While studying in 12th standard, I applied to appear in IIT Joint Entrance. The application form came to me in a brown envelope, with the acronym IITD/JEE/xyz written in one corner. I remember the fondness with which I noticed the seven characters: IITD/JEE. It seemed like a distant, cherished, perhaps unattainable dream.
I did not know about IITs when I graduated from class 10. One day I noticed an advert in the paper for a correspondence course to help students prepare for IIT joint entrance. The company advertising was called Brilliant Tutorials based in Madras.
I, and my family, thought it was well worth it to prepare for and to take the entrance exam. I studied mostly at leisure. I never woke up at an unearthly hour, or stayed awake beyond bedtime. My normal 11th and 12th standard college regimen was a breeze. I never took any in-person coaching.
Once a distant relative visited us, and he sternly chided me on my leisurely studying, and told me that unless I woke up at 4 every morning, or unless I studied till midnight or beyond, I had no hope in hell of succeeding.
My hometown was not known to produce IIT graduates, and when the fact of my preparing for JEE became known in my locality, I was the laughing stock of many youngsters, one of whom said that he would change his name if I didn't crash and burn at the entrance exam. The teachers at my 11th and 12th standard college were dismissive and insulting of their students, and took pride in their haughty condescension.
Our home was near a university, and both my parents were teachers in that university. I therefore had ready access to the university library, and read many a text meant for undergraduate and postgraduate science degrees. Sometimes I could only understand one or two chapters, and at other times it was instructive to read books designed and written with far greater care and quality than the Indian textbooks I normally had for my college syllabus.
Due to those university books, my interest was not just in solving problems but in educating myself. Those days of being a self-paced learner, an autodidact, someone who studied for pleasure, was one of the happiest periods of my life.
In the end, I got the JEE All India Rank 19, and was ranked third in the North zone, with two students from Delhi ahead of me.
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I loved computers, but had no access to computer at school, at my college, or at home. I chose to study Computer Science at IIT Delhi, and from the very early days, it was a nightmare and a debacle. Ugly hostels, bad food, a terrible discouragement to do anything but study the prescribed syllabus, a woeful library that had nothing but textbooks, a crammed curriculum, subjects which were taught without passion, some sadistic teachers, attendance requirements, and hardly any time to think and reflect. This was in stark contrast to a life of leisurely intellection and study in my hometown.
The one positive was ready access to computing machinery, and instead of spending my time trying to get good grades, I spent almost all my free time tinkering with personal computers, mainframes, and multi-user Unix systems.
Except for courses in Logic and Philosophy and the Humanities, which I genuinely enjoyed, I did not have good grades. I trudged through the four years at IIT Delhi, and got thoroughly disenchanted with studying for grades. I copied assignments, cheated in some quizzes, and became generally alienated from the official curriculum, while gaining tremendous felicity with systems administration. A few courses did hold my interest, but those were very unpleasant four years. I wished to be rid of being in that cage, and not being able to physically leave IIT, I instead became interested in transcendental philosophy, social activism and alternative ways of living.
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I had become almost the best in a country by having space and freedom for two years. But I became a recluse and a shell of a person by going through four years of IIT. Many of my IIT friends lost their balance from that trauma, and have still not regained it, and struggle with feelings of inadequacy and maladjustment.
For me, preparing to get into IIT was a great joy. But the actual reward, the actual being at IIT, was a disaster. The acronym that had enchanted me, IITD/JEE, proved to be a conjunction of hell and heaven.
During my fourth year at IIT Delhi, I appeared for the GATE exam for entrance to post-graduate courses at IISc or at the IITs, and I think I got a rank that was in the top 40. But I chose not to study further, and decided pretty much to drop out of society.
Many of my fellow classmates went to do their Masters in Computer Science, but I know they had no passion for the subject, and even less the courage to live an authentic life. Even today, I find them disinterested in a new advance in computing or science or philosophy, with their energies focused on their careers and the careers of their children.
I imagine that these days even that heaven of preparing for JEE has become hellish for many, with students choosing rather to die than go through the endless coaching. And I have no reason to think that the actual experience at the IITs has gotten any better.
My moderate professional success has no doubt been partly due to my IIT pedigree, but that is no commendation of its killing the soul of so many students. IITs get the very best of brains in India, and then choose to trample over them. Many of its students eventually do great things after they leave, but that is more a tribute to the innate intellectual ability of the students than to any nourishing of that ability by the IITs.
