The Website Story – Solidarity Eulogized

IIMB is a Universe of contradictions. The people here who burn the midnight oil more often than not use the darkness of the night for stealthy trips to the much romanticized Athicas (for the benefit of my NITK friends, that’s like a Khokha, except one that femmes too can frequent) and watching sitcoms and movies on the pretext of case studies and project reports. Then there is the other species, the ‘early to bed, early to rise’ types, whom we (for the sake of political correctness) refer to as ‘muggus’. Unless he/she is one of the latter, I would expect the reader to totally relate to my concept of a fumbling last-minute excuse for studying that an overwhelmingly elite minority here likes to call preparation.

As a part of the God-forsaken team behind the website, in continuum with the same tradition of my eleventh hour escapades, my version of the story of any real work in this case too would span over three full days of genius (!), toil and action at mind-boggling lightning speeds (notwithstanding the quizzes and submissions in the way)! But more than anything, the reason why I chose to subject my unsuspecting victims (my readers, by definition) to yet another addition to my spate of torturous writings is the mystic and logic-defying solidarity that a group of 64 strangers developed over a mere five months of companionship. I call it ‘The Website Story’ not because it is a narcissist ode to the Website Team, but because in many ways, the completion of this website is but another testimony to this amazing solidarity that seems to bind this unlikely group of, for lack of a better word, friends.

2nd of July 2007. The first time that approximately three scores of students (lets call them ‘subjects’ hence) were brought under the same roof to which they were destined for the following two years (discounting a change of Lecture Hall as too unromantic to be mentioned here of course.. oops, I just did it, didn’t I?). I may here spend sometime dwelling on the vast variety of dreams, aspirations and expectations our subjects held as they walked into that overwhelming lecture theatre and seated themselves behind those shiny nameplates bearing their names and greeted the other subjects on either side. However, having none myself, I seek solace in opining that these ‘aspirations’ and ‘ambitions’ are heavily overrated. My memory of that first BGS lecture is rather different. I recall wondering if the Overhead Projector really worked (pardon me, but I hail from a rather infrastructurally challenged background… my NITK compatriots would empathize here), where the much publicized ACs were hidden, how long it would take me to find my way back to the hostel in this maze of a campus, what on Earth did BGS stand for etcetera etcetera. But most of all, I wondered if everyone else was as floored by the Prof’s knowledge as I was (Man! The guy is a human encyclopedia! What have I been doing these past 21 years?).
Everyone else. I guess these two words summarized the very axis of our thought those early days. And so, unconsciously though, our trysts with one another began that first day itself.

Term 1 came and went by in a flash of quizzes, mid and end terms, marked by the realization, that there is more.. much more to a resumé than they ever thought possible, dawned on the wretched subjects! And as the term rolled by, misery bound them to one another at some level. Signs of this malignant bonding were visible right from the nascent stages of our very dear ‘Peace Club’ (of which the author happens to be a proud member).

However, it wasn’t until Term 2, with the Summer Placement that brought with them an exotic mix of elation and trauma, and that memorable trip to Goa with the beaches and the sunsets, the pukes and the bedbugs, that the subjects really discovered one another. I could go on for pages on both of these. However, my creative juices are constrained by the Technical Team’s banterings for space and your tolerance. So I would do better to let the pictures in the ‘gallery’ on the site speak the thousand words for themselves!

Right now, even as I pen this account, I am sitting in a roomful of my classmates, changing shifts to stay up the night, (this time notwithstanding the deluge of Project Submissions in the coming week). The number is so overwhelming that I am strongly contemplating taking my musings to another room!

There are a number of reasons cited on the site to answer the question ‘Why does Sec A rock?’. But I believe that the smallest thing like the fact that they are willing to sit through a Saturday night in a roomful of nerds wielding laptops, hailing cuss words at one another for missing pics and testimonials speaks volumes about the bond that is Sec A. There are a million possible examples (and you’d notice that we’ve covered them quite extensively on the site) of the SecAites’, for lack of a more apt word, friendship.

And the Website Story is just one of them.