“the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
– from Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver.

Some days, it still feels surreal to think about where I am now. This is all that I ever prayed for, and all that I ever wanted since I was a kid. LSR was childhood Trisha’s dream – and it’s unbelievable to me that it is adult Trisha’s reality. And yes, everyone who knows me knows that LSR was my dream, yes I get insufferable about this, but how can I not be? When you pray for something with such single-minded veracity, a piece of you gets embedded in every prayer. So when all those prayers come together to form something tangible, something real, something entirely yours, you can’t help but let that emotion spill.
And for me, it spills so evidently. Every time I walk into campus, every time I laze around in the psych corridor with a cup of iced-tea, every time I hug a friend before rushing to class. Every time I click a picture of the exact same tree, every time I run to the same 8:45 lecture (at 9:15), every time I turn in an assignment a minute before the deadline. In all the mundane things at LSR, there is immeasurable beauty – not just because this institution is reputed, or because it has famed alumni; but because it is sustained by a student body that values it so much.

There are memories in every corner, on every staircase, in every seminar hall. There are pieces of those who have come before us, and there is space for those who will come after. And there are promises; “of course she’ll text back”, “of course you will win that competition”, “of course I will come to see you perform”, “of course I will help you drag the podium to another classroom”, “of course I’ll get you momos from the back gate”. There is sanctity in the words spoken here, there is depth to the relationships forged within these walls. It feels almost holy. I have never seen as much friendship, camaraderie, and beauty as I have seen in the short time I have spent here.

But all of this transcends campus grounds. What LSR gives us is compounded by what we experience in this strange city that calls itself the capital of this strange country. I will never fully understand Delhi, I think. There are far too many metro routes to decipher, far too many lanes that merge into each other, far too many angry auto-drivers who honk at nothing and everything. But I feel this city in my bones. There is a familiarity here you don’t expect to find. Before you know it, you find yourself saying “those earrings are from my favourite shop in Janpath”, “the In&Out bhaiya gives us a discount because we go there so often”, “oh I know the way to the pretty shop in m-block, I’ll take you”. You find yourself in the nooks and corners of this city, over and over again. And you realise this too – during rainy auto rides where the red lights blind you, when you’re rushing to meet curfew, when you’re fighting with a friend over something miniscule – the profound understanding that this will never come back; that you will never be eighteen or nineteen or twenty again. You will never be this young, this old, this reckless, this stressed, this free, this bound.

Delhi is moulded, crafted, sculpted by the generations that come and go. It becomes a reflection of everyone who inhabits it.

It is here that I have learnt vulnerability. When you live with fifteen girls for a year, you learn to lay yourself bare. It is with these women that I have laughed, cried, complained, fought, shouted, and reconciled. They probably don’t know my favorite colour, but they know which mug to bring me coffee in when I haven’t slept in two days. They know which brand of ramen I stock up on the most, and the lipstick I never know where to find. We have songs that we blare when everyone is happy, and stories that make everyone cry. The residents of the flat above us are tired of our shouting, and our landlady is tired of the “rules” we never seem to abide by – but they are no match for a dozen girls who will bulldoze through any obstacle on their path.

We shout for and at each other, cry because of and with each other. When the laundry piles up in the common room, we know who the red t-shirt belongs to. When there is more chocolate in the fridge than usual, we know who is going through a tough time. When the flat falls silent, we know whose room needs a little more life. I don’t think I have enough words to describe the relationships that emerge because of such proximity. These women know what desserts I like, the password of my phone, the argument I had with my mom, my biggest fears, my deepest regrets. And maybe in a couple years, we will forget all this; maybe we will find new flats, new roommates, new songs and stories. But nothing will replace what the walls of this flat have seen – the sheen of adulthood, the guilt of leaving home, the lustre of freedom, the beginnings of a new life.

Being in my flat, in LSR, in Delhi feels like a responsibility. The memories we will make here will go on to become the stories we tell our children. The slogans we raise will become the standards of the future. The things we choose to believe in, we will later teach. What we create will be what we leave behind. So while everything is so fresh and beautiful and new, it is also a burden that we bear – to do better and to be better. While we make promises to each other within the LSR’s hallowed walls, we also make promises to ourselves and to those who will come after.
And this burden too, is a privilege. It is an honor to be able to impact things, to be able to write our own stories and tell them. It is a joy to be affected so deeply by what we experience. It is beautiful to be able to see both the mundane and the extra-ordinary, so inter-twined with one another.

What we go on to make of ourselves, only time will tell. Till then, I think, we will remember. We will remember what we dreamt of as children. We will remember what brought us here. We will look up to the sky for the women who paved the way for us. We will look around for those who have stood by us. And we will look behind to remember the beginning of it all. Maybe by the end of all this, we will be success stories. But success is an imagined reality, and we are merely mortals trying to make something bigger than ourselves. So maybe by the end of all this, we will just be stories. And maybe that will be enough.

a journey to remember.

Month May 2026

what does it mean to live?

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