Pop culture and the many Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) – India’s premier engineering college – have had a strained relationship. Caught between narratives of producing CEOs for giant MNCs (like Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai etc), or ‘alternative’ go-getters like Chetan Bhagat, who began as a ‘young adult’ fiction author, but has over time morphed into a columnist, ‘public intellectual’ and also a punching bag of sorts for many. The discourse deals in binaries, eg: the colossal salary packages on placement days, or the elusive promise that pressures lakhs of youngsters to step on an assembly line that will (hopefully) take them through the haloed gates; and in the process, pushes them to the brink.The depiction of the institution is either done through the lens of euphoric success, saccharine nostalgia or through the trauma of being entrapped in a rat race. Whether it’s Chetan Bhagat’s bestseller novel, Five Point Someone (2005); Rajkumar Hirani’s 3 Idiots (2008) – which was partly adapted from Bhagat’s book; Nitesh Tiwari’s Chhichhore (2019) ; Varun Grover’s All India Rank (2024), or shows like Biswa Kalyan Rath’s Laakhon Mein Ek (2017), TVF’s Kota Factory (2020-present) – the climax mostly unfolds like a thumping celebration, or with a tragic sense of what could have been. The feeling is compounded further by the institution being an envy of the many.People perceive an IITian a certain way. “They must be really smart”, “They must be very boring”, “They must be serious all the time” – are notions a layperson has about them.And yet, there are thousands of students in every batch, quietly moving around without drawing attention to themselves. IITians are hardly a monolith, and there are all kinds of students, who don’t make it to newspapers, or appear on screens. There isn’t just one emotion on which the entire experience hinges, and that too in students who contain multitudes.Gautam Sonti’s TechnoCats is about the kids forced to grapple with themselves, confront the disquiet within, once they leave the shelter of their homes. No longer a big fish in the local pond, they’re forced to meet more imposing sharks and whales. It can be a confusing time, with many of them living without their parents for the very first time.Sonti, an alumnus of IIT Delhi, went back to campus in 2016 to make this film, and it’s immediately clear that it’s not a casual trip down the memory lane. Even though his friendly, confident voice-over might do well to cover it up, I could sense him searching. Sonti picks seven students from across India (he calls them the ‘seven samurai’), who made their way to IIT Delhi, and catches up with them through three significant visits. He also chats up three batchmates on the 35th reunion, asking them about their state-of-mind during college, their choices after, and how they look back on it.One thing I immediately took a liking to, was Sonti’s camera becoming a character in the film. As much as it might have wanted to be a fly-on-the-wall, it moves around clumsily through corridors at first. Eventually, everyone makes an allowance for it, including the audience. The characters are shifty, awkward at first, but soon enough everyone drops their guards.Sonti’s film, across four visits in seven years, charts a graph of the seven samurai, noticing the changes and growth in each of them. There’s the shy Paras from a town near Agra, the assured Achyutham from Gazipur (UP), the academically-curious Akhil from Jammu, the quietly poised Jay from Guna (MP), the assertive Naman from Delhi, the misfit loner Suresh from Telangana and the ideologically pragmatic Adarsh from Patna. In 2017, Sonti visits their birthplace, meets their families, giving us a sense of the environment they’re trying to break away from. For example, Suresh’s parents are theists, who he dismisses and even mocks. He’s close with his brother, who is always a phone call away when Suresh is. Akhil comes from a home of teachers, who have high hopes for him. And they’re slightly underwhelmed with his academic performance.Like many in his hometown, an IAS job is the ultimate goal for Achyutham’s family. Paras looks like the mollycoddled baby of the family, tended to by his parents, uncle, aunt, grandmother – which partly explains his homesickness in the hostel. Adarsh’s parents live in an old, dilapidated mansion, along with his extended family, which the youngster looks anxious to break away from. It probably explains his moral flexibility, where he’s later found working as a political strategist, where he says “pushing narratives” is a part of his job. Achyutham shows off his book collection, among the usual suspects like Wings of Fire by APJ Abdul Kalam and Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey (even I’ve owned a copy of both!) is Mein Kampf. When Sonti asks him about it, the teenager says that he was curious about why so many people would be influenced by this one man’s ideas.The film routinely cuts between the students’ journey and moves to Sonti’s three batchmates: Soumitra, Vinay and Puneet. All of them well-settled, but with entirely different choices in life. Soumitra used his IIT degree as a ticket to America, like many in his batch. He slowly and steadily worked up the ladder, and would be termed by many as a ‘success story’. It all looks great for Soumitra, until he reflects on how he had to give up on many things to reach that place. Friends, extra-curricular activities, maybe the intangible parts of the college experience, of just sitting around in silence, until someone says something funny and the entire room breaks into raucous laughter.Vinay, on the other hand, seemed like the all-rounder, where he showed off a fat pile of certificates from extracurriculars – including theatre, water polo. The most unusual among them is Puneet, who brags about a backpack that weighs only 2 pounds. Single, and with a daughter who is now married, Puneet enjoys his life of travelling around the world with whatever little he can fit into his backpack. It’s a lifestyle many might have dreamed of in their 20s. And that Puneet has maintained it till 52, is admirable.“I spent my life being so different that I think I can’t help but be undifferent now. Not indifferent, but undifferent,” Puneet tells Sonti, and one senses the calm, the loneliness, but also the freedom of such a life.TechnoCats evokes many documentaries based on similar themes. I couldn’t help but be reminded of Steve James’ Hoop Dreams, where a crew follows two African-American boys through high school, as they nurture dreams of joining the NBA, through life’s ups and downs. I could also see shades of the Film’s Division of India documentary, I am 20, interviewing a bunch of 20-year-olds in India in 1967, talking about governance, the obstacles they have to overcome on a daily basis and their ambition. Some say they would like to excel in their vocation (as a soldier or as a scientist), while some say they’re happy being a ‘cog’ in the machine as an IAS, much like Sonti’s film. However, the film that I was thinking about most vividly while watching TechnoCats, was Abhay Kumar’s Placebo, which documents students from AIIMS – among the brightest in the country. But while Kumar’s film managed to get dirt under its nails by being a confidante for its characters, Sonti is treated respectfully like the elder relative by his.As pleasant and curious it remains through its runtime of nearly 90 minutes, TechnoCats is not without its flaws. Early on, Sonti’s voiceover mentions how none of the chosen students hail from a minority religion or an oppressed caste, which sounds like a blindspot being passed off as self-awareness. I wish Sonti would have pushed a little harder on the narrative around young IITians having a very logic-heavy approach to problems, which often get construed as apathy. In some cases, we’ve also heard some crude ‘solutions’ from some of India’s best engineers, which, one imagines, a humanities course can probably fix. But then, I’m perhaps forcing my own wishes on Sonti’s film.In the end, what’s remarkable about TechnoCats is how it frees its characters from the binaries of the discourse about IITians’ journey through college, and their goals after graduating. In a way, it demystifies the minds of these young ones — who are constantly treated like a repository of milestones. “What next?” is a question that seems to be haunting most of them, even as they get used to the good life that the institution has afforded them. But the race hasn’t ended, with the batchmates striving for new things or news of another breakthrough in the world, one can be rest assured that the young ones don’t have all the answers just yet. But they might have finally figured out the right questions.*TechnoCats was screened at Bengaluru International Centre (BIC) on April 22