Girls in IIT Madras

Let me clarify at the outset that this is not one of those scores of articles written to bash the girls in IIT on their lower beauty levels for I disagree with the view that none of the girls in IIT is beautiful. During my four year stay at IIT Madras, I did come accross a number of girls who were not only beautiful but also smart and intelligent. This article looks at the social attitude towards the girls in IITs( IIT Madras in particular). This article should, however, be considered my personal view and the reader should not take it as the general opinion prevailing on the campus.
The girls in IIT Madras are an awfully pampered lot. From Fellow students and the Professors to the companies who come for recruitment in the 4th year, all contribute to this pampering. They live a charmed live on the campus and are showered with a lot of attention. Opportunities and avenues abound for them . Ofcourse being in small numbers has a major role to play in this status elevation.
Let me back my claims with facts. My batch(2004 passout) had around 25 girls out of the total batch strength of 500, a boy to girls ratio of 19:1. The strength in my branch was, infact, very healthy boasting of 3 girls among 19 guys. In the very first semester, while the boys struggle to lay their hands on second hand books or drafters, the girls have a problem of plenty. A number of 'nice' and 'benevolent' seniors are ready to part with theirs without charging a penny.. The network with seniors already established, it is now time to turn our attention towards the batchmates. We would always struggle to get the best notes in the classroom though the girls had access to them at will. At some point during my 4 years, it beacame inevitable for us to get the notes of my batchmate X from the girls as we would have been refused point blank had we tried to get them directly from X. Its the turn of the professors now. Some of the professors had a 'soft corner' for the girls. So we knew what had to be done to postpone the delivery date of an assignment or to get a class timing changed. The girls were assigned that duty. The companies now? Well it is a well known fact in IITs that it is the easiest for the girls to get placed. I have an incident to relate here. One of my hostel mates returned after an interview with a well known IT company after being rejected. Seeing him visibly upset, I enquired. He didn't make it he said which was fine but why was a girl with a CG of 4.x selected, who had barely managed to pass in time. The guy in question was an eight pointer and among the toppers in his branch.
Its easy for me to go on and on and relate instances when they get special attention. Whether it is the Co-ordship for SARAANG or the invitation for the Hostel Nites, they are the preferred species. Hostel Nites are a very hilarious example in this regard. I think the girls manage to avoid eating the bland hostel grub for the whole month of April,the reason being that the institute hostel nites are celebrated during that period and they, invariably, get invited to all of them.
In the end, I just wish that God gives an opportunity to everyone on this planet to be born as an IITian girl.

Chronicles of a 7 point someone..

Time for me to go back into a world which I left long back physically but which will always be with me enshrined in my thoughts bringing with them the sweet nostalgia of the kind one feels while revisiting a sacred land. Yes, I am talking about the 4 years that I spent at IIT Madras, the 4 years which shaped my life, the 4 years that I had entered as a boy and exited as a man, the 4 years when I made some of my best friends, the 4 years when I took some of the worst decisions of my life, the 4 years when I had fun to the fullest,the 4 years when I learnt that I still had a long way to go before I could judge people correctly and those 4 years which were perhaps the best 4 years of my life till date.
There is so much to write and share about these 4 years that I wonder how and what to share. I will write down my experiences structured year wise and each chapter will contain an years experience. So those of you, who have shown an interest in reading about my experiences, will have to bear patiently as I wind through these 4 years slowly like a slow sailing ship on calm waters, an apt analogy for a boy who wanted to be 'An Ocean Engineer and a Naval Architect'. To keep the interest alive, I will try to make my experiences broad and universal in nature in an attempt to give you a peek into the inscrutable life of IIT Madras.

Chapter 1: The Struggle:1st Year at IIT Madras

"I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley"

Words from a well known poetry,which most of us have read, and I find these words apt to describe how I felt at the time of joining IIT Madras. The summer of 2000 it was when, by God's Grace and to the joy of my family, I cleared IIT-JEE and managed to secure a seat in IIT Madras. My branch of study was going to be Ocean Engineering and Naval Architecture. Know anything about this field? No?? Welcome to the club. Even i don't, till today . I was not very excited at the prospect of going to Chennai for it would be my first foray into the south and the horror stories of Chennai had already reached my ears. But the thrill of being a part of one of best institutions of the country and the value associated with it had overshadowed everything else and here I was travelling to Chennai with my Father, who was as excited as me, if not less, at the thought of my studying in an IIT. So with words of wisdom from my mother, I set out to enter a new world.
My Father stayed with me for a couple of days and during this time he efficiently finished all the work required to set me up for a hostel life at a new place. The paper work was done, bank account was opened and the money which I would require deposited , articles of daily use were bought and after accomplishing all his tasks he left with more words of wisdom. I, for my part, was trying to adjust in the new environment. I was a little worried at the prospect of not having any Hindi speaking guy in my hostel. Was I the only North Indian to have foolishly opted for an IIT in the south? All such fears were allayed when I found to my relief that the population of North Indians in my batch was quite healthy though there were not as many in my hostel. But as it would turn out, I made very good friends even with the guys from South whom I found to be very friendly and accomodating. Guys from Andhra,Gults, as they are called in IIT Madras, were a big number and though all of them generally stayed together, they were nice and friendly. Both my roomies were Gults and the fact that both of them used to converse in Telugu did make me feel a little left out at times. But this problem was solved by the Institute (insti henceforth) when one of them was transferred to another hostel leaving me and Praveen Babu behind in Room No. 273, Narmada Hostel.

Before I start with other things, a little about the IIT Madras Campus. It is a beautiful place carved out of the Guindy National Park and spread over an area of 700 Acres. I don't have the official figures but I believe that 60-70% of the campus area is wooded and inhabited by various species of the deer family. It is a beautiful sight to see the students, most of them on their bicycles, cycling down to the classes and passing hordes of dears grazing or busy with their daily tasks. The hostels were a disappointment. The rooms were fine, both the 3 seater ones as well as the single accomodation ones, but the BOGS( Bathroom of Graduate Students) were a nightmare. What else do you expect from Toilets and Bathrooms constructed way back in 1958 and never renovated since. This would, however, change as you will know a little later. The hostel also had a big quadrangle for games, a common room for reading and listening purpose, a TV room and a TT room apart from ,ofcourse, the mess. At the insti level, the facilities for the extra curricular activities were tremendous. For Sports, you name it and we'll have it was the common refrain. IIT Madras has a wonderful cricket ground called Chemplast Cricket Ground. So good and well mantained is this ground that it has even hosted the Indian cricket team for the practice camp before the 2000 Champions trophy in Kenya. The auditorium, the lecture halls and the Departments facilities all left me spell bound and it was then that I realized what it takes to develop an IIT.

My Department, Department of Ocean Engineering, boasted of impressive facilities too. Wave flumes, both deep and shallow, an artificial wave maker, a towing tank, an instrumentation lab containing some of the most sophisticated equipments are just some of the many sophisticated facilities that the Department boasts of. For having a look at these in details, you can visit the page http://oec.iitm.ac.in/.

The academic calander at IIT is pre-planned and the schedule for every day and every class is religiously followed. I still remember the Professor in my very first class in IITM, a Physics lecture, telling us that during these 4 years at IIT we would be taking around 200 quizzes and semester exams. Irrespective of what the others think, I personally feel that the academic pressure in IITs is tough and to get good grades, you need to be regular in your studies. We had to clear 180 credits in the next 4 years to earn the coveted IIT B.Tech degree. 180 Credits is not a small number and recently the council in IIT has significantly reduced the number of credits from 180 to 150. We had two round of quizzes followed by the end semester exams in every semester which decided our Grade Point Average(GPA) for the current semester. The Branch change unlike in the other Engineering Colleges was decided on the basis of the first semester's results only.
The classes started at full swing. The routine was very very tough to say the least. I had 24 credits in the first semester with only 2 aftys free. Afty is a short form for afternoons. Every semester it was common for the people to find out as to how many afternoons they will be getting free. An afty free was a precious posession. It was an escape from the sleepy afternoon classes or the gruelling lab sessions in the sultry weather conditions of Chennai to the comfortable confines of our room where we could retire for a much desired siesta. The most painful of all the courses, as everyone from the insti will vouch for, were the 2 credit courses such as ED(Engineering Drawing), ID( Industrial Design..this is a course unique to IIT Madras and no the Engineering College in the world teaches it), Work Shop and the Phyiscs Lab. They made us work the hardest and the returns from them, even on scoring a decent grade, was minimal as they carried a weightage of just 2 points. So every week constituted around 25 hrs of classes, 6 hrs of workshop, 3 hrs of Physics Lab,3 hrs of Engineering Drawing Lab and an uncountable number of hours to be spent in the Hostel completing the ED drawings, ID project and the course assignments( also called tut. sheets). It was the first semester when I had seen the students working the hardest in their 4 years at IIT. The reason, i guess, might be the prospect of a Branch change combined with the general sense of responsibility which everyone possesses after stepping out of their homes for the first time. It is another thing that this sense of responsibility does not take too long to vanish.




I had a poor first semester academically and the end semester exams were hugely responsible for the fiasco. My strategy of studying on the last night before the exam bombed in my face. Inspite of having decent pre-ends(marks from the quizzes) in some of the subjects, I ended up with poor grades in them. Second Semester and the new year of 2001, therefore, welcomed me with this news. It depressed me no doubt and I made it a point to study more regularly from now on. But somehow it never happened. Also, I started feeling a little homesick in this semester and it took some harsh words from one of the seniors to bring me out of this condition. Thanks to him.

Even semester is considered the fun semester of the IIT life. It starts with the GFKR Basketball tournament and it is fun to see the girls playing basketball in shorts and the IIT girl's team getting thrashed in every game. But kudos to their spirit. They still keep going without getting disturbed by the belting that they receive just like the Indian cricket team does.We consider the Basketball tournament a precursor to SAARANG( the annual cultural festival of IIT Madras). SAARANG is a week of complete unadulterated fun. This is the only time during the year when we see a lot of girls in the campus. There is always a talk of how SAARANG is a good opportunity to get a girl friend but sadly I haven't accross too many examples of this happening. Most of the girls that come to SAARANG are with their boyfriends and consider SAARANG a way to chill out with their partners. Nevertheless SAARANG is full of fun. From the Pro-shows to literary events to dance workshops to the DJs and the dancing on the roads of IITM, it is a never ending list of fun-filled events. No doubt the end of SAARANG brings with it a feeling of sadness and a realization of the impending 1st quiz. I became the ticket sales volunteer during SAARANG. Though I had wanted a more coveted vol-ship, I had to settle with ticket sales because I did not belong to hostels where most of the co-ords lived. They naturally preferred the guys belonging to their hostels and one place was left for the girls hostel. This gives some insight into the undercurrent of politics that runs among the students in IIT Madras.

After SAARANG, the next big event that arrives is the Institute and Hostel elections where we elect the cultural secretary and his team and on the hostel level our various secretaries. Its a month long event of politics and campaigning at its best.

Next come the Hostel Nights. Each Hostel celebrates its day of formation with a theme and events put up by its inmates. It culminates with a sumptous dinner and a grand farewell to the passing out batch wherein they are toasted and their secrects and biggest embarassments are let out before everyone. We can invite our friends from other hostels and from outside IIT. The cynosure of all Hostel Nights in the girl's hostel nite. This is the only occasion during the year when we are allowed to enter the girl's hostel and see how they live. But only a few are lucky enough to get this opportunity. Yours truly was one among the lucky few having been invited to three consecutive hostel nites. First year was the only abberation. The hostel nites also gave us the opportunity to indulge in gossip and who got invited by the girls in the batch was a thing of immense interest for everyone. The End Semester followed the Hostel Nite and after a week of forced insomnia, it was time to bid farewell to the institute for a much deserved break and a trip home. We were all looking forward to it. But the students of Naval Arch., had to go for a 2 week long training programme at the Cochin Shipyard. The purpose of this training was to enable us to get a feel of the real ship and its structure and the various processes involved in its construction. This would help us in our subsequent semesters. That was a fun trip too and all of us used to make it a point to escape from the shipyard after lunch for sightseeing. After the training, it was time to head home to be with the eagerly waiting parents and thus ended my eventful first year at IIT Madras.