village people

so last time around i showed you a glimpse into life at the village.. this time i'll tell you about the village people themselves. for those who missed it, the village in question being IIT Kgp.. and the people being the inmates. inmates you might think is a strong term, but life there at its worst is so inhospitable that the stress and the related dramas make life in the POW camps seem a not so distant reality.

certain monikers coined by the press about these inmates have been blown out of proportion, and led to fill the innocent with awe, the innocuous with admiration, and the insipid with disgust: "cream of the country" and "braintrust of the nation" among them. it is true that this just might be the hardest group of colleges to get into, with over a hundred thousand applying for some five thousand seats or so, but any honest IITian will tell you that they are not much different from any other engineering student.

i'm sure there are lots of folks out there who work much much harder than we do, and probably are more intelligent too. so yeah, i guess what makes us different is how we handle situations that are thrown our way.. which basically means we try a little harder to goof off work and still look good about it!

this is no way takes away from the achievements of those who went to IIT and were focused on their studies, and are now in positions of responsibility all over the world. i applaud them. but they are only a small percentage of the lot. the majority of the bunch go in there knowing that it'll smooth their path into a lucrative future, and getting in was the hardest part, and things should only get easier henceforth. sometimes this attitude hurts IITians when they go out into the world, because suddenly no one thinks they're the bees knees and a honest day's work has often become a forgotten concept. either that, or i had really been hanging out with the very wrong crowd in undergrad!

anyways, beyond all that, we had our fair share of characters too.. theories of group behavioral dynamics confirm that even in a group of similar individuals, some will excel and some will fail, some will take responsibility and some will be led, some will study hard and some will drink hard.. and the best part is that even the smallest population units will show this spectrum of characteristics.

from these pools of uniformity often there shone some stars.. people labelled as 'studs'.. all-rounders of the highest calibre, who studied, worked and partied with equal aplomb. i saw my fair share of studs in my time, and they served to inspire the masses with their deeds of daring. and as with all heroes, if they had a slightly-flawed character, it only served to enhance the legend..

more on the studs tomorrow.