Hello everyone!



I think I should first start with a brief “about me”! My name is Ashish Sangwan,

originally from Bhiwani. I wrote the JEE in 2003 and managed to get AIR 17. It has been

a long time since that but still that preparation period will for many reasons remain

forever etched in my mind. I got admission into the Computer Science and Engineering

course at IIT Delhi. In fact, for those of you who’ve read the last article by Mayank

Kumar (AIR-27), Mayank and me were not only from the same IIT, the same course and the

same year, we were roommates too! More about me: I passed out in 2007 and now I’m doing

my PhD at Georgia Tech, Atlanta, US in Computer Networks.







Telling you that the most important thing in this whole JEE business is that whatever

you’ve learnt in the last one or two years, everything will be judged in one day, so what

really matters is what your frame of mind is on the D-day. If you are cool, you could

manage a brilliant rank even without having studied much. If you are tense, well, God

help you then! Ok, agreed, everyone is a bit tense. I was too! But keep that tension in

check. Don’t let it get to your head. As my friend has said earlier, it is not a

life-and-death issue.  





Anyway, I’d like to talk with you about some of the interesting things

that happened during my stay at IIT Delhi:  



Ragging: I was really scared of ragging before coming to IIT as I’d h

eard a lot of incidents. And my fears turned out to be somewhat true,

though ragging was not as bad as I’d thought it would be. We were made

to do a lot of interesting stuff, some of it censored! I was made to marry Mayank,

Christian style, and I was the bride! :) Whenever an airplane passed overhead,

I had to run after it, shouting at the top of my voice, asking it to give me a lift!

We were made to enact a lot of interesting scenes. I was made to act like crazy gorillas,

and believe me, what I did was horrible! :) But you people need not worry about ragging.

It is non-existent today with the strictures imposed against it.  



Friends: I made some really good friends during my stay at IIT, not only from my department

, but others as well. My core group was of 5-6 people. Since IIT Delhi lies in

South Delhi, and there are lots of places to hang out in South Delhi like the PVR

complexes and all, we would go on outings very frequently. There are even all-night

cafes at the campus itself, and we would stay awake till 5 in the morning discussing

whatever took our fancy: mathematics, computers, technology, Lord of the Rings,

Harry Potter, girls!, food, our future, the future of mankind etc etc. These discussions

have etched themselves deeply in my mind, and much of my actions are guided by them.  



Programming: This is as important as water to me! Long hours used to pass while I

programmed this and that, and managed to create some pretty interesting stuff.  I

was pretty good at my course-work, and that's why I guess I managed to get admission

into a very prestigious institution for post-graduation.



Movies: This is an integral part of every IITian’s lives. We have a

LAN (Local Area Network) on the campus, where one can find almost any movie from

around the world. I must have watched approximately 600 to 700 movies during my stay!

(No exaggerations here). My all-time favorite movies are “Shawshank Redemption” and

“The Man from Earth”. I’d urge each one of you to watch these two movies, of course,

after your JEE :)



LAN Games:  Age of Empires, Quake-III, Counter-Strike, Unreal Tournament; those of you

who’ve played these games understand the addiction. In IIT’s hostels, we have rooms very

near to each other and one’s voice easily carries to all other rooms in the corridor.

A typical scene during a gaming session would be that everyone in the corridor would

have their doors open, and everyone would be shouting at everyone else: “Abe bomb plant

kar yaar” “abe woh tere peeche hai maar ussko maar” “Abe tu kitna bada ******* hai terese

who bhi nahi mara gaya” It was quite interesting, and fills me with nostalgia whenever I

think of it.  



Sassi: This is so important for an IIT Delhi student that I would be committing a

crime by not including it here. Well, Sassi is a roadside dhaba where they serve

paranthas, patties, dhaba chai and stuff like that. During our minors and majors

(mid-semester and end-semester exams), going to Sassi in study breaks was indispensable.

Once you got there, you’d find half of the rest of IIT there too! Standing there and

talking to others about their preparation and discussing questions related to the exam

tomorrow was pretty fun in itself. This dhaba finds a mention in Chetan Bhagat’s

“Five Point Someone”.  





Well, there are lots of other memorable things that happened, but that can’t be

covered in this short an article. These few things I’ve told you just to give you an

idea on how IIT life actually is, and what to expect when you go there.   I guess this

is where I sign-off.   Bye and best of luck!!!!!