of the culture, but this is how it works.
It is meant to happen that way; otherwise, even current residents would have never got a chance to create their niches. People will come and go, and walls will be painted again and again, but the inception of cultures will never stop.