Metamorphosis I: The Jungle
In Metamorphosis, Gautam Hazari recounts what it was like to live in IITB 10 years ago.
Hey youngsters, welcome to InsIghT's Metamorphosis series, where we get some guys who've been here a really long time to reminisce about some things they used to love/hate about this campus which are (un)fortunately no longer here.
“Where have all the tall trees gone?”
So, how many times have you bragged to your friends back home that IITB is virtually a forest in the middle of a city? How many times have you taken a first-time visitor to Bombay to one of the secret spots around Powai or Vihar Lake to impress them, rather than to the Gateway of India or the Infiniti Mall?
The Past: IITB used to be a much more dense forest than it is today? There used to be tall trees in between all departments. There used to be wild open spaces at prime places in the campus, especially where the new swimming pool is coming up, where Hostels 12 and 13 are now and the entire Sameer Hill area. The institute has been slowly and steadily deforesting these areas to make way for new buildings: KreSIT, Hostels 12-13, the highrise for Professors next to Sameer Hill, and now the swimming pool and the Convention Center.
But then this is the only way to provide all the facilities we need in the limited space available; what with the State Government staring at the front of our campus with hungry eyes for their road-widening projects. I have heard that we were literally saved by the tall trees in those parts.
The Jungle: Another interesting facet was that the heights of all of the earlier buildings were fine-tuned to be just shorter than the trees surrounding them. So, if you took an aerial snapshot of the campus or just went up Sameer Hill, all you would see would a dense canopy of tree-tops. You would have no clue that one of the most advanced engineering setups in the country was camouflaged under this green carpet like a crouching tiger ready to pounce on any hidden dragon. However, you can now see the new buildings poking their heads above the trees like a few unsuspecting giraffes providing easy targets to encircling predators. (Which reminds me, there used to be this conspiracy theory that IITB was a prime target for Pakistani US-acquired F16s and that there is an anti-aircraft gun especially placed on the hill behind what is now Hiranandani, to protect us from this menace. However, just as that hill has been disappearing, so has the rumour.)
Thankfully there are still some beautiful spots where the institute has not yet overthrown the rule of nature, especially around the Powai Lake. However the academic and hostel areas are rapidly becoming concrete jungles.
Volume XI