Taking a few steps backwards

This piece was written exactly 2 years before for our college magazine but somehow it couldnt find its place there. Its got its due by coming here. (In these two years things have changed and also my way of looking at things. So, I ll be coming with a sequel soon). Here it goes:-----

Every year you have the same old topic in Campus Rumpus -" My experience in IIT"and every writer is as adamant as a director of a run-of-the-mill stuff film that he's different. I probably belong to the same stock. Coz I have not even a vague idea of what was written before this edition. Perhaps that is why Ignorance is Bliss.

For me this year rode on an F1 car compared to the days when I was preparing for JEE when the time made futile attempts to overtake a snail. IIT, the three letters that looked elusive to me 3-4 years back, suddenly becoming a part of it was a dream(or was it a nightmare) come true. A year in hindsight I can just say that entering IIT has been the best and the worst moment of my life. And ambiguity of the statement is bare minimum as I have never been in a position to change my status from single to committed

Stressing on my memory I have never in my life restricted to just a small patch of land (320 acres might not sound small enough). Though it never seemed seclusion, inclusion or exclusion. Hostel life was one of my unkempt dreams which materialized here (and believe me it is nothing short of a boon).

CG, Profs..... will be too boring a topic to touch upon. I think there are some more frustrated and fascinated being who are worthy of highlighting the grading system, profs attitudes, class schedules etc. Perhaps you will find less of the captivated stuff and thank god for it as you wouldn't have got a true picture if that had been the case.

I don't know from where we have bequeathed the tradition of testing ourselves through exams. And IIT has inherited the legacy with much more conviction in the form of majors and minors. The name might be misleading but I would still like to enlighten you on this issue.MINORS- they leave us major casualties and MAJORS- they provide us with minor chances of survival. The day you understand the real funda behind them you are probably finished up with the semester.

One of the 'indispensable' events of IIT life is poltu- the most enthralling, intriguing, alluring, painful of all times. I have tried to sum up poltu in two lines (which would be sin "just two lines").

When ideologies collide,

friendship suicides,

Years divide,

poltu arrives.

You observe every emotion except romance in Poltu. There is an environment of faith, goodwill, bitterness, deceit, compromise etc..Once you witness the whole drama, tensions, mysteries you are drenched in thoughts so scary that what the real politics would like that takes place just a few kilometers from here. Where figures lie between 0 and1 unity is bound to be found lacking.

One of the good things about IIT was that my premonition of IIT being regime if geeks was stashed the moment I entered it. As the pros and cons go hand in hand it was disheartening to see that a person willing to study is despised, disliked and taunted.

Entering IIT Delhi, was it a correct decision?????

Probably IT WAS