Confessions of a cursed IITian: Part I

My entire life, I’ve believed that things go wrong because of the mistakes that humans do. But, some unknown force has always tried to prove me wrong. And, unfortunately, that force has been quite successful till now. Have u ever felt that some things are just not in our control? Have u ever felt that the cause behind some phenomenon might be a single person and not the entire system? Can a single human being have the power to influence the lives of every person living on this planet? Well, hold ur breath ladies and gentlemen, coz it’s the story of man who caused the phenomenon known as RECESSION.
The first day is still fresh in my memory. It seems like yesterday. 26th July 2005- The day I wrapped my lips around this mighty erection, called IIT, and sucked hard. Its so unbelievable, everyone seemed so happy. All the Relatives and Neighborhood aunties were behaving as if their own child was going to IIT. Not to forget, these were the same aunties who, a year earlier, used to taunt me, in every possible way, about me not concentrating on my studies. And when it was time for me to return the favor, they had all changed suddenly. Somehow, I never felt too good about it. You know, the way u feel, when u hit the ball for a six but it ends up being a four. And though everyone appreciates your shot, u r disappointed with urself. It was the same feeling for me. So, in between all this uncontrollable flow of emotions, I reached Roorkee- the last place where I expected to do my college from.
My first look at the hostel reminded me of all the jails that I had seen in the bollywood movies. As if that was not enough for the first day, I got a taste of the worst shit in the whole world, called administration, during the registration process. After all this was over, the worst nightmare was still to come – RAGGING. I went back to my childhood when I was told stories about the boogeyman. The seniors were the new boogeymen. The idea of being completely naked, in front of a whole group of people, feels different depending upon the gender of those people. Well, in this case the feeling was disgusting. Though I never had to go through the entire routine, I was disgusted to hell on just hearing the stories. While all this was going on, I also realized that I had got the worst room in the entire wing. Not only was it the closest to the loo, it was impossible to slip anything in from under the door. (Considering how important it is for an IITian to have this provision in his room, it was a really big disadvantage.) This was the first hint of things that were about to happen.
As a few months passed, I realized IITR is not that bad a place after all. I mean the guys, I met, were cool. And the life was awesome. Plus, the professors seemed to teach everything that I already knew. It seemed too easy to score in the exams. Except that at IITs, its not ur own score that determines ur grade. It’s the score of the entire class. And, for some unknown reason, all my batchmates showed their best academic performance at the same time when I, for once, had a desire to take the academic world by storm. To add to this, I always got the last number in the library lottery system and ended up with the worst books available. As if that was not enough, my sub-section had the worst possible time-table set up, with all the wrong classes at all the wrong timings with all the wrong professors. All this and some other small things (that I’ve omitted to make a long story short), made me realize that there was certainly something wrong with my luck. It was like a curse following me everywhere I went. This hypothesis of mine received the status of being a fact in the last month of my first year.
To be continued...