Day 1: IIT Kanpur

I still remember my first day at IIT Kanpur so clearly. It was a cold Christmas day in XXXX when I landed up there. Many people find the city of Kanpur unbearable but I come from a place that is even smaller and lacking in ‘happening’ things.

I had left my hometown after school, only to land up in a women’s institute where social life resembled more to a jail or a lunatic asylum rather than a college. The next five years were unimaginable, even though they did a damn decent job of educating me. I still remember the graffiti on the desk in one of my classrooms: ‘Anywhere in the world it is great to be young except XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX.’ But I will talk about it some other day.

Coming back to my first day at IIT Kanpur, I ended up at the girl’s hostel (what is called old GH now) and being a P.G., I was promptly allocated a single room. Having spent the past five years in a hostel, staring at a bare room with blank walls was nothing new to me. After a few hours of careless work, the room had acquired a touch of my individuality (read untidy and scattered).

I went to the mess for dinner later that day and found the food sad and pathetic, in other words the usual hostel fare. I think I did not do anything too important afterwards. At 10.00 pm I decided it was time for bed. The rooms in the ‘old’ GH have huge windows and on my first day I had no curtains to put on them.

And that was the beginning of my difficulties. I wanted to put on the lights and read for a while before going to sleep. I also wanted to change into more comfortable clothes. You my dear reader will say, so what was stopping you? You should just go ahead.

But my answer to you is, you may not know something that I did. Even before coming to IITK, courtesy my cousin, a Hall 3, boys hostel resident, I knew that guys could visit any room in the girls hostel from 6 in the morning to 12 at midnight and vice versa. Yes you read it right. In middle of Kanhepur, there exists this little utopia where there are no resident wardens for boys or girls hostel and both the genders can freely enter the rooms of each-other.

From my curtain-less room, the hostel at 10.00 in the night resembled a railway platform more than a girl’s hostel! I had not foreseen this scenario while building my plan for reading and changing into comfy clothes. Imagine no curtains on huge windows of my room, guys moving freely in the corridors and me slopped on my bed. Even though I would be wrapped in the razai (quilt), I still did not like the scene.

Finally, I read the book sitting on a chair and switched off the light before going to sleep and with the noise of feet, guys and gals in the air, I finally fell asleep with the railway platform feeling quite intact.