The Campus

The IIM Calcutta campus or Jokaland, as we call it, is almost like an island amid lakes.

The IIM Calcutta campus, courtesy Google Earth.

As it's evident from the Google Earth image, there are three major man-made lakes surrounding the academic block, the campus KV and library. Our hostels are along the lakes on the outside. The setting gets more clear in the Wikimapia image, as it has proper labelling too.

Compare it to the IIT Bombay campus and you'll find many similarities. Both the campus have the serene presence of beautiful water bodies and dense greenery. Right now the similarities get thicker, since the Calcutta weather nowadays is quite like Mumbai monsoons; it stays cloudy with frequent short showers. Due to the lakes, it stays humid at the campus and if it's not windy, it can get really stifling. The IIMC campus is much smaller than IITB campus, and obviously since IITB is meant for much bigger number of junta. It used to house 4 BTech batches, each of roughly 500 plus huge number of MTechs and few PhDs too. Here at IIMC there are just two batches at a given point of time. My batch's strength is around 310 and that's the largest number they've ever had.

One thing paining me is the distance from the downtown Kolkata. Last night I enquired about ordering pizza and I got to know that the minimum order they take is something as obscene as 6k!! That's because the nearest outlet is at Camac Street or like that :-). But, the food in the mess & (almost) 24 hrs canteen in the hostel is much better than IITB. But eating out is still an issue. Nearest Metro station is some 100 bucks away from IIMC and there aren't many options to reach there. I guess things would get brighter once my bike reaches Kolkata.

Today I took some pictures at the campus. I've uploaded them at the Flickr page. Most of them need little bit of postprocessing, which I plan to do soon.