A suitcase, a dream, and a city that doesn't wait

Who was braver? Was it you who folded your entire life into a suitcase and boarded a train to an unfamiliar city? Or was it your mother, who smiled while helping you pack, knowing that once you left, the house would never sound quite the same again?

No one tells you how difficult it is to pack a life. People tell you university life will change you drastically. But they rarely mention that it will also demand a part of yourself.

Every year, thousands of first-year students arrive in Dhaka with oversized bags and undersized courage.

But then you realise that your mother is no longer calling you to eat. If you do not cook, hunger waits for you. If you do not wash your clothes, they stay dirty. Sometimes you skip meals because assignments seem more urgent than hunger, or because money is running low. Is it loneliness or freedom? Perhaps it is a little of both.

Before leaving home, many people repeat the same warning: "Boro shohore giye bigre jash na" (Don't go astray after going to the big city).

I often want to ask them what "going astray" actually means. Is it learning how to stretch one meal into two? Washing clothes after midnight because that is the only free time you have? Calling home and pretending everything is fine when it clearly is not?

Growing up looks far less glamorous than people imagine. The strangest part is that you slowly stop belonging anywhere. In Dhaka, you are the newcomer. Back home, you become the visitor. Your mother cooks your favourite dishes just to make you feel at home, but somehow they only remind you how much has changed.

Each vacation feels a little shorter than the last. Your parents have a few more strands of grey hair every time you return. Your old friends build routines that no longer include you. The evening addas continue, but something feels different. You are present, but your presence is absent.

For many students, however, homesickness is only the beginning. Just when they begin searching for another place to call home, they encounter a reality few admission brochures or seniors on campus ever mention. Many people ask, often with surprise, whether Dhaka University still has gonorooms.

The answer is yes. At Bangamata Sheikh Fazilatunnesa Mujib Hall, they still exist, even after the glorious July Uprising.

When I first moved to Dhaka, I stayed at a hostel before receiving my hall allocation. Like countless students, I believed getting a seat in the university dormitory meant finally having a place to call my own in this overwhelming city. I could not have been more wrong.

Imagine a single room holding 36 students. Nine bunk beds. Four people sharing each bed. No study table. No ceiling fan. Cockroaches and rats scurrying around as permanent residents. Probably more powerful than you in this vast city.

The tragedy is not the conditions themselves; instead, it is when students are forced to endure them. A first-year student remains the most vulnerable after coming to a new city. The first year is when homesickness is at its peak. It is when freedom feels exciting but frightening. It is when students need stability the most.

Instead, many are denied something as basic as proper sleep, nutritious food, and a quiet place to study. The daal is so watery that the eyebags and dark circles reflect more clearly than lentils. The explanation for removing ceiling fans from the hall is often that students might kill themselves. Yet rooftops remain accessible. And then there are the bedbugs, relentless companions that cling to students with consistency like pasher bashar aunties.

Resident Sabina Easmin said there was not much to complain about because of the people she met. "The only drawbacks were the cockroaches, the constant noise and the unbearable heat," she said.

People have a love-hate relationship with Dhaka University. Some romanticise it. Others criticise it relentlessly. DU has certainly produced a lot of extraordinary people. But we should stop pretending hardship is the reason for their success.

Students do not excel because they sleep in overcrowded rooms or study without basic facilities. They succeed despite those conditions. Their achievements belong to their resilience, discipline, and relentless determination, not to institutional neglect.

Had many of them studied elsewhere under better conditions, they might have shone just as brightly, perhaps even brighter. We often celebrate stories of struggle because they inspire us. But struggle should never become a prerequisite for education. It shouldn't be glorified.

No student should have to earn dignity before receiving it. Some came from villages. Some from small towns. Some left parents who cried only after the train disappeared from their sight. They all believed education would build a better future. It should not first require them to sacrifice a safe present.

I still hope every student who left home chasing a dream eventually finds everything they prayed for and more. I hope they find rooms where they can sleep without counting strangers around them. I hope they find friendships that soften loneliness. I hope one day they return home carrying stories instead of scars.

Because every time I hear someone say, "E shohor amake deyni kichui," I cannot help wondering how many dreams this city quietly asks people to surrender before deciding they finally belong.

You may leave your home with just a suitcase, but you spend the rest of your life carrying everything that couldn't fit inside it – your memories, your love, your people, and the pieces of yourself you had to leave behind.