Surbhi Shah talks about her unpleasant experience with her roommate in college
Living with roommates can be a dicey affair. You may find some really good people who you would want to bond for a lifetime or may meet people who you would not want to see again. Well, the latter happened in my case.
During my post-graduation days, I stayed at the hostel where I met my roommate who seemed like an extremely shy and quiet girl. She started opening up in the next few days and I thought she is sweet and really adjusting. In two months, we became close friends. She started talking about her personal life and how she dealt with depression for a long time and had a lot of insecurities about her looks as well as her English-speaking skills. So knowing her drawbacks, I started shielding her from those who would be rude to her.
But she also had a cheery side to herself and gradually started getting along with others too. But it was only after our first semester, when she secured the first rank in our college, her attitude started to change. She became high headed and put down others who couldn’t do well in class. Initially, I thought she was insecure about herself so this transformation could help her boost her ego. But I didn’t expect her to become egoistic. In fact, things got worse when she started getting attention from the college boys. So much attention and popularity always comes with its own troubles. So one day, when she went on a date with a guy from our college, her boyfriend in the meantime paid her a surprise visit. She freaked out and asked me to help her out. I somehow spoke to her boyfriend and told him that the other guy was just a friend.
But these incidents kept occurring all the time. Every night she would argue with her boyfriend loudly over the phone. Even during our exam nights, she would waste all her time bickering with him and then late at night bugged me to teach her whatever I had learnt. I ran out with my patience with her tantrums and told her to calm down and maintain some peace in the room. But she reacted in a weird manner and started crying and accused me of not understanding her enough. I let the issue pass.
But instead of controlling her behaviour, the issues got escalated. Every other day, she would keep fighting over the phone. It hampered my study schedule and nights would go waste in consoling her and in the mornings I would feel sleepy in class. Eventually in second semester, when my grades went down, I decided to move out. But my roommate faked some illness and asked people for sympathy telling them that I had behaved rudely with her. She started telling people fake instances when I would yell at her in the room when no one else would be there.
Come to think of it, I wish I had yelled at her when I had the chance. However, instead of justifying myself or getting further frustrated, I moved out and have been living alone ever since.
— As told to Anukriti Sharma
