Usual Sunday morning, with nothing to do. The Second Last Bencher lies on my bed along with my towel, bag and a few other things.
The Second Last Bencher is a collection of real life stories as told by fellow IITans, published as a memoir for the passing 2012 batch by the IIT-M Alumni Association. I have read half of the book till now. The stories are filled with the 'insti-lingo', (the very term which I learned after leaving IIT). So does that make me just a passer-by of IIT-M? Have I or not belonged to the place which everyone in this book has called home?
Let's then seek the answers, for they are important- for me, for the thousands of MSc students who also, albeit proudly call IIT-M their home.
For the non-IITans reading this post, insti-lingo refers to the language used by the students of the campus. For example, there are words like cup (meaning failure), funda (concept, reason), fart(useless discussion), Junta (people) which are used. There is a Master's thesis on the IIT-M lingo by a German student as well (came to know about it only yesterday). The vocabulary is actually pretty strong there. The ones who have used lingo, will never stop using it while talking among friends. It's a proud culture of the institute (they'll say insti) and frankly the funda(should have used a different word :P) is if you don't converse in the lingo, you never really belonged there.
And here I am- never used the lingo in my friend circle, didn't even know there existed such a thing while I was there. The thing is, I never had friends among the B-Techs and that is the prime reason for not getting acquainted with the culture. So the immediate question that comes is, why didn't I have any interaction with the under grads? Well, if I had participated in ANY event, I was bound to have known a few of them. But there I was, happily enjoying my leisure, enjoying free internet, exceptional LAN and quite a few good courses. But that was me. Why didn't any other classmate of mine learn the lingo? Why didn't they interact?
A general belief that runs among the non-MSc students ( everyone else is included -all other students, every teacher, hostel staffs, monkeys, deers alike) is like this:
The PGs are muggers. They sit in their rooms, never get involved in anything, are concerned about grades (what a sin!) and the dominant feeling- they are blunt.
The post grads know about this mentality, yet the same thing goes on year after year. Don't they feel so strongly about the campus as others? How can they not, it's IIT, right?
Firstly, the excitement of independence is nothing new for the post grads. They spend 3 years in college before coming to IIT. So most of the "new" things for the smart under grads have been experienced by the MSc students earlier. They have already gone through the don't-care-about-grades phase in their life and they are mature enough to know that grades do matter. Anyone who says that he/she didn't care about the grades during MSc, is lying.
In order to love a place, you have to be there for quite sometime. I would say it takes around at least a year to feel the essence. For the MSc students, things are bizarre. Even before entering the beautiful premises for the first time, they know they will have to leave the place in two years.
Now, most MScs come from outside Tamil Nadu. So by the end of the first semester, all they care about is going home. Just as they return they are welcome by the most busy semester of their career. As the relatively busy first year ends, the students get ready for their summer projects. That's what they frankly care about because they are practical by then.
So after staying away from IIT for 2.5 months, they may or may not feel nostalgic about the place. I felt. The reason isn't easy to put down on paper.
In the third semester, there's time. So now, one looks around the campus, the roads, the cycles, Gurunath, his single room, things seem beautiful. To appreciate beauty, one needs to see. To see, one needs time.
But the student has spent the last two months in a research institute. That in most cases, multiplies the motivation of the student. So he thinks, "I have time. Why not attend an extra course, then?" And thus starts the Audit-Fashion Week. Auditing means you are attending a course just for knowledge, it's not going to affect your CGPA. This is the time of the year when nearly all the MScs sit in one audit course or the other. The Profs see this every year. So only in a third semester, you'll see them asking a cliched question, "How many of you are crediting the course?" The number of audit dudes usually dominate the class. But this frenzy lasts at most for a week. Then the highly motivated grey cells escape through the sewage.
In my batch, three or four of us actually audited a full course (it's a proud feeling that never leaves me). Third semester was the first time I noticed myself changing. I could see my increasing likeness for studying.
So till now, no one has learnt the lingo! Here comes the fourth sem.
Exams, interviews, applications, project, placement, exams again, farewell time.
Time to leave IIT has come before you know about it. There are plenty of good things which have happened to you in these two years. You have learned so much about yourself. You've grown up. Maturity has found a way in through time.
But you haven't learned the lingo.
It's funny when you read these books. You feel a serene happiness. You have loved the place in your own way. The bed, the benches, the stairs of the Open Air Theater, the Hostel Nights have nurtured you for the past two years. The relation is yours and it's unique. It's not necessary to enjoy a place the way others do.
As you are about to leave,as the bags and trolleys are pushed into the CALL-TAXI, you know that you have belonged there.
"MOVE ON", says the FAST-TRACK vehicle.
