On some night in January 2019, me and my roommates Aadil & Sushant were discussing how the hectic schedule in our college, and all our other commitments for improving our profiles, virtually meant that we weren’t spending time with each other at all. We all agreed that the only way to actually hang out more was to work on the same project. We started looking out for options, and after carefully weighing in our alternatives, we decided on participating in the Smart India Hackathon. The decision was guided by the kind of projects on offer, and a time frame that would have allowed to us to maintain our other commitments, manage classes and assignments and still give about 20 hours per week to this project. A blatant flaw with this plan, that we realized much later was that this competition was one which a lot of people from all across the country looked forward to, with some even spending more than a year preparing for it. For us, the first round of the competition was about 20 days away, with the final round in about 2 months time. There was another catch, each team had to have a minimum of 6 members, and after a mix of deliberation & persuation over the next week, we managed to form a team, adding Daniel, Arshia and Damodar to our team, all of whom were our batchmates.

The 1st round

The competition portal had released the problem statements somewhere around July 2018, and the format of the competition was that each such problem statement had a solitary winners prize. Each category’s winner would be selected out of the 4 teams, that would be selected after the 1st round. However, in case a problem statement did not have impressive enough submissions, that problem statement would be scrapped. Each team was allowed to submit proposals to 3 unique problem statements. The challenge was to select a problem that had a high probability of being chosen by others as well, besides thinking about a viable solution to the same. The initial discussions between our team did not not bear any fruit owing to a sense of disharmony between our team members. Some of the members were meeting with each other for the first time, and were not happy with the inequity in the work that was being done. At that time, we had to make a decision we had been putting off till now - selecting a team captain. Again, since the team captain would have to take care of a lot of the administrative side of things without getting any extra credit in the end result, nobody volunteered to take the part. Eventually I agreed to take up the role after a blind vote, where we chose the people we wanted to see become the captain. I distinctly remember the first discussion that we had post that vote. We all were standing in a circle outside our food court, faces looking grim in the team. We all pledged to dedicate a substantial amount of our time to this project, agreeing that taking it lightly and just continuing to act on whims would lead to nothing but a waste of time. Over the next week we all warmed up to each other, working till late at night on somedays to brainstorm over ideas. We eventually narrowed down 2 problems, and submitted proposals for them. The 1st problem statement was to build an application to find a nearby parking spot and the 2nd one was to build a game based on Gardner’s theory of Intelligence to gauge the aptitude of a child, and recommend possible career options he/she might be suited for. After submitting our proposals on the final day, we felt that our solution for parking spot finder was the one that had a higher chance of being picked up if at all.

A surprise and some second thoughts

After having made the submission, the next few days were quiet as our sessional exams had started. Once our exams got over, we went about inquiring about in all the departments of our college about the other teams that had participated from our college. We found out, that 4 more teams had participated just like us, and we also found out that our college campus was one of the places where the final round was going to be held. After another week, we eventually did get the results of the 1st round. We were the only team that actually did make it through from our college in the 2nd round, but to our surprise, we actually were selected for the problem statement that we were less confident in. But to our dismay the center for participation for the 2nd round for our problem statement specifically, was in Jaipur about 2000 Km away from our college campus in Manipal. Since the 2nd round was only a fortnight away, we seriously thought of quitting the event, since booking air tickets at such a late juncture would have cost us more than our combined prize money. The other option was to travel via train, which would involve 5 days of travel time to and from, with a 2 day stay in the Jaipur center for the competition. The issue here was that our college did not ususally provide any kind of support for students travelling to other venues for participation, which implied that the labs and assignmemnts we would miss during that period wouldn’t be rescheduled for us and our grades would get heavily affected. And in all of this, we were not even thinking about the extra time and effort that would be required to get a prototype for our proposal ready by the day of the final competition. We again had a long meeting amongst ourselves, and eventually agreed that such an experience of being in the final four of a national level competition should not be missed upon. We charted out the plans, set up timelines, completed a lot of the administrative work which included creating tshirts for every member in the team, getting permissions from multiple departments in the college, getting printed banners and standees all of which was mandatory. The only bit of support we got in the entire process was from the guy we went to for making the standees, who promised not charging us, if we won the competition. We also had to select a team name. Having seen Mr. Robot recently and in a bid to get over the formalities, we named ourselves PySociety. By this time, the team had really bonded and spirits were generally high, when we were working together. So, the actual goal of getting to hang out more with friends was somewhere being accomplished.

The journey

About 60 % of the work had been completed, when we were about to board the train from Manipal. A long journey lay in front of us, the first train would take us to Mumbai, where we would have to wait for about 9 hours, before boarding the train for Jaipur. We had kept local copies of documentations, had taken enough power backup to be able to work without internet during the train journey. We arrived at Mumbai, the Chattrapati Sivaji terminal station somewhere around 3 in the night. Aadil in our team hailed from Navi Mumbai, so after the mandatory walk along Marine Drive where the sea front just looks majestic, we headed towards his home. Aadil’s Mom had made biriyani for us and to this day, I haven’t had biriyani that has tasted as good. We left for Jaipur in a jovial mood that persisted throughout the remaining journey. At the time of our arrival at the Jaipur center around 4 PM on the 1st March, 75% of the work was completed. We were satisfied with the progress, but we weren’t able to get any more work done on that day owing to a overdrawn opening ceremony in the evening. As the competition was due to start at 6 in the morning the next day we called in an early night. 5 of us guys were given one apartment by the organizers, and all the girls from the all the teams were staying in another block. The block in which we were staying was under maintenance and was isolated from the rest of the campus, giving the entire place an eerie look. In our apartment though, there were only 2 beds which could take no more than 3 people. We were given 2 extra mattresses which we kept in the living room. Me and Sushant were sleeping there peacefully and around 5 in the morning we heard vehement knocking on the door. Altough none of us had faith in the existence of spectral beings, the sudden outburst in such an isolated environment terrified us, and we literally started screaming in fear. Everybody in the apartment woke up, we opened the door and we saw no one. We stood outside, confused about the entire ordeal, and just then someone in the corridor shouted that it was just a local guard who liked to play such pranks.

After that uncanny start, we got ready and made our way to the hall. There were to be 3 rounds of presentations over the course of the next 36 hours. There was little chance to fraternize with other teams since a considerable amount of work was still left. We got down to it and started working. About 14 hours in, we had our 1st round of presentation in front of the judging panel who gave us their feedback. We estimated that the with the progress that we had made, incorporating the feedback along with completing the rest of the project would take us around 10 more hours, and we would have time to spare before the final presentation. The competition rules mandated the presence of at least 2 members at the table assigned to us. We decided to give Sushant and Arshia who were in charge of integrating all the modules the entire night’s rest, since they would primarily be in action the next day. Aadil and Daniel decided to take a nap in the competition hall itself, since they thought getting up on cue would be easier. Me and Damodar tried to do our best, but by 7 in the morning, we were tired and were virtually sleeping with our eyes open when Sushant and Arshia came back and took charge. However we followed Aadil’s lead, and decided to take rest in the competition hall itself. Around 10, we were all semi-fresh when it was time for our 2nd round of presentation.

Panic and Hysteria

The judges in the 2nd round did not give us any suggestions, nor did they make any comments about anything they were seeing. We continued with our work, after their inspection. Around 1 o clock, we were pretty satisfied with our work, and all the modules were individually properly unit tested. The integrated application was working well, albeit enough tests had not been done on them. Seeing the progress, Aadil and Daniel decided to eventually go back to the rooms to get a power nap to catch up on sleep. Meanwhile, me and Damodar started working on improving the graphics and overall look of the application. Around 2, I sensed a bit of panic in Sushant’s eyes, he had been testing the entire application end to end for some time now. On being asked, he said that the application was randomly crashing in 1 out of 5 test runs and the logs weren’t clear enough to debug, what was causing the crash. We all left what we were doing to get to the bottom of this. Only Sushant and Arshia were experts in Flask, the web framework of our choice for the application. Although the others could support by continuously testing end to end, and trying to find the pattern of the crashes, it was up to the 2 to fix the bug. From having hours to spare with a complete application, to not having a stable application an hour before submission was due, anxiety was creeping in.

The Education minister of our country at that time, Mr. Prakash Javedkar had come to our center and was meeting with all the participants. There were 32 teams at the venue, 4 each for the 8 problem statements that had been assigned this center. The orientation of the the tables was such that, there were 28 tables around in a circle, and there were 4 tables in the middle file. It would have been a huge honour to meet with a man of his calibre. We were seated in the middle file, but owing to the orientation we were not in his line of vision, and the team escorting Mr Javedkar could not have insisted him to turn around to the teams he had skipped, and thus he ended up meeting the 28 teams seated in the circle. We got back to attending to our crisis. At this point, we had identified that the application was only crashing while transitioning between games. There were 2 kinds of transitions, from the end of the game to the story scene, and from the story scene to launch a new game. We were working on narrowing down the issue, with about half an hour to go, when the team captains were asked to step out and come near the podium. It was frustrating to be interrupted at this juncture, but I had no option but to follow the rules. I was sitting there along with 31 other people, when suddenly the video in front of us started, and the prime minister of our country Mr. Narendra Modi was with us on video call. An address from him was least expected. For a moment, I forgot about the issue at hand and intently listened to what he had to say, and his vision for backing this event.

I came back after listening to his rousing speech, with about 10 minutes to go before our final submission. Inspired from Mr Modi, I addressed my team appreciating each one of them for having worked so hard all these days, and to look at the positive side of the mess we were in, hoping that it would lift their spirits. All of them were listening keenly, when suddenly Damodar could not help himself and started laughing hysterically. Apparently the rest of the team had identified that the crash only occurred when the scene transitioned from the story mode to launch the 3rd level of the same game type. The scores from the 1st level were being passed on, instead of the 2nd one, and owing to a mismatch in the scoring patterns in the 3 levels, the crash was occuring. They had already made the change and tested the run a few times successfully. To this day, all 5 of them laugh at me for that “motivating speech”.

The Winning moment

Once again in great spirits we all headed for the final presentation, this time in a separate hall with extra panelists who had hitherto not been present. It all went smoothly, and we came back to the hall to interact with the other participants. One of the teams said that they had been working on the project for over a year, having had multiple interactions from the Ministry of Culture who were the guiding force behind the problem statement we were a part of. Another team turned out to be former champions of the event, having won the inaugral edition of the hackathon back in 2017. We discussed our proposals with each of them, fraternized with the other teams who had were submitting solutions for other problem statements. It was a lively atmosphere, and we almost did not realize that it was time for the winners to be announced. Every team assembled back at their tables. We got into one final huddle and agreed that if we win, we will get up and go and get our awards with absolute non-chalance à la MS Dhoni (for context he is always calm, no matter the result). Our problem statement was supposed to be the last one to have the winners proclaimed. The guy who was announcing the winners said ‘P-Y’, and we all knew what the next word was gonna be, and before he could finish saying “society” we were ready to get on the stage to collect our award. Everyone was so full of emotion, but we tried our level best to not show a shred of it. We all got out of the hall, took some pictures to mark the occasion. One would expect people to celebrate after such a win, but we all looked at each other and almost telephatically agreed that we all needed sleep before the long train journey back home. Two and a half days later, we arrived back at Manipal around 8:15 in the morning. I rushed directly to the my lab from the station, as it was to start at 8:30 in the morning. I eventually reached about 5 minutes late, but the teacher was kind enough to pardon my shabby appearance (long train journeys tends to do that to you) and late entry. Tanmay, one of my best buddies in class was gesturing, intending to know what had happened at the hackathon. I simply smiled back at him and showed him the victory sign.