Salem to Delhi, Looking Back
Why moving 2,500 km for college felt easy — a campus where no one was on home turf, and being trusted with the wheel early.
People often ask me how I made the call to move 2,500 kilometers from Salem to Delhi for college. It's an unusual move - most people from Salem don't head that far north, and honestly, Delhi wasn't even part of the plan. It just happened. And once I was there, I never really stopped to think about why the adjustment came so easily.
The question came up again recently at an SRCC alumni meet in the US, and this time I actually sat with it. The move was less complex than people assume, and two things made it that way: the environment I landed in, and my upbringing.
Common Ground
SRCC (and Delhi University at large) is one of the most diverse rooms you can walk into. People come from every corner of the country — North, South, East, West, every state, every kind of upbringing. And on day one, almost no one is on home turf. There are a lot of us, too - 19 colleges in a five-mile radius, all brimming with the same wide-eyed curiosity of trying to find our feet in a new city.
My first day, I was standing in a queue to fill out some form, and the guy in front of me asked where I was from. I said Salem, Tamil Nadu. "I'm from Bokaro. We're both from steel cities. We should be friends." I hadn't thought of myself as a steel-city kid until that moment, but the logic was hard to argue with. As it turned out, that was the pattern - a home state, a sport, even just a shared sense of being far from home was usually enough to start a conversation.
My accommodation in the first year had people from Lucknow, Chandigarh, Himachal, and Calcutta. Different food, different languages, different humor - but everyone was 17 or 18, leaving home for the first time, juggling academics, social life, relationships, food, money. I was figuring it out; so was everyone else. No one was the odd one out.
The Long Runway
The other half is on me - or, more accurately, on how I was raised.
My parents had a particular approach. You want to do something? Come with a plan. Make your case. They'd pressure-test it: How will you get there? What if X happens? And once they were convinced you'd thought it through, they'd back you. The decision was yours. The accountability too!
I wanted to switch tennis coaches once. I'd hit a ceiling with my existing one, and the better players in Salem trained somewhere further out. I made the case; they asked the questions I hadn't fully answered, including how I'd commute. Once we worked that out, they were in. Same pattern when I wanted to change schools after 13 years in the same place - initial surprise, clear rationale from me, and support followed. And the same pattern, years later, when I told them I wanted to move to Delhi for my degree at SRCC instead of somewhere closer to home. I'd done my homework on this one – I set up a meeting between them and another parent who'd sent their child to Delhi. This level of diligence impressed them, and half the case was already made.
The compounding effect showed up everywhere. I traveled for tennis tournaments and quizzing from a young age, often figuring out travel, stay, and finances on my own. Tennis tournaments in particular only ever needed a one-way ticket - you don't know when you're losing, so return plans get made on the fly. Landing somewhere new, with people I'd just met, on a plan stitched together that morning - that was just the default.
The clearest example: I was in Bangalore for a tournament, playing well, when a few players mentioned there were two upcoming tournaments in Bhopal - a chance to pick up ranking points if I kept the run going. I'd never been to Bhopal. Never been anywhere near Bhopal. On a Thursday evening, I decided I was going on Sunday. I called my parents; "What? How are you getting there?" I told them I'd figure it out with the others. I stayed two extra days in Bangalore at a local player's home, did my laundry there, and headed to Bhopal, planning, traveling, and crashing with folks I'd just met. By the time I was packing for Delhi at seventeen, that kind of leap wasn't unfamiliar - it was just a longer one!
So, when people ask, I joke that the food made the adjustment seamless, but in reality, the answer is less 'appetizing' - the DU environment and being trusted with the wheel early.