The joy of joining a prestigious college; the sorrow of leaving home, family and friends; the thrill of going to a new place; the uncertainty about hostel life and the fear and excitement of what's to come, those were some of the countless emotions that kept swirling in my head, like any other fellow freshie, on the day I joined IIT Madras!
The first day started with the Orientation lecture by the Director (Diro) and the Dean of Students. Since, it was the Golden Jubilee year of the Institute, the Diro joked that we were the Golden Guys!
After a brief tour by our faculty advisors (facads) and an English diagnostic test, we returned to our hostels. With expectations soaring high and inspired by the events of the day, I planned a daily schedule to work towards my goals! The schedule included things like getting up early, taking a bath regularly, studying for minimum 4 hours, etc.Little did I know that in the days to come, the entire exercise would be rendered futile, not to mention ridiculous!
That very night marked the beginning of the 'annual ritual' of ''freshie-senior interaction'. Someone knocked on my door, calling me for a 'roll-call' in the common room for a 'mass meeting'. After a little 'friendly' chit-chat, our 'noble' seniors summoned us to their rooms for some 'intensive exercises' to break the ice!
After about 8 hours or so, we were set free like Gladiators who had earned their freedom! After all, we had successfully completed their 'unprintable' tasks, earned ourselves an 'unprintable' name(let it be X), with an even more unprintablefunda(let it be ABCD), which were to remain stuck to us for the rest of our stay in IIT M!!! We had a reason to be proud according to a senior, who was quoted as saying: ''Your name is your identity and without it you are nothing in the institute'!! Freedom was short-lived for us, in my case it was there for just one day!! I accidently bumped into a senior, and then he uttered the words: Put-Intro-Da! I fought the urge to refuse. The previous night had taught us all the following:
Rule 1: A senior is always right. Rule 2: A Freshie can never be right. Rule 3: If you are confused, refer to Rule 1.
So, I began: ''My name is X, my funda is ABCD, my nick-name <actual name>, my AIR(All India Rank) is blah-blah, my factory(read coaching institute!).... and so on and so forth'. 8 hours later, I found myself returning back to my room to get ready for my first day's classes! It was slisha(read slightly) painful initially but soon, we all got used to the 8-hour 'social interactions'.
The tasks became more and more innovative, intense, needless to add unprintable, making those of MTV Roadies look like picnics to heaven!!We had a few freshies sports tournaments and competitions.
The difficult times like 'senior interactions', mess food at Himalaya had brought us, fellow freshies closer and, to our surprise we found ourselves making friends with seniors too! The 'freshie-senior' interactions had somehow broken the ice, with seniors putting fundaes, giving away books notes, workshop stuff etc. Sharing and inheritance are amazing characteristics of hostel life. For example, the whole lot of freshies in the hostel survived on just 4 tattered chem. lab coats! Also, books dated as early as 1980s were still floating around!
Soon, things caught pace. Visits to the Central Workshop in a ridiculous Workshop Uniform became a pain. Considering the vastness of the campus, attending classes looked like an arduous task in itself. After just two days of following the timetable, I had made, I gave up and it remained a theoretical concept, henceforth! Some people struggled to even maintain a minimum mandatory 75% attendance, to avoid the dreaded W grade! With acads picking up pace and from seniors' fundaes, I found out one thing: ''If you think getting into IIT was tough, try getting out'!! Quiz I and Quiz II could be handled easily, thanks to the size of the syllabus, but end-sems were dreaded by everyone. Since, there was no gap between two consecutive exams, night-outs were unavoidable, sleep, quite literally became a rare commodity!
