Editorial One

Its nearly been a semester since I posted anything on this blog. Its been tumultuous times,or well whatever being stuck in a discipline you know nothing about can be. I haven't really written much other than my editorials for EPC in this period. So for what its worth, I am just uploading them and hoping they bring some life back to my near-dead blog. Hope they're enjoyable.

Don't remember the exact date, this one was in the middle of the third week of August. Somewhere near 22-23rd August I think.

There’s something happening here,
What it is, ain’t exactly clear… 

It’s a nice rainy day afternoon as I sit in the comfort of my room with a mild headache and a Microelectronics Book trying to get some work done. It has been another satisfyingly colorful couple of weeks. The lazy heat-struck summer days that we normally associate with this part of the Pilani calendar has given way to much more pleasant rainy day afternoons. Incessant rains herald in the new semester in a blah blah blah…
Ok I guess that’s enough of the weather. It’s BITS Pilani, and how it has all changed. Even as our cars rolled into the campus, the change was in the air. I mean very literally too, with the smell of fresh paint mixed with the rare odour of wet soil welcoming us to a whole new BITS.

Things have changed, not least of them ourselves, along with conspicuously absent friends, marking their departure in a declining trail of phone calls and text messages. The institute has changed, and the sparkling white walls shine in the lazy mellow sunlight waiting for the opinion of its students. You stand in the shade of the newly painted clock tower, cribbing about the new Technology building ruining the beauty of back IC. You nod your approval at revamped laboratories and boosted-up net speeds. You curse the missing redis in inopportune moments of extreme hunger. Yet in the midst of absent-minded opinionating about the world around you, you notice these confused new faces around you. Slow, shy, formal interactions soon turn into full blown lachcha sessions as you regale them with stories of legends of the campus- myths of a yellow clock tower, roadside redis with their delectable sam-chaat and dusty blue lime room-walls. You show them the few remaining strips of the old paint on the back side of the clock-tower as you introduce them to the mysteries of the four faces of BITS’ own Father Time. You talk of legendary BITSians and their exploits of the yesteryears, even as they or perhaps even you will never meet them. You talk and one day hope to join them in their hallowed portals yourselves.

And soon, with or without a affidavit, in the midst of the of the C’Not sessions and ANC treats; department interactions and club recruitments; one out of every four faces that you see everyday evolve into a new identity that they will carry with pride for the rest of their days, that of a BITSian. So here’s to stories and lachcha, lingo and lives, rains and redis, folklore and fairytales.

Here’s to the BITSian circle of life.

“It seems so weird now. For four years I have seen alumnus come back after 25 years and talk about how nothing has changed since their time. And I come back after 6 months and… Wow.”

-2006 Batch Pass-out