People... New bonds are formed!
Believe it or not! Before I came in here, I was this unseeming introvert. Probably, I still am, in certain ways. Earlier, I used to be quite a talker with my family. All that changed in IITK was - my family grew from 5 to around 500. :)
The first day, I can still recollect, came as a bit of a shocker as most of realised that seniors at IITK were not too different from the stereotypical "senior" we had heard of and feared. We were told about interaction period which stretched a little beyond the allotted time. My parents did stay over for 4-5 days and every evening I made sure they were nowhere near our hostel when the quad interactions started. I would say I, for one, was never made to do anything even close to being really embarrassing. I had never heard most of the cuss words and I had a hard time complying to demands of speaking those aloud. (Things might have changed now :P)
An amazing part in this period was the bulla sessions we (the bhais) had after the interaction had ended. Everyone had a story to tell. Our baap, Sandeep, would come and chat with us and nudging us to interact more freely with the seniors. I had a rather uneventful time till 15th August when we were supposed to be set free from the shackles of full sleeved shirts, lousy pants, no belts(!) and the compulsion of hanging around in the quad till 10 pm. The 'Y5 Kat Lo!' chants by Y6 and some audacity on my part in front of certain seniors ensured I had a long night after the freshers. However, I came out having made some new friends!
Talking of Bhais, we had, starting from Room 312, 2 Top: Saurabh, Razdan, NMJ, me, Sumit, Harlalka, Jhansi and Ashish. It was a heady mix. While saurabh and harlalka were the reticent people of the lot (initially), Jhansi had an opinion (a very traditional one :D) on everything, NMJ's language brought a smirk on our faces, Razdan was rarely seen in his room and Ashish, well, came up with some amazing hypothetical situations and his reactions to those were absolutely hilarious. Then there was this divide in our wing - people living on either side of the washrooms! Our end had Jeet, Dhesi, Sharad, Akash, Dodda, Anubhav and Sandeep who attained the status of pseudo-bhais very soon. I still remember when a 600-700 bucks treat at Hall 7 was considered a big thing. All of us used to take the Hall 7 Canteen by storm and pick up almost everything edible available on the counters... and then order the meal!
However, things changed and some of us moved to an entirely different group in 5 Bot (2nd year). This wing was a sea change from the one we were accustomed to. It was fun, though. There were Thakur, Chapu, Pelu, Chomu, Nagoo, Bhargav, Tammy, Sardar, Pant, Labroo, Raju and Sumit, Jeet, NMJ and me from the old lot. A major activity here was gaming - not one I indulged in - but was wont to listen about at length. So much so, that after a certain period, most of the wing talk became unintelligible to me :). Another enjoyable part was sitting in 152 (Pelu and Chomu's room) and having some awesome bulla sessions! The NMJ bashing after DOTA sessions was a treat to watch as well...
At the beginning of the second year, I happened to meet Garima during the freshers' preparation for MME Dept. I could say she was my first female acquaintance here and though I am sure she would be reading this... but this one's worth sharing : some of my wingmates went berserk the first time she called me. Such is the state of affairs at IITK! :D
As this post is majorly about meeting the people who went on to become an integral part of my life later, I would board a time warp to Antaragni' 07. It, I still maintain, was one of the best we ever saw with good enough competition, POTF and Atif. I still remember telling someone that seeing POTF made me think that the slogging for JEE had finally bore fruit. Here, at the POTF concert, if I remember well, I was introduced to the lot of Banerjee, Aviral, Avantika, Swetha and Sezal. Bong, ofcourse, I knew from the quizzing circuit. I would consider to be an important juncture in my life at IITK as it somehow factored in my ending up in another new wing in the 3rd year. Ofcourse, more importantly, some of these people are the closest of friends I have right now (I hope they don't differ on this! :)).
Some of the things that happened during the later half of the second year are best left unwritten :P. Though, as mentioned in my previous note, it was a golden period in our team's quizzing graph. Oh! We met some more people... being part of the Prof Shows teams in Techkriti and Megabucks. It was an amazingly fun-filled experience working with Divya Goel, Kanchan and Govil. Met 'Strings- the band', Feeding the Fish and Niladri! Really, in terms of celebrities on campus, this year was a cracker!
I also joined Dr. Anish Upadhyaya's lab in the winter of '07. Met some nice people including Saurabh, Shobhit, Pritha, Garima Joshi and Divya (who went on to become my summer project partner). I stayed over in the summer of '08 for a project and inspite of the scorching heat, it was a memorable time. A highlight being the trip to water park, lucknow where I displayed my incredible skills of drowning in water merely 3 feet deep :D.
I regret that I don't have Utkarsh's ability and uncanny knack for detail. And moreover, I can't really remember how I "met" UT. Guess it was a gradual strengthening of the QC bond! With this, I'll sign off this post, having reached half time in this whopping journey called IITK...
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