Moronic Verses

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

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

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

"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

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

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 )