Shivangi Srivastava is a graduating Y19 student from the Department of Chemical Engineering. In the first edition of As We Leave, she looks back at her campus journey, the memories and the small moments building it.
Disclaimer:- The views presented below are the author’s own and are not in any manner representative of the views of Vox Populi as a body or IIT Kanpur in general. This is an informal account of the author’s experiences at IIT-K.
There is no combination of words and there is no amount of time that would let me write an as we leave I am happy with because there is no way to communicate what can only be lived. It was stormy the first time I sat down to write this. Sporadic showers of rain coming and going without any notice. It seems to come all at once, it feels like the sky might fall out. The first time it rained in this time in this intense summer heat, in the middle of exams we went to the connector block terrace. The sheer shock of the relief independently drew all of us in. We played our little makeshift games making a football out of an empty water bottle and imagination. I remembered I had a ball in my room. I find it so amusing that I have all of these things that will only find use in this incredibly specific little time only. Like their life is tied to that moment with an elastic string. And I remember running back with the ball in the corridor, trying my best not to slip. My bare feet against the wet marble floor. I had to run because it would end at any minute, it would end, it would stop raining.
I think life consists of the little moments strung together. This AWL makes no attempt to recount the big moments. They mean nothing in isolation. The relief felt after a big deadline. The cup of coffee shared in the ten minutes between classes. A cold drink of water in sweltering May heat. A TT match won(at least attempting to). Laughing at your friend reading the sign ‘no pedestrians allowed’ as ‘no pescatarians allowed’. Not knowing what metro station to get down at. Crying from laughter. Falling off your cycle. Building relationships with the IITK dogs. The delight in realising there are multiple tripods. Butterscotch and Lodu in the road between Hall 4 and GH1 at daybreak. 4 am DOAA canteen breaks. Finding ‘your’ table unoccupied. Samosas shared after film studies class. Hot soupy DCBM on freezing January nights. Canceled classes. Extended deadlines. Salami sandwiches* made with only a kettle. The ‘look’ shared between friends. Being asked to turn the volume down. I can’t miss an institute, what is an institute? But I can miss the little stairs cut into the stage in front of L20 and I will miss Ganesh the monitor lizard.
It terrifies me to leave. It terrifies me to move outside this place because I have always known what I am supposed to do here, with clean, neatly defined guidelines. Wake up on time, don’t skip breakfast, go to class every day, do the work assigned to you, pursue projects, engage in extracurricular activities, get PORs, get an internship, get a job. I think everyone actually always knows what they’re supposed to do. The problem is always in doing it to state the obvious. It has become a little difficult for me to write about this place with affection because I cannot handle that I am leaving. It goes without saying that this place changes you beyond recognition but you also see it change with you and all of us have this sort of collective amnesia where we immediately accept it as it is.
I remember the time before CCTV cameras when the streetlights were a warm yellow. I remember the time before the shiny new buildings in the academic area did not even exist, and who knows how shiny and new they are going to remain. I remember before the fountain was constructed in front of the library before bookshelves were replaced by desks on the first-floor area close to the main staircase. I remember a time before you had to sign in and out at the main gate when going outside the campus. Before CCD was renovated. Before CCD needed to be renovated. Time is a flat circle. Looking at the newest batch occupying the center table makes me think about how every inch of this campus is significant for someone somewhere but the meaning keeps getting rewritten every day.
We live in a mausoleum of lows and highs and tears and laughter and it’s all living in the uncertainty of our remembrance.
What is campus culture? I don’t really know. There are a few instantiations like kholna which continue to be transmitted but outside it, it’s something people keep referencing when truly we did not inherit what it was supposed to be. Campus culture is something that is internalized and enacted by exposure to the pre-existing community. Even much before covid seniors have bemoaned its loss, and our batch continues to grieve what we never had. Ever since ragging was banned, there have been complaints about losing culture with Hall 13 and draconian rules imposed on the movement of first years. Covid took away orientation and galaxy. It is widely agreed that junior-senior interaction is the mode of transmission. Note ‘interaction’ Not ‘Interaction’. But what even is this culture? It’s what you make of it. memoria praeteritorum bonorum, it’s a fallacious argument to make that culture increases with every older batch ad infinitum. What’s difficult to admit is that who it belongs to increases from older batches to the ones present, living, breathing it, not mourning. If there’s one thing I could say to my juniors reading this:-
You’re not meant to be a passive receptor of culture, you are meant to make it. Make it better or make it worse but make it.
I’ve met so many amazing people here. I was so lucky to meet seniors and batchmates and juniors and workers and teachers that I made friends out of and I hope our paths keep intersecting for life. If you let yourself, you can find contentment here. Some of the best moments of maybe life till now have been found in quiet moments across campus. Listening to music and admiring the million shades of green, yellow and blue on a sunny day. The way the reflection of fountain water dances on the roof of the library parking lot. Sunsets seen from the stage, sunrises seen from every rooftop. Every single conversation or cups of coffee shared between us. Darkened lecture halls with the red burning digital clocks. Slanting scribbled handwriting. It is so hard to believe it has been four years. It’s futile to even attempt to articulate what it has done to me. But I hope you can feel what I’ve felt. This has been a week of watching everyone of my friends leave one by one all tears and promises to meet again. The day I am completing writing this is also the day I am leaving after seven days of goodbyes. It is unsettling to see my life here evaporate to six bags and a gate pass. It reminds me of the last day of a fest when it is five am and you are bewildered to see events ground empty when a breath ago there was no place to walk. The ground is all mildew and it is just your four friends and the fog, you have been talking straight for three hours, two of which were spent suppressing yawns until it all goes dead quiet.
That’s when you know:- it is time to leave.
“One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands out and throws one’s head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one’s heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun–which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so.”
-Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
*SALAMI SANDWICHES
1 packet frozen salami
1 loaf of sandwich bread
Pickled onions, cucumbers, beetroot
condiments
sliced cheese
Retain the inner packaging of salami and boil in a kettle for a duration of whenever you feel like you have waited long enough.
Apply preferred condiments on bread.
Release salami liquid and arrange slices on bread.
Cut and place pickled vegetables on a sandwich.
Finish with a cheese slice and close sandwich
Enjoy! (best served chilling with a friend)
Written By: Shivangi Srivastava
Edited By: Mayur Agrwal, Gauravi Chandak
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