IIT KGP

I had a very interesting weekend. And I don’t know where to start. Should I begin with our train journey to kolkata in which we had to bribe the TT to get a berth? Or the onward journey to khadagpur in a local train, which the ladies of our group made miserable by their constant chatter? (thank god I’m not dating anyone of them). But I think the best start would be to begin at the moment I reached khadagpur – I fell in love with the town! It’s green, clean, and quite with almost no human activity. And IIT KGP (that’s what IIT khadagpur is called) reflected that quality (it’s huge), except it was buzzing with students from all over the country and abroad who had come there to take part in the ongoing tech fest organized by them.

Our team had made a robot which broke after qualifying the prelims. We were of course mighty upset, but I for one was cheered up by the lecture I attended by a Nobel laureate Kevin Warwick. He gave a talk on cyborgs. It was both enjoyable (somehow these physicists have a good sense of humour) and informative. They also distributed a DVD free of cost. It was of a soon to be aired Discovery Channel documentary on future living. Then we attended a musical show performed by some American band. It was a disaster. I’d rather listen to Parikrama.

Anyway, since we had nothing better to do, and the accommodation was hard to get, we decided to go to kolkata and spend the night there. So we did – in a dingy three bed hotel room which had ancient fittings (the hotel itself was located on the 4^th floor of a shady looking building). Someone had suggested we go there. He even booked the place for us.

The next day we went to ‘aquatica’. For those who don’t know cal, it’s a water park. And we did what you do in such a park – had fun! We bathed in various slides and wave pools for almost four hours and then we decided we had had enough of that to last a year. So we went back to the station. But the earliest train would not leave before until 5 hours. So I decided to kill the time in Park Street, where I had awesome beef steak and a much needed draught of beer. That was the last thing I did in cal before boarding the train back to Dhanbad. And the return journey was no less interesting. We traveled in a general compartment where there was literally no place to stand straight! I kept my sanity only because I had my music plugged to my ears. I actually managed to sway my body to the beats even though my lower half was numb with pain (it’s a 5 hour journey and the train was an hour late). The other passengers could not believe I could be so cheerful - they were all fighting over place to sit/stand. Thus I (and my friends) journeyed to Dhanbad. we reached there at 2 in the morning and to our luck found a dhaba there. And we hogged like starved pigs on butter chicken and tandoori roti before going back to college and collapsing on our respective bed.

What an experience!