🏰 My IIM Bangalore Travelogue

Reading Time: 13 min

Hi guys, how have you been? I feel like I always start my letters with an apology for being inconsistent but I believe you guys understand my other commitments very well.

This week, I will describe my experience at IIM Bangalore as a Research Intern on campus. It is going to be a relatively longer read so bear with me as I describe my days there. I could have also posted last week but I wanted to write it all in my journal first. For those who don't know, it's been almost 8 years since I've been journaling. Three years down the line I won't remember a single thing that happened on the trip other than the major highlights. Writing it down for myself means I can relive the experience and know what was going through my mind in those exact moments. And I wanted to savour this memory and hence this late post. Also, this is my first public journal which means I am going out of my comfort zone and penning down my feelings :) I am sure all my friends and family are sick of my IIM-B photos but anyways, this is for my Ana Thinks family ;)
It all began when my co-intern, Anjali Sundriyal called me in the middle of the day in June saying let's pack up and go visit the campus next month. I was quite surprised because of the impulsivity but I wanted to make this happen anyways. Soon, the flight tickets and the hotel room were booked and it was almost time I see Bangalore for the very first time. This trip was of many firsts - first flight, first time in Bangalore, first trip without family, first time trusting a stranger and sharing the room with her but I was prepared and excited. Our itinerary was of 3 days so I'll be segregating this Newsletter into 3 segments within itself. Also since this is a longer read, feel free to get a snack xd

Day 1:

I woke up at 4 am, all anxious - what if I embarrass myself at the airport since I don’t know how to take flights? The novice traveler in me was screaming insecurity and I opened Instagram out of fidgeting. A friend was awake, I told him my concerns and he once again clearly explained the steps involved and that I need not worry about messing up as even uneducated fellas make it past an airport. Lol, it was reassuring. Within 1 hour, my cab was up and running on the roads towards the airport. Upon reaching, I quickly grabbed my luggage and walked towards the gate. All my life up till now, I had only waved goodbyes to the family at this spot but here I was, just about to walk in as an anxious girl. I looked around and spotted Indigo flight desks and the attendee told me that I needed to print my boarding pass before checking in the luggage.

del to blr boarding pass

The attendants were, as expected, very polite and told me the next steps. When I reached the security check, I imitated what everyone was doing - unloading electronic items from the purse onto a tray. Did that, made it past the checkpoint and now I had approximately half an hour before boarding began.

Since I had left the house around 5 am, I was quite hungry. I spotted a coffee place just nearby and ordered a cappuccino and chili cheese toast (it was definitely a tongue twister to say this thing there lol)

A snap I took

After the brief breakfast, I wrapped up and moved towards the boarding gate, presented my pass and hopped on the bus to the flight. Damn, that bird was huge. It looks very tiny in the sky but it was nothing but a giant tube with wings on its side and suddenly I became a lot more interested in understanding aerodynamics and how the hell it stays up in the sky without falling down.

the majestic bird 🐦

The first time you take a flight you definitely feel special unless you've been born with a golden spoon in your mouth. The Indigo rep circled Bangalore and the Flight number on my boarding pass and gestured for me to move inside. The interior of the plane looked like that of a bus (as my friend had told me). I bet it wasn’t even half as special to be on this flight to everyone else as it was to me. I was gleaming with happiness every single second. The air hostess did her drill and soon the airplane was dashing on the runway. I followed every motion carefully with my camera until it took off and then I plugged in my earpods and vibed to the song Wings by BTS - something I had promised myself years ago - to listen to this song on my very first flight.

notice that cloud formation

Before the plane took up altitude high up in the clouds, the buildings below looked very small like matchboxes. It felt like I was in the Bird’s POV of a strategy game about to command my military forces here and there haha. The clouds outside looked so soft and fluffy almost like a white cotton candy. Soon, it was time for my meal which I didn’t want anymore as apparently, someone very smart had stuffed in toasts prior to departure. Nonetheless, I tried having those cup noodles while watching a K-Drama ~ Celebrity (which I now recall I have not resumed watching after that day lol). Time went by and I landed smoothly.

As soon as I stepped out of the plane, man, a chilly wind struck me. (I suddenly miss Bangalore so much now T_T I am writing this in an AC’s artificial cold air). I booked a cab to Hotel Euphoria, Bannerghatta Road and it turned out to be a 2-hour journey (which I had already been warned of). Bangalore looked somewhat grey and tropical because of the frequent display of palm trees. The roads are very narrow which is the prime reason for so much traffic in the city. I looked outside the window and noticed differences in the people - women wore beautiful white gajras on their hair and had long, slender bindi.

took this at a washroom in Cubbon Park and it aptly describes a Kannada woman

There were a lot many branded shops and some local ones too. One very different thing I noticed was that almost every store wrote their name in English and then in Kannada. It isn’t common to see this thing in Delhi, we don’t have all the brands writing their names in Hindi too but in Bangalore, they catered to their people.

Soon, I met Anjali in the restaurant-cum-reception of the hotel. To my surprise, she was exactly my height which is a rare sight. I am quite short (5’1) and when I see a fellow short person I feel a lot validated lol. We checked in and took a long nap to recover from the sleep deprivation. I had texted a senior at IIM-B almost a month ago for a meet-up and it was almost time I met him. I and Anjali dressed up in Kurtis and Jhumkas did some makeup and left the hotel for a short walk to the campus. Since the metro station is under construction, the roads were a bit trodden on our way to the campus.

Soon, we reached and there it was - the gate, looking spectacular amidst the entire street. I wondered if people passing by knew if this was a very special place for almost 200k people per year around the nation. We did our security check-in and I told the officer that we would be going inside after clicking photos with the logo and he laughingly said sure.

Now, I don’t need to mention the number of photos two young girls would have taken, yes a lot! So much so that my legs began to pain after a while of several rounds of photo-shoots. We talked and reassured ourselves to have no inhibition in taking the photos. We were here only for a few days and had to make the most of it.

one of my fav foto

By the time we made it inside it was pretty dark and we were running late to meet the professor and the PhD scholar. While sprinting towards D-block, I saw that the campus was quite green (reminded me of Indogulf) and had lots of insect sounds coming from here and there. And since Bangalore’s weather is mostly cool, staying here is the best thing that could happen to anyone :)

We made it to the faculty area, and I called our PhD scholar to take us to the prof’s cabin (because this campus wasn’t any less of a maze). She came and showed us around - the auditorium (which looked more like a moot court) and other places. IIM-B walls are all greyish which gives gloomy vibes at night when there is no one to be seen on campus (Ngl I’d freak out to walk alone among these walls at night, talk about Moaning Myrtle). The walls have vines climbing up most of the places which accentuates the beauty of the campus even more. Every now and then stairs go up somewhere and since the campus is primely indoor-outdoor combined, I could easily smell the moist weather of the night.

notice them vines

Prof looked exactly like he did on Zoom calls and the cabin looked modest covered with wooden shelves and whiteboards all around. All four of us - Prof, Scholar, Anjali and I talked quite formally until I broke the ice by saying, “Sir, why do you have so many whiteboards in the room?” He laughed and said, “It is to teach people like her (pointing to the scholar) all sorts of things. When I was doing my PhD in the US, I used to spend almost the entire day in front of my prof’s blackboard haha.” We continued to talk about how Delhi is no less of a microwave oven, how Bangalore’s weather is so cool and things on Behavioral Science, MBA and people. He then quickly showed us the gift he had prepared for both of us - it was a big, heavy hardcover book wrapped up in silver plastic. And since I am a book fanatic, I so badly wanted to tear the wrapper apart right then and there but didn’t because I didn't want to seem too curious and rude.

gift by prof

Soon our time was up and all four of us took a stroll around the campus until I remembered that I had to meet up with the senior. Prof suggested he take us out for dinner. So, we all agreed to meet at 8 pm in front of Prof’s cabin and until then I get done with my quick rendezvous with the senior.

And there we were - looking like absolute youngins on a campus of all Masters and PhD students. I was quite happy to be in IIM-B, it was totally a dream come true to be able to stand here and I did a little dance before I spotted someone walking towards us. He was a young man dressed in varsity, cargo pants and club master spectacles. As he walked closer and closer I wondered why was he staring at us all this while and suddenly he said, “You’re Anamika, right?” Damn, it was the senior. I prayed so badly that he hadn’t seen my goofy dance.

His name is Souparno Bhattacharyya and is a first-year PGP student at IIM-B. He was a 99.96 percentile in CAT 2022 and had completed his undergrad from IIEST Shibpur with a Bachelor of Technology. Who better than him to ask for, as Prof had put it - the MBA Gyan?

We quickly introduced each other and moved towards the mess area as he basically was a multi-tasker wanting to finish his dinner and our meet-up simultaneously. We talked about the usual CAT and MBA stuff. His voice and communication were quite smart and crisp and since I had literally no questions to ask (because I had prepared none), we exchanged goodbyes. I thought this was it until he mentioned we could see each other till the time we are in Bangalore (Spoiler alert: We did)

Fast-forward 1 hour, I was with the prof, scholar and timidly seated on a wooden chair in a restaurant called Chavadi, waiting for food. Chavadi literally means ‘a courtyard’ which is what was the overall vibe of the place - indoor-outdoor thingy. The lamps above the table had a beautiful vine looping it with a little yellow light bulb poking from within. Our orders arrived and we all dug in.

the dinner

If you know me, you know I am an Alfredo Sauce pasta lover, be it penne or spaghetti. Since I had a failed experiment of trying out sweet corn soup that day on the table, I wanted to play it safe and get something I was sure would be good lol.

The night caught on, the freezing wind, the ambience with sir cracking a lot of jokes and the scholar sharing her personal journey of choosing the academia. I and Anjali talked about our lives in Delhi and sir gave us tons of advice on how to be happy :)

By now, I was a lot more impatient to see the book inside and asked if I could open up the gift to which everyone responded affirmatively. Halfway unwrapping it and even before I saw the book, I said aloud, "Wait, is this Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman?” I looked at sir, he was dumbfounded. He said, “How do you know?” I laughed and replied that I sort of felt it like an intuition or you could say since we had been discussing Rationality and Behavioral Science earlier, I reckoned this might be the only book as it is the intersection of the two domains. Man, even I was surprised at myself to have guessed the book like that. Sir then continued to ask me how I knew about the book and I told him that since I had been looking for books in Rationality and Cognitive Biases, Chat-GPT had suggested me this popular book and I had it on my reading list for a long time now. And then we went into a spiral of discussion on Large Language Models and AI, mostly only in favour of it. The hot chocolate that I had ordered had turned into cold chocolate milk by now but nonetheless, I had a sip and tried finishing it. The night ended with prof and scholar dropping us off at our hotel room and I slept like a baby :)

Day 2:

After 5 hours of procrastinating, we finally left the hotel room around 12 pm with the sole intention of exploring the campus completely to our heart’s content. The first and most important thing was to have breakfast or if I may put it this way - brunch because afternoon had already kicked. Last night, we had asked the scholar if there were some nice places to eat on campus and she had suggested the departmental canteen which apparently had a wait time of 1 hour because the breakfast was now closed but lunch was coming up next. We didn’t want to wait an hour more when we were already starving. Asking around and after a while of stumbling here and there, we finally reached a food spot called Amul.

Amul

I and Anjali ordered a pizza, toast and coffee to kick-start our day. There were a lot of people around us and I asked one of them if they were MBA students and they were. From the looks the girls gave us, they weren’t very approving of our glittery eye-shadows and clothes while they were all in their lounge-wear. Wiping off our faces with a tissue, we moved towards our next quest - the merchandise store. The scholar had told us that we were actually lucky because this store had been closed for over 3 years now because of COVID but it’s now up and running. After spending a whooping 1-2 hours there, I settled on a varsity (which I had seen the night before), and a t-shirt whereas Anjali bought only the varsity.

Soon, Souparno (aka Soup as his friends call him) texted me and said that he was now free to show the campus. We waited until he came to the store with a girl who seemed quite introverted. He introduced her to us and then they went off to the store to buy her some merch. Then, she suggested that she would be leaving for her work while the rest 3 of us could carry on with the tour and so did we.

The campus is huge and totally like a resort on the outskirts of the city. Soup described every single place - the sports area, the trail, the buildings etc etc. I talked a lot to him to the point I don’t even remember half the things I asked him that day. One of the weirdest things I remember asking him is, “Have you ever had turtle meat until now?” Lol. Anjali was closely following us from behind not much interested in conversations as she, later told me because she barely talks to strangers. Well, since I am an extrovert, I find it very easy to talk to anyone (my friends can justify that) Later, it turned out I and Soup also had a mutual who was a Bangalore native. I didn’t click many photos of the campus because I was busy talking and too inhibited to pose. We also visited his room and saw the restaurant from last night through his balcony. It was now time to leave. I had plans for the evening so I left the campus for the day.

Day 3:

The third day was all about exploring the city - Rameshwaram Cafe, the Big Bull Temple, Tipu Sultan’s Palace, Mysore Saree Store, Cubbon Library & Park. I would have loved to attach more photos but Gmail prohibits large emails :’(

Later that night, I and Anjali once again visited the campus to see it for one last time and click pictures. We sat on a lonely flight of stairs and talked our hearts out - from trusting each other to spending the last few moments of this trip together, we bonded quite well. I knew her more than I had ever done. Thinking about this makes me feel sad again. I didn’t feel like leaving this beautiful place or Hogwarts you can say. Just wanted to spend a little bit more time. And for the last time, we once again met up with Soup, agreed to stay connected and departed for the hotel.

the hotel just before I departed for Delhi

This trip was of many serendipities. Only a year ago an IITian friend of mine had told me he had received an offer for an internship at IIM-A and I thought it was just one of the other things only IITians can do, but here I was, with a heart full of joy and a head full of fond memories just because I decided to surf the web that day for the opportunity.

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If you made it this far, it would mean a lot to me if you could tell me whether you like this kind of longer read. If you don’t feel comfortable commenting and have my number, do let me know there. Good Day lovelies.