The campus life at India’s top engineering colleges is one of pure joy and memorable interactions. The students and the faculty are not always the same and that is what the students miss. A heartwarming and fun moment at IIT Madras struck a chord with students, alumni and everybody else around the country. Directors of top engineering colleges are sometimes taken for granted as being very strict and formal authorities and are far away from the day-to-day student life. In a campus freshers’ party, IIT Madras Director Professor V. Kamakoti completely broke that mold and the students would say that what he did was amazing.
Rather than making the usual VIP entrance or giving an extended administrative welcome speech, Professor Kamakoti was much more casual. So he was wearing a normal student T-shirt, cap, and backpack (which he had already put together for the new first year students as part of their welcome kit a few days earlier). And as he walked in the auditorium he even said a few friendly words to a few students at the door, but his real identity was not even noticeable. He walked briskly through the auditorium and found a seat in the front row of the cheering crowd who were chatting, singing and having fun with each other and the leader of the school was sitting next to him.
For nearly ninety minutes the director sat unnoticed, watching, and relishing the youthful energy of the celebrations. And only when a few students looked at their neighbor in the rear of the auditorium were they able to realize that they needed to take note of their neighbor and that they had to do something about it. Professor Kamakoti was welcomed onto the stage by the cheering audience and took the microphone with a warm smile and had a joke that immediately got the crowd to laugh. The older man joked that while he is getting older and used to pulling off successful pranks without being detected for long periods of time while he was young, he was surprised that they had to wait for a full hour and a half to find out who he was.
As the laughter and applause started to build, the director got reflective and said higher education and youth are great. Looking back on his own academic journey as an alumnus who finished his computer science master's at the institute as he took over as president in 2022, he said that student life is still the most beautiful phase in the life of a person. Looking out with the young crowd sitting quietly in the middle of the room was so different and more special than working in management and he felt that in ninety minutes he could relive his own college days and relate to the spirit of IIT Madras.
