This is something I wrote 4 years back but publishing it today.
First day in IISc, you wake up at 7 a.m. for a 8 a.m. class and find out that bathrooms of your hostel wing are empty. As this is your first day, you think that you are late.But later you realize that you can take a long peaceful shower in IISc hostel anytime. You get ready quickly and rush for breakfast. As Mess Hall(Mess) is common for Boys and Girls and it is in Boy’s hostel, first day itself you realize that you can never have breakfast in your night dress!!
Anyways, there are very few people in Mess, so again you panic. Cool down, this is IISc, students here are ‘Owls’. After fixing bicycle chain twice in between and drive on a beautiful downhill road, you reach department just in time. And at the same time, you realize that bicycle breaks doesn’t work properly!!
In the class, everyone looks like ‘Zombies’ and you feel that everyone here is too serious to talk! Four classes are over and its 12.30pm. You are starving so head back to Mess. This time by walk with your classmates. After lunch, there is no time for going back to hostel as there is a department introductory tour at 2 p.m. You see all the labs and meet professors,seniors and research scholars. Suddenly all anxiety about “I am so dumb as I don’t know what I’ll be doing here for next two years” is gone and you feel to be at home!!
At 5 p.m. tea break, you go to ‘Tea-Board’ with your friends. Yes, within few hours,’Zombies’ has changed from classmates to friends!!! In a meeting with seniors in labs at 6 pm, you realize that you are already loaded with 4 assignments per week and 4 mini projects till end of the semester. To make your life more miserable, you need to choose one more subject from a big list of all confusing subjects!!
Over the dinner in Mess, you find that all your friends are as confused/miserable as you are. Hurray, you are not alone in the pool and that’s why you go to ‘Gym Cafe’ at 10.30 pm. OK, not only for this reason, but Mess food is so pathetic that you need to have some good food in your stomach to cycle up and down at least 3 times a day between Mess and department. Finally, at 12 a.m.(yes, its already next day), you reach your room to throw yourself on bed.
Next day morning, you wake up at 7.30 a.m. as you know that there is no need of hurry in IISc. Everything is so smooth and calm except your mind:-) And again in the Mess you feel jealous that all your male friends are coming directly from bed while you are all dress up for classes!!!
Anyways, after cursing yourself for not fixing bicycle (which eventually you will be doing everyday till end of the semester), you reach department 15 min late. But that’s OK, here no one cares how much late you come for the class. The important thing here is, you need to gain knowledge by any means you like and need to apply it in assignments, close book/open book tests, and in projects.
At the end of first week, you realize that you spend ~12 hours per day in labs!! And you need to spend more time in labs, during project submissions and tests. Gradually, you also turn into ‘Owl’. First one month you go for breakfast after waking up but now you go for breakfast before going to bed!!! Your hostel room turns into a ‘body resting place’ where you go in once a day when you are almost dead and after 6-7 hours you come out of the room as a ‘Real Zombie’.
This is how one month turns into two months and in between all this work load, you spend time to organize a junior welcome party ‘Potluck’ for the department. In last two months you watched only 2 movies that too in ‘Gym Khana’ on broken steel chairs!! So Potluck night is a good excuse for using department auditorium to watch movies on real chairs!!!
Suddenly one day in the Mess, there is candle light dinner. So you ask Mess workers what is wrong with the World now? And the answer is, its Diwali, stupid!! You call your parents to tell that you are having a great time with your friends on Diwali. But actually, you are cursing that ‘Kabini’ is closed because of Diwali.
And one day, your mother asks you that when are you coming home? Then you realize that final exams are just 15 days away and you have not started with two of your mini projects yet!!! Your ‘owlness’ increases exponentially and in some ‘zombie state’ you write your exams.
You need to catch train at 6 pm for home and you still write last exam paper till 4 pm. Somehow you manage to catch train and you decide not to think of IISc for next 15 days…But within next 2 days you start missing IISc, its trees, buildings, calmness, your stupid bicycle, your Zombie friends and even Mess…You start realizing that how rest of the World is just mechanical about running behind materials while “IISc is heaven on earth where there is no time for sense and no sense for time…”
After 15 days, you come back to Bangalore where IISc is waiting for you and in the night, slowly she says in your ear “Welcome Back My Child…”
Author: Prajkta V. Mtech from CEDT IISc
