…this place

I wrote this article in my final year at college for a magazine (I am not even sure if this was ever published). I found this accidentally while organiszing my computer data and thought may be it is worth atleast my own blogpost...

The best way to begin this writing would be to quote what one of my seniors’ wrote when I (in my first year then…) asked him to give me an article for the magazine narrating his experiences in the campus over his four years of stay here. He wrote, “It is very difficult even to conceive that one is going to step out of a place which till yesterday seemed eternally yours.”

As I sit down to write this article, where I am supposed to tell my juniors what to expect of this place and how to react to it, the reality of leaving this place, very soon, has begun to sink in. I am not exactly nostalgic because I haven’t yet left my SB-1 but it seems to be eluding me. Am I afraid of leaving this place? May be I am, but the question is why? Did I not have a life before I came here, or have I not been going home all these years on the weekends? Then why should it all seem so difficult now?

No more 2 A.M. visits to Nescafe, but then will I not be able to afford the best menu at Barista at whatever time of day I wish?

No more classes to attend, but then didn’t I always so loudly complain that they shouldn’t be so early in the morning?

No late night walks and no late afternoon lunches, but then will I not be able to see the early morning sun?

What am I cribbing for? Didn’t I always long to get out of this place and quickly reach out for that the love of which had brought me to this place.

In retrospect I am not even in a position to name this place as I can’t find a suitable name to address it with. Geographically it is IIT-Delhi but is that all, certainly not. It is a part and parcel of our lives. Everyone who has been a part of this system has benefited from here in more ways than one. The four years that I have spent here are by no means normal four years of my life, they have not only prepared me for the journey called life but they have made visible to me the vast sea of opportunities that lies ahead. In a few months time (and I hope my BTP does not play a spoilsport here) I will be a part of a legacy and how deserved that partnership would be will depend on how do I utilize the advantage of having lived here for four years.

No matter how much and how desperately I try I can not continue to live in this place forever but I can almost certainly aspire to live this place forever.

I think, having expressed my long contained fear in the initial lines, it would be advisable now to move to issues that any reader, reading a “passing out’s” article, would be looking forward to.

The obvious question to ask me at this point is, “How should one conduct himself during his stay in the campus?” Honestly, I have no single answer to this and this is because of two reasons. Firstly, I can by no means claim to have lived my life in a way which is even remotely close to the best way and secondly, because I have seen people succeeding (or call it, failing) in so many ways. However, there is one suggestion that I would like to make at this point and the source of this suggestion is pure experience. The keywords to living your life in this place are: Not competition but cooperation (this may be contrary to the popular belief that competition is paramount here and that is what separates IITs from most other places on Earth), not grades but insights and knowledge and not awards but interests. This seems like a normal oft repeated success formula, does it not, but that precisely is the point that I am trying to make. A rewarding and fulfilling life here is governed by the same factors as elsewhere but still the fact that this place stands out is only indicative of a diligent effort, by the people who have been here and made it what it is, to instill these factors in their personalities. This place is a wonderful platform where one’s growth is limited only by his imagination.

During one of my conversations with a member of a recruiting team of a very reputed financial firm that came to the campus this year, I came to know that most people whom he has met from Pakistan in US (that’s where he currently lives) hail invariably either from Lahore or Karachi or Islamabad (all these are the metropolitans of Pakistan). However, he said, this is not the case with Indians in America. They are from so many different cities of India but what binds these people is that if working in corporate sectors or academia they are mostly IIT or IIM alumni. This means that IITs act as a talent search engine for our country and as I have already mentioned they provide us with a platform from where we are free to fly as high as our will and desires permit us.

The fairness of its selection procedure and the fierce competition ensures that only the very best gets in. With all due respect to all those who in spite of their brilliant minds and diligent pursuit could not make it to one of these seven campuses, I claim that every student who has been able to make it to this campus is unique in some positive way and all that he should aspire to is to find out what makes him unique.

The key to goal attainment in my opinion is to remain focused and not give up in the face of failure. It is very important to realize that we are here to learn and by no means are we supposed to know everything when we arrive. So it is basically the desire to improve and excel that differentiates the full blooded IITians from just IITians.

The next thing that I wish to take up here is what should be our next step after IIT and what factors generally govern our choices. To answer this I will again steal a little excerpt from my senior’s article (I hope he does not mind little bit of plagiarism). He said,” What you do tomorrow is only half as important as what you do today and how well you do what you do today would determine what you will do tomorrow.” I hope I have successfully preserved the essence of his comment.