Mario’s sister s wedding was on Sunday. I didn’t go to Elias s house that night. Dad would not give me the permission anyways but that night me, raison and rajat did gang up and ask his permission to stay at elias s house the next night. With the permission got, i spent most of the day at home packing and then went over to raison s house. We started work on the contraptions that night and worked well into the morn. Last thing i remember is falling asleep at around 5. Waking up , i found rajat and pc had already left to college. Ashank, me and elias were left to do some work. At around 12 ashank went home to pack. I reached home much later at around 2:30 due to traffic. After this i had to pack and email a write up to the shaastra hospi ppl. Due to all this i was still at home at 3:30. The train left at 4:00. Now began the panic and also the last minute junk. Finally at 3:40 i left for the station in a rick and was so tensed about getting there in time. After some tense moments and a ‘run’ for it, i finally reached the compartment. The ‘run’ involved that i race carrying my heavy suitcase across platforms and across an overbridge racing against time. I was so damn exhausted by the end of it and it took me some time to settle down. In the course of time i forgot notify people that i’m leaving and also couldn’t return calls that i had missed taking or unknowingly picked up. Plus there was the paranoia of roaming charges, this was the first time i was using my cell out of the state.
The train journey wasn’t eventful. We spent most of our time adjusting to the seats, taking lessons in photography and doing nothing in particular. We were a bit spread out in the train. The bulk of us were in the same compartment while 4 of the others were about 5-6 compartments away. People shuffled between these two places. Food was eaten and my first forays into roaming calls started when my cell msgs were not going out. I think we slept around 11 after the sleeping system had been agreed upon., for eg. Who sleeps where and all that. Morning saw me getting up groggy at around 7 and not finding any tea on the train. Now i need tea to start the day, call it my poison.
Even after alighting down from the train i couldn’t find any tea. Avoiding porters and also thinking about our travel plans we made our way carrying our heavy luggage to the main entrance.
Finally with the help of the tamil speaking and understanding minority among us we were able to get a matador to drop us to the IIT campus spending about 1300 i guess. Karthik used to stay nearby when he was in Chennai and that helped us get familiar with the place and also to move about.
Seeing spotted deer was a pleasant surprise. In the IIT campus, wildlife lived in harmony with the interfering humans and even though the campus was within a national park we could see deer munching on accumulated garbage. One problem we faced was again transporting our luggage from the gate to the hostels which were quite far away from the IN gate. But with 19 of us that was not a problem for long. We invaded the next bus and got most of our stuff in it. We reached the hostels by 11 i guess. People went to eat and karthik went to wait in line for our hospi regs. That was one long reg line! Finally at around 2 i think we got our rooms. Until then you could have found us languishing in the hot sun outside Mahanadi with our luggage. We also met certain people we knew, from earlier fests or colleges.
We were allotted rooms in Mahanadi 548-551, the hostel which was serviced luckily by elevators of the monolingual and the bilingual kind. But surprise! The rooms were small, and by small we mean a one person only room and they expected 4 of us to fit in one. Me, raison and karthik decided to take the last room 551 which we had to share with an IIT kharagpur 3rd year student, shrey goyal, who had come to take part in The Symposium. We adjusted to him being in the room and he told me that this is one of the better boarding facilities provided at IITs during fests and we remembered how we had been treated at the VTU fest earlier and missed the comfort already. Comparison was inevitable when you have come across something which is superior indeed. We rushed to eat lunch and then came Back to adjust to the room. No mattresses or anything yet and we still had to start work on lot of our projects. Some slept and others went exploring. We sent people to get equipments and resources and other things. Everyone would be occupied for the next 3 days to the max.
To be continued…
well P.A.C.E., M’lore hosted their first Inter-Collegiate fest today. I had to be there mainly because my good friend Ashri was one of the Chief- Coordinators 
“Larry sent the Latter a Letter Later”.
