Things were not so simple as they first appeared. When my friend and ex roomie bhende had first aired the idea of attending shaastra, the IIT chennai techfest, I had said, big deal! Lets go for it! And it had seemed simple enough. With loads of time at hand, at that time, it seemed just a matter of booking the tickets and starting off. Bhende was specially pumped up about the mine-detector problem. Without bothering about the techno details- the problem was to create a fully autonomous robo that will follow the white lines in a grid, detect mines (metal bobs) placed in the intersections and dig them out. Interestingly enough, Bhende made it sound like child's play. He rounded up chanchal and toni to his side as well.
despite all the hullabaloo raised at the time, nothing solid could be done for at least a month, thanks to mid seems and our wondrous preparations, which always started on the 11th hour.
once the midsems were behind us, we went back to the drawing boards for planning and execution, but as one can expect, only one week was left for the journey dates now. Tickets are never a hassle fro svnitans, we had them booked earlier.
now comes the tough part. One session with chanchal's senior gave us the glorious revelation that the microcontroller interfacing required for the mine detector is way beyond our reach... with buckets of cold water down bhendes fire of enthu, we sordidly decided to go for the time tested robo sumo event.
with only 5 days in hand, we started our endeavor to put all pieces together. To start with, we pleaded drishti for four 100rpm motors, a request that was sympathetically turned down, owing to our promptness ( pun intended) in placing the request. We had to settle for 150 rpm motors costing 250/- each... (that's the way the money goes... pop goes the weasel...) the work on the robo took off... at a slow and elephantine pace, we started building the body.
In the meantime, all the administrative crap started getting the better of us. I started going around the campus to get the hundreds of applications signed, stamped and submitted. One for leave, one for concession, one to get a hole drilled in aluminum from the workshop. just imagine, it took me over two hours to get the last one, while the actual job took only 5 minutes! That's SVNIT men!
by the time all the applis and certis were duly signed and in place, we found that we haven't progressed much with the actual thing. the 15x15 size limit for the robo was proving to b a real hurdle. All sorts of designs and shapes were proposed and rejected, we shuttled between a pyramid and a hexagon for a long time... someone was great enough to propose a 'dumbbell' shaped body!! and trust me, 36 24 36 is what he named it... engineers...
in the end we realized that shape of the body is a thing of future, first we'll have to get the thing rolling... not a child's play as we could see.
with only two days in hand, the circuit was becoming a Herculean problem. We tried to bulid our own transmitter-receiver, spent over two grands over the ICs and all, failed, and settled for a 250 bucks toy car circuit from shanivari.... same as what everyone else did. what frustration......

by the end of september, despite my involvement in kashish anchoring and all, we were able to give our robo the basic shape of a car.... err ... cart would be a better word perhaps.
with all the gizmos and gears packed, and the car(t) neatly stuffed inside a shoe box, we started off for our rendezvous with the 4th metro.
The 30 hours train journey was mostly eventless, apart from my lovely white sport shoes getting stolen and my only pair of clean socks gone with it... wearing slippers and two days worth of filth from the train, we landed gloriously into Channai!
None of us had had the foresight to get ourselves registered for hospitality in IIT and by the time we logged on to the site, it was closed down. So most of us were faced with the problem of accommodation. We did the obvious, shuttled upto Adyar, and checked into a cheap yet comfortable lodge, the Adyar Guest House.
By the time we got ourselves scrubbed and fed... the first day in Chennai was nearly over.

Next morning, i.e. 5th of october, we decided to splash around in marina beach... time was ample as the fest was to start in the evening. After managing to push everyone out of the beds somehow, we started off towards the second largest beach in Asia.
The bus journey had just started looking like a one way journey thru hell when suddenly we could smell the salt... and lo! there it lay before u... the gigantic golden expanse of maiden marina...
Half the day went away in twisting and turning in the velvety foams of the sea... the ripples of bay of Bengal gently caressing our minuscule bodies and souls...
By the evening, we all were back to the hotel, showered, had lunch and were ready to go off to ground zero... the IIT itself.
The first view of the IIT gate will give any SVNITan a feeling of euphoria as ur heart leaps up and says... "yeah! we have a bigger gate!" but the feeling runs away soon as u coldly realise that that's almost the only thing where we're bigger than IIT chennai.
The four km distance from the main gate to Gajendra circle, the iit analogue to pmc (and of course, a blown up version) is covered by the regular bus shuttles... some of which are electric... oh dear...
once reaching the help desk, we quickly retrieved the info brochures and itineraries for the coming days and events. A bit of roaming about in the campus, cold coffee at the nescafe joint... and soon we were too tired to walk an inch for a mile...

the first day was over....

The next two days were a blur. waking up at 8, bathing in pell Mel, stuffing some breakfast down the throat, catch a shuttle to IIT, reach GC, run for the guest lectures or workshops, come out of one with face buried in the event list, run for the next... that's the way the first two days were spent. Who got into which event is pointless to discuss as drishti's already doing a great job with it.
Then came saturday, the day for our robo to pound the battlefields to dust.
most of the teams from our college had managed to finish building the bot by 9th morning, we included. By the time we reached the IIT SAC, rest of our college was already there. The event started at 9:30 am, sharp 45 minutes late ( come on now... even iit has got only engineers). once the event got off, our college was everywhere! a whopping 21 teams, one coming every few minutes and a huge crowd to back up every other team. (And who cares if our bot's name 'torc' was misprinted in the list as 'porc' ??)
11 teams, plus one from SCET cleared the elimination rounds, ours included. Rest of the statistics is histrory, just that our state of elation diffused soon as our 'torc' was trampled brutally by the would be champions of AC Patil collage, the tarantula.

The tournament and half the day lost, we the broken war horses started our way back... the penultimate day had drawn to an end for us...

We'd planned to roam about the city a bit the next day. Being the last day of shaastra, there weren't many events scheduled, and none of our interest. we made a quick trip to the helpdesk to retrieve our certificates( apart from the finalists, everyone else were refused point blan!!) and went off the the great shopping mall - spencer plaaza.
The day went off in a frenzy of shopping and roaming... soon it was time to pack...
we boarded the homebound train next morning, endured another eventless yet tiring journey and were soon back in the kingdom of gujjus...
there is just one point in the stirrer that calls for the attention of the layman. We go to IITs for such events and often leave a mark there, as we definitely did this time. But when will the day come when the reverse will happen? Will ever the IIT people be coming to NITs for a fest or an event? Education ministry... are u listening???