1. May 2001
This article was written at a time when I was so utterly free, that I decided to summon old frustrations and vent them all over again. Or maybe that's a good excuse to ease the blame off myself for writing something quite so bitter and unforgiving, should anyone later brand it so. In any case, this article was spurred by the realisation that there's a lot of atrociousness in the system that I had been taking for granted. In particular, I felt disgusted at the words as they came out, when I related the variety of tales and anecdotes that constitute classical Ramaiah folklore - stories of oppression, cruelty and logic-screwed-up-a-thousand-times-over, and the occasional self-respecting bloke that slapped the teacher that seemed too insensitive. I realise I bring out the most savage hatred I could ever feel, to the extent that one could accuse me of stooping to the levels of those that I brand crude. But I guess we need the outlet every now and then, as I'm not so sure it helps to live two years dwelling on vengeance. I find myself getting slightly inconsistent with the advice I'd give to others, namely, you do have to give a little up for the sake of JEE, but that could just be the mindless partying and the desire to be at the forefront of insanity with the rest of the generation!

2. April 3rd 2003
Since about one and a half years after writing this article, it has been of renewed importance in my life, and to some extent has helped me feel quite important to society, though quite remotely. For that reason I cannot quite dismiss it as only an outlet any more. I am responsible for my opinions. Especially those expressed on a page which is among the highest ranked by Google for 'ramaiah iit', etc! Since December 2002, a variety of people have stumbled upon this article on the net and mailed me about it. I have replied to all of them - students currently in Ramaiah who feel suffocated and need the courage to leave; parents who are now warned against putting their children in the institute or any other institute that coaches for it (yes such institutes do indeed exist!); even some concerned relatives of students in other cities and towns across India who had plans of going all the way to Hyderabad to prepare for IITJEE. Yes, that's a lot of people to be answerable to for my opinions. But I do not intend to make any disclaimer and wash my hands of the whole thing, now that I am in IIT and loving it. I stand up for those opinions, and am more motivated to fight for a cause.

In about June or July 2001, this article was rejected by The Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad's leading English daily. I am not surprised. It spoke too strongly against a figure which the Hyderabadi media had then been making its business to deify and worship. I'll say Hyderabad was the loser. I'll have them know that here in IIT Madras, I have interviewed the Director, and he calls people such as Ramaiah a disservice to education. I say that only those sensible people will agree with him, who understand what a person as qualified to comment on education as the Director of IIT Madras means by the word 'education'. Others will cry blasphemy. The IIT system is working to change JEE so that such institutes can no longer flourish. I hope they do something soon enough. I promise to shake the same Hyderabadi media again on my next trip to the city. I gain strength from the people who have mailed me. I can now claim that this article affects lives and decisions. It has to reach a wider audience.

This article was written with a purpose that I am glad so many people I do not know have helped me realise. It is a reflection upon the system of prevalent thoughts, beliefs, and practices in the city of Hyderabad, regarding preparation for IITJEE. And a call for change. A lot of people mailed me asking me to name the other 'human' institute that I owe my seat in IIT to. For long, though I personally mailed them back the name, I didn't think it necessary to put it in the article itself. This article was not written to advertise the other institute. But the public has a right to know and I owe them this information. I left Ramaiah to join Mega Study Circle (better known as Krishnamurthy). It is a pity that they still remain the second name in IITJEE coaching in Hyderabad. They so much deserve to be the first - for the people they are, and for their methods. I am eternally grateful to them. But I'm content keeping this in an introductory note and not in the main body of the article. As for the main article itself, I shall leave it forever unchanged, to speak for an eighteen-year-old's reflections.

3. August 2nd 2004
I just graduated from IIT Madras. I'm thinking a lot about this issue again for two reasons - first to weigh the meaning of life as I've learnt it to be in four years in IIT against the understanding we entered it with; and second, again with regard to feedback. I've been written to, once again, by people who totally agree with me, and for the first time, this last year has also brought with it several detractors. A community on Orkut, by name Ramaiah, has called me some rather unflattering things. Their discussion of my article, cheap personal shots at me aside, brings up other questions which I feel obliged to refer readers to, since my objective is to inform. Since this feedback has come entirely from people who have made it to the IITs, this note addresses them. Incidentally, my views here are backed by some of my friends in the other IITs, who also went to Ramaiah and who have just graduated and are pondering the same meaning of life question.

A couple of things to concede and defend, if I may. I agree that to call the people from Ramaiah emotionally battered and mentally scarred was rather unwarranted strong language on my part. But as a frustrated 18 year old who looked around, I meant it every bit. A large part of the negative feedback I've received has been from freshman IITians. All I can say to them is - wait till your 2nd or 3rd year when JEE seems like a joke, and then you'll realise there's more to life than IIT, and more to IIT than JEE.

The Director of IIT Madras has the following concern: Coaching classes mass produce disinterested non-motivated students. They're not the people who eventually shape this nation. A large number of them have been pushed into it by their parents or peers. Just because they can crunch numbers for two or more years and make it past JEE, it doesn't mean they deserve to be in IIT. At the end of four years you'll realise how few people actually ever wanted to be engineers. Chances are, if you never had that spark of self-motivation in you, you were not meant to be an engineer. Even if you did eventually make it to an IIT. If you can say so unashamedly that you would never have made it to IIT if not for Ramaiah cracking a whip at you, you're only proving my point.

In the IITs, the Hyderabadis and those even from Kota have built quite a reputation for themselves, and not a very enviable one. Perhaps there's a reason there're so few factory products in the IITs who are musicians, writers, speakers, quizzers, or even well-read and informed and aware. And we all know none of this passion for life has much to do with an urban or rural background. Look around. The most zealous IITians who 'crack' the technical festivals are also more likely from other cities. What have they gone through to get to IIT? Nothing like the insanity that Hyderabadis have lived with. And yet they outshine us. So what if Hyderabad puts more people through to the IITs - have they been very worthy IITians? IIT is about building character. That's a lesson lost on so many people even after their four or five years at an IIT.

Why are we praising Ramaiah for taking 100 odd of the best students and Hyderabad and putting 80% of them through, when those people would have made it on their own anyway? What do we talk of noble non-commercial ideals when we sit in those classes next to children of Income Tax officers who got a backdoor entry? We paid our fees and were never given a receipt. It was just cash loaded into sacks and sacks and sacks. Not only are they bad human beings, they're lowlifes! Ramaiah is an unregistered institute. They make more money than they'll ever need. It isn't greatness that keeps them from taking more students. It's lack of infrastructure, and the fact that their methods cannot work on 400 students with the same success. Let them put 80% of a random lot of students through to the IITs. And then we'll see about calling them great.

And some people have called the Ramaiah period the most intellectually stimulating years of their lives. I choose to either suggest they learn what intellectual means, or to feel sorry for how underused IIT was by them! And also, ask some of your less favoured classmates if they thought so too. Their viewpoint will be quite a revelation.

And another piece of information. Mega Study Circle has split. Mr. Krishnamurthy, the Maths Lecturer has formed V Study Circle, while the others continue to run Mega Study Circle.

I am not, however, about to endorse anything or anyone now, as being in IIT and watching the brightest from Madras and Bangalore makes me totally reject our model of coaching as a daily and several hourly affair. Hyderabad as a whole needs to lose the craze for IIT. Most of us are better off doing something else altogether. Why prepare three years for the Ramaiah entrance and then lose two years of your childhood in that dungeon only to realise at the end of your stay in IIT that you never wanted to be an engineer?

Among the people who've mailed in with positive feedback, one is rather motivated to make a documentary on the sheer ridiculousness of the Coaching scene in Hyderabad and how it robs our lives of those finer shades. I hope he gets far enough with that to make a difference. I speak out of concern for Hyderabad, and more concern for the IITs and the nation they help build.

For a year now, I have been hearing from back home in Hyderabad, of the coverage that Ramaiah's coaching institute ('Ramaiah' henceforth) has been receiving, in print, and on television. It was probably because the first year in IIT Madras was too hectic that I didn't find the time to write, until now.

I made it to IIT, after (rather, in spite of) one year in Ramaiah, and a second year in an institute run by humans. It was mutual hatred, and unwillingness to be part of the Mad Hatter's party, that drove me to leave the institute after my first year. Yet, much as I hated it, I was always willing to concede that it had its results to boast of. But now, after coming to know people from Kota, Rajasthan, especially those from Bansal's institute (which, incidentally had nearly 600 of its students qualifying in JEE 2000, including AIRs 1,2,4,7 ), I have grounds to prove to the blinded Hyderabadis, that it doesn't take two years of gore to make it to IIT. From what I hear, the culture of Bansal's Institute is wonderful, and the teachers and students share a very special relationship.

Mr. Ramaiah, one of the saner people in the core, makes a lot of statements to encourage students to put half their lifetimes into preparation for IITJEE, and worse still, on behalf of his colleagues, justifies their methods. And there are more takers, or buyers every year. Probably 9000 tenth class passouts take the entrance exam to Ramaiah's coaching classes. This reflects that the people are willing to do anything, necessary or otherwise, to make it to IIT. It is probably all right if one makes it in the end - people I know have said, " It worked for me. I have no regrets." But anyone who doesn't would feel, I'm sure, nothing short of murderous. It's great that their results are so good, but the teachers should learn somehow, to shrug off the idea that they're doing their students a favour by running their institute like some Nazi concentration camp.

Mr. Madhusudan, crudeness personified, should learn to complement his virtues as a wonderful teacher, with some consideration, and compassion. The least he could do is treat parents with some respect. He had once branded me totally useless, 'unfit for even EAMCET' , with Mr. Koteshwara Rao seconding the opinion. If I could meet them now, I'd let them know how insufficiently human they are to even judge. Mr. Madhusudan once slammed the phone on my parents. I am boiling for a chance to be as nasty to them as they've been to my brother (three years my senior, he also left the institute after one year and joined the same other institute, and is going to pass out of IIT Madras this July), myself, and my parents. More suggestions, though, for these people to improve themselves: Mr. Koteshwara Rao, ego personified is amazing at his subject, but it would do him well to hack down the 100 storey pedestal that he places himself on. Mr. Surendranath, mediocrity personified, should realise that his Java applets are no compensation for one year lost in aimless chatter.

I speak so strongly, more out of bitterness, yes, but somewhere in there, is also concern for 15-year-olds who lose two years of their life when it is hardly needed that there be a sacrifice at all. Even among those who made it, and who I now see in IIT Madras, most are mentally scarred, and emotionally trampled and battered. It would take either the courage to quit Ramaiah (or not join it at all), or the rare resilience to survive it unscathed, to enter IIT like a normal student from any other place. I hope either students turn to other institutes, or Ramaiah itself rethinks its attitude, so that Hyderabad sends more confident and colourful students to the IITs. Some of the most talented and flamboyant people I've known in IIT Madras are top 50 rankers, from Madras and Bangalore. Hyderabadis can stop trashing their interests and hobbies in the name of JEE and Ramaiah.

In speaking against what has nearly become a cult, I realise I face the possible threat of ostracism and excommunication from my friends and circles, but the truth remains right in our face. It's up to us to want to notice it.