1st semester...1st day at IIIT

First time in IIIT

It somehow happened that I joined the institute a week later than others....I came to institute on 22nd of July 2001...I reached institute at 8:40 and went to the reception, where the guard was not understanding what I was saying...I was not admitted till then so my name was not in the freshers list...so I sent him to see Cdr Raman who told him to get me a room...

I reached obh with the guard...I was sitting and waiting for the guard on the entrance as he went to search for a room for me...A guy came running outside hiding from everyone...as I was in T-shirt and Jeans he thought I am his senior and he wished me 'good morning SIR' ... after he was gone I was laughing...then the guard came back and took me to 3rd floor of OBH


OBH...
...it was a sunday so most of the people were sleeping after having a GALA time the previous night (FIRST SATURDAY NIGHT) ...
The room allocated to me was the biggest one...it was a common room facing the octagon...I thought I will have a nice time in such a big room ... then I started meeting new people, new faces, the people I would be spending my next 4 years with , some of which would become my friends forever...

A senior (Puneet vohra) came upstairs and saw me for the first time and that too in casuals and got !@#@!#%%&^ so he called me to his room in the evening (which I did not obey) ... I went for breakfast in the same clothes...I took 2 Dosas and was searching for shaved heads to sit with...and I met Mr Vinod Gupta (goli vaale) and few others (I dont remember) .. I started eating and just after the first bite my appetite vanished...I left it as it is cursing the food and the place and went back upstairs....Another senior came (dont remember the name) who saw us doing BC (till now I did not know it was BC that I was doing , and neither did I know that it will become a major part of my life@iiit and otherwise .. ) and told me to change...

Some part of my luggage I left at the main gate so I went there with 'Ajay bedi' to get it...He was one of the most 'terrified from ragging' guys...I got the luggage and kept it in my room and as soon as I stepped out a guy with plaster in his left hand approached me and asked about room keys for that room...All my dreams of living in such a spacious room blew off, and I was the only one person (also the plaster guy) who would be sharing room for few months in whole IIIT.

I went to take bath and he went back to get his stuff...I came back and it was nearly lunch time...I went for lunch and there I met 'Ankit Bhargava','Nipun Malhotra' ... I did not get paranthas as I was late for them ;) ... so I took 'biryani' and sat for eating...I took the first spoon and got the same feeling that I got in the morning after eating dosa...Ankit said "Abhi naya naya aaya hai na isliye lag raha hai, ek hafte mein khana theek lagne lage ga" ... and hearing this I went back to room...The plaster guy was already there...this was the time for introduction and starting a relation that would continue for lifetime...Hi I am Sandeep Chandna from Ghaziabad, I am Manjeet Bothra from Bikaner,Rajasthan...A brief talk on background etc...why you came late etc....and as we both were tired so we slept in the afternoon...

In the evening we both woke up and started searching for people...most of them had gone to 'KOTI' to get books and all...we went to the wing to the left of our room...
That wing was full of BC...with Ankit kumar (kaka),Ankit Bhargava,Arvind (upadhyay),Nipun (man),Sourabh (rajjo), Jayaram (jaya), Imran (kya re), Aaradhya, Ashwin (chaddi),sanyam (sam) ...
After seeing few locked rooms we saw two guys doing some work in one room (Arvind's room) , one was obviously upadhyay, other was apna 'Paritosh Pandey' ... Paritosh started cracking jokes from his database (till now I did not know whats a database) ... and he also told us few of his experiences with seniors and of previous night...
We were just talking when a chubby guy approached us ... guess who .. yes 'Sreejith (unni)' and told me and bothra to go upstairs for some 'healthy interaction' and we took unni and bedi also with us...

This was my first experience of 'Healthy interaction'...two seniors (final year - first batch of IIIT ) started asking us lots of questions...one of them was not intersted in the 'interaction' so he was just listening...the questions varied from favourite heroine to which car does the rock in the back of obh resemble most...he asked us some intersting questions also ;) .. on which except bedi everyone started laughing...bedi was very good at pretending that he did not know anything like that...it went on and on for an hour or so and we went back to our rooms...

As the previous night was full of fun so most of the seniors were not around for more 'interaction' ... so we met lots of people in the night ... we slept pretty early as compared to normal sleeping time in IIIT...

This was my first day in IIIT...the new life was about to start...with new professors, batchmates, seniors, subjects, environment ...