12.12.2009 - The First Match

The Morning of our first match ... This was why we were here! Finally the time had come ... Though it ws IIT Rajasthan only... still I couldnt help feeling excited ... Anish not having reached meant that I was sure to play atleast in the doubles :) The only pain was that our match was at 9AM in the morning .... and girls had their match at 11 AM... Kyuuuuuuuuuu..........!!! We would have to get up early .. I had to take a bath in the morning before the match to get rid of my drowsiness... Wen we reached the court, IIT Rajasthan was already practising...We knew it was goin to be a cake walk... got ready... I was playing the first singles, Mittal played the second and Aashish and I played our first doubles. Peacemaxx match.... Hardly anything I remember worth writing about ...

The girls had theirs against Guwahati... I forgot to mention in the previous post about Chili Chicken! So there was this chinki girl from Guwahati... for whom Chuunn had developed a "soft spot" ,,,, and we had an extended discussion the previous day about how there should not be a lot of Chili Chicken gravy... but a little bit of it is awesome! (people who whr thr.. Aashish and Chuunn will probably be able to make more of it... I was laughing at Chuun's description like mad!! )..

Back to the match ... Sharada won her singles peacefully as expected ... we were a bit worried about how Nidi would hold up... it was her first inter iit.. nd there would be crowd and shouting... plus we were also concerned a bit for her sevice ... But Nidi! ... was Awesome! She played her part to perfection near the net.. and the contest against Guwahati hardly turned out to be a contest at all ... Peaceful victories recorded in both sets of doubles too... and both the teams were almost certainly through to the knock out rounds ....

Minor mishap .... (only concerned me) ... Nidi had dropped Tang all over my new kit!!! I had taken infi efforts this time to pack my kit... and I could see it all falling apart in Tang powder!! x-( I was pissed!!

After the match, we went back to the hostel for lunch. The weather was really nice... The winter sunshine felt as nice as it is generally described in those romantic novels .. and I was all for sitting on the lawns... we decided to go to watch the cricket match against IITK ... Mittal, being GS, was concerned about other sports too and he was going there in any case....So all of us went to the cricket field...I cleaned up my kit... with minimal help from Sharada :P ... We watched the match for a while...

the others got bored in half an hr 2:30.. and they decided to leave... I expected atleast someone to stay .. but no one bothered! x-( Chuunn was the pioneer of "Going Back to Room Movement" ... He was tooooo sleepy.... I guess I had a good time though.. sitting in the sun... and thats when I started writing the diary about the camp time (which will be up soon)... The match ended by 3:30 and there was nothing else to do there... so I called up Mittal and he was at the TT court... I went along and sat with him .. TT junta were having a close one against Kanpur... They were leading 2-1 when I reached.. but Arnav lost his match against a guy from Kanpur who kept screaming "Yes Cmon! Yes Cmon!" after each point... as if he was winning the Championship point! Mittal and I had a good time there... egging him on... and shouting... We were surprised at how few people had turned up to cheer for Kanpur.... despite being the hosts... it seemed we were the only ones shouting ... the match was tied at 2-2 and Ketan was slated to play the last match .. the guy he was playing against looked very funny every time he served... he seemed to be setting his hair everytime he threw the ball up ... and served... Trust me .. it looked ridiculous... Ketan won his match and "Bombayyyyyyy!! Bombay!" echoed in the hall ... Mittal left to rest for sometime.. I really wasnt sleepy.. and knew that if I slept, I would remain sleeping for a long time... and then wont be able to sleep at night... which eventually would mean that I wont be fresh for the big match the next day ... so I stayed at the TT hall with Pritish and Neehar... watching the match between IITGandhinagar and IITG.. Rohan was playing ... he won peacefully in the end...

Sukhada arrives!

Infi pain maarke ek evening practice session jugaada tha.. Ravi Vikram Singh (the coordinator there) will probably remember me for the rest of his life for the infi pain I gave him .... first I got him to agree to a practice slot in the evening for Sukhada... but he permitted us to practice only till 8... (Anish was not going to reach by then)... then I asked for a practice slot in the morning at 6 .. to which he refused.. saying he could only give me one slot ... then ... Mittal talked to GS Kanpur... and asked him for a 6 o clock morning slot.. and he agreed... and then Ravi said no to the evening slot .... saying you already have a slot tomorrow morning .. in the mess, the court was emtpy... and the girls managed to play...

Sukhada, Sharada and Nidi took over an hour to come.. and I was left stranded at the court with nothing to do at all... finally they arrived .(Sukhada;s hunger was the cause of the delay and my intense boredom).. incidently, I came to know then that Sukhada also got EPFL intern.... CRACKK MAXX Sukhada! It took a while for Sukhada to get into rhythm .... It was almost 8:30 - 9 ... when Anish called up... "Abee.. main room pe pohoch gaya hoon... koi nai hai!" Aashish and Chuunn were in the canteen watching the match and Mittal had gone off for his meeting... I told him that I would be there in sometime .... and we winded up the practice session....
It ws awesome to have Anish back ... big match coming up tomorrow!~ ...Girls had dinner in the mess and then went off to their room... Chuunn and Aashish had been in the canteen all the time watching India defeat Sri Lanka in the T20.. so they werent very hungry... Room mein infi masti kiye ... we discussed perfectly GOD things.. like what if we lost to Kanpur? Then IITKGP would have to lose their match against Patna/Gandhinagar so that they dont have to face us in the quarters... then each time we got happy thinking about such things... one of us would bring us to back to the ground ... "abeee... quarters mein kgp se hi haar gaye to?! " and back to NBD!! But it was fun .. Anish had brought puri and sabzi from home... which formed a part of our dinner... the rest was in canteen ... We watched an episode of F.R.I.E.N.D.S and then zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

11.12.2009 - Official Opening Ceremony

Slept peacefully for the first time after coming to Kanpur... thanks to Mittal for moving in with Aashish and Chuunn... and I got to stay in a single room :) for a day atleast. Well, the morning started on a tricky note... Anish called and told me that his train was late by like 8 hours or something!... I was too sleepy probably to register what he was saying...Chuunn on the other hand was not ready to accept that this was happening. He bluntly said, Anish game le raha hoga apni. Mazaak kar raha hoga.. we couldn't do much about it anyways, so proceeded for practice after breakfast. The girls were actually reading books when we got there... Mera infi giveup hua dekhke ... subah subah baddy hall pe novels leke baithe the!! Practice was usual affair, Mittal was getting used to his new shoes. Rest of us just did some normal stuff. There was also a mini photo session on the stairs... random pics kheeche... people looking in the camre, people not looking in the camera, Chuunn pose ...






After our practice, we made our back to the hostel...and had juice on the way....as we reached the gate of the hostel, I realized I didn't have the keys to our room! Aashish said something about finding a single key on the steps in the court. I was pretty sure that it wasn't the key I was looking for as my key had a kinda keychain to it. In any case, I had to go back to the court to look for the keys. Sharada and Nidi were kind enough to accompany me back.. without much fuss... Nidi had a resigned expression on her face all the while...our trip proved fruitless. The key we found didn't work on my lock and in the process I missed my lunch. Mittal was infi angry as his tracksuit was inside the locked room and we had marchpast soon. Eventually, he wore Chuunn's tracksuit and Chuunn wore someone else's. He was complaining for a while... "ye kitna chhota hai". So at 2, we made our way to the main ground for the marchpast...on the way.. Chuun realized that probably Anish was not joking when he said that his train was delayed... "Katega to uska hi na... koi lene nai jaega usko" ... so we were resigned to the fact that Anish wont be playing against Rajasthan in any case. We reached the ground and IIT Hyderabad struck!!! One of the girls from IITH team was awesome! Most of the people around the stadium were drooling over her ... We were one of the first ones from IITB to reach the ground... and after a long long time everyone else arrived. We took our position on the ground. There were 15 IITs ... and it was going to be a looong looong marchpast. luckily the weather wasnt that bad ... and we dint feel the heat. (I guess it was real bad in madras ... whr it was all sunny and sweaty) ... IIT Bhubaneshwar was standing in front of us. They seemed to have brought the team prepared only for the marchpast... they had a small group and the way the contingent leader shouted commands, it seemed that they wanted to maximize their points in marchpast .. lots of cracks wr made in IITB contingent about how IITBh knew they wouldnt score a single point elsewhere... We din't even have 90% of the contingent as required... (i think some of the hockey guys were late)... The inspector came and started inspecting each and every contingent ... we did decently there... it was awesome fun to watch IITD ... they wr probably least prepared for the marchpast... IITG was doing pretty well ... by the time inspectors reached IITG, I had lost interest to see how the others were doing... it took a loong time ... and finally the music started... Sharada was leading the pack ... (without any placard! :P) IITB ws first in the lineup and thus got to walk the shortest distance. All the teams finished the marchpast and were finally seated. IITB contingent had already broken into groups by then and people were chatting around. I went and found Rohan and was chit chatting with him... There was a Malkham display ... (some crack from Chuunn/Aashish on this.. cant exactly remember) ... I chatted with Rohan for a while.. and the opening ceremny finally ended.... as we proceeded to ShopC, I suddenly realized I dint have my mobile with me. It had fallen on the grass when I was sitting and luckily no one had taken it! We went to ShopC after the ceremny mainly to get water ... It soooo sucked at Kanpur. .. there was no limit!! We had to get bisleris... Aashish, Chuunn, nidhi, Sharada and I went to the ShopC ... we got water bottles, new diary and a new lock .. (we would eventually have to break open the lock to my door)... We then proceeded to the basky ground ... Unbelievable atmosphere... IITB v/s IITM (nt sure) ... heard some of the awesomest comments passed .... there were guys with the following names written on their T-shirts
1) SNS
2) AURO
3) (and probably the bes of the lot) RECEPTOR

Baggji shouted.. .. "sab electonic devices band kar do!!!!!" Amazing time ... we had to leave half way through the match ... had to go for practice... before that, had to break open the door ...!! It was here that Chuunn met one of his friends and his greeting was "eenh eeeenh"! (if anybody gets that! :P :P... I m sure Aashish remembers!!)
So, it was time for the Mission LOCK! There was still no clue to where the keys of the lock had disappeared and there ws only one option left. Earlier me and Aashish had already brought a new lock). Mittal tried attacking the lock with a stone from the side.... it went on for sometime till the lock was disfigured but hardly seemed to give way. I called up Malpani for his inputs on how to break open a lock ... and he din'd provide us any valuable insights.







Sharada was the one who finally found a rod .. without which the lock wouldnt have opened. The rod was positioned and 2 shots from Mittal and the door opened! I dont think we did anything much after that ... We to the cour for a while... then returned ...

Dinner on the 11th was Awesome! We were a little late .. I was having dinner in the mess for the first time ... We sang songs all the time ... starting of "Chuunn Chala.. Chuunn Chala" and "Sharada->Shredder->Cheddar) .... it was awesome ... we were the last team sitting on the mess table... and singing and singing and singing ... Teraaaa Hone Lagaaa Hooon ....... Hone Lagaaaa Hoooooon ....... Jab Se Mila Hooooon........... Teeeeeeeeeraaaaaaaaaaaa............ one of the best nights in inter IIT!

10.12.2009

Early Morning 10 o clock practice slot! We felt that the one hour slot will not be enough, so as we were going to sleep, we had decided that we would leave the rooms at 8:30 and by 9 o clock go to the court. I couldnt sleep well that night. First, Mittal was on phone for a loon loong time(initially outside the room) so I got to keep the fan on and sleep for a while. At 2 in the night, I woke up and the fan was off. Tried sleeping without the fan but it didnt work out. Finally by 3:30, I'd had enuff and turned on the fan. Slept peacefully after that :) I woke up when Sharada and Nidhi were outside our room asking for food coupons. It was already 8:15, well past the time I had decided I would get up... (but its excused .. I hadnt slept well :P ). I did get a lot of snide comments from some ppl "aap to 8:30 court jaane wale the!" We managed to reach court by around 9:30. and the court was bathed in sunlight! (alrite... its an exaggeration .. :) but yeah... sunlight found its way on a non-negligible part of the 3rd court. ) Jitesh said that the shoe-fellow couldnt come in the morning and would probably make it in the evening. Mittal got Sidharth's shoes instead. We also found that we had no boxes with us. All our shuttle boxes were with the insti kit and all of them were out somewhr. We told Edwin sir that we would need the boxes, but it seemed like we would have to get thru this practice slot without shuttles... Eventually, we borrowed shuttles from the Kanpur team. I was feeling pretty embarrassed by then... first shoes...then shuttles ... what next... I wondered...I dint have to wait long for an answer as halfway into the practice, Mittal asked Jitesh to tell the show-fellow to get wristbands, socks too. So, apart from rackets, we had officially for everything related to Badminton that could be asked for. Wow! Talk about coming prepared... especially a Gold Winning Team! The practice session was nice. I did some shadows and shuttle run, and got a better feel of the court. Was finally able to move around as I liked. Dont remember a lot about the session apart from that. Mittal and I played a singles in which Mittal was leading 19-11... and he lost it from there :P :P :P ! We headed back to our hostel. All I remember about 10th was that we were sleeping for most of the day. In the evening, I had a chat with my friend from Nagpur. AA Bhaiya was sitting all the while listening to us... dunno how he dint get bored with our nonsense... We went to meet that shoe-fellow finally. Mittal got shoes, grips, wristbands, socks ... Mittal paid for everything... and started walking back to hostel... completely forgetting to take his new shoes with him! we went back to the mess. Outside the mess, KGP team had arrived. On seeing the KGP team, Mittal tried hiding his new shoes...(kept it on the floor beside the mess gate! What a plce to hide!!) I met my nemesis again... (@Mittal: This time.. not only mine :P ). We got talking and came to know that Angam and Abhijeet had been practising (Nervousnesss!!!!) We told Abhijeet that Anish dint come with us because of his brother's marriage and he was aghast! Completely violated "Anish ne bataya bhi nai Amit bhaiya ki shaadi ho rahi hai!!" and we said" Humko to invitation cards bhi mile! :P " By time time we finished chatting with them, Mittal had forgotten all about his shoes again! We decided to hv some fun and sent his shoes to TT team's room with Ketan. We all went to canteen after that and as we were eating, Mittal suddenly realized his shoes were missing ... AGAIN! After seeing him worked up for sometime, we told him that his shoes were "TAKEN CARE OF" ...

At night, Apurv came and set up the LAN settings on Mittal's lappy. We watched a couple of episodes of FRIENDS and slept off ... Pretty uneventful day as I recall it .. .

Does anybody remember anything else that happened?!

09/12/2009: Arrival at Kanpur

We were scheduled to arrive at Kanpur at 6:40 in the morning. By the time others woke me up, most of them were already packed and ready to get down (which effectively meant that I had to get up straightaway and couldn’t laze around for 5-10 minutes). So, I got everything packed, and even before I could brush my teeth and freshen up, we were at Kanpur. After unloading everything, the train was still at the station. So I got back into the train to brush my teeth. And suddenly, there was a horn. I immediately got down; with the brush in my mouth thinking our train was going to leave. It turned out that the train on the next platform was leaving, so I got back and completed my activities. Everybody was damn sleepy. Nidi was talking to her friend on the Kanpur station. As we were leaving from the station, I found it I actually knew that guy from Nagpur. We got on the IITK buses and there was a head count going on. Funnily, in the head count, there was an extra guy! Mittal and Reddy were laughing their heads off while trying to figure out how this was possible. As soon as the bus started, I slept, and slept soo soundly that I directly woke up when the bus stopped outside Hall 2 of IITK. I don’t remember a second of that journey. An interesting change from the last year… there was no “Mr. Lova Lova” at every point in the journey! We were shocked to see their hostels. They had proper modern buildings for their hostels, not like some 50s building in which we live. And the rooms … OMG! Huge double room, almost 2.5x the size of our holes in IITB. 2 tables, 2 cupboards, 2 tubelights everything! It was enough to make me think that we live in prison cells in bbay with the minor improvement of having a door in place of steel bars. The rooms were not yet allotted team-wise so we thought we could just grab any 2 rooms for the baddy team. Aashish, Chuun and I put our luggage in 2 rooms on the second floor and went off for breakfast. Their mess was also amazing, nice shiny flooring, some random equipment for keeping the used plates, almost looked Gullu to me. The only trouble with breakfast in the mess (and this was only for n-veg ppl) was the omelet guy. He used to make 1 omelet at a time and so would take infi time per person and the line would grow on and on and on. The water at Kanpur was horrible. It tasted all weird (we found out later that it was hard water) but yeah, it was clear we would not be able to drink it regularly. After lunch, Sharada, Aashish, Chuunn, Nidi and me went off in search of the baddy courts. Marchpast practice was scheduled for 4 PM, so Mittal was forbidding us to go. But we went anyways … and we took a long route to the new SAC. On the way, we saw the new hostels (or Halls as they call in Kanpur) and I was once again very pissed. Why do they get to live in such good building?!!? We tried to find solace in the fact that it would be verrry hot in Kanpur in summers and walking around the campus will be such a huge pain as compared to IITB. The new SAC was still in the process of being made ready for the matches. It looked an impressive building all the same. Inside, IITK people were practicing. I was shocked to see an awesome player inside who wasn’t in the team last year. According to our info, no new member had made it to IITK team. The familiar sense of imminent doom borne out of guilt of not practicing hard enough and taking for granted that we would win (that I have so well come to associate with the Inter IIT Days) came over me. I breathed a little easier when I found out that the GOD player was not from IIT and had been called just for practice. All the same, it was clear that Kanpur could be a pain! (they have a full-time coach, they had a camera and a laptop in the hall itself and to top it all, they had called players from outside to practice! And … and… Anish was out of practice) Thus began the many upswings and downswings of my confidence over the next 9 days. Jitesh came and talked to us. We asked him to arrange for shoes for Mittal. He was saying that some guy would come with the shoes in the evening. They had also given us a practice slot for that afternoon (which we eventually got shifted to evening 6:30 after the marchpast practice). The rooms were being allotted. We had rooms 219 and 220 for the baddy team. Once Anish came, Mittal was going to move in with the squash guys. We got our luggage out from the second floor room and placed it outside 220. Bored of waiting for the keys, I went down to the Warden’s Office where Mittal and Reddy were sitting surrounded by all the secys, some IITK orgies and a bunch of keys. It was all random. They didn’t have keys to all the rooms, some rooms had 3 keys, and some guy used to come running once in a while “240 ki mil gai”. It was clear that it would be a while before everything got sorted out. Aashish also came down and sat for a while. We got bored then and decided to go to the Shopping Center to get our phones recharged. Chuunn was sitting outside the room with all the luggage. So aashish and me made a quick trip to the ShopC and got our phones working again. By the time we returned, Mittal had found the keys to our rooms thankfully and we got the luggage moved. We then had lunch in the mess. (was OK as far as I remember.. nothing great). Mittal called up Apurv Nakade to let him know that we’d reached IITK. I was shocked at the way Mittal introduced me to Apurv. I grabbed the phone from him and told him I was Raunak from Nagpur and he understood. We slept for a while, atleast I tried to… Mittal was continuously bugged by people from different teams for god knows what all and if nothing, he was on phone. At 4, all of us got ready for the marchpast practice and assembled in front of Hall 2. Edwin sir was also there. There was still confusion going on over when Sukhada would come. I don’t remember exactly what the situation was on 9th but it concerned Pappu, Sukhada’s parents and Edwin sir. Eventually it was decided that Edwin sir would talk to Sukhada’s parents the next day. Sir then came up with a customary “Edwin-sir” joke. He asked me to call up Anish and tell him that he need not come as we would play Sharada as our fifth player. I had a talk with Anish and confirmed when he was reaching. Then we walked to the cricket ground where the marchpast practice was to be held. It seemed soo funny and embarrassing to be walking with such a big contingent with everyone in proper attire and practising for MARCHPAST!!! Reddy had new commands to teach us “Khula Line Chal” and “Nikat Line Chal”. When I first heard the commands, I couldn’t make a head or tail out of it. I thought it was something in gulti that he was shouting. Eventually, I could make out what he was trying to say. Anyways, the practice was a very weird situation. There was IITK students on the ground, who probably would laugh their heads off as soon as we left. But, we continued our practice, deriving some sort of pleasure in our shamelessness. :P It was easily the best practice that we’d done (probably because everyone wanted to get over with it as soon as possible). It was really funny to hear one of the coaches say “Remember your positions for day after”…. As if that was going to happen in a contingent of 100 odd people!!! Chuunn would get random moments of enthu during the marchpast and would start shout “ek do ek” at the top of his voice suddenly for a while, and then would stop. The series of “Lasts of Inter IIT 2009” had already begun. Our last marchpast practice of Inter IIT 2009. (Though not many would be very sad about that :P) We got ready and went for practice after the marchpast. Mittal couldn’t play much as he didn’t have his shoes. I found the court really tough to move on. It was not slippery at all and going near the net seemed like a real pain. I did some shadows to get my movement right, but didn’t help a lot. The first toss I attempted, I completely missed the shuttle. Another out of nervousness followed. The shuttle seemed to be coming extra slow on this court (which was expected as they had a much bigger hall as compared to us…. Still I couldn’t help thinking “What if we just don’t get accustomed to the flight!?”) It was also kinda cold inside the court and the shuttle seemed to be drifting. (I found out later that it was because a window was open which I couldn’t locate earlier). The lighting was horrible! It came straight in the eye along the side lobby and also reflected off the court at certain places. Aashish wasn;t too happy with the court and his game too. Interestingly, Mittal didn’t have a single pain with all this. He claimed that his height was optimal for the court :P. Girls seemed to be having pains too. Sharada was hardly moving on the court. Nidi has a weird fascination for hitting the net repeatedly. Every time the shuttle got stuck in the net, she would derive great pleasure in hitting the net repeatedly to get it out. Chuunn on the other hand was perfectly happy with the court and the flight. He was saying over and over again “Masst lag raha hai yahaaan khelke” He was able to hit almost every shot to his liking. Thus ended our first practice session in Kanpur. In any case, it wasn’t the most encouraging practice session we had. For one thing, not all four of us could even play together, because of the shoe problem. We left the court around 9- 9:30 and I think we went to the Campus Restaurent for dinner. Mittal didn’t accompany us as he had board meeting. I liked the food in Campus Restaurant. All of us ordered sweet corn soup which felt awesome with a lot of pepper in our sore throats. Funniest thing was, Sharada and I ordered Aalu matar at first, but the waiter told us that he couldn’t make it as he didn’t have any peas. When later I asked if he could make green peas pulao, he said he could! Eventually, my green peas pulao didn’t have a single pea! It still tasted good though. We walked all the way back to the hostel and I called up Ravi Vikram Singh (the coordinator for Baddy and TT) for practice slots for the next day. (Early morning .. Eghhhh ). I had one of the many fights I would have over the fan with Mittal. Eventually, I gave up and he did not switch on the fan. But …. But … when I couldn’t sleep till 3 in the morning, I switched on the fan and slept peacefully. :)