Trip to Mumbai – to IIT Powai Aseem N wrote this at 12:31 am • Filed under I, Me and Myself •

Right in my twelfth it was my dream to study in any one of the IITs, but sadly could not crack the JEE exam. So finally I had to do what most of my batchmates did. Joined Goa Engineering College. The not so bright students (now including me) didn’t really have a choice. Now that I know its ranked 75^th in India… ok I am there somewhere! :)

Our faculty here… I always admired them for being so meticulous over the fundas and concepts but never really wanted to be like them. I was happy with my five pointer sorta life. But suddenly there was this hype about selecting a project for our final year. I don’t know what hit me, but I thought this would be my last chance to really study something in my four years of engineering life. Most of which has been spent sitting and chatting in the college canteen.

So we spoke over to our professor and managed to contact a professor from IIT Powai. We decided to leave for IIT on the immediate weekend. Our college has a MoU with the institution that allows use its resources for our final year project.

WAY TO MUMBAI

Just as ideal students should be doing, we attended the morning half of college, and left to board the Konkan Kanya train. We spent most of our time, standing and sitting at the door of the train, watching the scenic beauty… the forests and rivers that passed by. It was so very refreshing.

I havnt been to Mumbai many times. Except for a few trips to Fort, Juhu and Goregaon. But always traveled with my family. It was more fun traveling like this with friends. We reached Mumbai early in the morning. To avoid rush we took the immediate next local to Kanjur-Marg. I had never traveled by a Mumbai local and this one looked like one being with all the sane people around. Most of them in deep sleep. Probably they had to get to the last station or they had some kinda body clock that would wake them up when their station would arrive. Otherwise in Mumbai no one really bothers about people around. So the short journey by the local was quite easy I thought.

All early in the morning, the guy besides me was struggling to be awake. So we enquired with him of when the train would reach Kanjur-Marg, the station closest to IIT Powai. 4secs was all that we got to get down off the train. There was not much rush, so we didn’t feel the run for time. Right outside the station was a multiplex, Adlabs Huma. We knew where exactly to come in the evening once our work was all over. We had tea, freshened up and took a rikshaw to take us to IIT Powai.

ACROSS THE GATES OF IIT POWAI

Right at the entrance, we were stopped by the security guards for a visitor entry. They warned us against carrying cameras. On reaching inside the campus, we felt like being one of the elite few… A campus as big as a city we thought it surely deserved for the people who made it there. After expressing a little pout for a while over that we didn’t make it earlier through JEE, we sat on a bench enjoying the cool morning breeze. Every one of us, speaking aloud in a discussion trying to prove our point of how our college could achieve anything like that the IIT as an institution had. Those passing by, probably professors and students who were on their routine morning walk, hardly cared to even notice us. They didn’t seem to be annoyed by our loud voices. Probably they were too busy with their own issues in life. We ended up our discussion by concluding that our college needs to be autonomous in its working, just like the IIT. Otherwise change is too slow in a government setup.

As the college begun, students and professors passed besides us. Students just giving a light smile to the profs and the professors acknowledging it with a slight shake of the head. One of my friends remarked, “Here in IIT people are so scientific in thought and that they even conserve energy in all their actions. Greet each other with the minimum possible use of muscles”. How true I thought.

At 10:00 am we had an appointment with the professor who would guide us on our project. We informed him that we had arrived and he immediately called us to his cabin for a discussion. A simple and sane person as we saw him at first glance and still maintain it to be so, infact with many more attributes to add to. The way he spoke to us and carried the discussion, we were so very impressed with his knowledge. You give him any technical topic to speak on, he will surely be able to put forth atleast a few constructive lines on it. When it came to speak on his specialization, he was sure a master! During the discussion he tested our concepts to see where we stood and also initiated us to give our own ideas for the project. He was so helping that he even managed for us guest passes to refer the library and asked us to choose a few topics and to meet him later in the day.

The library was sure ‘N’ times bigger than the one we have in our college, GEC. ‘N’ times because we didn’t manage to scan through every section there, so still can’t say how big it is. As much as we saw, it surely must be the biggest technical library in India with everything so very organized, with all records neatly maintained in a database available for search in the computers kept aside. It didn’t take us much time to figure out the section and even the rack of where the books and journals of our interest were. We browsed through our topics of interest and came up with a few suggestions. A movie at the multiplex was also playing on our minds. So we hurried up with the discussion with the professor to finally shortlist a few topics. We were again impressed with the knowledge he had to share over all the topics with probably all the associated references he could give. He then guided us with where we could have lunch and asked us to meet him after we have had food.

After a lunch at Gulmohar - a restaurant in the campus itself, we met the professor for a final discussion. He was leaving for a meeting, and offered to be present for a discussion after 6. It was hard to believe for us that a Professor from IIT could go so much beyond his timings to help us decide a project. We were glad to realize to be now doing a project under him.

MOVIE IN THE EVENING

We soon left the IIT campus, to reach the multiplex for a movie. We didn’t have a big choice over the movie to watch, as we had to reach Thane station to catch the train that would take us back home. So we chose ‘Anthony Kaun Hai’. A typical pop-corn movie, the first half was good enough to keep us interested. Too short a movie for our liking, we were not very impressed either. Except for the oomphatic Anusha Dandekar and my latest crush Minisha Lamba the movie could not hold our interest on. Hey by the way I don’t have any extra liking for those with names starting from ‘M’ to be my crushes. Most of you would have thought that way after I confessed my last crush on this blog… Melissa Theuriau. ;)

The movie was soon over. The cast of Anthony Kaun Hai was to arrive a couple of hours later at the multiplex for an interaction session. We thought we should wait, but then didn’t want to be strangled in the big and crowded Mumbai city too late in the night to eventually miss our train.

As most guys do in free time, we too did a little of bird watching for a while. Well if you are still wondering where were the birds amidst the city, I think I am talking nothing of interest to you. May be Salim Ali Bird Sanctuary here in Goa should catch more of your attention.

A TASTE OF THE MUMBAI LOCAL

So we soon reached the Kanjur-Marg station. As we had bought a full day local train ticket, we didn’t need to buy another one. So we proceeded to catch the local. The local trains that passed by were completely filled with people. It was supposedly the peak time. People returning from their work to get back to home. We somehow managed to climb the local compartment that was overflowing with people. Man! it was so packed, we could not even move ourselves. With one hand on the pocket of my trousers to avoid being pick pocketed, and another on one of the supports above our heads I didn’t even have to make an effort to stand. People around were almost holding us. Hehe. We were glad that we managed to climb the compartment and enquired of which side the station would be. Heck! Shocked to know that we were on the other side. The 4 metre compartment was never big a distance to cross for the 10mins that we had at hand. But then it was filled with a hundred people and so very difficult to make way for ourselves.

It didn’t take us much time to realise that always there were a few people who could not get down at the station they wanted to. A group of people who wanted to get down at Mulund, couldn’t really make their way out in the 3-4 secs the train driver had given them. Traveling first time in the local, we were sure that to get down at Thane Station was near to impossible for us given that we were on the other side of the compartment. Being bothered, I asked a man standing besides me of how would we really make it out. Standing like a saint there, wearing a serene face he calmly said, “Jawan Khoon ho, pahunch jaoge. Jisko utarna nahin usko bhi utaar do”. Haha… I almost felt like laughing. But couldn’t really, we all were in too bad a situation to enjoy the lighter part of the dialogue. All those who didn’t make it to the station they wanted to, as it was left way behind and were still stuck up in the jam, sounded like real pissed and were hurling swear words big time. BC, MC… all the ones in the unofficial dictionary of the Mumbaikars. In this josh, two of my friends too joined the party. Haha now it looked like some fun. I wouldn’t even mind if we were to go down to the last station.

A little more than 4 secs to get down at Thane session and we were glad to have managed it. Again we didn’t need all the energy to do so. Many people got down, so we moved out with the crowd without any effort really.

We moved around the Thane station to find some good place to eat. McDonald’s was our common choice. Hadn’t spent much all day, so we ate our heart out there. Then we got back to the station and sat on a bench on the platform where our train was to arrive. 3 hrs more to go… Messaging cost was too high as we were on roaming, so gave a few miss calls to friends. And then chatted with each other all about our project. The train reached the station on time. After a full tiring day, I immediately went to sleep.

THE BOMB SCARE

“Wake up… Bomb Scare!”, my friend came to the compartment and started yelling. All people were getting off the train as there were police checking the train. I don’t wake up, if I sleep… but then I heard the word ‘Bomb’ and sleep ran miles away from me. We all got down on the platform. Unpacked our luggage for the dog to sniff through for any explosive material. There was just one dog scanning the whole train. Poor him I thought. Often after inspecting a few bogies he was tired and sat down for a while and then got back to work. The train delayed for two and half hours. The fact that I traveled by the same train and today certainly alive and writing this post u might have guessed it was all a hoax. There have been a series of such hoax news after the Mumbai Bomb Blasts. I don’t really understand what these nerds get by initiating such bomb scares. Whatever I had a nice sleep all night and the train cruised at the top of it speed to reach almost on time. Just 30 mins delay. Great to know against Indian Railway standards and also considering the helluva delay due to the bomb hoax.

Guess… I am running into the fourth page of my Microsoft Word. With already a lot of red and green streaks around that I don’t want to care for, I think I have already penned down all that I wanted to say. Lots of content for you to read and some for google to index too. Bahut dino ki kasar poori kar di. I hope I wont be tagged as a lazy blog writer anymore!

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