People who know me wont be surprised when they see my 1st yehi hai right choice baby aha! even though my detractors ,mainly my batch mates would rise up in arms if they hear me saying that the library or the lib as we lovingly call it,is the lifeline that connects the whole iitk fraternity in the onenness that the institute is known about.(Aside(monologue) -if you read my other blogs you would soon realise that i have a penchant for XXX L long sentences and that i am prone to using flowery nonsensical mumbo jumbo to a very pathetic effect).Sorry for the distraction so where was i ...ah ...yes the lib.hum .
Physically the most imposing structure in the academic area ,it is just 4 storeys of racks jam packed with manuscripts and monstrous volumes stacked in never ending rows .Aisles after aisles of nothingness ,there are carved in between plenty of dark corners for dark deeds.these dark deed s are not what most of your dirty minds are conjuring up(yours truly included);those dark deeds are voluntarily abstained from in iitk(this is a separate topic to be dealt in more detail later i can actually write a novel on this).haan..so these dark deeds are the act of committing magai(pronounced magai) on days more than 48 hours away from the nearest exams.The situation 48 hours before an exam will be dealt in length a paragraph ;later..One of the most daring crimes that you could commit here is to go to the library,even for an as innocous reason as getting a novel issued;within the aforesaid 48 hours after a mid sem or end semester exam.Case have been known in which people had been publicly 'branded' a maggu-for-life ,a curse for any wannabe-cool-guy though some pyschopathic maggus take it as an honour and continue with this morality defying stunts many times over:0
The pychopaths are a separate fraternity here,well identified and mostly the object of ridicule for the 'maangbharo sajna 'hairstyle type cool-ies(see the pun see the pun!!what great shakespeare lies beneath me see!!?)though it is usually brushed under the carpet that these are the saviours of the masses in their wings during the biannual mega event that the dean of academic affairs organises for testing the mental faculties of his herd.the lib also has phases just like the moon only the period is less and the changes more stark.when the sem starts, the lib seems to have shed its people,the alleys are huge whispering galleries,'door door tak sannnata aur khamoshi ka raaj.' Anyways this is the time when you can actually study something meaningful .The reason is that first of all you can rest assured wont be a target for maggu hunters because no one can actually convict you of being in the library without himself being caught at 'mauka-e-vardaat'.Since the fear is mutual ,the whole affair would be brushed over by the two guilty parties.
The downside of this phase is that you have a pretty big chance of being held guilty by a fast track court(which in current parlance means ,a group of your batchmates hanging out near the canteen or the phatta fields on your way home to safety ) hurriedly convened to pounce upon any wayward fool who dares to defy their police of making merry till hell freezes over (by which i ,once again refer to the lovely exams i so much covet) :D ...Moreover the lib takes on a catacomb like' texture' so that after sometime the silence;which was so nicely silent the whole time; starts to hurt your ears and you ,at last have to give in to the lure of the latest movie that your friends are enjoying back in the hostel rooms.ALL in all this is a very uneventful time of the year though i must say most reputations are built at this time of the half year.
This was one end of the spectrum ,now i will fast forward to the other extreme end ,the dawn of the END SEMESTER EXAMINATIONS ha ha ha(a loud guffaw)and then a hee hee hee(a sly one).Anyways this is the legally and morally approved time when everyone is allowed ,no, expected to take up magai as a short term course.Just three days before the end sems the throng starts to build up to the final crescendo .Since we are granted 3 study holidays and that the lib opens up round the clock the M word becomes a twenty four hours affair .Every lobby ever nook and cranny is stuffed full of students,intent on making the top grades.the atmosphere is not gloomy if thats what you are imagining .it actually is quite like a village mela(if you have had the chance of going to one.Maintain silence is h=just one of the lib rules to be broken with people on 24 hr duty actually bring pillows to get thru the night ;bringing tooth brushes isn't an unheard of phenomenon ,especially among the bonkers ,eh i beg your pardon,the professional bunkers of the batch.The xerox points inside the lib go up in fumes(not flames that would be way too much for an approximation) with the sheer load of photocopying the 'best notes of the sem' many times over.these notes are actually in more demand than the reference books piled up in the reserved section,obviously none give a damn abt learning something new for their own betterment ...duh...!!!Another thing that leaps to your eyes is the 'bheed' about some tables with people coming out and going in but the size doesn't diminish.you might have guessed these are the hubs of those wronged people ,those maggus,the butt of jokes over the last 5 odd months./These are the stars of the moment,in-demand,their every saucy rebuttals taken as a 'khoon ka ghoont' by the rebuked new comers (new to the lib i mean).Go to the 3rd floor,usually the least visited ones and you will see a full ll blown party up there.I pods ,mp3 players, laptops and habituated flirts(or lassus in our parlance) dot the landscape.There remains no distinction of night and day,people sleep from 7 am to 11 am to come back to duty for another 20 hours.The frenzy during these days has to be seen to be believed,to repeat a cliche.The library stands tall over all of them guiding them through their hurdles never once disappointed during the lean periods,confident in its knowledge that ultimately everyone has to come back to her to seek her guidance in their paths to their glorious future.and there she stand ,beautiful in her own way,never asking for anything but more books that can take her counsellees to the heights no one can imagine,and for a simple coffee vending machine so that the hapless ones dont have to trudge on in the middle of the night to the faraway coffee and snacks shack(ha ha what an anti climax).
On a more serious note Thank you ,Thank you for being there.
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