Down to the dogs

The state of IIT Delhi hostels has gone from bad to pathetic these days. As if the prevalent mess “food” was not touching the seabed in terms of their quality, a new way to make it go even deeper has been introduced. Machines which would be making part of the main course (The main course is the only course served). And the products of these machines are definitely taking the popularity of the food to rock bottom levels. Meanwhile, the butlers are happy – though not very much visible – as it would mean less work.

But this is nothing if you read below. There is no provision for internet access at the hostels. The students have been barred from using proxies for fast internet access. The connection speed these days is so slow that before going for our food at the mess, we open a page on the net so that when we return, atleast half the page would have been loaded.

It all started when the people from the Computer Science department started noticing, that there has been much use by the students of the privilege of proxy. The usage had lead to deterioration of the speed of net access for everyone. So, the administrators felt why everyone (read faculty) should suffer. Let the culprits (read students) bear the burden. So, they barred anyone from using proxies.

The aftermath has been pretty disastrous. We have no way to check our mails. So, our mail accounts which never had more than 2 unread messages at a time has grown so long, that we have to visit pages after pages to see the list of unread messages. Many students like myself who are not fond of visiting laboratories, now have to succumb. We had avoided these visits, in our entire stay at IIT, even in difficult times of assignments. But the net access trick finally bowed us out.

But the laboratory scene is not quite romantic either. These laboratories, which once saw an outflow of students only at times of project presentations and assignment demonstration, have lately been filled. Well, ‘filled’ is rather understating. There is no room at all. The usual inmates of the laboratories are still present. But these days they are quite annoyed, for they have started experiencing competition and in a field they are not accustomed to face one.

For every computer, there are atleast two people waiting to pounce on it if given an opportunity (or sometimes waiting to create such an opportunity). Even with this in the background, the person using the computer is “busy” on stuff which is purely meant for leisure. So, he may be doing some “work” on Orkut. He would be looking at photos of his friend or of some”body” he would like to make his friend. He would be writing and reading messages, which if not read for another year, would not affect anyone’s life.