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.