An engineering odyssey

Where was the engineer born? For Hari's mother, it was the richly academic environment that she kept at home over the years that sowed the seeds. She, unlike his father, believed that more than the genes or anything it was just the way of upbringing that brought Hari all the way. Hari's father though, liked to believe that it was merely a transmission of genes from father to son. He always thought that Hari's extraordinary mathematical ability was solely a gift that he gave to his son. Reality though had different ideas. The engineer had long died a slow death which both of them were quite oblivious to. Today, on the day of Hari's convocation, let us go back to try and see the things squarely in the absence of a supreme judge.

A few years ago, when Hari came to this best engineering college he was more than excited. After passing the entrance test with flying colours, he had chosen electrical engineering side and right from day one, he had devoted as much time as possible towards his academics. Somewhere something went wrong though. In my reckoning, it would be more than unfair to call it wrong because time is yet to decide that. It is very difficult indeed to point out the time where the death process began for Hari did seem to enjoy even academics for some time, initially. He got swept by the wave of public opinion and all those 'cool' things somewhere along the line and renounced academics for his passion for management.

Luckily for Hari, in the following years he got more than one opportunities to take his management lessons. Sometimes it was his lab, lab viva or examinations. He learned the rule #1 of management - Talking about things that you don't know, doing things that you have absolutely no idea about and eventually getting your way out. Like many of his counterparts, blasphemy had not yet been imbibed in him which is why he carried on. For whatever hatred that he developed towards engineering there was always a happy, content and relaxed Hari as soon as he used to come back to his hostel and go out with his friend.

His management lessons were getting more and more intense as the time progressed. At the end of his junior undergraduate year he went to a cement company and worked for 2 months. It used to be called as "Practical Training" and Hari had mastered these by now. For a mere sum of 5000 rupees a month, he came up with a grand idea of new development technique for the cement company which would save the firm about 3 crores rupees every year. All his fellows displayed their high intellect in similar fashion, wherever they went. Yet for some reason he was still paid just 5000 rupees.

In his undergraduate year, he was made to carry out a project as a part of his thesis. This was his penultimate test of management. He did quite well there too. It was there that he learned that the HR side of management also holds some practical relevance. Going by the title, it seemed like a project of the century. Building an electric motor vehicle and propulsion system or something like that. Hari was smart enough by this time to have no problems with this one. Also, with the advent of popular sites like www.google.com, the task was never any easier for him. He made sure that his final presentation looked like a professional's one. Thereafter he gave it at the best binding shop. He could do at least this much.

The D-Day of his ultimate test arrived. It was his grand viva. For someone who has given up on academics 2-3 years ago, it was always going to be an intimidating challenge to learn everything in so less a time. Yet with the heart of a man he went to face the professors. Quite expectedly Hari wasn't having a good time there. They kept on asking questions and Hari kept on thinking. Finally a frustrated professor asked Hari. "A very simple question for you, how do you calculate the horse power of a horse?"
Hari had to say something on this one. Silence. The professor looks in his eyes. Hari looks down. Finally, he opens his mouth. "Sir, you take a horse, burn it and measure it's calorific value!"

Bang! The door was shut on him. That was how it all ended.

Today on the day of convocation, he is out there with his parents and he has been awarded the B.Tech. degree. He looks at it carefully and gifts the "Tech." part to his parents. For them to cherish the memories of their engineer son and for him to officially relinquish the "Tech." part associated with himself. With just that one letter "B." he gets all the confidence to conquer the world for he firmly believes that it is this magical letter that separates him from the rest.

On this momentous day for Hari and his parents let us not discuss whether he did right or wrong. Instead let us do one good thing that we certainly can. We wish him all the luck for future.

Perfect strangers

Today morning when I woke up, I realized that I needed to get all the redundant stuff removed from my wallet. Some old phone numbers of the people whom I don't remember anymore, random visiting cards,bills dated ages ago etc. I have always had the habit of accumulating a lot of junk which I might never need. As my wallet was almost 2 inches thick by now, it was high time that I got started with the cleansing act. I found a small yellow paper with 1 or 2 names and email addresses written on it. Also, on the back side there was a name 'Kaciane' and her phone number written in blue ink. That takes me a few months back.

Yes, to the good old days in Stuttgart. I do not remember missing anything in my life as much as I miss Germany. It was one more of those world cup days in the month of June. If I am not mistaken, it was sometime near the end of June. I came from the office at about 5 p.m. and was lying on my bed when I suddenly recalled that there was an England game that day. With a hope to see Beckham bend those special ones, I caught the train to Hauptbahnhoff or the main station. I could afford this liberty of traveling at my will thanks to the free train pass I had for the month of June. I got down at Stadtmitte and went to the Fan Fest. As always, the space was quite lively with diverse groups from all over the world wearing their flags, showing their national spirits. It was a sight to witness. There were more than 10,000 people at the Stadtmitte. The British fans or hooligans, as they are famously called, were making their presence felt. One could feel some nice little battles between these European giants. It was there that I learned that the Brits aren't great fans of the Germans or the French but surprisingly they get along quite well with the Dutch. The Germans don't like the Brits and hate the Dutch to the core.I doubt if any country in this world really enjoys the company of the French people. Then, I went inside the Fan Fest area where there was a huge screen placed in front and more than 5000 people either sitting or standing and relaxing themselves, drinking beer, eating sausages and many other food items. A 5 euro beer was a bit too expensive for a lowly paid intern that I was and I decided to go in the front and enjoy the game.

As the game progressed, I found myself standing amongst a few enthusiastic English fans wearing their T-Shirts, flags painted on their cheeks and shouting for Wayne Rooney. There was a slightly bald guy in his 40s or late 30s probably standing just next to me and accompanied by his wife/partner/girlfriend and their 2 children, wearing the England jersey. As barely anything was happening in the game, people indulged in some light talks as it was just a league game. So, this lady (his wife/ girlfriend) started a conversation with me...maybe because she wasn't of British origin and therefore wasn't exactly as white as the others. No, but that sure wasn't the case with the Germans. Then she asked me where I was from and what I was doing there and the talks began.

She wasn't a very beautiful woman or anything. She was wearing a nice red spaghetti and was at best fare but she was quite talkative. Her name was Kaciane. At first, I was quite glad to speak proper English, where I didn't need to stop after every sentence as I had been used to while in Germany. She told me that she was from Cyprus and then had moved to U.K. She was from London but lived in Stuttgart for 20 years or so. She was working as an English tutor for the corporates in Stuttgart. Then she introduced me to her partner and her sons.

We had some jokes about the Germans' English, she told her experiences in the past 20 years. Her partner told about his. He was quite excited to learn that I am from India for he was quite a regular visitor to Kolkata for some vague spiritual reasons. After a lot of days I had a nice talk with totally new people and had a great time.

Kaciane told me that they were always quite close to the Indian community in the U.K. and they used to go to the Indian restaurants quite often, in London as well as in Stuttgart. Following this she gave me her phone no and asked me to call anytime on the weekdays so that they could take me for dinner in an Indian restaurant. I was quite excited for it was a long time since I had had some nice spicy Indian food and started daydreaming about butter chicken and tandoori chicken. Meanwhile the match got over and we had those typical good-bye and will-call-you talks. I returned with a sense of achievement. I had made new friends of entirely different age group, ethnicity, colour and culture. More importantly I was to get a free Indian dinner and couldn't resist that temptation.

After about a week I called her up asking if they were free. Unfortunately, that day her sister from U.K. had come and they were going out and she asked me to call in the next week. The next week was the first week of July. My train pass had expired. Now, to go to Stadtmitte and come back, it would have cost me 4.4 euros. A normal meal which I used to cook, cost me less than 1 euro. This Indian dinner treat was no longer free. With the temptation for saving 3.4 euros I never called her up. I came back to India and almost forgot about everything. Everything comes back to me as I am removing all the stuff which I no longer need and the question comes to my mind as to what do I do with this paper. It has the sweet memories of the great hospitality shown by complete strangers and also associated with it is the fact, which certainly doesn't make me feel proud, that for a meager sum of 3.3 euros I did not return the elegant conduct that was required out of me. But then, life's long or so I feel. I might go to Stuttgart someday. She might still be there and maybe that time I would call and take them for dinner...or so do I convince myself and put that yellow paper in my wallet for it's the sweet memories associated with that paper that I don't want to get rid of. Maybe next time.....

It's time to fly

I don't exactly remember when did I acquire this habit, not that its strange or unique or anything, that I simply can't start my day without newspapers. For quite some days recently my newspaperwala is testing my patience by either giving me HT, Telegraph or no newspaper at all. This has finally diverted me into reading the e-paper on www.timesofindia.com.

So, like every other day, I woke up today morning to find out that once again I have to log in to the timeswebsite. Just as I went there, I found a headline saying -
" 71% say they are proud to be Indians."
It was certainly a news worth reading into and after I was done with it, I was quite astonished to know that this 71% comes from all over the nation...from metros also.

So, like Mr.Maugham starts in 'The Razor's Edge', here also, The man I am writing about is not famous, and probably he never will be. Coincidentally, he is one amongst those 71%.

He is really a very simple man. Ya, he does read a bit of newspaper everyday but that's all there is to it. Also, that habit of reading the newspaper, which he has cultivated over the years, hasn't really improved his general knowledge in any sense. Ya he surely does know the corporators and MLAs in his locality but when it comes to simple trivia like the name of George Bush's shoemaker's daughter's school's Headmaster's Son's girlfriend, he is found speechless.

For some vague reasons, he follows the civic elections quite curiously but more stupefying was the fact that he shows no interest in the US presidential elections. Not that he is particularly uninterested in the international politics only, he is clueless about the celebrities also. Of course he does know a lot about the Indian cinema but surprisingly he didn't quite enjoy the movies by the hollywood greats like Jim Carrey or Quentin Tarantino.

Astonishingly, his music tastes are also quite unrefined. I don't really know where did he form his impression that Indian Classical music is older and also probably more melodious than the western giants. In fact he's so naive that I have once heard him claim that Classical Music Ragas have been a result of research for hundreds of years and there is a vast theory behind the kind of music to be played at a particular time of the day. In spite of all this I didn't give up. I made him listen to a few Beatles songs and passed some important facts like in which Beatles song, the lead guitarist's girlfriend got impressed by his friend and then ran away with him and then how they were separated later on. But these interesting facts didn't impress him and his impression remained more or less the same.

Well, he certainly can read and write English. He does read the TOI everyday. When I asked him out of curiosity the reason why he reads the TOI, he said he quite admired "You said it" by R.K.Laxman for his satirical take on the things in the Indian Society. He simply adored the concept of Common Man. I could not help but pity his sense of humor. I asked him if he had read Dilbert or such other American cartoons and surprisingly he had but he didn't find them funny. I knew that he needed some time to mature.

Recently, I met him after a long time. I asked him how he was doing and he told me about his recent project of working as a social worker in the red light area. While working for the welfare of prostitutes there, much to his horror he found out that a lot of sex workers are gays. He felt the strong need to have some kind of a legislation for gays in India. On hearing this, I asked him whether he knew about the gay rights in U.S. and England. He was oblivious to such things. He didn't even know the much publicized gay marriage of Elton John for he didn't know Elton John either. I gave him a lot of inputs from my side about the state of affairs in the U.S. and U.K. but he was expressionless.

If all this insanity, weirdness, indifference to the world were not enough he has reached a new pinnacle now. This is certainly going to make him a subject of mockery. He is too naive to realize why no matter where he goes people will laugh at him. He is going to be a subject of derision by his contemporaries. Well, I quite forgot to tell you why, right? He has bought a new T-Shirt saying - "India Poised, its time to fly!"

When you say nothing at all

As my stay at IIT dawns to an end, there are lots of different things that are going through my mind.But let me not indulge into writing all the crap about nostalgia and all and how you can make great friends at IIT, life etc. I seriously doubt the veracity of all such statement and they sound grossly overrated to me.

Also, when it comes to discussing movies,books,philosophy that also I do in person with some of my intellectual(open to interpretation) friends. And then a few bunch of extremely jobless people who will land up here would neither be interested in reading any of this stuff which essentially leaves me with nothing at all to post.

But then, its been a really long time since I haven't posted anything. So should I post something for the heck of it? Of course not!But not writing something that you want to would mean that you are managable. So am I?

I don't know the answer to this question but the real question that is troubling me right now is 'do I need to post anything?'
Now, at this critical time in my life this question is actually quite inconsequential but the fact of the matter is, sitting in my room, I am thinking about it. At the outset this question does look fairly simple with a binary answer set but in reality it isn't.

Because if I do then, in all probability, it will be something non-sense as I have decided to keep sensible stuff away from a place like blogs.
But if I don't do it now then I may not do it again and my blog will die.
Now, if it dies then I would not write anything anywhere because as it is whatever I write is on my blogs.
Now, if I don't write anywhere then I will get bored and confused next semester as I will have a lot of free time.
But then, if I have a lot of free time next semester and I am not blogging then I would anyways have to blog. So, the fundamental question of my blog dfading away doesn't arise.

So, I am left with one more equally difficult question - If I have to post right now then what should I write about?

Requiem for a dream

In my first year, I had seen a few T-Shirts saying "You can take an IITian out of a Kgpian but not a Kgpian out of an IITian"
For a first year student who had just joined his dream institute after toiling for 1 year it was a dream come true.The T-Shirt was a hallmark of a true IITian or rather IIT-KGPian for which I did have a huge respect.The time passed by, now I am about to become a final year and now if I could, I wish to print those T-Shirts again, with a slight change though this time - "Unfortunately, you can take an IITian out of a Kgpian but not a Kgpian out of an IITian."
I strive hard to get that Kgpian tag away but I can't! What do I have against being a Kgpian? Well, after seeing some of the traits of kgpians I would desperately try and avoid being a kgpian.During my past 3 years at Kgp and intermediate visits to my sweet home, where I could meet a lot of level-headed, sensible, civilised, mature friends where I began to feel a bit out of place with time, I have learnt quite a few things.Some of them are:

There exists a world outside Kgp
That world rules!
Besides 'ch**t' there are other more precious things in life like formula 1.
Being civilized is not rocket science
A bit of formality makes no harm
Being marginally better than a few people here doesn't make you a god
Rat race does NOT exist everywhere, so the justification that 'poltu' is there everywhere in life is out and out rubbish and baseless.

Studs are the following people -

Who have a very low cgpa
Have nothing to do in life so they make friends with people from the other hostels
who are also equally jobless
Must not be well read or having some set of principles
Are parts of fests where getting in is generally achieved by licking asses of seniors
generally have a bike and they smoke
mustn't be a part of many extra-curricular activities

The intellectual IITians become so dumb and insensitive that they are ordered whom to vote for and unfortunately they do not have the guts to stand up against it.
Kgp is the only place people waste half of their life in thinking about crap like- Hall tempo, election pacts, no of heads and members in the fest per hall, general championship which is NEVER fought cleanly etc.The accountability, credibility and achievements of the people who control all these things is a black box!

Well, what I am writing here is nothing new.Not that there aren't many people who think this way.The unfortunate part is they are not united.They are least bothered. They are frustrated with this hypocrisy. Anywhere you go all you can see is mediocres holding on to the power.Why??? Not because the others can't but the fact is others don't want to.Why? Because they are smart enough to have realized that the rat race is not going to take them anywhere.

I have now started to enjoy it though.I am getting to terms with a new facet of a world that I had never seen before, maybe it will help me!It will teach me how not to be in an outside world.

At the end of the day, who cares? I got to see a lot of nice movies here, got to learn the guitar, the hostel life,could make a few great friends, late nights and many other things.When it comes to music, Kgp rocks! So I will just look at this bright side of the picture and be an optimist!But then the pessimist that has his roots deep inside my body, pops up every now and then when I try to be a bit happy, it jolts me back to my self! The utterly negative person! It sends shivers down my body...in about an year my odyssey of kharagpur would be over, my dream of being an iitian would have been realized but the pessimist refuses to fly away.He comes again and plays some melancholic music...I hope its not called the requiem for a dream...

complètement sans emploi

No no, I am not taking french lessons at all. Neither have I fallen in love with a french girl (sadly ;)). Its just that I have been reading excess of TOI off late who have this weird habit of replacing simple english words by French in order to make it cool. e.g They will never say 'PM's meeting with Finance minister'. It will be PM's rendezvous with the FinMan.So, I thought that plagiarism didn't harm any mediocres (look at TOI once again for that matter :D) so just make use of it.And thus goes the title of this post, "complètement sans emploi" which essentially means completely jobless, which is what I am, not today but in general.And this is precisely the reason that I am posting one more utter non sense article here because that will help me spend some of my "precious" time.

Yesterday was a real fun day.I Woke up at 2.30 p.m. and went to the Kshitij arena and had some good food.Thats my share of tech life in IIT's techno-management fest.Then in the evening I got a chance to witness one of the best scientists of this era, Von Klitzing from Germany, a Nobel laurate for his quantum hall effect.Don't worry ,even I don't know what exactly that is and thankfully it wasn't a technical speech and so most of the people like us could enjoy it. And after that was real fun...went to little sisters and boozed like crazy, drinking without an occasion.Shelled out 250 bucks for 5 pegs of Vodka, white mischief.Turst me, on the 5 th peg, you can actually have what they call as the 'tranquil pleasures'...free from everything!

Note: I had a terrible time after that as the pH of my blood was going a bit towards 7 and hence brain guided some of the cells to eject the OH- substances with immediate effect.

Sunday- Sunday, bloody sunday...this is the only thing that comes to my mind whenever I wake up on a sunday morning.In fact, Sunday morning is a very boring time for me as I wake up quite early (9.30 that is) and most of my wingies are sleeping.So, I have to somehow spend my time till 12-1 when people slowly start blinking their eyes when the sunlight gets over them.But, there is always some fun on sunday morning courtesy Mr.Jug Suraiya's Jugular vain.He is by far the best columnist I have ever come across.I also spent a lot of time in organizing my music collection and now its back on track.While doing so, I came across a folder called "Best Rock collection in the World" This inspired me to come up with my all time top 20 rock songs.This ain't an easy task.After a lengthy disquisition here goes the list.

1)Coming back to life - Pink Floyd
2)Stairway to heaven - Led Zepplin
3)Riders on the Storm - The Doors
4)Highway to hell - ACDC
5)Sweet Child O mine - Guns and Roses
6)Rock you like a hurricane - Scorpions
7)[Don't Fear] The Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult
8)Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd
9)Hallowed be thy name - Iron Maiden
10)Rock and Roll - Led Zepplin
11)Leaving on a Jet Plane - John Denver
12)American Pie - Don McLean
13)Wind of Change - Scorpions
14)High Hopes -Pink Floyd
15)Break on through - The Doors
16)Don't cry - Guns and Roses
17)Money for Nothing - Dire Straits
18)Free bird - Lynard Skynard
19)Not my kind of a girl - Zero
20)Burn - Deep Purple

And this truly stamps my assumption, I am a real Persona- complètement sans emploi and I am proud of it!

p.s. comments on the list more than welcome!

Coming back to life (II)

This is nothing special, neither am I trying to say that the previous ones were any special (:p) but this is absolutely nothing.Here are the lyrics of my probably all time favourite song. Coming back to life - Pink Floyd (who else?)

Where were you when I was burned and broken
While the days slipped by from my window watching
Where were you when I was hurt and I was helpless
Because the things you say and the things you do surround me
While you were hanging yourself on someone else’s words
Dying to believe in what you heard
I was staring straight into the shining sun

Lost in thought and lost in time
While the seeds of live and the seeds of change were planted

Outside the rain fell dark and slow
While I pondered on this dangerous but
I took a heavenly ride through one silence
I knew the moment had arrived
For killing the past and coming back to life

I took a heavenly ride trough our silence
I knew the waiting had begin
And headed straight... into the shining sun

If any of you haven't heard this song and want it plz mail me, I would be more than glad to send it.
bhikumhatre007@yahoo.com :)
kudos to the legends! long live the gods!

e4-c5 or e4-e5

Well,I don't know how many of the "numerous" people, who visit this heavenly place, do play chess but then I think that even a novice at chess would be knowing a bit about it.
It has been a week full of making my moves correctly for me.Yes,its purely chess...just a game and trust me, I have never enjoyed and learnt so much of it in so short duration.Ups and downs, highs and lows, we went through them and finally unlike a bollywood movie type "And they lived happily ever after" ending, in all probability we will be left with just a small piece of cherry.

The interhalls kicked off in style with our first match against Nehru in which we almost lost 3-0 until I got my share of UNDESRVED luck and we made it 2-1, a defeat but not all that awful. (from the scoreline point of view I am talking about :) )

As far as the games are concerned, I don't know whether any of the people play Ruy Lopez here but I would say that with white if you are going for Ruy Lopez my suggestion would be think twice!Its not as simple as it looks...its good, its attacking but its vulnerable.With black, after a lot of research (within the constraints of space, time and our intellect) we finally settled for Najdorf which did look quite aggressive for black.For the first time I implemented it today god hold of the game, dominated...came to the end game, with 25 more minutes than my opponent, one pawn up....and overlooked a simple trap only to find myself singing "I tried so hard and got so far but in the end it doesn't even matter!"

Enough of technical terms I guess, but it was really an enjoyable week and believe me, its really a great fun to watch a game of chess.
After around 3-4 years, I came back to this wonderful game.Chess has always been my favourite game and I am really glad to find a lot of time to play in full flow again.
We finally made it to semis, lost in the semis and now we will fight for Bronze tomorrow.
May god help us in achieving that Bronze!I wish me and my team all the good luck! :)

Bond, James Bond!

After a month long vacation, I finally (very reluctantly) set foot on the ground of Kharagpur yet again...coming closer towards a longer lasting salvation and solitude.I had spent barely a few hours in acclimatising myself before I was handed over with one piece of paper which most of the iitians inadvertently tend to throw away! (barring a few exceptions who are still stuck in the rat race of grades and marks). But still I had some kind of curiosity about my CGPA (cumulative grade point average which is called as CG ).I saw the magical figure and it just reminded me of the greatest fictional character ever! Bond-James Bond.We often used to crack a joke (not an original) that my CG is 9- 6.9.In this case though, quite unfortunately, it was true! My CG was 8....7.8! For a second I laughed for I had retired from the race of the lesser mortals for the grades long back.But then, the third consecutive massacre was a bit hard to deal with.Not that it came completely unannounced but then again seeing anything in black and white does tend to make you think a bit.
This time I was or rather am quite stubborn about my decision to study regularly.I said to myself "ok, enough is enough, this time I am going to study regularly and I am going to get 9.5!" Now, I started contemplating my grades and plans for getting 9.5.
I also realized that it was quite a daunting task but then I told myself "when the going gets tough the tough gets going"
This also reminded me of many more things that I had to carry out..for years I used to be depressed about the state of the rickshaw pullers and other fourth class people in West Bengal.I really wanted to do something for them.I could clearly see that this was probably the only sem where I could do any such things.So, finally I was going to get the home lessons of time management!Also, the news of terrorist attacks on IISc and its repercusions on IITs had really saddened me....so I had decided to educate the Indian Muslims to be loyal...I had very less time at my disposal.This further led me to chalk out a plan to educate all the infidels all around the world...so there could be no fights between the rulers and ruled....which will lead to world peace....which will eventually make all the people equal...there won't be any oppressed and oppressors....everyone would be happy! There won't be any poors and riches...all of them will be self sufficient!There won't be any war..all the countries would be co-operating each other.There won't be any gangsters and murders and AIDS will be a disease of the past.Everyone would be happy...everybody would be completely happy...so I had some extravagant plans in my tiny little brain results of which would be hidden from noone in a time of barely a few months.My 9.5 would just be one of them....everyone would be happy.....

KNOCK KNOCK! I AM TAGGED!

I don't know how many of you have played this game before but at least I had not. I really liked the concept. Moreover, it was high time that I post something or the other, no matter how crappy, on this page just to remind me of its existence.
So here it goes, the TAG game.

Seven Things I want to do in my life:

1) Settle in a European country prefereably England, Germany of Spain
2) Watch a football (champions league and premiership) game almost every weekend.
3) Work in Ferrari for some years at least.
4) Own a media company (newspaper and TV ) which will produce some quality stuff
5) Run a political Party
6) Own a house in the forest where I would be drinking rich quality vodka, scotch and having chicken!
7) Experience Cocaine and LSD.

Seven Things I can do

1) Play football
2) Play chess
3) Play a few songs on the guitar
4) Solve some decent maths questions
5) Play FIFA 98 to FIFA- 2k6
6) Sit on my comp for 30 hours continuously experiencing new techniques in Linux
7) Eat a lot

Seven Things I say the most

(Well, I hate to say this here...but I don't want to lie..the first entry is actually something that I use quite often but as an exclamation and not as a slang! :D)
1) bhen****
2) I am GOD
3) kya be
4) peace maar
5) ob (obviously)
6) I know (:D)
7) No, thats a different thing...(:p)

Seven Things that I can't do

1) Painting
2) keeping away from criticising anything
3) not giving funda (;))
4) not comparing
5) being peaceful about the exams and grades
6) indulge myself in a very intellectual task for long hours
7) back out of an argument

Seven Things that attract me to the opposite sex

1) Talkative (not too much of it also ;) )
2) Intelligent (trust me, not too much of this either...the overdose of first one will do but excessive intelligence can be disastrous!)
3) Good sense of humour.....one who can handle my "maaz"
4) Argumentative
5) Looks
6) a rock fan
7) social drinker

Seven Celebrity Crushes

1) ANGELINA JOLIE
2) Monica Belucci
3) Madhuri Dixit
4) Shilpa Shetty
5) Preity Zinta
6) Steffi Graf
7) Perizad Kohla

Seven People I tag

1) Rohit Shankar
2) Aditya Jeurkar
3) Akshay Adya
4) Sumedh Risbud
5) Aditya Shende
6) Karamyog Singh
7) Charudatta Galande

And yes, I wasn't really tagged by anyone but was introduced to this game by Recca
This was some kind of fun...I would love to see this propagate. All you need is just a bit of time and as far as I am concerned, I have ample of it!

Another Brick in the wall

And I come towards an end of yet another semester.I don't really think that this is going to be a lot different than any of my previous sems though. The same old massacre in the midsems, then the usual planning of studying everyday and going to the Central Library everyday, maintaing up to date class notes and above all not following any of these has already occured! So, being an optimist (just to say this is if you know me well) I just hope that the outcome though, will be different than my previous two semesters. ( different= better)
Well, what can I really write as a round up of this semester?? Nothing really big on my side except the ETMS.(Eastern Technology Music Society that is) . In case you are not a kgpian then by this time you are undoubtedly wondering about the relevence of 'Technology' in music. But then, this is where we are unique! Everything in kgp has 'tech' in it. Technology gymkhana, technology dramatics society and even technology canteen! Being a premier technological institute of the country we firmly believe that its our moral duty that since we do not really deliever new technologies we might as well incorporate technology in our day-to-day life.
So, here goes my round-up again. The new sem, new year began with the formation of our new wing "CGW" and its been a wonderful experience for me! The whole idea of your wing which we were looking forward to since our second year has finally materialised and nicely too!
Then came ETMS and I was lucky enough to make my way into the sociey.The production was quite decent and all in all was a nice experience.
Then came the traumatic experience of mid sems which we will talk about in person.
Then the puja hols and as usual "home, sweet home". The Pune trip rejuvenated me to go for a kill in my end sems! (Hope is the quintessential illusion of the mankind)
Amidst all this I could but see and sympathise my juniors for they were being made to work for an event which is a "true test of cali of a kgpain" (read lack of it). One of the most senseless events any sane person on earth can think of - Illumination. It will take place in a matter of week...that will end the life of misery and pain for the second years.....some of them will become "the illu gods" next year while most of the others will prosper! May god help both of them!
Then will come the end sems, as every other end sems this will also pass by and I would start singing
"All in all twas just a'nother brick in the wall!"

Sunday, bloody Sunday!

Ok, This addition comes a bit too early after my last one but then one more hackneyed quotation
"I can resist anything but temptation!" :D
This is because today is one of those rarest days when Times of India has actually published something which can be called as serious journalism, a term almost extinct in today's era.

Most of us are quite accustomed to TOI's usual 20 page newspaper with a pathetic city times supplement
which invariably has a sensual model on the first page, the last page giving news about who Jen Aniston is dating today and what happened at some of the hollywood movie's premier and all sorts of bullshit! The very fact that they have been publishing this stuff for so long, means that there are infinitely many daft creatures in India who love to be called as 'neo-Indian' who lift their asses off the seat if George Bush starts talking on the TV, who are more curious about whether democrats win or republics, who are not aware of the fact that India is still a third world country, who do not know which party is ruling in India, their state ,their city, who do not know that there exists something called as poverty, who do not know that even today majority of India's population do not even dream of using a computer in their life and the list is endless! Ironically they think that this is the way to cool..err...wrong spelling, its 'kewl'!
These creatures...ok, enough for my frustration, will get back to business and KISS. (keep it short and simple, just in case you are mistaken ;) )

I am an ardent fan of Sunday Times for some reasons. The first and foremost being its editorial page That does have some content which is thought provoking and written by some of the very reputed intellectuals (that does not necessarily mean communists as is the false notion in our country, persisted from Nehrus era) although every alternate Sunday we have to bear with Shobha De who seems to be fairly out of place in the whole scenario. I anxiously await Sunday morning to read Jug Suraiya, Swaminomics and other articles. (except the debate and Shobha De :D )
But this Sunday was a bit different than any usual day since today is Gandhi Jayanti. I least expected TOI to publish anything more than 'cool mahatmaji' and how jenifer aniston has started following gnadhism and what some of the rock stars have said about our beloved Bapu. But I got it all wrong today, for today's whole page on Mahatma Gandhi is one of the best newspaper articles I have ever seen till date.
I can not or should not write anything about that page as it will unnecesarily create prejudices in some of you who haven't read it till now. I would only suggest that make it a point to read it. It is specifically meant for those neo-nationals who make outrageous statements like 'mahatma's principles are irrelevent today' (as a matter of fact if they are asked about the principles they can tell nothing else than non-violence but then..this is the way to kewl')
Trust me, spend 10 mins of your 'precious' time and you won't regret.
Well, what else, if you are as jobless as me then you imght as well read Jugular vain and swaminomics also which happen to be my favourite columns.
umm...Thats it! As usual
signing of,
Adios!

Arbit

Ok, this is just another post trying to prevent my (long) blogging career from dying! :p
Its not been a long time since my last (first also coincidencially) blog. I have done absolutely nothing
this week. Watched some of the great movies though and if I am going to write anything sensible here it
can be about those 2 magnificient movies I saw. The first being Arofonsky's masterpiece Pi(3.14....)
and the second being One Flew over the cuckoo's nest.
Pi is cinematically ,I believe, one of the finest movies I have ever seen. Its about a mathematician who
believes that maths is the language of nature and there are patterns in everything thats around you. His current goal is to find out the pattern in stock market! Sounds crazy , doesn't it? But that is how it is! Right from the first scene the movie is shot in so unique way that any movie critic will go ga-ga over this one!
Its thought provoking, its philsophical and its phenomenal in every aspect you can think of.
I was introduced to Arofonsky's trademark called hip-hop montage through this movie.(www.google.com for further details :p) One of the strangest thing about this movie is its shot in black and white!
Watch the movie, think a bit and then you will probably think of something as the reason behind that. :)

The other one was One flew over the cuckoo's nest. (www.imdb.com for further information) Its about a guy (Jack Nichelson) who fakes to be mentally retarted and escapes from jail to mantal asylum. His basic aim is to do nothing but to relax which he thinks he can easily manaage there. But he goes from bad to worse. He has to face a dictator nurse and as the title tells is 'one flys over the cuckoo's nest'. But how does this one fly and who is this is the question. The climax in the movie is simply unexpected and there is a particular reason behind that climax and its not just to add some spice to the story.
Both the movies were very much thought provoking and quite off the road type of movies.

Dont miss out on these....thats it...signing off
adios!

Coming back to life

As most of you are quite aware that I generally make it a point not to miss out on hackeneyed quotations.
This again is one of those but the way I intend to deliever it is I believe not exactly same as it was used!

It's around 7 p.m. on wednesday, 21st September and I am sitting alone in my room fabricating my
party which is scheduled tomorrow night and at the same time trembling with examination
blues. Amidst all this my mind apparently came to terms with something that probably would have been lurking in my subconscious for quite sometime.
To put it in a very simple words, it was about 'change'.
I felt as I was looking at flashback with everything running in front of my eyes as if it appeared a moment ago, so fresh, so new and yet so old! Philosophy had never been my cup of tea but still this flashback unlike many others in the past created something akin to a butterfly effect. It would be pardonable if someone like me fails miserably at expressing my tryst with the butterfly effect which may arouse any interest in the reader's mind and this is precisely the reason why I finally decided to write this!
As I was just sitting quietly in my room a chain of thoughts ran through my mind
The traumatic experience of last few exams in kharagpur did have their role to play in this I believe.
It went back to an awful thermodynamics exam which I had last sem, then further back to 1st year and so on. I was more than astonished to think about how time passes and in the process how it leaves a mark of
its existence on us.
Time is I have heard the best healer of the things. I can go a step beyond that and would say time is the ultimate solution to all the problems anyone's faces. Just a few days back, caught in a deep trouble I could not help but panic as my usual reaction goes! The agony of the moment unified with the magnified intensity of the problem was all over my face, when a friend of mine who definitely was even in a graver situation than me just told me one thing which I would never forget in my life. He said, "In these type of situations what just counts is how much can you hold on to your never!"
My immense trust in him made me blindly follow his advice (maybe exaggerated) and retrospectively speaking, I don't seem to have been in any trouble whatsoever at any time.
There are so many times when all of us feel like crying , just feel as if the world will come to an end and then....in retrospect everything is just as fine and fettle as it was before.
The vicissitudes of human beings or rather the universe is so excedingly well organised that things
no matter how awful do they seem at times, finally seem to fall in place all by themselves with time.
No one probably would have ever thought 3 years back that I would end up in a place 2000 km from my home, taking something as unique as M.Sc.geophysicsdoing and then changing to something as obscure as energy engineering, on my way would lose interest or rather develop a kind of hatred towards maths of all the subjects, start drinking...social drinking this is, start and successfully quit smoking and probably a lot more. And.....
....I hear that clock again...10 minutes to 8. The reallity jolts me back to my senses, the duties I must complete as a part of my sojourn in this place haunt me or rather just guide my conscience. At the back of my mind though the butterfly effect blatantly refuses to let me remain at peace. It just settles on a deal that it will take the backseat for some time. I get back to the studies. I open the book and start fantasizing about tomrrows party then a bit further to the end of the semester...end of my my engg and then who knows!
At the moment though, I am 'coming back to life!'