IITM Memoirs

24th to 28th Jan 2006 -- some of the most unforgettable days of my short life so far on this planet. My second visit to IIT Chennai, this time the pretext being the Cul fest "Saarang". The onward journey was total fun, the highlight being the creation of the crazy Kaaya kavya. Once at Chennai, the gang of nine took a couple of taxis and reached the hallowed precincts a little after lunch-time.

Unlike last time though, we got mosquito-free (but cement dust carpeted) individual rooms rather than a common room. Since a black-buck reserve is actually enclosed within the campus, it was an awesome experience watching the deer and blackbucks roam freely all around us. A couple of us even got to touch a couple of really friendly ones. THRILLING ! And the best part - the deer easily outnumbered the dogs and cats and monkeys on the campus.

As regards the competitions, we were not really successful in breaking the drought of success in IIT, but the fun was the rest of it all. It being a HUUUUUGE campus, and walking being our only mode of transport, we must have walked easily 35-40 km in the space of those 4 days! We discovered a crashed plane also, and the controls in it still work after all those decades! On one of those expeditions, we visited a lake within the campus, and came within 10 feet of a couple of snakes (not surprising, considering that the Chennai Snake Park is a neighbor to IITM)

Two visits to the beach and had a blast both times. On the first trip, we saw a couple a navy choppers and 4 airforce jets fly by at a very low altitude! Lotza fun! We even spotted a couple of crabs on the beach. If wildlife is one of your interests, a mind-blowing trip. We caught the sun-rise there on both days, and thankfully no clouds to spoil the view. Unfortunately, some sea-water splashed my camera rendering it inoperable.... Too bad.... Once back, I managed to recover a few shots from the camera though by downloading some appropriate software.

We attended a lecture and a workshop by Mr. Nuggesh Kukkunoor and it was a "hazaar level" talk. He has such a such of humor and is such an inspiring person. We were supposed to attend a photography workshop, but found it toooooo boring.... That guy was actually giving a PPT which reminded us of our regular classes (yuck!) and hence we fled. Kinda felt that we could hone our photography skills better taking snaps of nature at its delicate best in the campus and the beach rather than sitting through that class (!!!).

Back at IIT, every evening there was a special event in the Open Air Theatre (OAT) with a seating capacity of around 9000 janta. The degree of security involved, even for registration for the competitions, was mind-boggling! Even as we were sent back on the first day to our hostel to retrieve our ID cards, we kept mumbling about how easy it would be for would-be terrorists to fake the IDs and get away with it.

Back to the shows. First evening - Classical Nite -- there was this absolutely AMAAAAZING performance by Ganesh-Kumaresh duo playing the violin. No vocalists, just instruments. Man, their control and speed were almost super-human! Second evening, rock band finals which we ditched and instead went on a nice long walk touring the campus.

Third evening, Shankar Mahadevan (SM), Ehsaan and Loy had their show. And with them were Mahalakshmi Iyer and a bunch of other upcoming stars. SM was simply superb. All janta were dancing to his tunes (quite literally!) all through the show. That guy is one brilliant entertainer, and a clown to boot.... hehe. The most beautiful part was when the entire audience took out their mobiles and waved them around reminiscent of lighters being lit during rock shows elsewhere. After the show ended at 10:15 pm, we went to the Dhaba (yeah, IIT even has its own dhaba!) and settled down for dinner. The crowd there was so huge after the show, we had to wait for almost 2 whole hours for the food to arrive!

Fourth evening, there was a jazz concert by a French troupe --- Duo Ferdinand Et Cie --- oh man, never knew a human being could play instruments that brilliantly and at such a blistering pace. Ok, me running outta adjectives to describe it. Almost missed it due to ridiculous security (even biscuits and combs were banned!!) but thankfully, I managed to be inside before they started. WOW! Those were really magical evenings!

Trip back was mostly spent dozing coz all janta were soo tired after over 100 hours of non-stop fun and exertions. Took me a couple of days to catch up on lost sleep, and now I'm back!