AthleticIISM and CulturalIICM

When the Sun has barely left its slumber, a friendly mist covers the campus. It almost seems to ask its students to return to bed. They glance at the time, and pull the blanket over, the humdrum of the first lecture still hours away. But there are certain people. For them, practice won’t wait. They finish their morning routines and dress up, swing the kit over their shoulders, start on the journey towards their practice grounds. The court is almost in sight, and there are other people like them, warming up already. Their drowsiness has started to wane. Practice will be followed by a hurried breakfast, and then classes, or perhaps a project report.

These are the people participating in the Inter-IISER Sports Meet (IISM) competition, conducted by IISER Pune for the year 2024. Every year, the IISM competition brings out the best players of IISc, in a multitude of sports like carrom, basketball, kabaddi, table tennis, athletics, march past, etc. IISM usually happens during the winter break, and the practice starts around September.

IISM is not the only inter-IISER competition. There is Inter-IISER Cultural Meet (IICM), the cultural and literary competition. Similar to IISM, it is usually conducted during the winter break, with practice starting from around October. Conducted in Kolkata for the year 2024, IISc has participated in a lot of events, like dance, poetry, music, short film, fashion show, wall painting, face painting and many more.

“The practice was from 6 AM to 7.30 AM on Friday, Saturday and Sunday,” tells Vidhi, a first year BS student who participated in basketball, “We practiced for around two months, for IISM particularly. But the classes began from around start of the academic year.”

The participating students had different ways to juggle academics and practice. “This time since IICM was only started on 26th December, we had the whole of December to prepare,” says Rishabh Hangal, who was a harmonium player for the Hindustani Classical Jugalbandi. “So, we did briefly meet our whole team once or twice before exams which were during November end. But most of the preparation happened after exams.”

“It’s about how much time you want to dedicate. And then you figure out how you’re going to get that much time” states Abhiram, a fifth year MS student, who participated in both IISM and IICM. “You have to put a limit on everything. This is a reasonable amount of music I can do in a day. This is a reasonable amount of sports I can do in a day. This is a reasonable amount of academics I can do. And like these limits have to be kind of dependent on each other.”

Both Pune and Kolkata are places of rich heritage, history and culture. Students travelling for the competitions not only got a flavour of sportsmanship and maybe even friendship, but also got to explore these cities. “Kolkata? Kolkata is a mix of words. I can speak about Kolkata for a long time,” says Ramnath, first year BTech student, who participated in poetry competition. “To say about Kolkata, the thing is that it is a very crowded city. The main modes of transport there were metro, local train and bus. All of them were very crowded. Unfortunately, IISER Kolkata was in the outskirts of the city, so I had to take these transports. But, there were many good things about it. The food was awesome. I had sweets as lunch. Just sweets as lunch. Bengali cuisine, it was very unique, I felt. Everything had a touch of sweet, but the dishes were so unique.”

Talking about Pune, Swetha, a first year BTech student, says, “Pune was fun. Cold, but fun. The food was great. I also ended up going to a friend’s house when I was there and introduced me to a lot of local cuisines, so that was fun. The people are as friendly as one would expect.” She participated in Table Tennis.

Once the wonder of being in a new city wears off, the participants begin to brace for their respective competitions. All the months of hard-work, it is going to pay off, for better or worse. Nothing matters now, except that they try their best. People had varied experiences.

“As a basketball player, I was playing against another team after a very long time and I thoroughly enjoyed my time during the tournament” says Palak, a first year BTech student. “A total of ten institutes took part in the tournament. Some teams came with great sportsmanship- humble in victory and gracious in defeat, and it’s always a pleasure to play with such teams irrespective of the result of the game.

But not everything went smoothly. Tarushri Manappurathu, a third year BS student and co-choreographer for the group dance, has expressed dissatisfaction about the way events were conducted in IISER Kolkata. “Based on our and other’s performance, we were sure of a podium finish and other teams agreed, too. But we didn’t get anything. The organizer said and I quote him, ‘we have failed to bring a good judge.’” Dance was not the only category which was under fire. There were judging issues with wall painting, fashion show and others, too. “Even after you have taken this much from these many institutes, not being able to bring proper judges, not being able to build a proper dance stage, it’s really disappointing,” she remarks.

Most people who went to IISM, IICM have said that the memories they made would be something they would cherish for a lifetime. “I would say it was amazing. It was a nice opportunity I feel. For me, to be independent to travel around, to be with new people, to learn a lot,” says Ramnath.

Friendships have formed, too. Rishabh says, “IICM is a competition, but I was really inspired by one of the IISER Kolkata team members who, after our performance, said, maybe tomorrow we can have a jamming session. And he said that this is the spirit of IICM, where we all come together and collaborate.”