My One Day at IIT

I was in my happy college days doing B.Sc. Visual Communication, away from my dreaded PCM subjects. Life was only about being creative. I was enjoying it. One day, I got a call from my school friend –Vaidhy. He informed me that IIT becomes an open house for the coming weekend and asked whether I could join him and other two friends of mine there. I thought about it. IIT was perhaps the most allergic location to me – Full of brainy geeks and Departments that could give me nightmares...

But, I agreed to it, after all it was a rare opportunity. The last time it was an open house was 25 years ago. That time my father visited IIT. He said it would be a nice experience. So, I thought of trying it out. What is the big deal? After all, I would get to know how interesting subjects seem when I don’t have to study them.

So, the coming weekend we went there in our two wheelers. I rode to IIT in my XL Super! It was the only moped in the whole campus! Perhaps I set a record by riding the first moped into IIT.

I and my friends went to various departments. At the start I was sort of feeling nauseatic seeing the Departments of Physics, Chemistry, Maths and various other heavily technical departments. But as time went on, I started to love it. It was like viewing a Discovery channel, where you get to know amazing things. There was this Astro-Physics presentation at the Physics Dept. It was really amazing.

Vaidhy was registering himself for some paper presentation in the biology department. In the meanwhile I continued to explore various departments. It was when I saw the Mathematics department, I felt pathetic about myself. IT was as if I remembered absolutely nothing in mathematics. Not one formula. All I remembered was to add, subtract, multiply, divide.

My other 3 friends joined me at the Maths Department. It seemed there was a Maths quiz that was going to happen. My friends wanted to do it. As I didn’t know how much time it would take to finish and as I was bored of wandering alone, I decided to wait in my much hated department.

It seemed the first round was a written objective questions round. Something inside me wanted me to attend it and have some fun. So I too got a paper and sat next to my friends. There were about 50-60 people on the test hall.

When I saw the question paper – *FLASH*, my mind went blank. I knew that I had studied many of the formulas needed to solve the paper. But I became dyslexic, I understood nothing in the paper, it seemed to me that all the questions were animated and was running all around the paper. There was this particular question that was still on the paper in an un-animated form. I looked into it. It was a probability question. If you apply one simple formula to it, it would be over. But alas, I didn’t know the formula. But then there was the advantage of solving the probability question the long way – tallying. I decided to do that to while time. I was pulling my hair with frustration while trying to solve it- the simplest question in the whole paper. It took 3/4th of the total exam time for me to finish it. At the end I was really confident that I had done it right. I was sort of proud of it. We were asked to give the sheets on which we did calculations! I gladly gave mine. It had nothing but scribbles of the longest route to answer a question. If any IIT staff saw it, he would definitely have searched for me. For it had no other answers worked out.

Then I looked at the other questions, understood absolutely nothing and then I did the Magic- The world famous ‘Inky Pinky Ponky’ on the IIT Maths paper. I was so happy to do it. I rejoiced it. I was smiling and laughing while doing it. It was such fun. After the exam, as my friends were discussing the answers amongst them. I found that I answered right to the probability question. I told them that. They were all very surprised. After all they knew me and my skills only too well. I winked at them. After half an hour the finalists listed was pasted on the wall.

*BANG* It hit me right in the head, My name was amongst the 18 finalists of the Maths quiz. I didn’t believe it. All that Inky pinky ponky worked!! I had the brain and technique that no other contestant had!! I was laughing after seeing the result. I had beaten a lot of IITians in the process.

One of my 3 friends did not even make it. He glared at me. I was feeling awkward. If I get teamed up with 2 IIT guys, I would be in hell. I thought of running away from IIT that instant. But my friend asked me to stay and have some fun. I was totally embarrassed. But I stayed.

The quiz started, I was glad that one of my friends was in my team along with an IIT-madras guy. I told him with an embarrassing face that I don’t know anything and I got selected because of luck. He said “No problem mate”. He was obviously thinking I was being humble. He knew little about me. We were placed in the first row. I felt awkward. I sunk down my seat, dipped my head down and half closed my eyes!

The questions were fired and the big brains around me went to work. 'I understood the questions as much as an illiterate understands Shakespearean English'. I hung my head down and let the others of my team answer. Apparently I found the questions were a bit tough even for them. The IIT guy with me was totally funny; he wrote a few steps to solve the question and came up with a wrong answer every time when the question was targeted at him. Not only that, Every single time someone else answers their question, he just wrote down that answer alone in a corner of his sheet, showed it to us, banged the table and said loudly “Shit, I got that”. My friend and I exchanged glances and smiled knowingly. The quiz came to an end. Our team scored a rightful ‘Zero’ and held the prestigious last position!

I was so glad that there was no embarrassment but all the same it was such a hilarious experience for me. Who would have thought that a teetotaler at Maths like me would make to the finals of IIT Maths finals? This was an unforgettable experience for me.