Till today many Indian students with an interest in Maths and Science, dream of studying at an IIT. I also had this dream long ago which became a reality in 2004. After passing JEE, I was asked to visit IIT Bombay for counseling to choose a specific branch and college to join based on my JEE rank (840 AIR). I had options to pursue engineering in computers, mechanical etc. at various IITs but my father being a medical doctor and my own agenda of studying interdisciplinary, a professor there suggested a new course in Biological Sciences & Bioengineering (BSBE) at IIT Kanpur. He especially emphasized that this is a new department with the first UG batch and you will have loads of opportunities to study interdisciplinary courses. I gave my first choice as BSBE, IITK, and was lucky to get into that.
Soon, along with my parents, we made travel plans to Kanpur from Kota. During those days, perhaps now also, there was only one train Awadh Express which ran between Kota and Kanpur. Coincidently, we met another guy, with his family, on the same train who was also joining IIT at Kanpur. His primary college choice was IIT Bombay, but due to haste and bad luck, he ended up in Kanpur. But all is well that ends well! Later this guy joined the same Hall (Hall 2) and was my roomie for a semester.
A bus from Kanpur Central Railway Station drove us to the IIT Kanpur or Kalyanpur, as it was referred to by the locals. We were amazed to find a railway line passing right before the IIT entrance gate. The bus dropped us near to MT and we looked for a help nearby to reach the assigned Hall/Hostel.
All admin work was handled by the students, to my surprise. The dealing students there saw a Gunda in me hailing from Kota (In the 80s Kota was known as Mini-Bihar). If I recall, they wanted me to dress up formally as I had just arrived and was wearing shorts (Code of Conduct!). I ended up paying later for being a rebel as I went through the ragging period with mixed emotions. I remember that a year or two later, ragging was completely prohibited by the school authorities.
After a day, we went outside the campus to purchase mattress and bicycle. It was a different experience roaming outside IIT campus all alone. On our return, as soon as we entered the premises on a Rickshaw, witnessed a running deer. The campus was full of peacock and a variety of birds. The direction to Hall-2 was one straight road from the entrance.
Two days later my parents departed, leaving me behind in the exciting world of IIT Kanpur. I was allotted a shared room in the D-mid wing of Hall-2. I don’t recall the room no. but my roll no. was Y4366. The initial few days were troublesome as we studied abstract maths, science and computers along with lots of ragging. It was also the time to know various seniors, get their intros, and earn some respect! Many seniors were curious to know why I had chosen BSBE with my JEE rank, as that would have fetched me a so-called better engineering discipline. But, I had my own reasons to believe in myself and BSBE! The ragging day ended with a fresher’s party in which I performed a robo-dance and enjoyed the night thoroughly.
Soon after the academic temper took over and students got busy with their own coursework. But amidst all this, it was the time to join different clubs. I participated in the cricket club trial wherein more than 100 students contested and only 10 including me were selected. They made me do some crazy cricket tricks apart from testing my cricketing skills, on the ground. I played for the city club a few years back (9th standard, 2001) and so that helped me a lot in getting selected.
I even got selected for a dance club but somewhere I had this self-impression that I wasn’t the best cookie for dance club, and although I stayed connected with it but didn’t participate wholeheartedly. Then came my first big Hall-Day in late 2004 which had huge structures made of quads with high-end sketching and painting that took hours of work. Everybody contributed wholeheartedly with me performing a dance-show along with friends. Then after a while, came along Antaragni cultural festival in which I couldn’t do a single thing, talk about being useless in IITs. But, I nevertheless enjoyed the event organized by the students, for the students. Managing all these activities along with studies became a major task for me and I suffered at the end of first semester. This was also because of not being able to cope with JAVA course during the semester (Although I developed better programming skills when there was no pressure after passing out in 2008!). Another reason was studying “Sanskrit” as a humanities course which caused me a major setback. As you can see: If cracking JEE is tough, excelling at IITs is tougher.
One of my earliest friends from Hall 2 was a guy from the computer science department. He was a gem of a person, an allrounder who would turn anything into gold. Except that, I got carried away with him and this was yet another reason for my performing poorly in the first semester. I had loads of fun with him and I can vouch for the fact that he was built differently.
Next semester in early 2005, I focused majorly on my studies spending time in the very famous PK Kelkar library. If the summers are hot in Kanpur, winters are chilling! It was a fun ride all along in Semester 2 which saw me improving my grades and enjoying the fruits of hard-focused work. I remember being creative in maths and learning physics from my friend. He could solve physics problems at will and helped me score a decent grade. During those days at Kanpur, grading was tough as we didn’t get A, A-, B+, B, etc but got either A or B. The opportunity to score high was not there. I once missed getting an A grade in Maths by 2 marks, which in other IITs would have fetched me an A- or a B+ but at IITK I got a straight B.
Nevertheless, I also participated in sports events playing cricket with seniors gaining popularity, and enjoying the Techkriti Technical Festival. We participated in a bridge design challenge that required us to build a stable bridge that could sustain minimum weight and was made using scraps.
At the end of the first year with bitter-sweet memories, while many students stayed on campus to study data structure, I decided to go back to Kota to spend time with my parents. I was confused back then and I am confused now too!