I spent a week of my summer at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Ropar. We, a total of seven people from ISI Delhi along with Ananya and her friend Aashi from college, went there to attend a 5 day workshop on Numerical Methods to solve Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations. The entire experience turned out to be one of the best moments I have lived in my life.
The Planning
It was a quiet Sunday evening in the first week of May, and I got a message on the BSDS '29 WhatsApp group. It was from Adithya sir, who'd been our teaching assistant for one of the courses last semester. He suggested we go to IIT Ropar for this workshop. I pulled up their webpage, saw how little they were charging UG students 😅, and was sold almost instantly.
I roped in Sap and Neerav, and they were in too. Before long, we had a full team of seven ready to go. Everyone did their registrations ; I was the first one, of course 😉 ; and I talked Ananya into joining, who then brought her friend Aashi along. And then came the wait: two whole months until the trip finally began.
All Aboard the Janshatabdi
Finally, the day arrived. We had our tickets booked on the Janshatabdi Express from New Delhi to Rupnagar for the 5th of July, with the workshop scheduled to run from the 6th to the 10th. And so, we set off.
It was a genuinely fun ride. I wore my ISI T-shirt the entire time, paired with a French hat papa had brought back from his last trip to France. Funnily enough, papa left for his own tour to New Zealand on the very same day I boarded my train to Rupnagar ; we left home almost in parallel, headed in completely opposite directions.
Ananya and I had booked our tickets together, so we sat side by side while the rest of my batchmates sat across the aisle in the same coach, smirking at us the entire time 😁. Mumma had packed snacks for the journey, including pasta, which Ananya and I shared since we were both starving by then. The ride was six hours long, but between the food and the conversation, it felt like it passed in a blink.
Midnight at Campus
We finally reached Rupnagar, booked an auto, and rolled onto campus at around 9 PM on the 5th of July.
Before we even got to the hostel, the entrance itself was worth a mention. There were huge stone blocks carved with what looked like scenes from the Harappan Civilisation. It made sense once I thought about it, since Ropar was a major Harappan site and was actually the first one excavated after India's independence. A little further in, we spotted a few tank caricatures on display too, not entirely sure why they were there. Either way, we finally made it to our hostel.
I was assigned a shared room with Omhari at Satluj Hostel ; our entire ISI contingent ended up stationed there together. Ananya and Aashi, meanwhile, were allotted a room in Brahmaputra Hostel, along with a third girl who wasn't due to arrive until the night of the 8th.
We checked into our respective hostels and regrouped at the Annapurna Dining Hall, where the whole gang sat down together for dinner ; officially kicking off the week. The food was decent. The campus also had vending machines running 24/7, and there was a cafe that stayed open till 3 AM, which came in handy more than once that week.