Outreach

Kolkata

August 30, 2008

There was a wonderful sense of nostalgia... August 30 evening... The Sports Complex Hall at the Calcutta Club was jam-packed with over 300 guests and all waited for the evening to unfold. The IIT Band had been invited to play and a team of 40 students had traveled all the way by bus, a good 4 hour ride.

The combined Annual General meeting of the Kolkata chapter and the Outreach program started with a welcome note by the Secretary of the Kolkata Chapter, Ms. Alakananda Rao. Mr. Pronob Guha, the President of the Kolkata Chapter then thanked the IIT authorities and expressed appreciation on fostering the continuing close co-operation of IIT Kharagpur with the local chapter and the growth of the Alumni movement and co-operation in projects.

The guests included a large cross-section of IIT-ians from all the IITs. There were even alumni who had registered from locations like Mumbai, Pune, Durgapur and Ranchi, thanks to the power of networking and the reach of the net. In fact one enterprising IIT-ian was on his way back from Bangalore to Singapore and used the stopover time to catch up with his buddies!

The Keynote address was delivered by Prof. Madhusudan Chakrabarty, Dy. Director, IIT Kharagpur and also a well known alumnus. Ashok Kalbag made a crisp presentation on the PAN-IIT event. The interaction continued well into the evening over dinner, where Mr. Ramanath Mani and Raj Varadarajan who had both joined from Chennai were swamped with questions about PAN-IIT, and the event at Chennai.

But, of course the star of the show was TMS - Technology Music Society - who belted out the latest hits with gusto to a foot-tapping audience. On complimenting them for their wonderful performance, in spite of their packed academic schedule, pat came their quick rejoinder "We try to do it all... And be the best at everything ..."

And that sums up the IIT spirit!