Shaastra 04

No, its not a case of too many posts on Shaastra, but since none of the Pune guys who had gone to IITM for shaastra this year, have put-up any sort of report on the event, I feel obliged to do so.
We went to Chennai by train and traveling with us on the same train (though they were in a world of their own, doing maaz as usual) were a bunch of IIT Bombay guy. Now these IIT-B dudes had taken a last minute decision to come to shaastra, and had not notified the hospitality organizers at Shaastra that they would be requiring accommodation, transport etc. The IIT-M hospitality volunteer present at the station asked them for their confirmation letters which were receipts of having registered with the hospi guys. The IIT-B guys didn’t have any, so the IIT-M guy told them that it would be difficult for him to make arrangements for them. At this, the senior-most looking fellow from the IIT-B gang pointed to himself, stood there like he were a
Demi god and said to the organizer, “ C’mon …. WE ARE IIT –B!!” Now that’s real maaz; no other word for it. The IIT-M guy was cool and replied, “ so what, even I am IIT-M!!”
So, you see, the most evident difference between IITB and IITM is that people in IITM are absolutely down to earth. One experiences this everywhere in IIT-M. People there are so helpful and down to earth, that you begin to wonder if you really are in an IIT, because the only IIT we had been to before was of course IIT-B.
Shaastra is a completely student organized event and also is the only student organized event to have an ISO certification. The events in shaastra were extremely well thought of and were very well organized. Everything always began on time, there were always volunteers around to help, and there never was any overcrowding at a particular event.
Quizzes formed quite a major part of the events at shaastra. There were all sorts of quizzes that took place like : The shaastra daily quiz (sci-tech GK and trivia ) ;
The lone wolf challenge (hardcore technical quiz) ; How Things Work quiz ;
And the biggest of them all (reputed to be the best technical quiz in the country): The Shaastra main quiz. People there love quizzing, and unlike quizzes in Pune where an audience for a quiz is a rare sight; the auditorium used to packed with people to watch a quiz; truly heartening for us quizzers from pune. The finals of the quizzes that happened on stage had the quizzers squatting right on the floor of the stage; no chairs. That really gave a very nice informal feel to the quiz just like a quiz at the boat club. The Shaastra main quiz finals had 8 teams each having three members sitting on stage, and the quiz lasted for an amazing five and a half hours.
The IIT-M campus was really beautiful having lush green vegetation everywhere and a variety of birds, and deer. The campus is adjacent to a small sanctuary meant for blackbucks and we even got to see a few on campus. There also were spotted deer in the plenty on campus.
Thus overall, it was a very good experience and I hope to go there next year too.

A photo of Expyre 

Expyre

This (i.e."Expyre") was the name of the firefighting robot we built for a competition called "Shaastra" which is the annual technical event of IIT Madras (not IIT Chennai) which took place from the 7th till 10th of october 2004. This was the first time that a firefighting robot contest was held in india at a national level. One such event is held annually in Trinity College, USA and some other american colleges also have similar firefighting robotics contests. The task to be acomplished by the robots was : to find and extinguish a lit candle in a 2.5m*2.5m model house, which had four rooms. The complete problem statement with the house plan can be seen at :http://www.shaastra.org/events/robotics/firefighter . In fact the IITM guys had juct copied this year's Trinity College competition satement. The floor plan was exactly the same as that of the trinity competition. This was a good thing in a way , that the plan was an alredy tested one. My team mates for this competition were Gagan Awhad and Anvit Phatak , both frpm VIT. Gagan is a pretty technically inclined person who had taken part in some project competitions before this one. He is also a big music fan. Anvit is a comp engg guy , always scores well in exams and plays a lot of sports. The three of us were not friends (read buddies/pals) as such, before we decided to form a team and I still cannot exactly reason out how we came together. So you see, it was a pretty risky decision in the sense, we could have failed in the attempt. But as it has turned out we were a pretty good team, and also won the competition. Winning it was pretty simple in the end, as there was no other team present who could complete the given task. Since ours was the only robot that actually worked, we got first place. There were no second or third place prizes given. Shaastra as a whole was a really nice experience; much better than techfest in IIT Bombay. More on this issue later though. There were other teams from Pune present at Shaastra, who also did pretty well in general. Nikhil K of the "mountolympus" blog won the open hardware contest there with two of his college mates. Cheers to them. Also there were two other teams from VIT there who qualified for the finals of their respective events. So it was a pretty good outing for the pune teams.