Today is Avurudu. Sinhala and Tamil New Year, April 14. I am not in Colombo. I am not back home. I am sitting on the SPPU campus in Pune, India, and I will be honest with you: I did not know how this day was going to feel.

I am a Sri Lankan student studying at Savitribai Phule Pune University, known as SPPU or Pune University. The "Oxford of the East," as they call it. And today, for the first time in my life, I celebrated Avurudu away from home. This is what actually happened.

The Sri Lankan Community Here Is Bigger Than You Think

Before I came to Maharashtra, I thought I would be one of maybe two or three Sri Lankan students at SPPU. I was wrong. The community is real, it is active, and on a day like Avurudu it shows up in ways that genuinely surprised me.

By 9 in the morning, there were messages in the group chat. Someone had managed to find coconut milk. Someone else knew a Sri Lankan grocery in the Pune area. By 11, we were in the hostel common kitchen making kiribath together. It was not my mother's kiribath. But it was kiribath.

SPPU's campus is 411 acres. There are open green spaces, gardens, trees that actually make you feel like you can breathe. We sat outside after cooking. It helped more than I expected.

What Avurudu Away From Home Actually Feels Like

I want to be honest here, because a lot of Sri Lankan students ask me this question when they are deciding whether to come to India. The first few hours of Avurudu are hard. You hear your family starting the rituals back home. You see the posts. You feel the distance.

Then something shifts. You start building your own version of the day. It is smaller. It does not have your grandmother's cooking or the neighbourhood sounds you grew up with. But it is yours.

Someone in our group brought kokis from a box they had been saving for months. We video-called family back in Colombo. One girl's mother walked her camera around the house showing us the oil lamps and the table. For about twenty minutes, we were all home at the same time.

Why SPPU Is a Good Place to Land If You Are Far From Home

SPPU is ranked among the top universities in Maharashtra by QS World Rankings 2026, and number one in the state. It has over 400 programmes, strong research facilities, and one of the biggest campus environments in Pune. For international students, the International Centre provides residence options designed to make the transition easier.

But what matters more to Sri Lankan students in moments like Avurudu is not the ranking. It is the scale and openness of the campus. The space to find your people. SPPU is large enough that a community can form, and it has.

What Sri Lankan Students Should Know Before Deciding

Missing home is real. I will not pretend it is not. Avurudu is not the only moment you feel it. There are smaller days, random Tuesdays where you want a roti from the shop down your road, or the sound of your mother calling you for dinner. Those moments arrive without warning.

What I can tell you is that Maharashtra gives you enough to build a life around. A real university, a Sri Lankan peer community, a city that is not hostile to you. The adjustment is not easy in the first semester. By the second, most students I know feel something they did not expect: settled.