Week 1: Moving in..

March 22nd: We took the first flight in from Pune and reached Chennai at 7:30. The flight actually reached 15 minutes early, which was a novel thing for me. We moved to the old campus at Saidapet initially for registration. Later we were taken bag and baggage in tow to Green Coconut, a resort on the East Coast Road.

The next day we set off for our Outbound Training Camp called 'Adventure Zone' . The two day camp consisted of Rappelling, Rock Climbing, Obstacle Avoidance and an Orienteering schedule. Having had some prior experience at Rappelling I aced this easily. Rock climbing was a bigger challenge owing to my not so inconspicuous tummy. The Obstacle course and Orienteering was a lot of fun even though lot of us ended up with scraped knees. Nights consisted of people getting to know each other through idle chit chat, animated discussions and 'sutta' banter.

After the adventure trail,we were taken back to Green coconut. The next 3 days we basically spent watching the IPL, gobbling up gargantuan amounts of food and attending the occasional lecture in between.

An important event during this period was the inaguration of the new green campus and the convocation ceremony of the outgoing Champions batch at the Chennai Convention centre. Shashi Tharoor was the chief guest. Hearing him speak was a revelation. In fact he was by far the most effective orator I have heard by a long shot.

The new campus was inaugurated post lunch by Adi Godrej. Also present were Jamshed Godrej, Madhur Bajaj and T N Seshan besides of course the effervescent uncle Bala.

Another noteworthy episode in the first week was the first lecture of T N Seshan. This gentleman walked in at the stroke of 10. The first thing he said to the students was " I have to go back home at 12!". What followed during the next two hours was amazing. The normally boisterous crowd sat rapt in attention, as Seshan proceeded to recount his entire life story. He spoke of the days when he drove a bus as a transport commissioner. He spoke of the time he defied Rajiv Gandhi as his security in chief , to cut short his Sri Lanka trip in the light of a security threat. He spoke of the time when he was 'transferred' 7 times in a single day. He also proceeded to give us a brief history of India right from when Aryans migrated down south to India, right till Narsimha Rao brought liberalisation to India. Unbelievable to say the least... The best moment of the day was his answer to a student's query as to how he dealt with the stress of his long public service. His response was (and i quote) " Cheee.... Whaaaat stress! There is no such thing as stress!"

True to his word he left at 12 sharp leaving us all richer for the experience.

All in all a pretty satisfying week which set the tone for things to come... Cheers!