The Life of Me

A female friend of a friend of mine who's at IIT:
"You know, you are ideal boyfriend material : XYZ caste boy, smart, intelligent, and more importantly, from IIT!!!

Well, as flattering as it may sound that gals think we are "ideal boyfriend material" and may even consider taking us home to the folks, I don't take kindly to the "more importantly, from IIT" bit.

Admittedly, most of us have dreamt of being in that club which theoretically includes the best brains in India. But once reaching there one thing that most, nay all of us have realized is that though we may have cleared one of the tougher entrance tests and 'proved' our mettle, what really matters in the end, on campus - and for most, off it - is not the fact that we had a better education, but that we made some memorable friends that stay for life. Ask any IITian what he remembers from his/her campus life, and I am willing to bet my hand (forgive the cliche) that they'd refer to some anecdote of hostel life or the various hang-out spots present on every campus.

Though IITs do play a great part in how we shape up as individuals, what we are is not determined by IITs, but by what we choose to take out of them... "more importantly IIT"... well, it ain't that important to us, if anyone is bothered to know. Apart from the pressure to keep up a front of superiority, which none of us feel, being branded is not what we want. Most of those who come into the IIT system are already highly individualistic people who are each unique in their own way, and I think that branding them all is not just an insult to the individuals, but also to the system that made them unique in the first place.

It was not just this girl's comment that made me write this down. Sometime back, I was reading an article about IIMs and how nowadays a majority of the students there are from an IIT background. The author goes on to write "the IITians no doubt would be circulating this article in email forwards patting themselves on the back... blah blah blah"... Do people really think that we are such egotistical idiots who take the first opportunity at "blowing our own trumpets" as a former prof of mine was fond of saying? Well, no doubt that we are immensely proud of our being alumni of such great institutions, but we value the fact that what we learned most from that place is that we are not special because we got in, or survived 4/5 years in the system, as may be the case. The place - and the system, even - is special to us because of the people who made up the place with us, and what we all shared. I think this is something that people see in almost all other educational institutions. I don't know why people tend to glorify us - well, I can't say I have a problem with that. My problem is that in glorifying us, people tend to concentrate on things that are not special to us, this special set!

I really didn't know what I would write when I started this... just pouring out on the keyboard whatever is coming to mind, and so the post may look logically unrelated to the start. This is just what I felt as I sat down and this post just came onto the keyboard without much intervening thought process. So in the end this post is really a rambling, but I don't care. The "more importantly IIT" specification leaves as bad a taste in my mouth as does the "XYZ caste boy", though I perfectly understand the importance of the latter specification to many in India.

Finally, yes, we are proud of what we were, what we are, and we know that our time at IIT did indeed help us become what we are. But - and I think almost everyone else from IIT would agree with me here - we would have become as special anywhere else if we had this same set of friends and companions-in-misery as we had in IITs. So please, we may indeed be ideal boyfriend material, but its more importantly because we are smart and intelligent, and not "more importantly, from IIT"...


Update: Well, I don't think I made myself even remotely clear as to what I meant in the whole rambling above... Well, all the IITians I have known - seniors, juniors, my batchmates, people from other IITs - are special in their own way. My problem as such is not that people make us out to be a special set, but the reasons they give. I mean, saying that we are special just because we made it to IITs is a gross injustice to all of us - we all are special indeed and we are special in our own personal way. I believe we all made it because we are special, and not the other way round. I may sound very conceited, but that's how I feel. This is not to say that those who haven't made it are less special or anything - just that we had some extra luck favoring us that fated day as well...