Sep 09, 2026 12:54 pm IST

Blog | I Lived In Satya Niketan. And I Was Too Young To See What It Did To Us

Sparking switches, falling ceilings, cardboard partitions. Satya Niketan had been crumbling for years. I just didn't know when it would collapse.

Anjali Joshi Anjali Joshi Columnist

Anjali Joshi Columnist

The year was 2013 when I first left a small town in Uttarakhand to study at what's deemed one of the most prestigious Indian institutions - the University of Delhi. Once the academic obligations were taken care of, the next step was to find a place that I could call home. After a long day of hunting and hopping, we finally landed in Satya Niketan. Yes, the same place making headlines today, and the place that, for three eventful years, I called home.

The recent tragedy of a building collapsing in Satya Niketan, unfortunately, did not come as a surprise to me. The collapse was new, but the cracks weren't. Some things, it turns out, never needed headlines to be true. I clearly remember the day when my parents came to drop me at Satya Niketan for the first time. A deep silence fell over them as they witnessed the gap between the Delhi they had imagined for their daughter and the Delhi that was actually going to house her. Me? I didn't feel much. At least not then.

Satya Niketan Meant Something Else To Us

There's something you need to understand about a sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen-year-old moving to a place like that - you don't see any of the warning signs. All you see is the charm of cafes that stay open late into the evening, the thrill of........

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