IIT MADRAS

Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) is located in the heart of the beautiful and colourful city of Chennai (formerly Madras). It was founded in 1959, making it the third IIT to be established, with technical and financial assistance from the Government of the erstwhile West Germany.

There are no time restrictions on students, to be in the hostel or inside the iit campus. One is allowed to walk out/in of the hostel/institute freely at any point in day or even night. Students take full liberty to make use of these rare privileges for learning or just plain fun!

A well-equipped 24x7 facility, allowing the students to innovate, create and give a shape to their ideas, does justice to its tagline ...FACILITATING THE CREATIVE GENIUS! It has produced several successful projects like an unmanned aircraft,

an ornithopter(a mechanical bird), a self-balancing bicycle,a Desalination Plant, a Robot which propels itself using Archimedean screws, a Farming aid to name a few.

Shaastra is the annual technical festival of IIT Madras. It is typically he ld in the first week of October and is the first ISO 9001:2000 certified student festival in the world!! It is one of the largest of its kind in Asia .

The rock show was opened by Mother Jane... with the star attraction being the legendary Swedish heavy metal band OPETH, performing for the first time in India!!!

After about 8 hours or so, we were set free like Gladiators who had earned their freedom! After all, we had successfully completed their 'unprintable' tasks, earned ourselves an 'unprintable' name(let it be X), with an even more unprintable funda(let it be ABCD), which were to remain stuck to us for the rest of our stay in IIT M!!! We had a reason to be proud according to a senior, who was quoted as saying: ''Your name is your identity and without it you are nothing in the institute'!! Freedom was short-lived for us, in my case it was there for just one day!! I accidently bumped into a senior, and then he uttered the words: Put-Intro-Da! I fought the urge to refuse. The previous night had taught us all the following:

Rule 1: A senior is always right.
Rule 2: A Freshie can never be right.
Rule 3: If you are confused, refer to Rule 1.

So, I began: ''My name is X, my funda is ABCD, my nick-name <actual name>, my AIR(All India Rank) is blah-blah, my factory(read coaching institute!).... and so on and so forth'. 8 hours later, I found myself returning back to my room to get ready for my first day's classes! It was slisha(read slightly) painful initially but soon, we all got used to the 8-hour 'social interactions'.

The difficult times like 'senior interactions', mess food at Himalaya had brought us, fellow freshies closer and, to our surprise we found ourselves making friends with seniors too! The 'freshie-senior' interactions had somehow broken the ice, with seniors putting fundaes, giving away books notes, workshop stuff etc. Sharing and inheritance are amazing characteristics of hostel life. For example, the whole lot of freshies in the hostel survived on just 4 tattered chem. lab coats! Also, books dated as early as 1980s were still floating around!

Soon, things caught pace. Visits to the Central Workshop in a ridiculous Workshop Uniform became a pain. Considering the vastness of the campus, attending classes looked like an arduous task in itself. After just two days of following the timetable, I had made, I gave up and it remained a theoretical concept, henceforth! Some people struggled to even maintain a minimum mandatory 75% attendance, to avoid the dreaded W grade! With acads picking up pace and from seniors' fundaes, I found out one thing: ''If you think getting into IIT was tough, try getting out'!! Quiz I and Quiz II could be handled easily, thanks to the size of the syllabus, but end-sems were dreaded by everyone. Since, there was no gap between two consecutive exams, night-outs were unavoidable, sleep, quite literally became a rare commodity!

Hostel life is fun in its own ways. All festivals are celebrated in a grand way, especially those like Diwali and Holi! Holi is celebrated in the most unusual way, the details of which are best not mentioned in this article. Other 'festivals' like the Ice-cream Nite, when unlimited ice-cream is up for grabs, are a rage!! But hostel life comes with its own set of hardships like sometimes taking orders from seniors(after all a senior will always be a senior!) while on the other hand they put pseud fundaes like how to impress a prof or getting studd grades or advice like maintaining atleast 1 km distance from the notorious DisCo etc.

My first year was very eventful. When my first cycle went missing, every morning I had to stand by the road stick out my thumb asking for a lift so that I wasn't thrown out of class for being late!! I made hazaar friends who were from all over the country(an advantage of a national institute). Bathing became optional! I spent my first year at IIT M pursuing my interests or exploring Chennai on weekends or in standing outside the class or crashing in class or in my room!

While some pursued grades, others various cultural activities, sports, the virtues of neighbouring eateriess - and combinations thereof. Others, who mugged all the time and in whatever little time they had in spare, spent it RGing.