Blog 4201: Hence, a fachha

I wrote this mail on 18th October 2002 to a distant cousin of mine... maybe exactly 3 months after joining Kgp. This is the cousin from whom I got the inspiration to go for Science and IIT JEE. Heck, it was coz of him that I first heard of IIT in class 9! I realise there are lots of kids who grow up hearing that they need to eat green vegetables, drink milk, oil their hair, and clear IIT JEE. I happened to have heard only the first three before having met this guy.

I opened my Yahoo account after ages today; and for some forsaken reason, they showed this mail as an unsent draft. Be it so or be it so not, it did remind me of what I was pre-Kgp. Rather... pre-OP.

Lemme copy paste it - the part in bold is the actual text... whats italicized is my expert commentary :P

It has been a quick three months at IIT Kgp. I am here in Calcutta as of now for the puja holidays and this is, really, the first time I have got online since joining kgp. (After the first day of classes, I duly made a list of books I would need for the sem and marched towards Academia in Tech Market. Except for a couple of giggling senior girls, things went pretty smoothly.
They were giggling coz I asked the shopkeeper, " Is there a cyber cafe around here somewhere?")

We do not have comps in our room unless we buy one but Internet connectivity is free. (Legend had it that students joining Kgp got free comps. Or so I believed before entering the hallowed HJB for counseling)

If I am to tell you of our life in the campus, I really do not know where to start and where to end. For one, I have become thinner than before - from first hand experience, you might be knowing the cause just too well. (I was 85 kgs when I joined Kgp; 72 when I went home in October. I continued on my path of losing weight until I reached 67 kg. Then, I discovered the art of eating out. The only thing that lost weight from that point on was my (or Krishna's :P) wallet.)

Time passes all too quickly. We have chemistry labs on Tuesday and electrical labs on Friday and we have to write the discussion for the experiment we did last time. Chemistry journal is fine because it can be done during the weekend but every Thursday the unanimous opinion is that time has contrived against us to bring Friday before it should actually come. Its like- abhi to electrical lab hua tha and tomorrow again.

The mess food has improved over the period we have been there. The students are, mostly, cooperative and friendly. (Haan haan hans lo :P)

There are lots of competitions every now and again. We have been advised by our seniors to participate in as many as we can. In fact some of the electronics department students say they have been told to participate in sports, in cultural activities, drama etc. and get a CG of 9.5! (Excuse the naivety puhlease!)

In terms of placements, our department is widely reckoned as a ‘fundu’ department to use some of Kgp’s jargon. The teachers are, generally, good but some like our mechanics teacher positively induce sleep. (I'm glad this list was not compiled near the end of my Kgp life. But then I wouldnt have been writing such things in a mail then.
Wouldnt have been writing a mail at all, more likely :P)

There are 20 marks for teacher’s assessment and these depend mostly on attendance. Consequently there is high attendance. Of course, there are some proxy attendances but the number does not go too low. Initially I used to feel very sleepy here but it has decreased now.(This is a cow, a cow has four legs and one tail. Phbbt.)

Hope you're doing well,
Sunny