My IIT Internship Stipend Was ₹8,000/Month. I Lived Like a King.

The internship was at a small research lab in Hauz Khas, stipend eight thousand a month, no housing provided. My mother called this 'barely enough to eat.' She was wrong, but only because she was thinking about Delhi prices in the way that outsiders think about Delhi prices, which is to say, incorrectly.

I found a PG in Lajpat Nagar for ₹4,500 a month, single occupancy, shared bathroom, meals included. This left me ₹3,500 for everything else. What followed was the most financially creative period of my life and also, genuinely, one of the best summers I have had.

The Budget Breakdown

The PG meals were the foundation. Breakfast and dinner were included. This meant I only needed to handle lunch on weekdays, which I solved by identifying the three cheapest and most reliable lunch spots within walking distance of the lab: a small dhaba that did thali for ₹60, a place near the main road that did chole bhature for ₹40, and the IIT Delhi mess when I could convince my batchmates who lived on campus to sign me in as a guest.

Transport was mostly metro and walking. Delhi metro on a student budget is genuinely reasonable if you plan your routes. I bought a monthly metro card for ₹400 which covered most of my commute. I walked anything under two kilometres because Delhi in June will kill you if you give it permission, but early morning and evening walks are not terrible.

The Part That Was Actually Good

Having ₹3,500 for discretionary spending forced a set of choices that turned out to be enriching. I went to exactly one expensive restaurant all summer, a splurge on the last weekend that cost ₹800 and was completely worth it. Everything else was street food, which in Lajpat Nagar and the surrounding area is some of the best food available at any price point in India. I ate gol gappas outside Khan Market. I ate nihari at a place in Old Delhi that requires a 45-minute metro ride and is absolutely worth 45 minutes of your life.

I also read a lot. Having no money for entertainment meant I became a serious patron of Delhi's libraries and of the one decent bookshop I found in Connaught Place that had a used books section. I read eleven books that summer. I do not usually read eleven books in a year.

The research work itself was mediocre and taught me that I did not want to do a PhD in mechanical systems dynamics, which is a valuable thing to learn. But the summer taught me something about living that I keep coming back to: scarcity of money, within reason, is a creative constraint rather than a deprivation. I am not romanticising poverty. I had a safe place to sleep and enough to eat and the freedom to leave. That combination, plus eight thousand rupees, was genuinely enough for a very good summer.