IIT Kharagpur was my first taste of hostel life. I have always liked to interact with people. For the first few months I used to roam a lot regarding some activity or the other. Through this I got to meet lots of people. There were a large number of boys in my first year hostel. The sheer variety of cultures, economic backgrounds, behavioural patterns that I got to experience by interacting with them was amazing.
Three years have passed. Yet the people here continue to fascinate me with their stories or just by their personalities. All this gives me an idea. What if I went to each and every room in IIT Kharagpur, interacted with its occupant, observed him and his room and got to know his feelings, his ideas, his emotions. What a wonderful achievement that would be.
Experience has made me wiser. Let alone the whole college it is impossible to know the inhabitants of one whole hostel. The deterring factors are many - personal ambitions, academic and social obligations, time constraints and the magnitude of numbers involved.
Sometimes this reminds you just how insignificant one is in the greater scheme of things. Since the inception of IIT Kgp, about fifty people have lived in the room I am presently occupying. Fifty hall presidents have presided over GBM-s in Patel Hall and an even greater number of people (like myself) have contested elections unsuccessfully for the coveted post. For quite a few decades now the department of Electronics & Electrical Communication Engineering has been grinding out engineers just like me. Many of them must have had the same queries at this stage of their lives as I am now having. Several thousands of young minds, in the course of these many years, must have travelled down Scholar's Avenue thinking some thought or the other. What were they thinking? Shall I ever know?
It is just like reading books. You can never complete reading all the books in the world, however much you may want to. You should consider yourself lucky if you have come across a few good books that you will remember all your life. Similarly it is through some select friends that you get a sneak-peek into this vast multitude of thoughts. I consider myself quite lucky to have got friends as I have...... but more about that later. posted by Kriti Sen Sharma on 09:06 AM 1 Comment
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