Thousands of miles from Grinnell, Varun Nayar ’15, Amul Gyawali ’15 and Aditi Lohia ’16 attended high school together in India. This year, however, they are reunited at 932 High Street.
Soon after graduating from high school and coming to Grinnell, Nayar and Gyawali met their future housemates, Saw Min Maw ’16, Andres Cambronero ’15 and Dan Teng ’15, through IPOP and tutorial.
The house is affectionately known as the Cumfort Zone, which hints at their strong ties and long-lasting friendships. Upon moving into the house, they found a photo of all of them that a friend had captioned “Cumfort Zone.” The name stuck.
The house’s unique setup allows the group to maintain constant contact, while also allowing them to escape to their own space for alone time. While some of the residents have single apartments, several of the apartments are built for two people.
“One advantage about this setup is that we’re all living in one house but we have our own apartments so we all get to do a lot of things together, [and] we have our space,” Maw said.
Along with the home’s convenient layout, the group enjoys a spacious backyard. The housemates frequently host parties, BBQs and spend time lounging outdoors.
“The house has a really nice backyard and we threw a couple parties. [The backyard allows us to have] a lot more people over,” Maw said.
Both in their personal and shared spaces, the group has benefited from furniture left behind by previous tenants of the house. Among the beloved furniture is an old door that is now used exclusively as a Beer Die table.
The group has left their personal mark on the door by writing their names all over both sides of the table.
“My name is Humpty Dumpty,” Gyawali said. “Because I have a bad habit of getting into a lot of accidents. I fell down the stairs first year and shattered my cheek bone and then second year a pot burst in my hand and burned my hand.”
Most of the names are not as “PG” as Gyawali’s.
“You don’t get to choose your own name, your opponent has to choose it for you,” Lohia said. “That’s why most of them are somewhat embarrassing.”
Beyond drinking games, the bunch has also bonded over some spooky near-ghost sightings.
“Earlier in the year, without touching it, my kitchen table started shaking,” Gyawali said.
“And 20 minutes later, my furniture started shaking for no reason,” Lohia said.
According to Gyawali, the ghost they are afraid of is probably a problem with the pipes, but they continue to be careful of eerie furniture movements.
Ghostly experiences are not the only things that have brought the housemates closer together. A favorite activity amongst the group is playing pranks on Cambronero. Throughout the semester, the other residents have banded together to play pranks on Cambronero.
“Even a guest who was staying here for two weeks used to sneak up on me and scare me,” Cambronero said.
Ghosts, pranks and beer die aside, the Cumfort Zone has merged separate apartments into one lively home. Though the group has traveled a long way from India and even IPOP in 2012, they have managed to comfortably come together over the years.
