Life at BITS Pilani: Discovering myself

BITS Pilani... One of the premier colleges in India. It was while I was staying in Hyderabad that the notification for the higher degree admissions came. I decided to give it a shot.

The centre was BITS Pilani Hyderabad campus. I wandered around the Secunderbad bus station to find the bus that goes there. Finally I found it & sat inside a bus packed with students on the day of the test. It was a long journey to Shameerpet, in the outskirts of Hyderabad. It was a cold Saturday morning as I went to the online test centre. I was welcomed by a computer ready to dish out the problems. I did pretty well in the test & was happy but never was sure until the results came & I saw that I was selected for M.E admission in BITS Pilani. So with the blessings of my teachers & best wishes of my friends at ACE academy , I bid adieu to Hyderabad after a stay of 7 months.

I was ecstatic but also a bit nervous of what lay ahead. I had to reach Pilani in Rajasthan in a weeks time & appear for an interview. I reached back home. It was a special feeling like never before... Nostalgic... like seeing everything for the first time. After a few days at home, I packed my bags for the long journey to Pilani accompanied by my uncle. It was late December & Delhi was covered in fog. The cold was chilling as we hired a Tata Indica taxi to travel 300 odd kilometers to reach Pilani. Pilani is a village set near the Rajasthan-Haryana border in the district named Jhunjhunu. It was my first time in North India... I watched with fascination the road side dhabas, the mustard & sugarcane fields, the overloaded tractors & rickshaws, the people & their costumes.

I stepped into the BITS Pilani campus on the cold morning of January 2nd, the interview day. It was a huge campus & the insti building looked majestic with its huge clock tower hidden partly by the morning fog. Interview had a surprise in store for me. I was called first!! I expected to be last since my name starts with 'V' but the names were called based on merit list. After that I & uncle had hot ginger tea which was refreshing in that cold climate. I collected my hostel room slip & shifted to Malaviya Hostel. From my room's balcony, I had a nice view of the Meera Bhavan girls hostel ;) I bid goodbye to my uncle at the bus stand. There were about 10 Malayalis in the hostel. We all became good friends. It was my first time in a hostel. I bought a cycle to roam around the 450 acre campus.

I loved that campus in the cold climate. The morning fog, dew drops falling from the leaves, the peacocks, the small roadside eateries, the cycle rickshaws... The Saraswati mandir looks beautiful with the sunrays reflecting from its white marble during sunset. It is surrounded by a garden filled with Dahlias & Roses. Its a tranquil place.

We have a supermarket named Akshay & a shopping center called Connaught Place (C'not). Another lovely place is the ShivGanga. Then came the time of registration. Being a new Bitsian, I had no idea what to do. It was basically to register for the courses during the semester. The first day of the class was a special feeling. I was sitting in a college classroom after 2 years & that too in BITS Pilani. Studies went on fine. I got myself a laptop for studies but it became more handy in watching movies :) Since my roommate rarely came, my friends would occupy my room & watch movies, with some beer & smoke giving company. I loved the state of the art BITS library & the computer center. The fun was in spending time in computer center & going to the All Night Canteen (ANC) at 12.30 in the night. Christo & Renju were my companions. I made good friends with my fellow Malayalis- Christo, Allen, Aji, Anil, Rocky, Sreeraj, Renju, Atul & Safal.

The life at BITS Pilani went on fine amongst the tests & quizzes. I was starting to get fed up with the mess food. There were movie shows at the auditorium & the IPL final was shown on the big screen. Our batch had variety of people from North, Central & South of India. Some unique personalities amonst them are Anshul- the counter strike game master, Deepankar- the techno & computer master, Deepak- the film freak, Sindhoor- the badminton master. Also Anil, Debabrata, Dharmendra, Divanshu, Jayapal, Kapil, Ritu, Kamal & Karan were my other batch buddies.

I suffered a nasty fall from cycle one Saturday afternoon. I cut my chin, broke my nail. I was in a lot of pain & bled badly. Anil & Allen took me to the Birla Sarvajanik hospital where I was stitched up. The following were days of pain & struggle and constant trips to the medical center for getting the wounds dressed. I found it difficult to brush my teeth, eat & walk. Friends were of great support during that time. I recovered well in time for the exams.

The climate was changing. One of my seniors told that the best indication of change in climate are the girls. The hotter the climate, shorter their clothes!! :) By mid April, I got a true feel of the summer in North India. Temperatures rocketed to 47 degrees. I struggled to get sleep at night. By the first week of May, came the comprehensive exams... the final litmus test. I did well & was longing to get back to home and escape from the heat. I was longing to ride my bike, meet my friends, eat beef....!!

Looking back at the past 5 months, I had a lot of new experiences- interacted with a variety of people, saw new places like Agra, made new friends, experienced hostel life, wrote open book tests, presented seminars & papers, experienced a new culture, ate new sweets like Rajbhog and learned that lime juice was called 'Shikanji' :) In the past 5 months in BITS Pilani, I discovered myself.

-Visakh
[Photos & Text]