Disclaimer: All characters and events in the article, even those based on real-life people (all alive and all dead simultaneously) including your fictitious writer are entirely fictional if not partially. All places, opinions and experiences have been stolen from a large variety of movies of all colours and sorts that the writer has seen in his 1st year. Even if poorly stolen, reader discretion is not at all advised. What follows is a product of a coarse mind and inexplicable existential angst which couldn’t be satisfied by pills and mushrooms during COVID-lockdown, not to forget the narcissistic bottoms of yours’ truly (that’s me again, why me? ……………….... remember narcissism?). Spoiler: Charter further on your own risk, dark failures ahead.

" Happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" - wrote Leo Tolstoy in Anna Karenina. The more the strides a person totes on his inevitable journey towards death, the deeper this quote sinks and makes way through his conscience.

Allow your writer to help you with this quote filled with unwanted meritocratic oddity, which Lo! and Behold! Bespeaks the crux of success; For something to be perfect or ‘happy’ (if you prefer); that ‘something’ must shine out on some critical aspects of its existence. Interestingly enough, if one fails in any criteria which makes that ‘something’ good in nature, the whole thing objectively as others of its kind, can be amiably called out as a failure.

Apparently, as it may seem, after 3 years of darning hard work and after managing to secure a 300ish AIR, I was content more on the fact of being in peace with competition than I was with my rank or college or branch. But it will all figure out to be a farce. It was a bright sunny day (not unlike that god-forsaken greyish damp day my JEE results were declared) when I first happened to crash, (yeah, absolutely crash) into IIT-R. The lush green R-land resembling Babylon itself, was, funnily enough, quite a dystopia for me. As it should be for anyone barmy enough who had spent years into his stable drenched with the smell of books. The registration went as catastrophic as it could, and with the first-time room allocation rules being changed, voila! I had a room-mate. Just like a prince who was forced into marriage as a means for a political alliance between families, I was shocked to the bottom of my entrails. With the only deviation from the analogy that I wasn’t marrying anyone. My partner would later on prove to be inactive in absolute Newtonian and non-Galilean terms, perhaps even more lethargic than ‘the broom-stick your mum bought you to clean your room’. That fella was enjoying his year nevertheless unlike this hermit.

I stand corrected, professors here as one apparently will discover, are in my opinion of only one use to me. I love calling them ‘professor’ because of the Harry Potter-Dumbledore vibe I feel when I call out ‘professor!’. Let the abilities of Dumbledore rest in peace because you will have an ample amount of time for your frustration to rest in peace. Obviously, not all professors are dull, some are so boring that you may favour talking to the lizards in your room.

Ah! Lizards, my dear readers, are the only feminine creatures that you will encounter across while in boys’ hostels. Lizards naturally occupy a very pristine place in the seldom charted nooks of your room. I was extremely (ahem ahem) afraid of lizards and we are two species on this huge blue rock that will never get along. Only Lizards and obnoxious fellow-inhabitants dare tread the filthy corridors of these low-life creatures who also go by the term- ‘college boys’. It is a common sight to see lizards crawling over your beds, sneaking into clothes, very often jumping in front to you so that you don’t forget them and on rare occasions if one is lucky, he may go on a blind date with a poor dead lizard (of course in your plate). It is taken that one will find creatures of all sorts and sizes while being in their hostel. Readers are advised to stay away from rabid dogs and half-human lizards(suspected human parentage) and not to forget Biblical reptiles (having very high CGPA).

I have been decent in the business of friend-making, but you, dear reader, must remember this won’t be a love-making affair, at least for me. The academics at IITR are relaxed and comfortable, but soon one finds themself out of tune and the first semester ends up in a beautiful academic tragedy, tragedy as in a Shakespearean tragedy with just no heroine to die for your hero. Crashing my first half of first semester exams, I was back on the AC/DC track in black, studying for ‘end-sems’. I found myself acclimated to mess food by then and anyways, you always have a canteen. The technical jargons of the R-land had made their niche in my vocabulary. I was a rogue in progress R-landian by then.

My social life, like everyone else’s, was sinking, sinking like Ozymandias into the sands of oblivion. Remember the blot of my mid-sems? I have managed to stretch my CGPA as of today to around (read further) 9.5 (reread the disclaimer). And this came at a hefty price which you would have obviously guessed from this para’s intro.

*‘Weird are the gusts of lazy winds, and even weird are those who dare chase it’ *: yeah, I just made it up, and similarly, I had just made my way into Watch-Out and Geek Gazette (the two magazines of IIT-Roorkee). The exhaustive drilling sessions were worth the efforts of the drillers (a reference to future mechanics and present crazy engineers with nuts in hand) and I managed to bump into the editor-academia of these magazines.

My parents were very conducive, and for them, my 1st year couldn’t have been smoother. Apologies for limited information, because the last thing I want is a stalker (though it might be the first thing I would wish for, depending on what lies beneath just over there from the screen, of-course Hell! (double pun intended)).

After studies were managed, next target were technical groups of R-Land, as fabled as the Order of the Hermetic Rose itself. But I couldn’t manage to pull this one off and who could, remember Mark Zuckerberg from The Social Network? "Funny are the ways of denial, ain’t they?" (Yeah, I made up this one too)

The seniors were very helpful when it came to the coding and future aspects of my career. They said it, and I quote – “Explore!” . Well, that is all folks, that’s all they have ever said. Even if they have had said something else, it's better to hear it for one’s own self. I still am figuring out that some people’s fate resembles that of Sisyphus (at the end of the day, whose doesn’t).

The world was working in its mysterious ways for 8 months, and I was surviving the day-light and night-life as the low-life of R-land. I have had some terrific friends and some outstanding experiences. Paraphrasing archetypical parents and some fellow Geeks: this phase perhaps, is one when you get to meet lots of people…blah blah bleh bleh. My zero cents(because I don’t believe in donations and paid advice) on this matter would be: Even if you meet a smaller number of people, I’m sure you will have a large number of varieties to smell and pick from.

It certainly goes without saying that this journey has been a hell of obnoxious, dark and ‘slimy mess’ (remember lizards with human seed). But this overall journey is totally worth it, not because of the beautiful experience or beautiful people or beautiful lessons learned but because of the high-internet speed you enjoy 24x7 at IITR. With this great power comes absolutely zero sense of self-accountability and social credibility.

As my dear reader, you would have realised I am not so good at closures certainly because my “it” never went as far as ‘closures’ but how is : "Hasta La Vista Baby!" by Arnold Shivajinagar himself.