My Final Week at IIT: Parties and Feasts

Author: Samyadeep

We know the IITs for many a things : dream packages, cutting edge research and extremely intelligent nerds who have amazing Leetcode profiles. On a normal day that is what you will find throughout the campus across the different classes and labs. However the things that I saw in my time paint a much more vibrant picture of the campus. Every time I went out there was some sort of party going on in at least one corner of the campus, but I was never invited. 

Things changed in the final week of my course though. We had five events lined up one after another. And the time that I would have otherwise spent slogging for the final exams of my degree, I spent partying with my friends and classmates with reckless abandon for my CGPA. Perhaps the true spirit of engineering had finally made its way to my study habits - I would now only consider it useful to study the night before my exams.

Farewell 

The first reminder of the end of our chapter at IIT came from our juniors. The farewell was organised in a
very impressive fashion by the juniors. We had an amazing evening where we had games, quizzes, music and dance which were performed by our own MSc and PhD students.

I had planned from the very beginning that I would wear a traditional black shirt and a Tamil lungi with my roommates. We rented three lungis and put it to good use when we danced together to the tune of Lungi Dance at the end. 

My performance at farewell was my introduction to my juniors

One of the games was a couple's dance on paper. If your feet fell out of the paper you would be disqualified. The catch was that after every round the paper would be folded by half. This gave way to a lot of innovative dance steps and by the end there was barely enough area left to land two feet, so the boys lifted the girls (who could be lifted) into their arms.

The party ended with a 30 minute DJ followed by some chicken biryani.

Graduand's Dinner

2023 graduands with full tummies

The second reminder that our student life was going to end soon came from our very own insti. The
Graduand's dinner would host all the students who would be graduating soon. There were more than 3000 students who had attended the dinner. We had an impressive range of vegetarian dishes served in a buffet by caterers inside the OAT (Open Air Theater). The food, although vegetarian, was surprisingly good. We had

Given that our insti does not spare anything when it comes to overcharging us for our bills, this was a welcome surprise, albeit a little too late into our stay.

Insti Ethnic Day

We had a day dedicated to the students wearing their ethnic clothes to class and in the campus. On an average day we would look around and see a bunch of nerds roaming around the campus in their T-shirts and tracks but on this day I truly understood how much I had underestimated everyone when I saw everyone in the campus dressed like they were getting married (especially the girls wearing their sarees). The Tamils wore their lungis, and the Bengalis wore their dhotis. Anyone could have easily mistaken the event for a big fat wedding of some local MLA's daughter.

The evening saw performances from the different ethnic clubs at the SAC(Student Activity Centre), where we had cultural food stalls as well, followed by DJ night. The entire campus was adorned with lights like a newlywed bride.

Wilkommens '23

A fitting end to my student life

 

The final week of my student life ended with a bang on Friday. The Wilkommens was the Alumni Association giving us our final farewell. If there is one thing that is par excellence at out institute it is our alumni association, and they certainly didn't shy away from showing their class on that eveing. We had the grandest party, again at the SAC. The evening started with a time capsule where we wrote our names on a piece of paper with our thumbprints on it with one of our friend's lipstick and put it in the capsule, which would be opened again after 25 years.

Everything from the food, to the DJ and the ice-cream after the endless dancing was top notch. They had an afterparty at the Westin in Velachery where everyone graduating and of age was allowed free drinks and the floor was open for dancing till midnight.

The next Monday we had our end semester exams. I rested on Saturday and started studying on Sunday. In case you are worrying about my results I ended up with an 8.6 CGPA. Now I can safely tell my juniors to party hard before their end semester exams as well.