BIRTHDAYS

Hi everyone.

It seems like it has become a very bad habit of mine to always keep the new posts of this blog pending for long and then later apologize for it. So continuing the trend, I apologize for such a long delay in this post. I had almost decided that I will be quitting blogging due to some personal reasons but I am lucky to have friends that keep me motivating for continuing this and I am thankful to them. I promise to all that I will try my best not to have such a delay again.

I would also like to sincerely apologize for the language I used in my last blog entry about a girl who cheated her boyfriend. Many of my friends made me realize that whatsoever the matter be, using inappropriate language for anyone publicly cannot be justified in any way. I will keep in mind not to repeat such a mistake in future and would like to thank my friends for making me realize my mistake.

Starting with the entry, this blog entry will be about the most special day in most of the people's lives; i.e. birthdays; and the way it is being celebrated not only in IITs but almost every engineering college. There is a unique and a totally different way of celebrating birthdays in college and I am pretty sure that almost everyone had & will always have the curiosity of knowing the origin of this way of celebration. I had my birthday recently and I feel fortunate enough (unfortunate; according to some) to somehow avoid the complete way of celebration. Due to this reason, a part of this entry will be based on other's experiences.

GPL (google 'gpl in colleges' for more info :P), a word I heard for the first time only in college, was thought of another college lingo(slangs of college) by me at first. But soon I came to know that this is something I will always love to keep my distance from. GPL can be defined as a ceremony in which the birthday boy is hit with special pair of shoes, sandals,  slippers and other footwear starting at exactly 12 at midnight for a time duration ranging from 10 mins to 45 mins. (yeah, 45 mins is too much!!) In some cases, the 'recipient' of GPL is hit so much that after some time of hitting, he is unaffected by any more hitting as a saturation level of pain has been reached :P. The pain is so unbearable that one of the most special day of someone becomes the 'pain-day' for him; making him think that why in the god's name did his birthday come?  Fear of GPL makes people hide their birthdates on fb (That's people like me). Fearful students tell their parents to wish them secretly instead of a public show of celebration. Most interesting thing I found about it was that if someone has his birthday in vacations or someone tries to be clever by declaring his birthday to be in vacations, then 2 GPLs are proposed for him; 1 before and 1 after vacations :P :P.

GPL invitations

Coming to the 'process' carried out on birthday; special invitations are put on fb or in hostel for increasing the number of people. Anyone and everyone can participate in it; irrespective of whether the boy knows him or not :P. Friends come 5 minutes before 12 at midnight to push the birthday boy (or the unlucky one :P) out of his room and is brought in a central area where everyone could assemble. One or two goes (who may call them organizers :P) to each and every room of the wing to call each and every student out for making the event grand! Clock strikes 12 and the sound of some special 'gifts' could be heard from a long distance. Whenever someone gives a solid hit such that sound is loud; others start hooting to  motivate him for more such hits :P (once it happened that I had to wait for GPL to get over before I could sleep as the noises were so loud!). The crowd in GPL can be broadly classified into three categories: one boy who is the prime focus of the event and is unlucky to have his birthday :P; the hitters consisting of many number of people; and spectators consisting of a few who are present just to enjoy GPL and do not participate in it. Hitters try their best to convert spectators into hitters. In short, your friends leave no stones unturned to make sure that you remember each and every hit on your birthday forever :P (this is the time when you abuse your friends from your heart the most :( ). After this is completed, in many cases it happens that to compensate for his suffering; they bring a nice cake for him for the traditional way of celebration also. But wait; how can something be so good?  So, either the leftovers of the cake or another cake is being used to apply on your face and body as much as possible :P.

Me after friends applied cake on me

Due to all this, it once happened that a boy whose birthday was on Saturday took his laptop, mobile, some money and required stuff and went to library & canteens for complete Saturday and Sunday to avoid his gpl. Crazy it may sound; but he managed to escape from his GPL somehow :P :P. Some students try their best to hide on their birthdays. After GPL, birthday boy is bound to give parties to his friends. Parties include party to wingies; party to dept-mates; party to society-people/club-people; party to NSS-people; different party for roomies may also be included!

But in spite of different opinions of what should and should not be done on birthdays in colleges; everyone holds one common opinion, i.e., it surely becomes the unforgettable day. The dun you do, the enjoyment you have, the memories you capture and the time you spend on that day really is a memorable one. Dozens of people wishing a happy day on fb or in personal, having parties with friends (although they may be a burden on your pocket :P) and such things makes you feel that birthday is real fun with friends. Birthdays come; you regret it due to GPL and pocket burden; you have some memories; you cherish them later and again wait for you birthday; your birthday comes again and the cycle repeats again.

That's all for this time's entry. I hope you enjoyed reading it. I have to go now for practicing guitar (my fingers hurt! If anyone has a solution to it; then do comment below in the comments section). And yeah, sorry for a long post this time!

Goodbye.

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CULTURAL FEST

Hi friends.

This post is somewhat a continuation of the previous post and focuses on my experience of my first cultural fest in college which was from 29 Jan-1 Feb. Most students are more excited for cultural fests due to more number of interesting activities because participation in technical fest requires technical knowledge, which most of us lack :P Also, better ratio is a major source of attraction for cultural fest as a lot of girls come from outside, sad part is that mostly are already committed :( and good part for most boys is that many are beautiful and their western dress (mostly shorts) makes the difference between IIT and malls of Delhi negligible :P.

Performance and shows in Spring fest were innumerable and brilliant covering almost all type of genres, from dramatics, literary, fine arts, film fest to music, dance, international carnivals and what not!  List of events seems never-ending, list of sponsors seems never-ending, list of participants from outside the college seems never-ending (and the best part is that list of girls also seem never-ending :P). And the pro-nights just proved to be an icing on the cake. I regret I can't describe those events as that would make this entry too long :(. Our schedule was simple; wake up in morning, get ready and roam for the complete day and night :) There were more people roaming on roads at 3 at night as compared to normal daytime! People were playing antakshri sitting on the road at 4 o clock at night!

This fest also became special due to one of my friend who came from Kolkata with some more friends of hers, who came as strangers for me but went as very good friends of mine :) I also had my first proper night out with them and I went to sleep at 8:30 in morning (may be normal for others but is a very big thing for me). And specially their different way of teasing me constantly for an unusual thing was actually fun.

But all good things come with a pinch of badness in them and fests are no different in this case. Being an eye-witness of such a magnificent fest, I saw some unexpected stuff during fest and my night out proved to be a new and unexpected one. A lot of people drank and smoked during fest at night, a lot of people vomited due to drinking a lot and many people were seen rushing to arrange drinking water for such people. I could not go to my favorite and the best place of our college due to excess stink of alcohol and cigarette which made that place unbearable (I never imagined so!). Some were even noticed taking drugs! But the worst part for me came when I went with my friends from Kolkata to a quiet dark place where we saw an already committed girl from that group kissing her ex-boyfriend! I was totally shocked, surprised and confused (I could not decide whether to be excited to see kissing live for the first time :P or be extremely angry at her). That b*tch, f**ker, bast**rd was cheating a boy who loved her so much and was not at all guilty after that too!! (Apologies for my language) Such people are the reasons why some people lose faith in long distance relationships. I wish I never get to meet that girl in future ever (Comment what u feel about that girl).

Do comment about the topic you want to listen to in the comment section below. Time to end this post as I have to prepare for my mid-sem exams. Wish me luck!

SPRING FEST 2016 EVENTS PART 1

SPRING FEST 2016 PART 2

Goodbye.

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TECHNICAL FEST

Hi friends.

Time for a new post. People want it interesting. What to give, what to give, what is most interesting, what will people enjoy the most.....oh yes, let me do this one on fests, I think people will like it.

So here is a new post about the most awaited time for any student of any college, i.e. fest time. This is a time when whole college environment changes drastically to a positive environment of fun and excitement and even the most studious students leave their rooms to enjoy the awesome change outside (I guess IITs are different as I was still able to spot 2 students; rather maggus; mugging in their rooms!!).  Talking of IIT, most of them hold 2 fests, one is cultural fest (such as Spring Fest of IITKGP, Mood Indigo of IIT Bombay) and other is technical fest (such as Techfest of IIT Bombay, Kshitij of IITKGP, for fests of other IITs; click the link given at the bottom). There are so so many activities going on during fests of IIT that sometimes we actually want to attend many of them at the same time :)

This year I had my first technical fest Kshitij from 21-24 Jan which is claimed to be Asia's largest technical fest of any college :) (Proud to be KGPian). But a fest with only technical events will be boring (as we lack technical knowledge :P), so we had a few cultural mega-shows in this fest (They actually kept the fest alive for us). For most of the first years, Kshitij is just observatory as they are still to learn something. But still some of the first year students participated in some events as they had knowledge beforehand and also outperformed (my roomie Ranjith participated and won second prize with Rs 15000 in a team of 4). Mostly students coming from outside are interested in it.

Events of Kshitij included Guest Lectures by eminent personalities due to which DC Avanti came to our college for display! (I was so excited for its just one look and it happened so well in Kshitij that I even clicked a selfie with it! I am greatly thankful to it :)) There was an event of robowars in which heavy robots fought with each other (hilarious to watch those heavy metal innovations fight in a transparent glass cage!), Code-o-Soccer in which my roomie participated (I personally liked this as this fetched me a pizza treat from my roomie :P). An exhibition of robots was also organised which showed a head band which manipulated our brain reactions, a robot which showed various dance moves, Indian robots which did push-ups and head-stand! The workshops included workshop by Google, Microsoft and other top companies. The cultural events were held in an open air theater which was new and pleasant for me, shows included a comedy show by East India Comedy (it was fabulous, was unable to control my laughter on their puns), a dance performance, a show by electric violinist from UK and a magic show by the finalists of America's Got Talent! All were just superb to watch :)

Well that's all for my experience of technical fest which proved to be a great time for me.
 Do read the next entry as a continuation of this post.

Click here for more info on fests of all IITs.

KSHITIJ 2016 EVENTS

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NSS CAMP & FRIENDS

Hi everyone.

This blog entry is about one of the unforgettable experiences of mine during winter holidays just after the finish of the first semester end-term examinations. My end-term examinations concluded on 28^th November after which an NSS camp of 7 days was conducted from 29^th November to 4^th December. I would also like to add here that this camp is limited to only a handful of IIT’s including IITKGP. Some of you may have a question that why I chose to write about an experience which is limited only to some IIT’s in a blog named ‘IIT college life’ and not ‘IITKGP college life’. Well, the answer is that this experience is such a different experience to me (and believe me, almost everyone has the same opinion; which is rare :P) that I can’t resist myself from writing about it.

NSS stands for National Service Scheme, a voluntary organization to serve the needy people of villages near colleges (that was official, but the actual scenario is that it is not at all voluntary :P Instead we are forced to do work due to the terror of attendance and the worst part of it is that failing in it would result in failing in semester irrespective of grades in other subjects!!) Talking about the camp, it had a daily timing of 7 in morning till 4 in the evening, which meant that we had to report at 6 at a place from where we were taken in buses (6 in the chilly mornings! And then you are literally smashed in buses like animals!!) We used to have a disgusting breakfast followed by even more disgusting lunch (I could have never imagined in my life that I would get to eat even worse food than that of my mess, but I was proved wrong by the ‘great’ NSS camp; I felt like vomiting the food). In those 7 days, we had activities which included conducting a survey asking villagers about their problems (believe me; it seemed like we were in a bigger problem when attending the camp due to their tasteless food and getting tired in the hot sun; why didn’t they ask us our problems??). We had conducted an awareness rally (everyone still believes it was all in vain :P) and a medical camp too (I really wish it served the purposes well). We also did leveling of ‘kuchcha’ roads by sand and gravel (to be honest, we did it for less than half of the allotted time and rest time was devoted to “important” activities such as playing dumsharas, mafia, cards, discussing about nukkad :P :P). We also had a snake bite workshop showing some poisonous snakes live (we all wished that one of them bite the camp coordinator resulting in the end of the camp, aren’t we cruel? :P) and a first-aid training program (it had the most exciting moment for all when 2 consecutive mouth-to-mouth-CPR were demonstrated, followed by huge round of applause and laughter by over-enthusiastic crowd :P) The best activity for me was the nukkad performance by our unit in which we stood 4^th among 15 units (I still feel sad that I missed participating in it L L).

But what made such a tiring, supposedly boring and useless week such a wonderful and never-forgetting week of my life? What (or rather who all) did I get from this camp which I will relish for my complete life? As predictable, I got a lot of good FRIENDS from this camp, friends with whom I enjoyed a lot, friends with whom I cherished my moments, friends whom I can rely upon. These friends are the sole reason for making my camp a blissJ. To name a few, Prasanna (flirtatious funny guy), Hitendri (sweet choti bachchi), Prativa (good friend cum leader), Aman (dusht bestie), Mageshwari (stud smiling maggi), Rajeswari (Raje or Raju :P), Lakshya (cool deputy), Nayan (quora), Anukool (netaji), Arsalan(superb singer), Gauri(fabulous actor and director), Yash agrawal (fantastic narrator and script writer), Yash goyal (brilliant actor having good sense of humor), Gaurav (gamer), Kashif (lazy fellow), Dev (people doubt his gender after NSS camp :P), Sachin, Parveen, Srikar (cheeku), Shantanu, Harsh, Ranjith (roomie rajnikanth) and all other friends of mine as well as other units. They made me realize that good friends are very important in life as they make every moment of your life enjoyable, then be it NSS camp.

That’s all about my point of view of NSS camp. You can also visit the link nssiitkgp.blogspot.com for some videos of NSS camp. Hope you enjoyed reading it. Do let me know any suggestions or feedback in the comment section below as it helps me a lot.

Goodbye.