What does it take to tick at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay? Possibly, just a heart-to-heart conversation between teachers and students. Or at least, that's what the academic council of the institute thinks so. In a novel attempt to reduce stress levels of students, the council has begun organising informal chat sessions between professors and students from IIT-B. The idea is to get the professors to talk about how they coped with the pressures they faced while preparing for the exams.

The new initiative, which kick-started in the last week of October, will be held once every semester, and will be scheduled just before the examinations, when stress levels among students are at their peak.