How it all began

Like all others who turn up in IIT, I was among the bright ones at school. It was kind of understood that I would take up science and then engineering henceforth. Never mind an aptitude test that I took in class 10, according to which my highest aptitude was for pure science, then political science and finally engineering. Apparently I didnt have an aptitude for anything else. At that point of time, IIT was that thing which appeared in FIITJEE's ads. Given a map of Delhi, I would have been hard-pressed to point out its location, although I had lived all my life in Delhi.

Fortunately for me, my parents did know what IIT was, and soon after the 10th board exams, it was decided that I needed to join a coaching center of some sort. Being the among the oldest of my generation in my family, I had no one to seek guidance from. So I asked some teacher in school and she recommended VMC. VMC ? I hadnt seen any ads for this place, and had no idea about. There was a shady coaching center next door, for which I gave the entrance test. They told me that I was not good enough to be given a scholarship, hence I would have to pay the full fees of 25-30k for two years. I told my parents that if this shady place was charging the same fees as the better institutes, I would go to a good institute, or none at all. And with that devil-may-care attitude, I went to class one day, when almost everyone had bunked school for the VMC test.

Things continued quite merrily for a while. Many of my friends were in FIITJEE, but their conversation seemed to revolve more around the girls and teachers, rather than stuff related to JEE. I was chugging along with Brilliants correspondence course. Towards the end of class 11, I causally told my parents that everyone who was serious about JEE had joined some coaching center or the other! It was decided that I too shall join a classroom program. A friendly neighbourhood auntyji informed my mother about weekend programs and so my fate was sealed for the next 10 months - 7 day weeks. Every weekend involved an ardous journey to FIITJEE and an equalling exhausting journey back.

Delhi's summers are cruel, and power cuts add to the discomfort. It was in this blistering heat, during the summer vacations that I went 4 times a day to FIITJEE, for the whole day. The blaring music of Kaho Na Pyaar Hai and Dulhan Hum le Jaayenge from buses still makes me relive those nightmares. It was a very depressing time, working for a goal which was quite impossible to achieve. Putting all your life on hold and most importantly from parents' point of view, neglecting the all important 12th board exams.

The classes were held in box like rooms, which had no ventillation. There was an AC duct, but with frequent power cuts, it more often than not resembled a steaming furnace. I was always in awe of the other students there. There was one chap from Gorakhpur, who had come to Delhi in class 12th. He joined DPS-RKP, where it was difficult to get admission in class 11th, 12th was an impossibility. He always used to finish level 3 problems, when others had not even looked at the solved examples! There was another dude with a fetish for organic chemistry, who used to attach all kinds of impossible things to a benzene ring, then try and attack it with some other weird substance. It was here that I heard of Irodov and ML Khanna and Morrision-Boyd.

Watching so many studious souls around me, and getting screwed badly in all the phase tests always made me realise the futility of the goal I was trying to achieve. After a mock-screening test, in which I had got 90th percentile, I noticed the score of another student, which was 99.xx. This person was Zubin Joy Saini, a name which I remembered since it was quite out of the ordinary. I guess it was the hand of fate that made Zubin and me meet in hostel and become friends.

The journey from screening to mains was pretty eventful. with Laxman and Dravid drubbing the Aussies at Calcutta, right in the middle of the 12th boards. My mains paper was following Murphy's law, even before I got down to writing even a single line. The invigilators thought that my face didnt match the photo on the admit card and had multiple looks at it. Their doubts were laid to rest only when a JEE official had satisfied himself. Another curious incident was that of a cockroach that decided to start exploring below my seat just a the start of the Maths paper. All in all, it was a pretty forgetable day, whose high point was that I attempted every question in the Chemistry paper, except stoichiometry, something which I had never got the hang of.

The result a month later was pretty unexpected, as I had never expected to clear with such a rank. Given my performance in the mock tests, I had doubts about clearing it itself. Even today, I look back with the same amazement that I did that day, how the hell did I clear it ? This is where luck comes into the picture. You might have aced a hundred mock tests, but its the real thing which always matters. But inspite of clearing it, I always had a nagging doubt I had ended up here by a fluke and didnt deserve to be here. Many people in the CS department were people who were NTSE scholars and people who had topped in mock tests all along. In their company, my past record seemed woefully inadequate.

Hopefully after graduation, these demons have been laid to rest forever. I might not have been as good as some, but it wasnt that bad either. I wonder how life would have turned out had I performed as I did in that test. The same goes for all the fellow contributors in this blogging effort. We are here together because of our actions on the 6th of May 2001. That day pretty much set the course for the rest of our lives ...