First Impressions: Inside the Gates of IIT-Bombay

Monsoons are probably the most romantic of all seasons, and I am definitely not the most romantic person around to live up to the ambiance it sets up. Still, as destiny would have it, I have found myself shifting to places which are famous for their monsoons in their own way- Manipal, Pune and now Mumbai.

In a scene quite fitting to my trysts with monsoons, I arrived in Mumbai on 11^th July amidst crazy rains. If arriving in IIT Bombay was a dream, it was a very wet one indeed! The rains ensured that I stayed inside my hostel the whole day. As someone who had lived 4 years of his life in Manipal, it was impossible not to think about the hostels of M.I.T, Manipal that day. Make no mistake that IIT Bombay is a college with very good infrastructure, but the kind of hostels, hostel facilities and mess facilities that Manipal had bestowed upon me during my stay was truly world class. It would be an understatement to say that I missed being in Manipal. I literally craved to roll back the years that day.

Such memories are there to be cherished, but the reality dawns sooner than later. It was back to reality soon as the college began the next day. A new college always brings with it endless new possibilities. With the start of the induction program, the series of introductions began; Introduction of classmates, introduction of teachers, introduction to facilities at IIT and ‘talks’ by IIT alumni in the coming days. The advantage of being in a city like Mumbai was quite evident with the ease with which an alumnus would just walk into IIT Bombay while going back home from his work or during his lunch hour and deliver a ‘talk’ to us. The talks were supposed to give thoughtful insights about the industry as well as a sneak peek into our life at IIT-Bombay for the next two years. I, however, found myself completely at sea during the talks. Many a times, I could not comprehend the facts and figures which were being spoken about. It was difficult to stay abreast with the questions which my batch mates put to the speakers. I must say the curiosity level of my batch has surprised me, but may be this has given me an opportunity to improve an important aspect of my personality here, i.e., to inculcate more curiosity in myself.

If the alumni sessions brought their own set of challenges, there were activities which were pure fun. The biggest advantage which one gets being in a B-School is the opportunity to stretch one’s limits, in tasks which might be very important and even in tasks which are meager and unimportant. Every small task, however, plays an important part in the development of an individual here. So within the first 6 days of my stay here, I ended up participating in a treasure hunt for the first time in my life, and I ended up preparing and acting in a small skit for the first time since my school days. I could not help but notice few interesting aspects of my batch during these activities. This batch has got excellent diversity when it comes to people coming from different regions of the country. You name a state, and we have a student from that state (except the north-eastern states). The learning about the cross-cultural group dynamics is going to be top notch in such a scenario. The challenge will be bigger for an experienced professional because he or she is used to operate in teams which usually have a hierarchy and a boss! But there is no hierarchy and no boss in such groups here. Everyone has his own view which often ends up being quite different from the other person owing to the different cultural upbringing. It is the co-ordination which matters the most. How one reaches a common ground in such a scenario will be fascinating to experience. If cultural diversity acts as strength of IIT Bombay, gender diversity is an aspect where this college fails miserably. Such skewed gender diversity creates the risk of creating new taboos, which is a lose-lose situation for everyone around.

So far I have only talked about the facts on the surface of IIT Bombay. There is, however, one more aspect to consider when you arrive at a new place- the kind of comfort zone it provides you. Prior to my arrival in Mumbai, I had stayed for 4 years in Manipal, 3 months in Trivandrum and 2.5 years in Pune and had moved into a comfort zone of mine in these places in no time. That comfort zone is somehow missing in IIT Bombay. There is something about IIT-Bombay  that reminds me about my stay in Kota; staying in small sharing rooms, being all at sea during the sessions, curious questions flowing all around, and a lot of jargon being thrown at you. It’s almost a flashback into my initial days of Kota, a stage of my life (Std 11^th – 12^th) where I made terrible mistakes; mistakes which were made because I was out of my comfort zone, mistakes which were made because I had been a very protected child, mistakes which were made because I had too arrogant a thought process to believe that something could even come in my way which could bother me. However, my experiences of Kota taught me the biggest virtue which I possess today, and that is ‘patience’. If ever there was a time and place to implement the experiences which I got from Kota, then this is it. Since the natural comfort zone is absent, I need to use my patience to ease in here. I do not fall in the category of people who take charge of the situation and make things happen. I am, instead, a believer of biding my own time. I even have this tendency of retreating into my shell sometimes.  Even if I get into a shell, I have tried to learn to keep the target just somewhere within my sight, so that when the time is ripe, I can have a go at it with no holds barred. The key here along with patience is to have a clear idea of what you want to do and more so a clearer idea of what you don’t want to do.

Now, with the end of the 6 day induction program today, the stage is set for the classroom to begin tomorrow. And I am ready to bide my time. The mistakes made in Kota made sure I had to wait for 7 more years to become an IITian. What better place than the IIT itself to rectify those mistakes. And as a professor told me during the induction, I can do that in two ways- one by being a guest of IIT, or the other by becoming a host here, by treating IIT as MY own college, as my second home, and having a sense of pride in being a part of it. The second way it is for me. It’s time to begin.