Acti-vettis of the Un-Common Man

Behind the Wall - The BCCI story?

2011-08-07T06:14:00.000-07:00

So one fine English morning, Kris Srikkanth wonders "What's wrong with these Indian batsmen? I say, in my days we used to attack the English bowlers with a cross bat and somehow managed to get the ball to the boundary. OF course, Sunny thought differently but he also thought scoring 36 runs in 60 overs would make people call him the Wall. Tcha, I thought I'll get more batsmen from TN by giving Mukund and Vijay chances. Inna pasangal la thirundada (Translation :These boys will not improve). Useless fools pa, I say".. And off he goes for his nicotine break.

The Indian cricket team, meanwhile on this fine English morning, is 'practising', in a match against the Northants. One of the spectators, a 11yr old kid asks his mother "Momma, why are they calling it a practice match? Their players are all getting out the same way. And why is Donhee not captain momma? Has he been sacked?" His mom, smoking a joint, is utterly pissed that Stuart Broad is not around as he had promised to meet her during the lunch break, to help resolve her divorce case. But her son had asked a pertinent question and she came out of her reverie "Well son, they are practising after all. How the hell do you think they get out in a perfect manner every other match. And Donhee, I suppose got his bollocks crushed by Zaa-hear Khan while offering no shot in the nets. He was trying to practise the "no-shot" shot to which he got out in the previous match. So if he aint got no balls, how the hell can he be captain!". The kid is intrigued now. "But momma, why do they want to get out so fast? Can't they practise some strokes instead?". His mom being a business graduate, responds "Well son, these chaps get paid a hell lot of money for playing a match. Why work for it when you are going to get it anyway. So when one can earn the money in 4 days, why work for 5 days!" Her son is baffled now but he doesnt realize that so are a set of 1.2 billion people in an Asian subcontinent.

By the time this English morning has transformed itself into evening, Rahul Dravid is having a chat with Kris. A certain news network overheard the dialogue and reported it as follows:

Kris : "So Rahul, what are your plans for the future?"
RSD : "You mean apart from anchoring your test team's innings in the coming matches, until Dhoni comes and screws it up?"
Kris : "Ayyo. Let's not discuss Dhoni now, shall we. I like him pa. CSK is winning the IPL. He gives my son Aniruddha a chance to bat for CSK. So I'm bound to like him and am also bound by my contract not to criticize him."
RSD : "Your contract?"
Kris : "You know, if I criticize him he wont give my son a chance. Then I cant even recommend his name for the India A-team. You see how helpless I'm?"
RSD : "Oh poor you. Just like how helpless I was when I was the 2nd highest run getter in that ODI series in South Africa but was still dropped. What to do, I'd a contract with time to abide. I couldnt get younger or go back in time after all"
Kris : "Oh yea, you are right, I say. But how if I give you a chance to play again in the ODI series coming up?"
RSD : "As what, an umpire, coz I am the only one who can stand up to the English bowlers?"
Kris : "Well the latter part is true. But as a batsman, not an umpire"
RSD : "Phew, atleast you told me that I wont be playing as an umpire as well. I thought that was the only thing I'vent done on the field in the past. You know, keeping wickets is portrayed as a hobby for me these days. And well, you dont want me getting injured if I start bowling, else you'll lose me even before the English bowlers have sweated it out in the day to get my wicket."
Kris :" Oh Rahul, I knew you would accept this offer..."
RSD : "I will, under the condition that I get to retire after the ODIs, of my own accord so that heart-attacks like these dont make a 'comeback' in my life?"
Kris : "Oh that would be so wonderful. You see, after that we'll have a series in India where our young lads can practice on home grounds and be ready for the next IPL. If they play here and get injured, you see how it affects their IPL career right?"
RSD : "Right! Good luck to your son for his IPL career. I wonder why you wanted him to get into India-A anyways, when clearly IPL is more important than Test matches. And with his technique (or lack of it, within his head), and you around, he's bound to succeed"

And we end the day with a cup of tea. Earl gray please. On to Edgbaston, shall we?

Philo Sophie

2010-11-25T12:53:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since I left my carbon footprint on the blogosphere (roughly 9 months, whoa!). So I thought, I'll write something on this virtual piece of the space time continuum. And for once, I attempt to write a serious article, a bit philosophical (if I may) in the hope that I'd be back here again, sooner than I think (hope so!)

The past few months have made me go through almost every kind of emotion I could ever experience - joy, anxiety, agony, dejection, schadenfreude, sympathy, exhilaration.. you name it, I bet it'd be there (not sure of Nirvana though :) ). Taught me a few lessons which I thought I must jot down for my own self, in no particular order. Most might seem cliched, but I believe that until I experience something personally, I'll never understand its true worth :

a) Time flies at a constant rate. Relativity accounts for the rest of what humans feel about it. Kipling must have understood this true worth ,when he wrote those immortal words. I wish I can do so myself. Or if dreams did come true, a time machine would do.

b) Life is like a cryptic crossword. Solving the clues one at a time gives more satisfaction than seeing the answers all at once. Maybe it's another way of looking at other cliched statements on the same subject, but I hope I can accept this part and continue ahead, rather than blaming everything on Murphy.

c) Smiling in times of crises is tougher than I thought. I respect those set of few people whom I've seen do so repeatedly, without the usage of psychidelic shit. I'll be quite happy to emulate them in this respect, if not as often (oh no, I dont want a calamity befalling me to try this out, but in general, would hope to do so)

d) The world respects you if you can do/ever did what you ask them to do. Until then it just listens to you until they're fed up of those 'blank' statements and retort back, to make you realize this truth, if one hasnt still. I thank a friend, who made me realize this quite recently and maybe this is one of the biggest lessons this sem (academic courses nothwithstanding).

e.1) You neednt lead the race at any point of time, but can still end up ahead of them all. Thank you Mr. Vettel for reminding me of a lesson which Mr. Raikonnen had already taught, but I seemed to have forgotten.

e.2) Play this innings like a test match. You might not be an SRT but Rahul 'The Wall' Dravid is still worth an option (no offence to Dravid, who along with Stephen Waugh, are my sources of inspiration, but at times, the eternal skeptic in me makes me wonder whether SRT is human at all.. ). Still not experienced the set of moments to fully justify my findings , but felt the same in bits and pieces, and hence decided to put it down to verify in the future.

f) Karma is a bitch. Not really, our actions are what we are. So if we behave like one, then cant blame Karma can we.. This is another big lesson learnt over the course of the last 3-4 months, out of a nightmare, I never thought I'd ever see in my life. Might be one of the most valuable lessons in my stay in this amazing place called IIT Madras. I still admit, it's a tough nut to crack but keeps me wary of the future, every passing moment.

g) Somehow, I've found the allegory of life and, the making of a piece of art, to be appealing. From my personal experience, no art work seems good until finished (and finished well that too :) ) , and uptil then speculations are always arife, internally or externally, as to how it'll come out to be. This is quite similar to what I've found in my experience while handling Sponsorship activities as well, but considering that it's a subset of life as such, might as well be treated as subset to move along.

h) Living in the present might be good, but reflection into the past is a must according to me. I mean it's a simple closed loop system (of which I detailed karma separately), and without a retrospection, somehow I've never had the courage to look into the future. What one looks for in the past is also a questionable issue, but suffice to say, to each his/her own.

Maybe, if I become famous one day, I could increase my revenues by writing a book on the above '8 Lessons of Life' or '8 things one needs to know in life', et al, adding to the already huge pile of these non-fiction stuff, which to my disbelief are at bestsellers!

24th February, 2010 A.D.

2010-02-25T00:14:00.000-08:00

Well, titling this post with a date may seem stupid but considering that this date is historic in more than one sense, I'll continue with my 'stupidity'.

First things first : It proved the existence of God. One of the names of this God is Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. People know me as a die-hard Dravid fan and I still am despite witnessing this magical knock of 200* against RSA at Gwalior. Maybe VISA should "adopt" Master Card's ad campaign with the following lines : " Buying a ticket for India vs RSA @ Gwalior : Rs. 500. Travelling charges from Chennai to Gwalior, to and fro : Rs. 6000. Food and India jersey for the match : Rs. 1300. Watching God perform magic : Priceless!" ... One of the ad taglines in today's (Feb 25) newspaper took this a little further stating " Sachin is the secret of India's energy! " (the ad was obviously by Boost). Well, I never did any of the costly things which Visa Power could buy me but preferred to watch this miracle from my hostel common room, which looked more like a stuffed pillow, with seemingly no space and yet being filled in with more people as time passed by and as Sachin neared his Double Ton. This experience was truly amazing, even beating the experience of watching India beat Pakistan in the T20 World Cup finals, from the same "venue". And this was something I just had to blog about, even beating my laziness!

Also, another interesting thing happened. One could call it a part of the social experiments I've been trying out over the past few months, of how people react to various stimuli and how much their actions seem to reveal about themselves. As it happened, I filed my nomination form for the post of Co-Curricular Affairs Secretary of IIT Madras the previous day (Feb 23rd) despite most people seeming to think that I was just joking about it. Well, I was serious about the joke I wanted to cause. And my! it seemed more like some kind of chaos theory developing around me. Never have I seen so many people united, against and pro my decision at the same time (trust me, it's always been a overwhelming majority for any side, for or against.. never 50-50). Insti politics is something I never wish to be a part of although I wouldn't mind observing how things shape up, considering it's worth a paper to publish if carried out in a scientific manner, with readings and all. Maybe I'm a bit late this time, but must attempt this stuff next year. Anyways, let's hope all these guys who claim to understand the dynamics of student council "politics" (for the lack of a better word as I haven't begun my GRE prep yet) are 'strategically' correct else I would feel that their decision to force me to withdraw my application would be gross injustice to a democratic right I fundamentally deserve. Oh wait a min : Wasn't I pro-dictatorship ? Oh screw it, I'm a sadistic hypocrite but whatever be the case, I must admit it was real fun to see the pained look on their faces after they realized that the "wolf story" I had informed everyone about was actually true. I've taken a couple of their photos as well for documentation purposes... in a hope to realize my dream of a publication :) Oh and yes, to clarify any doubts, the title of this post is also the date when this "social expt" officially ended. Hoping for some more opportunities to try out random experiments in an attempt to understand human psychology without having to do a PhD in the same!

PS : Mourinho's revenge on his former employers was also sweet! The date is referential to this incident as well, although nothing historic about it. Nothing great about Inter beating Chelsea; for me at least.

Bas ek aur!!

2010-01-17T01:39:00.000-08:00

Well, Schroeter cricket has been yet again, another disappointing moment this season, but this time there was a difference. We played Alak last year in our 2nd group match and played them first up this time. Alak missed the services of their studdest bowler, DB. We missed (not sure if we missed or not) our last year's captain and sports sec in the team. In essence, we were really underdogs but we had a heart and passion to win, something which we lost halfway during our previous encounter thanks to certain misgivings. Cricket is something according to me where statistics cannot tell you why things happened but how they happened, in terms of the scorecard. Of course, it never gives the complete picture but I'll attempt to fill in the blanks wherever necessart. In summary, this is how it was :

Jam lost the toss and were put in to bat :

After 10 overs, 50/2

After 13 overs, 64/6!!

After 18 overs, 102/7 (thanks to a superb batting display in between by our captain this year, Sixty, playing his final schroeter match!)

After 20 overs, 111/8

Well, the question posed by the umpires to us was a valid one "Do you think you guys can defend 111 on this track ? " Frankly, we didnt know it ourself. All we knew was if we gave it our best, we were through to the leagues and would have definitely pulled off what other hostels might call an upset.

Begin Alak's batting :
5 overs : 31/0
9 overs :69/2
10 overs : 80/2 ( this was my only over in the match where my plan to get one of their best batsman out was foiled thanks to a dropped catch when most would agree it was a regulation catch! The guy went on to add another 17 runs after that and maybe he could be in a position to remark in Steve Waugh style "You've dropped the cup mate!")
16 overs : 104/5
18 overs : 109/7
18.5 overs : 112/9!!

The last 4 overs were rivetting to say the least, and the last over drama was comical from a non-biased sense of thinking. It was senseless batting, good captaincy and field sets, and barring the 5th ball of the 18th over, it was definitely good fielding where Alak batsmen committed harakiri. The 5th ball is an interesting thing to be noted : They need 2 runs to win of 8 balls, with one wicket in hand. The batsman played a shot to point-- non-striker calls for a run--fielder picks up and throws over the keeper from a peaceful place-- ball collected by backup who throws it to the bowler's end-- bowler is halfway down the pitch, and misses the ball, which misses the stumps by an inch, -- bowler's end backup fumbles-- Alak completes the second run and there goes the match which we could have won :( It just went on to show how teamwork and great fielding can have the probability of beating even the best of sides although bygones are bygones and I wont continue to discuss about it.

I blogged about this just because of the fact this was very close to my heart; was one of those cases when one was so near and yet so far, and this being cricket and me being a part of the team, I just could not digest this loss. My performance in the match of course was forgettable to say the least, and hopefully, we'll be back next year and even more hopefully, I would be in a position to write about our victory!

Logophilia!

2009-12-29T00:23:00.000-08:00

Carrying forward from my previous post (and thanks to a comment by an anon appreciator), I thought I will put forth some interesting trivia which I came across in different forms of literature. Needless to say, the interesting stuff is related to wordplays(mostly anagrams) again as indicated by the title of this post and I've tried to post only what I found out independently, but where the case seems extraordinarily strong, I've included externally referred ones as well :

1) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's/Philosophers's Stone by JK Rowling

The 'Mirror of Erised' is a play on the word Desire. It literally means to 'mirror' "erised' into our eyes, i.e. if we mirror it, we are in a way "reversing it back"..meaning Erised reverses itself to Desire. Rightly so, it reflected one's deepest desires/wishes as explained by Dumbledore in the book. It could work well as a crossie clue in fact, a simple one at that.

The most famous wordplay in the whole series is of course "Tom Marvolo Riddle = I am Lord Voldemort" which I hear has given many translators a headache! I will obviously not name the spells which derive a lot from Latin and of course English.

2) The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown :

Needless to say, this book had infinite codes decoded but I'll try and have a look at ones which I found have been left purposely undeciphered.

One of them is Robert Langdon's editor's name : Jonas Faukman. Interestingly, Dan Brown has managed to get his own editor's name anagrammed individually and made him a part of the book. Brown's editor's name : Jason Kaufman!

Another trivia which I picked up from the news is the name of Sir Leigh Teabing : Which is apparently an anagram of Baigent and Leigh, the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail (a very interesting and eye-opening book I must admit)

3) This one was totally an unexpected one and I don't know if the film-makers made it intentionally. In the movie, Ratatouille, the celebrity chef is known by the name of Auguste Gusteau. Not until I checked up the IMDB, did I realize that the Auguste was spelt with an 'e' at the end. If we see carefully, Auguste and Gusteau are anagrams of each other!

4) This one I'm not sure if I've come across in the TFE earlier, but also struck me independently while going through the wiki page for the movie "October Sky". Apparently, the movie is inspired by a book called "Rocket Boys". You would have guessed by now that "October Sky" is an anagram of "Rocket Boys"!!

5) Another one which I picked up on the net and couldnt resist posting here. Paul McCartney's album "Memory almost full" is an anagram of "For my soulmate LLM" where LLM fits the initials of Linda Louise McCartney, his deceased wife. Still unsure whether it was intended again. If it was,

6) This was an original : Shashi Tharoor Tweets == Oh, he sorta writes trash! :D Composed just for the sheer fun of mocking Tharoor's joblessness and nonsensical sense of diplomacy.

Will try and continue when I come across more such ones. Adios for now

KHAMLINK WORDMAN - Thou Art God!

2009-12-27T22:54:00.000-08:00

Hmm, as far as recent opinions about me go, I could well be described as a person who appreciates less and critiques more, and maybe is cynical about most things in life. The opinions might be justified coz I've always believed in appreciating something which lasts the test of time and is not a one-time wonder. Hence the few things which I do appreciate, I believe are real stuff by geniuses and sometimes I cannot differentiate between God and Genius (yes, with the capital G).

This post is related to something which is close to my heart - word plays. Be it anagrams or anything to do with playing around with words and giving them a new meaning. To most, this would sound like solving codes and getting the thrill out of doing so. To an extent they are right. Anagrams were the first kind of wordplays which caught my attention, way back in Class 2, through the mode of what still continues in the TOI supplements as JUMBLE. It was a different kind of thrill altogether, way better than those puzzle books which kids solve. And the only game which existed then to satisfy my appetite was Scrabble. No doubt then that I bought a board for myself as a birthday gift to satiate my love. Unfortunately no one in my family had played Scrabble properly or knew the rules and I got a taste of it only in Class 8 thanks to a great Prof whom I must thank profusely for igniting that passion again. This passion continued in me when I joined IITM where I realized that there were people of exceptional calibre in solving wordplays which I could not even fathom after an hour of thought on them. But I started appreciating the person who sets these codes (for the lack of a better word) because therein showed their ingenuity and creativity. The Hindu crossie sets my pulse racing and so does a game of Scrabble, but nothing has got me this close to heaven such as the wordplays (and in most cases, the p(h)unny ones) by 3 guys who have happened to leave a deep imprint in my life. Sadly, one of them is no more, being afflicted by an illness claimed to affect one in a million. Unfortunately the one in a million on Earth happened to be chosen this time. Coincidentally, all three happen to be a year senior to me : two from IITM, who passed out in 2009 and one from IITB, who'll pass out in 2010. I hope I can write in brief about this trio and do some justice at least to their brilliance!

I shall not name these seniors, but I have left a clue in the title of this post. All those interested can crack the names, which are written as they appear on my gtalk list. The two seniors from IITM were not known to me in the first month, although one of them did "interact/rag" me, being my hostel senior. He was the first guy from whom I took 'fundaes' on solving the Hindu crossie. Not extensive, but sufficient to get me going. Cracking came a year later through another senior, whom I shall refer to as MoJo ( first guy I know to get a nick of that kind thanks to his younger brother! ). So this senior of mine was known to be good at wordgames and stuff. I hadnt heard of the other chap until I encountered both of them in a game of Scrabble at Lit-Soc. Having beaten other seniors until then, I felt that this duo could also be beaten (considering the others were also veterans and played decent Scrabble). But boy, did they prove me wrong! I didnt even bother to play the next game in the tournament and preferred watching their moves, something which has never happened before whether I lost or won a game in a tourney. That was an ominous sign of what I would be witnessing in the next three years! Come Saarang 2007 crossie, they showed me that they weren't just good, they were God! Being in their second year themselves, they were giving their final year 'studs' a run for their money and with some luck, these guys would have run away as winners. That was to happen of course, the following year where they left the other 'studs' behind by a huge margin. You could probably say they were the Aussies dominating the cricket world (in the Steve Waugh era of course), with the only difference being these guys were pure class and everyone actually liked them! Nice men finishing on top is not a frequent occurence. And humility along with top class is another rarity. I was probably thankful to have seen both in this duo. The best part about them was this : they did the stuff the way they liked it and not how others wanted it to be. Have you ever heard of someone packing the finals of an event at Saarang just because it was overnight ? These guys did. No one would dare to attempt a triple-triple bingo in a Scrabble prelims when a straightforward bingo lay elsewhere, for the fear of losing points and missing out on the final. These guys did and to my utter dismay and other players' relief, their word although seemingly existing, didnt find a place in the Scrabble dictionary and made them miss out on a berth in the finals. The other senior (being from a hostel which shares its name with the "dead river of India" ) was probably more gifted in writing really really funny articles with the best set of wordplays possible, but the duo, once together were probably the best you could get in India. And I'm not joking about this having seen people who are amazingly gifted and yet have found it difficult to surpass these two. Their WTGW and Crossie prelims have been a delight to attempt and solve, with the kind of questions being way different from the stereotypical ones which any experienced guy can crack within minutes of seeing them. But their questions, probably only Geniuses at par with them can crack. I have seen a couple of juniors of mine who could probably reach their level but only time will tell regarding their status.

The third senior from IITB, is a chap one rarely comes across. For one he is a Tam chap sporting a mohawk! Get me the odds on that one, will you? And he is amazingly cool ( or atleast anyone who is a logophile would find him so). My appearances at Mood I for the past 3 years (including this year) have been satisfactory solely due to the existence of this chap. He is the guy who sets the wordgames there and boy, he continues to amaze me every single time. It's like you know there's going to be something new out there awaiting you, to mystify you and the only way one can demistify and get enthralled is by solving them. One's respect for him jumps every time you solve one of the questions (again, questions for the lack of a better word). I have attended WTGW/Crossie/Scrabble at other culfests down south, where there's a lot of competition apparently but nowhere does anyone come near to this chap (barring the IITM duo) in setting word games questions( and of course, cracking them). He mixes it with a bit of all kinds of trivia and an ingenious manner of setting questions which leaves the person with a smile on his/her face after reading it and you cant but help wonder, is this another Avatar of God ? He'll be passing out but knowing that Mood I outsources its events, I'm hoping I can have yet another go at cracking his wordplays! My last 3 attempts (along with my 2 other teammates) have left me just short, here and there. Maybe that is an indicator that you can try to match the geniuses, but you aint one until you succeed them. That is unlikely to happen in this birth for sure and I hope I can continue on this post some time later with a few delectable ones from their papers (although it wont do justice to them unless I provide the full questions, in the form they were).

To Mr. Jilanar, DNK and Makhow I toast!*

(*Names changed to reveal their identity only to those fit enough to figure them out ==> those who would have already figured it out by now!)

S.E.N.S.E.X.

2009-10-18T01:15:00.000-07:00

The acronym was made up in the hope that it would catch people's attention and a random google search would eventually lead to my blog one day. Oh yes, the acronym stands for... well, I dunno what it stands for, but will post soon once I do figure out what it stood for. (Trust me, it did stand for some pseud name I'd come up with during Shaastra 2009 but I've forgotten where I kept that piece of paper where I'd written it down!)

To an avg IITM-ian, Shaastras come and Shaastras go. Well, that's to an extent the truth barring this point : Every Shaastra has had something different about it, or atleast in my last 3.5 years' existence on this amazing campus. And the last one for me was exxxxtra special. Yes, extra with the extra Xxxs. Being a member of the group which sat, envisioned and planned out a near flawless Shaastra this year (near flawless is an exaggeration, I know but just to humour me, assume it to be so), it was a privilege as well as a humbling experience working with a set of really stud people committed to something which we have all cherished as a part of IITM history (once again, at least for as long as we have been on campus). To give an example, I shall quote one of my co-cores -- " I would like to convert to Dual degree just to see next Shaastra da!" The fact that he was semi-drunk doesnt take the sheen away from his statement as it was still from the heart (most studies reveal that a person speaks the truth when he/she's drunk, which makes me wonder why can't they get a person drunk instead of asking him/her to swear on the Gita/Bible and allow him to get away with a lie. Anyway, more on that in some other post..)

Nostalgia is one of the right words which describes the series of emotions which filled my heart during the closing ceremony of Shaastra 2009. 5 months of hard work, inumerous decisions taken which I hope were all for the good and handling a team of 11 people whose calls would literally give me a heart attack, every single time I saw my phone beeping. Thankfully, I dont have any BP problems yet, else I might have found myself lying more often in the hospital than at any other place where I should have been. The Evolve dept of Shaastra might have had a DREAM, but I seemed to have nightmares, which luckily didn't materialize. If there was one word which could summarize everything I felt at the end of this Shaastra, it was 'relief'. Relief for having achieved against all odds, against arbit comments from arbit people who had no sense or knowledge of what they were talking and to some extent, against my own expectations. Another reason why I didn't have a Shaastra hangover, while others seemed unable to get out of it for upto 4 days post Shaastra!

Now that Shaastra 2009 is over, there seems a literal void in my life. Life is about asking oneself : What next? And after Shaastra, frankly, I've no clue of what'll come next. I wanted to write a loooooooong post on how it felt over the past 5 months, but I knew I wouldn't do justice and I thought of writing a brief instead. If I were to attempt to describe it in a few lines, I'd say " Life over the last 5 months was like the Sensex. You never know when it would be bullish and when it'll throw you down the roller coaster ride. It's a bit of regret that we cant control it as per our will, and the more we try to control it, the more it gets out of control"

Hope whoever came to Shaastra 2009 'adapted, evolved and enjoyed' it. Here's wishing you readers belated Diwali greetings. Dunno when I'll post next. Hope I can find time pretty soon, coz there's loads to write about and there's even greater inertia against it!

Verse-tile!

2009-10-18T01:12:00.000-07:00

A bolt from the blue,
Made me write this English Haiku,
Before I got swine-flu.

What an idea Sirji ?

2009-06-27T12:56:00.000-07:00

Hmm, wanted to write about this for a long time and finally got the time today.

Circa : A month back, when the TN CM Karunanidhi announced a scheme of gifting a gold coin to the family which gives their newborn a Tamil, oops Tamizh name. Now, pop comes the question to my mind. What exactly classifies as a Tamizh name and a non-Tamizh name ?

Let's see 10 examples on what kind of names would be ...er..lucky to get the few gms of gold!

1. Akash -- This will get a score of 1.8 on the Tamizh Scale (a patent pending scale developed by yours truly). Why so ? The TN supremo will claim its etymo from aakasam, which incidentally also means the same in Tam. Well, if Karuna decides to go against what his name implies, this name will get zero or maybe, negative, if he realizes that its origins are actually from Sanskrit.

2. Vikas -- Surely negative. No existence of any linkings to the Tamizh bashai. Of course, this scheme is not meant for those who want to Vikas in their own style (vikas meant progress if I rem my tenth standard Hindi well!)

3. Joseph/Abdul -- Woe betide the followers of Islam/Christianity if this scheme has any value. Poor chaps, they might have to make it Abduzh to even make it count to one extent. No sanskrit origins here might even infuriate the TN supremo, although he doesnt care a damn about Sanskrit. (This was just an example to prove my point and I'm not liable for any religious discrepancies arising from this post!)

4. Mayawati -- Karuna would love to take a gold coin from the family naming their newborn thus. Politically speaking, the newborn would be condemned to Upper Parts of the country, whereby developing narcissistic feelings (read : Too proud to listen to anyone, caste being no barrier here) and erecting statues which will get razed down by the next govt. In fact, Karuna might impose a Mayawati tax on her family so as to generate 1000 cr for the exchequer by the time her Maya is cast! You still interested in finding out the score on the Tamizh scale ? If so, then you're surely Mayawati!

5. Jayalalitha -- Hmm, tough one here. What does Karuna do as the Tamizh scale cant make any shit out of this name ? He uses his veto powers and shuns the name, to be condemned to the Hall of Shame. Anyone crying foul play ? Dont blame the Tamizh Scale, it's apolitical and unbiased!

6. Sonia -- Uh oh! Surely a zero on the Tamizh scale and if Karuna were to strictly follow the recommendations, he would lose out on getting cabinet seats for Maran(which incidentally is the name of a coal block in MP!)

7. Dayanidhi Maran -- Now, dayanidhi is undoubtedly un-Tamizhish but due to Sanskrit mixing(Karuna calls it polluting) with Tam, it might get a 2. Maran ? I thought I mentioned a coal block above with MP origins. Sheesh-- score == Zero!

8. Stalin -- What's that ? Russian right ? All those poor people who voted for the Dont Marry Karunanidhi party to power and hoped that naming their newborns after the CM's son might get them luck are in for bad news. Oh, Friends, Tamizhians, Countrymen, Karuna denied you your rightful gold coin, but Karuna is a noble man. Unleash the dogs of war you idiots!

9. Kannimozhi -- Finally, something which scores above 8.5! Why ?
a) It has the letters 'zh' in it in succession
b) People who have lived outside the venerable Tamizhnathu dunno how to pronounce it properly (including my Geography teacher!)
c) She's Karuna's daughter! (this is not on the basis of the Tamizh scale but coz Karuna forced me into adding an extra 0.3564 points. Ah, if only I had the power!)

10. Seshagiri -- Hmm, this will get 6.5. Why ? It sounds perfectly Tam right and sounds similar to Karuna's son (remember Azhagiri ?)? But didnt you forget, the scores seem to get tampered every now and then by the powers that be. Did I ever mention how the TN supremo prefers upliftment of masses ? And the masses apparently dont have too many Tam Brahms (ob. They are sitting peacefully in Benguluru or US of A!) So to promote populist culture, the name doesnt score above 7.

So, what kind of names should the people of Tam land give to be entitled to the 'elusive gold coin' --

Any name scoring greater than 5 on the Tamizh Scale-- which implies the following :
a) end the name with 'an' or any of the endings suggested below
b) have a 'zh' in any part of the name
c) having 'giri' at the end of the name might help sometimes
d) having 'swamy' at the end of the name is better
e) having 'samy' or 'mani' at the end of it is even better
f) start the name with a tam word for anything. It doesnt matter; it should just be of Tam origins. So, even if you start the name with the tam word for 'bullshit', you are probably the lucky owner of a BIS un-certified gold coin!

So, if my parents had ever made the mistake of settling in TN and had I been born in this year and had my parents made an even bigger mistake of being lured by the 'Gawd of all schemes', I would have probably been named Raghavan (ya, Raghav is a more northy sounding name to the ears of Corona-nidhi!). Luckily, neither of the abovementioned took place and I'm living to tell a happy tale from my keyboard!

If anyone planning to live in TN and is interested in buying the 'Tamizh Scale' in the hopes that their child will shine bright (I say, it depends on the gold quality!), can reach me by mailing to : noqueriesentertained@tamizhscale.co.fu)

PS : All names involved here have no right whatsoever to sue me for using them as this post was intended for purely academic purposes!

Quote of the Month

2009-06-23T12:55:00.000-07:00

This is one of the statements which I heard, made by an employee of L & T, Powai where I'm currently interning.

My boss : Arre bhau, kasa aahes ? (Marathi for : How's life bro ? )Bahut din baad dikhe ho. Sab theek na ?

Employee : "Arre, mast hai. Peir theek ho gayen hai. Socha kabhi apna munh yahaan dikha doon. Waise LnT main kaam aur paisa kahaan hai saab. Isse achcha toh bagal ki Kali Maa ki Mandir ke trust ka President banke aur fayda utha raha hoon "

I had to control my laughter in front of my boss and escaped saying that I was going to get tea :)

My experiments with truth - Part I

2009-06-23T12:40:00.000-07:00

Hmm, it was a good outing today at this place called Azzuri in Mumbai. 6 of our close gumbal from school decided to meet up as one of our friends was just going to graudate with a B.Com degree and he had decided to treat us. The chap has aspirations to become a CA and I wish him good luck in his endeavours.

As far as Azzuri's concerned : It's a place which serves alcohol and in good measures and is apparently pretty economical compared to other places they have visited. I stuck to my teetotaller image and had a cooler while the rest downed themselves in Tequila shots or Smrinoffs. The good part about the place : The papad! Aye, the rest - DJ/Music sys/Service pretty much sucks. Wonder how it was carried as a review article in one of Times' weeklies.

Well, why am I writing this post ? I certainly don't intend to describe a more-or-less trivial affair (barring the fact that I got to meet all of my buddies after a gap of 1 whole year!) . I came back home at 11 and prompt comes the question from Mom : "So, where did you go to eat ? " I was hesitant to answer coz my Dad knows about this place but decided to stick with the truth and told her. Then my Dad provides the spoiler "But dont they provide liquor there ?" And I replied "Aye, but they drank. I didnt" . Nothing whatsoever could convince them at first that I went into a place serving alcohol and didnt consume it. Thankfully, a bit of 'trust' prevailed and they agreed that their son has still stuck to the 'teetotaller' image.

This brings me to this very important question : Ever tried telling your parents (or any elder for that matter) that you went to a place serving alcohol/hookah and you didnt consume any ? I would love to know their responses, which I am safely assuming would be in the negative.

Adios

The Word-dict is out ?

2009-06-07T02:59:00.000-07:00

Hmm, so the world's gung-ho about the English language acquiring its millionth word. And India's "Jai Ho" about it, thanks to the media glitz and what not. Apart from all this paparazzi hype, I still dont get this fact, "Jai Ho" are TWO words, whose realization brings us to the pertinent question, which one of them is then in the race for the millionth one ? It certainly can't be 'Ho', coz it already exists, albeit with a different meaning compared to its Hindi counterpart. Therefore, by the above logic, it should be "Jai" which should probably be a strong contender for the race to come out trumps amongst others for the "Millionth" word.

But, keeping all the above views in mind, any non-rocket scientist can also tell us that "Jai" alone can't make it to the top ten contenders, leave alone top them, for obvious reasons. And it's ironic, that "Jai" can't come on top (ironic due to its Indian meaning). It's another irony that one of the "words" to be in contention for the millionth word in "English" is of Indian origin, which the Brits never quite understood completely, notwithstanding that anglicized accent. Oof! Not that they ever understood their Greek/Latin properly, but it must be accepted that they understood it much better than Hindi.

Another Indo-English/American stuff which the Indian media gloats over is stronghold of Indian-origin kids in the Scripps Spelling Bee competition. The Indian origin kids have produced 6 champions in the last 9 years. Wow ! Stunning fact right ? Well, not so stunning to me, considering that, my ideology has always remained that an avg. Indian is much smarter than an American, when it comes to memory recall while there are other issues where the Americans do beat us. A lot has got to do with the Education system, I suppose,but I'm not getting into that debate now. I'm not belittling the feats of these young achievers and I back them to the hilt to go miles in the future, and probably govern the USA in the near future( i.e. if the USA does exist after surviving potential threats from the Korean nukes!).

The whole essence of this post is to show that the Indian media has a tendency to highlight Indian achievements in a big way, but I think the real reckoning comes when an outsider does the same for us. It's all right to get a feel-good factor about being an Indian, but in some ways, it shows us the kind of insecurity we have as Indians to celebrate "Indians going global" news with glee only when such news is highlighted, while bemoaning the sorry state of the country for the rest of time. It's not that I value "The Sun" or "The NY Times" opinions greater than that of the TOI or The Hindu, but it's just boils down to this fact : Let the world speak about you rather than just you yourself. That is when we will pass the acid test for the global recognition of our abilities.

All said and done, I'm still proud to be an Indian and will be forever. Jai Hind! or should I say "Jai Ho!" ?

Batak to Matak ?

2009-05-15T09:34:00.000-07:00

Ah, a long long time ago, in a Solar system not so far away lived a mortal named X. X's career desire/path kept fluctuating after he entered an institute called '-T'. .... blah, blah..at the end of 6 semesters in this '-T' college, he decides to write again. His sadistic desires were back at play. And forth came out of his keyboard.

Well, what a lazy sem it has been (in terms of acads/blogging). Enjoyed a better Saarang, mech courses didn't seem that painful (the exams on the other hand defied Newton's laws for handpower-required-to-complete-a-paper!!) and yes, a sem in which I saw the least no. of movies (that's irony, coz I was supposed to have more free time compared to my batchmates coz I had postponed one of my electives!)

Anyway, I'm back home for my first full vacation in the last 3 yrs and boy, I sure do wanna make the most of this opportunity! Home-grub is ossum as usual, life without lan and slower net seems a pain but yes, a welcome relief from the searing Chennai heat :)

I enter my matak year next sem with 7 core courses on my palate. Will hopefully be interning at a place where I want to and even more hopefully, will get paid for it. 6 sems have gone by in a whizz but nothing seems like a blur though. Vivid memories of what seem to have happened just a day back. But well, time flies like an arrow. Dunno why it could never fly like a boomerang though. 6th sem, was eventful for me, to say the least! Here's a version of sem 6 ,post Saarang 09, DD-IITM_v6.0.zip

=======================

Acads -- decent. Won't talk much as grades are coming out now. We shall discuss this in the extraaaaaa innnings sans Ms. Bedi, who I guess won't be interested in it as it doesn't feature any pulsating action or her chummy Yuvi baby.

Lit-Soc -- Ah, one of my most memorable ones. I didnt wanna write about it coz there's loads to write to do it justice. But well, here it goes. Jam finished 2nd in Lit-Soc, its best position in 18 yrs (earlier info of 12yrs by a former lit-sec turned out to be wrong! Ironymaxxx ). Well, our team managed to place in all Lit-Soc quizzes finals and that's a high in itself but yes, all-time highs would have been putting 48hrs fight for a inter-hostel creative writing entry and winning it by fair means while others had it all discussed out over 2 weeks on google-groups etc :) Unlike the results of a couple of group events which left a sour taste behind in this wonderful experience as the Soc-Sec of my hostel (yes, including the bumps I got! and of course, for ensuring that we got a hostel t-shirt this year at least after a barren wait of 4yrs !!)

Grub -- Tried out different cuisines in Chennai and wow, must say that they were excellent. That they were expensive is the downside, but when you are part of a treat who doesnt have to shell much except for the travelling part, I aint complaining.

Hostel-Night -- again, undoubtedly my best. Well. goofed it up while trying out the grub here, but everything else was more or less perfect. And yes, I once again resisted the temptation to get sloshed and instead, enjoyed the revelries of my other mates, who gave-in to the hydroxyl group :) Farewells bid to another illustrious batch of seniors and somehow, a sense of emotional void did creep in. Maybe, bonding with ppl for 3 yrs does make a diff.

I think the above 3 segments were what stood out in particular for me. The other highlights -->

1. "Indian coal contains 40% ash! " -- a statement I used to hear at least thrice in every 50 min of our Power Plant course. Obba, that's the only thing I remember distinctly about the course now :)

2. "Chachuration " -- another word etched in our minds, thanks to a certain Refrigeration prof, who also happens to be Chairman, Council of Wardens :( Trust me, if you pay proper attention in this prof's class for one half of the sem, you'll probably sail through the est of the course and also, your english will tend towards the rotten side. My writing will tell you how much attention I paid :)

3. Fiction -- Ah, if there's one person who should not be lectured about anti-feministic thoughts, it's my Fiction prof. And guess what, I happened to do the same for my presentation :( Ah, but then again, the course was appalling in the way she took it and somehow, it didn't satisfy my appetite except for the fact that I read a short story called "Dumma and Dummi" !

4. V-Day -- got bumped maajarly thanks to a prank, which was followed up on my hostel-nite. Got frust a bit, but still enjoyed the fact that people actually put fight to pain me. Well, some are not gifted to pain others on the spot :) V for Vendetta machan, so trust me, I solemnly swear I'm upto no good, when Sem 7 starts i.e.

5. W -- > or how close I came to getting one in each of my courses this sem. Would be surprised to find an attendance grade of 'G' in any course, barring my labs!

6. Elections -- closest I came to following an election, thanks to 4 of my good friends battling it out for the top posts. 3 won, but 1 lost. Got to see the true side of people's faces during this time and yeah, a rich experience as put by one of my friends "Haarne ke baad bahut kuch ssekha yaar!"

7. "JoJo ki maa ka " -- a quote which shall be immortalized in the annals of Jam history. Reason : the guy who made this statement is JoJo' elder sibling. Talk of foot in the mouth! Well, both the bros are Arse-nal fans, so can't expect anything better than this.

=====

That's more like my sem, barring our 2nd round exit in Cricket Schroeter, where I swear, I would have bumped my Captain had the team supported me in holding him!

Post sem trips :

a) I attended a religious ceremony in Trichy in the first week of May. Mercury levels read : 41 degrees. Add to the misery : There are 4 LCD panels telecasting the ceremony, but just 2 standee fans for a gathering of 300 odd junta !! Preposterous. It was a good thing that as per religious norms, the menfolk needed to wear just the traditional dhoti and had to stay topless (aye, naked torsos floating around!), so we didn't have to strip to bear the heat. Just had to carry the extra towel to wipe your brow and back from time-to-time. A few other things of note included a conversation, which I happened to accidentally eavesdrop :

Note :A= Aunty == Maami = M, in Tam slang. The words in brackets are the translated versions of the tam dialogues (I've included Tam for the few readers who could probably relish it that way)

A1 : Maami, ongu pennu ka kalyaanam aidthaa ? ( Aunty, is your daughter married ? )
M1 : Illaiye, ippodhaan jadhagum patindu irrakom ( No, just going through exchange of kundalis and all)

A1: Oh, ho. Seshadri angeyu orru payyan paati vechirukkan. Avantu pesulama ? (Seshadri there, knows a boy eligible for marriage. Should we speak to him ?)
M1 : paakulamein. Engayi irrakan payyan ? ( sure. Where's the boy ? )

And now's the twist. I can hear this although I dunno who these ppl are and I know they are pointing somewhere coz their dialogue had stopped momentarily. Next moment, I get a tap on my shoulder asking me :

A1 : Onnoru peir inna pa ? (What's your name son ?)
Me : Raghav. Yen (Raghav. Why ?) .. at the back of my mind, this voice seems very familiar for some reason.

A1 : Inna padchirkai ? (Educational qualification ?)
Me : IIT Madras la Mechanical padchinda irrakein. ippo 3drd...

She cuts me short and speaks to M1 : Nalla padchirkaanein, IIT aachey (Has studied brilliantly, IIT boy na!)
M1 : Aaama, jadhugam shikrama paakalam (yaya, let's exchange kundalis fast then)

I sensed something wrong here and interrupted : Maami, na 3rd yr leda irrukein. Inno mudiyalei (I'm still in 3rd yr, not yet done!)

And as providence would have it, the guy named Seshadri and takes the embarassed aunties to the "right" guy ! Phew... This was also a pt which irritated me. I mean you come to a religious ceremony and end up gossiping or discussing marriages!!. Cant you do that at homes, at your leisure, under fans and not in this heat, where I had half a mind to go back unless my parents hadnt insisted I come tehre? And these are the same people dictating the orthodox stuff I'm supposed to follow in life. So much for their devotion and all that crap.. Hypocritemax !!!

b) Venue : Aircel shop, Mumbai --> I was on the hunt for a sim/network which would fit my tariff range and I decided to visit this Aircel priority store, which I presumed would give me a better offer. And when I enter, I see a hot chick there, in her minis with a pom-pom, ala an IPL cheerleader girl. Baffled by her presence, I continue with my necessary checking out rates, was happy , bought their SIM and was about to leave, when one of the promoters asks me to play this computer game simulating me as a CSK player in the IPL. I play it only to realize the purpose of the "cheerleader". She started doing all the wiggly-niggly actions made by the actual cheergirls in IPL whenever I hit a boundary on the computerized game!!!! WTF^3.. I thought I had seen enough crap, and now this incident adds to my list of stuff-which-no-one-can-argue-about,-but-can-be-assumed-to-be-stupid all the same.

======

More later. Sayonara. (IPL has caught my attention again while typing, not the cheerleaders though!)

Somewhere between 42 and infinity, lies the power of my creativity !

2009-01-26T02:13:00.000-08:00

The following was my entry for a Poetry writing part of Creative Writing during Saarang, 09 ( It's slisha longish but please have the patience to read it till the end, as I think it's not that bad; the results of Creative writing might not indicate the same !)

=====================================================

The Man who knew infinity,
Didnt know his divinity,
Until he met the astrologer,
Who said he could read his future.

The astrologer said to our Man,
You are gifted by a boon from Pan
Which you received in your previous birth
And is the reason that you bear such a huge girth !

Said our Man to the astrologer,
What is this boon you talk about from a Greek character
That I never encounter in the papers I publish,
Or are you back to your ways of speaking gibberish ?

The astrologer replied,
Ignoring the Man’s snide,
You could be more famous and enjoy thy romance,
I shall not tell forth until you pay my advance

The Man had no option but to cough up the cash
'Coz he loved listening to such flattery and trash,
After all, when one knows about infinity,
You needn’t worry about 42 or its complexity !

The key to success lies in your path,
Thus replied the miniscule psychopath,
The only thing which blocks you,
Is the birth date which mocks you !

How can it mock me,
When that’s what defines what you see
Unless it’s another stale line from your "Period of lunacy",
Hurry up, or I shall take back your fee !

This is the latest discovery my son,
In numerology, since the forecast of World War One,
You needn’t change the spelling of your name,
To end up gaining Sonu Niigaam’s fame !

A simple combination of digits can twist your fate,
Which you could ensure you a night with Ms. Winslet,Kate,
About whom you fantasize while sleeping in bed,
But alas ! your birthdate seems to deem the signal red !

The Man was impatient to know more,
For he now found this interesting to the core,
And for those who found this poem to be a bore,
I will honestly kick thy butt if you read no more !

Oh, divine messenger!
I didn’t know my life was ruled by a number,
Please do anything you can,
As I’m Ms. Winslet’s biggest fan !

The astrologer went into a trance,
Or so it seemed at first glance,
"How do I get the most from this impotent faggot?",
Was actually the aim of his wicked plot !

He suggested that our Man add four
To his existing birthdate,
Which would allow him to implore,
The finer intricacies of fate !

Unknowingly when he did it then,
His destiny changed drastically,
To counter which, the astrologer told to add another seven,
To his birth month to counter this anomaly.

By the end of this exercise,
Which lasted fifteen minutes and seconds thirteen,
The astrologer couldn’t be more precise,
When he said “Now you are as young as a teen !”

The Man was eager to test this update,
And knocked on Winslet’s entry gate,
Only to see her come out with a pink nightcap
And deliver on his face,one tight slap !

A costly lesson it turned out to be,
Which also ended his forecasted ‘romance’
He understood then that "Love by Numbers" wasn't so easy,
And was nothing but purely a matter of chance !

The Motorcycle Diaries ?

2009-01-07T02:52:00.000-08:00

What is this life if full of care, If we don’t have time to stand and stare,
For trips like these to Pondy, are oh, so very rare,
With 3 bikes and a scooty, one didn’t know whom to pair,
Until I tried the wheelie, raring others to dare !

We knew not what may befall,
Nor how may the trip stall,
But we knew that we had the gall,
To face anything but the ‘dreaded’ parents’ call !

Woken up at five in the morning,
I wished my cell-phone wouldn’t ring,
For I knew the trip ahead was gonna be tiring,
But who cares, it was very well satisfying !

The above poem, was in short, a description of a memorable trip to Pondicherry ( or should I say, Puducherry ? Never mind, I’m the author, and I have the rights to use what I want  ). But the painful chap that I am, I’ve never left things to be as short as they could be, and following the same rule of thumb, I shall delve deeper into the ‘trip’ that was.

But allow me to put a little bit fart/fact before that..Why ? Coz I am writing this and well, I wanted to put it down.

Shaastra – An ISO certified technical festival, planned and organized over 6 months of hard work, by the students of IIT Madras, valued at upwards of Rs. 1 crore !

Pondy Trip – An idea which struck someone for a vague reason, who thereby put Pressure to initiate things; was “organized” within a span of about 50 hrs, by the students of IIT Madras; Priceless in value ! (Well actually, the total expenditure is not yet summed up :P )

It all started when I received an sms saying “ Are you in for Pondy tomorrow morning ? “, while I was busy trying to get a dribbler in shape using polyurethane, which was rigid-ized using liquid Nitrogen ! From there onwards, the things moving in my head were all about how we would go, when do we start and come back, do we have enough Plan B’s to ensure that we go and come back safely,etc.

The night was spent in scouring for enough bikes so that the trip could actually proceed well but all the while I had this premonition that something was bound to go wrong. Not that I’m a pessimist, but my premonitions have never been wrong so far, be it exam results or Rahul Dravid’s innings..I was given a rude shock when someone told me that we have to start at 5 in the morning ! This was actually terrifying coz it would be freaking cold at that time, and it was just 9 hrs before 5am next day, that I was informed about this. I knew then and there, that my sleep was gonna be ruined. And needless to say, I crashed at 2:00 ( and so did more than half the ‘trippers’, if I could call them ).

My premonition’s first part came true as soon as I woke up.. a ‘confirmed’ bike was not the case now! What do we do : Go to an IIT alumnus’ place who’s willing to rent us his TVS Victor at 8 in the morning ( oh, our plans got derailed is another part of the premonition, but trivial compared to the others). The bike did give me the heeby-jeebies for I was certain that something wrong is gonna happen with this bike, which was proved to be true later in the day.

And so, our trio on two bikes reach the insti, where we realize our other trippers are done with their breakfast, while we were left to start off the trip on a hungry note ! What’s worse, they had even rummaged into our backpacks which we had entrusted in their care ( which I got to know just a few hours before typing this down !) A pity, that I never thought about it, but luckily, there weren’t any embarrassing stuff inside, so no problem..We finally started off at around 9, along the ECR ( East Coast Road, in short), which is a marvellous stretch of highway to ride/drive on. An unexpected stop at an Ostrich farm owned by the uncle of one of our fellow trippers also provided the necessary break in the morning to gear up for the events to follow. A pity for the ostriches, that they weren’t allowed to eat choco-biscuits..Sad life, seriously ! But I wouldn’t mind as I was hungry, and w.r.t. biscuits, the more the merrier.

While starting off, our ‘Bike+Sunscreen-Fundaes-Man’ asks us to use generous amounts of sunscreen lotion, which as per his demonstration seemed like ‘Shampoo-ing’ our arms or any other part of our body visible to the sun. Now, who was to know that our Victor had encountered a tyre burst amidst all the action and off we went to the nearest mechanic shop, a good 1.5 km away from the farm. Here, we split up into two sets of two pairs ; one set, went on driving as though there was no end and ended up soon in the beautiful place that is Mahabs..and the other, as expected, was doomed to find shade near the mechanic shop ! After putting enough tam fundaes, the bike was ready to explore the roads, although with one catch : It had quantum speed-shifts, moving at either 0,40 or 80kmph ! Wow, a motorcyclist’s work was never so easy ! As we went further, we realized that the brakes too were dysfunctional ...My, oh my, were we even gonna make it to Pondy ?

Now, all fixed and done, we start off where we suddenly face the “Who shall ride the motorcycle(s) and scooty problem ? “ coz the person riding the scooty had mixed ‘Emotions’ on whether to continue or not. Here comes my ‘pivotal’ role into the picture...I start the bike,{ after having been a pillion rider for a while now, to help out the ‘pressur(e)-ised’ guy with Tam fundaes in mechanic shops } and put a wheelie for 0.3 seconds and the rest,..well I don’t remember what followed ..I mean my memory auto-erased the boring part of the story and asked me to continue forward. I realized then that one man’s stunt, is another man’s ‘Poison’ ( :-P, I know I’m trying to convert my stupid act into a brave heroic, but then, I’m the author :P ) and I was condemned to driving the Scooty ! Ah, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise for me, as my pillion rider then pained me enough to let me get off and take the back seat and enjoy the beautiful scenery around, instead of tiring my hands  So somehow, we finally reached Pondy, and what better than doing a bit of peit-pooja, after all we needed a bit of food for thought to grasp the pretty vague and winding directions provided to us by the locals, with their accent being an eclectic mix of Tam coupled with the soft Francais ! Oui, ze languaze waz a beet of a problaim ..Lunch was more or less decent, where the highlight, if I could call it, was a fork-fight for French-fries where the person who actually had it in the end, never did enjoy the last laugh.

Freshened up, and raring to go, we wanted to see the Paradise we had dreamt of, but alas, it turned out to be an island and we missed the last ferry, by a few minutes ! Damn, starting off late was now showing its effects but since we had decided to have fun, there was the Sand beach which enticed us through a winding route. So finally, we were on the beach where TP was the theme of those couple of hours; being it zipping close one of the Event C(h)ores of Shaastra and enjoying the sadistic pleasure of him trying to come out of it like a caterpillar out of its cocoon or be it collecting sea-shells of different kinds or be it making a castle out of the sand ( which was really soft, cant deny admiring it) and attempting to break it down, but only being scared away by the law-suit for attempt to destroy property ( read : being hit by sand-balls, which crumbled halfway through their motion and thereby dirtying your already wet jeans !) or trying to figure out a route to this Paradise, only to be kicked out by the coast-guard when you had wet your pants already ( erm, the last part refers to just 2 members of the group, and I was certainly not one of them, for those who had raised eyebrows !! ) or be it just relaxing yourselves at the beach, with the waves kissing your feet tempting you to go deeper..Once again, time was a limiting factor here, and we had to bid adieu to this wonderful beach, but now, things just don’t move as smoothly as you think, do they ? We lost a key to one of the bikes, but then as they say, when one door closes, another opens ! Luckily, the Victor’s fuel tank key opened up the Yamaha, whose key was lost and we were saved the pains of pushing the bike till the main road ! We echoed together, “Everything happens for the good ! “

And then, began our final sojourn to our home that is insti. And if there’s any word which would describe this drive, it would be ‘COLD’ ! I was lucky driving the Scooty as it wouldn’t be allowed to rev up above 50kmph, thanks to its owner’s instructions, but then again, it was a trade-off for the time taken to come back. In between, I got a call from my mom, and luckily this happened when we had all stopped by a tea-shop, thus giving me time to think and convince her about my ‘safe’ journey..From here started my 100km ride, with just 1 pit-stop in between ( thanks to the cold, which was increasing with the passage of time and my pillion rider, dozing off every second minute ! ) while others, thanks to their bikes’ speeds, were having cold feet much before I did (pun intended :P ), and had to make several more stops. Finally, after making it to insti, and faking an arbit address to the security section, we had reached! The trip was worth it after all, despite the niggles and pains, felt on the return journey. But then, as I would put it “ Pains last for a day; the memories, a lifetime ! “

A few pointers to be noted from the trip ( a habit I picked up after getting pained while going to Big Bazaar and their likes, for what NOT to do and save time, and head back home at the earliest rather than waste time looking out for things which have offers, but are of no fruitful use to the family !) :

1. Spontaneity is the essence of anything related to fun, but it’s always better to plan a bit in advance. It’s ironic, that I never follow this well, but then, I know I’m a hypocrite :)
2. Coconut-water is never sweet all the time..there do exist ones which taste salty, and this is NOT coz of their proximity to the sea ( as explained by one of our trippers, who hails from God’s own land..Ironymax, I know ! )
3. Carry sunscreen ( thanks to our FSAE man for that :P ) and carry a good enough cam, after all “Pictures do speak a thousand words” and you wouldn’t want to have very few memories of such memorable trips, would you ?
4. Don’t lose hope ! I know that “ Jab kismat hai gandu, toh kya karega Pandu ? “ (thanks to Shiny for that quote !), but still Hope does set us free !
5. Do not attempt to start off in top-gear when you haven’t touched a bike for as long as 4 yrs ! You could end up doing a wheelie, and be proud of it, but an afterthought would tell you that you were lucky enough to escape unhurt !
6. Carry a set of trousers and wind-cheaters/full shirts if you feel you might return in the night; if possible, even gloves. This ‘cold’ experience was sure enough an eye opener..
7. Last, but not the least, enjoy the scenic beauty during the trip..Let your beautiful memories not be a blur, especially when the starry sky , the ‘yellow’ moon and its reflection on the rivers passing by are a delight to watch ! ( It also explains the first line of the poem, but the fact that it’s one of my favourite poetic lines could also be a factor for its inclusion :) )

I’ll stop here, I guess, as “Too much gyaan, spoils the blog ! “

Do a choppy rider rotation ?

2009-01-04T09:17:00.000-08:00

The title is an anagram of " A Road Trip to Pondicherry "..and is self referential to how the trip went as far as the riders and the pillion riders were concerned.

Will post soon about the trip as soon as my hands become normal enough to type a post longer than this :) ( a sudden excursion to a place 150 km far does take its toll, I guess !) They are quite normal right now, but I'm lazy :)

The longest call of Someone's Life !

2009-01-02T07:24:00.001-08:00

This is dedicated to the poor "salesman" from ABN-Amro Bank, who tried to sell my dad a medical insurance scheme,over phone, via an STD call from Bangalore, which apparently took care of all his family members' thyroid related illnesses, if any were to arise. It's not coz of the pity that I'm typing this down ( I'm known to be merciless, unless I make an exception), but due to a similar painful feeling endured over last summer..

Key :

Salesman from ABN : S
My Dad : M

Salesman's manager : C

S calls up at 1 in the afti on one fine day. My dad aint at home and I pick up only to tell him about it. I ask him to call back after half-hour when he was expected back home, and surprisingly, he follows it up diligently. Once again, to his disappointment, M aint there and I ask him to call up at 2:30pm..which he does again, and to his relief, M is available at home. I know I have a firecracker in hand when I see one, and I felt this was going to be another as here was a salesman, willing to make STD calls to get hold of a client and knowing my father, who knew such stuff due to his professional experience, I thought the man was going to have a tough debut ( as was to be known later in the dialogue that followed, that my dad's no. was the first in his list of assigned work !)...

Here's what transpired :

S : Good afternoon, Mr. M.

M : Good afternoon, yes.

S: Sir, I'm calling from..blah..blah..We're pleased to inform you that you are being offered an excellent insurance scheme called "Thyrocare" from our bank as we value you as our customer..blah,blah ( he goes on without even allowing M to speak a word until he was stopped by..)

M : One sec, one sec..could you repeat the name of the scheme again ?

S : Er..sir, (a sound of flipping through pages :P)..Thyrocare !

M : Ah, ok..and who's offering this scheme ?

S : ABN Amro bank sir..

M : No, No..I meant who's insurance scheme is ABN offering ?

S : Er..It's Reliance Health sir..

M : Well, what all benefits are my family entitled to..if I'm not mistaken, you said my family can enjoy the benefits too as well..

S : No, sir..I never said that Sir..

M : oh no, you did..

S : ( flips through pages again..) Oh yes sir..I'm sorry, even your family can enjoy the benefits..

M : Ah, ok and if I have to blah, blah.. ( he started with one of the many permutations and combinations he could come up with..)

S : Yes sir..yes sir..I guess yes sir..No sir, not that way..( and a series of similar dialogues with just the set of words being interchanged as per his increment in confusion levels due to the level of complexities my father drew him into.. I'm pretty sure he wouldnt have expected such a Chakravyuh in his first prospective-client-call itself..surely must have cursed his boss, and in all likelihood M as well :P )

M : Um, well..your benefits in a quantitative fashion seem ok, but can you elucidate on the actual tests that will take place..you mentioned 57 tests and I'm pretty sure, so many tests can't take place in a day..and I thought there were just 6-7 tests..

S : Sir, these 57 tests are actually sub-units of the major tests..

M : And what are these major tests, may I know ?

S : ( bulbs maajarly)..erm, er..I'll just get my manager on line.. I think he can help you out on this as I'm not too sure Sir...

< and the whole set of conversation above itself was 30 min deep..

M : Ok, please do so...

C : How may I help you, Sir ?

M : I was told of this scheme caled ..blah, blah..I want to knwo about teh exact tests which are conducted ?

C : blahblah, blah..blahblah...( and M's listening to all the gibberish he's telling over the line..btw, I had asked M to continue the convo in loudspeaker mode..so that I could have my share of sadistic fun :P )

M : Fine, but you seem to offer just 2-3 tests actually which are of use to me..what about the following ? blahblah..blahblah ( I never knew M knew so much about med stuff ! )

C : ( bulbs for a while )..er, actually they total upto about 57 sir..

M : agreed, but what about the rest I asked for ?...

C : urm, let me check up about them sir.. ( and conveniently escapes from the scene :P )

M : Ok, please make it faster..

S : Urm sir, so will you take up the insurance then..
M : Well, get back to me with set of tests first, please..

S : Erm, yes sir.. ( prays for his manager to come back with the vital data..)

..C has escaped completely from the scene..and S tries to fake some stuff..

S : Sir, these are the final list of tests on offer..blahblah..

M : Ok, that seems fair enough to me..

S : So will you take up the insurance sir..I've the papers ready right now, and canI have your address please ? ( he was evidently ion a hury to close this deal..already 40 min were up, and he was getting nervous from his tone)

M : Oh come on, how can I say yes so easily..I'll have to consult my family about this..gimme 2 days time, I think we can talk then..

S : but sir, you know the details well right ?

M : why dont you email me the details coz I feel, even my family members should not know the details..and written data would be better than hearsay right ?..plz mail me on..

S : but si, why dont you accept this..I'll mail you soon..

M : Please dont hurry up Mr. S..as I told you erlier, I need time.. I cant make a decision just from 1 call..

S : ( Puts up a very senti speech on how this was his first call, and how much he hoped to clinch this deal..for his mercy, I wont print the details..it's anothe fact that I dont exctly rem the words except the theme of his speech :P )

M : ( starts of on a profit-and-loss part of the scheme in which if his family members dont use one part of his, he would be losing Rs. X k of money, and so on and so forth..)

S : Sir, but this is a very good scheme sir, and for your benefit that we are offering..

M : Look Mr. S, it's related to my health and I cant take a decision so soon..please mail me the details, we shall talk later...

S : But Sir, why cant you just say yes, when you are convinced about it ? ( his tone was getting a bit impatient her, and I'm pretty sure, had M been in front of him, he would have bashed him up with his chair ! )

M : I cant. am sorry..not now, at least..

S : Sir, never has anyone asked me so many questions as well sir.. I thought you were going to say yes ( obviously trying to repair the damage inflicted by his first set of words.:P )

M : As a client, I'm supposed to ask questions and you're supposed to answer them..Please dont think this job of yours is easy..this is a part and parcel of the process..you should allow us our rightful time..

S : ok, sir.I shall call you day-after-tomorrow then..( sounding impatient to cut a call effot gone in vain)

M : and the e-mail ?

S : I shall do that also Sir..

M : thank you for your information, Mr. S..

S cuts the call abruptly.. M gives me the triumphant smile that one would give after a lawyer has won a case ! This whole talk lasted about 50 min !! that too on STD :P

No e-mail was received by M from S nor did S call back after 48hrs..that was the last of him..at least I hope so :)

Be Afraid, Be very afraid !!

2008-12-23T05:55:00.000-08:00

The last week in retrospect has been a very frustrating week in terms of what I expected it to be and what it turned out to be instead ..

1. I set out for a place with high hopes of finding a particular motor which would satisfy my constraints..reach the shop, who raises the bar of hopes by saying that the particular rpm motor is available and then...it simply exceeds the dimensional constraints and hence, rendered useless. This was probably an omen of things to come, I guess.

2. We set out to "conquer" Mood-I Quizzes/WordGames over the weekend. The quotes have been used for conquer coz I know it would probably be too Herculean a task to win all the events in the purview as the competition was actually fantastic, something which I never expected compared to last year's participation, but getting cash back in return would have done an almost bankrupt man like me a favour. Well, we qualified for the Main Quiz finals and apparently topped the prelims ( a bit of C2D was involved, to tell the truth but we did deserve to get till there is our opinion)..only to be steamrolled in the finals. As for the Word Games event, we did quite decently in the prelims and would have even come back home with cash except for one stupid buzzer round which changed the tide of the finals and we ended up missing the top 3 spots by 5 pt ( as to why the buzzer round was crucial : each question was worth 30 pts and we knew the answer all along and forgot to press the buzzer and allowed the team which beat us to sneak ahead. D'uh,I know, but this was yet another instance for me coming so near, and yet so far :( )

3. Never before has it happened that my ticket in the Tatkal quota couldn't be booked..and this has to happen when I wanted my ticket as desperately as possible !

4. An ambitious project we are working on suddenly goes into Plan-C/D/whatever_the_letter mode due to employees of a certain motor mfg. firm being on holiday. And this news comes right after the firm seemed possible to deliver us the goods, in probably as early as 2 weeks when compared to the normal 1 month standard expected. We must be damned, I must say.

The above 4 sets of events have all seemed as promising to deliver and yet failing. Is this a sign of things to come or has the storm passed ? Have I failed yet again to read the omens or have I read it correctly finally ? I guess only time shall tell me the answer which makes me very scared coz I never trust the surprises, pleasant or unpleasant that the future holds for me. All I can do is pray that the good times have begun (and I certainly don't intend to fly by Kingfisher to Fly the "good times", unless they are offering me a free ticket! ) coz what lies ahead of me is as good as a make or break situation for whatever I'd set out to achieve at the onset of the current academic year.

I have a Dream ..And I bloody well want it to come true !!

P.S. The only set of events expected which I didnt mention earlier were my grades, which for now also seem to give me a ray of hope and expectation and I hope they don't end up the way the earlier set did !

Life Without Walls

2008-12-15T03:28:00.000-08:00

I was watching the recent Test match between India and England at Chennai on TV and there flashes the Windows Skydrive ad with the following tagline :

" Windows A life without walls " .. which sets me into thinking .." If we don't have walls, where will we have the Windows ? :P Paradox max Ad !!

It seems with the exit of Bill, the Walls have crumbled around the Microsoft office :)

To B.E. or not to B.E. ?

2008-12-07T22:57:00.000-08:00

Hmm, I was going through a certain book on word etymos and something which surprised me was the term, Bachelor -- meaning an unmarried male, in common parlance. Now, I have been pondering on this term for a while coz I have never been able to figure out why is someone is awarded a degree stating " Bachelor of Engineering " , so on and so forth..Do they mean that the poor chap who's awarded the degree is unmarried to engineering,when ironically, he's spent 4 precious years trying to figure out the nitty-gritties of the same and in all likelihood has failed to grasp them!

Now, it's surprising that the Forum for International Feminine Associations (FIFA in short) hasn't launched a scathing attack on the powers that be, to find the Bachelors degree to be disappointingly sexist and thereby launch a Spinsters degree for the females who would have been otherwise awarded the Bachelors degree. But the fact that they won't crib over the Masters degree is evident coz after all, its Mistresses who anyway rule over the Masters in most prevailing conditions. Anyway, here ends the reference to the title of this post. On to more serious issues..

Getting an admit into IIT (not the Illinois one) is a matter of prestige for most of the wanna-be engineers and their parents in the nation. But has anyone wondered about the situation of the fellow post-entry into IIT ? It has become an awkward state of mind for the lad when he returns home (especially, if he is not studying in an IIT in his place of residence, if there exists one). Any allegation on me bearing charges of anti-feminism can be mailed to : thisismankindnotwomankind@grantmeawebsite.org and for those without allegations, can continue reading this post, if they are interested to..Now this guy who comes back has a burden of the IIT tag on him. Yes, I call it a burden coz every move of his is scrutinized by the dastardly elements of the society wishing to prove that IITians are human in as palpable a manner as possible. The funny part is this - IITians never claimed they were superhuman, but have always maintained the fact that they are human. So what's the need to prove someone down in this process ? The problem is, this tag stays with him forever until he retires and comes back as a prof in an IIT coz then, he's living with people of similar backgrounds.

Another embarassing situation arrives when this lad is introduced to some friend of his parents as " My son studies in IIT-X*" and there falls the sky on his head. And God save the poor chap if this Mister whom he's introduced to, has a son/daughter aspiring to be an IITian and is probably preparing for the famed JEE ! It's not that he doesnt wish to help out but it's just the fact that he wouldn't want to be pestered with people asking for advice. After all, coaching classes are meant to be there for the same reason. They too have ex-IITians as some of the faculty members. Well, my interaction with students of other IITs has been limited but from what I have gathered, life at almost all IITs, remain the same, except for a bit of grading differences and maybe certain facilities and probably, ragging. But this fact just doesn't sink into other aspirants, moreso their parents I would say. It's good to be concerned about one's ward's future but excessive advice seeking never did anyone good unless they were going to start up their own firm with a database of these advices.

Now, it's the time for this IITian ( let's call him XY, poor fellow will have a name ot identify with his chromosome at least )--ok XY goes to a nearby mart whose owner (O) has known him for the past 6 years. Seeing XY after a long hiatus, he enquires about his education and the conversation is as follows :

O : So XY, coming back from a long vacation huh ?
XY : No sethji, just came back on a vacation from college.
O : College ? waah, badhiya hai. Which college ?
XY (with a sense of pride) : IIT - Delhi ji..
O : Arrey, ek ITI toh apne Mulund mein bhi hai na, yeh dilli-willi kyun jaana ! (Mulund- a suburb on the outskirts of Mumbai)
XY : /*Damn, this fellow doesn't know difference between IIT and ITI*/
XY : Arrey nahin, IIT , like the one in Powai..IIT Bombay..suna hai na ?
O : Oh achcha, like that bolo na..toh why Delhi beta ? Powai mein donation dena tha kya ?
XY : /*Damn, no point explaining him. Next he'll ask me my CET score and tell me that I could have got in VJTI itself( VJTI-- is the "best" engineering college in Mumbai, if IITB is not considered into picture) */
XY : Haan, that was the case. Chalo, I've work to do. Will come later.
O to another customer : Poor fellow..was a brilliant chap but couldn't get a seat in Mumbai itself. Had to go to Delhi of all the places !

This above conversation is not a myth but a morphed version of the real one which I encountered last summer. And I thought IITians were famous. No wonder, the political party floated by a certain group of IITians ( I think it's called Lok Paritran ) is a disaster !

Above all this, there's always the fact that your friends,( those who are fortunately/unfortunately not in IITs despite deserving to be so) will view any statement made by you with a prejudiced attitude, unlike the times before you cleared JEE. It's a part and parcel of this process called life that you move on from one time period to another and in this process, I think it's humanely impossible to keep in touch with anyone and everyone you knew well prior to joining IIT. And once you come back to your residential town and if you dont call up these bum-chums, they would think of you as "another IITian who doesn't care about us now that we aren't fellows in his league ". A popular misconception, I must say. I agree that it's a bit difficult to maintain the same bonhomie prevalent earlier and getting that spark back again does take time; added to the fact that every damned person has some expectation or the other from this XY that he's totally confused as to what to do and gets pained by trying to please everyone ( but in the process, ends up pleasing none coz he's worried about the statements he makes which become a bit formal over a period of time as he's unsure as to how the world shall react to them--once again leading to the Pre-IITian and Post-IITian schools of thought :( )

All said and done, I guess the only way to sort this thing out would probably not consider IITians as geniuses; at least don't be prejudiced in judging a person's statements, whether he's an IITian or not, coz we are all human after all, and mistakes or correct decisions are never decided whether a person is an IITian or not.

** There do exist female IITians but I have never been in their shoes to corraborate the same into my post.
## I hope this post is not considered with prejudice as an IITian's post or else, my whole purpose would be dissolved !

Long Time, no C !

2008-11-29T13:00:00.000-08:00

Aaah, yes. I couldn't post for a long time thanks to the ordeal that's Code-named " Mech 5th Sem, IITM " . I'm not much of a coder, but I did do C well ( as per one of my colleagues, who somehow managed to get my number and text me her coding problem coz she thought I was some stud !Aah, it's human to err )

Now, coming back to this blogpost material, lemme give you a brief of what kept me busy so long ( and oh, before I forget, I tried to blog sometime a couple of weeks back by trying to write my first senti blogpost only to crash off while typing it :P)

1. "The Spirit of Engineering " -- now, don't jump to conclusions that I was very enthu about my 5th sem, but the first ISO certified student organized festival in the world -SHAASTRA. I write it in caps, coz I believe it deserves to be. The tenth edition of Shaastra combined with the Golden Jubilee of IIT M was a treat to experience ( the spons treat we got after that also was :P )

2. Lit-Soc -- the earlier typoed "Lit(e)-Soc " suddenly got into me some infinite enthu, when for the first time in my 3 yrs, I attended all the events in the sem gone by..something I never even attempted to do in my earlier sems. And it saw me surprisingly participate in events where I've never ventured to do so in the past 5 yrs ( Well, I somehow lost all kinds of apprehensions of making a fool of myself on stage. After all, this world's a stage and if I'm the comedian in it, no problemo ! )

3. Mugging -- Aah, for once I saw myself mug like never before ( well, probably mugged better for JEE but this concentrated activity for 8 days during end sems finally ended my coded ordeal )

4. Fussball -- One of the better things to have happened to Jam in the last 3 years. Tottaaaaaalllllllllly loved it !

5. Misc : Hmm, this would describe all the TNR ( totally not required, for the uninitiated) activities that one could do in life ). Fine examples would tripping ( there were a certain trio who called themselves "brotherhood" amongst my fellow spons coords who were at the suffering end of this for most of the time :P), crashing ( but this was any day lesser than my normal crashing :( ), putting fart ( which reached a peak during classes with our otherwise boring profs somehow giving us enough content to come up with quotable quotes !) , etc....

Now that you, my dear reader, have been briefed up well about what I am going to write about, have the option to read the last line of this blogpost ( X marks that spot) and follow it or continue reading this post ..

Shaastra -- those 6 months from the beginning of May this year to this date, have given me the most cherishable experience in my life so far.. I've no words to describe it coz I'vent mugged for GRE yet, but scaled down versions of those words would probably be - kickass, phenomenal, fantabulous .. When I set out for work as a Spons and PR coord, little did I know what was in store for me ( apart from caling in orgs to get the moolah and if lucky, end up meeting them or at least the probably hot HR female or receptionist, none of which sadly happened with me !). With situations changing real-time and moods fluctuating unperiodically, this literally made me see some of the highs and lows of life ( ya, getting bumped and proposals getting rejected can get very painful until the cash flows in, trust me !) And if I thought that my whole affair with Shaastra 08 would be spons-ish, I couldnt have been more wrong ever. Like every twist in the tale, this journey too had one, although a bit predictable from the start, except that its magnitude was unprecedented -- The Golden Jubilee Conclave. Well, it wasnt the best a man could get but then, attempting something within a span of 2 months which other organizations take years to achieve, that too completely student-run ( who also have their acads to take care*) and yet managing to pull off the presence of a couple of members from the politburo and an eminent author (Ramachandra Guha, FYI) , who addressed an audience comprising top-notch company heads, alumni and of course, us :)
On a personal note, the icing on the cake for me was the presence of the Renault Formula One car, driven to victory by Giancarlo Fisichella, at Shaastra. This was one of my dreams at the onset of working for Spons and my joy knew no bounds on the day I received a confirmation of its presence. The fact that it's ambience wasn't all that flashy may have been a dampener, but then getting a REAL F1 car to be displayed for the first time in Chennai is also something to be proud of, I guess. Although, if my sources are to be trusted, another F1 display is on cards, this January at IITM courtesy, Force India or should I say, Kingfisher, to be apolitical !

*- One industrialist, who's apparently world no. 2 for Renault suggested that we guys take a two month holiday to prepare for the Conclave, to make it look pseuder than it actually was. T for him, is what we have to say, as though all that we have to do is Conclave. God Save IITians ( and their jobs :P) if that happens !

Lit-Soc -- Well, as indicated earlier in one of my posts, this year was a year of maajar responsibility undertaken by Lit-Soc secs of Jam to win the Lit-Soc shield for the first time in the past 11 yrs (if my trusted sources are to be trusted) and despite all detractors, I guess we have been able to put up a good show thus far. But to quote SRK in OSO " Picture ab bhi baaki hai mere dost ! ". I wish I could see the future but I just hope that it holds something great in the near future, which I would love to take back when I become an alumnus of this insti. This was the first year that I took part in any speaking event at Lit-Soc, one which involved Light music ( light ra mama, for its details - in typical IITM lingo ) and the other was Debate which to me and my teammate's surprise, fetched us the 2nd place :) Not bad for a half-hour fight which we put before the event ! As usual, our Drams performance was a display of spectacular acting skills ( although, the actors themselves were not too satisfied with their performance !) and our lit-event performances have been on a constant rise over the past 3 yrs which makes me hope that they reach their crescendo this season ( there are people who'll try to deng me for this and possibly try and convince me that Jam's not going to win Lit-Soc, but I'm not going to believe it until there's no mathematical scope left !! )

Mugging - lesser said about it the better :) ( I hope my grades are good, that's al; ! )

Fussball-- What do you do when you have a project worth 20% of your total course weightage, have 10 lab reports to cog off and are just 6 hrs from its submission time, have loads to mug for a lab-viva but have no enthu to do either of the above ? -- You play Fussball !! ( but of course, you must be privileged enough to be a Jammie or have good contis, who'll let you play here :P ) Kickass fun and totally unpredictable ( unless, you are playing against me and my teammate, who'll be better than others :P )

Misc -- If truth be told, this misc time was more than the time spent on mugging or Fussball ! Tripping came but naturally to me ( or so say the people who get tripped on :P) and farting is an essential quality which needs to be acquired to set one's insti life in order. So both of the above stuff, were needless to say, comprising max of my misc time although my trippiness has reduced for certain unforeseen and unmentionable reasons. I guess I'll save those reasons for a later post coz mentioning them now would involve tripping for the same reasons I shouldn't and that would become a paradox then !

All good things must come to an end, and similarly " All painful sems in Mech must also come to an end :P" which is applicable now, as I'm typing exactly 28 hrs after my sem has officially ended -- meaning the time from which I can't eat in mess ( not that I want to eat there! ). And similarly, I must end this post as well, but not without the mentioning of a few memorable quotes :

1. "Derivation of Mugged Expressions "-- the expanded form of a paper acronymized as DoME but which essentially stands for Design of Machine Elements :P Thanks to Alok for this one, considering the fact that it was w.r.t. an arbit max paper full of derivations which were at least 4 pages long but worth just 8 marks :(

2. " Choose a prof whose daughter is good looking and younger than you, for your BTP ( BTech project in short) " -- SKD, the Gawdest of profs to have taught us.. and then he mentioned his daughter's age to be 24 ! Just to ensure that we idiots dont pain him for BTP's I guess :)

3. " Yes, we can " -- I bow to thee, Obama ( or should I thank his strategist ? ) for the tagline of a century ! I had to keep one in this list which wasn't trippy and yet too stud to be ignored !

X - As indicated, X marks the ending line of this post. For those who scrolled down without reading the post, as per the earlier deal, thou art ordered to go through the same ordeal as others, who went through the above fart :)And yes, the title of this blogpost is referring to the long gap in my career with respect to coding. Hoping to do some useful coding in the coming winter :)

Dasvidaniya !!

Saarang LVC !

2008-08-23T01:41:00.000-07:00

Well, LVC here doesn't stand for Long-Visual-Connect but Long-Verbal-Connect (Note that the earlier statement is only for insti quizzers who would be familiar with LVC like terms. If you aren't one, pardon me but if you aren't and yet know about it, Good for you ! )

The following is my entry for the Newsletter Ed's application for Saarang 2009. Hope you enjoy it ! (The theme also is provided below )

Connect :- Saarang-AJ-Time Machine- Lace-Angelina Jolie- E=mc^2—ACM Turing Prize-Booze-Why so Serious ?

The connection is as follows :-

The preparations had begun in full flow for Saarang 2009 with the people in charge of it slogging away ( in some cases like the Design Team, cogging away). Lace was also one of these guys( and gals) trying to get some sleep as he was trying to fix up the loose ends; the fix here being that he could not tie his own Lace ! But as they say, the Saarang Spons Saga was Lace-d with many such instances, with one of them involving him to order a spons coord to approach the ACM Turing Prize panel to donate the prize money as a Sponsorship amount towards Saarang 2009; as cash resources and time, both were running out. Meanwhile, Lace’s co-Core/C(h)or was being his reSPONSible self ordering AJ on how to go about handling “Public Relations” (read- “How to make their Relation Pub(l)ic “).

Now, it so happens that Alan Turing was known to have a Homo-Genius mix of orientation towards Computers and homosexual practices* (of which I daren’t speak of !)

*Quote misquoted from www.uncyclopedia.org

Hence, the ACM Turing Prize Panel, in accordance with Turing’s final wish, wanted to support homosexuality. Aaand, when they saw the logo of Saarang 2008, they were simply turned ON by it and gave away a huge chunk of the prize money as Sponsorship towards Saarang ’09 only to find that the same money was spent on booze, snuff,etc... So, now that we had cash, Akanksha tried to create a PR stunt by proclaiming to the media (read ‘Newsletter junta’) that AJ was coming to Saarang ‘09; the only glitch being that this stunt flopped worse than Han-Cock. The reason was pretty clear that she didn’t know that she was (in)famously known as AJ^ in IITM whereas the AJ she referred to was Angelina Jolie (or probably Angelina Jolie ‘Pit’t, by the time this piece goes into print).

^- AJ doesn’t stand for Akanksha Jain, but Arrogant Jackass !

This flop disillusioned her about Saarang 09’s look to the public and she was about to resign her Core-ship and offer it to me*** but she was somehow convinced by N2 that even ‘E=mc^2’ was proved only after years of 'hard work' and the same is applicable to Saarang. Well, trust AJ to goof up the simplest of things and she took N2’s words to be as “Hardly working” towards her goal and started boozing until she became a Bo(o)zo !

*** To me, coz she had the best TIME of her life in the most unique TIME machine I gifted her, to create her Moods as per her convenience (now do you get the Time funda ?), on our 7th wedding anniversary .

My friends, That’s the way Saarang 2009 crumbles ! Here I’m, Heath Ledger, Chief Correspondent, Crappy News Network (CNN), signing off . BTW, Why so Serious ??

Pleasant Jerks ver 2.0

2008-08-13T10:35:00.000-07:00

TTN has become a bit serious with his teaching nowadays ( read, telling lesser PJs per class) but yet we have another gem from his class here :

" I went to a restaurant which had buffet style dinner offering me dal, roti and sabzi kept in different rows. Now, while being served, I got Roti first, which was hot. Hence, good. Next, I was served Dal, which was also hot and hence, that also was good. But. when I was served Sabzi, it was cold. Temme why ? " ...............

"Well the answer is that it was picked up from the 'Sabzi-Row' " :P :P

Well, I know one thing for sure now that I will take up an elective in Industrial Engg. next year if it's continued to be taught by TTN.

Pleasant Jerks !!

2008-08-08T13:28:00.000-07:00

Well, finally I'm dedicating a post to someone -- Prof. TT Narendran (TTN in short). What makes this post special is that I've not sat in a single class of his and yet I'm posting some of his delectable quotes (thanks to my choice of Minor, but well I never knew TTN rocked like this :( ) Following are some of his PJs, not in any particular order :-

"Which element in the Periodic Table can make you feel poor ? " ...... Antimony !!!!

"Which is the only creature apart from human beings having emotions ? ".....Sentipede !!!!!!!

"There were 2 scientists ;- Highf & Daw " Didn't get it ??? It's High-Funda !!! (Pun Intended)

More are to follow as his classes go by ! Wow, now there's a Prof. in IITM who can keep a class going :)

1111111 / 12 O' clock

2008-07-16T03:32:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a long time since I posted here and hence got the feel to write something but at the same time, I was too lazy to write as well.

Lots of things to write about, but where to start is the question. So this is what I plan to do :- Write a blog-post every weekend covering the 'highlights' in fortnights that have passed by in the last 2 months.

And yes, if you didn't understand my title of this post,it means " Once upon a time " (Depends whether you understand rebuses or not :0 ).

To be contd .....

A.I.R. An Insipid Ranting

2008-06-08T10:40:00.000-07:00

This post is dedicated to...none, after all I haven't achieved anything so great that can be deemed worth dedicating to someone, unless you can count my PJs into consideration which are fit enough, according to me, for global domination. Didn't get it huh ? Well, the PJs will drive the people mad and hopefully, I'll let them loose when Mars is habitable enough and people also have enough money to travel to Mars. Due to this 'proper' timing, these 'mad' people will run off to Mars and Earth will be left to my mercy and hence, Global Domination.

Now, enough of my PJs ( I agree, too much of something good can also drive people insane). This post is an attempt to explain subtly some of the common acronyms used in our everyday life. Hope you find it entertaining enough. Even if you don't, please do comment; not because you'll most probably feature in my next post, but I'll at least know how jobless you could have been reading other useless blogs.

The order need not be alphabetically correct, but how these names pop-up as soon as I think of them :

1. A.I.R. --> Commonly known to people as All India Radio or All India Rank (for those nervous students awaiting their entrance results). My full-form will read as .... Apple's Intellibulos Result. Usage : " Macbook A.I.R. is the thinnest laptop in the world". I am simply short of words for describing AIR, it's truly le-gen-dary.

2. J.E.E. --> Joint Effort Examination (well, I dont take credits for these but one of the best profs to have taught me). Now, junta dont think that I'm getting too much into the exam mood, but it's results time everywhere now and hence, the words coming in my mind.

3. I.P.L. --> Indian Publicity Lounge..I guess this could sum-up a part of the recently concluded IPL, apart from the entertainment it provided and mirch-masala as well (Remember Charu Sharma and Mallya ?? ). Thus, providing publicity for a good one month. Thanks to it, even my 8 year old neighbour now knows about DLF.

4. B.I.T.S. --> Well, in normal parlance, it would refer to a reputed technical institute situated in a desert. Here, it means, "Bhai, Isey Tera Samajh"--used when it's time to pay the bill and you point it towards your 'friend'. No hard feelings meant here, but generally wanted to 'deng' BITS.

5. B.C.C.I. --> I'm not referring to our money-making Board of Corrupt Controls in India, but to these :- Booze,Cigar(ettes),Cocaine,more IITS --> the four things I feel we can do without on the path of progress. Well, the first three are easily understood. The last part refers to the intake of students from the recently concluded IIT-JEE into 3 new institutes. The sorry part is that they do not have sufficient faculty to teach them basic subjects at these institutes. Although, a sufficient amount of work inside IITs is a self-study exercise but that doesn't mean we can do away with teachers. But unfortunately, the government doesn't seem to understand the issue (I dunno what the Education,HRD ministers are upto apart from counting their votes for the next election). This seriously gives me the urge to publicly molest those idiots with the whole world watching. Oh sorry, I won't do that...it'll garner them more sympathy votes and they'll continue making even more stupid decisions to ruin lives of innocent people.

6. N.A.S.A. --> Nagarjuna's Association of Stupid Actresses ..ref :his comments on the only actresses he would work with. To find more, read this post till the end.

7. P.C.B. --> not the printed circuit board or Pakistan Cricket Board---it's Pagal Coke Bureau. Recently inducted members include Mohd. Asif who carries his membership proof in his wallet. Can also be called Publicity Coke Bureau..this Coke I mention can be used by yourself and travel to the nearest airport/immigration point and lo ! next day your photo will be definitely found in the headlines. Make sure to smile properly in them; you see the first impression should always be good to keep it lasting long.

Now 7 is a magically powerful number and hence, I am unable to continue further. But I shall definitely keep you posted on similar and better acronyms.

And for those who were searching for the references to my comments on N.A.S.A., let me put it in clear words --It was a rumour (but it probably was true..)Anyways Go Ogle at the actresses whom he has wanted to act/has acted with, if you wanna be even more jobless or else, a better option would be to read my other blog posts.

Las', A Grand Ethos !!

2008-05-20T08:57:00.000-07:00

Well, all I can say is this "At last, one of my anagrams has gone down people's throats without leaving a sour taste ! ".

As you may very well have realized, the title is an anagram for something. In one of my previous posts, I had mentioned about posting certain details regarding a "particular something ". Although this is not the right time to talk about it, I will relieve the viewers from going through the agony of figuring it out. It unscrambles to "Golden Shaastra " and the anagram itself, I feel is grammatically correct in a small way. It reads "At last, a grand ethos ". Now the meaning behind this statement is of utmost importance, otherwise the anagram is of no use.

As ethos, by definition is some spirit imbibed in a culture, in this context, the spirit is the 'Spirit of Engineering' with the culture being Shaastra, the annual technical festival of IIT Madras. The year (2008) being the Golden Jubilee year of IITM, it adds significance to Shaastra, making it "Golden Shaastra" and hence, the anagram.

Now this anagram struck me when a Layzee fellow asked me to find an introductory title to one fabled brochure, which forms a very important part of my work for the next 4 months. I started doing the normal stuff-- searching in thesauruses for synonyms of introduction/welcome/greetings and the like. I went to the extent of looking up GRE word lists for such stuff, but finally gave up on them, since none of them satisfied me. In the end, I resorted to what I did best (at least, I claim that) ---creating meaningful anagrams. And Lo ! behold the anagram which becomes the title as soon as it's suggested to this Layzee bugger. It also added the element of thinking out of the box...erm, sorry out of the dice ! Again, full fundaes on this will be put up some time in the future.

Till then, I guess you, my patient reader, will have to wait. But I assure you, it'll be worth the wait (unless, I lose whatever sanity is left in me by that time).

The Chronicles of Fart-nia

2008-05-09T10:35:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back. Sounds cliched, I agree, but let me remind you that I've survived(or at least hope I have) the longest of semesters ever possible at IIT M. 26 credits,Period.

A lot has happened between the last post and the time at which this post will go to the press. Lots of stuff to chronicle and lots of stuff to be censored. And what I am to do in the next few days (and hopefully complete the tasks assigned for myself for the next 3 months) will possible be the most crucial phase of my life at IITM.

Some unique things which I would like to first talk (type) about.

a) Put all nighters for 3 of my 6 end-sems.well this may not be unique but what follows may possibly be. I happened to sleep for half an hour at least in 2 of the three-hour exams that followed. Was woken up thankfully by the invigilators on both the occasions (on one occasion, the invigilator thought that I had put my head down and was in Deep Thought ; pun unintended, and if you didn't understand the pun, get yourself a copy of The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy. You may or may not understand the pun after that, but you'll definitely understand the importance of a towel in the Universe :P)

b)I don't know why I didnt do this, but I DID NOT APPLY for any summer internship programmes(while EVERY person I knew in the institute had applied) during this period except in one case where I accidentally mailed my resume to one of the companies, even though I didn't wish to apply (that's coz I felt that it wouldn't suit my needs. After seeing the kind of people it's taken up for work, I regret it and still feel I could've done a better job and had put the dough to some better use) . I'm wondering yet whether or not I did the most stupidest thing in the world.

c)Got rejected twice after proposing, that too on consecutive days.....Hold it, these weren't marriage proposals, but propoosals to companies regarding Sponsorship for a particular something which I'll describe at an appropriate period of time.

d)Got kicked out of class (well not kicked,that's just for the effect, which I dunnno was effective or not) for sleeping. And the worst is that I went back to ask the prof for attendance at the end of the class, and he gave me since I was honest enough to leave the class. I guess I'm able to feel the situation of the students in my school-days who routinely went through such stuff (except getting their attendance back !) and I think of how much trouble I've got them into. Well, the truth is that half the pranks played in my school had my hand but I was well-hidden due to the "sincere student" tag and the "naughty junta" got caught always.

e)I saw the Lit-Soc shield being presented to Godav Lit-Soc secs and swore that by the end of next year, the same shield shall reside in Jam (oh, yes, I forgot to mention that I was "elected" as the Social Secretary of Jam in between. To those, who do not understand the previous statement, I'm sorry you shall never understand and I wont take the pains of making you understand; unless of cousre, we get the shield to Jam next year ! )

f)Saw a Hostel-Nite marred by 'n' hiccups (well, there were quite a lot who boozed enough to have hiccups too, but rest assured, I was NOT a part of that gang. I stuck to my total teetotaller image and even refused offers of sleeping with someone that night. To clear any confusions, the offer was from a drunk senior and HE was a Male. SO obba, I had to refuse :P). Apart from the hiccups and other cups, it was altogether an almost fitting farewell to an illustrious batch of seniors when the night ended at 5am and the Morning Raga started at 12 am.

g)I saw my plate of Bhel being pounced upoon by a cat, who I guess thought it was chicken (which was imposs, coz I'm pure veg). Maybe the cat had a cold that night or probably it could not think clearly and hence, required 'food for thought'.

h) Yes. I finally made use of the pool in IITM and started to learn swimming the day before this post gets puiblished. Was an amazing experience and a much awaited relief from the Chennai-Heat. One of the local radio stations has somehow managed to get Chennai right with its tagline, "Itha Sammu Hot Machi " aka "This is very very hot, mate". He may probably have referred to the "hit" songs being played but somehow those songs dont 'hit' well on my ears.

i) Finally, I managed to sleep for 11 straight hours in this sem. Don't ask me how, but never before had I slept for so long in IITM. This again may not be unique,but considering the tasks I had to finish that day, no guy (or girl) could have possibly dared to sleep that long. And I seriously thank GOD for somehow saving me that day by getting more than half the work postponed to the next week. And as is usual for a normal fellow in this insti, I hadn't done my work by then either, and put an all nighter to complete that work.

So, I hope you had a not-so-good time going through the life of another abnormal guy, coz if you did have a good time, I'm pretty sure you are abnoral as well.(That's good , join the gang !!) To avail a free copy of my complete chronicles, mail your requests immediately to : paymeforwritingorgetlostdude@nofartsnoarts.co.tv

Moronic Verses

2008-03-08T12:06:00.000-08:00

The stage was set in the Caesarian era. To prevent any misunderstandings, although Caesarians do occur even today, the time zone in the Space Time Continuum being referred to is the Caesarian era of Caesar (Julius/Octavius and the like). The exact time was never known since the manuscript on which the following conversation was recorded, was written in aCarbon2 ink and paper . Don’t ask me how, but I guess a suitable answer would be ‘Caesar said so’. Without further delay let the characters be introduced. First up is Monstaradius1, the world renowned astrologer/ practitioner /soothsayer (and in some circles, even a bluffer). If you haven’t heard of him, then you aren’t of Caesarian origin. If you have, then you’re surely bluffing. But yes he was the guy who told Caesar to be wary of the Ides of March and that’s probably why he’s world famous. Next is Einsteinisntagenius, the scholar who thought way ahead of his time, but could not see as far as Monstaradius and to complete the triumvirate, there was Bushius, the local simpleton who always though he owned the world and that he had every right to invade everything in his vicinity, including Caesar’s bathroom, in search of chemicals of Moss destruction but was pardoned since he was an idiot. And this is how they talked the talk:
M: I doth see dark times ahead for mankind,
but there’s so much light that maketh me blind,
E: So what do you see ,thy ghouliness?
M: I don’t see much, since I told thou that I was blinded. But yes, I did see something. Footprints!
B: You mean Footprints in the sands of time?
M: Thou shalt not insult my profession Bushius. These footprints are way ahead in time.
E: You mean Carbon2 footprints?
M: Aye, aye! And there are loads of those out there. These lead me to the place where I saw the blinding light. I think they lead to Armageddon.
B: And what do you see after that, my fellow countryman?
M: Thou art increasing my anger Bushius. Beware. I have told you that the light was blinding me and I couldn’t see.
B: Aye. But for zeus’ sake will someone tell what do these carbon footprints mean and how they lead to this place called Arma-the-gun?
E: Why doth thou have an obsession with guns, Bushius? Anyway, “Carbon footprints” is going to be defined as the measure of impact of human activities in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced, therefore increasing global warming
M: Precisement.
B: Well, but why the Erebus will they call it footprints when everything is... well, so abstract?
M: Remember that what we speaketh of is way ahead in time. So probably it would make sense to them and not to us.
E: Well. According to my improbability-fartistic calculations, less than 0.0I per C will understand what it means then. So they could remain abstract even then.
B: Okay, forget the abstract part. What art those greenhouse gases and how do they increase global warming? I mean, is it related to some human activities because of which lots of gases are emitted?
E: Well, yes, but...not in the way you see it Bushius. Now that you talk of it, I shalt get back to you, regarding how green thise gases you talketh about are.
B: Okay, you mean to say that what future lineage is going to do is going to make this world a hotter place to live in? Cool mate .
E: Now, why doth thou say that it’s cool when it’s going to get extremely warm out there?
B: It’ll atleast help us to get our water baths get warmer quickly and wow, I love water baths.
M: Bushius, remember that life isn’t just about water baths. There are also other things in life top worry about.
B: Like what?
M: Well, I knoweth not. But I see this in the future that people will face lots of problems.
E: Now, statistically speaking, that will be true.
M: Yes, even more so because a guy called Al Gore/El Gore/El Bore or some whore gets a prize for pointing this out.
E: You mean the El Bore guy gets a laurel wreath for just pointing this out?
M: Yes and also got applauded for pointing out that one Ms.Porky Hicton’s* semi-nudity was also adding to the warming of the earth.
B: Wow, I wish that I would be alive then to watch her. But coming to talk the serious talk, how can we cut down on this hot affair?
E: Plant trees.
B: But we doth have loads of them.
M: Aye, but they won’t have the same canopy Bushius.
B: Ok, we do plant trees. But how, when, where and why?
E: Well, how is very easy and hence I won’t answer it. When? Whenever thou doth feeleth unhappy about the situation or you maketh mankind unhappy. Where? Obviously where there is no tree and why? Because according to me, they stop these greenhouse gases from going out; I don’t know why but probably since they’ll be green, the gases will be taken up by the trees.
M: Now, isn’t that cool?
B: OH, I think I got the idea. So whenever I see that El Bore upset and orating about the Helitonising3 of earth, I, or rather, my lineage should plant a tree. Whenever I go on a chariot to a palaestra## or my successors go on a chariot driven by the burning of wood# and someone shouts about it, I’ll slap him and yes, plant a tree.
M: Yes. Trees are our only hope, apart from the boy with the lightning scar and a wand (again made of wood!)
B: So, now that we doth know the plan, why not form a Humanity4 to solve this problem?

A FEW DAYS LATER:
B: I being the leader, propose to stand on the pulpit and speak:”Friends, Romans, War-mongers. I come to you not to speak about global warming, since it’s already a hot topic for discussion. I come to seek your support to eliminate it. There’s only one possible solution to this. We, our Humanity, have been looking deeply into this matter, in a very deep way. And the problem, we have found out, lies in Nature. We need Nature to cooperate with us. If not, we will make Nature cooperate with us...
The remaining part of the speech was drowned in applause by the fickle-minded Romans. The rest, as they say, is History.

*-->Name changed to protect identity
1--> Monstaradius saw that in the future, he would be reborn as Nostradamus and become very famous. So, he made his name from an anagram of ‘I, Nostradamus’.
2--> Carbon : This was named after the Roman God Of Non-Existence, whose probability of existing tends to zero.
3-->Helitonising: tons of Helios-> tons of suns warming up the earth. Also, due to the degradation of hearing, in future years, came to be associated with one Ms. Hilton, who was also related to the word ‘hot’ in some way.
4-->Humanity : comes from a mix of hum (the humming sound) and unity when the Romans realized that all that happens in a committee is the same, why not shorten the name and make it look more humble and broad.
#-->proof that the secret of engine powered vehicles was already known to them but they were lazy to make such a thing.
##-->gym in olden, golden words

Sleeping by Books on a Rainy evening

2008-02-10T05:50:00.000-08:00

Well, these verses were created (some may even call it re-created) in a weather which induces more sleep than mugging habits. And if u liked the lines below, it could well go on to prove that Quizzes too can be inspiring.

"" The books are heavy and piled in a heap,
But I also have my grades to reap,
And lots to mug before I sleep,
And lots to mug before I sleep ! "

I just hope that my quizzes go well, or else..........God save me !

Extra "Rural" Lecture

2008-02-08T06:36:00.000-08:00

Today, I happened to attend one of the EMLs (Extra Mural Lectures for the uninitiated) organized by the EML team. Well, let me start with a little intro for those who have never attended one (and for those who have, I'll request you to be a bit patient and continue reading). These are not the conventional lectures you would find in classes, but are intended to create an environment for unwinding people's thoughts and thought processing. Note that I said "intended" since in some cases, you'll sleep through some of them; in fact I almost slept through today's EML , despite sitting in the second row from the speaker. And yeah, with reference to what theme the speaker is addressing, it could be ranging anywhere between things related to Indian history or some personal issues which the distinguished speaker might have addressed/is addressing/has experienced.The speakers are usually well distinguished fellows and hence, it's a kind of rare chance to interact with them and if possible pull them down (Ref : Medha Patkar in of the EMLs in 2006). Well, so coming back to the point of today's EML, the speaker was none other than PV Indiresan, an ex-director of IIT Madras. (A very reputed personality but who is also kinda 'infamous'. For more references, you can Go Ogle about it).
The lecture started off on a light note with him referring to how fast IIT is growing and then pointed to the wall clock which was 10 minutes ahead of time (and that's one of the very few things which I was happy about this lecture). He then went on to ask how many off us wanted to be rich, how we plan to be rich and all that fart. Then he came to his point . Oh yeah, I forgot to mention earlier, the topic of his lecture was "Economic Growth and Social Justice". Well, he himself told that he may not stick to the topic and I never expected him to stick to his word except for a while when he was showing us snapshots of "reality" ; not all the idiotic 'reality' shows which frequent our TV screens more frequently than the Saas-Bahu types(I wish I could ban both of them, sadly both are "hits" and boost the Totally Random Paagalpans aka TRPs), but depicting the pitiable conditions of a huge strata of our society and what we are doing..... sorry , not doing to resolve them. I was sleeping through most of this part coz I had done much more than what he had shown me under my Humanities Prof. last sem and I didnt want him to repeat that with statistics whose correctness I'm still unsure of. Well, I was woken up by my friend sitting next to me (he accidentally placed his foot on mine !)and by that time he was trying to distinguish pleasure and happiness ; so I continued staying awake till the end of the lecture. Then there was the usual question and answer(s) session for about 15 min.Now, this is where I got psyched out. To every question he posed, he would just say "THINK" at the end of the slide. And to every question posed to him by us, I don't think anyone could make out a definitve answer from his words.I guess despite leaving the institute, the vague-answers-to-questions-asked-by-students-syndrome hasn't left him yet.I agree with him in urging us to think, but couldn't he have tried much more motivational methods ? If all he wanted us to do was think, I would have been happily playing cricket in my hostel or probably preparing ("thinking" )for my upcoming quizzes. I was expecting something new from this lecture, something "extra", but alas, in my viewpoint what I got "extra" was just the time spent in some air-conditioned hall (and the nearest possible view of the Dean's A**). The funny part was that a fellow had asked him whether our population seems to be a hindrance in economic growth to which he cited examples of cities in Holland,Britain,etc. telling him that we can still be prosperous despite high pop. density and he almost contradicted himself in the next question posed to him to which he cited models of cities with smaller populations and how they should be followed to decentralize populations in big cities. Duh !!!
I would end with some points which I found encompassing the lecture. Firstly, he tried his best to keep the mood light-hearted for which I appreciate him. Secondly, it was supposed to be an "extra Mural lecture" and not an "extra Rural lecture" which was it turned out to be and hence, was not greatly informative to me. And lastly,if you ever want to make a person think to yield something constructive, show him at least a path to follow among his current options so that he can be concerned ,compassionate, comprehensive,capable to carry out the task he set forth for ; which, in my opinion , Mr. Indiresan was hinting at but couldn't make it very clear.

That's all folks ! Any cribs can be directed to dudegetlost[at]noreplies.com

Every Quote has a "Shiny" lining

2008-02-04T08:31:00.000-08:00

"We're back on the top " remarked a freshie to me, to which Shiny, our Soc-Sec responded "What ? In Tech-Soc ? " :)

Points to be noted :
1. The freshie was talking about Arse-nal getting back to the top of EPL(momentarily) and putting a big attempt to nullify Manchester United's glory, which he obviously failed to do so.
2. Jam winning (or even leading) Tech-Soc is like Tapti/Narmad winning Schroeter ----> Zero Scope for next two years.
3. Shiny is the Bulb-God. So he is our eternal provider of such eternal quotes.

The Holy(i) S**t

2007-11-01T22:52:00.000-07:00

Well, finally a post due to maajar cribbing by one of my friends who persuaded me to blog and this one is just to temporarily stop his cribbing. This was my entry to TFE but dunno if it got published. All characters in this post are not fictitious and bear full resemblance to whomsoever referred to except the Holy C.

Note : This is an unbiased, carefully scrutinized opinion written by the Holy Monitoring Committee(HMC)1 urging people to read it for pleasure and not for criticism.

Well, the dreaded day had come for people to get drenched(you see, there are residents who got without a bath for a week and almost have hydro-phobia) and coloured; so much so that they would be in the pink of their lives, happily enjoying some drinks (they called it bhaang, but I guess there may as well be some amount of the hydroxyl group in it). The fact that surprises me is that there were seniors coming and knocking on our doors even before the alarm clock began to buzz, that too on a Saturday while on most of the working days , they would have been happily dozing of in their beds, clutching their pillows as though it were a you-know-what CD being confiscated by the warden(nothing of this sort has been reported yet, but keep your fingers crossed!).
For the first time after the “ ragging period ”,(sorry seniors, I couldn’t find a softer synonym), there were junta coming out of their rooms,(frequently to events ,that is) , asking students about their problems, interests, asking first years to interact with them more (but not to come too close either) and of course, enlighten them about the article of Universal Suffrage as stated in our Constitution. You could as well say, for the first time in many months were they asking us about our pains( not the ‘intro’ ones) and shortcomings and how they could apparently rectify them.
Coming back to the point of ‘Holi S**t’, let us look into the matter, being very fair to the students (though they may not be so fair after enjoying a great show of Rang de/le Basanti ), who after all need some change of air and some entertainment, other than their usual dose of watching the other descendants of our ancestors playing around with “their” clothes and hopping around cleaning the dustbins (probably a part of their NSS programme) .
First and foremost, in a country ,state, insti and hostel, where dihydrogen monoxide is considered very precious, there were many volunteers# filling up a so-called pond with water (which apparently had an infinitesimal leak so that the volunteers could do more work on Holi-days) , so that the junta can come and clean the Holi-S**t off their body or someone else’s body. But a careful observer* noticed that there were small amphibians who were having the time of their lives thinking we were doing some pro-bono job, happily swimming around and trying to escape the sun’s heat (now, isn’t that escapist attitude ? ) ; and this careful observer informed his seniors and Soc-sec about how he didn’t want his Holi-S**t to be cleaned by the Frog-waters House Coopers (the observer got his due when he was thrown into the pond and was later molested to the core !).
So the Soc-sec using his Fluid-mech fundaes , tried his best to allure the frog into a bucket (he resorted to FM only because , unfortunately, he couldn’t find a kind of its opposite sex due to the disappointing ratio of females to males in the insti). All said and done, the frogs and leeches were out and the buckets were in. Now if we estimate the amount of universal solvent used up in filling the “pond”, let’s assume each bucket’s capacity to be about 20 litres and since the volunteers were pretty lethargic fellows, they would fill up the buckets only up till the halfway mark in the first half of their session(where only two seniors were after them) and fill them upto 90% of the capacity in the second half with more seniors chasing them( sounds liked the effort of the English football team trailing 1-0 ) . So, in the first half since there were only 8 volunteers, they must have emptied their buckets five times(max) into the pond, that capacity comes out to be about 400 liters (do the math yourself and if there is any error of + δ ,please do not crib coz no value is reported perfectly). In the 2nd half, the no. of volunteers doubled to 16 and now two chains were formed from the bathrooms to the pond ( at last intelligence dawned on our seniors, who were initially too skeptical about accepting ideas of volunteers, coz they were supposed to know more being the co-ords). Now as I said , 90% of the buckets were filled up and there were 16 people, it was observed (once again by our careful observer) that every volunteer , if he had emptied the bucket alone, would have, on an average, emptied them at least thrice, which comes upto roughly around 860-odd litres. And add to the above mentioned values, there was a pipe connected to the pond as well, with water flowing in it at a decent speed to reduce the workload of the vols a bit( you see, the co-ords are also kind people who don’t want to pain their vols a lot) . From rough calculations (don’t ask how it is calculated as it is as tricky as the Duckworth-Lewis system), it was estimated that it would have added upto another 350-400 litres. Summing them up, we get a total of about 1600 ltrs (Holy S**t! That’s about 90 people taking baths). And since all the calculations have been done keeping the minimum limit, imagine the citizens (or NRI’s) of the future not practicing what they preach by the method of IP’s on bogs about saving WATER.

Another serious aspect is the affect of colours on people allergic to them (like our careful observer) who were d-ragged out of their rooms (probably a practice for the tug-of-war that was to be held later on that day!) and were asked to participate in it as though they were winning some LitSoc points for their hostel, by showing how colourful their characters were to the other hostels. Mind you, this is not written by a critic of Holi, as one of the members of the HMC also used to enjoy it a lot until 6 yrs ago, but unfortunately a bout of di****ria left him low and the doctors advised him to stay away from it to prevent a repeat of it, for otherwise he would sink even lower under the weight of this liquid, which contained no paint, only added colours and a whole lot of God-knows-what.

These were the only two aspects touched by the HMC as they thought the rest of the day was a peaceful, colourful and Holi(y) affair; as also one of the few times where the volunteers could rub shoulders with their co-ords/seniors and have a dig at them (there were quite a lot of Digs, anyway) and pull their legs, literally and figuratively. (The HMC also thought of discussing the idea of playing music in a 2-in-1 on the PA system but packed it since it would be too noisy an affair).

So, all in all, as they say all’s well that ends well, the HMC thought of scrapping the two aspects they thought were serious enough, as long as there was enough Holy-water to clean the Holi S**t off their bodies that day and the next day (you see, the profs wouldn’t be pleased to see the colourful side of their students who were expected to sincerely solve tutorials over the weekend).

Well, that’s all folks….Hope you enjoyed your Holi-day!

# Volunteers:- They were freshies forced to do voluntary jobs.

* Careful Observer: - was not the common man, but one of the HMC members himself.

Holy C --> short for Holy(i) Committee

1 HMC:- don’t confuse it with HM Cauvery. Its members consisted of me, me and me myself.

Emer Scored a Chink Stunt

2007-11-01T22:49:00.000-07:00

Hajjar treat for the person who decodes this title (treat bills to be submitted to 145 Jamuna,IIT Madras, Chennai-36 on or before 30th Nov.,2007 )