Speed Limits

IIT Madras campus now has a 20 kmph speed limit. Right in time for the first time ever when I went there by car!

It appears like recently some deer lost its life (or got badly injured) at the IIT Madras campus after being hit by a vehicle. For they have now imposed a 20 kmph speed limit for all vehicles on campus.

It’s a story that’s repeating 25 years later later it seems! Back in 2000, when I joined IITM as an undergrad, they had just imposed a rule barring incoming students from bringing in “powered vehicles” (cars and scooters). Most of us complied and just used cycles to go around the vast campus, though quite a few (mostly people from Chennai) violated it.

I was at IITM yesterday. My wife had a class to teach, and we wanted to do a holiday in the “long weekend” (if one can define one with a scheduled holiday on a Wednesday) leading up to Ganesha Habba this Wednesday (27th august), and we wanted to go to Tamil Nadu again, and so we decided to go to IITM as a family on Saturday to kick off the trip.

The journey to Chennai deserves its own post. This is about the campus itself.

This was the first time EVER that I was driving a car inside IITM. The above mention ban on powered vehicles partly has to do with it - not that my parents would have got me a car to use in Madras then (though they did get me a new car when I joined IIMB, as a reward for my performance in CAT - that was one of their bribes for me to stay in Bangalore rather than go elsewhere).

Back in childhood, our Resident Welfare Association would organize a bunch of sports every Republic Day. One of the regular games there was “slow cycling” - the objective is to cycle as slowly as possible without putting your foot down. It is more challenging than it initially sounds.

Similarly, “slow driving” is challenging as well. It is one thing to just “drive carefully” while being mindful of the deer and monkeys and dogs and mongooses crossing the road (my daughter unexpectedly upped her “animal count” at IITM yesterday - she had never seen a mongoose before. That said, finding mongooses in a campus adjacent to the Chennai Snake Park should not be surprising).

It is another to be mindful of seemingly heavily enforced speed limits. The number of security personnel across the campus has gone up since the last time I was there - in May last year. There are some 6-7 stations along both Delhi Avenue and Bonn Avenue between the gate and GC with a security person monitoring it.

And by looking at the other vehicles that I came across during my time there, the speeds seem to be well enforced. Nobody goes faster. And I’m told that the going premium paid to auto drivers to go inside campus has also shot up since they end up taking much longer.

My biggest challenges driving on campus yesterday and this morning happened when someone in front of me was driving especially slowly. The dilemma was in whether to overtake them or not - they were clearly going at well below 20 kmph, but was it ethical to overtake when a low speed limit was in place?

Similarly, was it okay to honk, though it hadn’t been officially banned? What if it woke up some sleeping deer? Would it piss off the professor who I think is responsible for this speed limit? Driving was more stressful than I had thought!

Elsewhere in IITM

While my wife was away teaching, I decided to show around the campus to the kids (though I don’t know how much my son appreciated, since he undertook the tour in his buggy). Given we were staying at Taramani Guest House, it was a short walk to show them my hostel (Narmada).

And then I was in a dilemma - ideally I would have wanted to show them my “department” but it physically doesn’t exist any more. Back in my day, there was no building for Computer Science, and we just occupied the top floor of the Building Sciences Block (Civil department). During my time there, we started expanding, taking up some space above the (magically adjoining) computer center as well.

Over the course of time, Subramonian Shankar (founder of American Megatrends - remember them from your windows BIOS in the 90s?) donated money to build a building for “our” department (adjacent to the computer centre and building sciences block). So Computer Science has its own building now.

What should I show my children as “my department” now? I don’t identify at all with the Subramonian Shankar block since it didn’t exist when I was a student. The Building Sciences Block doesn’t house the CS department any more. From a department perspective I was “homeless”!

The problem solved itself since we were running out of time before my wife finished her class (and we were to visit my IIT classmate Ranga for dinner shortly afterward), and both BSB and the new CS block were too far from Taramani House. Instead, I decided to show my kids what was once supposedly the “longest corridor in Asia” (in Humanities and Sciences Block). They fawned over some fawns in front of CLT (Central Lecture Theatre).

This morning, before we left IIT to continue on our holiday, I decided to give my wife a short tour of IIT in our car. We went in front of BSB and I told her my department used to be there. Then we drove around to in front of the Computer Centre, where it now says “computer sciences block”.

Suddenly, I figured out that that was the most logical “departmental home” for me - we had a lot o classes in that building back then, and it is connected to both BSB and Subramonian Shankar Block. We got off the car and took a picture and moved on.