Diwali in IIT KGP

The Illumination competition or “illu” as it is called in the campus is something unique to IIT Kharagpur. An institute famous for its scholarly pursuits and devoted practitioners of “Counter Strike” and “AOE (Age of Empires)” (for the uninitiated, they are PC based games) comes alive about 20 days before Diwali. Suddenly you find the attendance in classes dropping to abysmal levels, M Tech classes still maintain a semblance of normality but B Tech classes which are sometimes standing room only (for some popular electives) are almost deserted. Those few students you see in the academic block are yawning away to glory. As Deepavali approaches you find loud music blaring from all halls (hostels are called “halls of residence”) throughout the night. Bunches of guys come together to create exquisite patterns of diyas on chatais (wire frames made of bamboo skin which are placed vertically). These patterns are made up of diyas (small earthen lamps) fastened to the bamboo frames and depict various scenes from our culture and heritage. Some scenes depicted this time where the Taj Mahal by LLR (Lala Lajpat Rai) hall, Ramayana by RK (Radha Krishnan) hall. As they say a picture speaks more than a thousand words, so have a look at these pictures, remember that they have been illuminated by diyas by hand. An enormous effort to say the least!

Now for the facts, there are 15 halls which take part in the illu competition. The budget for each hall is approx 50 K, with more than 100 guys per hall working for the better part of 15 days! The best part is that winning is not important, Conceiving an idea and the joy of seeing it bought to fruition is more important.

On that note so long till the next post.