As We Leave #73: Arriving Somewhere but Not Here

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In this 73rd edition of As We Leave 2026, Raghav Madan, a Y22 student graduating with a double major in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science & Engineering, traces four years of relentless ambition, unforgettable MClub runthroughs, and friendships that made every high and low worthwhile. What begins as a story of chasing goals gradually becomes one about discovering what was truly worth chasing.

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.

The problem with writing an AWL is that four years refuse to fit into a few pages. You begin with the intention of writing about the important things. But somewhere along the way, you find yourself remembering completely different things.

For most of my time at IITK, I was always chasing something. A better grade. A better internship. A better performance. Every time I achieved one goal, I would spend a few days feeling happy before convincing myself that the next thing was what really mattered. The finish line had a habit of moving.

Strangely, when I sit down to write this AWL, those goals are not what I remember most. The grades became numbers. The results became bullet points on a resume. What remained were the people, the stories, the late-night conversations, the failures that seemed catastrophic at the time, the inside jokes, and the different phases of life that unfolded while I was busy planning the future. Some of those phases were incredible. Some were terrible. Some were unnecessarily stressful. And some were so much fun that I wish I had realized it while they were happening.

Someone once told me that college is four years you’ll spend trying to build a future, only to realize later that what you miss most is the present you were too busy living through. While writing this AWL, I realized that most of my favourite IITK memories aren’t attached to achievements. They’re attached to people.

So rather than writing about everything that happened over the last four years chronologically, I’ve decided to divide this writeup into 3 different sections – the three major aspects of my college life: Academics, Music Club, and my Homies so that the reader can easily navigate across sections and can read whatever they want to know about.

Chasing Goals - Academics

Coming to college, everything felt different. People were accessible. If you wanted to talk to someone, you didn’t need a reason. You could just walk into their room. There was always something happening somewhere – a wing discussion, a random cricket match, a night canteen visit, somebody watching a movie, somebody debating football, somebody doing absolutely nothing. After two years of JEE preparation, it felt like freedom.

Naturally, I spent my first year doing almost everything except studying. I stopped attending classes after the first week. Every morning, my roommate (Navnit) and I would wake up, look outside the window, and if the fog looked sufficiently intimidating, we’d conclude that sleep was the better life decision. Most mornings, the fog won.

I treated the acads of my first semester as a challenge to myself- how much can I score after studying the least. Before every quiz or exam, I would deliberately wait for everyone else in the wing to start studying. Only after I was certain that I was the last person left would I begin. It became a game of seeing how much I could get away with.

Most of the time, JEE knowledge carried me but courses like TA and LIF f*cked me. Four hours before the TA endsem exam, everyone around me was discussing projections, sections and visualizing objects in three dimensions. I was visualizing my grade card getting destroyed. I genuinely didn’t know shit. Thankfully, my roommate rescued me. He somehow managed to teach me enough in those final hours for me to scrape a C.

That was one of my favourite things about IITK. Whenever you found yourself in a situation where you thought you were completely screwed, there was usually someone nearby who had already gone through the same thing and was willing to help.

In my first semester, I used to see my friends working on ESC111 and ESC112 lab assignments. For reasons I still don’t fully understand, watching their test cases pass felt incredibly satisfying, and it was probably the first academic thing that seemed interesting to me after JEE.

So during the second semester, I started spending some time on coding apart from the coursework. Initially, it was just curiosity. I wasn’t thinking about internships or placements yet. I simply liked it. That curiosity slowly became direction.

For the first time, I had some idea of what I wanted to do. I started learning about internships, software roles and what seniors were doing. Around that time, Ankur, my SG, told me that doing ESO207 in the third semester would help me get a good internship. The advice wasn’t entirely accurate, but it wasn’t bad either. At that time, ESO207 was available only to students with an A* in ESC, so suddenly that grade mattered. For probably the first time in college, I wanted something badly enough to work for it.

Got the *.

The grade itself wasn’t particularly important. What mattered was that it felt good to care again. For almost a year, I had been treating academics like a game of minimizing effort. It was strangely refreshing to want something badly enough to work for it. Moreover, this course created a good perception about CSE courses, and I was interested in exploring more CSE courses.

Then came the conversation that changed how my second year was going to look like. The senior batch’s internship season was going on and, like every sophomore who had recently discovered ambition, I was fascinated by quant firms. So I asked a senior what it took to get there. He asked for my CPI. I told him it was around 8.3. He told me to forget quants and target something easy like SDE or analyst since quant firms didn’t even look below 9 CPI and said that reaching 9 in 2 semesters is improbable. The conversation lasted less than a minute. The effect lasted much longer. For some reason, that statement hit me hard. Maybe it was because he was right. Maybe it was because I didn’t want him to be. Whatever the reason, from that point onwards, getting to 9 CPI became an obsession. I didn’t want it, I just needed it.

After third semester, I needed roughly a 0.4 jump to reach 9 before internship season. The math looked ugly. The credit load looked uglier. The problem was that my fourth semester was of 58 credits and mathematically the target looked ridiculous. But I somehow had to get to 9. So, I dropped a three-credit lab and took CS771 so that my total credits increased and reaching 9 at least becomes theoretically possible with a near-perfect SPI.

The word “theoretically” was doing a lot of heavy lifting there, but I was nevertheless determined to make an academic comeback. That semester became one of the toughest periods of my IITK life. My days revolved around the KD labs. Study during the day. Competitive programming at night. Sleep. Repeat. Towards the second half of the semester, I stopped carrying my belongings back to the hostel and simply left them in the lab because I knew I would be back the next morning anyway.

That was also when I met Hardik. Since our courses were almost identical, we started studying together regularly. I still can’t decide whether we motivated each other or enabled each other’s academic insanity. Probably both. The semester itself was brutal.

The courses were harder than I expected. My Codeforces rating refused to cooperate. I kept making silly mistakes in EE250. EE210 wasn’t going particularly well either. Every few weeks there seemed to be a new reason why the target was impossible. But by then, I had become too stubborn to quit.

Most people imagine hard work as dramatic moments of motivation. But in reality, it usually looks like showing up on days when absolutely nothing seems to be working.

Eventually, things improved in the second half of the semester. I scored well when papers became tougher and slowly started recovering ground. In the end, I missed a perfect SPI because of a single B+ in EE210. But I got the 9.

These 4 years at IITK made me realize that there are some difficult things that one wishes to achieve, and sometimes those goals look impossible somewhere in the middle of the process, but if you remain consistent and show up every day, you eventually reach your goal, and most importantly, that gives you an unmatchable amount of dopamine hit. My 4th semester was one of those phases.

I thought, now, after reaching 9, I was one step closer to my goal. Now the target became reaching 1600+ on Codeforces. The same routine continued through the summer. Hardik and I practically lived in KD. Study, code, eat, sleep, repeat. I gave contests religiously. My ratings went up. Then they went down. Then they went down some more. At one point, I left campus and went home for a while simply because I needed a change of environment and couldn’t handle the constant downfall during peak summers. Even after doing CP for almost the entire summers, I missed the 1600 mark by 6 points.

The major HFTs I was targeting didn’t even shortlist me. Optiver. Quantbox. Quadeye. Alphagrep. Worldquant. One by one, the lists came out and my name wasn’t there. The Graviton shortlist was the last one and I was expecting my name in the list, because the offline test went really well. I searched my name in the shortlist multiple times because I was convinced I had missed my name somewhere. I hadn’t. My heart sank. I cried like anything that day.

Eventually, I got a internship at Microsoft, but I was not happy even after getting a Day 1 intern because I didn’t achieve the targets I set for myself. A version of me from first year would have celebrated. The version of me sitting there only knew that it wasn’t the goal I had spent two years chasing. I think that period taught me something important.

During the whole preparation process, many people regularly told me that many of the targets I set for myself were a bit unrealistic. Sometimes they were right, but I didn’t stop working for them and didn’t even let that thought enter my consciousness. Many times I failed. But I never really learned how to stop aiming for difficult things. As I reflect, this habit of mine has often led me to disappointments, but it has also caused most of my growth. Life is not about achieving goals; it’s about the process you go through while achieving them. The euphoric feeling of achieving something lasts a few days. The disappointment of missing it lasts a few days too. What remains are the memories of the process itself. The people you met. The routines you built. The version of yourself that emerged while trying.

After the rollercoaster of internship season, I was tired of the hardwork and went into a chill mode. More like the kind where you’ve been running in one direction for so long that you suddenly realize there are other things worth doing. So I entered what was probably the most relaxed phase of my college life. I spent most of fifth semester with my boys and in the Music Club, both of which deserve their own sections later.

Sometime during my 2nd year, I came across a blog written by a senior who had somehow managed to complete five minors at IITK. Like many questionable ideas that eventually turn into life decisions, my first reaction was, “That’s pretty cool. It sounds like a fun challenge. I want to try that.” By then, I had developed a genuine interest in CSE courses and wanted to take as many of them as possible. I applied for CS345 (Algo II). I got rejected because I didn’t have an A in ESO207. At that moment, it felt like the end of my grand plan of doing an algorithms minor, the field I really liked. But it was probably one of the luckiest rejections of my college life.

Since Algo II wasn’t happening, I ended up taking DMS625 (Stochastic Processes) instead and maxed out my credits for the sem. Nikhil – my wingie, branchmate, my homie was taking it too, and the course seemed relevant to my quant obsession at the time. What looked like a compromise turned out to be one of those decisions that quietly change everything. It gave me a non-CSE OE that later helped with my double major, gave me a W course (easily top 3), and introduced me to someone who remained a constant through some of the best and worst phases of college.

The next semester, I had only two DCs left. Everything else was a DE. After doing so many compulsory EE courses for more than a year, I decided, f*ck the DEs, I’ll take whatever interests me. I wanted to do systems, so I took CS220 as a prerequisite for CS330. I also picked Randomized Algorithms because it sounded interesting. That course introduced me to Prof. Surender Baswana, one of the best professors I had the privilege of learning from at IITK. I really admired his teaching and wanted to do well in that course.

For most of the semester, everything was going surprisingly well. I was among the top performers in randomized algorithms, enjoying the lectures, and genuinely looking forward to assignments. Then the endsem happened. Ironically, the same IITK where I rallied post-midsem to clutch an A in EE250 also found a way to rob me of an expected A here. Obviously, getting an A was no cup of tea, given the crowd that was doing this course, but I managed to bottle a course that was going almost perfectly. It was frustrating, but it taught me something that IITK repeatedly reminded me over four years: no course is won at the midsem. You don’t get an A/A* for being ahead in February. You get it for surviving till the grade submission sheet comes out.

Sometime during sixth semester, someone looked at my list of courses and casually asked, “Bhai, CSE mein hi major karega kya?”. A few days later, I realized it was actually theoretically possible. If I maxed out credits for the remaining semesters, got the courses I wanted and if a few administrative stars aligned correctly, I could complete a double major in just 4 years. The plan sounded ridiculous. Which, in hindsight, was usually a good sign.

Somehow it all worked out. I got the courses I requested, survived the credit load, got allotted the double major by the barest of margins at the end of the seventh semester, and eventually completed the coursework. After JEE, I had seriously considered taking a drop because I couldn’t get CSE in any of the old IITs, and I knew I had that potential. At that time, it felt like I had fallen short of something important. Life took a much longer route and somehow brought me to the same destination anyway. That’s probably the biggest lesson academics gave me. Not that hard work always pays off. It doesn’t. Not that everything happens for a reason. I still don’t know if that’s true. But sometimes the rejection that feels disastrous today ends up creating opportunities you couldn’t possibly see at the time.

Sometimes life rewards you in a delayed manner; that’s why I believe that dreaming and trying to achieve difficult things should never stop. If you keep trusting the process, keep falling again into the same dream unless its done, in the long run, you either achieve what you dreamt of or maybe your goals change and you realize that thing you were trying didn’t really matter. Had I gotten Algo II when I wanted it, I probably wouldn’t have taken DMS625. Had I not dropped TA and taken CS771, I probably wouldn’t have completed the double major in four years. Many things went wrong over these four years. Many things went unexpectedly right. And ofcourse, luck is a bitch and I have been unlucky at many points in my life, but sometimes it just works when you need it the most. And somewhere in the middle of all that uncertainty, the pieces fit.

Finding My music - Mclub

If you had asked me sometime during second year whether Music Club would become one of the most important parts of my college life, I would probably have laughed. Forget becoming a cordie. As a secy who almost got de-ratified, I wasn’t even sure whether I belonged there.

I had learnt a little bit of drums during school and that was pretty much the reason I showed up for Freshers’. Since our first year was mostly asynchronous, there wasn’t much happening apart from Freshers’ and Galaxy. I enjoyed both, got to interact with some seniors and play a few songs, but Music Club wasn’t really a major part of my life yet. At that point, it was just another activity I happened to be doing.

Things became different after becoming a secy, though not in the way I had imagined. Compared to the other drummers in the club, I wasn’t particularly skilled. More importantly, my priorities were elsewhere. Most of my mental bandwidth was occupied by academics, coding, intern prep and I was in motorsports as well for some time, so that also used to eat up my time. Music Club slowly started feeling less like a place where I could relax and more like another responsibility waiting for me at the end of the day. Orientation wasn’t particularly enjoyable. Neither was my first Musical Extravaganza. Picking parts felt like a burden. Runthroughs were serious, mistakes were immediately noticed, and whenever I missed a beat or messed something up, there was usually a stare or a scolding waiting for me. Most of it was deserved. I wasn’t putting in enough effort and I definitely wasn’t skilled enough to compensate for it.

Gradually, I started convincing myself that music simply wasn’t for me. There were people around me who were much better musicians, much more invested and much more talented. I felt disconnected from the club and started drifting away from it. I skipped Acoustic Night so I could focus on CP and acads. I showed up less often. Then one fine day, I got de-ratified.

At that time, it felt terrible. I was upset of losing a POR after putting in effort for more than half a tenure. And like any second-year student trying to build a resume, I used to believe that a secy POR has an importance on my resume. Although very soon I realized, in tech no one gives a shit about POR, at least second year POR.

Around the same time, Galaxy season was approaching. Me and Vedant were the only two people from Hall 2 in Music Club and both of us had already been de-ratified. We were like f*ck galaxy. Hall 3 looked stacked. Hall 5 looked stacked. Hall 12 looked stacked. We weren’t discussing podium finishes. We were discussing whether we’d manage to finish above Hall 6.

Then the HEC seniors got involved. We told them even if we performed, what was the point? We had no realistic chance of competing with the halls that were packed with talent. But since we had fun doing galaxy the last time, we agreed for probably a last music performance in this college.

That decision changed my entire relationship with music. We stretched the budget, arranged the inventory and somehow convinced Shivang, Ritick, Akshat and Rajat Gattani to join us. Four days before Galaxy, we still hadn’t properly started practicing. We chose Blackbird as our main song because Gattani had already picked the Mark Tremonti solo. Being the only drummer, I had to pick all three songs. The first runthrough was exactly what you’d expect when a team starts preparing four days before a competition. The juniors were struggling, the seniors were stepping in to rescue things, and nobody looked remotely ready.

I remember walking back after one of the runthroughs with Vedant and Shivang. We were talking about how we got kicked out of the secy group and lost our PORs when Shivang casually said, “Galaxy jeet jaao, POR se zyada badi baat hogi”, and we laughed saying, “Aise haal me Hall 6 se upar aa jaye toh badi baat hogi”.

But somewhere during those four days, something changed. For the first time, I genuinely enjoyed being there. I spent hours with Ritick, Gattani and Shivang, and the conversations were never limited to Galaxy. We talked about academics, internships, personal life, random frustrations and whatnot. Whenever I had some BT, they were the people I could discuss it with.

Galaxy day arrived and we had the final slot. Our first two performances were mostly there to involve juniors and satisfy participation requirements. Nobody really considered us contenders. Then came the final performance of the night. Since I was on stage, I didn’t realize it then, but it was the tightest performance of the night.

And then we won. Somehow, the same group that had spent four days convincing itself it wasn’t even in contention had won the whole thing. None of us had prepared emotionally for that possibility. I still think the trophy was the least important thing that came out of that experience. The important thing was that for the first time in college, I enjoyed playing music. Not winning. Playing.

After Galaxy, I wanted one more chance to perform with those seniors before they graduated. So I signed up for the second ME and requested a drum part in their song. When the part distribution sheet came out, my name appeared beside the drum part with a small question mark in front of it.

Honestly, I couldn’t blame them. It was a difficult part and I wasn’t sure I could pull it off either. The difference this time was that I wanted to. For the first time, I actually enjoyed picking difficult drum parts. I started showing up to runthroughs every day. During a semester that was otherwise dominated by CPI calculations, coding contests and internship preparation, the runthroughs became the best part of my day. Initially, I would seek advice from Shivang and Gattani regarding internship preparation. Slowly, those conversations drifted towards music. We discussed bands, exchanged recommendations, debated songs and spent hours imagining how we would perform on stage.

Without realizing it, I had fallen in love with the club. More importantly, I had fallen in love with being part of a band. For the first time, it felt so good to see all of us – me, Anisurya, Samprit, Vedant, Vasu, Shivang and Gattani growing together as a band. Instead of simply pointing out mistakes, we were helping each other fix them. Every runthrough felt slightly better than the previous one. Every performance felt more personal than the last.

Recreating Normal, Porcupine Tree cover photo

Even after ME ended, the journey didn’t stop. During the summer, while solving Codeforces problems and spending long hours studying, I started listening to Porcupine Tree. That rabbit hole eventually introduced me to progressive metal and completely changed my taste in music. Fifth semester became a phase of exploration. I started listening to different genres, interacting more with seniors, taking increasingly difficult drum parts and trying to become a better musician. I always belive that your music taste is never truly yours, its a mix of music taste of the people who you are influenced by. Shivang and Ritick introduced me to prog rock, Gattani introduced me to metal, Ujjawal introduced me to Techno, Pink Floyd and some Jazz and experimental, many people from the club introduced me to Dream Theatre, started listening to some hip hop and Kanye due to my wingies Sanchit and Adil, and Anisurya had a variety of all these.

That year, I also went to Mood Indigo for my first band competition. It was both humbling and inspiring. Watching so many talented musicians perform made me realize how much room there still was to grow. Around the same time, I became obsessed with Tool and desperately wanted us to perform a Tool song in the next ME. Unfortunately, Arnav had different plans to do a Karnivool song and there wasn’t enough room in the setlist. I was disappointed, but it was probably one of the best things that happened. We did that song together, had a great experience performing with Arnav and as usual Samprit was obviously there (in all my f*cking songs I did at Mclub).

During Internship days, one fine day I decided to travel to bangalore to meet Anisurya and Samprit so that we can not be sober. We were just chilling in a room, listening to music, and there we discovered our shared interest in Karnivool. We listened to their discography and felt in love with their music. That’s when we decided we are going to perform Karnivool and Tool songs together before we graduate.

In my final year, I started spending a lot of time at Mclub, listening to different kinds of music, practicing tool and Karnivool songs, interacting with juniors and batchmates and just being there in the club. That’s when the meaning of Mclub changed from Music Club to My Club for me.

Me and Anisurya used to listen to Themata live version a lot whenever we used to chill together, and soon it became our goal to perform this version on the OAT stage. 3 months before the graduating ME, me, Anisurya, Samprit and Vedant went to Dream Theatre’s concert and we spent 6 hours in the airport lounge discussing and planning how we would perform Themata as the last song of event, how the lighting would be, how me and Anisurya would go shirtless on the stage, how I would start hitting gym so I can look somewhat like Steve Judd (drummer, Karnivool), how Samprit would mimmic Ian Kenny (vocalist, Karnivool) and whatnot. We all were just too excited to execute our year long plan.

Contrary to our plans, when we start doing runthroughs of themata together, nothing was coming right. Anisurya couldn’t play the intro riff, my transitions were not smooth and overall nothing was in sync. At that point, for me, nothing mattered more than bringing this song tight. I used to practice 4-5 hours a day for it, trying to improve every small mistake I was making, and then hit the gym or go swimming. My goal was to practice this song so much that I’d never lose grip of control. Themata was indeed the hardest song I played during my 4 years, but man, it was so fun.

We almost lost hope at one point, but we kept each other motivated and didn’t stop practising. Finally, 3 days before the event, it started coming out tight. But on the event day, nothing went as per our plans. Due to uncontrollable factors, there was chaos and shortage of time during the event. Minutes before, we weren’t even sure whether we will be able to perform the full song or not. I could feel the pressure belonging to all. Plans of having the perfect lighting, going shirtless, giving the performance of all time all these just remained plans because simply there wasn’t time nor the peace of mind to execute these things. Obviously, it was not the end we wanted but that’s what real life is. You always don’t get the perfect end to your journey.

In first year, an Mclub senior told me that why he does events every year – It was because of the thrill you get while performing on the stage. For me it was never the thrill that mattered, it was the runthroughs. The cycle of doing an event in Mclub depicts the human life perfectly. You have a goal – the final performance, you work towards it by showing up daily – the runthroughs. Fun is never achieving the goal, you never know you could have a bad performance due to factors not in your hands and you might fail to achieve the goal, but what brings you back into the cycle is the fun you had in the process of achieving that goal, the fun you had interacting with different people during runthroughs, the fun you had in working towards a common goal, that is what’s irreplaceable.

Following the tradition, it was the time for end tenure party – a party given collectively by the graduating batch. It was real fun hosting a party on such a large scale- me, Akshat and Anisurya spent days finalising the venue, budget, food, and most importantly making a (wish)list of quality liquors. As a tradition, Me and Anisurya went to Gurgaon with 2 empty suitcases and a duffel bag to do shopping for liquors. We were literally selecting all the bottles we wanted to taste in our lives, but ultimately had to put control on our budget. Also, the tradition of someone being in loss after party was also fulfilled, it was me this year. I hope someday, I’ll recieve the contri of 8k I spent from my pocket.

Across all four years, the songs were just an excuse. The real reason I kept coming back was the people. I joined because I knew a little drumming. I stayed because every year there was another song to play, another runthrough to attend, and another excuse to spend time with people I genuinely enjoyed being around. Somewhere along the way, Music Club became My Club. And I think that’s the reason I kept coming back.

For me, Mclub meant a lot of things through these 4 years, Music Club, My Club, Masti Club and sometimes Mclub.

The real major - my homies

If I had to define success at IITK, it probably wouldn’t be any of the things I spent most of college chasing. My biggest success was finding people I could do life with. Because no matter how ambitious, talented, or mentally stable someone appears, IITK eventually finds a way to humble everyone. And when that happens, you need people who can sit next to you, make fun of your problems for five minutes, and somehow make everything feel manageable again. For me, that support system was my boys.

One of the first people I met in college was Pulkit. The friendship began when I misread my roll number during orientation and sat next to him. My roll number was 220853, but somehow I convinced myself it was 220835. From that point onwards, we spent orientation together, sat through sessions together, and more importantly, escaped from sessions together whenever they became unbearably boring. He became my first-timer homie in every possible sense. Our first trip, first alcohol, first bong, and countless other first experiences that probably shouldn’t be documented, somehow involved Pulkit. Both of us loved travelling, which usually meant that whenever everyone else found a reason not to go somewhere, we found a reason to go anyway. Many of my favourite memories from college exist because the two of us (sometimes Adil also😝) repeatedly ignored the sensible option and booked the tickets.

When people look back at friendships, they usually remember the trips, the parties, the games they played together and the obvious highlights. I remember those too, but when I think about my boys, that’s not what comes to mind first. What I remember are the hours spent doing absolutely nothing. Sitting in someone’s room after dinner. Lying on a bed while everyone else drifted in and out. Conversations with no agenda and no destination. Somehow, those moments were always the most fun. We spent hours laughing at things that made absolutely no sense. Someone would become the target of jokes for the evening, and most of the time, that someone was me. Strangely, the person getting roasted often enjoyed it the most. I don’t think I would ever laugh harder in my life than I did with my boys. Through all the academic stress, internship anxiety, placement drama, and countless self-created crises, those idiots somehow remained the cure. No matter how bad things got, spending an evening with the boys could temporarily convince me that everything was fine. Most of the time, that was enough.

One great realisation I had was during a trip to North Sikkim with the boys. After a long day of travel, we were sitting together, consuming some pot, talking about random college memories. Somehow, the conversation drifted to one of our wingies whose semester had been dropped, and we started remembering all those Hall 2 evenings that had once felt completely ordinary. Somewhere during that conversation, being high, I got lost in a thought and had a realisation. You never know when you’re doing something for the last time. Nobody tells you. There isn’t a notification, a farewell ceremony, or dramatic background music. One day, you drink beer with a friend. One day, you have fun with your wingies outside a hostel room at 3 a.m. One day, you go on a random trip. And then, without realizing it, you’ve already done it for the last time. Maybe that’s why those moments are beautiful. If we knew they were ending, we’d probably spend the whole time being sad about the ending instead of enjoying them.

That realization explains a lot about how I approached college afterwards. It explains why I almost never said no to trips, random plans, late-night outings, unnecessary adventures, or experiences that simply sounded fun. Because eventually everything becomes a last time. You just don’t know when.

Sometime during third year, we were scrolling through Instagram and watching stories of seniors leaving Hall 1. People were crying, posting emotional messages, and writing long captions. We looked at each other and laughed. “Hum thodi roenge.” “Maza aayega tum sab se peecha chutega.” At the time, it sounded completely believable. Then fourth year happened, and suddenly those jokes stopped being funny.

The strange thing about endings is that they don’t arrive all at once. They arrive slowly. One event becomes your last Galaxy. One semester becomes your last semester. One trip becomes your last trip. And before you realize it, all the remaining days can be counted on your fingers. The last fifteen days of college were some of the busiest days of my life despite the fact that I had absolutely nothing to do. No academics, no deadlines, no internship preparation nothing. Yet somehow nobody slept for more than 5 hours. Some nights I don’t think we slept at all. Nobody wanted to miss anything. Nobody wanted to waste time sleeping. Nobody wanted to sit alone. Suddenly, sleep felt less important than togetherness.

My last few days were spent almost entirely in Rajeev’s room, F110. At some point we removed the bed and table, spread mattresses across the floor, and converted it into our collective living room, bedroom, and emotional support centre. People kept coming and going, but somebody was always there. Nobody explicitly said it, but everyone wanted to stay together. Nobody confessed how they were feeling. But everyone knew. The ending had become visible.

The last night on campus felt different. It felt heavy; there was a feeling of emptiness. Nobody knew how to express it properly, so most of us hid behind jokes. Some people cried. I maintain that I didn’t, at least that’s the version of the story I tell when somebody asks. But that night felt heavy. Everything kept flashing through my mind. Vikram me Bhar ke Barkaas jaana. Random days of getting high. Secret drinking sessions in H13. Roasting each other for absolutely no reason. Late-night H10 and Mama Mio runs before endsems. Anisurya showing up in my room for a sesh before I was even awake. Hundreds of moments that felt ordinary while they were happening now seemed priceless.

If someone somehow offered me the chance to relive these moments, I wouldn’t think twice. But since that’s not how life works, I’ll settle for being grateful that it happened at all. And if there’s one thing IITK gave me that I know will survive long after the materialistic achievements are forgotten, it’s this: I found my people. And that made all the difference.

I don’t think interacting with anyone would be as feasible as it was in college. Everyone was just a few rooms away, you could literally go and meet anyone at any time and have fun. More than a month has passed since college ended. It still feels a little like summer break. The only difference is that for the first time, I know I’m not going back. And maybe that’s why I finally understand something that sounded cliché when seniors used to say it. IITK isn’t a place. It’s people. The buildings will remain. The hostels will remain. The lecture halls will remain. But the IITK I will miss existed because of the people who filled those spaces. I would give up anything to relieve these 4 years, but obviously that’s not possible – so whatever time you have left, feed your will to feel your moment and draw your way outside the lines. Reach out to embrace the random, and embrace whatever may come.