Welcome to IITKGP

Any IITian's blog is incomplete without some posts from his college days. Though I should have written one long back, it's better late than never. I am sure that in due course of time I shall be writing multiple posts on the fascinating college days. However, let me start off with the very first day at IIT Kharagpur. 

Our train reached the KGP platform at 12.30 am. My father and I got out with the luggage and started walking towards the nearest stairs. After walking for, what seemed like eternity (thanks to the longest platform in the world), we finally reached the taxi stand. I was all excited to see the best engineering college in India, as India Today had rated IITKGP as the best college for the second year in a row (yeah... I believed in the India Today ratings then). Well the grand entrance gate didn't disappoint at all. The roads inside were very well built and since it was night, the infrastructure around looked great.

Soon we reached JCB Hall, the hostel which was allotted to me. There was no security guard and no person to assist us as it was 2 am in the night. I met a guy roaming about and asked, where could we park for the night. He pointed us towards the mess. It's been 2 years since I passed out of IIT, but the mere mention of the word "mess" makes me lose all my appetite (shall share the horror stories about mess later). Anyways, thanking that guy we went ahead and entered the mess. We were welcomed by the most nauseating stench of fish (despite the fact that I am a non-vegetarian). There were no sleeping arrangements made inside, and my father and I just lay on one of the mess tables with the disgusting stench all around. What a fantastic way to spend the first night at IIT!

Early morning, we went outside and found the guard sitting on the main exit. After seeing my identity proof, he gave the keys to my room. Having always stayed at home in big spacious rooms, the allotted room seemed kind of small to me. It started looking much smaller when moments later a guy entered my room with his parents and introduced himself as my roommate. We put one more bed in, and there was hardly any room left for us to walk. After exchanging the pleasantries, he told me that we need to go for the registration. The registration was all manual at that time. Also, the icing on the cake was that IITKGP gave admission to a whopping 650 students. When we reached the Hangar, we saw hundreds of students swarming like bees all over the place. Like good students, we also got into one of the lines and started the registration process.

After filling up a million forms and after a zillion obligations, we finally got the registration done. Tired from all this, I came back to my hall and decided to take a bath. Going into the bathroom, I realized that there was no water. I came out and saw that there was as water tanker outside and and a long queuee here as well. After standing in the queue for about 45 minutes, I finally managed to get the two buckets of water. Dad left for Ahmedabad soon afterwards and I started feeling homesick. Then it was dinner time and I had one of the worst meals ever in my entire life. Lying on the bed later that night, with all my body parts aching, I recounted all the events since yesterday night and how different I had expected IIT life to be.

I knew that I was in for a tough ride and things would get worse once the classes started. In hindsight however, I realize that it was probably IIT's weird way of making sure that our life at IITKGP could only get better, which it did.