Yr 1:Panagarh ke Sholay

NCC
The first 2 years here have an extra burden attached to them other than the academics. Students get a choice between various sports, NSS( social service) and NCC( National Cadet Corps)...
Try-outs were allowed for any one sport/physical activity... I tried out for yoga in the first year and was rejected ( "You are over-weight...")although a year of the mess food has taken its toll now!. That gave me a choice between the Army and Air NCC , I chose the Army and the following weeks had drills in the sun, with a few sessions of weapon handling...
I guess the part people disliked most was the immaculacy in attire. Short hair, clean shaved faces, polished boots which bit at the ankles, and ofcourse the khaki coloured uniforms...
All these are alien concepts to most IITians since laziness is an ideal which we hold dear to our hearts and the lackadaisical attitude is one which stems from a self-assumed intellectual superiority.
So, most classes had the instructors shouting out mild insults and pointing out our imperfections in doing the simplest of tasks. Our parades were inefficient, our drills were a joke, and try as they might, not a single class went by without some idiot being pulled out because of a imperfect attire!!
But amidst all the bickering, the one thing most admirable was the patience and tolerance of the Army and Air Force officers. They were quite patient with us through most of the 'ordeal' (as most of us will put it!). At the end of the first semester, we had camp...
It was the first week of December and we were off to a much neglected military camp at Panagarh. When we got there, we were informed that thieves had gotten inside during the neglected years, and stolen the doors of all the toilets!! I mean, what kind of retards do that??
The result was opaque sheets of cellophane that hung outside each door to an unavoidable fate ( I really don't think anyone went 10 days without crapping!). This led to really hilarious and inventive ways to indicate an occupied loo... people whistled, sung, help the sheet tightly, threw their pants across the sheet...etc.
Platoon no. 1 got mess duty the first day, which meant that my first day would go well, or so i thought. Mornings were at 5 so that we fell in-line at 6. You could see a plume of your own condensed breath for 2 feet in the air in that chill. As we went for a jog with the instructors, cramps set in the unused muscles and wordless abuses were mouthed while panting for breath. When we sat nursing our aching limbs on the 2nd evening, we were informed that we have to present a 'cultural show' for the commanding officer on the last night of the camp. This meant that some of us would be spared most of the exertion so that we could sit back and relax... Even though it sounds like the ultimate solution to our problems, most people preferred to stick to the scheduled torture. I have to admit that i was amongst this majority for reasons of pure lethargic averseness to change. But that very evening, amidst the regular sessions of jokes, bug swatting and card games, we started comparing our camp life to Ramesh Sippy's 'Sholay'.
The result was an unanimous decision to make a skit based on this very concept... ofcourse this meant we could take time off for cracking jokes and incorporating them in our script, so, it was more than welcomed as an idea and the 13 of us got to work(if you could call it that!)
The result was clearly( by the response , we got from both the students and instructors) a rioting success :) The end of the camp gave all of us more familiar hand-shakes which would probably last for the rest of our stay here... and not to mention, back-aches.

Yr 1:LOAD

Endsems (November, last week)
There are a lot of things which can't be understood till they are experienced. Examination stress in IIT is something like that.Especially, end semester exam stress. This is different from all the other types of examination stresses in other universities... you wanna know why?...weirdos..thats why..
It is the first time that your mom isn't there to feed you as you burn some midnight oil, here, your neighbour is drinking his early morning spirits! Nobody plays any loud music at home because you have your exams and the family can bear one week of no TV. Here your wing mates are staying up watching a movie since they don't have an exam the following day like you. For the first time in your life, nobody cares that you stood first in your school, almost everyone else did too during their days as well, and those who didn't are putting in extra effort since they are used to it. The competition isn't a part of life here...it is what you breathe in every waking moment...in almost all things that you do, you are competing with some one better. Now you are on your own, the real test of whether all those years of parent-inflicted deprivation really meant something. If you want to beat the rest, you need to slog your ass off, if you want to take it easy, you will pay the price...
During those last few days of the semester, people really start discovering a place in the campus called the Central Library. You need to search for places to sit and study peacefully when such a huge edifice is filled with students hidden behind mounds of dusty books which are opened only on an annual basis!. That is an amazing fact, since this is Asia's largest library in any university, has more than 400,000 books and occupies the space needed to house at least a million more books!!
For almost all IITians this is training time for night-outs...a few years down the line and you will be able to stay awake indefinitely for long stretches and will crash on your bed after a week of no sleep. There are people who need to study just for 2 hours when you need to study for 7... there are people who have finished(gasp!) the syllabus, there are normal students and finally there are people who don't care! All this makes the examinations a melting pot for all sorts of academic capabilities. I still remember, having screwed up my ET paper in the mid-sems and doing fairly well in my endsems...got a bloody B finally, but that was much better than what i expected :)
This is repentance time for all the classes you bunked and all the you-can-have-my-finger thoughts you gave to your professors. Almost everynight, you can still hear some poor damned soul crying out, "Why? why fail me?... "