Reflections from IIT Kharagpur: A Journey of Friendship, Learning, and Growth
After graduating from IIT Kharagpur, Archi was a software engineer with Wipro for a year before going to IIM Lucknow to do his MBA. After that, he worked with GE and HP, before starting Thoucentric in 2015 (a consulting firm specializing in Supply chain, Finance, and Sales & Distribution, through Project Management, Business Applications, and Analytics). Thoucentric was acquired by a Chrys Capital portfolio company, Xoriant Corporation, in 2023. Archi continues to head Thoucentric as part of the acquisition.
The hostel(s) and wing(s) and room(s)
Let me start with my Day Zero experience from the summer of 1994 — I left for Kharagpur, still on a high from my JEE success (albeit metered down by my not-so-great AIR) — and looking forward to transforming myself into an easily employable adult. I admit, I was also apprehensive about an IITian-only environment and if I would enjoy that for four years. I did not know any IITians personally till then. All my childhood exposure was limited to a distant neighborhood of Monirampore, in Barrackpore (best known for Shahid Mangal Pandey, military barracks, police training center, and Hooghly river), a suburb of Kolkata. It was followed by 2 years of education in a Kolkata school, and I felt ready for the journey ahead. I took the local train from Howrah to KGP with a holdall bag and suitcase — accompanied by my elder sister, her boyfriend (now my brother-in-law), and my mother. On the train, I kept hoping to see other similar travelers to KGP. After a reasonable set of new students gathered at the KGP station, an Insti bus took us to “VS hall of residence” — a hostel dedicated to first-year male students like me. The dedicated hostel was supposed to protect us from being troubled by seniors, we were told. After getting the room allocated, and laying my bed, my family left to catch one of the evening trains back to Kolkata. It was the time before the internet and cell phones — I felt left alone in a new world that I had to adjust to — a world that would help me grow as an adult. That day I made acquaintances with two of my next-door neighbours Anshuman (from Bokaro) and Vivek Singh (from Patna). Just when I was thinking I got lucky that my roommate probably ditched IIT to do something else, and I could have a separate room to myself; my roommate Deepak Kumar Singh (from Sindri) walked in with confidence late at night. For most of the year, the 4 of us converted the 2 rooms into a sleeping room (for all 4 of us) and a study room (severely utilized as a bhaat / adda room by more than just the 4 of us). Today I still call Deepak, Vivek, and Anshuman, my friends that I can count on. Thanks to the then recently implemented concept of a dedicated first-year hostel — I knew almost my entire batch of about 400 students. And knowing all my batchmates came in very handy in my post-KGP life.
Yes — I made thick friendships in KGP. In that IITian-only environment that overwhelmed the fun-loving adult teenager in me, I made friends for life. Anshuman and I have had a wonderful time as families over time, Vivek, Deepak, and I moved to LLR hall of residence and we became wingmates by choice — and have remained in touch by choice — and we have also found some ways to work together from time to time. Similar friendships with many more graduated into choosing wing-mates in our third and final years. Saurabh, Upreti, Nishit, Kundu, Kassera, Suman (Delta), Suman (Nandi), Abir, Saket, DK, and of course IP — were part of the experiences one can construct a tele-series around. Hope this blog reaches you somehow. Saurabh and my family speak as much with each other as the 2 of us do! I am gladly and fondly, in touch with most of my wingies — and we all cherish our hostel days in our ways.
It’s a place where you will make friends for life — Smart, Sincere, Ambitious, Unique in their ways — and people who can all make a big difference in whatever they put their minds to.
Cherish these relationships. Whether you think you are making friends or not — you will, make friends for life. I do hope that in this world of devices and the internet — KGPians still spend time ‘with’ people around them.
A look at some of our honourable ATOPians. In the backdrop you can see the Lala Lajpat Rai hostel. Once a Lajpatian, always a Lajpatian
Sitting from left: Nishit Kumar, Saurabh Mukherjee, Dipak Kumar Singh, Prakash Upreti, Indrajit Paul
Please identify them yourselves in the next few pics :-)
The extracurriculars
I had spent a lot of time participating in multiple extra-curricular activities — Illu as a pure volunteer, various sports, some cultural events as a volunteer again, spring fest, and working as a sports secretary for our hostel — to name a few. How can I forget campaigning for my friends and hostel mates for insti elections! It has helped me learn how to work with others as a team, and how there is something to learn from everyone around you. Some sports experiences specifically taught me how to be effective (or ineffective 😊) as a leader.
I do hope that most KGPians participate in group activities and learn to play different types of roles given the relative construct of the group. In some cases, it’s better to let someone else lead, and just be a participant/follower to make sure the team performs well. I learned to focus on my strengths when executing to some desired output. A lot of time I had focused on working on my weaknesses, attempting to strengthen them. As important as that might be, whenever that took my focus away from executing to my strengths the trade-off was never worth it.
The Final year Project experience.
All my classroom experiences culminated in my final year project experience. The entire set of soon-to-graduate final year students walking into the computer lab trying to get hold of a PC, writing code, project reports, and coming out with prints — being sleepless for 2–3 nights in a row was not uncommon.
I had to learn very fast and convert that learning into something meaningful for my guide’s larger research. It taught me how to meet a schedule around deliverables and of course, it taught me visual C++. I used one of the rarest lab equipment a budding civil engineer could get their hands on. Something that passes white light through a model structure (built of photochromic material) under stress, resulting in fringes based on the stress taken by the object at different points! It was in 1998! It was cool! I felt privileged to have access to that infrastructure in India in 1998. It speeded up my ability to learn new things to get a workable output. Thanks to Prof Nirjhar Dhang, my project guide, I did learn so much from my project — I got the confidence to be able to pull off something completely new.
The placement experience:
I had a really tough time at placements — getting rejected in the interviews — multiple times over. I didn’t know what I wanted to do in life at that stage (except wanting to do an MBA) — my learning: if you don’t know what you want to do — go for a series of things and see where you land — typically the system takes care of things and lands you where you fit in. However, knowing what you want to do, takes away a lot of uncertainty and pain from the process of landing somewhere enjoyable. It is important to know what you want to do. However, there’s no hurry if one does not know it yet, and even if one knows it, it can change over time.
Options in work-life have multiple correct choices — I have always focused on the one at hand that I could grab and tried to enjoy the process of living it.
Closure and the lack of diversity experience
With all the good things in KGP — there were the not-so-good things also. They are a function of the times we live in, our age at that time and so many more contemporary contexts.
There were bitter experiences too, for many people including myself. Competitive and ambitious people come with their baggage — as many of us did, including myself. There were bitter conflicts around from time to time, and there were disappointments. Some people might start putting a lot of pressure on themselves in an environment like the IIT campus.
The best way for me to handle pressure was to figure out a way to not feel it, but enjoy the process instead.
Given the day and age we live in today, and in hindsight, I do hope one thing changes about KGP life. I was a heterosexual young male — a significant majority on campus in our time. There were very few women — some of the sharpest minds in the country — and I am not sure that life was as enjoyable for a young adult female on campus. As a father of two teenage daughters, with an engineer and MBA wife, and the perspectives I have got outside my KGP life — I hope KGP has become/is becoming a more enjoyable place for everyone — and not only for the heterosexual male residents.
Everything said, my KGP life was something I wouldn’t trade anything else for. I had fun!
~Archi Bagchi, Dept of Civil Engg , 1998, LLR Hall of Residence
