NSS Camp : 2014

Hello Everyone. It's been a long time. I'll be blogging regularly from now on. All my exams are over and I'm finally back home!

By Monster4711 (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

Ok, this isn't my home. But after living in a hostel, my home does feel this good.

If you've never lived in a hostel before, trust me, there will come a day when you'll actually be dying to eat the food your mom cooks everyday. You'll actually prefer it over Pizza Hut and CCD. And if you think I'm lying or exaggerating, ask someone who is living in a hostel presently.



My last exam was more than a week ago. After the exam I had to stay back at Kharagpur for a week because of the NSS Winter Camp. At that time, I felt awful that I had to stay back! Imagine having to wake up at 7 and cycle 6 kms over a bumpy village road in this cold weather!

Plus we had to write camp diaries! Eeeeeew. Who writes stuff after their exams are over! But I had to stay back, the camp was compulsory, nothing I can do about it!

By OverlordQ (Own work ಠ_ಠ) via Wikimedia Commons

I believe on the first day of the camp, my face was something like this.

Before I continue, a brief introduction about the camp. NSS ( National Service Scheme ) is basically a group of students, guided by professors, who work in nearby villages for the betterment of the rural folk. And the camp is held every year, in a different village each year. The morning session of the camp includes physical activity ( We basically built kuchha roads and carried out a survey ) and the afternoon session has camp activities. We are served breakfast, lunch and evening snacks at the camp.

So if you guys think life at an IIT looks like this : 

By U.S. Navy photo by John F. Williams [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

You won't be completely wrong, but you are in for a shock. Our life also involves this :

P.C. © Mridul Kothari

And that picture isn't just a pose. We were actually doing this for 6 days! Hard manual labour. The way I look at it is, we were contributing back to the society. To the villagers who live near our campus. One villager actually told us that The Sarkari officers are very slow in doing work, we on the other hand built/ repaired more than 1.5 kms of roads. That sure is a feat to be proud of, and moreover, it is the perfect way to  give back to the society what is expected of us.

P.C. Mridul Kothari

I admit this was the hardest part of building roads, the boulders cut into your hands, and they are quite heavy. I had planned on watching at-least one movie each day after the camp. In the end I couldn't watch even one! The camp used to leave me that tired!

If any of you guys noticed, throughout this post, I've been treating this camp as an event I never wanted to be part of. That is true in a way, the camp is compulsory. But in the end, I guess I enjoyed it. I made many new friends at the camp, you can see some of them in the picture above. I learned how to work in a team ( and that is quite an achievement ! ). The food served to us was much better than what I had expected ( All you LBS people, it was actually better than LBS mess food :-P ). The professors were supportive, encouraging and above all friendly. And thinking back on it now, I actually did something to help the people of my country, all while I was having fun!