Aastha Kapoor

“With acads, interns, placements and everything else, it can get difficult, but don’t stress out. Log ye sochte rehte hai ki kya ham bhi machau ban payenge? 4th year tak sab machau ho jaate hai.”

Q. Where are you from? Tell us a bit about yourself

I was born and brought up in Bhopal. Initially we lived in different places but my mother was very scared that I’d speak shuddh hindi when I grew up and that’s why we relocated to the city. Along with pursuing Civil engineering, I was a part of Insync, Styleup, Aakar and the Culinary club (yes, it exists) over the course of my insti life.

Q. A significant part of your insti life was spent online. What changes did you see in the offline vs online part of your college life?

The online period was not as bad as you think it would have been. Everyone was really active – we used to spam comments on facebook groups, and have meets regularly to keep the flow going. I spent a large part of my time cooking various dishes, which led me to start the culinary club along with 3 of my friends! We spent 1.5 years online, seeing the same people again and again on video calls, but when we came back to insti, everyone seemed a little different. It was a bit hard to accept that you don’t know everyone, but again everyone got busy with acads and other stuff, which was much more fun to experience in an offline manner.

Q. What was your most memorable experience in Civil?

Okay so I’m sure everyone knows about a Professor in Civil who is infamous for giving bad grades and failing entire batches (Yes, that’s him). There was a course in which seniors had specifically told us to study for midsems warna seedha fail ho jaoge. He had said that the passing marks would be 25, and he doesn’t mind failing everyone if that happens.  Obviously, midsems didn’t go well and everyone except for a few students were scoring poorly in the quizzes. Endsems tak bhi kaafi time waste ho chuka tha. We thought it would be better to drop the course than to repeat after failing, so I, along with some other friends, did. That led to a chain reaction and out of 60, 56 people ended up dropping the course! One of the 4 people thought ki Prof 4 log ko toh pass kar hi dega but bechara, he ended up failing the course as well.

Q. Any funny incident from your insti life that you’d like to share with us?

I was always good at breaking locks (just Bhopal things :p). The terrace of H15 used to be closed at the time. So after getting an AP in the workshop course in first year, with all tools handy, we used to break the lock of the terrace door multiple times and go up there to hang out. At one point, the administration got so fed up that they ended up replacing the door with a piece of plywood! Sadly, this was the end of our short term criminal career.

Q. Do you have a message for your fellow batchmates?

Thank you for making my insti life so interesting and for the life lessons. I don’t have much to say, but these lessons taught me that life is not what you think it is. We lose friends through the journey, some stick till the end with us, but the bright side is that you get to meet a lot of new people, they help you develop your personality into what it is today and that’s just beautiful to experience.

Q. If you had to do it all over again, and not repeat a single thing, what would you change?

I’d choose mechanical, just because CPI acchi milti hai. I’d wish that I’d get to live all of it offline rather than online. I would love to be a part of Insight – always wanted to experience freshie journalism. Didn’t have any 3rd year POR earlier so would like to experience that as well. Remember the prof I mentioned earlier? I’ve never seen him in real life, just online. I’d love to meet him in person once.

Q. Insti favorites?

Favorite place: Gymkhana grounds at night – they’re truly peaceful.

Favorite eatery: Amul, the veg cheese jumbo burger is something to cherish for life

Favorite Movie: ZNMD – friends and paise