You push your face against the window of your car, looking earnestly for a signboard or a banner to convince you that the place you are headed to is real and not another scene featuring in the world’s longest and most lucid dream. In the end, you spot nothing, except the endless wilderness, open fields punctuated by hamlets and a bad stretch of road. Here, at the beginning of a new volume of your life, no trace of BITS seems to exist. But then you see—or, more likely, don’t see—the BITS signboard near a nondescript entryway, half shaded by trees. You roll down the windows to get a whiff of your new life, and the air takes on a hazy, dreamlike quality. It is not magic; it is most likely dehydration, and it is advised to keep a stash of ORS handy. Also advisable is a furtive arrangement with your hostel’s redi for a lifetime supply of mosambi juice.

You taste the heat and feel your skin bake. The swimming pool — flanked by a faded signboard and a padlocked gate — appears in your line of sight. You are not likely to see anyone swimming in the pool, since the last time it had water, theatres probably still played films in monochrome. Any enquiries about ‘apple placements’ would take you to Shokat Ali, the campus seller of fruits. He’s wizened up since and can still be sighted with a cart of apples and bananas that he swears on his cigarettes are ‘reasonably priced’.

Next, you leave your car in a lot sandwiched between hostels closest to the New Academic Block (NAB). You will be photographed for your BITS ID, and, if you are smart, you would have already used the long queue to build lasting friendships. Then, you will be allotted your bhawan, which, after your branch and before your name, is one of your defining features in freshman year. If your roommate is not there by the time you show up, you get to pick the better side of the room. In your room, you will curse the fan and its maddening pace. The healthy solution here is a pedestal fan or a cooler that is mostly psychological in its effects.

Next in your destiny is at least one round trip to Akshay. Pick out a favourite mattress, a favourite bucket, a mug, a broomstick, and everything else in that list you are regretting not making. While returning with your haul, you will be approached by one Laundromat employee and will be forced to swear your allegiance to one side in the Dhobi v Laundromat war. At the mess, befriend workers for extra helpings of jalebi.

And now, after a long orientation, you see your guardians leaving, and the car disappears around the bend, stealing away the last vestige of your old life. You get a pass to cry this once, or power through, or celebrate your independence at ANC. In any case, the following days will mellow you. There is much to do before the mellowing begins: you can research great professors, and play around with DVM’s time table generator for the best possible combination of classes before registration. You may spend all your time outdoors and talk to everyone you meet. If you are lucky, you will run into a senior and end up with an aloo tikki burger, books and promises of an interaction later.

Now you lounge in the air-conditioned comforts of the library, next moment in the IPC, and as you watch the nights bleed into the colours of morn, you become one with the campus. Years later, you will recount these first few days in your head and swear you can hear the tolling of the clock tower that has never once rung in all these years.