This post is not about my life here (may be another post about that? Wow... I'm on a roll!!!) but about the life I left behind almost a year back.
As I sit and reminisce about life at INI (since I have nothing better to do right now ;-) ), I can't help but smile. It's been such an awesome experience. I remember our first day at INI, Aug 25, 2006. We were an excited lot of 60+ students and we went into INI to admire our brand new high end machines and of course our offices/cubicles. People started scribbling on their white boards kinda to show ownership while Sanchita went around drawing and scribbling on everyone's white board including her own. Cluster 103 of course had a rather amusing conversation going on on the white board and others would stop by to read it and sometimes contribute to it and have a laugh.
The next day we had the famed INI cruise on the 3 rivers... The food was great and so was the dancing. Uj in fact managed to squeeze in 2 looong tracks (20 min each) of Hindi songs to our immense joy and some people's displeasure (understandable if you have to put up with 40 min of unknown songs you don't understand) and even taught Dena (the director of INI) how to do the Bhangra. We were restricted to 2 drinks per person, so the guys went around begging the till then sober girls to hand over their drink tickets... Trust them to find a loophole in the system! In the end there were fabulous fireworks... though till date I'm not quite sure whether INI organized that or we just happened to be at the right place for fireworks after a Pirates' game.
Then classes commenced and all of us began spending more and more time at the INI. Think that became our home rather than "second home". We would work on assignments and projects till 3/4 am, sometimes even later, and then take the "Escort" home to catch a few winks. Many a times we would get frustrated or tired with our assignments in the middle of the night and take a little break and wander into the INI kitchen or other people's offices/clusters. I remember how for several nights in a row Sethu would leave the cluster with his laptop unlocked and we would change the password and then leave a completely ridiculous and in fact unrelated hint like "Mutex lock" (inspired by OS). And every night at 2 am like clockwork he would announce to every unfortunate soul in the cluster "Hey guys... you are not gais (cows), you are bhaises (buffaloes)...". Bobby too kept us entertained with his many now famous "Bobby isms".
Birthday celebrations in INI were always a riot. The trend in our batch was started by Saurabh, though sadly I chose to stay home that night and missed it. He brought a huge tub of ice cream from Giant Eagle and of course everyone was more than happy to have dessert at 12 am. Birthday after birthday Sanchita and I, the "birthday generals", perfected the art of cake smashing while the guys got "better" at breaking pool sticks on the backs of the birthday boys. I particularly remember Ujjwal's birthday when his roommate Sachin gave him flying kicks... Oww that must've hurt! Thankfully the girls were spared. Some of the non Indian guys in our batch wondered why the birthday boy got bashed up on his birthday. Honestly don't think any of the desis managed to answer that so they were spared too. Usually at 11.55 pm someone would go and round up everyone present in INI, irrespective of the batch, for the birthday celebration in the kitchen. Then at 12 am the birthday boy/girl would be escorted by his/her friends to the kitchen and then the ritual would begin. Sometimes it even included people chasing each other in an attempt to smear cake on the victim. And oh yes... whenever the birthday boy/girl crossed 25 years of age, Arpan personally welcomed him/her to the "25+" clique.
We even managed to celebrate Holi at INI thanks to Arpan, Janhavi, Utsav and Sid, who managed to lay their hands on some colors at some event on the main campus. They suddenly attacked some unsuspecting souls in the middle of the night. Then they went around finding their own victims. For this event no one was spared. It sure was a lot of fun running around in the dead of the night laughing and smearing colors on anyone we could find...
And of course... I've got to mention the potlucks... We didn't have these too often due to lack of time but did manage to squeeze in a few. People were mighty enthusiastic cooking for 50+ people and turns out most of us do have an alternate career option... that of a chef! Food would range from appetizers to fancy entrees to finally desserts (Meenal when do we get to sample the brownies again?). This was usually followed by dancing (typically led by Smidth) and/or games. Sometimes Sethu used to provide entertainment by mimicing classmates, professors and so on.
"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". Think INI kept this in mind and thus provided us with a pool table which was used regularly. New games like "Cut throat" were invented. We did try to get a Foosball table too, but unfortunately didn't succeed. Our final semester at INI did see a lot of Bridge as well. Think it was "jobless" Rio who got people excited about it and even took the effort to teach clueless souls like me.
A post about life at INI would be incomplete without the mention of cricket. We had lots of cricket enthusiasts and the dudes and occasionally the dudettes would play cricket in the 1st floor corridor. The rules were changed taking into consideration the restrictions imposed by the location itself. Dustbins usually served the purpose of stumps and certain areas were marked off as "4 runs" and "6 runs".
Dustbins suddenly remind me of Sundar aka Bandar announcing and in fact creating a big ruccus at a Town hall meeting about how INI didn't have trash cans designated for recyclable waste and so on. INI took his suggestion to heart and within a few days extra trash cans appeared in the kitchen. Though I really really doubt whether people took the effort to actually sort the trash before dumping...
As our time at INI drew to an end, we decided to celebrate our 2 years in style... Since we started with the cruise, it felt only fitting that we end with one too. Of course the cruise part turned out to be mighty expensive, so we just had a lavish party on the Gateway Clipper with Rio and Mike stepping in as the DJs for the night...
As Ramu aptly said "INI has given more than just careers to us"... Indeed... new friendships were formed, even romance blossomed within the walls of INI. INI was indeed a home away from home... where a new family came together and alliances were formed that will be cherished forever....
