6 girls & a guy, whosoever heard it in my friend circle declared him a ‘lucky dude’ but how lucky it turned out for him only he knows ;) he is our Pandeyji..
It started with him and ended as well..For he was the topic of our discussion most of the times (not for any good reasons, though)..it was him who booked our seats for purshottom express which took almost 24-26 hrs to reach our destination that could have been covered in less than half of this time had we chosen other train. Nevertheless, we enjoyed it as we got more time together.
On 23rd night I reached New Delhi railway station! It was the first time I took a short, week day trip ONLY with friends and therefore was li’l scared..scared to be going to a distant place without family (mebbe its kiddish of me, but its true). But soon it was over.
My friends and I had been looking forward to the trip so we didn’t want to waste any time at all. After we finished our classes in daytime; as some had already brought their luggage in the campus while others like me had planned to go to home n return to station. Our compartment was firing with noise, laughter. We discussed every possible topics ranging from dowry to caste-system to “Hema” etc to pass our time. Played Antakshari to beat the time, clicked number of photos. In b/w Manisha, Ankita; while I was sleeping, screwed up Pandey.haha..
I can say ,Our journey was fruitful as Paulomi finished an entire novel and I finished a half read novel which I was planning to do from time immemorial..lol!
We reached to the world’s longest platform i.e. Kharagpur at 2:10 am 25th morning, n took taxi to reach to our allotted ‘Vishwesarya guest house’. The room we got was just awesome.. the entire day we had nothing to do but to just explore the campus. It was a large campus, and many plants on it. But what impressed me most was the atmosphere and greenery there. The campus is one of the largest campus of our country or may be Asia.Between those similar looking buildings were many narrow paths; beside these paths lay green trees swaying in the breeze. I took a deep breath, relaxing myself, and enjoyed the serene, peaceful moment.
There’s a famous Tech market, which had almost everything. Sunlight shinning on us through leaves was not flashing but mild. We stayed out till the night darkened the sky. There was one open restaurant where most of the crowd used to gather in the evening n night. As we dint know much of the place then, so did our breakfast-lunch-dinner at our guesthouse only. The food was yuck!
The next day was the day of work. The purpose of our visit i.e. workshop was on
“ Bioinformatics in Genomics and Proteomics” the first day was of only lectures by the faculty of Deptt. Of Biotechnology, IITkgp and some other universities. I was seated with Pandey away from rest of my frens..
later I got to know that they were found sketching cartoons during some of the lectures. :)
from left: paulomi,preeti, myself,manisha and ankita
[this was after the workshop has ended]
All those who came from other universities were different ppl, not indulging in talks or else but towards end it all became interactive; even with pandey’s roomie who was once chosen a suitable match for paulomi..lol!
Bengalis really like rasogullas so much that it was a part of every meal even with breakfast! Phew!!
But damn!! The lady attendant at food counter was horrible; she used to give us “Zee horror show” type looks whenever we went to ask for food.
The act of sleeping according to my roomies was a prohibited act .so slept very little there utilizing our time in other activities.
But the best part was when we met Biman and Nandana at Sahara restaurant. They are research scholars in Prof. Kundu’s Tissue engineering lab.i also met my super super senior from grad’n college who is now doing research from iitkgp only. That restaurant is the heart of IITkgp in the evening with all sorts of crowd of B.Techs,M Techs, research scholars etc. we talked like anything with ‘em.so down-to-earth persons they were.
After dinner they took us all for a long walk of the entire campus finally reaching to Nandana’s Laxmibai hostel for women where we weren’t allowed to enter as it was already exceeding 11 pm.
IITkgp campus is the safest campus, we were walking at 12 or so in night. N that was just fun!
Next day was hands-on-training day at Takhshila hall, as promised by Biman sir, organized by all the ‘young’ not so boring type research scholars and that no one would feel bore as previous day. We learnt DNA->RNA->PROTEIN conversions on all the bioinfo tools including restriction enzymes modification followed by Ramsol software program which was the most coolest and interesting thing to do.
After the hectic day, we again met Biman and Nandana for dinner at Sahara’s. she invited us to her hostel which again was a memorable experience..
The trip was short but a very good one. Traveling with friends, I have different feelings about everything. But what’s different is that I can share these feelings with my friends, so do they. With different people, you have different feelings. And this is also why the trip with friends can be so interesting and fascinating to anyone.
