Alumni remember days at Hindu College boys’ hostel

New Delhi: More than mere brick and mortar to many, the Hindu College’s boys hostel which is under demolition for a remake, has sent several alumni waxing nostalgic about the famed building which once nestled them. The hostel building, which housed thousands of students over its eight-decade run, is too infirm to carry on in its present state and the college plans to “reconstruct” it, says Principal Anju Srivastava.

“The new building will be a four storeyed structure with a stilt and will be ready by 2026. This will lead to doubling of its capacity to accommodate the growing intake of students in the college,” Srivastava told PTI. Talking about the history of the structure, she said the current building is about 80 years old and the administration has spent a lot of money in different phases to make it sustainable. “We also got engineers to test the foundation of the hostel to check if it can take additional two floors but the base isn’t that strong.

There’s a huge amount of pressure on the hostel. Therefore, the governing body decided to direct the rebuilding of the hostel,” she said. The new structure, being built at a cost of Rs 50 crore, will house more than 500 students and is likely to be ready in two to three years, she added. Sources said that the old building has been closed since the Covid-19 pandemic. After the news of “demolition” of the hostel building circulated among the alumni, Hindi film director Imtiaz Ali shared a post on Facebook recalling his days at the boys hostel.

“I got to know that the hostel is being demolished and rebuilt during a NAAC meeting at my alma mater on Monday. It felt like a friend had died. I felt sad and nostalgic as I spent my youth in the boys’ hostel. But the old order has to change to give path to the new. I am not going to stand in the way,” Ali, an alumnus of the Delhi University college, told PTI. However, he stressed, the college must keep in mind that a certain aesthetic, reminiscent of the past, is maintained in the new hostel.