Coming to the University of Hyderabad (HCU) was never part of my plan. Hyderabad felt too far from home, too distant from the familiar comfort of my culture, my food, my city. My heart was set on returning to Delhi, to my friends, to the life we had mapped out together — renting a flat, reclaiming the time lost to COVID-19 lockdowns.
Everything was sorted. But fear, that strange mix of hesitation and curiosity, nudged me toward HCU — a chance to explore a renowned university, a risk I wasn’t sure I was ready for but took anyway.
When I first arrived, the campus felt less like a university and more like a jungle retreat. Its vastness overwhelmed me. I vividly remember my counselling day, feeling utterly lost, like a kindergarten kid stepping into school for the first time.
That feeling lingered for months. A campus so expansive does that to you, every path feels unfamiliar, every turn a puzzle waiting to be solved.
The first two months, from November 18, 2022 (the day our classes commenced), were chaotic. A lot of us were torn between sticking to their pre-planned lives or immersing themselves in this new world.
For me, the turning point came unexpectedly — on a farewell walk to Mushroom Rock for a classmate leaving for Delhi. The shortcut was still under construction, so we took the long way, a dense, shaded path where even Google Maps failed us. It was my first time walking through such wilderness, unsure of the destination but enjoying the journey with people who, unbeknownst to me, would become some of my closest friends.
Emerging from the dark path, we reached the Helipad in the East campus — a vast, sunlit expanse. The contrast struck me. It felt like a metaphor — how uncertainty and confusion could lead to unexpected clarity. When we finally made it to Mushroom Rock, a marvel balancing between ancient stones, watching the sunset, I realised something: this was where I wanted to be.
Maybe this was my last chance to experience a life like this — a campus so alive, so free, so breathtakingly beautiful. Delhi, with all its chaos and pollution, could wait.
From that day on, Mushroom Rock, Buffalo Lake, High Rocks, Virgin Rocks, and Peacock Lake became our sanctuaries. After long, pressure-filled days — made even shorter by the university’s decision to compress a six-month semester into two and a half months after the delays in CUET 2022 exam — these places were our escape.
The exhaustion, the stress, the uncertainties of academia melted away in these pockets of nature as these were our addas where we processed our frustrations, our doubts, our dreams. They were places of escape, of resistance, of becoming.
Despite the initial struggles, HCU felt like home. A home where you were woken up by peacocks at 4 am, where deer roamed freely, where encounters with snakes were less frightening than they should have been.
It was a place where nature and people coexisted, where students, birds, and animals lived in harmony — something I didn’t fully appreciate until I left.
When I graduated in 2024, I didn’t realise how much I had taken the campus for granted. But now, as a journalist covering the destruction unfolding in my beloved university, my heart aches. It’s one thing to read about deforestation for "development." It’s another to see it unfold in a place that was once your home.
This — this feels personal. The places we once hung out, the landscapes we described to our families and friends with pride, are now under threat. It feels like they are tearing down our home — not just a physical space, but a sanctuary that nurtured us, shaped us, and propelled us forward.
The state government asks why students are protesting. “What do they have to do with this land? And this is nothing but mere political activism or agenda.” But as an alumna, I can answer that. This isn’t just land. This is where we grew, where we found ourselves, where we built a community.
Watching it being destroyed feels like a personal loss, even though most of the students aren’t even from Hyderabad or Telangana, one that words cannot fully capture.
As a journalist, I try to remain neutral. But speaking to my juniors, seeing even those who never engaged in activism now taking a stand, I wonder — if this were just politics, why would so many who usually remain silent feel compelled to fight? This is beyond politics. This is about a place that means something to all of us.
Universities like HCU were built to be intellectual refuges, spaces where students from across the country, across geographies, languages, and identities — could come together. They are meant to be spaces where ideas, not just people, found a home.
This destruction is not just about biodiversity loss; it’s about erasing the very ethos of public universities as spaces of autonomy, of thought, of possibility.
The fight to save HCU’s green spaces is not just about nostalgia. It is about the right to claim space — not in a legal sense, but in an existential one.
In a country where higher education is becoming increasingly privatised and inaccessible, universities like HCU remain one of the last few places where students, regardless of economic background, can exist without being reduced to mere consumers.
To destroy such spaces is to attack not just trees and lakes, but the very right of students to belong, to exist, to imagine futures beyond corporate skyscrapers and concrete jungles.
And yet, in all this despair, there is a glimmer of relief: the nation is finally paying attention. People who had never heard of HCU, who had no idea what Kancha Gachibowli was or what the 400-acre land auction meant, are now raising their voices. Those who had no connection to this university — who may have never set foot here — have watched the viral videos of deer running through the campus, have heard the sound of peacocks echoing through the trees, crying while their home was destroyed by the bleeders of the campus, and have felt something shift within them.
If people who were previously unaware can be moved by witnessing the sheer beauty and life that exists here, how can the government say that its mere political activism of the student groups in the campus, when we have lived there and see it as our home and still how can the government continue to justify its destruction?
For years, we coexisted with these creatures. We shared this land, this home. The memories we built are inseparable from the landscape — our late-night walks, our silent reflections by the lakes, our laughter that echoed through these open spaces.
And now, we are forced to watch as bulldozers crush it all — the land, the trees, the animals. Worse, we watch as police lathi-charge unarmed students, beating them down for daring to fight for something as fundamental as the right to preserve what sustains life itself.
How is this wrong? How can standing up for the survival of a land essential to both biodiversity and humanity be dismissed as mere student activism? This fight is not just about a university — it is about a vision of development that prioritises profits over life. And if we do not resist, this will not be the last time we watch our sanctuaries disappear.
It will only be the beginning.
