Neeraj's Take On.......

Two years into the pandemic, with people all around contracting COVID and some less lucky ones not making it, contracting COVID seemed inevitable. Even after all the precautions we take, from wearing our masks to sanitising our hands, we never know when and where we might contract COVID. But the end result is that we get COVID, and we stay home for a week possibly...  When COVID started, everyone, including me, witnessed the hardships those who contracted COVID had to go through, especially the part where patients couldn't move out of their rooms. The fear of having "nothing to do" made us extra vigilant about the precautions. But we never know where COVID strikes us from, and it sure does... Towards the end of January, on a Thursday, I thought of getting myself a haircut. It's been two months since I cut my hair, and it's really affecting my game ( I was playing badminton during this time, and I still am). So I walked to the city centre and got myself a haircu...

COVID-19, Covid, Corona... The virus, with its many variants, has snatched and is continuing to snatch something dear from everyone... It could be a loved one, the freedom to roam anywhere or a few cherished experiences...  Office goers may always look forward to the chats they have with their officemates, and for students like me, it's meeting up with friends and teachers after seeing (or not seeing) each other. We did get that chance, but it slipped from our hands really soon...  Our batch came back from IITM in March 2020 because of the Covid scare. We never foresaw the scare spiralling into a pandemic and the two-week "midsem break" turning into a two-year stay-at-home-and-do-everything exercise. At first, online learning was exciting... Can learn at our own pace and most importantly for a student like me, no proctored exams and a three-hour clock hanging above us within which we had to give our best answers, online assignments with choices and week or sometimes month...

Towards the end of October, I got an email from SAATHI or the Student Wellness Body of IIT Madras calling applications for the post of department representative. At first, I didn't apply, thinking that I may not be the right person for the job, but then I thought, No Pain, No Gain!!! So I applied.  The people at SAATHI (basically students) asked me to join a WhatsApp group to have my doubts about the positions and responsibilities of the position clarified to make up my mind before I submit my application. The thing is, I submitted my application even before they asked me to join the group! 😅😂😂 See, I like getting things done ASAP and not keeping them pending for too long. This was one such thing that I wanted out of my way. So about a week later, I was added to a different group created by the people at SAATHI for those shortlisted for the interview stage, and I could not find anyone from my department. When I joined the other group where I could have had my doubts cleared, I s...

Stepping into college from school is a process in itself. It takes a substantial amount of effort to adjust and adapt to the new academic and campus environment. Colleges have a system where seniors are to help their juniors transition into college life and be a helping hand in college and a shoulder to lean on.... This is kind of what the Job description of a mentor looks like But being a mentor and handling mentees is not an easy job..... When I joined IIT in 2019, I was assigned a mentor-a senior from my department. He was my Buddy Mentor. Then I was assigned another mentor called SAATHI mentor. To this day, I don't know the exact difference between the two. The only insight I can give you about the difference is that the former is an academic mentor while the other is a mental wellness mentor.  However, the mentee experience was not that great. I met my Buddy Mentor as a mentee only once and all our further interactions were restricted to WhatsApp. I now don't know who my...

My department at IIT Madras-the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences- has a peculiar way of allotting the streams of specialization starting from the third year of the five-year course I am enrolled in. The performance of the first three semesters in terms of the CGPA will be taken into account while deciding the stream to be allotted to a student.  There are only two streams available: Development Studies and English Studies. Having studied English courses for the first two semesters gave me a clear image that English is not for me. I could not risk getting into English Studies. Therefore, I had to make sure that the grades in other courses compensate for the not-so-okay grades in English. This meant that only studies, studies and studies for the two years. Any other activity that could prove to be detrimental to studies were cut off immediately. This meant no Positions of Responsibility or PoRs for two years.  That strategy paid off, and I was allotted the Develop...

When the second year (an entire laptop-only year) was drawing to a close, I thought, why not do something worthwhile this semester break?  The last two were not that productive; online courses, play, etc. Why not earn some money??  I went straight to the God of Internship for beginning interns like me: Internshala. I entered my preferences: 2-months max, content writing, paid preferably (that's in my mind, not in Internshala filters). Clicked Apply filters...  Boom!!! 500+ Internships available. It was 8 pm, and mom said, "You get over here and eat your dinner before I come there." The thing about mothers is no matter what the situation is -post-surgery rest, illness- they will always find the strength to yell at the "children" 😇😇😅😅.  I weighed searching for internships with my mother's "call" and found that the scale is flat on the ground on the mother's call..... Get dinner over with and resume internship search.....  Dinner finished, a...

When the lockdown was announced a year and a half ago (Yeah, it has been that long), I thought we would be back soon. But that never was to be..... However, one thing did happen.... Google Meet, Zoom and Office.  When I came back from IIT, we were initially given a two-week break, as we thought the crisis would be contained (Even that didn't happen). After that, the Institute sent circulars advising the professors (or profs as the students call them) to start "online" classes. I dreaded that the profs would be sending some reading material, ask us to read it and write our exams (or assignments as they turned out to be). But I never thought a new component would enter my academic life.... Google Meet and Zoom. In the first week of April, when the classes resumed, profs started sending us these Meet links and were told to login using the institute email id given to us.  I attended my first online class with my video on, sitting from the dining table and the WiFi modem nea...

(Before you read this piece, I strongly urge you to read The Journey Begins.... and The Garden and the Horse because they provide the background for this story) After two days in Coonoor and Ooty, it was time to go home...... We got up in the morning, went through the gruelling experience of brushing and bathing (Yes, they were becoming gruelling there) and had our breakfast. My uncle was keeping track of the train in which we had to go back, and the site said at 8 am that the train, which was coming from Assam and we would board it from Coimbatore at 11am, was delayed by over 5 hours. Our initial plan was to get up early and leave. Now that the train was delayed, we thought it was okay if we started off late. Our driver also suggested the same. After all, who wants to rush through the 14 hairpin bends we had to go through when going to Coonoor?? So we leave our housing for the trip at around 9 am on the advice of our driver, who had gone on this route many times and started going ba...

(Best read after reading The Journey Begins) Day 2 of the trip..... Waking up from a chilly night is really difficult. It's like asking me to get off the bed when the AC is on... Real difficult... But I had to get up... Brushed and bathed... Bathing was a different story. The lodging had bathrooms with double valve taps: Hot and Cold, and I didn't know how to use them. Turned on the hot one, turned on the cold, and it was neutral water. Upon pouring it down, I realised neutral water was the same as cold water and bathing in cold water in Coonoor is suicide. Came out of the bathroom desperately trying to hide my chattering teeth.  Came breakfast, ate and off we went......  First to the Rose Garden. I thought I'll see a host of roses, but mostly I saw just bushes. Seems like the season is in May, and so is the Flower show. But we still got to see a lot of other flowers in the Garden. Got to click a few of the roses there (can't remember any of their names. They had spec...

Some time off the hectic schedule was always needed for us. Me sitting in front of the laptop day in and day out, my Dad working, my mom under rest post-surgery with nothing much to do, and my sister going through the same ordeal as I was..... We needed something different; something had to change.....  That's when my maternal uncle asked us if we wanted to come on a family trip to Coonoor and Ooty with his family, to which we said YES, but later became concerned abt my mother; whether she'll be able to climb up the stairs and steep surfaces. But she wanted to come anyway, and all four of us went on the trip.  We got on from Kollam, and my uncle's family got on from Kayamkulam. My uncle has a two-year-old younger son, and his antics kept us engaged till we reached Coimbatore. Stayed there for a night, and the next day, our journey began.......  We first went to Dolphin's Nose and Lamb Rock viewpoints, which were high off the ground. Was scared like anything to look do...

(This is a follow-up story of A Mom-less Home) With the semester starting (started on February 1, to be exact), my mind was planning on how to get the household chores and the academic work together. It's going to be one heck of a job to pull them together... But u got to do what u got to do... Ain't nothing changed, here we go..... U see, the timetable in IIT Madras is really different from what I know about the other colleges. Other colleges have a 9-4 timetable with classes every hour and a lunch break. In IIT, it's different. Our timetable is 8-6 (almost like training us for the boring 9-5 jobs atleast a few of us will enter). But we don't have classes from 8-6. Our timetable has slots, and each subject is assigned a slot, and classes only take place in that slot. Say Indian Literature is assigned slot A-it means Indian Literature classes take place only when slot A is there.  Moreover, not all days have all the slots, and we have to learn only 6 subjects (ONLY?!!)....

 For someone coming from one language-speaking community and living in one that speaks another, many of u reading this can relate to the plight I am going through. We are most likely to be caught between the home and host languages. In my case, it was Malayalam and Tamil.  When I was in Trichy, I was caught between the Malayalam spoken at home, the Tamil spoken outside, and the English spoken at school (Yeah the last part was of no consequence).  My mother always tells this with a story of me in playschool. The word for water in Malayalam is 'Vellam'. So whenever I wanted water at home, I would say 'Vellam'. However, the same Vellam in Tamil means Jaggery!!! And my mom said that my Preschool teacher was initially confused, for she would have wondered, why does he need Jaggery but doing the action for drinking? (The actions kids do to clearly convey what they are trying to say.. Yeah that's the one).  So my mom had to tell my preschool teacher that whenever I said Ve...

It has been nearly a month (and counting) since my mother underwent surgery. U know that "cliched" dialogue mothers give "Start working around the house so u will know to do things when I am not here?". Well, I did learn a few of the things: "patiently" cleaning a sink full of utensils and others. Thankfully my mom underwent her surgery towards the end of my semester, which means no classes and only assignments for evaluation. Thank God!!! If it was otherwise, then I am done for!  Anyways, the first day after my mom left for the hospital, I did the cooking for all three meals- breakfast, lunch and dinner... But I realized that the associated tasks eat into my assignment time ( I would say this is mostly bcoz of my late waking up; Though I set the alarm for 7am, I switch off the alarm and sleep till 7:30... Lazy Me? Yes, Yes, Yes!!!).  That was when our neighbours came to know about the situation at home and offered to help me out... In COOKING (What did ...

The lockdown, which was to be a two-week mid semester vacation (This is what I initially thought it was going to be) ended up becoming more than half a year and counting.....   It was in the middle of the second semester that I had to come back home from IIT. Now the new "online" classes (They have now gone from "online" classes to online classes, I think u get the difference. No?? Look again!!).  I would kill my time in between classes (Not during classes, Come On!!! Don't judge me so quickly) by watching videos on YouTube.  Remember that thing YouTube does called "Recommended Videos", where they send videos similar to the ones u watch? It was one such YouTube recommendation that brought me to the book I just finished reading.....  The video was of a game show called Family Feud. Checked it out.. It was a bit out of my league, but the host was downright hilarious. His name..... Steve Harvey...  Yep!! This Him!!! You would have already seen him  What...

The place where I study now, IIT Madras is located in the middle of a National Park. So we hostellers aren't permitted to use motor vehicles ( It's not of much use anyway, considering the fact that I don't have a motorbike despite having a driving license. Also, the experience at the driving school was gut-wrenching). So all hostelers had the option to walk or ride a bicycle. Given the vast campus (around 660 acres), walking for a lean person like me is out of the question. Also, it had been a long time since I rode a bicycle, so I decided: Get a Bicycle!!! Every year for freshers who don't have a bicycle, there is a bicycle sale at the Sangam grounds inside the campus, where over a thousand cycles are for sale. Me and my father went there and a salesman showed us a Red colour XYZ bike.( I don't want to hurt the sentiments of the lovers of the particular brand, it was a well-reputed one, and it took me a while to come to terms that this bicycle was made by this bran...

 As the Ananthapuri Express left Kerala and entered Tamil Nadu, it was a moment of joy and nostalgia for the 18-year-old me. On 23rd July 2019, I was to join the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Madras. ( I think that's the date, I can't remember it..... Come On, it's been one year since that took place!!!!). As the pastures and windmills of Nagercoil went past me, the good old days in Trichy came rushing to my memory when the first thing we were eager to know was the last day of the Annual exam, so that we could book our tickets to Kerala. That routine went on for several years until in 2013 all got derailed and I ended up permanently in Kerala. When we reached Chennai and had a day more to the orientation,  my father and I decided to get everything done before we leave for IIT : go to the movie, eat outside, buy some stuff for hostel etc.  Hostel. Was told to be Cauvery when it was changed to Brahmaputra at the last minute. I didn't know either of...

                                                                                                                         In the 2019 CBSE Board Examinations, I topped the Thiruvananthapuram district and came second in the Thiruvananthapuram region( also called the Kerala region) with 99% . Just days after the results, I had to write an entrance exam ( I wasn't ready to go to the DU, I really wasn't and still am!). My friends who had come to write the exam congratulated me and I congratulated them for their performances.  Now comes the heroine of the story: The mom of Rashmika ( I don't know the girl's name, so let's assume her name is Rashmika). I saw this lady bragging about her da...