A Night In The Life Of An IIM Student

Disclaimer: Everything stated in this document is factual information which can be verified at any point by picking up any random PGP 1 student at IIM Indore. None of this is a figment of my imagination. If you are a highly empathetic person, please don’t read further. You are at a risk of putting yourself to great agony and mental pressure. Issued in public interest.

00:00 hours:  The time when normal people go to sleep (an assumption, on account of not knowing  what normal is like) is when the life of an IIM Indore PGP student starts. A point of clarification here: when I say ‘starts’, I don’t mean we’ve been resting before that. We probably have just ended a 24 hour cycle of sessions, meetings of clubs and committees, quizzes, classes, more quizzes (surprise surprise) and the like. So yeah, 12 am, that’s the time when most of the people on your Gmail list think of you, send you ‘gentle reminders’ and want you to complete crucial grade (read life) altering projects within two hours.

00:30 hours: After staring at our screens for 30 minutes (it’s an excruciatingly long thirty minutes) only to feel hopeless about the day to follow, we usually go to “night mess”. This hub of social activity,  kicks into high gear at midnight, just like our lives.

If there’s anybody who has learnt the fundamental lesson of making money by targeting the inelastic demands of people, it is this place. It lets you sample the same selection of incredibly overpriced flatbreads and ‘chilly rubber’ (read paneer) which from the moment of ingestion begins its journey (inevitable) towards anti peristalsis that shall occur the day after. But you know what? We still eat it. Why? First! Because beggars are not choosers and second, because with time you develop the immunity (or so you convince yourself every single time). Just Kidding! :P it’s not that bad!

01:30 hours: 60 precious minutes later, a glance at the whiteboard (which hasn’t been white since its entry into our rooms. Also, every second more stuff is added to it, hardly anything subtracted) reveals an urgent task that till now had been dutifully ignored after.We then proceed to slog through a submission to be made at 2:29:59 am. 15 minutes of creative unproductive thinking, 15 minutes of data sharing, 15 minutes of ‘numbers crunching’, 10 minutes of plagiarism checks and 5 minutes of final touch-ups and right at 2:29:58 am, hit the send button.

2:30 hours: This is usually the power break before a meeting/interview to be held at 3:00 am. With the mail that comes this time, there comes a dress code: smart casuals/ business casuals/ business formals and all possible permutations and combinations. So usually people use this power break to scan all that they have; pool clothes, polish shoes and create the best out of the waste in their rarely touched wardrobes.

4:00 hours: I didn’t skip the hours. I was attending the meeting with all sincerity (kept alive with caffeine pumping in my veins, my thoughts questioning the purpose of my existence). So this is the time when we look at our beds intently, imagine an hour of sleep, then look away because it hurts to think of forbidden love, something you can never have. With tears in our eyes and dark circles beneath, every PGP student takes out the pre-readings for 8:45 am classes to follow.

6:00: hours: The time before the vicious cycle of lectures takes over, some privileged souls who got a laundry slot go to sleep while the not so lucky ones make arrangements to clad themselves for the days to come.

7:00 hours: *dream sequence*

“Welcome to hell!” the professor introduced the life to come. A student, oblivious to the severity of this life, let out a sincere laugh at the exaggeration”.

*wakes up terrified*

Is it also an exaggeration if I say that this is a flashback and not a mere dream?! Snap! How wrong was I to treat facts like exaggeration! Half a term has passed ever since day 0 and the sound of my (then) scoffing laughter now mocks my naivete.

Life at IIM Indore can actually be hell and you might feel jet lagged when you get to sleep at hours considered normal by normal people on earth.

 However, my account of this hell will remain incomplete unless I tell you about the things that keep us going.

This place gives you a chance to meet some of the most amazingly talented people from all corners of India and in no time, you see these people turn into your family. The night before a series of exams is greatly improved when you have a group of ten people barely fitting into one room, trying to make each other feel better about how they shall fail to make the other pass (relative grading :P).

The campus is one of the most beautiful things one can experience at night and sometimes a pizza and coke(or sometimes even better things like ‘namkeens’ and ‘mathri-achars’ and other delicacies from someone’s place) with your group of friends at sunset point, pi-shop, cricket stadium (basically anyplace) might be all the therapy you need.

You can easily spot a huge group of people singing random tacky Bollywood songs after every exam series ends. Walk into any group, sing along, laugh it out and you actually feel happy enough to face the same life.  Sleep on such nights is impossible for another reason altogether. The whole hostel building comes alive with the sounds of speakers, people dancing and you automatically feel this urge to be a part of the small joys of the student life.

Despite the perils, you will always see people participating in all kinds of activities, walking to the gym in the morning after a sleepless night and still managing to live through the day. In short, the place never fails to inspire you.

Ultimately, when you do sleep, you do it with the satisfaction of being in one of the best institutes in the country!

And to end this testimony without any sarcasm, The night life at Planet-I is ‘happening’! Quite literally more could happen over the two hours that you decide to take a nap than just sleep. That’s why I decided to let people take a peek into our night life!