May 17, 2012

Jadavpur Diary: Día Número Uno

The temperature was over forty degrees, but that didn't matter. Believe me, with the humidity of Kolkata, you don't care what the temperature is, you sweat more in a day in Kolkata than in a month in Roorkee. I got down from the auto, with the driver signalling to me that I had reached my destination. There it was, right in front of me: Institute of Chemical Engineers. Well, that's what I saw, bewildered. I just failed to notice something within metres, written in golden characters: Jadavpur University.
Living in Dum Dum, it's a helluva journey to Jadavpur University. I had to wait ten minutes for an auto, 5 minutes to travel to the metro station, stand 5 minutes in the queue,  another 5 minutes before the metro started, half an hour to Rabindra Sarovar, 15 minutes in the auto again to reach Jadavpur. After that kind of a tiresome journey, you kinda lose track of time. How long is it, anyways?

After a relatively long walk to the department of Geological Sciences, I started searching for the room of Professor Nibir Mandal, who was to be my guide for the summer. I looked at my watch: 9.20 AM. I had mailed him that I would be reaching at 9, and since I had not received any reply, I was not sure whether being 20 minutes late on the very first day would be a good idea. His room is in the second floor. Finding that every single room was locked on the way to his room, I just hoped for the best. But it was not to be. There was not even a single soul in the department, so I thought of going out to have a soft drink.

After coming back, fortunately I caught hold of a Research Scholar working under him and yes, finally, I was inside the room. He called up Sir to inform him that I had arrived, and believe me, the next half hour wait was boring and interesting at the same time. Boring, because, well, I had nothing to do. Interesting, because each and every hair of my body started acting like an antenna. First thing I noticed was the PC right next to me, with the letters "HP" pretty clearer, but the notice right next to it even more clearer. It said something about not switching it off as there was some program running in it. Well, right on top of it was a calender which showed the month of January even now. Weird. Out of the big and thick books in the shelf, the first book that I noticed was "Cobol Programming". Weirder? Maybe. There was a softboard in the room, and the most significant piece of paper said "Bachu(cleaner)" with a phone no. Well, as I said, interesting, but boring.

Anyways, after Sir did arrive, it was time I learnt how things were done around there. The first official thing I did was to fill my joining report. And although I insisted that I would post it later that day, he said there is no point in delaying. After coming back, I eventually realised that this heat is gonna kill me, if not the World's End later this year.

The best part of the day was the lunch. There are three types of food in this world: normal food, fast food, and Bengali fast food. Oh, yes, you read it right. In a flash, I realised what I had been missing in Roorkee being content with the Bun-Butter-Samosas of Alpahar and the cheese grilled sandwiches of (the late) Nesci. Maybe the fact that I had lunch after 3 had something to do with it, but the food was simply great.

The day ended with me going to South City Mall (which is three minutes from the campus by bus) to watch Avengers. This made me realise how the IITR Junta is deprived of the "facilities" someone from other colleges (IITD, IITB) are very familiar with, but I would stop right here, as I had vowed not to complain anymore once I visited the Saharanpur Campus.

Liked this post? Have any suggestions? Just let me know. Feel free to comment below!

0 responses:

Post a Comment