KOLKATA: Rohini Datta, a first-year student, has a special meet-up on Saptami. She will be meeting her classmates in person at Indian Coffee House on College Street for the first time since getting admission in college two months ago.
Arpita Chatterjee, another first-year student, will be meeting her classmates for the first time outside Ballygunge Cultural Association on Navami.
Durga Puja has always been an occasion for friends and families to meet each other but this year the biggest festival in the state is also going to become an unlikely occasion for classmates to meet each other who have only been in touch with each other on social media platforms as campuses have been shut since March last year.
Students from both the batches, who took admission last year as well as this year, are planning meet-ups with classmates and many of them will be meeting each other for the first time.
The plans have been made over messaging platforms and some of the popular meeting hotspots are Coffee House on College Street, Maddox Square, Ballygunge Cultural Association, a popular café and a mall in south Kolkata.
“We do not know when colleges will reopen and when we will meet our classmates in person. For the past eighteen months or so our world has been restricted to a virtual one. So, some of us decided to meet each other during Puja to spend sometime in the real world,” said Rohini Dutta, a first-year student of economics honours at St Xavier’s College.
Piyali Ghosh has met her classmates in different subjects (honours as well as electives) in the past one year but a day after Dashami, 28 of them will be meeting in a mall on Jessore Road for the first time. “Many of us will be meeting each other for the first time since we started first-semester classes last year. Today we are in the third semester. The plan is to have adda over some good food,” said Ghosh, a student of Jaipuria College.
The government has said campuses might reopen after the festive season if the cases do not spike but the date is undecided.
“Everything about reopening is uncertain as of now. We will have to wait and see if Covid cases spike after Durga Puja. If there is arise reopening might be postponed,” said Arpita, a student of Asutosh College.
