Are we truly IITians?

We IITians are proud to proclaim to the world that we are the best, that we are the cream of the country. But are we really so?Not so, in my opinion. Just being the technological masters is not a sure shot way to proclaim that one is the best. We pride ourselves to be getting the best education in the country, but then are we behaving in a manner befitting that? A big NO. Why? Well read more to find out.

In my UG days, it is a rare phenomenon that there is water supply 24x7 in the college hostel. In fact, in those days there used to be something called water strikes. These strikes were called by the students in the hostel to protest against the lack of water supply during day or night. It often happens that the water supply in the hostel would be disrupted for days together. But in IIT, I have not experienced a single day where there was no water supply. But it is precisely for this reason that water is considered so cheap here and wasted like anything. I can give you so many instances:

1) We have a tap in our wing's bathroom. which needs to be pushed a little harder than an ordinary tap, to close it completely. But why should anyone care about it? The guys here just use the tap and then leave the bathroom without closing it completely. Result? Water keeps flowing all day and goes wasted. Everyday, and I mean every single day, I would end up closing that tap atleast 5 times.

2) In the mornings, when guys are busy brushing their teeth, they simply keep the tap open, as if cleaniness of their teeth depends directly on the amount of water wasted. Same goes for shaving. These guys just keep the tap open and then go on shaving, once in a while putting the blade under the tap to clean it. The better option would be to just open the tap when needed or even better, collect water in a mug and then clean the blade by dipping it in the mug.These guys, who don't realise the value of water, must be taken to places where people walk 10-20 kms to just get a pail of water. But no, that is not right.Why? Because we are IITians and we can do whatever we want and no one cares a shit.

The same things apply in case of electricity also. It seems as if IITians have their hands programmmed such that the moment he/she enters the bathroom, it goes straight towards the switch to put on the tubelight, even if the bathroom might be located in the centre of the sun. During the afternoons there is so much light that one actually needs some instument to reduce the light. Even then one can find all the tube lights on.But then who cares. Why? Because we are IITians and we can do whatever we want and no one cares a shit.

One needs to visit our hostel mess to see the amount of food that gets wasted everyday. Though food wastage during breakfast is not so high, it grows exponentially for lunch and dinner. Though I am not 100% innocent here, I have always tried my best to make sure that I take only that much amount which I would require. And I can say with good confidence that I have been 95% successful in this, though, anything less than 100% is nothing to be happy of. In this regard I must make a special mention of my friend Ajitav, who is very particular that he doesn't waste food. If one sees his plate after he has finished his lunch or dinner, it would be hard to believe that he had food from that plate because it would be so clean and nothing would be left on the plate to indicate that food had been served in this plate. In fact I have great respect for him in this regard and has been trying to follow him.

But then there are some guys who gets great pleasure in wasting food, every single time. It's like as if their life mission is to waste food. Even the pictures of poor malnourished children of other countries,waiting in line with empty plates, plastered all over the mess, fails to make any impact on them. But then why should we care. We paid for the food like anyone else so what we do with the food is our business.Why? Because we are IITians and we can do whatever we want and no one cares a shit.

We have a very beautiful clean campus in IIT.
(We have lots of "Use Me" waste baskets at regular distance, which is a rarity in India. Absence of such waste baskets are one of the main reasons why streets across our country are being littered like anything. This is not to say that wherever there are "Use Me" boxes, the place is like heaven. Atleast it doesn't provide the public with an excuse to litter the streets).

According to me, it is every IITians' responsibility to make sure that it remains the same beautiful campus as it ever was. But then this doesn't even figure in the priority list of some students. So what do they do? They keep spitting on the road ( seeing the frequncy at which some people spit, I really wonder whether a human can produce so much saliva), they urinate on the side roads(Try taking a night stroll in the campus and you can see atleast one such case), throw away used plastic bottles anywhere other than into a "Use Me" basket. Some of my friends are also guilty of one or more of the things mentioned above. Their main excuse is that irrespective of whether they do these things or not the animals that roam around the campus keeps doing all these things and litter the campus, so what's the big deal if they too do it. Frankly speaking, I don't think I will be able to convince these people who wants to compare their activities with that of the street animals. I was under the impression that the one of the main difference between animals and humans were our ability to think. Well these guys really don't think so.Why? Because we are IITians and we can do whatever we want and no one cares a shit.

Smile please

In one of my previous posts, I had written about some of the funny incidents that had happened to me in IIT. Well today, I will be writing about some where I am not the chief protagonist, but was still present at the "crime" scene, when it was unfolding. As usual, the stories getting printed below is a "Garam Masala"ised version.

December 1st, Dec 2008, me and Kukri (real name can't be revealed) was aboard the train heading to Trivandrum. Our first semester was over and we were heading home for vacations. We were travelling by the new "All-coaches-AC-but-no-place-to-sit" Gharib Rath train. We were sharing our compartment with an elderly couple.

Few hours had passed since we boarded the train. Initially we whiled away our time chit chatting about various things that happened in campus that semester. After sometime, we started feeling bored. Then Kukri suggested something:

"Why not watch a movie. We can watch it in my laptop. I have downloaded Yuvraaj (Salman Khan's new film) from the hostel LAN. I was planning to watch it at home with my family, but I guess we can watch it now"

I thought it was a good idea. He took out his laptop and then he started to play the movie.
Suddenly for the first 2-3 seconds only sounds were coming out from the the movie player

"Hmmm aaah oooo oo yeah.........."

We didn't understand what was happening.
Then 2 seconds later the video came up.
Boom!!!!Suddenly we felt someone dropped a nuclear bomb on our heads....the video was a full blown porn movie!!!!

Kukri jumped into action immediately. Within a fraction of second the laptop found it's way back to Kukri's suitcase and there he was sitting giving a fake smile to the elderly couple, who by then were staring at us strangely (wonder why!!!). He was muttering under his breath

'If I ever lay my hands on the son of the ***** who names a porn movie Yuvraaj, I will %$@#%^&* him...."

After seeing all this I was thinking what would have been the situation if Kukri had actually watched the movie at home with his parents.

Our second semester had started in January 2009. As a part of our Mtech course structure, the Mtech students have to perform TA (Teaching assisstant) duties under some professor so as to be eligible for the monthly stipend. I was assigned to Prof Bhujade. I, along with 4 others from CSE Mtech1 (ie, the first year Computer Science Mtechs) had the responsibility to conduct the VHDL lab. We were selected for VHDL lab because we had done a course in the previous semester, by Prof Bhujade, where we had learnt a bit (a very small tiny bit) about VHDL. Our job mainly was to make sure that the 2nd year Btech guys were doing their VHDL assignments properly, in the lab, and to help them out in case they had any issues with VHDL programming.

2 days before the first lab was to begin, there was a change in the TA list. Sriraj, who was the "brightest" TA among us was "handed" over to Prof Sharat due to his "expertise" in various complex applications (website maintainence), way beyond the comprehension of a normal human mind. Thus there was now a "vacancy" for VHDL lab TA. Our CR, Aadi, promptly reacted to the crisis by "appointing" my roomie Sheiku (Sumair) as the lab TA. On learning about his appointment, Sheiku was almost in tears

" Oyee I haven't taken the VHDL course last semester, then why have I been put in VHDL lab. I don't even know the full form of VHDL"

Well the truth was even I didn't know the full form. But then I quickly googled the net and found it before anyone saw me doing it.

We had our first VHDL lab day before yesterday. I was wondering how Sheiku was going to manage the lab. The lab started and students started doing their assignments. After sometime I caught Sheiku busy asking a student, questions about his VHDL code.

"Explain the code"
"What is the significance of this keyword"
"Explain how this function works"
and so on....

After the lengthy discussion, the student asked Sheiku

"Sir is my vivae over"

"Yeah it's done. You have done well. Keep it up".

The student felt happy.Sheiku then comes over to me and whispers

"Poor guy thinks it was vivae. Actually he was teaching me how to do VHDL programming"

Well, certain people do have ingenious ways to learn new things.

After sometime another student called Sheiku.

Student : "Sir, what is a test bench"

Sheiku : " You don't even know what a test bench is? Didn't you brush up your concepts before coming to lab? Very bad. I will not help you, you find it out yourself"

The poor chap looked helpless. He was sure the "all knowing" TA would have helped him out.

Sheiku then walks over to Krishna (another TA) and asks

"Oye what in the world is this thing called test bench"

Thus our hero Sheiku had an eventful TA duty on the first day.

After the first semester results were declared, there was one person who scored a perfect 10 (whew!!!) in our class. His name is Lokendra. Last week it so happened that Lokendra, Adil, me and some of our friends went out to have icecream, as a part of Lokendra's treat. While we were having the treat, Adil was having big big conversations with Lokendra, asking him for tips on how to top the class, secreats of how he got a perfect 10 etc. After the treat was done, we all came out of the shop and were preparing to leave. Just then I heard someone calling me from behind.

"Psst...over here..."

I saw Adil indicating to me to go over to him. I went over to him.

"Oyee what was his name yaar, the one who gave us the treat"

I was a little surprised.

"Lokendra", I said.

Suddenly Adil went over to Lokendra and said,

"Lokendra bhai, thanks for the treat. I always knew you would top the class. You always had it in you. Keep it up"

The way Adil was talking to him as if he had known him for a long time, I couldn't help but smile.

Classmates revisited

Well well well, what have we here. Another post on classmates. Hmm how can it be different from the one that was posted earlier. Hmm let's see, this post is being written after getting a much better understanding of my peers when compared with the last post on them, which was posted just about a month or so after I joined IIT, this post will have new heros, this post will see introduction of heroines since the last post was a all-male movie and last, but not the least, this post will be more ruthless. No one's good deeds/behaviour will find a mention here, since I am not here to give these guys/gals grades. You see I can't help being evil. This post may result in my kidnapping or maybe kick in my ass by the characters mentioned below, but I am taking that risk in the supreme interest of my nation...err sorry blog. It will be a bit long post, so please bear with me. So here we go...

Anand Raj
-----------
This guy should be actually renamed Miner Raj. He is out to learn all the existing data mining concepts in this world. So what does he do? He takes up Data mining, Statistical Foundation of Relational Learning (whew), Graphical models and Web mining courses. Well if you thought that was it, you are wrong g. He's going to take computational biology also!!!!Why? He thinks DNA is full of data and he wants to mine it!!! O someone please save him. Nowdays he evens talks in Data mining language (whatever that is). Just read the below chat that I had with him .

Me : Hey, u know Manav from electrical department.

Anand : Yeah I do.

Me : How much do you know him. I mean is it just hi-bye type.

Anand : Well I have 45% confidence level with 90% statistical importance.

Me :#$@!@#$)$%#@!@#@%$

Aaditya
--------
Aah no improvement here. Same old Aadi boy churning out blog after blog which he claims to be philosophy (but god knows what actually it is), minute after minute, which goes higher and higher over my head each time he posts a new one. But then he still manages to screw up his simple CR duties with amazing frequency and clarity. Wonder how he can do that. And he still has many pending treats which he has yet to honour...grrr.

The lucknow sisters - Ambika and Shubangi
--------------------------------------------
There...our heroines have entered the scene. You may be wondering why pairing is done here. Well the story goes that both of them were actually the first siamese twins to have been born in lucknow. But as luck would have it, now they are seperated (how that happened is still a mystery). So thus the pairing. Well about sister number 1, Ambika, well she has this amazing ability to not study until the last day of the exam and yet top the class. When I asked her how she does that, she said it was simple "just sit through the whole night without sleeping and study the entire thing". And she suggested I should try that one out too if I wanted to top the class. Well I took her advice and did the same. And sure enough I did top the class....from the bottom @#$$@%#^$#. Some advice.
Sister number 2 : This girl is a real mystery. Sample this. She sits in front of the Indian Astronomy class. She listens with so much passion at what sir is teaching, nods at whatever he is telling, furiously writing down notes. At the end of the class when asked how the class was, thus was her reply
" Aree yaar it was soo boring".
What!!! It was boring to you? This is your idea of a boring class...you listen, you write down notes, you keep nodding...O for heaven's sake if it is a boring class then show it in your actions...Go to sleep!!!!Haven't she ever read the rules manual on students' behaviour in class? Clause 56 clearly states that students are expected to express their feelings in the class.

Jayalakshmi a.k.a meenu a.k.a evening-walker-who-thinks-it-is-actually-jogging/running
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This girl has got some serious problems facing her. Either she has fallen for a handsome guy and is out to impress him or she must have got a stern warning from her mom- either way she is into too much exercising nowdays. Walking (she says it's jogging), swimming, trekking and what not. It's another thing that she now eats twice as much food as before. But then hey, someone here is doing some serious slimming down and she needs encouragement. Clap clap clap...

Adil - Ajitav
------------
Well another pairing. Why? Well nothing happens without a reason. I seriously think these guys were husband and wife in their last birth. One day they pull out each others' hair, next day they are all over each other (err I mean as friends. Don't get me wrong here). I sometimes wonder who would have been the husband out of these 2 in their last birth. If I were to hazard a guess then it would be as follows : Adil is into heavy weights gymming and since girls don't usually do heavyweights....well remaining you guys figure it out.

Sriram Kasyap
---------------
If anyone would have told me that Newton has taken a punarjanm (rebirth), then I could have answered "I knew it". Nothing else can explain how he keeps blabbering about God knows what all. Einstein would be crying in his grave right now, thinking of all the theories which he failed to come up and which now comes out of this guy's mouth the moment we sit down to have our lunch. His favourite timepass being computer programming, I shudder to think what material his dreams are made of. Not that I am interested. Just that keeping a tab of that would have easily given a PhD guy a thesis. Lucky he is not much interested in data mining, or else God knows what would have happened had Goliath (Anand: height 225 cm???he does looks so) crossed swords with David (Sreeram: height 125 cm???).

Sriraj Paul a.k.a CP
-------------------
Can't tell you guys the full form of CP, it is a secret only few knows, so let's keep it that way. Well here's a guy whose concept of an english rock song is "Jingle bells jingle bells jingle all the way...". He has this amazing ability to ponder over problems which never exists!!! Sample this

Some of us were watching a movie. Suddenly the player stopped playing. Sriraj kept looking at the screen for a long time. The remaining guys were wondering what was happening

Me: "Oyee what are you doing"

Sriraj : "Hmm I am not able to find out why the VLC player stopped playing. Maybe the file is corrupt. Or maybe we need to upgrade the player. Or maybe there may be it is a virus. Or maybe..."

Me : "Or maybe the first CD is over and you need to play the 2nd CD. Play the damn 2nd CD idiot"

Sriraj : O yeah right...

Well I wanted to write about some more people, but I guess this is more than enough for one post. In case any of you hear about any kidnapping or murder in the campus in the next few days, well you can find my home address with the hostel warden in hostel 6. Please do inform my family.

Second semester starts

A new year starts :-)
Vacations done with :-(
New semester starts :-((
Back to old ways of losing sleep over assignments and projects and screwing up quizzes :-(((((...(

Well this sums up my emotions as I enter my 2nd semester here in IIT Bombay.
This semester we have to take 4 courses as credit along with one seminar. Prof Dhamdhare, our faculty advisor, had agreed to guide me for my seminar, so the headache of seeking seminar guides was over. But going by his reputation of strictness and hard to please nature, combined with my lazy nature, we sure are going to have some fun in the days to come :D.

I had already decided that I will take up an R&D project this semester, instead of a course. It gives me several advantages.

1) No end sem and mid sem exams
2) No quizes and assignments
3) Extra 3 non-lecture hours per week, which will be fruitfully, carefully and productivily used in bed.

But there is no such thing as free lunch. So the cons are

1) Several research papers to read up. Feels almost like another seminar.
2) Needs to show some "productive" result at end of the project.

Well let's see how it goes.

So 1 down, 3 more credits to be taken.
Next one I had in mind was a course called "Embedded Systems Design" which was offered by the electrical department.

Well as some wise person has said (obviously me), someone who doesn't know one's own backyard, shouldn't go and start digging in someone else's backyard.
Ok bad attempt at philosophy.
It was supposed to mean, a computer science guy, who is not even thorough with his own courses, should never dig his head into other department courses, especially electrical. This was the moral of the story I learned after my first class in this course.
The prof was shooting out OPAMs,Transistors,CMOS,IC at everyone. All the electrical guys were having a great time while poor me was drowning in a sea of ICs and transistors. But I was determined to credit this course. It's not everyday that you get to screw up a course offered by another department.

So 2 down, 2 more to go.
I had actually narrowed down my options to 3 courses now, out of which I have to choose 2. I had the option of either crediting 2 courses and doing a sit through (which means just attending lectures and no need to write any exams or do any assignemnts) the 3rd one or just take 2 courses this semester and do the 3rd course in the 4th semester (same courses are offered in the alternate semesters).

The courses were:
1) Program Analysis
2) Indian Astronomy (This semester we are supposed to take a non-CSE course called institute elective. The electrical course mentioned above is a different case in that even CSE students can credit it)
3) Mathematical foundations of formal verification (MFFV)

I had attended the first class of both Program Analysis and Indian Astronomy and wanted to credit both of them. But I had almost made up my mind to take up MFFV. One because it was going to be taught by Prof Supratik. He was one of the best profs in our dept and I had already taken a course last semester under him, called "Formal Specification and Verification of Programs (FSVP)". I loved his teaching soo much that I had made up my mind to take whatever course he offered this semester. So it was with a very heavy heart that I attended the first class of MFFV. I really wanted to credit Indian Astronomy this semester, but now it seems a remote possibility since I had made up my mind to credit Program Analysis. Well what the heck, I could always take it up in the 4th semester.

Supratik sir started taking the first class of MFFV. There were around 30 people in the class

"Hi all, this is the first time I am offering this course. "

Hmm good...

"I am surprised to see so many of you. I had planned this course keeping in mind a class strength of around 10"

Count me in...

"Maybe after I tell you the pre-requisites for this course, you all may get a more clear picture of what I intend to teach in this course"

Nothing is going to stop me from taking this course...

"The students who take up this course must have a good understanding of Automata theory, Propositional Logic, Discrete Structures. It would also be good if you take up, side by side, the course taken by Prof Bharat Adsul called 'Special Topics in Automata' "

Great!!!!! To take this course, I need to take up 4 other courses!!!!

Now I was in 2 minds whether to take it up or not. Maybe if I put in a little more effort, I may be able to manage it.

Then he started teaching the first chapter. That did it. I knew which course to take now.

At the end of the class Vinu came up to me and asked

"Hey you look so happy. You taking this course?"

"Yahooo I can take up Indian Astronomy now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

So that's it. I had chosen my courses. Hopefully I can scrap through this semester also. All the best to me.

My entry into professional life

July 11 2005. Not just another day. At least not for me.
It was the first day of my professional life. The day when I entered the big bad world of corporates.
Me, along with my college classmates Ashok, Rajappan and Arup were in the train to Mysore on July 8th...

Flashback...Colour replaced by Black and White screen

Interviewer announcing my name, looking in my direction and smiling with tears in his eyes thanking me for choosing his company. Sob sob..so touching (Actually he just announced names of all the 100 odd guys who got through the interviews and just left. But let's not get bogged down by silly details like this).

"Pehla nasha pehla khumar" plays in the background

I am jumping in the air doing the leg 180 degree leg stretch. (It's another thing that I have torn 3 good pants trying this out in real).In flashback scenes, slow motion is allowed. So by the time I come back to the ground, the song is done with.

Flashback done, 70mm color screen comes back. Me still in train. I started dreaming of all the wonderful things I will experience during my 3 month training period in the campus.

We reached Mysore campus on the 9th of July which was a saturday. The mysore campus had a jaw dropping view even from the outside entrance. It was so huge that it took some time for me to just scan the entire campus from the entrance. After all the security checking was done, we were escorted to our rooms. The rooms too were just out of the world. I got the impression of staying in a 5-star hotel. On 9th and 10th we just roamed around the campus exploring the fantastic buildings. While one building looked like an Egyptian pyramid another looked like a Roman palace. IOn seeing thse types of buildings, I couldn't help wonder whether we need to learn history during the training period.

First 2 days we had ice breaking sessions. Ok it doesn't mean literally breaking blocks of ice with hammer. Students were encouraged to interact with one another freely through various activities. Within 2 days, I made a quite a few friends.
On the 3rd day we were all asked to assembly in the main hall. After the exciting first 2 days we were expecting more "fun". How am I to know that my fun loving days were going to end all of a sudden.

We guys are called company "resources" in IT lingo. ie, anything owned by the company becomes it's resource. Now that's a very presigious title considering that you have things like desk, table, dustbins to share the same title. After everyone had arrived in the hall, the HR manager said he had a happy news for some "special" resources . Naturally me being special and now also being a two day old resource, the news should concern me also

"Everyone with a computer science background will be directly put into production (that mean actual projects) without any training" thundered the HR manager.

For a moment there was silence.

"This was his god damned good for nothing good news??????"
Steam was whislting out from both my ears.
All those day dreaming about enjoying the mysore campus went up in smoke.
Hmm maybe I guess this is how a terrorist is born.

One bad news down. God knows how many more to go.

Next thing to worry was where we would be posted. They would put out the list in 2 days. I was hoping for getting posted in Bangalore or Pune. Chennai and Bhuvaneshwar were the last places I wanted to go. Other places like Trivandrum, Mohali etc were still fine when compared to Chennai (too hot for me..I mean temperature) and Bhuvaneshwar (what to do there????).We were asked to fill up our choices for location in accordance with our preferences. So my list had Bangalore, Pune at the top and Chennai, Bhuvaneshwar at the bottom.

2 days later the list came. I scanned through the list
"Saraswati...Saravanana.............Shekar...........................Smitha...."

"Crap why should there be so many S guys..."

"...Sreeram....aahaa Sree Shankar...hmm....Chennai"

O man not again!!!!...
Nothing seemed to be going my way. I wondered Which ass**** made this list??? Was he born with his head upside down that he saw my list and thought I preferred Chennai to Bangalore. My only regret when I left Mysore campus the next day for Chennai was that I couldn't kick that moron's ass.

All the ones who had got Chennai as their posting location were going to Chennai in the same train.

Fine no use mourning over the past. Better look into the future and move on.
Now the next worry was the type of project I may end up with. We were told that we would be put into one of the following project genres : Open systems ie, mainly unix, Datawarehousing, J2EE, or Mainframes. Now the one I most dreaded was the mainframes projects. The reason for this was that I had already had experience working with the COBOL language, which is the language that is mainly used in mainframes, in my college. I was ready to dip my head in a cartload of shit rather than work on COBOL again, or , a more scary scenario, become a COBOL developer my entire life.

The next day we reached Chennai. For the first week the company provided accomodation for all of us. In contrast to the Mysore accomodation, here we stayed in a minus 3 star hotel, the only favourable factor being the proximity to the office. We had to report at the office the next day.
The next day, I reported to the HR manager for Chennai DC (Development Cener).

The entire time only one thought was going through my mind
"No mainframes...No mainframes"

"So you are Sree Shankar"

"Yes Madam"

"No mainframes...No mainframes"

"Your manager will be here in just a moment"
"No mainframes...No mainframes"

After couple of minutes
"Aah there comes your manager. You may go with him now."

"No mainframes...No mainframes"

"So Sree Shankar right...Hi my name is Uday. I will be your reporting manager for this project."

"Hi Sir. Nice meeting you"

"Hey don't call me sir. In this company we address everyone by his first name"

"Ok sir...err I mean Uday"...

"No mainframes...No mainframes"

We got into an empty lift. Next few seconds no one talked as the lift started moving up.
Finally I couldn't stand it any longer.

"Uday, what is our project about"

"Oh it's a very interesting project. You will surely love it.It's mainly reading data from one file, doing necessary processing and then writing it to another output file in a specific format"

That bought something of a cheer to me."Finally...whew...doesn't sound like mainframes."

"So in what language are we doing this...C/C++ or J2EE or some new language", I asked enthusiastically.

"COBOL".

What more could a person entering his professional life ask for.