After getting admission into the colleges in Bangalore, students often face the difficulty of finding accommodation in the City. Most of these colleges offer hostel facilities on campus, but seats are limited and provided on a first-come-first-serve basis. Students living in hostels face a host of other problems as well, like lack of space or strict timings.
Pallavi Bhelawa, a third year student at Christ University, resides in the hostel on campus. She finds it difficult as the students aren’t provided with meals. “I shifted to a PG in my second year,” she says, “In the hostel, the 9 pm curfew was very strict and they didn’t give us food, which was tough.” However, she found that the situation in her PG wasn’t much better.
It was less spacious than the hostel, and the residents were given a bed and shelf but no table. The 10 pm curfew was a relief, but Pallavi mentions that her landlord tended to change rules at random after she moved in, which became a serious inconvenience. She moved back into the college hostel in her third year. The other option open to students is renting an apartment. Anjali, who is studying her Masters in Clinical Psychology at Christ University, feels that this has worked for her.
“I didn’t enjoy staying in a PG,” she says. “So my friends and I rented an apartment very close to the college in my second year. It’s much more convenient.”
However, Navya Agarwal, who is enrolled in Raffles Millenium International, feels that this isn’t always a viable option. “Initially, apartments seem a cheaper alternative to staying in a PG,” she says, ‘Two bedroom flats are available for Rs 9000 a month, and if two people share a room then the cost is even lower. But there are a lot of added expenses to living in a flat, like water and electricity bills. Besides, you have to handle everything like cooking and cleaning by yourself.”
Navya lives in a PG very close to Forum Mall. “The PGs are more expensive, but they are worth it. The rent for different rooms vary according to whether they are two or three seaters. If a student doesn’t eat meals in the PG, the rent is only Rs 3000. This gives students a choice as to how much they want to spend, which is convenient,” she says.
But she admits that staying in a PG also has its downsides. The quality of food is bad, and it is served in a different building.
Also, the rooms have very little storage space.
The area around Christ University has about fifteen buildings where girls can reside as paying guests. However, the number of options for boys is much less. The university doesn’t provide on-campus housing facilities for boys either, but has a number of tie-ups with different hostels in the City.