My experience at IIT Kanpur
With a mixed bag of emotions, I boarded the train on Monday, the 19th of July, to come to Kanpur. The industrial town, which also hosts the prestigious institute, was new to me. I have never been here before (barring the 12 odd hours for the interview stage), and was quite apprehensive as this place is going to be my home for the next 2 years. I remembered that night 3 years ago when I faced a similar situation, moving to Bangalore, and took heart in the fact that my stint there was a very enjoyable one. I was determined to replay the same script over here again.
The first thing that shook me was the weather. In the summer months, the heat is really on in northern India, and Kanpur is no exception. The sun is merciless, and leaves you parched and dehydrated. It sucks every ounce of your energy and you really need to replenish yourselves with water after every couple of minutes. Although I am a Delhite, living in the pleasant Bangalore weather for long had rendered me completely unprepared for this scorching heat.
Reaching the campus, I proudly instructed the auto wallah to drop me off at Hall 4, as I was duly informed through mail that our accommodation has been arranged over there. I made it to the warden’s office, where to my dismay; I got to know that we were temporarily to be housed in the SIS barracks!
Well, the barracks are a nice and cosy place. You have lots of cots lined together, some of which have a tendency to kiss the floor as soon as you sit on them, to the amusement of everybody else. Sometimes the fan above your cot refuses to budge from its resting place, in which case if you have been friendly to your neighbouring cot-mate, he might let you align your cot with his own. That too, is quite a dangerous situation, as during the night, he might tend to show some brotherly love.
Unfortunately, I was not able to enjoy this setup for long, as the coordinators shifted us out to Type-Vs, where you get to share a flat with 7 other people. Two such flats share a common guardroom, which is strangely equipped with an AC while the flats are not! The guard duly informed us that this room doubles up as a reading room for the students. We did make good use of the facility for the next 6 days, albeit not as a reading room but as a ranting room... where we would rush in after all the orientation lectures, which were used to test the potential of the speakers as professional sleep inducers, without the side-effects of the traditional sleeping pills.
The honeymoon period was soon over, and we were again shifted to Hall-10, situated right at the periphery of IITK. Looking through the window, I can still see the fence which separates me from the tigers, leopards, cheetahs, gorillas, elephants and other horrifying animals which I am sure lurk around, ready to devour me any instant.
Come next Monday, I got ready dutifully, ready for my first lecture as a postgrad student, and went to study accounting fundamentals.
Dr Sinha has an innate ability to bring out the worst in you. Discussing the first lecture of a course, Sir was keen on getting the class to discuss the definition of accounting. Gaurav obliged and the rest of us followed, uttering all sorts of nonsense to our heart’s content! Much to the chagrin of the German exchange students, who were really bewildered at our ability to exploit the education system.
2 weeks of fun quickly went by, with readings, a couple of quizzes et al. Most of the times, when I was unable to comprehend a word of whatever subject is going on in the class, I observed the teaching style of our dear professors. Varman Sir(OB) is sarcastically brutal, Mehta sir(Ops) has already lost faith in our abilities, Mishra sir(Com) magically gets to know that all of us have done well in the quizzes which he never bothered to collect !
RRK Sir(Mktg) curtails all scope for discussion after a presentation, as he quickly jumps on with the topic. I guess he has figured out our nonsense-generation abilities, unlike Dr Sinha. Puneet Sir(Eco) is quite energetic and merciless; energetic by way of his teaching style in class, and merciless because of the odd hours of night when he assigns reading material.
So you can see that my first 3 weeks at IITK have been quite eventful. And I hope the rest of my stay stays that way. :)
(Something I wrote when I joined IITK... as part of the selection process for AG Editor. I got the job !!)
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