Our Journey
I am very excited about writing this blog. Now its been almost a week but every time I try to remember that evening , the whole thing appears in front of my eyes. Its like that moment is locked up deep in my heart and never going to go away.
It was 11th of feb, we got confirmation from Smart india hackathon team that our proposal was selected. We were very excited.We started learning more about the project requirements. Days passed .It was 25th.I was Ankit’s apartment when I woke up with some horrific news.One of our team member Ankit Arnav met with an accident and he was heavily injured. He told us that he can’t come with us.We had to let him go as his health was more important than anything. Then after a long search and applying many machine learning algorithms ,neural networks and tuning our hyperparameters , we got Ashutosh a.k.a ashugnion(correct me if i’m wrong).
Two days later on 27th , I had an interview in the morning and a train to Chennai at 11pm that night.I reached my college at about 9am .We were waiting in our college auditorium for our turns for interview. My turn came at about 6pm . I was exhausted.I think this day my luck was not that good. I gave the interview and I was told to leave for the day.
When I came home I was mad like hell . Things weren’t working out.Soon another thing came up. Our semester results. I thought it could relief me a bit but it was opposite. There was some mistake in my result. I couldn’t bear the frustration level. I was fed up. But I didn’t knew that in next few days something really good was about to come and this was going to be best days of my life.I took a long breath. And after talking to my friends and teachers and getting some positive assurances a little bit of hope left in me sparked.
I got up , packed my bags , ate some food and booked a cab to the station.I was with my friend Ajitesh. We reached Howrah station where our other three friends (Ankit, Aditi and Ashutosh)were waiting for us.I was meeting Ashutosh after a long time. He was very calm and simple back then and turned out a source of laughter for our journey.At 11:45pm our train started and so did our flourishing journey.
We were very excited about the Hackathon but the train journey which is 28hours long is a different experience in itself.Also this was my first journey that long with friends.In the train we enjoyed our time by playing UNO and some card games.Although the UNO master’s trick weren’t working that time or I’ll say she was out of luck that time or this could be also be the possibility that she was keeping the luck for something that was about to happen. :)
After the 28 hours long journey we finally reached at Chennai Central railway station at 4 am in the morning . Then we had our first food at Chennai as Idlis. Soon our sixth team member also our team leader arrived with our two mentors (Subrato and Aman bhaiya).We waited at the station till 7:30am and after that a bus assigned by nodal center took us to the college.We reached their in about 2 to 3 hours. When we reached at the college we couldn’t believe what we were seeing. That beautiful and humongous college campus I had never seen in my life.The name of the college was SSN college of engineering.We reached at the hostel where they provided us separate rooms. We moved to our respective rooms.After an hour we had lunch provided by the college itself . We had our first Chennaiyan meal at it was very good. The only thing we won’t forget is confusing curd rice with kheer .After that we did our registration and went along to see the college campus.
At night we had a long planning of how we have to get things on track and complete out project .We were assigned tasks.
The day came . We woke up early and got ready for the competition.We assembled (like if avengers are going to…)at the college auditorium where inauguration ceremony of the Smart India Hackathon took place.After that we went to the building where the whole setup was ready for the competition. We had breakfast. And the time began.
We started with a little bit of planning and started working on the project.Soon the two ministers from Agriculture ministry of India arrived who were going to evaluate our proposal.In our first round of evaluation they were very upset because we were using a proprietary software. But somehow we managed to save our lives. Ankit’s out of the box idea was the one who saved us. Ma’am told us to do certain changes and use a open source software.We were on it.It was very challenging for us to make that much shift a that time. But as you guys know we are endgame.Ankit and me were on it WHATEVER IT TAKES. We learned a bit of that software which will be in our hearts forever. QGIS it was.We tried to implement some thing for the next evaluation. Everyone was working very hard.
Our next evaluation went very well.Ma’am’s were satisfied with what we were doing.On the same day two more levels of evaluation was waiting for us. Every team present their was working very hard and we thought our competitors were on the top of them. Seeing this sometimes we had feelings of giving up but every time that happened one our team members was their to put that bad feeling away and motivate us. I think that was very important. But one more bad luck happened that day and I think that was the last one. Slippers guy’s slippers worn out. I had to take Ajitesh’s slippers everywhere.And this was the reason behind we not seeing Ajitesh dance that night.
At 12 that night after our third round of evaluation we were given red bull.The energy drink whose energy we moved with our dance moves after an hour.That recreational activity was truly recreational although we missed Ankit and Ajitesh.After that we came back to our tables and we were shocked.We saw every on working very hard . We thought that we wasted our time. We did regret that we we dancing that time but not for long. We put our immense effort after that .One after another we took our chances for sleeping since some of us had to be their on the table.
The next day started with some yoga activity which we didn’t join.Some of us were still working from the night.Soon the next rounds of evaluation happened. Every thing went well and with positive feedback from our beloved ma’am’s we were excited for the result. The mentors were working on the machine learning models and training the models for trend analysis which i think was the plus point and made our win even more possible. Verma was mastermind behind it.After final evaluation everything went well. We reached auditorium late after having some chicken sandwich.In their there was something else. As soon as we entered , or hearts started pounding more and more. After some speeches by ministers the results were going to be announced. I remember our claps rose to another level when ma’am was giving her speech. We thought that every word came out of her mouth had a link to our ups and downs during the last 36 hours and somewhat related to us and only us.
This was the time we were waiting for. The entire good luck was waiting to be unleashed . The host said “The first prize goes to the team who call themselves ENDGAME.”. This was our moment. I first looked at each of our friends face. I couldn’t be more happy.Then we went to the stage , took the trophy and the cheque of INR 100000. We came back to our seats ,called our best friends, parents, uploaded whatsapp status and every thing we could do at that time.
After coming from auditorium we were still in that mood which can’t be defined , it can’t only be felt and I know five person that time who felt it.
The rest is on the way……… keep waiting.