There was something in IIT I've never criticized - the food. Most writers who have eaten four years' of meals here tell everyone who has not how terrible it can get. I disrespectfully disagree. I could not have been more pleasantly surprised when that first piece of (paneer*, was it?) slid past my lips and didn't make me regurgitate. Since then, I've rarely come across a bad meal (and I've tasted some pretty apalling stuff) at the messes here. They may not be fit to serve for a grand dinner but they are never inedible. Part of the glamour, I believe, lies in the criticism - it unobtrusively places one at a level above the common hosteller (a word almost always replaced by the annoyingly erroneous 'hostelite'), proclaiming to all who may care to interpret it that one has been brought up on the grub of kings.
Occasionally, a truly dreadful dish does enter the weekly menu but more often than not the long arm of democracy hurls it back out, leaving behind only an unpleasant aftertaste and a enlivening conversational topic for those otherwise subdued dinners.
Tonight, as of now, I shall digress from my mildly cynical stand and speak of more pressing issues through my own biased eyes. To get straight to the point:
RGgiri. This dreaded word is a popular term for an unpopular trait. RG is the IITian acronym for Relative Grading, a concept thoughtlessly borrrowed from the west along with countless other trifles. IIT does not encourage intellectual brilliance - it promotes relative brilliance. If you shined in the past there is every possibility that you will be outshined here. But it is also possible - nay, probable - that collective ineptitude will rule the day. Relative Grading is the institute's way of differenciating between its many students and it is by far the worst way to judge people.
The near-universal acceptance of this system of grading does not deter me, for I am a witness to the bitterness that it can cause. At the end of every quiz (read: test) or exam, the average IIT student is not so worried about how well he has done; it is others' misfortunes that delight him, their mistakes his gains, their success his bane. This mentality, if strictly restricted to classrooms, would not be half as deteriorating as it otherwise is. Students however have the unnerving capacity to compromise their standards and fall in with the system (of grading). They act in accordance with it and turn competitive to the point of boredom. Hostility, though very covert, ensues and any chance at a close-knit student community is tossed out of the window.
The reason we still have some of the camaraderie talked of outside is perhaps because not everyone falls prey to the invidious grading. There are those who shun academics as an excuse for nothing better to do with one's time. I am inclined to fall in with this latter lot as I see them less dependent on the shortcomings of others for their enjoyment.
Some would claim that a relative system would make it easier for companies to efficiently pick the best guys. But since when has IIT's priority been the companies? Why must the students live in such an inherently hostile environment for the sake of companies?
If it appears that I am exaggerating, count the suicides from these elite institutions. Recently I stumbled upon a blog of a friend of one of the dead and read his forthright and angry article directed at the faculty. Academic pressure in IIT is high enough to burst any bubble of protective apathy, and sometimes it drives a student to the other side of the tunnel. The tunnel of light, the tunnel to the Other side.
FOOTNOTES
* Paneer is the Hindi term for cottage cheese.
