Sree

All hail English

2011-12-25T23:34:00.000-08:00

English is a very funny language. One word here or there or, for that matter, even a letter here or there, can change the whole meaning and spirit of the language. For example when Saurab bought his first guitar he wanted to tell everyone "Yeee I got my first 6 strings", but as luck would have it his status message came out to be "Yeee I got my first G strings". Well he still claims the status message was not his - "Ye sab opposition party ki chaal hei". Well whatever be the case, his exact feelings didn't quite get reflected: all because a 6 became a G.

But it is not the accidental interchanging of letters or words that is the main problem. Nowdays the medium of communication between various organs of the society happens to be in English. For eg: the "official" language of almost all private as well as most of the government educational institutes happens to be in English. And that, as we will soon see, is not always good. So how do these institutes still survive when not everyone in these institutes are not exactly English professors? Well here is where the Indian concept of Jugaad comes in. For the uninitiated, Jugaad means "somehow get it working" which mostly involves tweaking the existing concepts to suit one's environment.

One funny incident that I can remember, happened to me during the first year of my under graduation. As every engineer will know, there is a compulsory mechanical workshop for all the first year students. It involves hammering, cutting steel plates, digging sand and what not. We had a chief instructor who, at the start of each class, will explain how to do the experiment meant for that day. On that particular day the experiment involved sawing a thick steel piece. How the instructor communicated to us with his limited knowledge of English vocabulary was, in my opinion, an incredible example of Jugaad in English literature.

"Today we see how we saw". Then taking the saw in his right hand and the steel piece in his left, he continued - "Take saw, then saw", pushes the blade forward "and saw" pulls the blade backward, "saw" - pushes forward, "and saw" - pulls backward.

He did this 3 or 4 times. "Saw saw saw saw. All see how saw?". Everyone nodded.

"Now, you saw I see". Everyone started sawing their steel piece. One guy, in his enthusiasm to finish the work fast, was sawing the steel piece at a furious pace. When the instructor saw this he immediately stopped him.

"Don't saw saw saw". Then showing how to do it smoothly, he continued -" just saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw".

I was amazed at how, with explicit usage of just a word, he held his on throughout the entire session, though I wouldn't be surprised if anyone lost his sense of grammer after this class.

But sometimes English can be a real badass, especially in the hands of a person who is not very comfortable with it. The incident, that happened to Nandu's friend, more than illustrates this fact. In one of the classes in her college days, the professor had asked the students to study the day's lesson and come prepared for his next class. The next day, the professor started asking questions regarding what he taught the previous day. One of the questions was asked to Nandu's friend. Now she, being the typical college student, had no recollection whatsoever of what was taught the previous class.

She started blabbering - "Err sir it is...that is...then only but also...err...sir.....sir I don't know the answer".

The professor was furious. But he would never have meant what he said next.

"What!!!You don't know how to reproduce. Yesterday I taught you everything and today you can't reproduce. No, I won't allow this, you have to reproduce. C'mon try, I will also help you to reproduce"

The girl was stunned. She didn't know what to say. She knew the professor didn't mean it, so she had no idea how to react. As for the professor he was clueless as to why the whole class burst out into laughter. Poor Prof...poorer student.

People holding very high positions are expected to be very good in communication. Thus it cannot be stressed enough how critical it is for a person holding a very important position, like a Director of an educational institute as in this case, to be proficient in English and to be precise on what he wants to convey. Else incidents like this are bound to happen :-

It was the first day of the college and the Director was addressing an audience comprising mainly of students and parents. He started his lecture with an history of the institution and about how the students - and their parents - have made the correct decision in joining this "great" institute. Then he came to the main topic.

"Younger generation discipline very bad. One boy one boy ok. One girl one girl ok. But one boy one girl - Total problem"

He continued ranting.

"Today's girls boys no study. Today's girls boys no class attend. Today's girls boys full day sit under the trees."

Then he went on to propose far reaching measures to improve student discipline.

"This year we cut all trees".

Whew, this guy should have been our Finance minister.

Then, addressing all the parents in the audience, he emphasised how his reforms were going to improve their children after 4 years in this institute.

"Today you give me one child. After 4 years I give you another child!!!"

Well what else to say - All hail English.

PS: The below video captures the theme of this post precisely. The plot from this famous mallu movie where the hero is trying to impress the girls' parents with his english whereas the villain is trying to prove that the hero doesn't know even the basics of English grammer.

Nandu ban gayi engineer

2011-11-27T03:26:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: As usual high dose of masala and imagination involved.

Nandana ( Nandu for me) finished her schooling in 2006 and it was time for college admissions. After her entrance exams results were announced, she wanted a seat in PSG, a private engineering college in Coimbatore. But Mummy dear(my mother-in-law) was pushing for GCT, a government college, also in Coimbatore. This resulted in an intense "war" between PSG and GCT in the house. Each side employed all the modern day technologies like Google for data gathering to strengthen their arguments for and against each of these 2 colleges. The war was so intense that by the time the day for the counselling arrived, their neighbors knew more about these two colleges than even the PSG and GCT students themselves.

Finally the D-day arrived. Mummy dear tried one last attempt. She made Nandu her favorite breakfast, puttu and kadala. If Mummy had hoped for a result favourable to GCT, her hopes were dashed. All she got back was a plate with no puttu left.

By the time Mummy, Nandu and Daddy reached the counseling centre, the counseling was already underway. After some half an hour or so, Nandu's chance was fast approaching. Nandu started biting her nails. She was getting tensed. Only 1 seat each left in PSG and GCT and there were 2 more girls more to go before her. She still had her chances for PSG. But it was going to be a very close call. Meanwhile Mummy too was biting her nails. After all GCT too was in the race.

"PSG...PSG...PSG", Nandu's mind was racing.

So was Mummy's, "GCT...GCT...GCT".

Luckily the girl didn't choose either of PSG or GCT.

The list narrowed down to 1 girl with 1 seat each in PSG and GCT.

By now Nandu and Mummy had no more nails left on them. But the race was still on, nails or no nails.

The girl in the front was taking all the time in the world to decide her college. Tension was slowly, but surely, building up. Finally when it seemed that this girl will never decide her preference, she got up, went to the counter, and gave her choice. Nandu and Mummy turned their heads at the same time onto the screen.

Screen started blinking. After 30 seconds or so an updated message came up.

Number of seats left
----------------------
PSG:0 GCT:1

Nandu thought someone just slapped her. Mummy thought she just won a million dollar lottery. GCT beat PSG in the battle of titans. Poor Nandu. She was just not lucky that day. And this is how she got joined production engineering at GCT.

Once the classes started, Nandu had left her disappointment behind and was looking towards a great campus life in GCT. She soon realized she had to overcome many obstacles in the male dominated field of Mechanical and Production Engineering. One of them was the workshops. Workshops were heavy duty stuffs. To lift the heavy hammers and tongs itself was beyond her, let alone use them to make to forge something. But then these are the situations where being a girl helps. All she needs to do is put on a damsel-in-distress face.

Zoooom!!!From nowhere the instructor reaches her place.

"Enna ma, hammer romba heavya", he asks
[What happened my girl, is the hammer very heavy]

"Amma sir, onume panna mudiyathu. Epadiyavathu help panungo sir"
[Yes sir, I am not able to do anything sir. Please help me sir]

The scene after 5 minutes would be this.

Standing in one corner of the workshop, Nandu and her co-damsels will be discussing the global issues concerning the world

"Lakshmi, you saw the new Shah Rukh movie da. Oh he's soo handsome in that no?".

"Yeah Nandana, I too heard about it. I want to see it da"

"Don't worry da, I will come. I want to see that film once more da".

Meanwhile the poor instructor would have broken his back doing each of their work. One may wonder whether this trick will work all the time. Well trust me, it does.

Some of her college professors were world class. One of them, let's call him NK, had a unique teaching style. He comes to the class and straightaway he goes and writes a problem on the blackboard. Once he has finished writing the problem, he turns and faces the class.

"Find the solution to this".

No sooner does he says this than the geeks get busy while others, ie, 99% of the class, get sleeping. After the initial struggles, the brightest geek of the lot would be ready with the solution which NK sir starts evaluating. NK will read each line of the solution given in the textbook. Then he compares it with the corresponding line of the solution that the student had got.

"Torque = 72.........hmm Torque=72...ok"

"Distance=50....hmm distance=50...ok"

"86....86...ok"

"22.....22....ok"

"98....45...What!!! Your solution is wrong. See the value should be 98. You got 45. What the hell is this"

"Sir but 98 is the page number of the book."

The whole class bursts out in laughter.

"Oh ok, no problem, let's continue. 45....45...ok". And the brilliant evaluation continues.So much for his teaching abilities.

Another Professor, who manages to use his pants to cover his entire stomach, deals with late comers in a different way. For example, once it so happened that one of Nandu's friends, Kapil Dev (not the cricketer, Mind it Rascalas!!!), came late for his class. Kapil stood outside the class and requested Sir's permission to enter the class. Sir stopped teaching and turned to face him.

"Who are you"

The poor guy didn't know what to say. He just kept looking at sir with his mouth open. He knew the professor knew his identity very well.

The professor pulls up his pants, and again asks, "Who are you".

"Sorry sir"

"Your name is sorry?"

"No sir, I am sorry for being late. I will not repeat it sir".

"Who are you"

Poor guy knew there was no escape. He knew his Prof very well. He will keep asking "Who are you" till you reply properly. Not that a proper reply will guarantee one's entry. But nevertheless....

"Kapil Dev", he replied.

"Ooooooo you are Kapil Dev"

"Really sir I am Kapil Dev sir"

"Yeah and I am Mahatma Gandhi"

Poor guy was at his wits end. He gives up and leaves the class. And this is how this professor put an end to the "menace" of late comers.

Nandu, in her 4 years, had made quite a lot of friends. One of them was Aparagita Varman. This friend of her's faced an unusual problem in college. The teachers had a hard time pronouncing his name. More so when attendance was being called.

"Arun Palaniselvam"

"Present Miss"

"Aruna Prabhakar"

"Present Miss"

"Appu Doraiswamy"

"Present Miss"

When our hero's chance comes, all hell breaks loose.

"Apa Raita Varman....err no....Upper jaati Varman.....Upuma Raita Varman err no....aah crap roll number 3"

With a heavy heart, he will stand up and acknowledge his presence.

And so, in this fashion Nandu completed four eventful and joyful years after which she graduated in 2010.

Frustrated

2011-11-19T05:40:00.000-08:00

What happens if you trust your roomies so much that you don't care to logout of your blog once you are done with it? Nothing much other than that your blog will get hacked. Though I am not 100% sure who wrote this, if I have to take a guess, the major credit for this post goes to Akshat bhai, with no less contributions from my dear ex-roomies Anshul and Saurab. This post had been lying as a draft for several months now. Now I am posting it verbatim. I have not changed even the title.

"
NOTE - The incidents of this true story have happened over past two years. This is a true story, the story of my life.

It has been several months or rather years since I have joined Matrimonial Site but honestly, it's a sheer disappointment for me. There are several reasons for the same. First and foremost is the inability of the matrimonial site's search engine to publicize the most eligible bachelor of the state (no price for guessing ... it's me) and if by chance someone selects my profile and expresses interest, the horoscope feature puts hurdle in my way. The way which could lead me to my would be better-half. Another reason for disappointment is that when I search with "my criteria" , there is hardly any females being listed by the search engine. One fine day my friends came up with this.

Looking at that, even though I laughed with my lungs out, I felt happy that atleast I had someone (in a fake pic) with me. I want to confess that I couldn't sleep the whole night, not because the pic was haunting me or because of mosquitoes in my room, because the sense of being with someone filled me with joy. Now I cannot wait to meet the special one. I know she is out there, somewhere waiting for me. That is why I have started attending my friend's marriages, I travel in city buses, I walk a long way instead of taking an auto-rickshaw, so that I can find her, the princess of my dreams.

I know most of you will probably laugh reading this but this is the story of my life. I request all my friends, even those who fell prey to my petty pranks or my blog posts to pray to God so that I can get married soon.

Waiting ... waiting ... and waiting .....
"
So this is how one's blog gets hacked. As someone has said, if you have friends like this, who needs enemies.

Update: My roomies' prayers and efforts have been finally answered. I got married to a very beautiful girl.

The Trip

2011-02-20T13:07:00.000-08:00

It was an overcast sky, with the clouds threatening to open the floodgates any moment. But Saurab cared two hoots to what the rain Gods think. His MTP (MTech Project) is over and done and according to him, he has earned his break. But with rest of Mtech CSE students still breaking their heads and laptops to complete their MTPs, poor Saurab had no one to give him company to enjoy his break. But Saurab was determined to make the best use of his break. As usual he approached his all-weather friend Akshat.

"Oyee chal, Vihar lake chalte hei".

Akshat, as usual, put on his "too-tired-after-work" look on his face. You can never blame him. He just finished watching Ram Gopal Varma's ki Aag!!!He had enough torture for a day.

But Saurab was not the one to give in too easily. He threatened Akshat with dire consequences - singing in Akshat's room all day through- if Akshat didn't go with him. Poor Akshat had to give in. It was too much of a punishment for him. Thus Saurab succeeded in persuading his friend to go with him to Vihar lake. But Saurab was not satisfied since he wanted a bigger group. He decided he will drag with him the first few guys he sees on the way. Unfortunately I happened to be one of them, along with Rakesh, Vishal and Nazeem. Now what can these 4 poor souls do if someone comes and theatens to sing the whole day in your rooms. Nothing but give in to his demands. Thus the group was formed and the plan made.

Vihar lake is actually a restricted area for students. This is precisely why all students want to go there atleast once. Rule breaking runs deep in an IITian's blood. Since it is a restricted area, there is a fence which separates our hostel from the lake. Saurab enquired with his friends as to how to reach his destination. He came to know that some smartass had made a small hole in the fence through which students can crawl through to reach Vihar lake. With this ground breaking information in hand, Saurab led the group towards the fence through the hole and finally after 20 minutes or so into the journey we managed to reach our destination.

The scenic beauty, coupled with cool monsoon climate made our day. It was such a relaxing time. After spenting an hour or so, we made our way back to the hostel. Even though the time was around 6 pm in the evening, it had already become dark. We crawled back through the same hole and were almost back in the campus when we saw the H12 student head and some men, whom we had never seen before, standing near the hostel. As we approached the hostel, these guys stopped us. We looked at each other. Everyone had the same expression on their face - clueless. On top of that these guys looked real frightening. I got the feeling that each of them had one kilo of biceps and chest muscles for their evening snacks. Such was their body build.

Then one of them spoke

"Kaha se aa rehe ho tum log".

"We just went to Vihar lake", Saurab replied.

"Aisa kya". He turned to face his fellow-muscle mates. "Talashi lo inke".

We had no idea what was happening. They body searched us. But apparently, from their looks, they didn't find anything they were expecting. Then they confiscated our ID cards and told us to collect the cards from the Dean tomorrow. That is when we realised we were in serious trouble. Vishal, who somehow had a great talent to get on the wrong side of our professors, sighed

"Dean hi bacha tha milne ke liye. Ab ye tamanna bhi poori ho gayi"

No one knew what to do. Everyone looked at Saurab with a face which can be best described as "next-time-enjoy-your-damn-break-yourself-$@#$%%@#$%". Saurab somehow felt the sky was looking beautiful at that moment and kept admiring it till he was sure we were no longer looking at him.

Everyone started thinking about what to do next. Rakesh was the first to chip in.

"How about applying for new ID cards. We can tell them we lost our old ones".

"Dude, we had lost our brains when we listened to a great mind and went to some restricted area, but rest assured they still have theirs"

"Ok how about this. We forget the entire thing and do nothing about this. What can happen", Vishal opined.

"Looks like you don't want to stop with meeting just the Dean. With the kind of talent you have, you should aim for the Institute Director himself".

Thus the brainstorming session went on and on. Ultimately we all decided on the best route possible. Meet the Dean the next day and beg for mercy. Everyone agreed that we will meet up outside Dean's office and then go in together.

The next day me and Nazeem went together to the Dean's office. Throughout the entire journey Nazeem, as usual, was indulging in philosophy and religious thoughts.

"I think we got what we deserved. This is Allah's way of telling us we have wronged and need to repent for this. Rules are meant to be followed and not broken. We should never have gone to vihar lake.".

"How come your Allah never tell you these things on time. He waited till we got caught and then he gave you this advice?".

"Allah does everything for a purpose", he replied.

"Great. I hope his purpose doesn't include both of us getting kicked out from the institute"

We continued walking till we reached Dean's office. Saurab, Rakesh and Akshat were already waiting for us outside the Dean's office. After waiting outside the office for sometime, we were called in. All of us went in without knowing what to expect next. When we entered, the Dean was typing something on the computer, with his back to us.

"So you like to break rules is it", he asked without turning and continuing with his work

"No sir", Saurab replied almost immediately

"Oh you mean you didn't break any rules".

"No sir...err I mean yes sir...I mean not exactly sir...",Saurab started blabbering. He looked at us with a help-me-out-here expression.

Dean finally turned around to face us.

"So why did you go there", the Dean asked calmly

"Sir we went there to enjoy the scenis beauty", Saurab explained.

"Is it. You guys went to Dargarh to enjoy it's scenic beauty???".

"The what....". We started looking at each other's face. No one knew what the Dean was asking. I was even more confused. I slowly came close to Nazeem.

"Psst...what is this Dargah. Is it some restaurant or something".

Nazeem glared at me with a What-an-idiot look.

"It's a religious place, like a mosque. I guess he thinks we went there and attended the preachings, which maybe of extremist nature", he whispered.

Meanwhile Saurab continued wailing

"No sir, nothing like that sir, please sir, believe me sir, we haven't even heard of anything called Dargarh. We went there to just see the lake. That's all".

"No no this is very serious. I will take action"

"Sirrrrrrr...", Saurab let out a cry. Somehow his cry sounded somthing similar to how our bollywood heroines cry out nehiiiiiiiiiiiii when the hero dies.

"Sir sir please sir, don't take any action sir. I am the only son of my parents"

"O you mean if you had a brother, I could have taken action"

"Yes sir...I mean no sir...please sir don't take action"

This went on for sometime. Finally, and I am guessing he had enough of Saurab's wailing, he let us go with a warning and a petty fine. We were all relieved. We paid up the fine and came out of the office.

Once outside, Saurab was happiness personified.

"Tho bhai log mazaa aaya na. Ab kaha chalna hei".

What happened next is best kept a secret.

Friends forever

2010-09-18T04:43:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer : This post has some naughtiness to it. In case you are one of those who doesn't like such posts, I advise you not to go any furthur.

Saurabh bhai, the most enthu guy in our group, as this pic shows, was on the top of the world. Why not? After all he got his long desired guitar, with his own money. But as some wise man has said (and obviously that wise man is me) sometimes people with high IQ fail to express their emotions in reasonable quanity. What else can explain his running from one end of the road to another, shouting "I got my first real six strings...I got my first real six strings" with the neighbors watching with their mouth wide open and wondering what the hell was happening. Shah Rukh Khan must not have been so happy after getting a six packs as compared to our Saurabh bhai's happiness in getting a six strings. Even the word, "Guitar", which our ancestors had invented to describe this beautiful instrument, went for a toss. Somehow he thought the phrase "six strings" suited it better.

But the tragedy of this story is not this, it transcends all this. As mentioned before, being a high IQer, he didn't just want the neighbors to know about his buying a new guitar...he wanted the whole world to know about it. And what's the best way to do that? Of course update one's Gmail status!!!. But in his excitement, he did one mistake...I would say a rather serious error in judgement considering his high IQ...he used Akshat's Wipro laptop!!! Now Wipro laptop is after all Wipro laptop...nothing can beat it...you type something, something else gets typed. Poor Saurabh, he wanted the entire world to know about his first love. But his first love, as the world came to know, was this. Well you can be sure he will never use a Wipro laptop ever in his life again.

The debate about who is better : humans or machines have been going on for a long time without no clear answer. Well finally that puzzle has been solved beyond any doubt. The proof for such a conclusion has been presented below :-

Akshat Saxena is a very brilliant chap. He was the gold medalist for topping the university exams during his Btech days. This speaks volumes of how bright this young chap is. Though the average intelligence of human race is much below the caliber of our friend, he is one of the parameters used in this proof just to show how such a brilliant chap fades in intelligence when compared to a machine. Akshat, like any other homosapien, loves tagging himself in his orkut profiles. For eg: this picture is an example of human intervention in picture tagging. Now let's see an example of how efficient a machine is if no human intervention happens. The result is this. The efficiency with which a machine accurately tagged Akshat puts to rest any doubt whatsoever as to who the ultimate winner is in this debate.

It is always a surprise when you come to know that one of your closest friends got married and he/she didn't even inform you about it. The surprise factor grows exponentially large if the groom himself is not aware that his marriage is over. Yups that's right, my marriage is over. You guys need to thank my loving roomies for it. They couldn't bear to see me remain single anymore, so they took matters into their own hands and got me a lovely wife. In case you are one of the poor souls who were not invited for my marriage and thus for not fortunate enough to witness my grand wedding, join the club, I too wasn't invited for the same. Uploading this marriage photo for all those who missed my marriage. Please bless us everyone.

It's been a while since I have had any contact with Ajitav, so one fine day I thought will ping him. As usual, he had a busy symbol with a "Working hard" status on his Gmail. Seconds after pinging him, I got his response. He too was happy to have seen me after a long time. I asked him how his work in Amazon was.

"It's rocking dude. I am enjoying every bit of it. My manager says I am a great talent and that a bright career awaits me", he replied.

"Wow dude, you must have made some impression. Is your work so critical", I asked him.

"Oh you have no idea how critical it is. In fact, my work is so critical that it affects the entire Amazon organization".

I started feeling jealous. Just at the start of his career, this guy is making such huge strides. "So what is your position in your company", I asked.

"Well it's a bit complicated one and hard to explain. I will do one thing. I will send you a picture that was taken during one of the busiest times in my office. A picture speaks a thousand words right?".

And thus he sent me this picture. It is then that I understood how true Ajitav's words were. His work really is critical for Amazon.

God proposes man disposes

2010-09-12T04:18:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer : A totally fictional story with fictional characters.

"Kudiakose, can you please come with me"

"No Krishi, I am busy...you see I am working on a critical project right now, so don't disturb me"

Krishi peeped into Kudiakose's laptop. Kudiakose's entire screen was filled with chat windows from Neena, Meena, Deena and Maina.

"Err which of these projects are critical", Krishi asked.

"Still deciding", Kudiakose replied, continuing with his multi-project management.

"Plz Kudiakose, I really need your help. It's a matter of life and death for me"

"What is it", Kudiakose asked, getting irritated. Kudiakose doesn't like being disturbed when he's busy with his projects.

"You see Kudiakose, one of my relatives have brought a proposal to my parents. Now my parents have asked me to go and meet this girl. I am feeling very nervous and I don't want to go alone. Can you please accompany me".

Kudiakose suddenly jumped from his seat.

"Did you say you are going to meet a girl", Kudiakose asked with his eyebrows raised and eyeballs almost popping out of the socket. "Why didn't you tell me this before Krishi. Come let's go and meet her. And don't be nervous, I am the there for the you".

"But if you are busy with your projects, then I can understand. I will go alone"

"What!!!..no no no....how can I leave you alone in such a dangerous situation. After all what are friends for. Just gimme a second, let me dress up and come".

After an hour or so Kudiakose came out of the dressing room. Krishi couldn't believe what he saw. Kudiakose was completely transformed. He was wearing a suit, a tie, formal pants, formal shoes fitted to perfection with ray-ban goggles and his face fully white washed with powder - somewhat similar to this random picture of a dashing young guy that I found in the internet.

"Err Kudiakose hope you are aware that I am the one who is going to see the girl"

"I know I know. That is why I have worn a simple dress".

"This is simple dress?"

"You want it to be more simple?I can do that if you want"

"No no no this is more than enough simplicity. Let's go"

After 20 minutes or so they reached a garden like place.

"Ok we have reached our destination", Krishi informed Kudiakose. Kudiakose looked around. All he could see was grass,plants, trees and some dogs.

"Where is your project...err I mean your girl???", Kudiakose asked.

"Look over there". Kudiakose looked at the direction pointed to by Krishi. He could see a boy and a girl standing at a distance.

"Who is this guy", Kudiakose asked

"No idea", Krishi replied

Krishi waved to her. Both the girl and the guy waved back and walked towards them.

"Hi you must be Krishi. Myself Madhuri and this is my brother Mahesh", the girl said shaking Krishi's hands. Then seeing Kudiakose, she asked Krishi "Err and this is?"

Even before Krishi could open his mouth, Kudiakose answered, "Manukkus...Kudiakose Manukkus"

"Hi, nice meeting you Mr Manukkus".

"Please call me Kukdi. Friends call me Kukdi only", Kudiakose replied, looking down, his face blushing and drawing God knows what, on the ground, using his feet.

Krishi was feeling very nervous. He didn't know how or what to talk to Madhuri. Madhuri was smiling at Krishi. Krishi, in turn, was looking at Kudiakose for some help. Kudiakose, meanwhile, was busy looking at Madhuri.

"So how was your day", Madhuri asked, trying to start a conversation with Krishi.

"Oh his day was good, how was yours", Kudiakose replied even before Krishi had a chance to reply.

"Err it was good", Madhuri replied, wondering why Kudiakose was answering instead of Krishi. "So Krishi, what are you currently doing"

"Talking to you of course...ha ha ha...what a joke what a joke", Kudiakose started laughing at his own "joke"

Madhuri gave a what-is-this-nutcase-doing-here look to Krishi. Krishi started sweating. The poor guy did not know what to do. Krishi wished someone could put him in a rocket and send him to a far off planet.

Krishi suddenly had a brilliant idea. He turned to Kudiakose

"Kudiakose, I think Madhuri's brother is standing alone, bored, without any company".

"Yeah, I totally forgot about him. Poor guy".

Krishi smiled. He could see that his plan was working. Atlast Krishi will be able to get rid of Kudiakose and have some moments alone with Madhuri.

Kudiakose turned to Mahesh.

"Mahesh, I think Krishi wants to talk to you". Then turning back to Madhuri, Kudiakose continued "So Madhuri, did I tell you about the time when Krishi unknowingly ventured into a ladies toilet. No? O god the story is so funny you have to listen to this. Last year when........"

Krishi meanwhile was banging his head on a nearby tree.

And thus goes the story of how Krishi met Madhuri. I guess the climax of this story is predictable, like any Bollywood movie. Both of them got married and have been living happily ever since :- Krishi with Radha and Madhuri with Ganesh. Last heard, Kudiakose is still busy with his projects.

The day Brocade stood still

2010-08-15T02:39:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer : As usual a good amount of masala and exaggeration added

3 weeks after our UDP (University Development Program) commenced, the final day had arrived when we were all going to "graduate" with flying colors. But before that glory were to be bestowed upon us, we had to prove our worth before an audience consisting of our managers and other fellow UDPers. As mentioned in my last post, the 31 UDPers were divided into 4 groups. On the final day, each team had to make a presentation and present it before the audience. Each member of each team would have to speak for about 2-3 minutes and the total time allotted for each team was 20 minutes. We were given instructions by our program coordinator, Eve, to use all the skills we had acquired during our UDP days to make a world class presentation. Oh yeah it was indeed world class, nothing less.

Finally the moment came. Team 1 members came up. Their topic was

"How will Brocade decide whether an application needs to be developed in-house or bought from a 3rd party vendor"

The team did a great job. They had researched their topic well and presented a series of steps and processes outlining how the company can take a firm decision as to whether it needs buy or develop a tool. At the end of their 20 minutes they received a big applause from the audience.

The next was the Question and Answer session. For the first few seconds there was silence. No questions. Then our heroine, Ojasvita stepped forward

"C'mon guys ask questions".

Still no response.

"If you don't ask questions then it either means you understood everything or you understood nothing"

The UDPers from other team were wondering what she was upto. Each of the team was praying hard that the managers don't ask any questions to us but here was a Jhansi ki Rani who is asking the managers to shoot her questions. Well anyway her wish was granted. One manager stood up.

"Ok so here is my question. Now suppose after following the process you just described, we decided to go for a 3rd party tool, what should we do if , after sometime, the 3rd party vendor refuses to provide support for the software they provide".

Total Silence.

After some seconds, Ojas spoke up.

"Yes very good question. Err Karamveer, why don't you come forward and answer this question", Ojas replied, stepping back and pointing to her teammate.

Karamveer felt as if someone just slapped him on both his cheeks.

"What!!!", he replied. Suddenly he realized he was standing in front of his managers.

"Yes yes good question. Hmm and the answer is...hmm....err...Sandeep I think you can answer this better".

Sandeep felt as if he was electrocuted. He started thinking fast.

"Right, I can answer, but I think this is Mritunjay's domain. Jay what do you feel".

"I feel like punching your nose" Jay wanted to answer, but he restrained himself.

Jay started coughing. "I would have loved to answer, but you see I am not feeling that well. Ojas I guess you can answer it yourself", Jay said and continued coughing.

Miraculously his coughing stopped once Ojas, feeling no way out, started answering the question herself.

Somehow Ojas, using all her UDP acquired skills, managed to convince the manager that in case the 3rd party vendor did such a heinous act, Brocade should just go and kick the vendor's ass. That would solve all the problems.

The next team to present was team2. Their topic was
"Suggest innovations in Brocade process flow to improve efficiency"

These poor guys had to study the entire Brocade processes and then suggest improvements to the managers who has been following this process for well over a decade and knows these processes like the back of their hands!!! But still the team put up a credible performance.

Now came the frightening session - the question and answer part. Since there was no Jhansi ki ranis in their team, no one dared to ask "Do you have any questions". They just kept quiet. But this strategy didn't work. One of the managers stood up and asked

"Do you think having a process cycle in software development kills creativity".

Before anyone from their team could even open their mouths, Prateek quickly replied

"Yes definitely. We should just take away all these processes and throw them in the dustbin".

All The managers looked shocked. Someone who has not even been in the company for 1 month tells them to throw away all the process that they had painstakingly nurtured for years and years!!! The manager who had asked this question must never have expected this answer in his wildest dreams. He must have planned for a followup question once the he got a "No" for an answer, but now all he could do was stand there helplessly with his mouth wide open and eyes bulging out.

But the other managers were not ready to give up so easily. Each of them trained their guns on Prateek and started throwing at him big big fundaes as to why processes are so important. Prateek, poor guy, was getting bullet shots from all sides. He thought giving a simple answer would have put an end to the dreaded question answer session, but instead he now found himself in the middle of a war-zone. Atlast he could take no more. He lifted both his hands.

"I SURRENDERRRRR. Galti hui maaf karo. I accept henceforth that Brocade has the best process in the whole world".

Thus the Team 2 presentation also came to an end.

Next Team 3 came in and their presentation ended without any hitch. In fact I felt theirs was the best presentation among all 4 of us.

Next was my team - Team 4. Our topic was
"What initiatives can the government and the company take to reduce traffic congestion in bangalore".

Our presentation also started well. One by one each of us presented our part. Atlast it was Nazeem's chance. As planned the previous day, he had to present 2 things :- ways that can be implemented by the government and the companies to encourage public transport and also the summary of our presentation. But what followed was something we had never bargained for.

"We all know that our managers come by cars everyday. They never use public transport. We software engineers care about our environment and the pollution and so we use the public transport. But our managers come by cars and increase air pollution, noise pollution and increase bangalore traffic. Why should we suffer for what our managers are doing".

The managers were stunned. They looked as if someone just put a needle on their seats. Suddenly some of them got "phone calls" while some of them got up to go to the restroom.

"So to summarize the bangalore traffic is caused by our managers".

And in this way our mind blowing presentation also came to an end.

A great day for the UDPers, though I am not sure the same could be said for the managers. Last heard, they were trying to find out the guy who recruited these 31 great guys and gals.

Art of Negotiation

2010-07-29T14:31:00.000-07:00

It's been 2 weeks now since I joined Brocade in bangalore. We were informed beforehand that for the first 3 weeks we would be undergoing training in soft skills. Each day, a new topic is chosen and deliberated upon. Since it was happening in a 5 star hotel, along with free lunch, we had no reasons to complaint. Today, as usual, a new day, a new topic.

The topic of the day today was "Negotiating Skills". As part of this, all of us had to take part in a role play where the 32 of us were divided into 2 groups. One group will be the employees of the company TechPartner (TP) whereas the other group will represent the company MegaHard (MH). Each group was given a sheet which contained details of only their own company, but it contained no details whatsoever about the company the other group represents. Each member of TP was mapped to a member of MH and both of them had to negotiate a successful deal favorable to both the companies so as to to replace the current contract. All of us were given 30 minutes to go through the sheet and prepare for the "negotiations".

I was in the group that represented TP. There was so much data in the sheet that by the time I could make out what the numbers meant I was already asked to go to the negotiating table.

The tough negotiator that I had to face on the other side of the table was none other than.............

DEBOJYOTI ulf DEBO ulf DADA!!! (Ok now everyone no need to laugh, he's a good guy).

Dada, with a menacing look in his eyes, came and sat next to me. Those eyes had a fire that I had never seen before (I may have missed it because he used to sleep 24x7 in IIT). Dada never let his gaze off my eyes even for a second. I started sweating.

"How can I save my company from the tough negotiator that MH had sent", I thought. I had no answer.

I had to talk to myself to calm down.

"Ok dude, take a deep breath. Relaxxxxxxx. Just remember this is just our Debo boy. You can do it. You know your CEO has given you some flexibility. All you need to make sure is that this guy does not raise the prices, mentioned in the current contract, by too much an amount. A small amount is something we can live with. Also make sure that we need to limit the period of contract to 2 years though MH guys will want it for a minimum 3 years. You also need to ensure that the we must have a guarantee from MH that we will be delivered atleast 20 units each month, double of what is mentioned in the current contract. So just relax. Everything will be just fine".

I calmed down a bit. I wiped the sweat flowing down my face. I decided I will just go for it. I must have rehearsed my opening statement a 100 times. I wanted the opening to be perfect. But even before I had a chance to blurt out my well rehearsed statement, which was by the way "Good Morning", Dada exploded :-

"I can give you only 5% discount"

I was shocked for a couple of seconds

"You what?"

"I can give you only 5% discount", Dada repeated.

"You will?"

"Only 5%".

Wow....here I was trying to see how to make sure MH will not increase the price and this fool is offering me 5% discount!!!

But since this was a role play for negotiation skills, I thought I will play along.

"No I want 10% discount", I said, putting on a stern face.

"I won't go a step furthur from 5%", Debo stated, standing his ground.

"As if I care", I thought. I started laughing in my mind.

"Ok fine so be it, as you wish. 5% it is", I replied, as if I am doing him some service.

Next in the agenda was number of units to purchase. I had to convince him that I need a guarantee that MH will provide me with 20 units per month, compared to the 10 mentioned in the current contract

"I want a guarantee that MH will give us 20 units each month", I informed Debo.

"Ok done", he replied.

"What? Done? So fast? So easily? No fight?".

"You sure?", I asked just to make sure I heard him right.

"Yeah", he replied

Man, I am good at this, I complimented myself. Debo is really a dumbo.

The last point was about the period of the contract. I was hoping to be third time lucky.

"I can commit only for a period of 2 years", I told Debo.

"No that can't be. It has to be for 3 years"

"No 2 years", I protested

"No 3"

"2"

"3"

"TWOOOOOOOO"

"THREE"

"Abee 2"

"3"

"Saale tera kya jaata hei. Maan jaana be. Class ke baath lime soda pila doonga", I pleaded.
[Idiot, what is there for you to lose. If u agree to 2 years, I will buy you a lime soda]

"Ok done. Agreed".

Hahaha, this guy really is a dumbo. He agreed to all my terms without me conceding anything. Man I am good.

We went back to the class. We had to report our negotiation terms to Eve, the instructor from US, who was coordinating the class. After we told her the terms of the negotiation, she turned to me and asked

"So do you think this deal was beneficial for your company TP"

"Definitely Eve. My CEO wanted me to ensure the price rise per unit was minimum, but through my hard negotiating tactics, I actually got a discount of 5%. Man I am good. I had to put my negotiating skills to a even harder test with respect to ensuring that TP could secure a guarantee of 20 units per month, but in the end, the better guy prevailed and the deal will guarantee TP 20 units per month. Man I rock. And last, but definitely not the least, I kicked his ass by limiting the period of contract to 2 years. Man I am the best".

Eve was impressed.

"Goooooooooooood. Well Doneeeee. Now Dibaaajoti, how was the deal for you. Was it beneficial for your company MH".

I was laughing in my mind. What will this dumbo say

"Well Eve, these are my points

- My CEO had asked me to ensure that I do not give more than 15% discount. I ensured I gave only 5%.

- My boss had instructed me to ensure atleast 15 guaranteed units per month, I am giving him 20.

- I ensured that there was nothing in the contract wherein MH could have to pay any fines in case of late deliveries.

- Though my boss ideally would have liked the deal to be for a period of 3 years, he was ready for 2 years, provided the discount in the price was not more than 10%. Since we had agreed on the 5% discount, it automatically ensured that I could have the period of deal for 2 years.

Taking all this into account, I must say I couldn't have got a better deal"

From somewhere above a 1000 ton hammer fell on me.

Those were the best days of my life

2010-07-08T13:40:00.000-07:00

This blog is dedicated to all my friends of CSE MTech 2008-10/11 batch. I miss you guys so much.

The golden era has come to an end. 2010 June 2nd, 3:20 pm - the final journey homewards from IITB. Many of my friends had already left and the campus was wearing a deserted look. It was one of those moments which I had dreaded long ago, but I had kept convincing myself that this moment would never come, so much so that it was a little too much to handle when the moment did arrive. I was fortunate enough that almost all my friends who were still left in the campus had come to see me off. It is a moment that will be ingrained in my memory forever.

IITB - a place that truly made me, helped me realize myself, helped me make the person I am now. I have never known how much this place meant to me, but now when I sit at home typing this post, I realize that I have left a part of me there forever, a part which will always want me to come back to that campus again and again. Now that I have all the time in this world to sit back and just think about everything that happened to me in the last 2 years, I am overwhelmed at the many "firsts" that I did and experienced, after coming here :-

The foremost "first" is that it was the first time ever that I got the taste of hostel life. The experience was mind blowing - I made friends for life, total independence, lessons on how to survive bad food and last but not the least the hostel competitions. It was a truly alien world to me, but to which I became a part of very quickly.

I started blogging after coming to IITB - I have never told this to anyone before, but I actually got the inspiration to blog after reading my classmate, Devshree's first post in her blog. Though initially my idea of blog was of a digital database of all my experiences in IITB, as time progressed, I decided to change my blog goals a bit. I decided to write all the major experiences in an actual real world diary, but I was also pretty sure that I didn't want to miss out on those small small experiences that I had during my 2 years here and that is what I wanted my blog to reflect. I am sure many many years down the line I will read my own posts once again and hopefully recollect all those golden moments.

Continuing with the list of firsts, it was in IITB that I did my first ever solo performance. The occasion was the freshers' party, a few days into my IITB "career". Fortunately I didn't mess it up. But I more than made up for it by trying to be a hero once again, went solo again for the annual onam celebrations of mallus, but this time made a big fool of myself in front of the audience (another first). Needless to say that was and will be my last solo performance ever.

It was in IITB that I acted in a movie for the first time ever - a role of Circuit, with Adil donning the role of Munnabhai. Though the 5 minute film, was made as an entry for PG Cult fest 2009 and got a 2nd prize, everytime I see that film I laugh at how stupid I look in that film. Speaking of movies, it was also the first time I was part of the team that directed a movie, which made as an entry for PG Cult fest 2010, and it won a third place. As the part of movie spoof team for PG Cult 2010, for the first time ever, I acted in a live skit in front of a live audience. For first time in my life I won medals for some sports events - bronze for badminton and gold for football, both as part of PG Sports 2010. It was the first time ever that I had assumed a major role of responsibility, that of being department placement nominee, and I think I, along with Raka, have done an ok job. At the last count 83 out of 85 students had got placed. I really hope the ones who are yet to get placed gets placed soon.

But the most integral part of my campus life involves my friends, all different from one another, each special in their own ways, and yet all of them contributing in their own ways to make me what I am. I think I was able to learn atleast something, irrespective of however big or small it is, from each and every one of my friends :- Raka, Adil, Saurab taught me what it means to work-hard-party-harder, Shubs, Riju and Chotu showed me what is meant by dedication to one's work, a lesson on how to face problems without tension from Anna, true definition of the word geek from Borol and Kashyap, how to be an inspirational leader from Ajitav, a lesson on sharing from Sheiku, time management lessons from Ambu and Akshat, how-to-increase-your-friends-circle lesson from Maate, a lesson on never-giveup attitude from Sandeep Mukherjee (I still remember those stressful placement days when, after each rejection by a company, you looked forward to the next company with no less enthu as the previous company you faced. I salute your courage dude. Anyone else would have long givenup on the cause) ...the list can go on and on and on. Not all experiences had an happy ending, but nevertheless they are as memorable as others.

Now, when I look back at my 2 years in this wonderful campus, I can see that IITB has given me much more than I had ever hoped for. It will always be a defining period in my life. I wish all my friends, who are about to enter the corporate world, all the very best and hope that this flame of friendship will last forever. These truly were the best days of my life. (A special thanks to our junior batch for making this wonderful farewell video).

The booze effect

2010-06-15T08:05:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer : MDH Masala added in good quantities.

The best thing about a booze party is not the booze itself, but how people starts behaving once they have gulped in the necessary quantity. Even the most introvert guy opens up his heart and shares his "pains" and "struggles" of his life (even though he would be struggling to stand on his 2 legs).

The other day our batch had organized a goodbye treat to our juniors. We wanted to make it a rocking and a memorable party and wanted everyone to join in the DJ. But most of the juniors were shy and I had to pull most of them out forcibly to make sure they too joined in the DJ party - an action for which I paid for dearly once the booze party started at 9:30 pm. Once the booze started taking effect, the hunter became the hunted. The very guys whose pants I was pulling, now started pulling my pants to join them for DJ. My cries of "I am your senior, show some respect" or "Don't pull my pants, it already torn underneath" or "Dude, unlike you, I have been dancing all this time and has no more stamina left" fell on deaf ears.

For one guy, the booze effect manifested in a different form. He comes to me with a smile on his face and says

"Thank you for such a wonderful party. You guys rock". Then he goes back to drinking

After 5 minutes, he comes back again and with the same smiling expression, says

"Thank you for such a wonderful party. You guys rock", after which he goes back and continues drinking

After 5 minutes, he again comes back. But this time, even before he could open his mouth I replied

" Yeah right, we rock"

His smile vanished and he blinked for 2 seconds, opened his mouth to say something but then thought otherwise and went back, never to return again.

Then there was this another guy, who was having a tough time having his dinner. He was looking very sadly at the chicken leg on his plate. I looked at him

"Hey why are you not eating the food. Does it taste bad"

He turned around and looked at me, looking totally lost.

"I was just wondering how there are 5 plates now when I remember taking only 1 plate"

"Err but there is only one plate on the table", I asked in a confused voice.

"Really!!!....You sure?"

"Of course I am sure"

"Hmm then I guess that explains"

"Explains what?"

"Explains why my hands goes through the plate every time I try to pick up this chicken leg. I gave up after trying for half an hour"

As the party was nearing to an end and everyone was having a great time, there was suddenly a loud cry from somewhere in the dancing crowd.

"ANAND...WHERE IS ANAND...."

Everyone started looking around to see from where the voice was coming from. All of us got a shock when we saw the owner of the voice - It was our "Chinese-guy-with-Indian-visa" - Mahesh Kamtess with an empty whiskey bottle in his hand.

"ANAND...WHERE IS MY ANAND...."

I came close to Mahesh and whispered into his ear

"Usne tera bhi wallet churaya kya...saale ne do din pehele mera sau rupaya churaya tha"

"Chup kamine, Anand ke baare mei aisi neech baatein...%&#@!$*&^#E@"

What followed was 2 minutes of sweet sounding music for which I had to spent the next one hour cleaning my ears. Meanwhile Kamtess continued his search for Anand. He soon found him.

"ANAND....ANAND..."

Anand , who was enjoying his dinner, looked startled on hearing the voice and started looking around to see what was happening. Mahesh went and occupied the seat near Anand. And with a twinkle in his eyes, a smile on his face, he looked at Anand.

"Yes?", Anand asked in a surprised tone.

"Do you know something dear. You are the best sportsman ever. Without you, we would not have won PG Sports this year...You single handedly got PG sports Volleyball gold for us...you are a stud...you are God...you are great...you are...you are...arre I am not getting words to describe you".

Then turning to face the "audience" who were enjoying this scene he shouted

"Koi tho dictionary laake de be"

Then turning back to Anand

"Don't worry eh, Dictionary is on it's way. I will find out the right words for you in just a second. Dictionary aane de".

Anand did not know whether to cry or smile.

Just then Kamtess caught Ajitav gulping down the 100th scoop of icecream

"Saale @%&#^$!#$ khaana unlimited hei ka matlab ye thodi hei ki poora icecream tu khud khale"

"Sorry Shaktimaan", Ajitav replied back and then continued his eating.

Suddenly Kamtess remembered that Ajitav was our PG sports Rep from our class

"Oyee Ajitav, iss baar best sportsman ka award Anand ko milna chahiye..."

Then turning to Anand, with a smile on his face

"Don't worry eh, I have arranged for the best sportsman award for you", patting Anand on his shoulders.

Ajitav, who was half way through gulping down his 101st scoop, blinked

"Award?What award....there is no such award"

"If there is no such award, then make one you idiot", Kamtess shouted back

Turning back to Anand

"Don't worry eh, Foolish fellow, he doesn't know anything. Abhi bhi bacha hei"

Anand was all smiles. I guess he must have felt happy that atleast someone was aware of his sports contributions and sacrifices he made for our batch. By around 12 midnight the rocking party came to an end. The hero of the party - Mahesh Kamtess - had to be airlifted to his room, along with many other Martyrs, who sacrificed their consciousness that day, for the cause of making our goodbye party a success.

Gadha Vs Darshad

2010-05-25T08:32:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: A completely fictional story. If you feel that the characters in this post resembles anyone alive or dead then it is your problem.

As usual the sun rose at 6:00 am in IITB that day. Mikhilesh dayamaxx Gadha, as always, refused to get up, inspite of the poor alarm howling into his ear:-

"Get up you big fat moron, else you will miss your breakfast again"

No use. The alarm kept howling while the kumbakaran continued sleeping.

But finally Gadha did manage to drag his huge body down to the mess, only to see the mess workers cleaning up the tables. Poor Gadha missed his breakfast yet again.

"Grrrrrrrrr", his stomach protested.

Gadha patted his belly softly and sweetly. "Don't worry, Badlu's hei na".

Badlu's is the canteen in IITB CSE department. Gadha has a symbiotic relationship with Badlu's. One can't exist without the other. Gadha's daily quota of 20 idlis keeps Badlu's business running while Badlu's idlis manages to keep Gadha's belly round and plump.

After gulping down his idlis, Gadha slowly walked towards his lab. On the way he suddenly remembered that he didn't sign the muster. Muster signing is an integral part of every Mtech student's life. Officially the students are expected to sign it daily inorder to ensure that their monthly stipends reach their bank accounts safely and surely. But most of the CS Mtech students are the hard working types, who instead of wasting their precious time in stupid labs, prefer doing quality research on varied topics like "how to increase movie downloading speed" and "how to sleep all day without getting tired" in their rooms.

Thus the daily muster signing goes for a toss. Once in a week or two, the students, stressed out from their research work, finally find time to move their asses to the labs, putting a week or two's signature in the muster at one go. But sometimes it can happen that the higher authorities in CS office, led by the efficient and sincere, madam Dictor, conducts lightning muster raids without any warnings. She then analyses the muster for finding out the names of these "hard working" students and then crosses out the unsigned part of the muster after which she writes those terrible words by the side of the unfortunate students' names.

"Meet me".

The "marked" students will then have to meet and convince Dictor madam as to why the muster was left unsigned for so long. The innovativeness of CS students are best brought out under these pressure situations. If it is "a-crow-shitted-on-me-when-I-was-on-the-way-to-sign" for Sankaj lover-boy Polanki, then it is "I-was-in-coma-for a-week" for Mudiyakose Kakus. Dictor madam had a very hard task finding out which of these excuses were actually genuine. For example she knew Mudiakose was telling the truth, as it was only common for students working under Prof Impossible-to-satisfy Disha to go into coma every now and then, but she knew Polanki was lying as he was a born liar. It is always a tough task for her. Poor ma'm.

So back to the story.
As our hero Gadha was signing his muster, he happened to see Darshad giveup-case Karnarkar's row in the muster.

"Saala do hafte se sign nehi kiya hei", said Gadha to himself.

Suddenly a bright idea came to his mind. Making sure that no one was seeing him, he slowly crossed out Karnarkar's row in the muster and wrote in the side

"Meet me"

Then he took out his phone and dialled Karnarkar's number

"Oyee lounde, kya kar raha hei"

"Kuch nehi yaar, as usual room mei time pass"

"Aree sun, tune do hafte se muster mei sign nehi kiya hei na"

"Ha yaar, kal karta hu"

"Dictor madam has crossed out your row in the muster and has written Meet me by your name"

"What!!! O my god, what should I do now"

"Nothing much you can do other than meeting Dictor madam. Else your stipend is gone".

"Ok yaar, I will get ready and reach the office in half an hour", Karnarkar replied in his usual give-up tone.

"Great".

Gadha disconnected the phone and with a wicked smile on his face, he proceeded to his lab.

Meanwhile in madam Dictor's office.

"Jai why is this student coming to meet me in half an hour", Dictor madam asked without taking her eyes from the mail she just received from the HOD's (Head Of the Dept) office.

Jai got up and came over to Dictor madam's desk and looked at the mail madam was reading.

"Oh this one. This student was caught trying to put proxy attendance by signing for his friend in the attendance column in course CS233".

"Hmm ok let him come. I know how to deal with such devils".

After half an hour or so our friend Darshad giveup-case Karnarkar came running into the office and frantically opened the muster and went through all the rows till he reached his name. What he saw there made his heart skip a beat.

"Meet me"

Slowly, with a heavy heart, without knowing what excuse to make up, he made his way to Dictor madam's desk.

"Ma'm"

Dictor madam looked at him

"Yes?"

"Sorry", Darshad said, with his head looking down, not daring to look at ma'm face.

"Sorry??? For what?"

"Ma'm...err...signature...I..."

"Oh ok so it is you. How dare you do such a thing. Are you not ashamed of yourself?".

Darshad looked a little confused. "Am I supposed to feel ashamed for not signing the muster???", he thought in his mind.

"Err yes ma'm, I am really ashamed. I promise you I will sign regularly in future".

"What!!!You will sign again in future?"

"Yes ma'm, that is a promise that I will keep till my last breath. Even if someday I am not well and can't come, I will make sure I will get it signed by someone else".

Dictor madam was in a state of shock. This student, who was caught signing proxy attendance, dares to stand before her and declare that he will continue giving proxies till his last breath!!!!On top of that he will make sure that if he can't do it, he will make someone else do it!!!!.

"You...you.....", Ma'm was grinding her teeth, seething with anger

"Why are you angry ma'm. If you want I will tell everyone in my class to do this regularly".

"You will make your friends also do the same!!!!...@#$%@#$%#@$ ...".

Ma'm couldn't take this any longer

"I will have you suspended from the institute"

Now it was Darshad's turn to get shocked.

"What!!!Ma'm I told you in future I will sign regularly", Darshad almost cried in a desperate voice.

"That is exactly why I am going to suspend you".

"You are going to suspend me ?", Darshad now couldn't control himself. He started crying...then thinking of a better idea he puts a hand over the right part of the chest and started making different expressions of pain in his face to show that he was about to get a fatal heart attack without realising that the human heart was actually on the left.

"What else should I do to a student who is hell bent on giving proxies....and also doesn't know where his heart is"

"Signing proxies?No ma'm I never signed any proxies", Darshad replied in a confused tone, making sure he moved his hand to the left.

Now Dictor ma'm was confused.

"Err...but are you not the student who was caught signing proxy attendence in course CS233?", she asked

Suddenly the "pain" in Darshad's chest "miraculously" disappeared.

"No ma'm that would not be me. I came here because you crossed out my row in the muster and had put 'Meet-me' near my name", Darshad said in a relieved tone.

"No I didn't cross out anything in the muster not did I ask anyone to meet me", Dictor madam replied.

"What? But it was written...muster....but Gadha told me.....Gadha also saw..."

Suddenly the entire picture became clear to Darshad. It was Gadha's plan all along. Gadha was taking his revenge on Darshad for stealing an idli from his plate yesterday. Darshad could not control his anger. A shout resonated across the entire CS dept

"GADHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"

Placement stories

2010-05-10T11:08:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer : As usual good amount of masala added.

It was around the month of October. It was the time when students had to upload their resumes to the placement site. But before they can do that, they had to get their resumes verified by the placement nominees (me and Rakesh).

One such day during this period ,Harshad pinged me.

"Hi, I need to get my marks verified. Are you free anytime".

Whoa this guy is acting very formal and friendly, I thought. Looks like someone hit him on his head real hard.

"Yeah sure no problem, come with your marklists to my room at 8 pm", I pinged back.

"Your room?In Hostel 12", he pinged back.

"You know of any other room allotted to me in some other hostel?"

"Hello how can I come to your room"

"I suggest walking...but if you can fly, then that would be better"

"Hello Sree, wake up"

"$!#&#%@$# You wake up"

"Do you know who I am"

"A big fat buffalo. Come to my room if you want to get your marks verified", I pinged back, starting to get irritated.

"Hellooo I hope you have not mistaken me for someone else. I am Harshada"

"I don't care if you are Harshada or...", I suddenly stopped and stared at the screen for a second.

What!!!Harshada??? Harshad with an 'a' at the end???So I was talking to a girl all along???

I checked the chat window to check the gmail id from which I got the ping. It was indeed Harshada and not Harshad. Realising my mistake, I apologised to her and explained to her that it was a case of mistaken identity. From that day onwards I made sure that I will never reply to a chat until I am doubly sure as to whom I am chatting to.

*****************************************************************

The following incident had happened to Sheiku during our placement season, though I came to hear about it only recently.

The placement season was in full swing in our campus. Each of us trying our level best to crack the tests/interviews and get into one of the many companies that visited our campus during the placement season. Sheiku too was no different.

For one such company Sheiku had cleared the test and now his interview was going on.

30 minutes had passed...yet Sheiku's interview was still going on.

45 minutes...no sign of Sheiku...

50...55...finally after one hour or so Sheiku was granted his freedom.

Sheiku was all smiling when he came out of the interview room. We got the hint that he must have done great in his interview.

"Oyee how did the interview go yaar"

"Aree first class. I guess this was my best interview till now. I guess they must be typing my offer letter now", Sheiku replied happily.

"Cool dude you are so confident that you have cracked this job. Gr8 going buddy", and everyone started congratulating Sheiku.

"Oh it was nothing. The technical questions were easy. As for the HR questions, I was just unstoppable. In fact the HR was just staring at me with her mouth wide open after I answered her last question. Guess she was speechless on seeing my performance in the interview", Sheiku chuckled.

"That's wonderful. What was her last question".

"Oh it was simple. She just asked how I came to know about her company".

"And what did you tell her"

"Just what she wanted to hear. I told her all these lies about attending their pre-placement talks in August, how professional their PPT looked, how I was impressed with their work profile and how I came to the conclusion from their PPT that theirs was the best company in this world".

"Err did you actually attend their talks"

"You kidding me. I must have been sleeping in my room when this happened".

"Hmm I think I know why the HR was speechless", Krishna told Sheiku.

"Of course I know. I was rocking", Sheiku replied.

"There might be another reason for it", Krishna reasoned.

"What is that", asked Sheiku.

"The company never came for pre placement talks".

Needless to say Sheiku started preparing for the next company.

Panku ban gaya corporate-man

2010-04-17T02:04:00.000-07:00

"Panku, a letter has come for you from your company. I have given it to Macha. Collect it from him", I pinged Panku.

"Sahiii. Aaya re aaya, mera offer letter aaya", Panku cried in excitement.

After about 10 minutes , Panku pinged me.

"Yaar this is not an offer letter....it's a regret letter", Panku cried.

"What!!! How can that happen. C'mon there must be some mistake", I tried to console Panku.

But Panku was inconsolable.

"They couldn't have written it in more clear words. Boohoo.....", Panku started crying

"What have they written in the letter", I asked.

Panku pinged me the contents of the letter

"We are sorry to inform you that we cannot appoint you for the post of Member of Technical Staff which we had offered you at the time of recruitment.

The decision has come following the huge economic setback seen by the company during the current financial year.

We will open our recruitments in December 2010. You can appply to our company in December 2010"

"Wow Macha is good", I thought.

Flashback : one hour back

"Oye Macha, tell Panku that his offer letter will come tomorrow. The HR has send a mail saying so", I pinged Macha.

"Hmm Panku is finally getting is offer letter is he? Now let's see, do I see some fun here?"

"What is the fun in his getting an offer letter", I asked

"Hmmm...do one thing- usko ye math bolna ki uska offer letter aaya hei...usko bol de ki uska regret letter aaya hei", Macha's evil mind started working furiously.

"Aree he will commit suicide if he hears something like that", I protested.

"Na re, nothing like that".

"Magar aise kyu karna hei bhai".

"Yaar, whenever I ask him what will happen if the company sends him a regret letter, instead of an offer letter, he says if something like that ever happens he will put an atom bomb on my head....Atomic Energy Commission ka CEO uska mama samach reka hei".

Thus Macha coerced me into this evil plan with his "forceful" arguments on why Panku needs to be taught a lesson - never put atom bombs on Macha's head.

Thus the ingenious plan was born. Accordingly, Macha was entrusted with making the most convincing regret letter ever made and I, being the DPN (Dept Placement Nominee) had to convince Panku that the letter was indeed send by the company.

Back to the present

"Yaar after reading the letter one thing is clear", I told Panku.

"What is it? ", Panku asked hopefully.

"You are screwed", I answered "truthfully"

"Boohooo mummmyyyy. Ab mei kya karu yaar", Panku started crying even louder.

Poor Panku, he was at his wits end.

He didn't know what to do. He started debating whether he should buy a rope or a bottle of rat poison, both of which will burn a hole in his pocket, or whether the free of cost jumping-from-the-window would be the better option.

Finally, when Panku said he has made his decision and that he was going to H12 shop to buy some ropes, I spilled the beans. I revealed to Panku our deadly plan codenamed "The Macha-project"

After hearing all this, Panku was back to full josh.

"Abe kamine macha, agar mera letter nehi aaya hota tho tere sir pe bomb fod deta mei"

What to say. Some people never learn their lessons. But Panku is now a very happy man.

KPL Day 7 - The Fall of the Warriors

2010-03-28T23:43:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer : Unusually high dose of masala and imagination added.

KRRRINGGGGGG...

The alarm echoed all over the four corners of H11 hostel.

"Kaun gadha phone kar raha hai itni subah".

Neha picked up the phone.

"Neha, this is Tarun here. Come to KV grounds at 7 am."

"Acha it was you. Don't worry Tarun, I will be there at 7 sharp"

True to her word she reached the ground at sharp 7 am. As usual, everyone except the lazybones Sree, had reached the grounds.

"C'mon my boys, aaj ye match hamko jeetna hi hai. Woh Sree ka bachha abhi tak aaya nahi kya.Osko do thapad doonga. Aane do osko."

After 10 minutes or so, Sree somehow managed to reach the ground after which the match started.

Day-7 : Semi finals between Ultimate Warriors and "The Strikers"

Toss was won by "The Strikers" and they chose to bowl first. For Ultimate Warriors, Tarun the owner came out for batting along with Uday.

Tarun started blasting and by end of first over Ultimate Warriors had a good start.

But in the 2nd over Tarun got out. He returned back to the pavilion.

Maate felt let down that such an important member of her team got out so early in the innings.

"Yaar Tarun tune fine leg ki aur maarne ki koshish kyu ki. Straight bat se khelna tha na"

"Sorry Neha", said a dejected Tarun.

Sree looked at Maate with his mouth wide open.

"You know so much cricket? Fine leg?Straight bat?"

"Oyee u r talking to the captain of Indore Women's Cricket team. Mind it."

Meanwhile Kiran and Uday continued batting.

Maate was in full form.

"C'mon Kiran maaro chakka"

Maate was giving cricket tips to whoever cared to listen.

"Kiran ka bat lift utna nahi hei jitna chahiye. Isliye woh teek se nahi khel paa rehe hei. Aur unke bowling na..blah..blah..blah......"

Meanwhile 4 overs up. Now it was Matte's turn

"C'mon Maate, you can do it", cheered the Ultimate Warriors.

"Ya I know I can do it", Maate acknowledged.

20 pushups, 25 situps and 30 strecthes later, Maate was all set to face Ambu, the lady terror from the Strikers' team.

1st ball...Ambu balls...Maate misses....

"Pitch mei bahot patthar hai", Maate reasons, looking at the pitch.
"Oyee tu...", Maate shouts, looking at the nearby fielder." idhar aa...ye sab pathar hata"

The poor guy meekly followed her order. After all, who can dare disobey Maate.

2nd ball....Ambu balls...Maate misses...

"Hmm bahot tez hawa aa rahi hai".

3rd ball....Ambu balls...Maate misses

"Mere ankh mei dhool gaya"

4th ball...Ambu balls...Maate misses...

"Oyee ball mei bounce nahi hai"

5th ball...Ambu balls...Maate misses...

"Bat ki width bahut kam hai yaar"

"Aap agar aagya de to kitchen se bada sa tawa leke aau aapko batting karne ke liye?", Sree asked.

"Oyee chup, concentrate karne de mujhe".

6th ball...Ambu balls...Maate misses...

"Yaar inswinger tha. Kuch nahi kar payi".

Thus Maate completed her wonderful round of batting.

With some wonderful hitting at the end by Sagar, the Ultimate warriors put up a score of 65 at the end of their 7 overs.

The Strikers started their innings with Vijay and Harnath. Sagar started with a great over conceding just around 4 runs.

Maate was inspiring our team members with her cheering everyone from the pavilion (as for 1st 4 overs, girls from both teams had to sit outside).

Then started the downslide. Each over, we were gifting them with wides and no balls. Wides after wides were being bowled by almost all bowlers.

Maate was getting frustrated.

"Oyee kamino, itni subah subah utke aayi hun ye sab dekhne ke liye? Thik se bowling kar re. Inswing kar, Out swing kar, kuch bhi kar, bas unko out kar".

But no use. Along with the opponents' great batting and our wide bowling capabilities, the Strikers were inching slowly but steadily towards their target.

By end of 5 overs, they required 8 to win from 2 overs. Tarun bowling the 6th over...
wide,wide,wide,wide......there...game over...most wonderful way to end a game...

The Strikers win with 2 overs to spare. Ultimate Warriors creates history....for the most number of extras - 30. Now that's what is called an unbeatable record.

KPL Day 5 - Execution of a perfect plan

2010-03-26T22:47:00.000-07:00

Day 5 - as usual had to cut short my sleep and get by at 6:30 am to "report" at the ground for our "practise" match against Scorpions. It was a practise match because we have already qualified for the semis. We had taken a decision the previous day that we will stick to the following strategy -

"Play our worst game, make the other teams think that we can easily be pushed over and thus make them over confident during the semi final match".

Though others will find it very hard to stick to the game plan, it will be a cake walk for me since it comes naturally to me. But finally we did manage to execute the script to perfection. Here's how.

After winning the toss, we elected to ball. Sagar, though he struggled to stick to our team plan, he did manage to put up a credible performance and managed to give away 15 odd runs, though the team expected him to give atleast 20 runs away. Uday came in next and did his part well. The opponents were well in sight of a 100+ runs even though only 2 overs were done.

Next came in Tarun. We had high expectations from him. But he screwed up our plan!!! He gave only 10 runs!!! Sagar was desperate. The team plan was going haywire. He needed someone trustworthy to make sure the team plan is executed perfectly. He knew he could depend on only one person for this. He turned to me.

"Jaa mere sher, dikha tera jalwa"

And thus started my over of the tournament.

1st ball....6...

2nd ball...4...

Sagar started dancing with joy.

3rd ball....6 jaane waala tha...but unluckily caught at the boundary...

Sagar stopped dancing.

4th ball...dot ball.

Sagar stared at me. He had a "don't-let-me-down" look on his face. I gave him a "mei-hoo-na" look back.

5th ball...1...Smoke started coming from Sagar's ears...his face turned red.

6th ball...again caught and batsman out...Sagar went mad and started pulling out his own hair.

I let Sagar down. Only 11 runs and on top of that 2 wickets also.

Next over Kiran came in for bowling. The seasoned bowler bowled the right line and length and got thrashed all over. Smile returned back to Sagar's face.

He gave the last over to Guru.

First 4 balls dot balls. Sagar came in running and had a chat with him .
Sure enough it had the desired effect.
Next 2 balls - 6,4.

Thus the Scorpions scored 80 - which was 20 short of our expectations, but nevertheless we were fine with it.

It was easier than expected to stick to our plan when it came to batting...

Tarun opened, within 2 balls he was back.
Next was Sagar.
He went, he saw, they conquered, he came back...really fast.

Uday and Kiran tried their best, but somehow was not getting out too quickly.

When it was the girl's over, Maate too chipped in with her contribution. In KPL, the rule is for every wide ball the batting team gets +2 runs and everytime the bats-girl gets out, 2 runs are deducated from the batting team.

The bowler at the other end was Prajakta aka Motu, who apparently claims that she was the college cricket captain in her Btech days (government sources inform me that there was never a girls' cricket team in the history of that college, but let's leave that aside for the time being).

Thus whenever Motu bowled a wide delivery, Maate compensated by getting out the next ball.

Motu bowls wide Maate gets out,
Motu wide Maate out....wide,out...wide,out

Thus Maate successfully and skilfully batted through to make it a maiden over.

Maate returned to the pavilion to a standing ovation by our team members. The plan was working great.

Needless to say, by the time we ended the innings, we not only lost by 30 runs, but ensured that all of us got out. Whew it is really hard to make one's team plan work, but in the end we did it.

KPL Day-3: The rise of the warrior(s)

2010-03-24T23:50:00.000-07:00

Aha what a match....what a godgiri match!!!It was one of the most mind boggling matches ever played in the history of 7-over international matches. Read on to find out how history was made today.

Our today's match was against Dark Knights, one of the favourites to win KPL. They won the toss and elected to bat. We made a bowling change and asked Tarun to open the bowling. And it worked!!!He bowled a good line and length and gave away only 9 runs. Sagar was the next bowler. He was not at his best today and after he was done with his over the score read 2 overs 19 runs. Uday came in next and wrested the initiative back with a tight over.

Sagar came in to bowl his second over. Sagar sensed danger.

"Kya fart hei!!!Koi runs hi nehi bana raha hei ye Fart Knights waale. Agar chase karne ke liye runs hi nehi hei tho BCCK* ko mere batting skills ke baare mei kaise patha chalega"

BCCK* - Board for Controlling students from playing Cricket in Kresit

By the end of Sagar's second over, the opponents were going at around 10 per over.

Next was the girl's over. In came our in-form bowler Maate. She made a silent prayer to Aloo Devi, the goddess of Aloo parathas, to give her the strength to knock down the opponent's stumps. As usual, the Ultimate Warriors kept cheering for Maate

"Maate tuche apni Aloo Paratha ki kasam, aaj tuche apni Aloo Paratha ki karz chukana hi padega. Udaa de humare dushmanom ko"

And guess what. Maate's Aloo Parathas did not let her down. She bowled a maiden over!!!! And the icing on the cake - no dead balls at all!!!!!!!
This can mean only one thing - Maate must have emptied the entire set of Aloo Parathas meant for the whole of H11. So what if H11 inmates have to go hungry today - what an over madamji.

At the end of 7 overs the Dark Knights made 60.

Our innings started. And guess who opened the batting along with Tarun...the greatest batsman ever to have walked the floors of C wing 2nd floor H12...the one and only...yups that will be me.

As usual nothing new to add in the script - bowler bowling, me swinging, keeper getting catch practise, Rahul Dravid threatening Sagar, me back in pavilion "retired hurt".

2 overs left. 32 to win.

Mukand, playing his first match, looked a little tense. But he kept his cool and managed to bowl a decent over. 11 runs came of it.

6 balls 22 to win.

No one had any hopes of winning from here. Guru had already started playing rock-paper-scissors with Sheiku.

Rishi bowling...Kiran batting.

Rishi, after a successful first over with just 5 runs coming off it, was looking confident.

In comes Rishi with his first ball. Kiran swings his bat and runs a single. The ball goes straight to Debo. Debo fielded the ball and then looked at Sagar at the keeper's end. Both of them communicated with their eyes

Debo : "Jab tuk Suraj chaand rehega, Debo fielding ka raja rehega"

Sagar : "Acha aisa hei. Oyee Kiran bhaag".

Debo : "Oyee saale bhaag math. Mei mazaa kar raha tha be..Oyee cheating math kar".

But it was too late. The 2nd run was already taken

Rishi : "Oyee saale #$!@#$@ Debo tera #$@#$@$ maar doonga mei"

5 balls...20 to win.

Rishi runs in...bowls a fast one....only to be dispatched to the boundary for 4.

4 balls 16 to win.

Rishi now balls a straighter one. Kiran lashes his bat at it. It goes high high high and hurray......it crosses the boundary ropes for a six!!!!!!!!!!!

All hopes came rushing back to us. Guru even refused to continue playing rock-paper-scissors with Sheiku. He didn't want to miss out any action.

3 balls 10 to win.

Tension mounting. Sweat all over Rishi's face. He looks straight at Kiran's face. It seems Rishi is contemplating a change in line and length of the ball.

Rishi comes running in. Kiran grips the bat tighter. Rishi bowls...

WIDE!!!!!!!!!

2 more runs (wide accounts for 2 runs in KPL).

3 balls 8 to win.

Rishi has no idea where to bowl now. Kiran seems to be hitting the ball as if it was a football.

Rishi balls the 4th ball of his over.
Kiran swings his bat...but misses. Oh Damn.

2 balls 8 to win.

Rishi grips the ball tight..comes running in again...and bowls an over pitched ball...perfect ball to be dispatched to the boundary and Kiran did no mistake....and guess what...it was also a no ball!!!!!!!!!Free hit!!!!!!!!!!!

2 balls, 3 to win, free hit.

Needless to say Kiran utilised the free hit to the hilt and closed out the match with a boundary.....Ultimate Warriors wins!!!!!!!! What a knock by Kiran. It will certainly be remembered for a long time to come.

The Ultimate Warriors celebrated the victory in true Warrior style. No one had expected us to win even till the last over....it was truly a memorable match...and the Hero...Kiran...A gem of an innings.

After the celebrations, me, Vinu, Rishi and Srikrishna were walking back. Rishi was dejected.

"Yaar Krishna, tell me yaar, what did I do wrong. Do you think I bowled many over-pitched balls"

"Yes yes you bowled many over-pitched balls".

"You think I should have bowled more yorkers"

"Yes yes I think you should have bowled more yorkers"

"I should have bowled a better line and length"

"Yes yes I think you should have bowled a better line and length"

"Saale mere hi copy kyu kar rehe ho. Kuch aur bolo be"

"Bharat Mata ki Jai"

"Yeh kya tha"

"Tune hi tho bola kuch aur bolne ke liye"

"@$%#%^!@#!@$"

Meanwhile in the other match "The Strikers" won an upset victory over the tournament favourites "Scorpions".

Tomorrow is a resting day for us. And rest for me also. No blog tomorrow. Whew.

KPL Day 2 - Ultimate Warriors become Penultimate Warriors

2010-03-23T23:02:00.000-07:00

After a great first day yesterday, Ultimate Warriors found their match today - Powai Panthers,who were licking their wounds after getting mauled yesterday by Dark Knights, came right back into the tournament with this win. As for the Ultimate Warriors, we had a point to prove - that winning is not everything, we also know how to lose a match. When you are on a winning streak, it gets so boring after a while. So a good change for us I guess.

The match started at around 7:30 am. Both the teams were in high spirits. Maate was looking unusually energetic today. Wonder whether it had anything to do with the sudden and mysterious disappearance of about a dozen Aloo parathas in H11 yesterday night.

We won the toss and elected to bat. As we were getting ready for the ultimate destruction of our opponents bowling, Tarun suddenly realised one thing - Sagar has not yet reached the ground.

"Idiot he must still be sleeping. Someone call him up. Meanwhile me and Kiran will open the innings".

First over. Shailendra bowling to Tarun....and it's a six!!!!!!!!!

But in the very same over Kiran nicks one to the keeper. One down.

Sagar was supposed to be the next batsman, but he was yet to reach the ground. Kiran had to decide who will take Sagar's place now. He looked at the 4 of us sitting in our "dressing room" - Guru, me, Vishal, Uday. He pointed his finger in our direction in slow motion...and from somewhere behind, came the announcement

And the winner is....Sree Shankar.

"Ooohhh I won...I won...", I cried out.

The crown of the "Next batsman" has come on me. I can't believe it. I hugged my friends and thanked them for their support. As I walked down to the crease to a standing ovation, I was rehearsing my acceptance speech in my mind -

"Thank you everyone for this wonderful moment. I would like to thank my parents, who supported me by buying me a toy bat at the age of 5, which I broke the very next day. I would also like to thank my coach Mr Machine Mandotkar who kicked me out of his coaching academy for breaking his office window with my deadly bowling and last but not the least I want to thank my friend Kiran TVS for getting out so fast and giving me a chance to hold the bat for the first time in my life".

The game resumed. I was just unstoppable. I whacked my bat in all possible directions. The only problem was that I was whacking empty air. The stupid ball didn't know that it was supposed to make contact with my bat and not with the stupid keeper's hand. The balls kept coming and I kept whacking and keeper continued his catching practise. I guess Rahul Dravid, sensing that his record for the lowest strike rate was on the verge of being broken by my stupendous innings and must have threatened Sagar (he finally managed to reach the ground) with dire consequences if he didn't do anything about it. So the poor guy, coming under intense pressure, recalled me back to the pavilion.

Tarun meanwhile was playing Godgiri game. But the rule was that after the batsman crosses 30, he had to retire. Thus all our star batsmen, including me, were back in the pavilion. Once our innings ended, we had scored just 49 runs in 7 overs.

Sagar, as usual, was our opening bowler. He, along with Uday, bowled a tight line and length and by end of 4th over, they required 26 to win from 18 balls. Next came girls' over. It was time for Maate to show to the world, the power of Aloo parathas of H11. The first 2 balls were deadly - they were declared dead. But Maate then upped the ante and managed to bowl 4 balls which were bang on target. But unfortunately the next 2 balls went for boundaries.

16 to win from 12 balls.

Tarun was the next bowler. He managed to ball 3-4 good balls, but then 1-2 bad balls can turn the situation in this game. 2 boundaries in 2 balls.

7 from 6 balls.

Kiran came in to bowl. He tried his best, but it was a tough task. Powai Panthers won the match. But nothing has been lost as yet. We still have 2 matches left. Tomorrow we face Dark Knights. The Dark Knights lost today's match against Scorpions. Let's see what happens tomorrow.

KPL Day 1 - Ultimate Warriors crushes The Strikers

2010-03-22T23:59:00.000-07:00

It's KPL season folks. For the uninitiated, Kresit Premier League (KPL), the baap of IPL, is organised and played by the CSE Mtech students. It was started by our seniors last year and we are continuing the tradition this year with much more vigour. This year the prize money for the winning team is KPL $3500. There are 5 teams with one girl in each team. Special rules were made to make sure girls contributed equally to the win(or loss) of the team. Auctions were conducted and a cost was fixed for each player. The starting price of each player was Rs.10. The costliest player in the auction was Kiran TVS with Rs.265 - narrowly overtaking my cost of Rs.40. More details of KPL can be found here.

All the teams have been practising vigorously for the past few days. Keeping in mind the big expectations that my team had in me due to the heavy cost they had to pay to buy me out, I wanted to give my best too. So I spent 2 days googling on how to hold a cricket bat properly and also on how to safe guard my strategic points when facing fast bowlers.

Finally the D-day arrived (23rd March,2010 AD).
Venue : KV grounds, IIT powai
Teams : Ultimate Warriors (yups that's my team) Vs The Strikers
Time : 7:00 am (#%&*@$!#* - waking up in the morning sucks)

Some team won the toss and they chose something. All I know is that we were given the ball and asked to bowl. According to the rules, the girl members from both the teams have to sit out for the first 4 overs. Sagar started the proceedings for our team. He stuck to our game plan which, I guess, must have been to bowl well. Maybe it was because Tarun didn't attend our team meeting when we made the extra ordinary game plan that we will bowl well. Or maybe the opposing team had sent in their spies and overheard our game plan of bowling well and made their own extraordinary counter game plan - to bat well. Whatever was the reason our team owner and bowler Tarun got thrashed all over the place the next over.

But somehow we managed to put brakes on the opposition till over number 4. I was quite extra ordinary in the field, making sure that not even a single ball crossed me to reach the boundary. That was not because not even a single ball came in my direction, it was just because I am extra ordinary.

Next was the girl's over. In came our heroine, Neha Jain a.k.a Maathe. The villainess, the girl from "The Strikers", Ambika a.k.a Ambu took guard at the wickets. Maathe had been preparing rigorously for this match for last 2 days. She made sure she had put in that extra effort to gulp down 2 more aloo parathas in addition to her exisitng quota of 5 aloo parathas inorder to get that extra energy.

Maathe gets ready to throw her first ball. Ultimate warriors had only one question in mind

"Will Maathe's ball ever reach the wickets?"

The Strikers had only one question in their minds

"Will Ambu ever be able to lift the bat"

Maathe throws. Ambu lifts the bat.

First bounce...second bounce....third bounce....

After 5 minutes

100th bounce...101st bounce....

No one had the patience to wait till the ball reached the wicket and so it was picked up midway. The ball was declared a dead ball.

Maathe had a I-knew-just-2-extra-aloo-parathas-were-not-enough look on her face. But Ultimate warriors showed true team spirit and encouraged Maathe to go on (as they had no other option - a girl's over was compulsory). Maathe finally managed to complete her 20-ball over in which 14 balls were declared dead.

Finally we finished our quota of 7 overs. The Strikers had made 53 runs. Thus our target was 54. Our opening batsmen - Kiran and Tarun. Both of them struck terror in the opponents hearts with their batting skills. The Strikers struck back by striking off Tarun stumps. Sagar, the next batsman, continued from where Tarun stopped. During the 5th over, Maathe too contributed and proved her mettle by hitting a boundary and by the beginning of the 7th over , the game was over. Ultimate warriors crushes The Strikers by 5 wickets!!!

After the celebrations of the morale boosting victory was over I returned to my room. I found Kukri in front of his computer.

"So how was the match"

"Naa it was easy. Nothing that me or my team couldn't handle"

"Cool, so how many wickets did you take"

"I didn't have to. My boys had it under control".

"Right, so in other words they didn't give you any over to bowl. Fine how many runs did you make".

"I am a middle order batsman. So you see I was supposed to come 7 down, but that situation didn't arise".

"How many players are there in the team".

"8"

"So you are the last man to bat. Great. Atleast tell me you fielded well".

"Of course I would have fielded well if the ball had come to me".

"So in short you didn't bat, you didn't bowl, you didn't field. What exactly did you do. Tell me atleast you touched the ball"

"Of course I did"

"When"

"During the drinks interval"

Update : In the 2nd match of the day Dark Knights Vs Powai Panthers, Dark Knights won by 40 runs. Tomorrow we face Powai Panthers.

My Abyasika experiences

2010-03-21T09:33:00.000-07:00

In IITB we have a very noble initiative called Abyasika, whose purpose is to improve the educational standards of the nearby slum children. Though the initiative has been going on for years, I came to know about this only during my 2nd year in IITB. Now it's been around 8 months since I started going for this, though I sincerely wish I could have joined this from my 1st year.

Everyday a batch of volunteers go to the slums near IITB, and help the children with their homework, clarify the doubts that they might have which, I guess, either they are afraid to ask the teachers or may not have understood when it was taught in their class.

It is not at all easy to make a small kid understand what something means, especially kids in the age group of 11-13. These children go to the nearby govt aided public schools where the quality of the teachers are one of the lowest. The level of education of a kid in these schools is much below the equivalent education level of his or her counterpart in private schools.

The most difficult part in teaching these kids is that what sounds obvious to us are not at all obvious to these small kids. Let's take an example

If I ask one of them to evaluate

2 +
3
-----

then they will give me the answer as 5.

But if I write the same thing as

2+3=

then they are unable to give me an answer.

They are unable to understand that both the above formats are one and the same.

Similarly if I write

2*5=

they will give the correct answer but when I rewrite it as

5*2=

they are not able to provide the answer.

Almost the same scenario is repeated when teaching English. Everyday these children are given a set of questions to do as homework by their school teachers. These children are asked to find the answers to the questions and then write both the question and answer 5 times. What these children do is, they just open their guides, search for the question and then copy the answer. Then they write both the questions and the answers 5 times. Homework done!!!

But what is the result? The students know both the questions and the answers by heart, but if I ask them what is the meaning of these questions and the answers, they have no clue.

For example the question and answer may be as follows

Q) How many wheels are there in a bicycle

A) There are two wheels in a bicycle.

If I ask the children the question, I get the answer within 2 seconds. But if I ask them what the question actually means, they have no idea. Thus these children are encouraged to resort to the same old technique of plain rote learning which is the curse of our Indian education system. What is more shocking is that the students do not show an inclination to understand the meaning behind what they are learning. It is not because they are not interested, but because their primary priority is to complete their "homework" otherwise they will receive punishments from their teachers the next day.

But what is amazing is the that even when provided with such sub standard quality education in their schools, there are one or two kids among them, whose ability to grasp and understand things is just mind boggling. Given the right education and help, I have no doubt in my mind that these kids can conquer the world. But the question is will these talents go wasted or can we do something to provide these kids with the right help.

Before I end, I would like to share an essay that a student in Abyasika has written, when asked to write an essay about her favourite teacher. Her name is Deepti.

PS : You can skip the last line of the essay. That line was added by Rishi, who too comes with me to Abyasika :)

Course sweet course

2010-03-03T02:29:00.000-08:00

Out of the many courses that a CS student in IITB can choose, the one that stands out is CS*** (let's keep this a suspense). This is a course that is tailor made for those students who wants to spent their academic semester on anything but academics. Obviously I too have credited this course. Now the natural question that anyone will ask is why is this course so attractive for lazy bones like me? Well, for that, one first needs to understand IITB :-

"It is not the IITB that one learns from books and parents"

"It is the IITB of boys who have to fight with 1000 other guys to win over 50 odd girls"

"It is the IITB of students who have taken a pledge to start their assignment work only when one day is left for it's submission"

"It is the IITB of Boroles and Kashyaps whose technical conversation makes you wish you were dead"

"It is the IITB of students who burn the midnight oil only to get screwed up in the exam the next day"

An outsider will never understand what this means. For that, one needs
the sense, the sensibility and the sensitivity of an IITBian.

(Now some people may say that the above lines are similar to some dialogues in a mallu movie. Just ignore them).

Sorry, got a little emotional there. So where were we? Oh yeah, why is this course so attractive. Well it is attractive because unlike other courses where you do all the assignments, quizzes, mid sems,end sems, project and still manage to get the worst possible grade, the same can be done in this course without much effort. The glamour quotient of this course can be gauged from the fact that in comparison to other courses where the average count of students who have credited the course is around 20-30, this course is credited by around 100+ students. So you see, I am not the only lazy guy in here.

This is the only course in whole of IITB where students come atleast half an hour before the class. This is not for the love of the subject, but for great demand for the last benches. There is a quiz in every class and the total weightage for the class quizzes is so high that even if we give the end sem exams a miss (btw no mid sems for this course), we can scrap through with a pass grade (passing is the only criterion for the final year students like me).

Now most of us belong to the elite category of students who have no idea what is being taught in class. There are just a few among us who are outside this category. The whole burden of making sure all the elite students pass this course, rests on these few students. It is such a huge responsibility that these guys have to take the hard way - study and come prepared to the class. As for the elite students, each of us has a definite style of finding out the right answer.

Let's take the examples of the bengali brothers Dodo* and Munna*. For Dodo to pass the course, the only thing he needs to do is make sure he comes early to class, and reserve 2 seats - one for himself and one for Munna and make sure that no one but Munna occupies that seat. Dodo is very protective of the seat meant for Munna, like a lioness protecting her cubs. Anyone coming near to that seat will have to face Dodo's wrath. After all Dodo's dream of passing out from IIT depends on how comfortable Munna is while writing the quiz.

*(names changed considering the terrorist threats faced by them)

Some people put their machine learning knowledge to good use. They first look at the guy sitting to their right, then to their left, then front and then back. After the "data" is compiled from all sides, machine learning techniques are applied on these data to come up with the answer which, they think, will be the most probabilistic answer. So effective is their approach that Prof Soumen and Prof Sunita would have had tears in their eyes knowing how much their students had learned from them.

Others, who are not equipped with such highly sophisticated weapons like data mining, will simply look at the guy on the right and then on the left and then take the arithmetic mean. Thus if the guy on the left has written an 'A' and the one on the right has written a 'C', then the answer, according to him, will be 'B'.

The only limitation of this course is what to do for the rest 1 hour 25 minutes, once the 5 minute quiz is over. Well, considering the brilliant innovative stuff that IITians are made of, we overcome this limitation by doing what we know best - sleep.

Thus this is one of those rare courses in IIT where we can end up getting good grades as well as good sleep by making sure we follow what bible has adviced us to do - "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself"

A paradise called Goa

2010-02-20T02:43:00.000-08:00

Last week some of us went for an amazing trip to Goa. The group comprised of myself, Ajitav, Sunil, Macha, Pankaj, Karthik, Kamle and CP. For all of us, it was our first time to Goa. We started our journey on 15th Feb night. We had booked AC Volvo sleeper tickets. It was my first time on a sleeper bus. Overall the journey was comfortable except for the AC. Each sleeper had it's own small AC that could be switched ON or OFF. But the AC on my sleeper had it's switch ripped off by some former passenger and the owners didn't find it very useful to fit a new switch. Thus the damn thing was blasting cold air directly on to my face. By morning I felt like an Antartican polar bear minus it's fur.

No sooner did the bus stop at the Panjim bus stand, the next day morning, than we were hounded by tour operators offering their services which included everything from arranging a guest house for all of us to stay, arranging for rented bikes if needed, arranging sight seeing trips etc. We finally chose one out of them, who then led us to a house nearby. Inside the house there were 5 beds. We looked at him.

"But there are 8 of us"

"C'mon 5 beds are more than sufficient. U guys are all thin right", he said taking a quick look at all of us before resting his eyes on Macha.

"Ok not all of you, but atleast most of you"

Macha's ego was hurt. Not only because the truth was revealed, but also because, I, the other fatty in the group, escaped "unhurt".

We soon freshened up and went Goa exploring. Towards afternoon we reached Dona Paula and had our lunch here. I was very excited about having Goan food, so I ordered fish curry rice. I was expecting the menu to be fish + some good curry + rice. But when the food arrived it was actually fish curry (without any stupid fish in it) + plain rice + some black half burned object which the waiter claimed was fish fry. The food items ordered by others were no better. Looks like Goan people prepare food using only sugar and coconut oil. The "spicy" fish masala was actually tasting sweet.

From Dona Paula we went to MiraMar beach and had a great time there. After spending around one hour playing in the waves, we left for Mapusa, where the Goan Carnival was going on.

By the time we came out of the carnival it was past 9 pm. It was then that we came to know that in Goa there was no public bus service after 9 pm. Thus we had to catch a taxi to return back to our house.

The next day CP joined us. He couldn't join us on the first day because of his "academic commitments".
The tour operator had arranged for a bus for us that day for sight seeing. The trip included a boating session

a visit to a temple (sorry forgot it's name)

a visit to Vagator beach

then to Anjuna beach

and finally to Calangute beach. This was one of the best and most frequented beaches in Goa. We all had our first para sailing experience here. There were many more exciting water sports that we wanted to take, but since we had a cruise to catch, we had to leave soon. The cruise was a laidback experience when compared to the water sports in Calangute beach, but good nevertheless.

On the 3rd and final day we arranged for a taxi to explore South Goa. South Goa is filled with old churches which are architectural marvels.

CP was the most enthusiastic of us to explore all the churches. He even started conversing in Hindi with the driver. Now, as far as CP is concerned, all hindi sentences should end with "jaata hei". He bought a Goa guide book, showed the driver some random picture and then instructed him

"idhar jaata hei".

Driver : "Acha aapko *** jaana hei kya" (don't ask me the name of the place. Ask CP or ajitav for that).

CP : "Udhar nehi jaata hei. Idhaar jaata hei"

Then he turns to Ajitav

"Abhi hum idhaar jaata hei. Lunch kaha jaata hei"

In the afternoon, we visited a place called Big Foot, a famous place in Goa. It was such a calm, cool and serene environment that greeted us. It is definitely a must visit place for anyone planning a visit in Goa.

Our final destination in Goa was Colva beach, the biggest beach in Goa. This is also one of the busiest beaches in Goa. Here too we had fultoo masti and fun.

This was one of the best trips I have ever had. Hoping for more such trips in the years to come.

Crisis management

2010-02-05T10:06:00.000-08:00

Making sure a company pre placement talk goes without a hitch has been one of the greatest challenges for a DPN (Department Placement Nominee), especially if the pre placement talk is that of a company that he himself was handling (Each DPNs will be handling a handful of companies). The most critical aspect of this was to make sure that sufficient number of students were present for each PPT. The following happened during one such PPT of a particular company.

The PPT was scheduled to start around 8 pm. At around 7:50 pm the students started trickling in and by around 8:10 pm there were sufficient number of students. But then there was no sign of the company officials. The DPN (let's call him Raj) handling the company was already getting nervous.

He tried calling up on the phone of the HR. No use. No one was picking up the phone. The audience, comprising of the "disciplined" students of IIT Bombay, were trying to communicate to him how much they are loving this. Some gave him the finger. Some showed a slow motion action of how his nose was going to be punched. Some even threatened him that they will celebrate his "birthday" that day.

8:20 pm. Yet no sign. Our DPN saab sweating. Now and then he looked at the audience. They were growing restless. He started realizing that something must be done before things go out of hand. He called the other DPNs for a quick meeting.

"Kya kare yaaro", Raj asked. Raj looked at me. I looked at Rakesh. Rakesh looked at Jainendra. Jainendra looked at Raj.

"Aree kuch tho karooo, nehi tho maar khayega aaj. Aur kal muche guide ke saath meeting bhi hei. Aaj hospital mei admit hua tho kal guide ka maar bhi khaana padega", Raj started lamenting.

Just then Raj pointed at the door of the hall and started shouting, "Catch him catch him".

We all turned around. A student was leaving the room. All of us gasped at the same time

"Oh No".

We ran towards him,as if our life depended on it, and caught him in the nick of time.

"Plz don't go, plz don't go. The company guys will come any minute. Please go back and be seated", Raj pleaded.

"But I have to go, it's urgent, I..."

Even before he could complete what he was saying, Raj let loose his desperation

"Plz plzz if you want, I will buy you tea and medu-vada after the session is over, but please go back and be seated"

"But I can't hold on any longer".

"Plzz you have to. The HR will arrive any moment now".

"That's exactly why I have to go to the restroom now. I can't hold any longer".

"Ohh". For a moment Raj didn't know what to say.

"First turn to the right", Raj replied giving him a sheepish smile.

8:40 pm. Yet no HR. Raj called us again.

"I am going outside and will try calling the HR. You guys somehow keep the students inside the hall".

And before we could say something, Raj vanished, leaving us among the pack of wolves baying for our blood.

I looked at the audience and muttering all my courage I asked

"The HR will be here any moment. In the meantime why not have some entertainment. Who will come forward and entertain us with a song or a dance".

The students started whispering among themselves. I was expecting a rotten egg or a tomato to fall on my face any moment from any direction. Luckily one enthu guy volunteered for "entertaining" us.

He came up to the front, turned and faced the audience.

"How about a nice break dance everyone".

Even before anyone could respond, he started shaking his hands, then legs, then hands and legs, then his whole body. He seemed to be enjoying his own show, though the same could not be said of the audience.

Suddenly the hall went quiet. The only noise that could be heard was our enthu guy dancing. Our hero stopped dancing.

"What happened", he asked the crowd.

No one replied.

He turned around to face us. There Raj, along with 2-3 persons with business suits, were standing, with their mouths wide open. On seeing them, our Michael Jackson slowly returned to his seat.

Raj turned to the HR.
"Sir, I can assure you that you have not come to the wrong place".

Thus goes the endless list of "innovative" crisis management techniques that are adopted by the DPNs of IIT Bombay.

Rishi's mundu

2010-01-13T21:52:00.000-08:00

"I got a mundu....I got a mundu", Rishi started singing at the breakfast table.

"You got a what", Dhaval asked looking confused.

"Mundu yaar...Oh sorry u guys don't know malayalam right", Rishi said with a smirk. "Mundu...lungi....dhoti...understood?"

"Acha you mean you finally got something to cover your lower body now. Great. Never thought I will live to see this day".

"Hey how about this :- we can stick Rishi's mundu onto a wall and ask everyone to autograph it. You can keep it as a souvenir from our class", Sagar suggested.

Ignoring all the teasing, Rishi continued

"Yeah yeah make fun how muchever you want but the fact is...I got a mundu...I got a mundu"...and the singing continued.

After sometime I asked Rishi,

" So how did you get your mundu. You bought it or someone gave you?".

"Or did you steal it from some poor mallu. Poor guy must be searching for his mundu now".

"I got it as a gift from my college junior".

"College junior? Why?".

Rishi became sentimental. Flashback.

Black and white film.
Location : Rishi's room in bangalore.
Time : 2 years ago.
Scene : Rishi standing. Junior squatting on his knees, at Rishi's feet, with folded hands. Rishi holding out his right hand and blessing his devotee. Analogous picture would be Hanuman squatting at Lord Ram's feet.

Junior : "Sir aap dhany hei"

Rishi : "Nehi beta, mei Rishi hu"

Junior : "Nehi sir, mera matlab tha tussi great ho".

Rishi : "Aisa kyu wats"

Junior : "Agar aap nehi hote tho na jaane mera kya hota iss bangalore sheher mei. Mei ye waada karta hu ki jis din mera naukri pakka hojai, os din mei aapko ek mundu mail kar doonga. Muche aashirwaad dedo sir ki muche naukri mil jaye aur aapko aapka mundu".

Rishi : "Ayushmanbhava wats Ayushmanbhava".

Flashback vanishes.
Location : Back to the breakfast table.

Rishi wipes the tears from his eyes that he tried hard not to show to others. Well, can't blame him. Such sentimental and emotional stories can make even a stone cry.

"And so, now that he has got a job, I have got my mundu".

After wiping off his tears, Rishi turned to CP.

"What kind of a mallu are you. You don't follow your own culture. Mallus have to wear mundu, but I have never seen you wearing a mundu. This is bad. See I am following your culture by wearing the mundu. Look at me and get some inspiration".

Now no one can taunt a lion and get away so easily.

CP : "So you are following our culture".

Rishi : "Yes"

CP : "And you are a Bihari".

Rishi : "Yes".

CP : "You are a Bihari. But you follow mallu culture. So basically that means you don't follow your own culture. What kind of Bihari are you?".

No one heard any more mention of mundu after that.

The rise of the king

2009-10-18T06:45:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer : A purely "imaginary" story with "imaginary" characters.

On one fine saturday morning, the whole of H12 was shaking.

Whoa, what was happening?

Is it an earthquake?
Did some terrorist manage to infiltrate our campus and throw a bomb?
Did Ladha fall in the bathroom again?

Many possibilities. No answer.

I quickly opened the door to investigate the reason. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect what I saw next. The whole corridor was filled with students running in a particular direction. And by students I mean both boys and girls!!!

"Whoa, so many girls in a boys hostel on a Saturday morning???"

I happened to hear a bit of conversation of 2 students who were running along with the crowd.

"Run fast lest we won't be able to get a glimpse of him"

"But where is he staying?"

"I don't know yaar, just follow the crowd. Everyone is running to see him only"

I couldn't understand what was happening. I asked this question to my neighbour, who was standing nearby.

"Yaar, what is happening".

"Don't know exactly yaar. Heard a rumour that Darkha Butta has come to the hostel"

"What!!!!Darkha Butta!!! The famous reporter from MDTV!!!!!!!!!wooooow. But why?"

"No idea re. Seems the institute has got a new academic genius. And that she has come to interview him".

"Cool"

"Also heard the genius is from 2nd year Mtech Computer Science."

"What!!!! You kidding right?"

"Well , this is what I heard. Don't know how true it is"

So some guy from my class is an academic genius and Darkha is interviewing him?
Hmm now who can that be.

Is it the deadly Borol-Sriram combo? Did Darkha madam happen to hear one of their lunch time "technical" discussions.....Na, not possible. She's still alive isn't she?

Is it our sit-through raja, the one and only CP?......Na not possible. He must be attending one of the 1000 sit through courses he has taken this semester and so he cannot be in the hostel at this moment.

Err, could it be me? Hmm a very high possibility. But then how come crowd is not running towards me? I guess people still haven't learnt to recognise a genius when they see one.

And since the genius is a guy, as unfortunately no girls stay in H12, it leaves out the network queen Chotu, the compiler rani Ambika, the mtech-convert-to-phd-convert-to-postdoc-convert-to-god-knows-what-is-left-to-take Riju and operating system "expert" Jaya.

Well it still leaves many possibilities...Rakesh, Kamle,Chander and so on.

I guess I need to find this out myself. So I dressed up and followed the crowd. I noticed that the crowd was running towards the A-wing of H12.

The whole of A-wing was jam packed. People were pushing and crushing each other. I somehow managed to make it to the front. Darkha Butta was standing a few meters away, apparently waiting for our hero to make entry.

Suddenly a back ground music started:

"He walks like a king, he talks like a king...He isssssssssssssssssss....THE KING"

And in a slow motion, our hero comes running out of his room with the song in the background. The camera moves from his toes up. As the hero comes running in slow motion, the camera shows a pair of black shiny shoes, then black shiny leather pants. The camera then moves up to reveal black jackets. Looks like this guy has been bitten by the Matrix bug. The camera then moves furthur up and finally our hero's face gets revealed....and I nearly died of shock.

Him????An academic genius??? Since when??? Am I dreaming?
I pinched myself. Whoa it is paining. Na, I am not dreaming. It is really not a dream.

The back ground music was still going on.

"He walks like a king, he talks like a king...He isssssssssssssssssss...."

This time I completed the song

".........SHEIKU?????"

Meanwhile the girls were going crazy. Sheiku was planting flying kisses to all the girls who had arrived just to see him.

"Oh he's soo handsome"

"Oh look look, he's smiling at me. Oh someone hold me or I will faint...."

I stood there mouth opened.

What was happening. Isn't this still the year 2009???

As I was wondering whether I was still living on Planet Earth, Sheiku's interview with Darkha Butta started.

Darkha : "So Mr Sheiku, how did you manage to top score in the machine learning course"

What!!! He top scored in the machine learning course??? This is definitely not the year 2009.

Sheiku : "Oh it was nothing. Just years of practice and a little use of my excellent brains".

Darkha : "But you were never even on the critics' radar before you became the course topper".

Sheiku : "Aaah critics. What do they know about machine learning".

Darkha : "A few words of advice to anyone who wants to take up machine learning courses"

Sheiku : "Well study hard party harder"

Darkha : "O is this how you top scored in this course".

Sheiku : "Yups...except for the study part".

Darkha : "So what next. Where do you go from here"

Sheiku (blushing) : "Well I guess I will go straight to the restroom. A little emergency".

Darkha : "Err I meant career wise"

Sheiku : "O sorry. Most probably I will apply for 'Machine Learning for Dummies' in MIT". You see no more machine courses left in IIT for me to take up".

Darka : "Wow MIT eh? Cool. Sheiku,a few words for your girl fans".

Sheiku : "I will always be there for them. They can ask any machine learning doubts to me anytime anywhere".

Darkha : "O your fans will be so happy to hear that".

Sheiku : "Err you asked only about the girl fans right".

Darkha : "Right. Anyway congrats once again for being chosen the academic genius. Wish you all the best in your life".

Darkha turns and faces the camera and continues

"And thus we have come to the end of your favourite program 'Even impossible things can happen'. By topping the machine learning course which only a selected few in this world has ever accomplished, Sheiku has indeed announced to the world...He is the king".

MTP stories

2009-10-08T05:58:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer : Some parts of this blog is contributed by Ajinkya Joshi

It's project season in IITB. We need to submit our stage 1 of our MTech project
(MTP) by this month end. All the class geeks are so busy with their project reports submission that it's been ages since I have seen some of their faces, apart from the coincidental meetings in the boys' restroom.

In order to evaluate how the situation of our class is in this hectic month, let us look at how some of our folks are doing their MTP. Names have been changed to protect the identity of these people.

The first in the list is Mr CurryPurry. So how is Mr CurryPurry doing his MTP...well let's see how

One fine saturday morning

"Knock knock".

Someone knocking at my door. I open the door.
Standing outside is Mr CurryPurry.

Me : "Hello Mr CurryPurry, what can I do for you"

Curry : "Hello Mr Sree Shankar, I need your help"

Me : "Anytime Mr Curry. Go on. Tell me how can I help you"

Curry : "Please call me on my mobile"

Me : "Why Mr Curry. You are standing in front of me, then why should I call you on your mobile"

Curry : "Please Mr Shankar, do as I say, pleaseeee"

Me : "Ok Mr Curry, relax. I am calling"

I gave a call to Mr CurryPurry's phone.

"The number you have called is currently out of range"

"My Curry, I am getting an out-of-range message"

Curry : "You sure?"

Me : "Positive"

Curry on hearing this became very excited. He, who can't dance to save his own skin, now started dancing and singing!!!

I couldn't understand what was happening.

"Why are you soo excited"

Curry : "Now my guide will not be able to contact me and fix the project
meeting. Yahoooooooooooooooooooooo. Another guide-free weekend."

and Mr Curry returned to his room, dancing all the way.

What can I say. Different people different styles.

Now we will see a different character. His name is Tree_In_Kresit (As mentioned above, name changed to hide the identity of our characters). Tree_in_Kresit sits in the Circular Hall of the Kresit building.

Tree_in_Kresit has almost finished the stage 1 of his project. The smart boy that he is, this was only expected of him. As Tree was marvelling at his own work sitting in front of his computer system, a colleague of Tree's, let's call him Mr X, came up to him. Unlike Mr Tree, Mr X is an ordinary Mtech guy. Why do I say so? Well he, like many of us, is successfully screwing up his project with high precision and accuracy.

X : "Hey bhai, how's your project going"

Tree : "Yaar, ye bhi kuch puchne ki baath hei. It's almost done re. Just some brushing up to do here and there"

X (Going green with jealousy) : "Yaar gr8 man. So what is your project about"

Tree : "It's a GPS related project. See suppose I give the coordinates of a place in terms of latitudes and longitudes, the program will return the output as -

You are currently sitting in such and such place "

X (Feeling even more jealous) : "Wow yaar, kya program banaya yaar"

Tree (blushing) : "O it was nothing"

X : "Hey can you enter the coordinates of our lab into your program. Just want to see what what the output will be"

Tree : "It's output will be
You are currently sitting in the circular hall of the Kresit building"

X : "Cool dude. Just give the coordinates to the program"

Tree : "Ya sure"

Our friend Mr Tree enters the coordinates. The program starts processing
Mr Tree and Mr X both glued to the computer monitor waiting for the output.

And then with a flash, the output screen appeared.

"You are sitting in the middle of the Arabian Sea"

Silence for some seconds.

Mr Tree looked at Mr X.

"Satellite problems"

PS: Thus completes the 50th post of this author. He has thus successfully managed to bore the readers 50 times over :-).

Salsa night

2009-09-24T21:21:00.000-07:00

One fine day, or rather night, as I was "busy" doing my MTP (theoretically MTech Project, practically Mega Time Pass) , I got a call on my mobile.

It was our dear old Rishi.

"Oyee Sree, daer ho raha hei, jaldi aana"

Me : "Kaha jaane ki baath kar raha hei bhai"

Rishi : "aree bhool gaya kya...aaj Salsa ka workshop hei na"

Me : "aree ha bhool gaya mei. Nehi yaar tu ja. Mei MTP kar raha hu"

Rishi : "Kya MTP be. Ye salsa hei salsa. Har roz dekhne ko nehi milthe"

Me : "Na yaar MTP"

Rishi : "Dance seekhne ko milega"

Me (tempted, but firm) : "hmm...naaaa...MTP"

Rishi : "H11 se sabi aayenge"

(Hostel 11 [H11] is the PG ladies hostel in IITB)

Me (more tempted, but still firm): "hmmmmm....hmmmmmmm....naaaaaaa....MTP"

Rishi : "Unke saath dance bhi karne ka mauka milega"

Me : "Aisa hei kya. Sahi biduuu. MTP chale bhaad mei. Chalooooooooooo"

We were joined in our salsa quest by salsa "enthusiasts" CP, Kukri, Ajitav and Nazeem. On reaching the location, we saw that we were not alone in our quest. The entire male population in IITB seems to have taken a liking for salsa.

No chance of getting a girl partner now, not with such a screwed up gender ratio of 1 girl to every 100 boys. So what was the next best thing? Well watch the lucky ones dance. Atleast we will get to know what the entire hullabaloo about salsa is all about.

A few minutes later, we heard an announcement.

"Everyone sitting on the benches, please come down and take part in the workshop".

Me : "Looks like the guy making the announcement is blind. Can't he see that all the girls have already been taken up".

(Another announcement)

"Everyone sitting on the benches, please take the person sitting to your right as partner and join the workshop"

I turned my head to the right. I got the shock of my life. Ajitav was grinning back at me.

"Over my dead body dude. No way. Don't even think about it"

Ajitav : "Oyee c'mon yaar, what's so much fuss about it. Don't worry dude, it's me only na"

Me : "Dude, that's precisely my worry"

Ajitav : "Aree tension math le. Come let's join them"

With these "consoling" words, he dragged me to the ground. The only solace was that I was not the only person doing the same-gender-salsa. In fact it was almost an all-male salsa workshop.

The workshop started.

All the "couples" were made to stand next to each other. Ajitav stood to my left.

The instructors shouted out

"In case of same-gender couples, the person on the right will be the girl and the one on the left be the boy".

Crap. My luck sucks. I turned left.

"Oyee you come here. I can't move like a girl"

Ajitav : "Aree kuch nehi. It's all the same, whether you are a boy or a girl"

Me : "Yeah right, maybe for you"

The instructor continued

"The girl will keep her left hand on the guy's shoulder. The guy keep his right hand on the girl's hips"

Me (Looking at Ajitav) : "Don't you dare do that. That idiot will keep saying such things. After all he has a hot chick with him. That's not my case"

Ajitav : "Aree kuch nehi re. It is very easy"

And he proceeded to show me how it is to be done.

Me : "Hehehe......hehehehe"

Ajitav : "What happened. Why are you wriggling and laughing"

Me : "Abee you are tickling me"

Ajitav : Ok, let's try it again

And again we tried.

Me : "Hehehe....hehehe"

Ajitav : "abee stand still"

This went on for sometime. After 10 minutes of salsa I had enough of it. I stopped and returned to the bench. Ajitav, with his undying spirit, soon found another guy, and he continued. Thus went my first salsa experience. I hope even my enemies don't get to have such a salsa ever in their life. I would rather prefer jumping down a cliff.

Life in 3rd semester

2009-09-08T00:10:00.000-07:00

Yikes...life cannot get more hectic than this!!! So busy that it's been ages since I wrote my last blog. Now finally managed to find some time to write some crap. In this semester each day starts agonizingly early (8:30 am!!!. Man, I really want to kick the ass of the guy who made this timetable. Making students see the inside of a classroom before the sun rises should come under IPC 302 and the person who made this timetable must be awarded capital punishment. By the way sun rises at 10 am in IITB). My daily routine goes as follows :-

Get up at 8:15 am, then dress up and start eating breakfast by 8:30 am and then reach the class at 8:50 am (for the 8:30 am class). 10 minutes goes into relaxing under the fan after the marathon you just completed to reach the class from hostel. After 10 minutes of relaxation when you are really ready to now listen to what the prof is saying, he would have already covered half the lecture. Since I don't have this bad habit of revising what was taught the previous class, whatever the prof says goes over the head. So back to relaxation till the class gets over. The 8:30 am class is a total give up.

Usually classes go till afternoon. Then I come back for lunch. Gulp food down in 10 minutes and then go back for the 2 pm class. Finally at 3:30 pm all my classes for the day will be done with. Next stop...placement office. (For those who don't know, DPN is Department Placement Nominee. There is a DPN for each department and program. DPNs are responsible for inviting the companies to the campus for recruitments. Unfortunately for the students of CSE Mtech, I am one of their DPNs. Poor students). Since IITB always strives for cultivating a sense of sharing among all the students, they thought it was best that all the DPNs share one phone to call the companies. So there I would stand in the queue, waiting for my chance to use the phone, with nothing better to do other than watching the other DPNs "thank" the company HRs for refusing to come to the campus. After half an hour of useful work done, I manage to get hold of the phone. Now the other DPNs get a chance to see me thank the company HRs.

As if the DPN work was not a handful, last week came the shocker in the form of TA duty. We use a tool called Sonata for our VHDL assignments. And I am the TA (Teaching assistant) for this course which requires the VHDL tool. The stupid tool, which was working beautifully for the last 3 years, saw it prudent to stop working when I became the TA of the course. Now what wrong have I done to this tool to deserve this? Couldn't it have waited for just 3 more months and stopped working when the next TA came over. No, it had to stop only now. Calls and mails from the prof and students jammed my inbox and phone. Aah how I miss those good old days when there were no telephones or internet to disturb your peace of mind.

The experiences in the courses that I had credited too were getting no better day after day. It was raining Andas (eggs,zeros) in the probability assignments and quizes. As for functional programming (FP), the prof and me were certainly not on the same page. But that doesn't prevent me from nodding at his lectures in class. Well I don't stand to lose anything by giving the impression to the sir that I am listening attentively to his lecture when I am actually analysing why Shahrukh Khan movies are better than Salman Khan movies. Who knows, I may actually benefit from this nodding technique...maybe end up getting some sympathy half mark or one mark from sir when I manage to Andafy (meaning getting anda) FP exam also.

Morning blues

2009-08-12T10:49:00.000-07:00

"UUAAAAAAAA"...."UUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"

I sprang up from my bed.

"Wha wha what happened what happened...".

I looked around my room. Nothing.

"Did India just conduct it's 3rd nuclear test outside my hostel room ?????", I thought to myself.

I looked out of the window. Just a few pigeons practising their shitting skills on some poor chap's clothes below.

The nuclear test seemed to be the only possible explanation. Nothing else could sound so loud to awaken the sleeping giant. I stood still for sometime trying to hear the sound again. Silence. Hmm maybe just a bad dream I guess. I looked at the watch. It was only 8:45 in the morning. There is still a lot of time left for the first lecture. It starts only at 9:30. Who bothers about getting up now. And back to sleep I went.

"UUAAAAAAAAAAA.........UUAAAAAAAAAAAA"

"What the ****...".

I got out of my bed.

"Definitely not my dream. No one makes such stupid noise in my dreams. Not even me"

I was determined to find out what it was. I opened the door.

"UUAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"

The full blast of the sound wave, magnified 100 times, hit me squarely on my face. Things in my room started flying around, my cupboard door closing and opening at a vigorous pace and I was lifted off my feet. I was floating in the air, holding onto the handle of the door, lest I too get blown out through the window.

PS: Ok relax, nothing like this happened. I just opened the door and heard that stupid noise again.

The noise was coming from the restroom. I tip-toed up to the restroom door.

"Who knows what monster may be inside it. No humans can ever make that noise", I thought.

So, as a tool for my protection, I grabbed the broomstick that was kept near the door. I opened the door very slowly. Initially I couldn't see anything. I opened a little more.

Slowly a blue mass came into sight.

"Whoa a blue monster" ???

I opened the door a little more. More blue mass.

"Man what was this thing".

I pushed the door a little more. More of the blue mass.

"Doesn't this thing have an end" .

After some more pushes it got fully revealed.

It was one big human ass. An ass with an even bigger blue shorts put on.

The owner of this ass, a short fat guy, was doing a stunt which I would never ever wanna see even if someone offers me a free dinner. This guy was putting his hands into the throat and trying to do something which only he knows what. The only thing that was coming out was his "UUAAAAAAAAA"s. The sound was such that it can blow your ear off at a very close range.

That sight was more than enough for me to lose my sleep. It was soo disgusting. If he did want to do something like this, he could well have gone and done privately inside a bathroom and that too without making such a ruckus. He managed to wake up pretty much everyone in the entire hostel wing with his "UUAAAAAAAAA"s.

But I had not seen the end of it.

He came out of the restroom, walked straight to the water cooler. He drank some water. Then he did a much more disgusting stuff. After he was done with drinking the water, he just blew his nose and put the phlegm in it. I just felt like kicking his ass.

Has this guy lost his senses or something? If he was some illiterate poor guy, he could have been forgiven. But this is a guy who was getting the highest quality education this country can provide. It just made me wonder what a waste all this education has been on him if he can't even follow the basic norms of civil manners and responsibilities.

Guys day out

2009-07-27T12:14:00.001-07:00

Sometime around last month, some of us had gone lappie shopping. Me and Vinu had been planning to buy a lappie for sometime now. On that day we were joined by Anand, Ajitav, Nazeem and Kukri. Though he didn't come, the person who was most enthusiastic that I get a lappie was my roomie Sheiku. Not that he cared two hoots about my lappie, but he was finally going to see a day when his lappie would be free from my evil clutches. The poor guy had a tough time, for the past one year, trying to dislodge me from the front of his laptop. There were also rumors that he had tried to rent a bulldozer to kick me out, but apparently the security guys at the main gate reportedly stopped him and said he needs to get permission from the Dean of human affairs, for issues related to kicking out irritating roomies. All day long he was encouraging me to go and buy my lappie, even offering me goodies like if I do manage to get hold of my own lappie, he would sponsor a dinner for me. Heights of desperation!!!

So thus we 6 heroes, out on a critical mission to save Sheiku from the ultimate depression that comes with sharing room with roomies like me, set out to seek our goals. We went to Mulund, got into an electronics shop (Chroma), spent some time looking at the models and atlast decided that it was going to be a DELL inspiron 1545. We used Anand's credit card and paid for both our lappies. Mission accomplished.

But now the question was where next. After some squabbling in the middle of the road, we decided that the next destination was going to be CST (Chatrapati Sivaji Terminus). After a 45 minute train journey we reached CST. Outside the station, there was a beggar sitting on the roadside. He looked into my eyes with a deep emotional face. I fell for it. His looks melted my otherwise rock solid heart and he became richer by Rs.5.

The round 2 of "where next" started. Some brilliant guy suggested "Tendulkar's". It's a restaurant owned by our own Sachin Tendulkar. No one else had any other bright ideas and so the resolution was passed unanimously. We got into 2 taxis and set forth to our destination. 5 mins later we were all standing in front of the restaurant, staring blankly at the notice put up in front

"Closed for renovation"

"So anyone else has any more bright ideas???", I asked. Nazeem, who was standing next to me, raised his hand.
"I have one", he said.
"Well what is it", I asked.
He replied with a smile on the face "We can go to Deluxe".

"What the hell is that. Is it some shopping mall. Because if so I don't think my stomach will allow me to go to a mall when it had been crying 'food' 'food' for the last one hour", I replied.

With an even bigger smile, Nazeem replied "Nopes it's a good mallu restaurant".

The mention of a mallu restaurant brought a smile to all of us. The only non-mallu in the group, Ajitav, also agreed to the idea.

"Great so what are we waiting for, let's go", I said.

Nazeem (frowning a bit as if he remembered something important just now) : "Well a small problem."

Ajitav : "What is it"

Nazeem : "I forgot the exact location"

Everyone : "#$@%$#%@#$@. "

Ajitav : "Ok no problem, just tell me some landmark and I will try to find the location".

After thinking for sometime...
Nazeem : "There are lots of trees on the road side"

We looked around us. There was nothing but trees in all directions.
We looked back and glared at Nazeem.

Nazeem : "Err right, not a very good clue I suppose. Let me see whether I can remember any other landmark"

One minute....two minutes....five minutes....everyone holding their hungry tummies

"Aah I got another one", shouted Nazeem

Ajitav : "About time. Ok so what is it"

Nazeem : "There is a tar road in front of the restaurant"

Ajitav (turning red): "#$@%$#%@#$@"

"Ok how about 'The restaurant was build from bricks'".

Ajitav's face turned dark purple.

"A white Skoda car was parked outside the restaurant that day"

Smoke coming out from Ajitav's ears.

"There was a beggar sitting outside"

Ajitav starts plucking out hair from his head.

This went on for sometime. But inspite of these earth shattering clues, Ajitav was unable to locate the exact location of the restaurant.

Silence for 5 minutes. Then Nazeem opened his mouth to speak.

Nazeem : "We can do one thing. If we return to CST station, I may be able to remember the way to the restaurant from the CST station"

Me : "You sure?"

Nazeem : "Yeah"

So we all boarded the taxis and returned to CST station. 10 minutes later we were standing at the same spot where we were standing just half an hour back. Productive use of time I had say. The same beggar was sitting there. Our eyes met once again. The same emotional look. Naa it's not gonna work this time buddy.

Everyone looked at Nazeem. "Ok genius, lead the way".

Nazeem : "Right, give me 10 minutes. Let me just try to remember"

After 10 minutes , Nazeem pointed at a direction and directed all of us to walk.
After walking for sometime, Nazeem stopped.

"What happened"

Nazeem : "This is the route in which we are NOT supposed to go"

Me : "What!!!!If you knew that, then why did you take this route"

Nazeem : "So that I can make you guys understand that this is the wrong route to take."

Me : "Did anyone of us enrol for your course of finding the right path by traversing all the wrong paths????"

Nazeem : "Well I thought you guys may want to know both the wrong routes and the right routes"

By this time everyone started exercising their arms and legs. Anand was halfway through his push ups. Vinu started with his squats. Nazeem sensed danger.

Me (hunger sounds coming out from stomach and anger smoke from the ears) : "Someone's ass is in the line of fire"

Nazeem covered his ass with his hands to provide it with an extra level of defence in case Vinu and Anand decided to act.

Nazeem : "Ok I am sorry, I still can't remember it exactly. Give me another chance. I will make sure you guys reach safely at Deluxe"

Again Nazeem led the way. Every now and then he looked back to see whether the others are making any concrete moves to launch missile attacks on to his ass. Tension was written all over his face. He knew he faced definite extinction if he didn't lead these hungry cannibals to some source of food.

After around half an hour of roaming around, finally he did take us to the correct place. Only then did he start breathing properly. I guess never ever would he volunteer to lead an "expedition". He had enough for one day.

A curious thing that I noticed on reaching the Deluxe was that, on the entrance it was written "Partial A/c". Now no one understood what was meant by partial A/c. Or atleast they didn't understand it till they got to experience it. It meant a "A/c which doesn't work".

A homework half done is a homework not done

2009-07-20T01:35:00.000-07:00

For the last one week, I had been attending a 6-day course of Art of Living (AOL). Not that I have any hope that I am going to be any better than what I was before the course. Let's just say it is this small curiosity to know what actually these guys teach. But I must say I am pretty impressed by what I have been experiencing throughout the course and, I feel, if practiced daily, will certainly be beneficial. But being the lazy guy that I am, that's just going to remain a pipe dream.

The course is being conducted by a person called Salil. He is one of the many AOL teachers. This guy has a tremendous sense of humor (and I must say, after meeting some other AOL teachers, this strait seems to be a common one among all of them). He explains things in such a lucid and funny way that whatever he says, will get registered in our heads (including my dumb one) for a very long time. At the end of each day, each of us is given a homework to complete. One such homework that was given was

"Do 5 random acts of kindness".

We were given a time of one day for this task.

The next day, as usual, everyone gathered in the hall. Salil bhai came in. After a few introductory words, he asked,

"So how many of you did your homework yesterday".

Many hands rose into the air. As you may have guessed, I didn't raise. Salil then asked one of the persons, who raised his hand, to stand up. His name was Ramesh (name changed to protect the identity of this person. Another insignificant reason is I don't know his actual name).

Salil : "So you did your homework right"

Ramesh : "Yes sir, I did 4 acts of kindness"

Salil : "O you did 4 acts of kindness!!!"

Ramesh (with a very happy face) : "Yes sir"

Salil : "Well, what was the homework"

Ramesh : "Do 5 random acts of kindness"

Salil : "So how many did you do"

Ramesh : "4 sir"

Salil : "So did you do your homework"

Ramesh : "Yes sir...partially"

Salil : "O you did your homework partially...hmmm..."
(After 2 seconds of silence)

Salil : "are you pregnant"

Ramesh (with his mouth wide opened and shocked) : "What!!!"

Salil : "Are you pregnant"

The poor guy looks down. Did the belly give it away?

Ramesh : "Definitely no sir"

Salil : "You sure?"

Ramesh : "100 percent"

Salil : "Not even partially pregnant?"

Ramesh : "No sir"

Salil : "So you can either be only not pregnant or pregnant right. There is nothing like partial pregnancy right"

Ramesh : "Yes sir"

Salil : "So you did your homework"

Ramesh : "Sir...but...4...I did...only one left.."

Salil : "You pregnant?"

Ramesh : "Ok ok I didn't do the homework"

Salil : "Aaah there you are, now you may sit down"

Needless to say, when Salil repeated the question
"Now who all have done the homework",
not a single hand went up into the air. Well, I am not alone in the laziness department.

Fun with GD

2009-07-04T10:14:00.000-07:00

Note : Thanks to Akshat and Ladha for the data to write this blog :-)

This week we had a workshop on GD (Group Discussion) conducted by a reputed institute. As a part of this workshop, the students were asked to divide among themselves into groups of 8. There were around 4-5 topics that were taken up during the GD session. I would like to mention some of the interesting points that junta came up during the GD discussions.

One of the topics that were given for discussion was

"MF Hussein had painted Hitler in nude. He claimed Hitler deserved it. Then he painted Indian goddesses in nude. So does MF Hussein deserve to be welcome back to our country"

Before the GD started, the moderator had a few things to say

"In a GD, we should be shameless. That is, we should not hesitate to say what we want. Do not think what others will think of you, just say it."

And then the GD started.

The GD started well. Junta started discussing points for and against the topic. A few minutes passed. Suddenly one guy opened his mouth and went ballistic

"We should kick MF Hussein in his ass. How dare he draw nude pictures of Hitler. What does he think of himself. He is an insult to the nation. He should be given a taste of his own medicine. I know what to do with him. We should draw a nude picture of him and then sent it to him by post."

Hmm really makes me wonder whether M F Hussein drew this guy's nude picture, going by how much this guy "loves" M F Hussein.

Another guy came up with a very "genuine" doubt.

"I think this topic is utterly false. How can M F Hussein draw the nude picture of Hitler"

Moderator : "Why"

"M F Hussein was not even born then na"

Well thus went the first GD topic.

The next topic up for discussion was

"Whom does your vote go to : Mukesh Ambani or Ratan Tata"

This too started fine. Somehow most of the junta's votes were going to Tata. And they had pretty strong reasons too. Checkout the reason given by one guy :-

"My vote goes to Ratan Tata because Mukesh Ambani didn't make his empire, he only inherited it"

Moderator : "Even Tata inherited Tata group. He did not make it"

"But Ratan Tata is a good man na. So it is fine."

The poor moderator had no answer to that.

But Mr Ambani too had supporters in the group. Try this

"Tata doesn't care about the employees"

Moderator : "Why do you say so"

"Well how can a person, who doesn't take care of himself, take care of his employees"

Moderator : "And why do you say he doesn't take care of himself"

"Because he is still unmarried na. So you see, if you don't marry how will you know how your wife feels. And if you don't know how your wife feels, how will you know how your employees' wives feel. And if you don't know how your employees' wives feel, how will you know how the employees feel."

The moderator by now had a "What-the-hell-am-I-doing-here" look on his face.

One guy came out with a "Nano" support to Tata

"Tata built a Nano car for the poor. So I vote for him"

Prompt came the opposition

"You call that a car? And what a stupid name : "Nano". It should have been "Maaro" [Hindi for beating]. Does it even look like a car. Looks more like a doghouse. The metal used is so thin. Tyres are so small. Seat comfort goes for a toss. A cycle's handle turns better than it's steering wheel...."

On and on went this guy. Looked like, for him, Mukesh Ambani was not even in the picture. As far as he was concerned the vote is between Tata and "Maaro".

Atlast this discussion also ended.

The next topic was

"India's GDP in terms of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) is 4th in the world, but in terms of HDI, we are ranked 132nd"

In this discussion everyone was given a chance to speak for one whole minute.

Discussion started. It was speaker number one's chance to speak.

But what happened was that most of the guys had no clue at all about GDP, HDI, PPP etc. Everyone started looking at each other.

After looking helplessly at everyone for a few seconds speaker number one started speaking

"Hmm GDP...no idea...And then HDI...absolutely no idea.....but I guess since this GDP thing is growing, it should be a good thing. Let it keep growing. Then HDI...hopefully it won't fall down more"

He must have taken around 20 seconds to say so much, as supposed to one minute that he is to talk. The remaining time he just kept looking at everyone else. Silence prevailed.

One minute up.
Second speaker's chance to speak. Well he was no better.

"I total agree with my friend here."

Needless to say it was silence for the remaining 55 seconds.

When my chance came, I managed to talk some crap to fill in my one minute. In between I said the following in the context of corruption in India

"As Rajiv Gandhi said, out of every 100 paise spent on various schemes, only one paisa reaches the needy. Rest of the money goes into the pockets of the babus"

When my time was up, the guy sitting next to me started talking.

"I agree with my friend here. I also agree with Rajiv Gandhi...and his one paisa...and his 100 paise."

The moderator was at his wits end trying to make out what this guy was saying. I guess this maybe the last time he may ever attend a GD session in our college.

The real happiness

2009-06-26T11:18:00.001-07:00

A typical placement scenario in a highly reputed institute.

"Hey Ramesh what happened dude, why you looking so sad"

(in a sad tone) "Na nothing yaar, just didn't get the company I wanted"

"But I thought they offered you 6 lac per annum. That is a good salary buddy."

"Yeah that's right...but 6 lac per annum is too low. All others got better salaries than me"

Scene shifts to a nearby slum

"Hey Muthu you look so happy"

Muthu replies in a very ecstatic manner, " O yes I am so happy today...a kind man gave me a packet of biscuits to eat....whew they are soo tasty...especially after being hungry for last two days. Here you too take some."

How many of us can say that a packet of biscuit can brighten up our day. I don't think many among us. But for Muthu, it was a gift straight from heaven. If a packet of biscuit can bring a smile to Muthu, why does having a 6 lac per annum not make Ramesh happy. Why is that we have forgotten to smile? We are so busy running after making more and more money and other material comforts that we have forgotten to enjoy this beautiful creation of nature called life.

Have we ever realized how lucky we are? Well to know that, all we need to do is go for an evening stroll on the beach. You will find atleast 10 children, barely aged around 8 or 9, walking around selling balloons or some food items. Did we do anything even remotely close to this when we were around this age? No. Our parents took us to the beach to enjoy the sunset...not to sell balloons. Then why is that these children have to toil the whole day to barely have 2 square meals a day while we had the luxury to go to school and enjoy a good upbringing?

Has anyone ever tried calculating the probability of a child being born into a family which can barely sustain itself? Well, don't. It will scare the shit out of you. You will realize just how high your chances were to have been another one of those kids selling balloons. But yet here we are having 3 meals a day, enjoying a tension free sleep in our own house, living a life free from all worries such as how to feed the family the next day, what to do when the rain washes off the mud house, how to get some clothes to protect us from the harsh winter and so on.

Why is that inspite of all these luxuries we enjoy, we are still not happy?

Why are we not happy that we got a decent job instead of worrying over the salary. There are millions out there without a job.

Why are we not happy that we live in a rented home rather than keep worrying about owning a bungalow. There are millions out there who doesn't have a roof above their heads.

Why are we not happy for the fact that we are able to afford 3 meals a day rather than worrying over ways to live a King's life. There are millions out there who rarely gets one proper meal a day.

It's because we never had to endure how it feels to be without these luxuries. It's just like an old saying

"You never realise the value of your eyes until you have lost them"

This is not to say that dreaming of a better job, or a better lifestyle is a bad thing. Just that it is not worth sacrificing one's happiness to achieve those dreams. Chase those dreams by all means, just make sure you don't lose your happiness on the way.

To me, real happiness does not lie in trying to worry about how to make more than what we really need, but it lies in bringing a smile to those who are not fortunate enough to lead a life like ours. It need not be spending millions of dollars on charity work. A small act of giving your old clothes to a child, who can ill afford to buy one, is more than enough. The smile this brings on to that face is worth much more than all the money in the world put together. That, for me, is the true meaning of life. Like someone said

"With great power comes great responsibilities"

If we have the power to change something, then let it be to bring a smile to those who never had a reason to smile.

Comedy of errors

2009-06-15T23:27:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer : Conversations below are mostly imaginary though the incident is real

It's been one week since I have been lazing around in Trivandrum with nothing much to do other than eat, sleep, sleep, eat...not that it was much different when I was in campus, but somehow the eating factor has increased exponentially high, ever since I came home, and still going strong without showing any signs of stabilization. Maybe the thought that after one more week I have to face the hostel mess again, must be acting as a catalyst(and a very strong one) to gulp down whatever good stuffs are available at home. Once I return, it's back to the mess torture once again for the next 6 months.

2 days back my uncle Hari mama had paid me a visit. During the casual talk that we were having, he told me about a funny incident that happened to Kannan, his son and my cousin, recently. Kannan is a first year engineering student.

Hari mama is the district magistrate in a place called Attingal. Being a magistrate, he gets calls from all important people like politicians, bureaucrats, police officers etc. The call he got 2 days back was just another such call. Or so he thought.

Caller : "Hello"

Hari Mama : "Hello, who is this"

Caller : "Good morning sir, this is sub inspector Prasad"

Hari Mama : "O hi Prasad, how are you"

Prasad : "I am fine sir"

Hari Mama : "And how is your daughter"

Prasad : "She is also fine. She is now doing her first year engineering"
.
.
.
.
.
.
After talking for sometime

Hari Mama : "So is this your mobile number"

Prasad : "Yeah"

Hari Mama : "O great, just hold on a second".

Then shouting to Kannan,

" Kanna, bring your mobile, I need to note a number down".

Kannan bought his mobile.

Hari Mama : "Aah yes Prasad tell me the number"

Hari mama typed in the number into Kannan's mobile and pressed "OK". In his hurry to save the number he didn't read the message for which he pressed "OK". The message was

"There is already a name called Prasad. Do you want to overwrite"

As luck would have it, Prasad, whose number got overwritten by our inspector Prasad's number, was Kannan's good friend.

After sometime Kannan messaged his "friend" Prasad in typical college student lingo.

[in malayalam] "Enthonada chette ravile pani. Choriyum kuthi irupano"
(Wassup idiot? As usual nothing to do other than scratch your back?)

But today, he didn't get any reply

[in malayalam] "Ninte naavu enthada erangi poya pullae. Marupadi ayakkan enthada ninakoru madi"
(Bloody rascal, has someone plucked out your toungue that you can't sent any replies)

Still no reply.
[in malayalam] "Ninte appante cash kondu ala nan ente phone bill adakunne. Ente paisa kalayathe reply cheyada parikki"

(Your dad doesn't pay my phone bill. So stop wasting my money and sent a reply good for nothing country fellow)

Well now we all know, the golden rule in indian democracy is come what may, but never ever insult a police officer's father. Needless to say, Kannan got a call on his mobile the very next instant. Kannan looked at his mobile.

"Aha Prasad calling"

Kannan (Picking up the phone) : "Enthada potta reply cheythudei"
[Can't you sent a reply you dumbass]

Prasad : "aara ithu"
(who is this)

Kannan : "Ninte thantha. Sound maatiyal enikku manasilakulla ennu karuthiyo. Manda"
(Your father. You think you can fool me if you talk to me in a different voice. Foolish fellow)

Now this was more than what an average kerala police officer could take in. He opened up the floodgates of the police dictionary filled with police vocabulary.

Hari mama was sitting nearby reading a newspaper. As he looked at Kannan, he could see a lot of emotions passing through Kannan's face...

It had started with a smile when the mobile rang....2 seconds into the call the smile vanished....then eyes widened....jaws dropped....sweat started dripping down the neck....big gulps of saliva...

Hari Mama looked at Kannan curiously. Kannan was looking scared, with his mobile on his left ear and one finger inside his right ear, as if he didn't want to hear what the guy at the other end was saying. Poor Kannan was repeatedly blabbering some phrases.

"Sheri Sir" [Yes Sir]
...
...
...
"Maapakanam Sir" [Forgive me Sir]
...
...
"Ini avarthikila Sir" [Won't repeat it sir]
...
...

Hari Mama went to Kannan and took his mobile and brought it to his left ear. But the intensity of the vocabulary from the other end was so high that even the hard core magistrate had to remove the mobile from his ear and then clean his ear just after 5 seconds of "knowledge transfer".

Finally Hari Mama talked to Prasad and later on the full cause of miscommunication came to light. Only after Mama told Kannan that everything has been cleared up, did our hero start breathing properly again.

Skit wits

2009-06-09T02:10:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer : High dose of imagination added to real life incidents

We had our dept valfi (ie, validaetory function) for the passing out Mtech and Btech students a couple of weeks back. As a part of valfi, some of us :- Neha, Akash, Akshat, Krishna, Aaditya, Ladha and me, had decided to perform a short skit. The skit's theme was

"What would have been the first day in IIT for some of our seniors".

We had handpicked some seniors, on whom we could make a skit on. Now the director of our skit was Neha. She's one tough director I must say. One growling look from her is enough to get everyone's attention. She had the prepared script in her hand and was telling each of our actors what they have to do.

Neha (to Akash) : "Your character is a music loving guy and has been in IITB for one year now. So when he enters the class, he sees many new students and starts singing 'Aao naye panchiyo' "

Akash : "Magar panchi kaha hei"

Neha : "Oye bhudhu in musical sense, students are equated to birds..uff...am I the only intellect here"

Akash : "Yeah right"

Neha : "Start cameraaaaaaa...action"

Akash walks in singing "aao naye panchiyo"

Neha : "Cut cut cut"

Akash : "Kya hua"

Neha : "Ye kya tha"

Akash : "Naye panchiya"

Neha : "Woh tho teek hei....Magar scene mei entry karthe waqt amul ad ki ladkiyom jaise kamar hilake kyu aa raha hei...seedhe aana"

Akash : "Maine socha thoda sa improvise karoonga"

Neha : "tu improvise math kar re, tu sirf acting kar"

Take 2
Akash walks in singing "aao naye panchiyo"

Neha : "Cut cut cut"

Akash : "Ab kya hua"

Neha : "Robot ki tarah expressionless kyu hei"

Akash : "Aree dono tu hi bol rehi hei. Pehele bolti hei expression zyada ho gaya. Ab bolti hei expression nehi hei. Tu abhi decide kar, tuche amul chahiye ya robot chahiye"

Neha : "In dono ke beech mei kuch nehi milega kya?"

Akash : "Tho improvise karna padega"

Neha : "Tu kuch bhi karle mere baap...bas teek se kar"

Akash improvised. Neha happy. Everyone relieved.

Next was Krishna's entry.

Neha : "Krishna, u have to look at Akash and then tell the dialogue 'Hi, I am Yogi Yogasan'...teek hei?"

Krishna is a Telugu guy, and his hindi is sometimes hard to understand

Krishna : "Bas, itna hi...fikar mathao karao, mei hei nei"

Neha : "Kya"

Krishna : "Bola na mei hei nei"

Neha (looking at others) : "Ye kya bol raha hei"

Sheiku, my roomie, and also a telugu guy, who was standing there watching our practise, clarified "He means 'main hoon na' "

Neha : "Ok good good. Now let's get started. Start cameraaaaa....action"

Take 1
Krishna walks in, takes his seat,looks at Akash

"Hi, I am Yoga Yogasan"

Neha : "Cut cut cut...oye Yoga Yogasan nehi, Yogi Yogasan"

Krishna : "Acha teek hei...mei hei nei, don't worry"

Take 2
Krishna walks in, takes his seat,looks at Akash

"Hi, I am Yogi Yogiasan"

Neha (cheeks turning red) : "Yogi Yogasaaaaaaaaan"

Krishna : "mei hei nei...mei hei nei"

Take 3
Krishna walks in, takes his seat,looks at Akash

"Hi, I am Asan Yogasan"

Neha could take it no more. She starts pulling out Krishna's hair

Neha : "Saale teek se dialogue bol, teek se dialogue bollllllll"

Krishna : "AAAAAAHHHHHHH Yoga Yogasan....no no...sorry.....Asan Yogasan..AAAHHHHHH...no no sorry sorry..AAAAAHHHHHH...Yogi Yogiasan...aree woh bhi nehi...AAAAHHHHHHHH.....Rogi Rogasan...AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH"

Poor guy started losing his hair count exponentially, till he got the name right. By the time he did perfect his dialogue, he was looking almost bald.

He thought, "Why in the heaven's name did I go to the barber shop yesterday for the hair cut. I got one for free today"

Krishna (to Akshat, making sure Neha is out of earshot) : "Ye ladki hei ya kuch aur hei. Kaise kundhal kundhalke maara re mereko"

Next was Ladha's entry.
Neha : "Ladha, after you make your entry and take your seat, you will ask Aaditya a doubt in data mining. He will tell a jumbo mumbo answer. So when you hear that, your face should show an expression which tells the audience that you are not understanding Aaditya's answer. Got it?"

Ladha : "Fine, no probs."

Neha : "Start cameraaaaaa.....action"

Ladha walks in, sits on his chair and asks his doubt. Aadi starts giving the answer. Neha closely watching Ladha's face.

Neha : "Ladha expressionnnnn"

Ladha narrows his eyes

Neha : "More expression"

Ladha raises his eyebrows also

Neha : "more more"

Ladha now holds his breath. His cheeks turn red.

Neha : "moreeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"

Ladha's widens his eyes as much as possible.

Neha : "MOREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"

Ladha's cheeks were getting more and more red. Tears falling down his cheeks. Eyes almost popping out. Steam flowing out from both his ears.

Neha : "MOREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE MOREEEEEEEEEEEEEE"

Ladha looked as if he will burst any moment.

Neha : "Cutttttt. Cool Ladha, that was great acting. It looked so natural"

Ladha (after catching his breath) : "O it was nothing. Err I will come back in a moment"

As Ladha was going out, Krishna asked him "How did you do so naturally"

Ladha : "Well, don't tell her. It looked natural because it was natural. Can't hold it any longer. Need to visit the loo."

And the poor guy just ran off.

PS: Though most of the dialogues and actions mentioned above are imaginary, we guys had a blast making the skit. The main credit for making skit a wonderful success goes to Neha. Though she has been demonised in this post, she's actually a very sweet girl. But then sweet girls seldom make for good blog posts, thus the character assasination . Sorry neha ji :). I would like to dedicate this blog to all the guys/gals involved in the skit. Thx one and all, u guys rock

My quest for food

2009-05-20T10:15:00.000-07:00

Most of our lives we keep running after money. But sometimes experience shows us that money can't buy everything. There will be occasions when it won't be worth the paper it is printed on. Well I had once such experience today.

The summer vacations are on in IITB. All the students have returned home for two and a half months vacations. Well almost all. The Mtech guys have no such good fortune. Apart from some 10-15 days, we have to continue to stay in the campus and "work" on our Mtech project. O hell yeah work we certainly do. We work on "LOST", we work on "FRIENDS" and most importantly we work on our thesis "How to sleep beyond 12 hours". Since most of the students are not in campus, almost all the hostel messes have been closed for vacation. Out of the very few open hostel messes, I have my food at H12 mess. There we can take a 15 day card for Rs 825.

As usual I got up today morning at 9 am. I then washed my face, brushed my teeth, put on a shirt and was about to go to H12 when I remembered

"O crap, my food card had expired yesterday"

Luckily I had the required amount in my wallet to make another card. So, making my pocket heavier with Rs 825 cash, I made my way to H12 mess. Somehow my stomach was grumbling more than usual (Well usually it grumbles like anything). The smell of the food just made the grumbling worse. I had to look down to my stomach and give it a reassuring look

"Dude hold on for a few more moments, food is on it's way"

I went to the counter, took out the money and stretched it out to the counter guy (CG). The counter guy looked at me and said "What"

Me : "Card"

CG : "Come at 12-12:30"

Me : "Why not now"

CG : "Time is up"

O great.

Me : "Fine atleast give me a Rs 20 coupon for the breakfast"

CG : "Time is up"

Me : "What!!! I am asking for coupon, and not card"

CG : "Time is up"

Man what a horrible way to start the day. Stomach grumbles even more. Fine, I guess I have to go to H7 mess. On reaching H7 mess, I eagerly looked into the food containers.

EMPTY!!!.

I guess I have to do with just tea today. I walked to the tea vessel and opened the tap at the bottom

FIZZZZZZZZZ.....just air comes out

O damn it.

I decide to buy something from H7 canteen

(PS: Canteen is different from mess)

I walk to the H7 canteen.

LOCKED!!!

Man, why aren't shops open when people need food the most. I stood their pondering over my options.

Fruit juice shop....naa low probability of opening.
CCD.....naa too far away.
H6 Canteen....nopes, will open only at 2 pm.
How about skipping the breakfast....GRRRR...the grumble from below reaches a crescendo.

So there I was standing, with around around 800 rupees in my pocket, and yet unable to get something to eat. By this time sounds started coming out, literally, from my stomach and passers-by looking at me suspiciously trying to see from where the sounds were coming. I made my way back to my room. Well I guess it was a good learning experience, though some grunting noise from below tells me that not all parts of my body agree with me.

The great CSE debate

2009-05-07T12:17:00.000-07:00

CAUTION : There may be many grammer mistakes in the hindi conversations below.

Many of my friends in my batch are specializing in different fields of computer science namely databases, networks, operating systems etc. Now let's imagine a situation where these guys are talking about their area of specialization. Let's see what happens. The scene is the DMC lab. As usual Adil, Guruji(Akshat), Chotu(Prashima), Riju are some of the many DMCers in the lab.
Suddenly...

Adil : "Aree yaar, databases nehi hota tho ye zindagi bhi kya zindagi hota"
[Dude, what is this life without databases]

Guruji : "Networks kya kuch kam hei...tu internet ke bina jee sakthe ho kya?"
[Whoa as if networks is not good enough...can u imagine a life without internet?]

Adil : "Magar internet ka data store karne ke liye databases chahiye na..."
[But then you need a database to store the internet's right]

Guruji : "Internet hi nehi hei tho tu database ka kya ukaat leega be"
[But what worth is your database if there is no internet at all]

Adil : "Database ke bina tu internet se kya karega...gillii dhanda khelega?"
[But what use is the internet if you don't have a database to save data]

Guruji : "Chal Chotu se pooch lethe hei . Oye Chotu, tu hi samchade isko ki networks bahut badi cheez hoti hei"
[Ok let's ask Chotu about this. Hey Chotu, make this guy understand that networks is a big thing]

Chotu : "Ha"
[Yes]

Adil : "Database bhi phodu cheez hei"
[Databases are also damn great]

Chotu : "Ha"
[Yes]

Guruji : "But networks is more important than databases right"

Chotu : "Ha"
[Yes]

Adil : "Databases is the backbone of any application"

Chotu : "Ha"
[Yes]

Guruji : "Yeh kya ha ha hi bolti jaa rehi hei. Kabhie tho na bhi bol"
[What is this yes yes all the time. Atleast say no once in a while]

Chotu : "Ha"
[Yes]

Guruji : $%#$^%^*$#@#%$

Guruji : "Oyee Somil, tu Adil ko samchao ki networks ko koi hara nehi saktha"
[Hey Somil, make Adil understand that no one can defeat networks]

Somil : "Kuch bhi ho Buchi is the best"
[Whatever is the case, Buchi is the best]

(PS: Buchi is a term used in theoretical computer science)

Guruji : "Burji? Kya burji? Egg burji? Burji kaha se aagaya yaha pe"
[Burji? What burji? Egg burji? What is egg burji doing here?]

Somil : "Abee saale, burji nehi buchi...buchi automata...kya sahi concept hei yaar"
[Idiot, not burji...it's buchi....buchi automata...what a sexy concept dude]

Guruji : "Koi isko yaha se leke jaa. Yaha mei networks aur database ke baare mei pooch raha hu aur ye bol raha hei burji aur bhajji ke baare mei".
[Someone please take this guy from here. Here I asking about networks and databases and this guy wants to talk about burjis and bhajjis]

Adil : "Chal Anand se hi pooch lethe hei. "
[Let's ask Anand about this....]

Adil : "Hey Anand, which do you think is more important...database or networks"

Anand : "Statistically speaking database is important, but probabilistically speaking networks is important too"

Adil : "Err and that means...?"

Anand : "Statistically speaking database is....."

Adil : "Yeah we heard that. Just tell us in plain english what it means"

Anand : "Err sorry I don't know plain english. I know only plain data mining and plain machine learning".

Just then our ex-CR Aaditya walked into the lab.

Guruji : "Hey Aadi, which, in your opinion is more important, databases or networks"

Aaditya : "He looked into the mirror. He saw his reflection. It was looking back at him. Mirrors are like life. It reflects what we actually are"

Guruji : Hey bhagwaan ek aur blog!!!....Maine tere kya bigaada hei be...ek chotta sa sawal hi tho maine poocha tha...oske liye itna bada dhand?
[Oh no not ur blog again!!!..Have I ever wronged you in anyway...all I asked you was a question...and for that so big a punishment???]

Adil (shouting) : "Vinu Vinu..come here"

Vinu : "Yeah?"

Adil : "Dude, we have a problem here. We are having a debate as to which is more important, networks or database. We need an answer to that. What do you think"

Vinu : "I too don't know the answer, but I will ask Alex and get back to you"

Adil : "Alex? Which Alex? Ooo Alex the Phd guy ????"

Vinu : "Naa Alex the ManU guy...as in Alex Ferguson, the Manchester United's manager. There is nothing in the world that he doesn't know. Will mail him today itself"

Adil (looking at Guruji) : "Abhi tuk sirf suna tha ki football logom ko pagal banathe hei...abhi dekh raha hu"
[Till now I have only heard that football can make people go crazy...well now I got to see it in real]

Just then Vishal comes in. This guy has been watching the FRIENDS series for the last 2 weeks, the effect of which is that only english words flow out when he opens his mouth.

Adil : "Hey Vishal, tu batha, kaun sa technology better hei, Networks or Database?"
[Hey Vishal, you tell us which technology is better. Networks or Database]

Vishal : "You asking me which is batter?"

Adil : "Abee batter nehi be, the word is better"
[Dude, the word is to be pronounced as "better", and not as "batter"]

Vishal :"Oo is it then I batter pronounce the word as batter and not batter"

Adil : "Abee better bol"
[Dude pronounce it as "better"]

Vishal :"Yeah right batter"

Adil : "BETTERRRRRRRRRRRRR"

Vishal : "Exactly...Batter"

Adil : "@$#$@!%^&#$#........woh chod, answer bol"
[Getting frustrated...Ok leave that, tell the answer]

Vishal : "Answer...hmm..I batter don't know"

Adil : "Saale bhag yaha se"
[Idiot, GET OUT!!!]

Vishal : "Yeah I batter go"

Suddenly a loud laugh was heard.."HEHEHEHEHHE...."
As usual it was Riju...

Guruji : "Dekh humare PhD bandi. Osko tho patha hona hi chahiye. Osse hi pooch lete hei"
[Look it's our PhD girl. She should be knowing the answer. Let's ask her]

Guruji goes to Riju

Guruji : "Riju ji I have a question to ask. Do you think....."

Even before Guruji could finish asking the question, Riju started laughing again.
Riju : "HEHEHEHE..."

Poor Guruji thought she was laughing at him. He looks down to make sure his zip was closed. Hmm no problem there. Then he looks at Adil

Guruji (whispering) : "Psst Adil...mere pant ke peeche check kar...koi hole tho nehi na"
[Hey Adil, just check the back of my pant and see whether it's torn]

Adil checks and replies in negative. Guruji looked relieved. Then he looks at Riju

Guruji : "Itne bhi hasne ki kya baath hei"
[What's there to laugh so much?]

Riju (Very innocently): "Patha nehi...hehehhehehehe"
[(in an innocent tone) I don't know...starts laughing again]

Guruji : "Hasne ke alawa kuch karthi bhi ho aap"
[Do you do anything else other than laughing???]

Riju : "Patha nehi...hehhehehehe"
[(in an innocent tone) I don't know...starts laughing again]

Guruji : "Yeh patha nehi patha nehi kya hei"
[What do you mean "I don't know"]

Riju : "Patha nehi....hehehehehehe"
[I don't know....again starts laughing]

Guruji (to Adil) : "Aaj H11 ke breakfast laughing gas tha kya???"
[Was laughing gas served for breakfast in H11 today???]

(PS : H11 is the girls' hostel)

Thus the great CSE debate rages on...

Wireless troubles

2009-05-04T07:45:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: As usual, a highly exaggerated version of some true incidents

"Abee darwaza khol"
[Open the door]

No use. It takes more than that to awaken the sleeping giant (me).

"Kamine dharwaza khol nehi tho thod daloonga"
[Open the door else I will break it open]

The bang on the door just kept growing louder and louder till I knew the resistance level of my door was about to be breached after which my room would have got the dubious distinction of being the only room in the hostel with natural ventilation (ie, no door). Now I wouldn't want such a situation would I?

Me (in my sleepy condition) : "Abee bhen**** mere darwaaza ko chod. Mei aa raha hu"
[ Leave my door alone. I am coming]

On opening the door, I find Vishal standing outside, grinning at me.

Me : "Kya be, mere darwaaze se kuch panga hei kya tuche?"
[You have any problems with my door?]

Vishal : "Wire hei kya tere paas"
[You have any wires?]

Though Vishal and me were conversing in hindi, I was still in my sleep state. In my sleepy condition, I thought we were talking in my native language malayalam...and "wire" in malayalam also means stomach.

For a second I looked confused, then looked down to make sure my "wire" was still there and then looked back at him, looking more confused.

Me : "Ha abhi tuk tho hei"
[It's there till now]

Vishal : "Tho de"
[Then give]

Me : "Kya!!!Tuche mere wire chahiye??? Pagal hua hei kya"
[What!!!You want my wire?Have you gone mad?]

Vishal : "Abe dena yaar"
[Give it dude]

Me : "Saale, tere wire ko kya problem hei ki tuche mere wire chahiye"
[What's the problem with your wire that you want my wire]

Vishal : "Mera kaafi nehi hei"
[Mine is not enough]

Me : "Ha woh tho mei dekh saktha hu. Mere jaise thoda bahut khaana khale, tuche bhi mera wire mil jayega"
[Ya I can see that. Eat more food, like me, and you too will get a good wire like me]

Now the poor chap looked confused. That is when I looked at his hands. He was holding lots of wires, as in cable wires. That is when it occured to me what he was asking for.

Vishal : "Abee project kar raha hu...tere paas koi wire hei tho dede...project ke liye chahiye. Mere paas jitna hei, woh kaafi nehi hei"
[Dude, we are doing a project. We need some wires for it. If you have some then give it. We need more wires than what we have now.]

Me : "Andar jaake jitna chahiye lele"
[Go inside and take what you want]

Vishal (shouting) : "Oyee Manan, yaha ka wires mil gaya, tu oss room se leke aa...oyee Ganesh tu woh room cover kar"
[Manan, I got the wires from here. Now you try to get some wires from this room and Ganesh, you get it from that room]

I could see that these 3 guys were pulling out wires from all the rooms in my wing.

Me : "Kaun sa project kar raha hei be"
[Which project are you doing]

Vishal : "Wireless networks"

Me : "Kya!!!wireLESS networks????wiresONLY networks bol"
[What!!!wireLESS networks????you are joking right? You must mean wiresONLY networks right]

Vishal : "Abee tu nehi samchoge. Tu jaa"
[Leave it, u won't understand]

Well he did have a point. Networks were never my cup of tea. But then a natural question that arises is shouldn't a wireless project be done without wires???

After getting my morning sleep screwed up by big guys doing some wireless project using wires, I thought I may as well go to the lab. I took a bath, had my breakfast and started going to the lab. As I left my room, I could hear Vishal shouting to some guy on the 3rd floor :-
"ABEE WIRE NEECHE DAAL"
[Drop the wire down]

As usual the DMC lab was full. This week was going to be a tight week for all the first year Mtech guys since everyone had some project or assignment submission deadline coming up soon. Adil, Chander, Riju, Ajinkya, Ramesh, Vaibhao, Rakesh, Chotu, Saurab were some of the people who were already in the lab. Everyone was busy doing big things on the computers/laptops, looking damn serious. Suddenly there was a cry.

"Yipeee we received the packets, we received the packets"

When I turned to look at the source of the cry, I saw Riju dancing (looked like bharatanatyam to me, but in all possibilities she may have actually attempted to do break-dance which ended up looking like bharatanatyam). But the first picture that suddenly came to me, on seeing Riju, was that of Riju thumping her chest, like Tarzan, and screaming "OOOOOOOO........"

But her partner, Ajinkya, was looking at her, confused. "But I didn't sent any packets. Then how did we receive it"

Riju (Shocked) : "You didn't sent???"

Ajinkya : "Nopes"

I looked at Riju. "You too Wireless", I asked. She nodded. O great, one more wireless project. Well, atleast their project didn't have wires.

Meanwhile in the other corner of the lab, a few minutes back :

Ramesh : "Abee Vaibhao, where did our packets go. You sent them right?"

Vaibhao : "Yups"

Ramesh : "Then where is it"

Vaibhao : "How do I know"

That is when the explosion, in the form of Riju's shouting, was heard throughout the lab.

Ramesh : "Hmm I think I know, where our packets went".

The situation continued for a long time, Ramesh's team senting the packets and Riju's team gobbling them up. As I sat down in front of my computer to do my work, I could visualise packets with names Ramesh and Vaibhao on them, flying around the DMC lab, trying their best to get back to their masters' laptops, but unable to do so since a blackhole called Riju was busy eating them up.

Munichammis rock

2009-04-17T04:17:00.001-07:00

During my undergraduate days, there were a group of us who hung out regularly. We called ourselves "The Munichammis". It is thanks to each and every member of this circle of friends that made my college life so much enjoyable. This blog is dedicated to each and every member of the Munichammi group without whom life would be meaningless for me.

Most of of us are now seperated and are in different parts of the globe, the majority being abroad. So having a get together with all of us at a place was a big ask. Inorder to overcome this some of us decided that every sunday, at a convinient time, we will meet up online in a group chat and be updated on what is happening with the rest of us. Our chat is such that most of us will choose a target, from amongst us, and then concentrate all our energies at him. The usual prey is Sabari. The conversation given below is a small reproduction of a chat that we had sometime back. It can be used as a template for "How to kick a man's ass from all sides". As usual Sabari was our chosen prey.

Me : "Did u guys know that Sabari, went to Paris, the city of Love, when he had gone onsite from his company."

Shyam : "Wow, never expected that from Sabari...with whom did you go Sabari my boy"

Sabari : "With my manager".

Shyam : "Must have been one hot chick eh ;)"

Komalan : "Na, it was one skinny guy called Sergei. Don't know about his hotness, only Sabari can answer that."

Shyam : "Sabari aiyeee aiyeeee"

Sabari : "Son of a BEEEP...BEEEEEEEP....BEEEEEEEEEEEP...".(Censored)

Komalan : "Sabari you bloody monkey, such filthy language!!!!"

Varunni : "Sabari, u filthy dog"

Sabari : "Komala, why hasn't sylendra joined the group chat yet."

Komalan : "He's yet to accept my chat request".

Sabari : "Idiot, I give you one task to do and you can't do it properly."

Komalan : "What more should I do...go inside his computer and make him press the accept button ?"

Shyam : "Komala, you r forgetting u r talking to Sabari. If he had known all these things, Sabari would cease to be Sabari. It is our duty,as friends, to accept him with all his stupidity".

Komalan : "He has been showing heightened symptoms of stupidness ever since he parted with his manager, Sergei".

Shyam : "O poor Sabari...must be missing Sergei a lot..."

Me : "Guys don't underestimate Sabari. If he was so stupid, how did he manage to open a tea shop in his company".

Komalan : "Yeah you are right...poor illiterate beggar".

Sabari : #$@%@#$^%#

Me : "Guys, don't crush our poor Sabari like this...he may sent invitation to the Sergei guy to join the group chat to support him against us."

Komalan : "But Sergei doesn't know malayalam".

Me : "Then how in the world did Sabari communicate with Sergei. You telling me Sabari knows english?????Never..."

Komalan : "Language is never a barrier for love."

Me : "Yeah very true."

Sabari : "Varunni, how is the climate in Malaysia"

Komalan : "Sabari u bloody bugger, don't change the topic"

Komalan : "Guys, bad news. Current will go in another 5 minutes. So I need to log off".

Sylendra : "This is what happens if you don't pay ur electricity bill."

Komalan : "For all you mallu 'NRI' guys :- load shedding is still common in trivandrum."

Though it is impossible to go back in time, it is through these get togethers, online or offline, that we try to re-live our golden happy college days. Really miss those days.

To believe or not to believe

2009-03-29T01:34:00.000-07:00

"Do you believe in God or not, Yes or No", Naveen wanted to know.

"I don't believe in the concept of a person sitting above us and presiding over us", said Vinu. He was not the one to give up easily.

"I am not asking whether you believe in God as a person or the different forms of God that exists today. All I am asking is do you believe in the concept of a power that science is unable to explain", Naveen asked, trying to coax a definite answer from Vinu.

"I believe that Love is God", Vinu said.

"So u believe in God"

"Love is God"

"So it's a Yes"

"Love is God"

"So it is a yes right?"

"Love is God"

"Da poda", Naveen said irritated. "Ok, lemme put it this way, have you ever gone to a temple".

"Of course", said Vinu

"Aha there you are", Naveen said, excited. "May I know why"

"To watch girls",prompt came the answer from Vinu

"Yups, I have to agree...nothing can beat girls praying in a temple...", I chiped in, nodding my head, as if we both agreed on the same philosophical thought.

Flashback:
One fine morning last week, I found a forwarded message from Naveen. It was some high funda philosophy from Manusmriti, an ancient Indian book. The essence of the mail was women should never be the head of a house, ie, house should be run by hubbies, and not hi-fi wi-fies (meaning wives). The champion of womanhood, our hero Vinu, on reading this mail, opposed it tooth and nail. So replies and counter replies were exchanged between those two, with some fools like me,
acting as mute spectators, sitting and wasting our time, reading it, with nothing better to do. Even after several mails were exchanged, no compromise was in sight. So in the end, the third umpires were called for :- the smart third umpires me, Kukri,CP(Sriraj),Anand, who then took a decision to sort this out over dinner (Which meant no mess food. Great escape!!!!!!!!!!!). Over dinner, though conversation started with Manus and Smritis, it drifted and reached God.

Back to present:
Kukri suddenly looked at Naveen and asked "What makes you sure there is God"

"Aha look who's talking. Then how come you are not eating chicken today on account of being Easter today, if you didn't believe in God", Naveen asked pointedly.

Kukri didn't know what to say."I..hmm...err..So Anand, as I was telling you, Goa is a very nice place........."

As this great conversation was continuing, the waiter came to CP.

Waiter : "Kya mei aapka order le saktha hu sir"
[Can I take ur order sir]

CP: "Entho"
["What" in malayalam]

Waiter : "Kya mei aapka order le saktha hu sir"
[Can I take ur order sir]

CP : "Mei tu hei...tu mei hu?"
[Applying all of Anand's Data Mining and Machine Learning knowledge, it seems that CP was trying to tell the waiter that he didn't understand Hindi]

Waiter : "Kya"
[What!!!]

CP: "Hindi hu hei hi"
[CP still trying to convince the waiter]

Waiter was looking as if he will faint any moment, seeing how well CP was succesful in killing his language.

CP : "Oye guys, how will I tell 'I don't know hindi' in hindi"

Vinu : " 'Know' in hindi is 'maloom'. But don't know the hindi of 'don't know'".

CP : "Yeah that will do, rest I will take care".

Then he looked at the waiter.

CP : "Hindi maloom". Then he started shaking head from left to right and then right to left. "Hindi maloom" head shake..."Hindi maloom" head shake. This continued for a few seconds.

The poor guy took a minute or so to really understand what CP was trying to say. But in the end CP's brain power did work. No wonder he's the class topper.

Meanwhile the God conversation went nowhere.

Love letter

2009-03-24T23:47:00.000-07:00

First the big news...I stood third in the love letter writing competition for PG Fest 2009, which concluded this week.

Possible Reasons:

1) Only 3 entries were there to be judged from.

2) Some other guy named Sree Shankar is present in the campus who must have actually written a good love letter.

3) It might have actually been a "How not to write a love letter" competition.

Actually this was the first time I have ever written a love letter. And where does it end up? In some GUY's inbox. Why? We had to mail our entries to a guy who is supposedly one of the judges. I must be the first STRAIGHT guy in this world to have written my first love letter to a guy. Hope no one else get to have such rotten luck.

Given below is the "love letter" I wrote. Read it at your own risk. Don't say I didn't warn you. Anyone with a weak heart, your journey ends right here. Others, all the best in case you have decided to read it. Since this is my first love letter, I dedicate it to the unlucky girl, destined to bear me for the rest of her life (By the way search is still on...any girl willing to take a risk can apply)

"Why does each day, bring a spring of happiness to my heart. Is it that smile of yours that makes my knees go weak or is it that celestial face that glows like a thousand suns or is it just the thought of getting to be near you,I know not. The harshness of the cold winter or the cruel summer heat is nothing compared to the pain of the heart,those moments of your absence cause. Your very thought makes my heart go heavy with numbness when you are away and as light as a feather when you are near me. Just looking into your eyes gives me a warmth so great that no cold or sorrow can penetrate. Even Mother Nature seems to know how special you are to me. She showers you with snow in winter, flowers in autumn and rain in the monsoons as if she wants you to know how much you mean to me. The winds bring your presence to me from the farthest of the lands. Your beauty is the ray of light that brings warmth into my soul just like the warmth and light the rising sun brings into the world drowned in darkness. The blossoming of a flower dims in comparison to the the blushing on your cheeks. The lovely time that I spend with you are moments that are embedded deep in my heart, never to be forgotten. Would you, my love, give me an opportunity to bestow you with all the happiness in this world. All I ask is the chance to keep holding your hands for ever and ever, this life, every life."

If anyone managed to reach here and is still alive, then congrats

The X scare

2009-03-22T07:53:00.001-07:00

In our first semester we had an assignment based on a tool (let's call it X) . The stupid thing was soo confusing that most of us had to spent some sleepless nights breaking our heads over this. When we realized that we were going to go nowhere this way, we decided to split the tasks among ourselves and each person would try to solve one task each instead of everyone trying to do the same thing. Thus when someone somehow finds out how to do a particular task, he shares his method with everyone else.

In this way we somehow managed to submit the assignment before the deadline. This was just before the Diwali holidays. Soon afterwards the Diwali holidays started and most of us went home, had a great "break" from studies and returned afresh (Some poor guys like me had to stay back due to the long time it will take to reach our hometowns).

A few days after the classes resumed, some of us were having our lunch in the hostel mess. Suddenly Akshat said

"Hey did you hear that there are 24 copy cases that were caught for the assignment on X"

"Whoa whoa when did you hear that. How come no one else heard it"

"Aree looks like one of the TAs had told someone that such a thing happened"

(TAs are Teaching Assistants who do most of the assignment corrections on behalf of the professor)

"But we did not copy right? We only had some "healthy" discussions and shared "tips" on how to do the damn shit"

"Yeah right tell that to the TAs."

"Also how can those guys find out about it. It's almost impossible to just look and tell since doing a manual comparisons of all the files in an X application is almost impossible due to the very large number of files in X."

"Looks like they have used some high funda software for doing it"

"These guys have softwares for catching copy cases????? Man that sucks"

After this, all the guys started speculating on who these unfortunate 24 people were.

I looked at Adil

"Tu tho gaya beta".
[You are busted dude]

Adil : "Oyee maine kab copy kiya be"
[Oyee, When did I copy]

Me : "Haha tu nehi kiya tho kya hua, mere code mei tera code bhi hei na"
[So what if you didn't copy. My code contains ur code also]

Saurab : "Muhahahahahaha....muhahahahaha....."

Me : "Oyee tu kyu hass raha hei be saale...tera code bhi hei mere code ke andar"
[Why are you laughing idiot. My code contains your code also]

Saurab : "Saale haram khor, khuthe,lafange....."
[Calling foul words]

Rohit : "Bechare log...chu chu chuu"
[Poor people]

Me : "Rohit bhai, maaf karna, tera bhi code liya hei maine."
(Rohit my brother, forgive me .I have your code also)

Rohit : "Saale tu kissi ko bhi choda nehi hei kya."
(Idiot, haven't u spared anyone?)

Me : "Aree mei kya karu. I spent 3 whole days on this dumb thing. It was soo confusing and irritating. I coded two or three things and then I borrowed the rest. I really don't think any human being created X.. Must be the evil work of aliens from other planets. They must have made this grand plan to give each human being a X assignment to do as homework and in the process of doing the assignment, the human race will become extinct. Inorder to prevent such a mass extinction I thought maybe atleast I should try not putting too much of stress on myself. I need to save the world you see."

Rohit : $#@$^$*^%^$#@

Nothing much anyone could do other than wait for the demonstration day when we had to demonstrate our X application to the TAs. Well atlast the D-day came. Everyone sitting in the lab, tensed, waiting for the TAs to arrive. Rumours flying thick and fast as to who were the 24 genius guys. Everyone came up with their own list of 24.

The TAs came. Everyone was looking at their hands.
It was empty.
Hmm guess the list is in their pockets. Wonder when they are going to take it out.
Each person started demonstrating their X masterpieces.

Suddenly one of the TAs started moving his hand towards his pocket.
Oh no, this is it!!!!
The TA's hand reaches the pocket...goes inside...some shaking inside the pocket...more vigorous shaking......then the shaking stopped...Oh no Oh no....looks like the hand found what it wanted....the TA's hand got into reverse gear...it's coming out..slowly...really slowly...and then..it came out...and we saw it open mouthed...
a dirty handkerchief!!!

O man some people are really gonna have to deal with some serious heart attacks before the TAs leave the lab.

Ohoo...there it's happening again...his hand...it has started it's forward motion again...and this time it's going towards his back pocket....Oh great the TAs must have kept the list in their back pockets owing to the "security" concerns following intelligence reports that some guys from our batch may try to destroy the list...the hand reaches his back pocket..and then into it...and..and...is moving up and down????...now why would he be doing that...wait a minute....Aah...the poor guy was just scratching his ass...boy another scare.

After some hair raising moments, when each time the hands goes anywhere close to the pockets our hearts almost came into our mouth, the TAs completed their evaluation and left.
Everyone was looking at each other.

"Aree then what about the list ???"

"Lagtha hei kissine ullu bana diya re"
[Looks like someone has made a fool of us]

"You mean some asshole made up this story and gave me countless sleepless nights!!!
If ever get my hands on that egg head moron who came up with this story of copy cases, I will...I will... &$@!@#^*!@#"

Seenu,Teenu and Tree

2009-03-13T04:40:00.001-07:00

All characters mentioned below are fictional and any resemblance to anyone, especially to any of my classmates, is purely co-incidental.

This story pays "tribute" to a lady's noble endeavor to increase the language vocabulary of students in a particular institute. Let's call this lady Teenu. The story is about how Teenu tries to teach malayalam to her friend Seenu and how Teenu gets a little help from her classmate Tree Trunker in the process.

Tree Trunker is a first year computer science Mtech student in IIT Bombay. He is a good boy......I mean a very good boy.....I mean a fantastic boy.

(Again I have to emphasize that the characters mentioned have no resemblance whatsoever with anyone alive).

Most of the time Tree is free. So free that his email id itself is tree.is.free@gmail.com. One day, as usual, Tree was whiling away his time when suddenly he saw his classmate Seenu's status message

"Ente aniyante peru Manoj ennu aanu"
(My bro's name is Manoj)

The message was in malayalam. How did she ever learn malayalam!!!!
Tree pinged Seenu

Tree : "You the Malayalam"

Seenu : "Yeah"

Tree : "Since the When"

Seenu : "Since Yesterday"

Tree : "But the why"

Seenu : "Simply"

Tree : "By the whom"

Seenu : "Teenu"

Since Tree was a mallu too, he too decided to teach Seenu something.Tree always believed that one learns best from mistakes. And he decided to apply that concept here.

Tree : "Hey Seenu, you should thank your teacher Teenu for her great sacrifice of teaching you"

Seenu : "But how"

Tree : " Next time when you see her, just tell her 'podi kazhudhe' . In case you want to thank a guy just say 'poda kazhudhe' "

(PS : poda/podi kazhudhe means "Go away donkey")

Seenu :"Oo so what does this mean"

Tree : "It means thank you for whatever you have done"

Seenu : "Hmm podi kazhudhe....sounds so beautiful"

Tree : " Yeah I know..it's nothing. I can give you even more beautiful sentences".

Seenu : "Anyway thanks for your help. Poda kazhudhe".

Tree : "Err...yeah welcome welcome".

The scene changes to the girl's hostel. Teenu and Seenu are taking a stroll in the garden

Seenu : "Teenu, I want to thank you for what you have done for me"

Teenu : (blushing) "Sure go ahead"

Seenu : "Podi kazhuthe"

Teenu : "What!!!" (looking at Seenu mouth opened)

Seenu : "Podi kazhuthe, podi kazhuthe, podi kazhuthe".

Teenu : "Is this what I get for doing all this."

Seenu : "You like it?"

Teenu : "You have no idea girl"

Seenu : "Want more?"

Teenu : "O no no no...had more than enough for the day."

Seenu : "So when is my next class...teacher."

Teenu : "School closed for summer vacations."

Swimming and me

2009-03-01T07:56:00.000-08:00

Ever since I came to IIT, I wanted to learn swimming. Why?Well for one, I suck at swimming, the obvious reason being I don't know how to swim. Another reason was that when it comes to water, my body defies the laws of physics. How? Well according to the laws of physics, any round object fully filled with air should float in water. But somehow my body doesn't want to follow this law making my life all the more difficult. Some body eh?

So, armed with all the above "compelling" reasons I had made this grand plan that by the time I graduate from here, Michael Phelps will beg me not to compete with him for the next Olympics. The very next day, after I entered the sacred portals of IIT, I joined the swimming club. Though it burned a Rs.100 hole in my pocket, it bothered me the least. Where else can one go to learn swimming for Rs.100 per semester. Well here ends the happy part of the story. Now starts the sad part.

As soon as I filled up the membership form, I was asked to buy a red cap, which was meant for beginners. So another 100 rupees gone. This red cap, according to the admission officer, was to make sure that the instructors can make out the beginners from the rest. The least I say about that red cap, the better. It had a stupid itching head cover, with 2 long strings from either side which goes down the either cheeks and then you need to tie a knot below the chin. Well if you didn't get the picture correct, then just imagine this : You are made to wear a 2 year old baby's scarf. It made you look like such a buffoon that after seeing yourself once in the mirror with that cap on, you never ever would want to see a mirror again in your life.

Fine whatever. Bearing the "humiliation" I started walking towards the pool, all the time making sure that I kept looking down so that no one sees me with that stupid red cap. I reached the pool. I was about to jump into the pool when someone started poking me on my back. I turned back. It was the instructor. What does he want? O maybe I need to wish him.

"Good evening", I said.

And I turned back to jump into the pool. Again he poked me. Now what.

Me : "Yes?"

Instructor : "Beginners are not allowed in the big pool initially"

Me : "Then where else do I swim"

Instructor : "There".
He pointed towards a small shallow pool of water.

Me : " You call that a swimming pool???"

Instructor : " No, we call it a baby pool"

Me : "Do I look like a baby"

Instructor : "You sure do", eyeing my red cap.

First these idiots give me a baby scarf and now a baby pool.

2 minutes later there I was standing in the baby pool, with a baby scarf, looking here and there, not knowing what to do. I looked at the instructor.

Me : "So how should I get started'

Instructor : "You can start by bringing 2oo ruppees the next class"

Me : "WHY???"

Instructor : 'That's my tuition fees"

I pay Rs.100 for getting membership, another Rs.100 for that stupid cap, bore the humiliation of wearing that stupid cap and now standing in that goddamned pool which bearly reaches till my knee and he tells me that I need to cough up another 200 ruppees to learn swimming. That's it. No more of this tamasha. I decided that I will learn it myself. No help whatsoever. After 8 months what is the end result : I should have paid up that 200 rupees ;(.

Birthday goodies

2009-02-21T22:14:00.000-08:00

Birthday bumps. Aah what a beautiful concept. The very thought of toasting the guy's ass for the unpardonable mistake of dropping down to this earth. Great right. Well not exactly. Not when it is your ass which is doing all the receiving. Even if you forget your own birthday, there would be a set of "loyal" followers who makes sure you don't so easily forget that you just completed one more year of burdening Mother Earth,each year, every year.

During my initial days in IIT, I used to hear strange noises coming from somewhere in the hostel corridor. The funny thing was that these sounds start coming soon after 12 am. And it was almost a daily affair. Later on I came to know that it is actually a birthday celebration. And this is how it goes...

The birthday boy is first made to "embrace" the wall. Before the "execution" starts the birthday boy is allowed to say a silent prayer

"May my ass rest in peace"

Others also joins him in his prayer, just that their prayers are semantically slightly different

"May your ass rest in pieces"

Then the firing starts.

"BANG"
"AAAHHHH"
"BANG BANG"
"AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH"
"BANG BANG BANG....BANG"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

Some people use their slippers to do the job while the "professionals" let their legs do the talking. In either case, the birthday guy is a gone case. The firing goes on and on. It stops only when everyone is satisfied that his round convex ass has turns red hot and flat. Soo flat that rotis can be easily cooked on it.

4 years of birthday celebrations in the campus and his future is in doldrums. With a flat ass after graduation, marriage is out of question. Depending on the degree of flatness, it is very easy to identify the person's hostel. Anyone with a concave ass should definitely belong to my hostel. That's for sure. With the number of good "friends" I have made, I have no hopes that I will live to see 2010. Maybe it's a good time for me to make my insurance plans.

The old man and the mess

2009-02-18T20:08:00.000-08:00

The mention of hostel mess doesn't give me pleasant thoughts, atleast not when the food is concerned. It gives me nightmares even to think of having lunch or dinner from our hostel mess, though there are exceptions some days. But this post is not about how I feel about my hostel mess. It is about an old man in our mess. Since I don't know his name we will call him Mr Hero (since he is the hero of my post). Now our Hero is a mess staff member. As far as I have seen and experienced, he is not into cooking. His expertise lies in arranging washed glasses on all the food tables and to make sure the water jug on all tables is constantly full. So why is he the protagonist of my post? Well here goes.

Hero seemed to be have issues with other fellow staff members. At the rate of atleast 2 fights per day, he makes sure that he covers all the mess members in one week. But though his fights are, in general, not against any one person, he does have a special "liking" to a particular old chap. Let's call him Mr Villain (since he is the enemy of our Hero). He leads the fightback of the remaining mess members against Hero. On days when Hero is on a "date" with Villain, it is a feast for eyes for we students. It's not everyday that one gets to see a proper fight. Once they almost came to blows. If the students had not interfered, we could as well seen a great granfather fight. Never had a chance to see one till now.

Very often when we are having our food, our Hero comes near us, and starts blabbering about things which make anything but sense. If there is an empty glass on the table that no one is using he comes over and shouts

"Yee tumhara glass hei?"
(Is it your glass)

"nehi tho"
(No)

Continues in his loud voice.
"Phir yaha pe kyu hei. Andar kyu nehi rakha?"
(Then why is it here. Why is it not inside.)

PS: Used utensils and glasses are supposed to be deposited at the washing area after we are done with our food.

"muche nehi maloom. Mera nehi hei"
(I don't know. It's not mine)

"Kaha kaha se aate hei log"
(From where all does people come from)

Often it happens that even though mess timings for dinner is till 9 pm, we come five or 10 minutes after 9 pm. So what do we see when we go inside? All the food is over. But not so for our Hero. We see him leaving the mess with a bag full of something. We always had a suspicion that the bag must contain the mess food. In keeping with the supreme human tradition of blaming anyone other than oneselves for one's faults, we find it easier to put the blame on him for the mess food getting over rather than our coming late.

2 days back we were having our dinner in the mess.
Suddenly we heard some noise behind us.
Aha Hero and Villain are at it again. Great, let's see what happens...

Hero takes 2 ladoos from the sweet container and keeps it in his table.

What does our Villain sir do? He snatches those ladoos from Hero's plate and keeps it back in the sweet container.

Hero glares at the Villain. This time he takes 3 ladoos and puts it in his plate.

Villain gives a even bigger glare and snatches it back.

Our Hero being the typical bollywood type, doesn't give in. He stretches his hands to take "his" ladoos back.

This is when Villain jumps into action mode. He just lifts the entire container in his hands and starts running around the mess with our Hero in hot pursuit. Villain knows as long there are ladoos in the container, his life is in "danger" from our Hero. So our Vllainji goes to each table and asks the students to take one ladoo each. The students were more than happy to oblige. Usually we guys have to play hide and seek with the guy who guards the sweets container against anyone taking extra sweets. Today the very guy is begging us to take an extra one. Man, how times change.

Hero keeps following Villain. He will not be satisfied until he got his "heroines". As he keeps following the villain our poor Heroji keeps shouting

"Baaki sab ko 4-5 ladoo de rehe hei, muche ek bhi nehi de raha hei"
(He is giving 4-5 ladoos to everyone, but he's not giving even one to me).

This kept happening for sometime. Villain running around with the sweet container distributing sweets. Hero following him with a heavy heart. We students and other mess members were having a great time seeing this.

Even after giving an extra sweet to all present inside the mess, some sweets were still left.

"Now what?", thought the Villain.

Then someone shouted from among the other mess members
"Ab TV room mei jaake sab ko baato"
(Go to the TV room and start distributing sweets to everyone sitting there)

Our poor Heroji must have been devastated on hearing this. Now whether he really got his ladoos or not, I don't know. But we guys surely are looking forward to the next "encounter".

How to speak in Telugu

2009-02-07T01:44:00.000-08:00

PS: Before I start my new blog, a small token of appreciation for my friend Akhilesh Ladha . He has been very enthusiastic about my previous post "Are we truly IITians" and has been trying to forward this message of resource conservation across as many people as possible. It includes posting the post on our Mtech newsgroup, orkut community and also to his hostel mailing list. Really appreciate your effort my friend.

How to speak in Telugu
-------------------------

There are lots of side effects of having a guy from a different region, talking a completely strange language, as one's roommate. The main (dis)advantage is that you get to learn (or maybe forced to learn) a whole new language. Well, mine case is no different either. And after around 8 months of sharing the same room with my roomie Sheiku, here I am , equipped with an entirely new language...Telugu.

My roomie is from a place called Guntur in Andhra Pradesh. So most of his calls are either from his home town or from his Telugu friends in the campus. So how did I get my advanced knowledge of Telugu? Well here's how...

Krrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggg....
(his mobile ringing)
He picks up the phone

"Endi"...
......
"Cheppu"...
...
...
"Endi..."
..
...
...
"hahahha endi endi"
"Cheppu"....

You guys might be thinking he speaks only 2 words. Nope absolutely not. The thing is, I can make out only these 2 words clearly out of all the of "akada" "chakada" "makada" "pakoda" that he shouts into his mobile.

Thus my 8 months stay with him enriched me with 2 words - "Endi" and "Cheppu". Now what this actually means, my guess is as good as yours. But the thing was I never had got a chance to use my "advanced" knowledge of Telugu with anyone. My roomie wud rather hang himself than hear me kill his mother toungue. But I soon got my chance.

One day my roomie had gone to his lab in the evening. But he had forgotten to logout from his Gtalk google messenger. After he had gone to the lab, I started using his system. After 5 minutes or so I suddenly got a message

"areyy meku firebird assignmet echara?"

The message was from Krishna, my classmate, and he too is from Andhra. He actually meant to ask this to Sheiku. But, as Sheiku was in the lab and since I received the message, my evil mind started thinking of many infinite possibilities. Oppurtunities knock your door when you least expect it. This was my best chance to test my Telugu.

The only thing I could make out from Krishna's message was the term firebird. It was an equipment in our lab on which we do our embedded design assignments. The other words were as good as Greek to me. So what to do now? I need to give this guy a good reply if he had to believe that it was indeed Sheiku who was replying. And that means some proper Telugu words needs to be typed in. Well, that's not a big problem. I have 2 good Telugu words at my disposal. And I decided to one of them.

Me : "Endi"

I waited anxiously. Did this work?....
After some 30 seconds of anxiously waiting, prompt came the reply

"maku assgn 2 echaru ra saying tht we need to complete in 4 hrs anta"

Aha first hurdle crossed. I got a reply. But now what? Well what else other than using my 2nd and last word of my Telugu dictionary.

Me : "Cheppu"

Now what will this guy reply now. And if at all he replies, what do I reply back. My quota of words were over.

Krishna: "see the message i typed above lab loo vunnava?"

Hmm some words english, some words telugu. Is this guy trying to say that he wants to go to the loo? Na it can't be. If he wants to go to the loo why would he want to tell Sheiku that.

But now what to reply. Suddenly I got a brillant idea. Krishna was typing lots of Telugu words right. So all I need to do is select some words from his own sentences and fire it back at him. Hmm so which one to choose. "Vunnava" looks like a very cute word. It reminded me of my Lonavala trip. So fine, "Vunnava" it is.

Me: "Vunnava"

Well no reply for sometime. I guess the game was up.

After 5 minutes or so...

Krishna: "anna sumairuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu kathalu paduthunava ra?"

Wow, game not over yet.

Me : "endi endi"

krishna : "hmmm"

His "Hmm" didn't feel like a good sign. Does he smell a rat? I have to do something...fast!!! That means my reply should contains lots of telugu words. So what's the way out. Simple. Ask him the same question he asked.

Me : "maku assgn 2 echaru ra we need to complete in 4 hrs"

Krishna : "areyyy repaye lab ra evalla epodo mail cheysaydu ra i think chadevayedhi challa vundhi".

Whoa whoa lots of telugu words in return. Well I just need to choose one or 2 and reply back.

Me : "challa vundhi vundhi"

Krishna : "abeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy"

Me : "endi endi"

But this time the game was really up. No more replies.
Later I came to know poor Krishna, on the verge of going mad, called up Sheiku to ask for an "explanation". But seeing the amount of time I held on during those "tense" moments, I guess I am prepared for a even more advanced course of Telugu.

Are we truly IITians?

2009-01-29T02:00:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-23T04:52:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-14T04:16:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-12T05:51:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-03T11:56:00.001-08:00

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.

Mood-i

2008-12-31T08:47:00.001-08:00

Dec 31st 2008 10:17 pm. The year 2008 almost coming to an end. In less than 2 hours a whole new year starts. What does that mean?. Nothing except that my vacation is done with and the 2nd semester starts tomorrow :(. I may as well end this year with a new blog. What better topic for the blog other than my experiences in Mood-i. Mood-i is the yearly cultural event that is conducted by IIT Bombay. It happens towards the end of December of each year. This year it was from 20th-23th of December. Mood-i is the biggest ever cultural program that I have ever attended till date and the experiences were worth it's weight in gold.

Unfortunately I couldn't make it to the campus on 20th since I had a get together with my close friends at Kochi on 19th. I, along with my classmate Vinu, reached campus on 21st around afternoon. As soon as we entered the campus, the sea change that the campus had undergone hit us with full impact. At first I thought I may have ended up in heaven surrounded by hundreds of beautiful angels, albeit with smaller clothes. The desert that was the IIT (regarding girls that is) has suddenly become Hawaii beach. There were lots and lots of banners and posters on both sides of the main road. All along the roadsides were stalls and Proshows. In one of the stall, sponsored by Ponds company, some kind of game was going on. I didn't know what the game was...but all I could see was that girls were standing on guys feet and dancing. Research is still going on world over to ascertain the amount of heartburn these things causes to unlucky guys like me, who are not so lucky with girls.

Soon I reached my room, took a bath, changed into a new set of clothes and then set out to explore the campus. I soon met up with with our guys Adil, Vishal, Harshad, Ajitav, Vaibhav and Ladha. They had all reached the day before and so were blessed enough to enjoy Mood-i from Day 1. From them I came to know that the Circus, that was supposed to be have been held the previous day got cancelled due to the crowd getting out of hand. This had also resulted in police lathi charge. Vishal recounted his "bravery" wherein he managed to escape the lathi charge by pushing the guy in front away and ran for his dear life.

According to the schedule there was going to be a DJ party on the swimming pool side at around 4:30 pm on all 4 days. Well before the scheduled time people would start forming queue in front of the poolside. Having no other events to attend around that time, we too stood in the line. We whiled away our time chit chatting and enjoying the natural scenary around us, mainly dressed in tops and mini skirts. At around 4:30 pm, the line started moving. Just before we reached the front of the queue, our eyes suddenly fell on a board kept near the poolside entrance
"COUPLE ENTRY ONLY"
Needless to say we didn't wait anymore though Ajitav said we still stood a chance. After all it's not mentioned that the couples should be straight.
But Harshad was determined to see what was happening in the DJ party. He had already made big plans to go about it, the blueprint of the plans being kept classified. But highly placed sources revealed to us that his plan went thus : "Identify a girl standing alone, go to her, and then go around her in a circle of radius of around 10 cm whispering poolside poolside". We never came to know whether he was successful, but we did see a red mark on his cheeks, the next day, which remotely looked like the party symbol of the Congress party.

The 6:30 events are the hightlights of each day. The events are usually concerts by different eminent people. These 6:30 events also have a commong feature. The experience of standing in the queue for these concerts gives you a miniature feel of how people get into a local train at Dadar station on weekdays. The entire "drama" starts with a wait of around 1.5 hours before the scheduled time. It starts with a single line at around 5 pm and minutes before 6:30 pm when they are about to start admitting people into the OAT ( Open Air Theatre) there would have formed around 5-6 lines. At 6:30 pm they start admitting people. Since only one line will be admitted by the security guys, pushing and shoving starts between the guys in these 5-6 lines inorder to form a single line. One needs to rely on one's no-one-get-better-of-me attitude to successfully get in. Motto: No compassion for others. Make sure you get your ass inside if you want to get your seat.If one gets to train himself in this format for a week, then I am pretty sure he would qualify himself to enter the local train from Dadar station on any day at any time. In contrast to this, the ladies-only line makes a mockery of all these efforts we guys put into getting a good seat. The girls stand relaxed, only one line at the 5 pm and also at 6:30 pm. No 5-6 lines like us :(. At 6:30 pm, when the entry starts, they calmly enter the OAT, with no pushing or pulling. ( For the unknowns, Dadar station is an important station for mumbaikars for whom the local metro train is the lifeline. A speciality of Dadar station is irrespective of whether the compartment is empty or overflowing, the latter being the more probable case, the "Dadarians" make it a point to punch each others' face when trying to get in. In case you are one of the unlucky few who have to board from the Dadar station, and you somehow manage to get inside the compartment, there is a high probability that the count of your teeth would have been reduced by atleast one).

The 6:30 concert events went thus : On 21st it was a concert by Kavitha Seth and then another by roop kumar rathod ( Veer Zaara music director) and his wife Sonali (I think). On 22nd it was the Indian Ocean Band and concert by Rabbi Shergill. 23rd was the biggest draw with concert by Mohit chauhan and Sonu Nigam. The Mood-i officially closed with the Sonu Nigam concert. All concerts were good though my favourites were Sonu Nigam and Indian Ocean.

The mornings were full of small small programs and gameshows which were very entertaining. Unfortunately there are so many of them that it cannot be mentioned in just one post. In this blog, I have just touched upon some interesting experiences I had in Mood-i and haven't mentioned much about how much I enjoyed all the events that were there. Even then I should make a special mention about "Laughter Lyrics", where 4 highly regarded comic hindi poets , though I forgot their names, thoroughly enthralled the audience with their sheer comic timings and dialogue deliveries. According to me, it easily stands out from the rest of the events I saw. I will definitely make sure not to miss any part of Mood-i next year.

Time : 2 am Jan 1st 2009. The new year has already come. A very very happy new year for all.

Death race

2008-12-16T08:39:00.000-08:00

Have you ever had an experience where you knew, or rather, expected, that the next few seconds may well be your life's last? Well, I had one such experience years ago. It had such an impact on me that I am sure even if amnesia conquers me, it will never be able to get rid of this little piece of memory from my head. This one experience, more than anything that has happened to me till now, have made me realize the beauty of the entity called life.

I think it was when I was around 9 or 10 years old. My father had bought me a new cycle some months back and from then on cycling substituted walking as my chief mode of transport. Irrespective of whether the distance was too small or too far, me and my cycle were inseparable. During that time I had a friend called Naveen. He used to stay in a lane near to my house. His house was such that it was almost like being on the top of a hill since the lane was a steep climb upwards and his house was at the end of this lane. Starting from his house, this lane came downwards and joined the main road. Either side of this lane was covered with houses so that a vehicle starting from his house will never be able to see the vehicles coming from the left or right ends of the main road until the vehicle reaches the path where the lane joined the main road and formed a sort of tri-road junction like a T shape.

Naveen and I used to be very good friends. Since we were in the same class, we used to meet almost everyday. During weekends I sometimes used to go to his house in the evenings. One day he told me in class that the coming saturday was his birthday and that he wants me to come for the his birthday party. During those days, almost everyone in the class celebrated their birthdays by having a birthday party. I readily agreed and so it was decided that I will be at his house at around 4 pm on saturday.

Come saturday evening, I dressed up, took my cycle and rode to Naveen's house. The party began at around 4:30 pm and everyone had a wonderful time. By 6 pm the party came to an end and everyone was saying goodbye to each other and departing. Since my house was the closest, I waited till everyone has gone and then atlast I too decided to leave. By this time it was growing a bit dark also.

After taking leave of Naveen, I got on to my cycle my cycle and started pedalling till I reached his house gate. Since his house was on the top of a "hill", it was a steep ride "downhill". So I let gravity take over and relaxed as the cycle gained speed. Midway through the journey I thought the cycle had gained too much speed and pressed the breaks a little to slow down the cycle.
Nothing happened.
Hmm Looks like the breaks are not in good condition. I guess the cycle needs to be serviced.
I pressed the breaks a little more.
Still nothing happened.
I started getting worried. I pressed the breaks to the full extent.
Nothing.
I pressed the brakes again and again. Nothing was happening.The breaks were not working at all!!!!!!
I panicked big time. The cycle was gaining speed each second. In my frantic efforts, I just kept pressing the brakes over and over again hoping for some miracle each time.
The result was the same.
Since the lane had houses on both left and right sides, I could not even see whether there were any vehicles coming from the left or right end of the main road. The only part of the main road I could see was that part where the lane merged with the main road, ie, the junction, which was straight ahead. I thought of diving from the cycle. but the cycle had gained too much speed by then that I was sure I would crash my head if I did so. I thought of shouting out help. But no sound came from my throat. I was too scared. I had only one option left. Let the cycle continue down the path and hope for the best. Any high speeding vehicle passes through the junction, at the exact moment I reach the junction, and I was history.

Around 5 seconds to reach the junction.
I started sweating...
4 seconds...
I gripped my cycle harder
3 seconds...
One bus just went past the junction
2 seconds...
I could see stars all around my head
1 second...
I now knew it was now or never. I gripped my cycle with all the strength I could muster, called upon all gods whose names I knew, and on reaching the junction turned right. I closed my eyes expecting something to hit me from the left or right.
2 seconds passed...
The cycle was still continuing in it's path, but now on the main road. I checked my whole body. Hmm 2 hands are still there..both legs are intact....Overall I was still in one piece. And I was still alive. Whoaaa I escaped the jaws of death!!!!!!!! It was all the more spectacular because a speeding bus passed me around 5 seconds after I reached the main road. I shudder to think what a delay of 5 seconds would have done to me. I don't know what saved me that day. I guess it was sheer luck. But then it helped me look at life from a whole new perspective. I don't take life for granted anymore. I am thankful for each day that goes by, thankful for each new experiences it brings with it, thankful for the new things it teaches, thankful for the new friends it brings and last but not the least thankful for the chance to enjoy one more day.

School memories

2008-12-10T13:33:00.000-08:00

As usual, on vacations, I have nothing better to do other than sleep, watch movies and waste time. Today I was just lying down on the bed, remembering my school life. I had done my whole schooling from LKG to 12th, at the same school :- St Thomas Residential School in trivandrum. As I was going through my school life, I was seized with a big urge to write a small post in my blog dedicated to my school life memories. There are lots and lots of things which I would like to write about my school life, but then I guess I can't put down the entire things in one post. So here I am putting down in words some of my fondest memories of my school life.

It was when I was in 4th standard. I was one hell of a restless mischievous naughty boy then. The lunch break was the time when most of the actions took place on those days. The lunch break was a horror time for my classmates while it was party time for me. The moment everyone washes their hands and sits down to have their lunch, their horror, in my form, appears. I start from one corner of the class and stops at each lunch box, checks whether the person (I followed a policy of no gender discrimination) had bought chicken or not. If any unfortunate guy/gal did bring chicken for his/her lunch, then they are forced to make their lunch boxes lighter, and my hand heavier, by one chicken piece. Obviously vegetarians were left unscathed. Though most of the class meekly "surrendered" to this torture, there were some other chicken-lovers who put up a brave fight by gobbling up an entire chicken even before I could reach their desk.

In the evenings, when my mom opens the lunch box, she would find a huge pile of chicken bones inside. In order to put a stop to my embarrassing habit, she will make chicken for me for lunch. But then being the smart boy that I was, I ate both my chicken and others' chicken and returned home with even bigger pile of chicken bones. After that my mom knew I was a hopeless case and didn't try anymore "tricks".

In 4th standard, I don't think there was even one teacher who hadn't had atleast one complaint against me. But the one who leads the pack was my social science teacher. I don't exactly remember her full name. Let's call her my SST (social science teacher). In those days, we had a 45 minute lunch break. 10 minutes went for lunch. Remaining time we played football. I guess rugby would be a more appropriate name. I would just roll and roll on the ground, in the name of playing football. Our uniform was made up of a white shirt and gray shorts. Not so for me post lunch break. It becomes brown and brown. Most of the days, the very next period after lunch break is the social science class. The teacher would enter the class. Then she would scan the class. What does she see. 40 white shirts and 1 brown shirt.This is how she tracks down her "favourite" student.

SST : Sree Shankar please get up. Come to the front.
I come to the front with my head looking down all the time

SST : So what happened
me: Nothing
SST : How did the white shirt become brown
me : I was playing football
SST : You were playing football alone?
me : No
SST : Then how come I see only 1 brown shirt.

I would look around the class. Hmm she is right. Do these guys apply any anti-dust lotion before coming to play?

me : I don't know teacher.
SST : Ok do one thing. Take off your shirt and put it on the window grill. You can put it on after the class is over.

I would go to the window grill, took off my shirt and put it on the the grill and returned back to the seat. Now the class looks better. 41 white shirts : 40 half sleeve shirts and 1 sleeveless shirt
(my banyan). If anyone thought this experience would have changed me, then they are horribly mistaken. This routine continued throughout the whole year :D.

When I was studying in the 5th standard, the maths subject was taught by one Mrs Alieyamma George ( I am not exactly sure of the name since most of the teachers in my school had their names as Alieyamma or Achamma or some variations of these 2 names. So I often confuse one teacher with another ). She was an expert in giving pinches. I am sure her resume would contain a degree on advanced course in pinching. She had invented her own method for pinching. It was as follows. She would search the entire triceps part of the hand for the most fleshy part. Once she finds the "weak" spot, it's a nightmare from then on. She swirls the skin at that area. The more she swirls, the more one goes up one his/her toes. Any outsider, on seeing a victim, could easily mistake it to be a ballet dance practice. The ISRO guys could surely have saved a few rockets, which failed to reach the space, if only they had thought of using our teacher's pinch instead of any fuel propellant. Even the rockets won't dare defy her pinch. No prizes for guessing who got the maximum pinches that year. One pinch from her would suffice to answer the question "how many stars are there in the universe".

Towards the end of the year, Alieyamma teacher had asked for a feedback. I don't know whether the above experiences had played any role in my feedback, but this is what I wrote.
" Teacher you are fat. I think you have diabetes"
Actually I don't recollect the above incident. It was told to me by my favourite teacher in school, Mrs Poonam Lal. Had anyone else told me such a thing happened, I would never have believed him or her. I must say I really had some guts when I was small.

These experiences do not even form the tip of an iceberg. Maybe some other time I may write another blog narrating more such experiences.

Wedding bells

2008-12-04T07:47:00.000-08:00

Now before u guys jump into any conclusions, lemme clarify...my wedding is still a long time away :D. This is about the wedding that I attended today. The background for attending this wedding is this. A few days back, Jijith sent me an invitation through mail and chat inviting me to his elder bro's marriage on dec 4th. So who is Jijith? He was my onsite coordinator when I was working in Infosys chennai. For those who don't know who an onsite coordinator is, he acts as an interface between the offshore guys and the client who is in the onsite (Usually an onsite is a synonym for USA for most of the projects in our account). Since Dec 4th happened to be the time when I would be at my hometown for vacations, I readily agreed because, though I had a very friendly and cordial relation with Jijith, I had never met him in person. All our contacts were through chats and/or phone. Though he had come to chennai office once, when he had come to India, I was at my hometown that day. So I was not able to meet him then. The marriage was to be held at a place near to where I was staying. So now here was a chance to meet him in person (at last!!!).

At around 10:45 am I reached the marriage hall. I looked around once, hoping against hope to meet someone whom I know.
Tough luck, no one.
Fine, no use fooling around. I went straight into the marriage hall. It was filled with people. Suddenly it struck me. How do I recognize Jijith in the first place? All I have seen of him is a pic that was about 3-4 years old. Well lemme try to think how he looks like...hmm thick moustache, little bulky, sort of long hair ( I think). Gr8 now all I need to do is to find the guy who matches this description. Now that should be simple right.
Aha there goes one a long hair thick mustached guy. He should be it. I was about to approach him when I saw a child and a lady along with him. Whoa he can't have a wife and a child when his elder bro is getting married today, can he? Only 1 explanation for this. This is NOT jijith. Atleast not the one I am seeking.
Aha there goes another one....Naa he's not bulky.
aah there another..and another...and yet another...oohhhh grrr @#$@!#&$%#$
looks like entire marriage hall is filled with long haired little bulky thick mustached guys!!!!
Then suddenly another terrifying thought stuck me....what if he has cut his hair short, cut his moustache and is no more bulky now. Oho, if so how will i ever find him in this "jungle". My dilemma was that I could not even go and ask anyone about this. What will I ask.."hello sir, I don't know either the groom or the bride...I am the groom's brother's friend. Could you tell me how the brother looks like?". People will think I have gone mad.

Then an idea stuck me ( whew, long time due ). The brother would be standing besides the groom once the marriage starts. So I just need to zero in on the thick mustached guy when the marriage starts. Soon I spotted a guy who was a bit bulky, but short hair, standing besides the groom. It should be jijith. Nevertheless I wanted to be certain. Since his back was turned to me, the "mustache clue" was still pending to be verified. Even after 5 minutes, no signs of him turning. I was in my mind shouting "Turn turn..". Guess he must have heard me "shout". He just about turned by around 10 degrees to the left. There....I could see the left end of his mustache. Thus by theory of induction, his mustache should also have a right edge. And since no person in his right mind will ever come to his brother's marriage with just left and right edges of his mustache, it means he should have the whole mustache "intact". Aha the 3rd clue verified. He shud be my man. Mission Accomplished. When he was free, I went over and talked to him. But, unlike me, he didn't have any difficulty recognizing me (wonder how???)

A wedding experience, especially the ones in Kerala, are never complete without a mention about the sadya ( lunch served during marriages). I was going to have one after a loooong time, especially after my torture for 4 months in the iit mess. Even the thought of having the sadhya was mouth watering. I just couldn't wait to get my hands on it (another reason was that I was damn hungry. But then I guess the first reason makes for a better reading rite :D ).

I was desperately waiting for the marriage ceremony to get over, I suddenly saw people rushing towards the food counter even before the ceremony got over. Whoa looks like there were more desperate people than me!!!!And from the looks of it they will not stop at anything before they lay their hands on the food.I guess I need to "suffer" for some more time and wait for the next batch. After 20 minutes or so, even before the previous batch was done with their food, the next batch was already ready at the doorstep of the food counter. This time I too took up my position. Enough of sufferings. Its time for action now. The time kept ticking. People waiting with bated breath on when the door will open.
Tick tock tick tock....
And then suddenly the door opens.
Whoaaaaa whoaaa don't push me..help!!!!
I was being pushed into the room by the crowd in their hurry to reach the counter and book their place. It was as if I was carried by them, instead of my feet, to my seat. And thus "thanks" to a little "help" from the crowd, I managed to get a seat.

Now I was ready to have my first sadya in a long time. I always had this problem, while eating the sadhya, that I could never control how much I eat since they are soo delicious. But this time I was determined to eat only what is needed. By the end of the meal I requested the 2 neighboring people to pull me up from the table, since I was finding it difficult to do it alone. So much for my eating control. Thus today I was at last able to meet Jijith and also have a delicious meal. good day's work :-).

End of an era

2008-11-28T23:11:00.000-08:00

All right all right it is just the end of the semester and not an era, but c'mon what's life without some harmless exaggerations :). So, finally, after months of toil, hard work, and studies by my classmates and a little bit by me also, we have finally reached the end of our first semester and now it's vacation time!!! For me,it will take sometime for this feeling to sink in. Even the feeling that I am studying in an IIT itself has not yet sunk in, let alone this one.

I really don't know how I feel about completing (somehow) the first semester. It seems just yesterday that we had all gathered in the Kresit hall and were introducing each one of us to each other. That day it was a hall full of strangers. Now, whenever I think about it, it was a hall filled with new found friends, some who have become very close in a short span of time. I must say time really flies fast.

I feel great on completing one semester, and looking forward to spending a few days of rest at home and catch up with all those whom I missed, and I must say I missed them a lot. Yet deep inside me I would miss this campus, even if it is for just a few days. It was truly a wonderful journey till now and hopefully it continues to be the same.

There were some memorable events that happened the whole semester. First would be our CR elections, where Aadi somehow managed to become a CR. This was followed by a "small" period of inactivity by our CR. A series of constructive feedbacks (read shoutings and name callings :D ) from our friends "inspired" him to perform his CR duties in the right spirit. Now he's doing fine :D. What all some "constructive feedbacks" can do!!!

Then there was the freshers' day party which was a special one for me (read blog posted sometime back). Description of the IIT life is incomplete without mentioning the night outs we have on the previous day of assignment and project submissions. Then there was the dept trek, the trek to our hilltop inside the campus, the volleyball tournament that we PGs won, the football matches we have in the evenings, the cursing of the mess food in one voice during lunch and dinner (usually bkfasts are skipped as a life of an IITian starts after 12 in the afternoon) and many more such sweet memories.

My last exam was over yesterday. It was one hell of a paper. It now ranks first in "my screwed up papers" list. But then who cares. Screw ups are a part of an IITian's life. We also had our birthday celebrations yesterday, to celebrate the birthdays of our classmates who had their birthdays on October and November. It was such a grand "finale" to sign off our first semester. Hopefully the joyride continues in the 2nd semester also. Will miss my friends and the campus till then.

FRIENDS or enemies

2008-11-21T09:18:00.000-08:00

It's exam season in IIT. Wherever you look, one can see the smoke from the overheated heads of the young minds. Some interesting changes happen during exam times. Night tea is available for free after 10 pm. Earlier the internet used to get disconnected after 12 am, now it is extended till 4 am so that students can "study" online. Selected stationary shops and photostat shops will be kept open till 1 am. Fewer people are seen on the roads. All in all everyone and everything contributing to building a big scary environment.

But there was one guy who, even 2 days before the exams were to begin, was yet to show any signs of being "affected" by these changes. Yup, that's me. Yeah he did welcome the night tea change - he got tea free now....he welcomed the internet change - he could download more movies now. He didn't even bother about other changes. Why would he want to bother with photostats when he doesn't even know what to photocopy.

One month before the exams were to begin, I had downloaded the first 2 seasons of the famous FRIENDS comedy series. I had seen random episodes of this series at home when it was telecast on TV . Since then I had always wanted to see the entire series in the right order. So thus started my journey into the deep unknown unexplored mysterious adrenaline packed (c'mon no harm in a "little" exaggeration, right?) world of FRIENDS. After watching the first 2 seasons there was no stopping me. I immediately downloaded the next 3 seasons. The fact that exams were just a week away had least impact. In fact I noticed a worrisome trend as the exams were nearing. Somehow my watching rate was becoming inversely proportional to the number of days remaining for the exams.

2 days left for exam.
Exam to study for : Digital Image processing.(DIP)
Priority : Very high
Reason : Had one of the biggest screw up in the history of IIT during the mid semester exam of the
same course
Priority actually given by me : Very low
Reason : 5 more episodes of season 4 pending :(

So a "crisis" has definitely risen. Friends or DIP.
Things favouring Friends :
1) There are 2 days still left to study :D
2) Mentally prepared to getting screwed up again. Somehow what the prof teaches mostly goes over my head.

Things favouring DIP:
1) Only 2 days left to study :(
2) Accept the challenge to mentally prepare myself to not to mentally prepare myself to get screwed (if that makes any sense)

Since the factors favouring DIP were unprecedentedly high, I had no option other than to start preparing for DIP. I opened the book and started with the chapter image compression.

"Image compression is blah blah blah.....compression techniques are used in variety of applications and and and....will Ross and Rachel break up...na they can't break up right, they are so great together....and hoho, that chandler is funny"
"Whoaaaa dudeee what the ****, concentrateeeeeee."
I was like" hey who's this".
Then I realized it was coming from inside my head itself.
"C'mon dude we need to see the next episode and see whether they are really breaking up"
"Hey hey now who is this"
Again I realized it was coming from inside my head itself.
Oho 2 contradicting voices from the same head. Only 1 explanation for this. It's the white angel (WA) versus the Red Devil (RD) contest once again. (Do I watch too many tom and jerry shows???)
WA : Image processing is tough
RD : But FRIENDS is funny
WA : You need to get a good grade
RD : Na, u can always make it up in others
WA : RD sucks
RD : I rock.

Me : Aaahh stop itttt you two....I will watch FRIENDS for 10 minutes and then study...what harm will come in not studying 10 minutes.
Next "10" minutes went in watching a whole 25 minutes FRIENDS episode.
Fine at least now get down to study...it was already noon and have done nothing yet
Back to image processing...

"There are different types of compression techniques : LZW compression, the JPEG compression, GIF compression,Rachel compression, Ross compression...Aaaahhh not againnnnn"

Now I had some serious trouble. I just can't concentrate on my studies as long as I have the FRIENDS series pending (and I had 5 more seasons to go, that means 24 episodes in each season and each episode around 20 minutes). O crap I need to do something about it.
I packed my bags and went to the lab (each mtech guy gets a personnel PC here).
Things started getting better after that, though concentrating was still tough. But since I didn't have FRIENDS in my lab PC, I had no other choice than to continue studying.

This was my routine for the next 2 days. Go to lab, sit there till night and then come back to the room. Soon the exam day arrived. I went confidently to the exam hall. 5 minutes later the question paper was distributed. One look at the question paper and I knew it....It's screw up time once again. The 2 days time that I had sacrificed for the sake of preparing for this paper could well have been "well utilised" at finding out whether Monica would really get a boyfriend or whether Joey would pass his audition. Suddenly from inside my head came the reply
" I told ya so".
Yeah I know. RD is always right. Fine whatever, I need to go back to the room and make up for the lost time and find out the answers to the above questions before my next exam.See ya.

Inner reflections

2008-11-07T01:24:00.000-08:00

All my posts till now were of non-serious genre. So this time I thought why not a serious one. Yeah ,me and serious, it sounds oxymoron to most of the people I know. But then hey, lemme atleast give it a try. Through this journey of life, I have encountered many wonderful people who have been my source of inspiration and at the same time my source of fun and happiness. I want to dedicate this post to all of them.

Some of the people I have known at some point or the other, will tell that I am a jovial fun loving person to be with, while some may say I am a non-serious guy, loves teasing people...while others go a little more forward and tell that I am an immature guy who likes making fun of others. It's not always that the people have told me these things, though sometimes they do tell. But mostly it is the impression that I get when I am with them or may have heard from others.

I am one person who cannot survive without friends. Friendship is one thing I treasure a lot. Different people have different methods to express their affection to the ones they love and care. It maybe just a smile for one person, for someone else it may be buying gifts whereas for others it may be a hug and so on. For me it's none of these. I have this peculiar character that the more close I feel to a person, the more I tease him/her. Even now, there are many people, whom I have known for a long time, who doesn't know this or, to put it better, haven't realized it.

But there is one major problem with this character of mine. I always assume that all people are easy-going or take-it-easy characters like me. I often tend to forget, that people are different and that I may actually end up hurting some people's sentiments due to this, though I may not realize it. And this is what hurts me most. And it's very hard for me if I come to know that knowingly or unknowingly I caused hurt to others since,whenever I tease my friends, it's due to the feeling of closeness I feel, and when that ends up hurting that very closeness, I feel guilty about it.

These types of miscommunication occurs mainly due to my crossing the invisible laxman rekha. Though I would love to have that line at infinity, that is not possible in the practical sense. I may not realize it then when it is happening, but later on I somehow get the feeling that I did cross the line. For some close friends, the line to cross is far and I can go a long distance before I reach that limit. But for others, the limit is reached too fast and I cross it even before I realize it.

Some of my close friends really put up with me even after I tease them like anything. One of them is Roshini. She's my neighbor, in my hometown, and is now happily settled in US with her hubby Vikas. She is a great dancer and has a great passion for it. But I tease her precisely on her dancing, making all kinds of silly comments on her different dance steps. I don't know whether it's true, but I had always got the feeling that though I am teasing her, she understands that it's really my way of telling how much I appreciate her dancing. Maybe I am wrong, but she has never given me a chance to think otherwise :).

Some of the closest friends that I have are the ones that I made in college. Yegnesh, Ashok, Murali, Varun, Sabari, Vinod, Rajappan, Komalan (Some are nick names :D ) are some of them and these guys are very close to my heart. When in a group, we make fun of each other and laugh at each one's expense. In fact in the group I end up being the target often, though I am "left alone" when sabari is there in the group :D.

In our class in IIT, 3 people whom I tease a lot is Aadi, Prashima and Meenu. Though Aadi has never told me anything as such, I get the feeling that he sometimes gets hurt by it. Aadi, sorry dude if I have hurt you in any way. Same goes for Prashima. She is one of the most bholi bhali girl that I have come across. I tease for almost anything. If she goes to library I tease her about studying too hard though I too go to the library, if she comes in jeans and top I tease her saying she is trying to impress someone and so on. She does smile through all these comments, but I really don't know whether I have ever crossed the line. As for Meenu, I think she somehow knows how this is how I am since, I guess most of her college friends have the same character :D.

One guy, in our class, who is my baap in the teasing department is Adil. This is one guy whom, I know, I can put my laxman rekha at infinity . I tease him like anything and he gives it back to me with interest. But mostly he wins the contest :D.

Last, but not the least, this post is intended for all those people who I may have ended up hurting with this stupid character of mine. I am really sorry if I have hurt you guys in anyway. Just know that the more hurt you may have felt, that much more I loved you guys.

small amusing foolish stupid

2008-10-29T11:51:00.000-07:00

We all have our own small incidents, which may not be big enough to write about or important enough to tell others, but yet may amuse you when it somehow crosses your mind. I too have my collection of these small incidents some of which are amusing, while some are foolish and stupid. I am writing about some of these here.

On one beautiful ( This I am guessing :D) saturday morning, I got up around noon. Having nothing better to do, I thought why not take a bath (What a timepass). The previous night I had the usual struggles of my life, finishing off a damn assignment and so had slept late. Having got up soo "early", I was still not fully awake. I took my bucket and soap and went to the bathroom. I hung my shorts on a hanger, outside the bathroom, and went inside to take a bath. Soon I was enjoying the cool waters from the shower.

After finishing my shower, I reached out to take my towel. Nothing came to my hand. I turned around. Oyee where is my towel. Then suddenly it stuck me. O great, I forgot my towel. I guess I would be the first person in this world who would have forgotten to take a towel while coming to take a bath. While the outside world was enjoying the beautiful day, I was foolishly standing inside the bathroom, with water dripping all over me, wearing nothing, not knowing what to do. Well, the only option left for me was to dry myself with my shorts.
Wow great, now that's on the hanger.
But hey, but that's just 10 metres away.
Maybe...just maybe, if I could run outside and get hold of it....
But what if anyone comes into the bathroom at that exact moment...
Well no risk no gain...
After weighing the pros and cons, I decided to finally take the plunge. I peeped outside. Hmm coast clear. And then,with all the strength I could muster I ran outside, got hold of my shorts, got back into the bathroom just in the nick of time as at that exact moment when I reached back inside, a guy came in to pee. Guess I won the race ;). I dried myself up with the shorts and then had to return to my room wearing the same shorts. People were just staring at me, but then I didn't care...I had prevented a greater catastrophe from happening :D.

This happened just yesterday. It was the last of our diwali holidays and some of us were playing football in hostel-6(H6) ground.The time was around 6:45 pm. The lights were very dim, but the game was still on. There is a small forest like area just outside the boundary wall. The wall was so high that it just about reached my waist. Suddenly I heard some grunting from somewhere near the boundary wall. I turned around to see something big standing just on the other side of the wall. The light was very dim and the fact that I had short sight made the matters worse. Somehow it seemed to me that a lion was standing on the wall. Suddenly all those stories of panthers entering the campus popped inside my head. My first reaction was to just shout out "lion lion" and started running towards the room. Everyone else just stared at me for a few seconds, unable to comprehend what was happening, then everyone turned their heads towards the wall and then they started laughing.
Oyee it is a hungry buffalo you idiot.
Imagine the stupid sheepish look on my face on hearing this. Man where did I ever get the idea of a lion in the campus.

There was once a "Save electricity" campaign in our campus. Some of us had volunteered for this campaign. As a part of this, we were to stick awareness posters in the hostels, wherever we thought people mostly frequented. The obvious places were the toilets and canteens. To kickstart the campaign, we gathered at H12 at around 12 in the night. We were divided into groups and each group was assigned one hostel each. My group was assigned H7. It was a very big group : 2 people. Myself and a senior. We started exploring H7 and started sticking the posters at places we thought caught everyone's attention. Whenever we saw a light was on which was unnecessary, we switched it off and kept a count of the number of lights we switched off. After almost an hour or so (man this is the first time I realized how big our hostels were), we were almost done. There was a last poster to stick. By now the count of switched off lights was about 24.

Senior : We will stick this last poster in that toilet

Me : Sure.

After sticking the poster
Senior : So we are done.

Me : Not yet. The light is still on. And that makes the count 25.

And then I switched off the light
Suddenly there was kicking of doors from behind us.

"Oyee bhenchod kaun lights off kiya be. Lights on kar"

Me : Oops looks like the toilet was not empty.
We just switched on the lights and ran from there as we didn't want the bathroom guy to know the source of darkness in his bathroom.
And yeah, count is still 24.

There are more such small incidents. Maybe I may put them in another post some other day.

The assignment tsunami

2008-10-15T09:58:00.001-07:00

The first reaction of a person getting through IIT is "Yahooo (maybe google will be better) I have reached the top of the world...."..well herein lies the problem ....when u reach the top of the world from one side of the world, the momentum takes you down through the other side. This,in short,tells you the life of an IITian (atleast as far as Mtech goes). Well my story is no different. I can't forget the day when the results were declared and to my pleasant surprise I got through ( I had already started preparing for next year's exam). Well that is how I reached the top of the world.

Now comes the interesting part-the sliding down part. Once in IIT I made this grand plan of playing one sport each day, seeing 2 movies a day, go out sight seeing mumbai each weekend. 2 weeks later, I still didn't know the nearest bus stop to our IIT campus, already submitted one assignment, screwed up a quiz and knew each corner of the our department lab like the back of my hand. Now that will give you an idea of how much I executed my grand plans.

One of the things that I hated most when I was in Infosys was the night outs that I had to spent inorder to meet the deadlines. There have been times when I had to sit till 6 am in the morning to complete the work. When I resigned Infosys, one of the things I was happy about was that now there will be no more night outs!!!!. But what do I see when I reach IITB. There are practically ONLY night outs. The day before the assignment submission, the lab is filled with our class. Even people with laptops are forced to come to the lab since there is no internet connectivity in the room after 12 am ( How cool is that :( ).

Till around September beginning, life was ok-ok. Though work was there, it was manageable. I could watch around 1 movie per day. The real attack started soon after the month of September started. Beginning of 1st week of September my workload read 0 assignments to do, no quizzes, 3 movies pending to watch. By end of 2nd week of September my scorecard was 5 assignments to do,1 quiz to prepare for, 2 movies pending. By end of 3rd week of September 2 assignments done, 3 more to submit the next day, screwed up the quiz, ended up facing a surprise quiz in another course and deep and creative thinking (read sleeping) during class hours. O yeah 2 movies still pending.

The most irritating of all the courses is the software lab. We need to break our heads on mundane assignments like Latex, HTML,Ruby, Ruby on Rails (Now which egghead can think of such a stupid name for a such a stupid application). Sorry for all these technical junks, couldn't help it. It was just last week that we had submitted our assignment for Ruby on Rails (ROR). The damn thing was soo confusing that my hair count have reduced to half due to the constant plucking of my hair each time I go mad trying to make sense of what was happening in this goddamn application.

Since ROR had become such a headache, we guys had no choice but to cooperate among ourselves to finish it off. Some guys will do one set of problem whereas others will try out the remaining. If in the very highly unlikely case that the puzzle(ie, the task) was cracked, it was time to rejoice for all. Our motto was :- One for all and all for one. In between we had some interesting conversations

Me : Alpha charlie come in, alpha charlie come in

Adil : Alpha charlie over, alpha charlie over

Me : Alpha charlie, what's your position, what's your position

Adil : solider down, soldier down

Me : Alpha Charlie, hold on to your positions, we must not give up.

Adil : I have given up. Contact beta charlie. Mei tho jaa raha hu sone ke liye.

Thus goes each day in the life of a new Mtech student. Life is hectic, definitely, but I guess it's worth it. After all IIT is IIT. :).

The invincibles

2008-10-15T08:42:00.001-07:00

The professors in our campus are really unbeatables. Most of them are soo good that they can give their counterparts in MIT a run for their money. Obviously they are the best in our country. Most of them are damn good in what they have specialized, their degrees speaks volumes of their abilities. Most of them are PHds from highly reputed institutions.But in this post, I want to express in a comical exaggerated way some interesting features of some of them. For obvious reasons, I won't name anyone :D. Most of the descriptions given below are based on what my friends have told me since I haven't taken up those courses taught by them.

There is one professor who loves the blackboard very much. So much so that if a bomb explodes, he will run out of the class carrying the blackboard. I am sure if the blackboard was given a chance to write the exams, it would have topped the class for that course.

Then there is another prof who speaks soo fluently in english, but hates seeing anyone smile/laugh in the class. My friend was once a victim of this and from that day onwards he laughs with his mouth closed (Now don't try to imagine it. No one, who hasn't sat in this professor's class will ever be able to do that).

Another prof has this super duper ability to make even the most insomniac person go to sleep. I have a gut feeling that he must be hired by the pharmaceutical companies for testing their new sleeping drugs to test whether the drugs can match his efficiency.

There is another prof who gives marks for class participation. Anyone raising his hands in class is eligible for these marks irrespective of whether the person really had some doubt or whether he lifted his hand to scratch his underarm.

One prof speaks soo fluently that there is a hot debate among students whether he speaks Russian or French.But everyone agrees it cannot be English.

One extremely talented prof is very fond of english alphabets. He makes sure that he somehow uses all the alphabets in all the mathematical formulas and derivations.
Here is an eg:
"Consider a function F containing 2 variables b,c. When you apply a function H on this function, you get function G. Keep applying H on F and you get functions M,N,O,P....". Once he finishes up the english alphabets, he starts attacking the Greeks. "Take alpha, beta, gamma...". Thank god there are only 26 letters in english. I shudder to think what would have happened to we poor souls in his class if there were over 100 alphabets.Whew.

Before I end this post, I really would like to thank all these professors who will shape my future. It is such a refreshing change , compared to my Btech days, to be taught by people who knows what they are teaching and that too the best in what they teach. Thank you dear profs :).

Chak De PG

2008-10-10T01:27:00.000-07:00

There are lots of events that are held in our hostel. One of them was the volleyball competition. There were about 5-6 teams that were competing in this. All the team members were UG guys (UnderGraduates). So there was no team to represent the PG guys ( PostGraduates ). So the organiser approached one of my friends and he agreed to cobble up a team. After we discussed it among ourselves, 6 of us from Mtech 1st year computer science batch managed to form a team. Anand was made our captain. Now he was the only guy in the team who knew how to play this game. (We actually had to ask him all the rules minutes before our first game got underway ).

So thus we formed a PG team and our match schedule was put up. Our first match was against the team representing the fifthies (5th year UG). The match was to be held at the volleyball ground inside our hostel. Special arrangements like putting up floodlights were done for this competition. And soon the day when our first match was to be held,arrived. And then our match started.

There were 6 of us..All from our class.From Left to right : Anand our captain (the blue dress), Saurab(red dress next to Anand), vishal, Ajitav, me, Akash.Since most of us were playing this game for the first time, our first game was very funny. I will recreate some of the scenes that happened that day. As usual it will be a bit exaggerated :D.

Ajitav : Everyone take up their positions

Sourab : Mera position kaha hei be

Ajitav : Jaha court mei space hei ,waha tera position

Sourab : Sahi tactics hei be

Game started. The ball comes into our court.

Anand : mine mine mine mine....
Hits the ball back. Again the ball comes back.
Anand : mine mine mine mine....
After 15 minutes :
Anand : mine mine mine mine....

Ajitav : Abee kya mine mine, ab mera mine mine...and he hit the shot :D

Once the ball came to me. I hit the shot and it went outside.

Ajitav : c'mon guys, play well, we can win..by the way score was around 20-2, with them leading.

The ball came to our court, Sourab hit the ball and it went out. He comes to Ajitav.
Ajitav was getting very desperate by now.

Sourab : Yaar ajitav, ball ko aise marna hei ya aise.

Ajitav : abee tu mere ko hi maar.

And by this time the first set got over and score was around 25-5

Anand was playing fantastic with his big smashes. But he wasn't getting much support from the remaining guys. We often end up hitting each other's asses instead of the ball. Another time when the ball was coming everyone shouted mine mine mine...and then each of us hearing the other guys call mine mine mine, left the ball with the result that no one hit the ball. But somehow we managed to pull up our socks and won the 2nd set. That gave us some amount of confidence that we too can give those guys a run for their money. But that confidence was short lived when we were bombed to pieces by the opposition attack in the 3rd set. Thus we lost our first match. But hey, we won a set playing our first match guys!!!.

Our 2nd match was held 2 days later. By now the fame of the PG team had spread to every corner of the hostel. This match was against the sophies (2nd years) . But this time we got an additional member in our team. Praneet was his name. And he is Mtech 1st year Electrical engineering (I think). We were not very sure how well he plays and so initially he was a substitute. The match started. And as usual we lost the first set. But that day we were playing better than we had done in the first match. So though we lost the first set, it was by a narrow margin. In the 2nd set, it was a comeback of sorts as we came from behind to hold the set. The 3rd game saw a see saw battle. In between anand made a change and brought in Praneet. After sometime we realised that he actually plays the 2nd best in the team, after Anand. Thus his addition to the team improved our team performance. At one point they were leading and at other times we were leading. The score reached 21-20, we leading. They score 2 points in a row. Score 22-21 they leading. We score one more. Score 22-22. Then Vishal delivered 3 killer serves in a row and yahooooooooooo, we won our first match!!!!!!!!There were huge celebrations among ourselves. The underdogs defeated the abovedogs( or whatever you want to call the opposition team ).

After this match, there was rain for the next few days and so no matches were held. and since we didn't get to hear anything from the organisers we thought maybe we are out of the competition on account of our first match loss. But a few days later we were told that our semifinal (yeah we reached the semifinals!!!!) match was the next day. Unfortunately that day, due to a pending assignment submission I had to miss out of the match. After the assignment I got back to the hostel. By then the match was already over. I asked Vishal what the score was. He looked at me with a dejected face. I got worried and asked "Kya hua yaar"
Vishal : "Hum jeet gayeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" and burst into a big smile
I was like wooooooooooow, we did it again!!!!!!!! And this time, believe it or not, it was in straight sets. The underdogs were in the finals!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The next day was our final match. Since we had a good winning combination now, I offered to be the substitute. We were going to be play against the best team we had seen so far in the tournament. We had seen their semifinal match and they were simply superb. But now we too were not bad. anand and Praneet as usual the champs. vishal had improved a lot. They formed our front "army". They ensured that most of the balls coming into our court were handled between the 3 of them with the others providing the back support whenever the ball coming into our courts gets out of their reach.

The game started. Both the teams were equally good which meant long rallies and thus a good eye feast for the audience. The cheering was rocking high on both sides, with PG cheer squad performing better (obviously :D ). The first set was closely fought, but in the end we won it. The 2nd set too was nothing less than a see saw battle, but we were always in the lead though by 1 or 2 points. Towards the middle we accelerated our performance and we reached a score 22-15. But after that they started scoring continously and was begining to close in the gap. The score read 22-21. Then we scored 2 quick points. They scored 1 more point.Score 24-22. Tension mounting. Our team serving. Anand served, they returned..after juggling in our court for sometime Anand went for a smash...the ball went flying to the other court zooooooommmm. We won the poiint, the set, the match and the tournment!!!!!!!!!!!!!We created history (don't ask me why). The underdogs have won the "prestigious" Hostel volleyball competition. Soon after we were given our trophies:- a Rs 20 food coupon!!! woow can anyone think of a better trophy :D.
But that day will always be a memorable one. We bunch of first timers got together to win a tournament no one expected us to win. The main credit for this goes to our star Anand though the contributions of others were by no means less. It really does feel good to win a tournament as underdogs ;).