December Diaries-2
As the inter IIT sports meet began, the action started to unfold on the pitch. Day 1 saw very well contested matches between all IITs.But IIT Madras contingent stood out in terms of its vocal ( or shall i say "expletive") cheering of its teams, which lead to it being noticed by the disciplinary commitee and appropriate warnings beings issued.

The IITM cricket had a bad start ( as usual!), with Kharagpur giving us an 8 wicket drubbing.
So we were back to the familiar situation, wherein which every match was like a knockout; there was no room for mistakes left.
So after all the build up to the Bombay game, the game finally began. We won the toss and decided to field after learning from the previous days horrifying experience batting first. Things went to our liking for a change. (Yes! this team had not seen victory for two years.. so anything remotely positive is always exaggerated!) Thanks to an excellent bowling performance from our spin trio , we were able to bowl out Bombay for a meagre 106 in 25 overs.
The bowlers had done their job, now it was time for the batsmen to stand up and be counted. However, that was not to be. Within the next hour, from being in a position of strength, we were practically out of the match at 65/8 first at and subsequently 69/9. The captain for some strange reason,( which later he claimed was part of " team strategy") kept pushing me down the order untill there was noone left to send but me. It was a familiar situation for me, having been in a situation similar to this on two earlier occasions,both of which i ended up being on the losing side.I was not thinking of that; I still dont know for sure what actually was running through my head when i walked in to bat.My captain whispered to me his desperate hopes as in walked in.One thing was sure, I was in a defiant state of mind. The first few balls i faced, i never thought of the target in mind.( which at that point of time was 39 in five overs)I was just trying to connect the ball and stay calm while the bombay fielders were barraging me with their "words of wisdom".
Me and my partner somehow managed to spend three overs there without getting out and soon we got to the situation where 26 runs were needed of two overs. I still never thought we could make it, but i did not want to get out and that kept me going. A leg spinner was to bowl the penultimate over. He had been bowling an extremely tight line and the wicket was assisting him with a lot of turn and bounce.Despite this,My partner and me decided to chance our arm against him,since the bowler at the other end was far more difficult to slog against. So off the very first balll i danced down the track and hit him straight to the fielder on the boundary,who let it slip through his legs to cross the ropes! The pressure was on the bowler now, and he panicked and fired a ball down the leg side to get a stumping, only to find that the ball beat the keeper and go for a boundary! Suddenly we needed 13 runs from 8 balls, and the bombay team was getting all jittery and nervy on the field. we managed another four runs of the over and brought the equation to 9 runs required of the last over.
We applied enough pressure on the bowler to make him panic and thanks to some absurd cricket from bombay(overthrows, wides, misfields) we brought the match to within shooting distance( three runs of one ball). It was only then that i started to believe that we could actually win the game. I was at the non striker's end and told my partner to hit straight no matter what the ball was. Just before the ball was going to be delivered i stopped the bowler on the pretext of tightening my shoelaces,in an attempt to piss the bowler off and make him do something stupid.Then the final ball was bowled. Well what happened still baffles me, as Bombay committed harakiri by literally gifting us three runs for a shot which deserved no run! We ran the first run and then two runs off an overthrow and i cannot explain the feeling that was running through my head. The next few minutes were the best moments in my life. I had for first hand witnessed a miracle! My teammates came running after me, but i just wanted to keep running and running. The adrenalin rush subsided and i finally lay on the ground, when all on my teammates pounced on me in celebration. Those scenes of ecstasy and joy are still running through my mind as though it was just yesterday.
That victory changed it all. It gave us the confidence to go on and win every match after that, and eventually win the cricket gold, which led IIT Madras to beat Bombay in the overall championship by two points! Yupp, it was redemption for the Madras cricket team and me personally after the disappointments of last year.

December Diaries -1
As part of my annual schedule, december is the month which takes me touring to a new IIT. So here i am, in the far east, at Guwahati(actually 45 mins from the main city in a place called Malegaon). The campus is scenic, with mountains,lakes, and the mighty Brahmaputra flowing very close to it. It feels as though you are in the english countryside,with all the natural beauty around you. But with that stops all the praise about that place!
The place is deserted, with absolutely NO LIFE around campus. Inside campus, the story starts and ends with the word CONSTRUCTION. There is just so much being constructed, that it hardly feels like a college campus. But i guess, one has to expect that considering the fact that it has been only a decade since its establishment.

The IITM contingent was here two days prior to the start of the event, so we got sufficient time to acclimatise to the conditons. The weather is just perfect, hot during the day( a day which turns to night at 5 in the evening!),and chilly during the nights. Let me just say that the weather was very romantic!The sporting facilities for all sports are pretty good with the exception of the cricket ground, which according to the director of IITG, was made by filling a swamp 3ft deep with mud. No wonder you get that sinking feeling now and then!
Thats part one of my diaries, More about the actual action later.....