The first sem gave a lot of memories to store in that deep vault in my mind, finding a commendable space among many sweet memories in 18 years. The first of those started a day before the sem officially began, when I started playing football in the hostel quadrangle. In an attempt to demonstrate my goal-keeping skills to my seniors, I banged my head on the goal post, ridding myself of a significant portion of skin on my forehead. To make matters even more interesting, i did not realise I had sustained an "injury" until some fifteen minutes later, when I accidently happened to brush my brow. I was quite startled to find a deep red coloured hand returning back from the forehead trip. In the end, I had to have a stitch, and my misadventure proclaimed to my classmates. On the bright side, a significant number of people got to know that I am pretty enthu about football.
The sem progressed into the second month. Freshie schroeter passed, and I got to represent the hostel in the football team. Unfortunately, our team, though talented, could make it only to the quarter finals. One of the incidents in my life which time shall find hard to efface happened during the freshie schroeter. A match against Godav did not produce much of a cheering squad from my hostel Tapti. The result was that all the people around the ground were godav supporters, and not too many voices to shout "Go Tapti". We were playing rather well on that day, which meant that the ball was in the other half for most of the time, and I was rather lonely at the goal post. Sensing this, a huge army of Godav supporters decided to rid me of my boredoom, though not in the way I would have desired. They gathered around my goal post and started shouting against Tapti and me in particular. I had to endure some twenty minutes of fifty people hurling abuses at me, right in my ear. They started in Hindi and English, until a couple of guys from my hostel tricked them into believing that I was from Andhra Pradesh. Then they started in Telugu, until a few people finally discovered I was Mallu (I have no idea how). They were massively overridden by the gult crowd though, so I ended up adding a few words to my now-stagnated Telugu vocabulary.
Shaastra, the tech festival of IIT Madras descended pleasantly upon the insti. It showcased a variety of innovative tech in a variety of fields. It facilitated a good number of lectures for the science and technology buffs by leading figures from the industry as well as the field of research. I was a hospitality volunteer and gained a lot of work experiences during the five days of Shaastra '09. Hospitality was mainly concermned with providing accommodation and help during the events to the participants. I still recall carrying dusty mattresses four and five floors to make rooms habitable for participants from across the country.
The sem progressed into a deluge of quizzes, assignments and presentations. I have never considered academics to be any sort of a stronghold for myself and won't be in the near future. The trend was aptly reflected in all my papers as I crawled past with below average marks. Others whizzed past me with varying degrees of super grades, while I was left with an usual sense of-no, not disappointment-ordinariness, because that is what happens in my everyday life.
In retrospect, all I did for a majority of the first semester was play football, read a few novels and sleep.
I briefly and frequently toyed with the idea of checking out the much touted great leveler called alcohol but I never got to tasting a drop of it for I don't know why. Time flew by, carrying me along, till we came to the end of November and the end semester exams loomed up like a bleak grey mountain. Serious and desperate last minute studying ensued, with nights and days merging into each other in a sleep deprived haze. I wrote exams the way I have done all my life-hoping for the best, though not quite prepared for the worst. In the end I managed three of Bs, a C and a D, resulting in a GPA of 7.47, what I like to call the Boeing GPA.
Back home for the winter hols, and looking forward to seeing insti again. :)
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