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Aditya Agar (PGP 2012-14) on the Co-ed Hostels at IIM Bangalore

Disclaimer: It is with sheer ignorance and non-existent experience (yes, oxymoron-ism is in!) that I assume my target audience is comprised of starry-eyed CAT takers and the IIM-battle survivors. To the guys on campus still reading this: ’Aap dude/dudette hai!’

So we wake up one day and a very famous newspaper, in which we have about eight ‘page 3s’, has a front page story on a scandalous MMS in JNU, Delhi. An ‘administrator’ from the institute issues a statement which goes: “If college students of both sexes are made to share a hostel, all they would then do is make babies.”

As much as you might want to deny it, the concept of co-ed hostels is among the top five thoughts that fuel/fuelled your desire to be at IIMB! As a private raconteur for you, I take it as my imminent responsibility to demystify this gift of God to the denizens of IIMB.

‘Planned destiny’, I vividly recall, was my catchphrase for the first few days I spent at this wonderfully ‘green’ campus. My first encounter: Walking up to the bathroom to realize (to my sweet horror!) that a PGP2 senior is brushing her teeth! As an engineer you’ll turn away and walk at the rate of knots in about 3 nano-seconds because:

1. You think you have teleported to the wrong hostel block!
2. You know for sure that you are going to receive the bashing of a lifetime!

Until of course the senior comes up to you and apologizes: ‘I am sorry to have startled you. Actually, I live on the floor above and all the bathrooms were occupied. Sorry once again! Your name?’ Oh of course, you regain your senses after being asked for the third time!

I can go on and blabber incessantly about how this concept of combined hostels made me submit myself to its awe in the first month of my stay here. I, pardon me, wish to end this razzmatazz here and tell you the real success story people need to sit down and hear.

The concept of co-ed hostels has been in place at IIM Bangalore for as long as… years now. Let me ask a very simple question: ’Have the IIMB co-ed hostels ever caused trouble?’ Yes sir/madam, your answer is a resounding no and we take utmost pride in that!

Having had a feel of this place now, I think IIMB is more than a diploma certificate (and the majority will suddenly find this perfect GLOBE, but it is sometimes what BGS teaches you!). Here you don’t learn management, you live it! And you live it through such experiments like co-ed hostels which treat you as informed adults. Here, your learning beyond classrooms is immense and it is only this and long lasting friendships that are outcomes of such co-ed hostels.

We do not live with each other Mr. Moral Administrator, we @IIMB live for each other!

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