Back to campus life -By Chaitanya Sethi from IIM Indore
I had it all planned out. The spot in the campus from where I’d click the perfect picture of the panoramic view of the campus. The caption that’d encapsulate the joy of coming back to campus life at IIM Indore whilst taking a light-hearted jab at getting back to the rush and rut. It was to be my Instagram ode to the place I was desiring to return to after the internship, just months after I had sat staring at my wall, wondering if it was meant for me, or I for it. The truth is, this grand gesture of mine never came to be.
How does it feel to be back to campus life at IIM Indore after the internship?
The minute I stepped inside the familiar winding roads of the campus life at IIM Indore, I was out of water, famished for food, and burdened by the task of shifting my belongings to my new abode. And so, at the mercy of the (thankfully functional) water cooler, the kindness of the mess owner who let me eat from the containers that were removed for the rest, and the assistance of the transportation staff who laboriously ferried us and our luggage to-and-fro those very winding roads, I found myself unpacking my cartons in a room where the previous owner’s graffiti still adorned the faded yellow walls.
After having settled down, I went for a walk when the blazing sun was somewhat bearable. Slowly it started coming back to me. The year that had gone by. It was hard not to cast back to when I had arrived here for the first time, nervous and bright-eyed, unsure but excited, scared but determined. It seemed like it had happened so long ago. This sense of distortion of time was a feeling many of my peers shared. Perhaps it had to do with how the campus was essentially a world within itself, ensconced from the rest.
In the evening, we sat together, and like war veterans, traded internship stories. Complexity of challenges, eccentricities of colleagues, inedibility of canteens – all found their way into the narrations.
We commiserated over the state of our new abodes, discussing if the plaster was flaky, fan was noisy or tubelight too dim. Once we had successfully caught up on the day’s quota of conversations, we slowly retired to our rooms. Despite joking about how I would snore off into oblivion post the exhaustion of the day, I wound up wide awake early in the morning. I slipped back into my usual routine much more effortlessly than I had anticipated. The day went by as many had the year before.
Barely 24 hours back, I couldn’t even tell that I had left this place for a while. The professors certainly didn’t let us feel as though we had missed a beat. Very soon, the usual rush of classes, assignments, group discussions, quizzes and the rest started. A fortnight flew by in a blur.
My whiteboard is slowly raking up more and more tasks to do. My desk is starting to be a tad more disheveled. I am well and truly entrenched in this world again. I sit on my desk, writing this at 2 in the night. My window offers me a view of the prominent eating joint on the campus where people are busy chatting away as the sizzle of spices and smoke on the pots and pans add to the sounds. There are banners welcoming the incoming batch. New faces have starting trickling inside the campus, nervous and bright-eyed, unsure but excited, scared but determined. I feel as though I’ve come full circle.
Even though I had had it all planned out, my ill-fated tribute to my campus didn’t see the light of Instagram. But like life inside this place, you take your (overambitious) plans and you improvise. And so, I am. While this article is nowhere near the pristine image my filtered social media photo would have presented, it is an honest depiction of all those little things that make it more than the sum of its parts.
Coming back to the campus has brought me back to that atmosphere of messy, caffeine fuelled, timebound, work-laden, sleep-deprived nights. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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