Maker's Asylum

 When I enrolled for the Maker’s Asylum program, I thought it was going to be a run-of-the-mill course where I learn skills one on one and that’s that. Something technical and structured to be crossed out in my resume-to-be list. But the room I walked into wasn’t a generic bedroom. It was a chaotic one, with beauty in every corner. More than that, it was a community. A place where curiosity wasn’t just encouraged or developed, it was water’s placeholder.

The first few months were online. Tutorials, o
ne-on-one mentorship, skill tracks. It was all exciting, sure. I was learning to solder without burning myself, building IoT prototypes I had seen in Spider-Man movies, and getting a feel of trying to model houses in CAD. But even in those early Google meets, there was this quiet energy. The mentors didn’t just want to complete the modules. They wanted to explore  and learn with me. And that attitude was contagious.

Then came the residency in Goa. That’s when this thought crossed my mind: “You know what? This is the real deal.”

It’s hard to explain what it feels like to meet people you’ve only seen in tiny video rectangles and immediately feel like you belong. We came from different parts of India, spoke different languages, listened to different music. But somehow, we were all on the same frequency. Within hours, we were talking about sensors and how  c++ is an absolute pain. We were bonding over failed prints, Deathstar references, and arguments about which soldering iron tip was secretly the best.

The maker-space felt like a water park posing as a maker-space. 3D printers humming in one corner, laser cutters sparking in another, people sprinting between workstations with half-finished prototypes and ambitious ideas. It was intense. It was overwhelming. It was absolutely amazing.

Our team worked on a glove that could translate sign language to speech. The idea was simple. Making it wasn’t. It really wasn’t. We had plenty of setbacks through the days, but they were all manageable. All except one.

On Day 6, almost all of our sensors failed. We were running out of time, sleep, and confidence. For a while, we just sat in silence, watching our project crash down in a burning heap of broken dreams. But then someone came across an Instagram Reel involving
copper tape. It wasn’t planned, it definitely wasn’t pretty, but it worked. At least it worked. We were back.

That moment changed something in me. Maker’s Asylum doesn’t teach you how to build things. It teaches you how to rebuild things. More than your code and your wires: your motivation and your mindset.

But the best part wasn’t the tech. It was the people. I made friends I never would’ve met anywhere else. People who could go from discussing voltage drops to debating the meaning of life without skipping a beat. People who made me feel like being obsessed with small details and big ideas wasn’t weird. It was welcome.

We shared music, ice cream, soldering tips, and existential conversations. We stayed up not because we had to, but because we couldn’t stop. We created a working product, yes. But more than that, we built a shared experience, a group chat that still lives, and a version of ourselves that feels more real.

It started as a program. Then it became proof that when curiosity meets community, something powerful happens. You don’t just learn how to make. You start figuring out what kind of person you are, and what kind of person you want to be.