We caught up with Amit Sinha, IIT  Admit  from Mumbai  who scored a whopping 315/360 in his JEE Mains Examination this year. Amit tells us about life in Kota, the dream and the hype

Offensively compiled by Sandeep Dash.

In the last 25 years, an average Indian parent has consistently dreamt of his children becoming engineers, more so- get into the IITs, even if they didn’t know what the IITs taught. They know it fetches good money and everybody is behind it, so we will too.

Just 2 days after your 10^th Std. Board exams, you would be chilling, texting or sleeping, Amit left for Kota.

Now for all those who don’t know what on earth Kota is, here is a short description.

Kota is a place where some 4 lakh super nerds study 25 hours a day to crack the entrance for India’s top engineering colleges, then become engineers and then, well, become bankers.

Some 20 other people you meet will tell you how they rubbed as**s and worked really hard in Kota and then got sub zero marks in the exams, Amit tells us about the reality.

Kota is another myth that Indians have bought, others being ‘IPL’, ‘Achhe din’ , ‘Ekta Kapoor’ and ‘Dr.Batra’s hair growth techniques’. We feel that KOTA is the end to our IIT woes but it just starts there. Statistically only 1 out every 40 students from Kota gets through the IITs, some 7-8 others get decent colleges, some repeat the year and the rest curse the teachers to join baap ka dhanda. Kota assures nothing, the chances of turning vegan in Rajasthan are more than clearing the exams. It’s never going to be a magic wand, its two years of dedication, will power and of course- an aptitude for the f*****g subject.

Amit recounts that there were plenty of people who had joined multiple coaching classes in Kota, had the best notes from the best teachers and still sucked in the subjects worse than a commerce graduate. “Aptitude”, he says “Neither parents nor the students themselves realize that they do not have the aptitude for engineering and are probably meant to sell tea at the other shop, still they just want to waste some money and come here to impress girls that aren’t.”

Kota as he says is a sober brothel- a place where intense and strenuous romance with books ensues and there are no police raids. In the past 2 years he says, that what makes you or breaks you in Kota is your company. There are only two kinds of people in Kota- one who study from day one and watch porn occasionally. The other is the ones who watch porn from day one and study occasionally. You know who gets the IITs.

Kota had a coaching class at every street, even the worst coaching classes had teachers’ driving swanky SUVs, like it was some kind of a mandatory disclosure that every teacher had to make. There are all kinds of eateries in Kota and some of them make their best effort to not let students fall sick. To facilitate making out, some malls have come up.

Just for the sake of information, Amit lived at an institution’s hostel where he had to wash his clothes himself. That was cool but then he had to wash the washrooms pathetically used by other inmates, too. So that was not cool.

A guy named Rohan had some booze, wore great clothes, partied every day , smoked up and made loads of friends in Kota, sadly that is not the recipe to taste success in Kota. He came back to Mumbai, only to realize that with all the qualities he had, he could do a BMM. No offence there.  But it was late and he couldn’t do BMM too.

 Before taking any decision, realising your potential is important. If you have the potential, go become a Amit. If you think you don’t, stay away or compromise to become a Rohan. Friends and parents, it’s not about having just a dream, it’s about having a rational one.