Campus view

While visiting my parents and attending cousin's marriage, I sneaked out to do my regular "whats new" trip to IIT Kanpur campus.  My father spent good 25 years in the campus so its like my home in many ways.  All my early attempts to understand the world happened inside the calm environment of this elite institute.  I didn't study here but I used it's wonderful library for good 5 years.

Campus is always active and the new generation of students are savvier in event management. Tech-fest named Technokriti is about to start where the topics are all cutting edge - Open source hardware,  robogames, micro-electronics design contest among others.  All the usual suspect sponsors are there as well - Infosys, Wipro,  Mentor Graphics etc.  Students wearing penguin T-shirts are not uncommon. Linux definitely gets lot of people talking.  This proves that students world-over are ready takers for compelling social movement of any type. Open source fits in nicely with the whole package of  underdog (against Microsoft etc), and pushing the right elements  for the sake of society.

Department of Biotechnology is a great addition to the campus. Met few Phd students and hoping to stay in touch with them as I learn more about the Bio-informatics field. 

In all this quest to know what's latest in the campus, I never fail  to identify the mango tree around which many childhood memories are constructed.  In a quick  rewind all the names and faces come to mind. Where are they now ? 

The thing I like about visiting UP and Kanpur in particular is the new perspective I get. Staying away from blogging world in a near disconnected state is not exactly a bad thing.  I gained lot more in understanding how the narrow-band and noband  world is  living.  There are huge barriers between three spaces - blogosphere, cyberspace (part of Internet still untouched by blogging) and third one which is relevant in India and it's called pothole-space.

Describing pothole-space will take another post. Let me just stop here with all the childhood memories still in my head.  Will come back to it in the next post.