The building for the Hobbies Club

Who would have thought that star gazing, gardening, painting, philately and numismatics are hobbies that aspiring engineers at IITs would pursue? But here’s the thing, the Hobbies Club at IIT Roorkee was started 56 years ago to make sure that these would-be-engineers’ hobbies don’t vaporise in the humdrum of equations and formulae.

“The Hobbies Club is a place where students can pursue their interests even while in college. The Institute too has been encouraging students by providing all the equipment and funds to conduct lectures and fests. Right from the telescopes, cameras, operating systems used to create softwares, everything is made available to students.” says Tathagata Sengupta, current student General Secretary for the Club. The Star gazing section, which started off with just two refractors, today has 5″ refractor telescopes built by Celestron. They even had a webinar session with Dr. Ashwin Vasavada from Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA.  

Not just that, but students also have various guest lectures and seminars to keep their learning process on. This persuasion and the constant learning process throughout the semesters has enabled them to win laurels at various national level competitions. “The web designing and software development section of the club has won the Delloite Collegiate Cyber Threat Competition consecutively for the last 4 years. We won cash prizes worth Rs. 1.2 lakh in that competition,” says Ravi Kishor, a student who was a part of the winning team. He is also the ex-General Secretary for the Hobbies Club.

Students also conduct their annual fest ‘Srishti‘ which sees a footfall from across all engineering colleges in the vicinity. They don’t just have exhibitions of their works, but also arrange workshops, competitions like the flower quest (a treasure hunt like game), CurrenC- a crossword puzzle of currencies and countries, and a lot more in the span of three days. During the course of ‘Srishti’, students don’t just undertake tedious tasks of management and organisation, but have an experience worth all their existence. “What one learns as a part of handling this fest is something to cherish for a life-time. Right from the permissions for the equipment, to getting experts on board to share their knowledge and until the last day … there are instances one cannot discredit,” says Abhijit Gaur, a student who is in his fourth year at IIT- Roorkee. The students, who sign up for this club, have been allotted an entire building with state-of-the-art facilities to carry out their event-related activities.

Students at ‘Srishti’

Some of these students have gone on to ditch their engineering plans and pursued their hobbies as professions. Divya Agarwal, who was a part of the club, is a photographer today at TinyOwl- a mobile app company. This club has come a long way since its inception thanks to the constant efforts and passion of the students to keep it going.