On the 7th of March, I woke up to write my last midsem, excited to have the exams over with and eagerly awaiting the few weeks of relative calm, dotted incessantly with Banoffees from Pizzeria and day-long wingie FIFA tournaments. I looked forward to seeing my juniors take charge of the club for APOGEE, and anticipated seeing their energy and creativity power a great fest press.

Those days seem so distant now.

As it turns out, those “focused” IPC midsem study sessions, that were followed by ANC feasts topped off with gulab jamun, would be some of the last few days I would spend with many of my wingies. Those evenings I spent tossing around a frisbee with friends, when any sensible person would have been ghoting for the upcoming elective’s midsem, may be some of the last times I spent in Budh’s serene QT. Little did the 2020 graduating batch know that their psenti-semesters were nearly at their end. To some of them, it had barely even begun.

There’s no way around it—this sucks. But many of us have acknowledged that these are things we can’t control. We’ve moved on—doing online courses, stuffing ourselves with sumptuous home-cooked meals, wearing neatly ironed shirts on top with boxers down below for internship meetings over Zoom.

Some BITSians have gone out of their way to care for the less fortunate in these tough times, and help daily wage earners, labourers, and migrant workers: the men and women who build and maintain our country, and who deserve to have the country stand with them. 

And of course, there’s also been the endless binging of Netflix, the time spent with siblings and pets, the few lockdown resolutions that stayed, and the many that didn’t.

But despite all this, there’s still the nostalgia. The longing for a return to normalcy. The wishing to be back in BITS, to have the freedom to walk to ANC without a covered face and huddle around the coals on a chilly night, paying no heed to social distancing.

Most articles of this issue were written before and during the midsems. As circumstances changed, we delayed publishing them, in order to focus on answering the pertinent questions about evaluatives and the future of the semester. Since we didn’t publish them then, we’re doing so now. 

Admittedly, some articles of this issue are outdated, and perhaps not the most pertinent. Nevertheless, I hope that these articles take you back to the time when the leader you expected to hear from was the new Director of the campus, not the Prime Minister of the country. When your biggest worry was the quality of hot chocolate at the new Nescafe parlour.

To a time when you were back on campus.