Iit Kharagpur

We spend our days inside the Drives Lab, which is part of the Department of Electrical Engineering here at the institute. It’s a room full of wires, machines, and the hum of equipment that never seems to stop. Working in Kharagpur means being part of a very specific kind of community. We’re located in West Midnapore, and the campus feels like its own little world. In this lab, we deal with the practical side of things. It’s dusty sometimes, and there are always tools lying around on the benches. We don't have a receptionist or a fancy lobby; you just walk in and see people working. Most of the staff here have been around for years, so we know where everything is kept, even if it looks like a mess to someone else. We drink a lot of chai to keep going through the afternoon slumps. The department building is old and has that specific smell of books and ozone. It’s not the most modern place, but it works for what we need to do. We spend a lot of time troubleshooting small issues with the hardware. It’s slow work and takes a lot of patience. People come and go, mostly students doing their projects or faculty checking in. We just keep the lab running and make sure the experiments don't go too far off track. It is a very busy place but we manage to keep things moving.