Aroon Narayanan

The month of July is usually an exciting time for students at IIT Madras – freshers eagerly await the dawn of their college lives, and senior students look forward to welcoming in a new set of thoughts, ideas and perspectives. Over the last few days, however, the social media has been abuzz with indignation at the administration’s decision to house undergraduate freshers and undergraduate seniors in different hostels this year.

My first memory of Kerala is the hypnotizing smell that accompanies the first showers falling on the bright red ground. The rain keeps falling, not stopping for even a second, as if enchanted by the ground.