Homecoming

Only a few things make me as uncomfortable as I get when I’m asked what I’ve done in the vacations. Thats because the question forces me to come to terms with what I’ve really done then- nothing at all. Anyways, I’m finally back at IIT and was overwhelmed by a sense of homecoming when I reached here. If you manage to understand what getting used to a thing such as oDC is like and what spending three months without it is like , then you just might be able to grasp just an inkling of what coming back here and reconnecting feels like. However, the homecoming feeling quickly evaporated during my first lecture class. It was a 90 minute long lecture on organizational psychology (or orgy as we know it). I spent the first half hour in what will rank as one of my most sincere efforts ever to follow a lecture. The next half hour, I tried explaining my waning concentration that here was the chance to start from a clean slate this academic year. And then I spent most of the last half hour staring at the ceiling and wondering what to blog about. Back to square one I guess.

Nevertheless there is a distinct improvement in hostel life being a sophomore now. Now, I’m not the kind of guy who gets a kick out of making boys just a year younger than me (and some just as old) dance in their underwear or play some sadistic version of a buzzer round quiz (don’t ask). But the hesitant fleeting glances freshies throw at us, the continual ‘Good evening sir’ I keep hearing, (sometimes as many as 9 one after the other) and the dexterity or clumsiness with which they recite their ‘intro’ in ’shudh Hindi’ are the stuff good clean fun is made of. And these are just peripheral pleasures, what lies at the core of happiness is that I now get my water bottle filled by just waiting at the stairs for a stuttering, little freshie to come by.

Nothing much has changed here at IIT Delhi other than that the place seems to be more crowded than before. Or it could be just in my mind. Now three freshmen stay in a room as opposed to two earlier. They’ve done away with the middle room partition for that purpose. With another 9% OBC quota being implemented next year, I hope they don’t get any stupid ideas like denying us our single rooms in the third year. Plus we have IIT Punjab ‘operating out of’ our campus, they’ve taken a block of apartments somewhere here, from what I’ve heard. I have yet to meet a IITP student and with only 120 students, theirs is a ‘ghost’ existence here. The price we ordinary citizens pay for our power-hungry politicians’ election tactics.

Well, as far as the things I’m looking forward to are concerned, nothing deserves a special mention. On that note, bbye.