memoirs of the nowhere man

Houston, We have a problem.

2012-01-03T14:44:00.004+05:30

There are just too many things going on around these days. Most of them wouldn’t be called pleasant. Berlusconi stopped getting invitations to his own Bunga Bunga parties. Gadaffi made a terrible error in judgement when he chose as a hiding place a sewer pipe over any where else in the world. Sharad Pawar discovered that walking briskly is always a good idea. But in the midst of all this I read this. It talks about a group of IIT Bombay students who have been working for the last 4 years on a satellite which should soon be ready for launch. Now that I am a bit more qualified to appreciate the complexities associated with such multi-disciplinary endeavours, I can only hope that the project ends successfully and spurs similar groups into action across the country.

However the aim of this post is not to indulge my pontificating self and pen a thunderous denunciation of all those engineering undergraduates who are not building satellites in their free time (that would be the entire day in most cases). The aim of this post is to indulge my exaggerating self and recall how I almost started building a satellite myself.

In circa 2008, a year defined by the brave manner in which my beloved alma mater was coming to terms with my tyrannical regime as the enforcer of all things co-curricular, a bizarre incident took place which few individuals in the institute were privy to. Now that the self imposed statute of limitations has expired, I shall spill the beans before Assange beats me to it. It all began when our director casually mentioned in an internal meeting that its time the students think about building a small satellite. The professors around the table concurred, agreed that it was completely feasible while mentioning that functional support could be obtained from their pals at ISRO. And then they looked at us students with the expression that they would be terribly disappointed if we didn’t have the satellite ready by the next meeting. Confronted by this unexpected directive, my team and I conferred and decided its best that this idea is thrown open to the students to find someone competent enough to pick it up and lead the project. So Shampoo, our head of events, declared in the coordinators meeting that a plan to build a satellite is on the table and all interested individuals should contact him. That’s where the matter rested till two weeks later when a phone call woke me up one late morning.

I answered the call, still very sleepy and blurry. A lady with a very polite tone said she is calling from the Bank (name withheld) She mentioned that she read about the satellite we are planning to build in the morning papers and her organization is very keen on sponsoring the project. She also talked about how inspiring this idea was and how excited her colleagues are about it. But I had lost her at ‘read in the morning papers’. In spite of my muddled state, I could sense something was seriously amiss. I asked in my best apologetic tone, usually reserved for my department faculty members, whether I could call her back as I was in the middle of a very important engagement.

I rushed out of my room and tried to get hold of all the different city papers I could find. Hindu, TOI, DC, all three of them.I started with TOI, the pallbearer of sensationalism but surprisingly found zilch. A rapid browse through the Hindu didn’t yield anything either. Finally the first page of the education supplement of DC revealed the entire extent of the crises. The title story with an overtly generous font size screamed, IIT Madras building a satellite, or something to that effect. I don’t recall the exact wording. It referred to my events head by name and how he had proudly announced in true JFK fashion that students at IITM would be putting a small satellite in space with assistance from ISRO. Though the obligatory references to beating the Russians and doing it within the decade were left out, the emotions were eerily similar. The only other person who would have been as perplexed about this whole affair as I was would have been the charge de affaires of the department of student satellite collaborations in ISRO. I am assuming that being a government sponsored organization, the resulting bureaucratic set-up in ISRO would allow the existence of such departments.

But now was not the time to fret over ISRO’s bureaucratic set-up. I had to immediately launch a three-pronged strategy to diffuse the situation. Firstly investigate how this leak took place. Secondly try to calm the excitement at the Bank. And thirdly build a satellite. It looked a bit daunting when put that way. The first part met an early end. All I could do was to call up my events head. I refrained from launching into my version of ‘Et tu Brute’ right at the beginning and asked him if he had spoken to the media.He replied in the negative and his tone betrayed his own bewilderment.Obviously it was going to be an impossible task. There were close to 100 people in the campus who had been aware of this and it could be any of them. So it was time to engage the Bank.

I called up the polite lady and we arranged a meeting at the campus CCD that evening. So I had a couple of hours to prepare for it. Back in those days, I hadn’t yet fully developed the skill of elaborating eloquently and confidently about work which hadn’t been done yet. Hence I was a bit apprehensive on how this meeting would progress. The primary aim was to avoid yet another headline announcing that IITM was shelving their satellite plans as they were not aware they were in the midst of building one. I decided to take no chances and called in the closest thing I had at my disposal which resembled Seal Team 6. The time was to have people at your side who were much better at pretending to know what they were talking about. A few discreet calls were made, the sensitive situation explained and assistance sought. The concerned individuals promised to be present at the meeting.

In spite of the preparations, the start to the meeting wasn’t a very smooth affair. The visible enthusiasm in our counterparts was disconcerting. It seemed the only thing more difficult than raising capital was refusing it. The phrases payload, geo-stationary, thermal control sub-systems and orbital stability were generously deployed to warm the audience. Once technical salvos effectively obfuscated the fact that this was the first meeting ever on the subject, we slowly slid into project planning jargon. We sighed that scheduling was a nightmare as it had to be balanced against competing priorities of the numerous stakeholders, to speak nothing of the endless red tape associated with any procurement of sensitive equipment from the US. Finally we moved in for the kill stating that while we are extremely grateful that the Bank was interested in our project, we were not ready with our cost estimations yet. We were still considering various vendors from both sides of the Atlantic and would of course have to have our final assessments reviewed by competent authorities. We couldn’t of course allow a situation where we are forced to keep revising our capital expenditure estimates midway through the project. That wouldn’t be professional at all. Hence it would be a prudent idea if we could get back to the Bank once we had progressed further and had a well-defined scope and execution plan in place. With that, we closed out the meeting. It had begun on an unsure footing but we had managed find our way in the middle and ended it confidently.When things go well, there is always a tendency to get carried away and it was to our credit that we kept our explanations restrained and realistic. Otherwise we could as well have ended up with yet another headline the next day, “IITian promises to land on Mars by next Diwali”. The day which begun so depressingly was finally looking up.This wasn’t a situation of our making and it was a relief to come out of it without ruffling feathers at the Bank or having a full- fledged PR disaster. All our statements and assertion in that meeting would have been eventual truths once the project actually got off. Procurement would indeed have been a drag and scheduling would undeniably have been a hostage to more conventional concerns during a semester, like classes and labs.

So finally as per my to-do list, there was only one thing that remained. Build the satellite. I was convinced that now that it was published on the news, we will have to go ahead and build this as soon as possible. There was no time to look for the right people. I would have to get it done myself. A fortunate by-product of the make-up-as-you-go meeting was that I had an overview of how we should progress from here on. Any observer of the events till now would have decided that now was the opportunity to intervene politely and mention that my intentions, though noble, were flirting dangerously with the realms of feasibility. The only thing I had built in my life was a cylinder out of bamboo sticks as a part of my ID110 course. That too was so poorly designed that it buckled under the slightest of loads. A jump from that to conceptualizing the shooting of an object into space would be pushing the definition of ambition. However I have never been known for ruminating on issues for too long. And I always wanted to have a positive answer to that frequently asked question “Who do you think you are? A rocket scientist?” So I set up a meeting with the dean to get the necessary administrative approvals.

One of the few good things about a bad idea is one usually realizes how bad it is within the first few seconds of the onset of the execution. As I passed the door of the dean’s office and took the few steps towards his desk, I began realizing at substantial speed the absurdity of what I was about to say. I couldn’t possibly be proposing that a hastily cobbled up scheme to build a satellite be approved immediately just because a reporter penned yet another ill-conceived article on IIT. I checked myself in time and just mentioned the unsolicited news article to him and how the Bank was very eager to sponsor the project. His response was short and crisp. Dismissing any possible implications of the news article, he asked me not to worry about the Bank’s overtures. Apparently the Bank had been trying to get permission to open an ATM inside the campus for years and this was yet another attempt by them to ingratiate themselves with the campus community. As far as the satellite plans went, I was advised to follow the initial approach of scouting for interested and capable people and have a structured plan in place. I left the room as my dashed rocket scientist career plans became a footnote in the annals of space exploration.

PS: Helpful souls have updated me that our humble beginnings in 2008 have matured into a full-fledged project. Details are here. We may actually beat IITB to this.

The History Channel

2011-02-07T17:43:00.003+05:30

While having dinner with an Egyptian friend of mine two weeks back, the conversation veered round to the recent Tunisian crises. I remarked how Foreign Policy was already predicting that Egypt and Libya would be next to see their long-standing rulers fall. My friend Ahmed considered the possibility for a moment and then replied with a reassuring nod of the head that the west doesn’t understand Egypt well enough and Mubarak would continue to rule. We had a chat yet again last week, this time on Facebook. He had just had a talk with his family and they suggested that he withdraw all his money as the banks are being looted rampantly in Cairo. I concurred with this suggestion as the downside to doing that was just the transaction fee. But I refrained from pointing out how he had been wrong the last week. The poor guy was jittery and I assumed, wasn’t in a mood to be mocked for past lapses in judgment.

One of my regrets of living in the twenty first century is that as far as sweeping political events go, the current times pale into to insignificance compared to the heady days of the thirties and the forties. The modern world is all about keeping pace with the latest update to the latest Apple product or finding out why Bruno Mars wants to hold a grenade. My feeble mental capacity finds it difficult to keep up with the obsession for newer electronic gadgets or seemingly endless reality shows churning out super humans who then disappear without a trace. I yearn for less demanding and old fashioned global events like coup-de-tats and assassinations with an economic recession thrown in every now and then.

However every few years we have one of these milestone events where all history buffs can get their bag of popcorn and start flipping between BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera and watch old school reality television. The current imbroglio in Northern Africa is one such rare opportunity. The frustrating dilemma with historical events is that they usually follow a standard template which makes me look up the dictionary to check how déjà vu is spelt. Nevertheless my opinion is still divided about whether the Egypt/Tunisia story will eventually follow a script which will be vaguely familiar to the students of world events. So I have decided to indulge in some Glenn-Beckish speculation.

Anyone with an opinion on this issue is claiming hoarse how all this sudden burst of resentment among the people is so unexpected. No one apparently knew that Tunisia was ruled by an iron-fisted but benignly named dictator, Ben Ali. Selective and biased reporting, an inadvertent hallmark of the western media, means that any unconventional news from nations with west-leaning despots are met with shock and alarm. North Africa today presents us with an outstanding opportunity to see western diplomacy’s hypocrisy at its finest. While I am a firm believer in having an adaptable, self-serving and hypocritical foreign policy, if I take off my tight fitting nationalist cap for a moment, I find the whole charade of sympathy emanating from the foreign offices of all the western governments highly amusing. Till a month ago Ben Ali and Mubarak were the darlings of the western democracies with the Pentagon regularly outsourcing their illegal renditions and interrogations to Mubarak’s delightfully cooperative security agencies. UK and Switzerland never got conscience attacks when the Mubarak family hoarded an estimated 70 billion dollars in terms of real estate and Swiss Francs. The Bush administration invaded Iraq to “bring” democracy as they thought Saddam’s 98% majority election victories were phony. But Mubarak’s continuous electoral victories with over 90% votes polled in his favour hardly raised eyebrows. I am sure there is a US State Department paper somewhere stating 92% majority as the acceptable boundary between the-people-have-spoken elections and he-is-a-tyrant-who-rigs elections.

With the people on the streets for a couple of weeks, the sight of Hillary Clinton and Obama solemnly rebuking Mubarak to take the right decision and step down and give democracy a chance is perhaps a signature moment showcasing the delightful and highly effective duplicity of US foreign policy. Without doubt, while mouthing its commitment to the Egyptian people’s aspirations, the Americans will be working furiously in the background to keep status quo but minus Mubarak. The masses, gullible as always, will have their ego boosted at having removed a hated figure while their life slips back into the clutches of yet another repressive regime.

At this critical juncture where the situation is poised to turn in any direction, I am tempted to make some predictions. I will bet my money on the ex-spymaster and newly appointed Vice-president Omar Suleiman who should take over the reins and brings things under control with the help of the ever compliant army. Mubarak will be given an unceremonious farewell which will be painted as a “dignified exit for a patriot”. Gamal Mubarak will be making late night phone calls to his ex-es and bitch about how if only his dad had handed over power to him a few years earlier, he would have never allowed any of this protest nonsense. And then he would quietly wait for a comeback and turn the tables on Omer. Hosni himself will spend his days in exile, most probably in Europe, and write long letters to a kindred spirit Ben Ali about how the Yankees fucked them both over when the chips were down. El-Baradei will find himself back in Vienna, a city where he has spent almost all his life, agreeing that parachuting oneself into a volatile situation and exploitatively painting oneself as a mass leader is something only the Gandhis can do. He will also get rid of his designer I-am-a-revolutionary stubble. The Israelis will congratulate each other in private on having accomplished yet another clinical behind-the-scenes operation and the Swiss will mail brochures about their outstanding banking services to the new Egyptian president. The Indian government will obviously continue to monitor the situation till kingdom comes. The Chinese will exploit the confusion and try to buy the pyramids.

But then the above scenario happens only if everyone plays their part. What if the powers-that-be start fucking things up? The situation may tread uncharted waters if the Egyptian masses irresponsibly show continued self-respect and a complete lack of expected riot fatigue. What if the Americans misplace their standard operating procedure handbooks on democracy prevention? What if the Israelis just decide to take some time off from worrying about their existence? What if real change happens? Incredible and unconventional though it may sound, I would still like to hazard a few predictions here too. Mubarak and all his cronies would be thrown out. Some of them would be mysteriously found in dark alleys wrapped in white cloth, an old Egyptian tradition. Gamal Mubarak will send his resume to Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan and get recruited immediately.Elections would be held and El-Baradei will realize he cannot pull a Rahul Gandhi-ish con and then retire with a grumpy face to Vienna. The new government with a sizeable representation from the Muslim Brotherhood will show more kindness towards Gaza and indulge in a bit of saber-rattling about Palestinian rights. The Americans will promptly shut them up with military aid to the tune of a billion dollars. The Swiss will mail brochures about their outstanding banking services to the new Egyptian cabinet. The Egyptian people will begin to get used to the change from hating just one man to hating a house full of squabbling and corrupt parliamentarians. Obama will take credit for the victory for democracy and check with the Norwegians if another Nobel can be obtained. The Indian government will obviously continue to monitor the situation.

And I will then regretfully flip back from Al-Jazeera to AXN and get a gin and tonic.

The Proust Questionnaire

2011-01-09T16:05:00.004+05:30

It is widely acknowledged that adding one’s mom on Facebook can bring nothing but gloom and anxiety. That axiom was momentarily proved wrong when my mother shared the Proust Questionnaire. Needless to say, I didn’t know who Proust was or why we should bother about some questionnaire bearing his name. A quick search on Wiki revealed that Marcel Proust was a French author of great renown who had filled a questionnaire twice in his lifetime (a common trend in those times) and the difference in his answers showed how his thought processes had changed with his life’s experiences.

A quick look at how Proust had answered made me cynically suspect that it was a clever attempt at impressing the ladies. However I have to grudgingly accept that as far as attempts at self-discovery go, there is a point in answering such questions and then look at them some time from now to see how things change. So I have boldly decided to pull a Proust. For some reason there is a mild difference in the two sets answered by Proust and I took the liberty of merging them.

While at first glance the questions seemed to border on the trivial, they were surprisingly difficult to answer. At the end I was left with a depressing feeling of a complete lack of depth on what I know about myself and the world. It’s obvious that more effort needs to be invested in the right pursuits.

It is highly advisable not to read Proust’s own elegant replies before one attempts the questionnaire as it is bound to influence how one may answer. So here are my own answers.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Inability to communicate.

Where would you like to live?
A country with no little guys.

What is your idea of earthly happiness?
Happiness is hypothetical.

To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
Faults which make life more amusing.

Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
Edmond Dantes, Howard Roark and Bertie Wooster. Anyone who knows exactly what he wants.

Who are your favorite characters in history?
Alexander for setting the benchmark so high on what one man can achieve.
Ashoka for symbolizing everything my country should be about.
Che for walking the talk.
Gandhi for his utterly brilliant and sometimes exceedingly cunning politics.
FDR for showing how anything is possible.

Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
All single mothers.

Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
Any character which forces me to imagine in painstaking detail how they may have looked like.

Your favorite painter?
Rembrandt.

Your favorite musician?
Hans Zimmer and The Beatles

The quality you most admire in a man?
Loyalty, courage, zeal

The quality you most admire in a woman?
Patience, tenderness, spirited

Your favorite virtue?
Intelligence.

Your favorite occupation?
Pleasure

Who would you have liked to be?
Who but me again. But perhaps a bit leaner and more aware would be good.

What do you most value in your friends?
Loyalty and frankness

What is your principle defect?
Ignorance.

What is your favorite color?
Anything which occurs in nature.

What is your favorite flower?
Depends whom I am getting it for.

What is your favorite bird?
The eagle

Who are your favorite prose writers?
Wodehouse and Dickens

Who are your favorite poets?
I have read too little to decide but I always liked Tagore.

What are your favorite names?
The one which is whispered.

What is it you most dislike?
Arrogance and disloyalty.

What historical figures do you most despise?
Churchill, Mir Jafar and General Dwyer.

What event in military history do you most admire?
War of 1971.

What natural gift would you most like to possess?
Discipline and charisma

How would you like to die?
Without pain and with a smug look.

What is your present state of mind?
Lazy and disorganized.

What is your motto?
Failure is acceptable but not regrets.

2010 - The Year That Was.

2011-01-01T22:29:00.004+05:30

January: Big boys don’t cry. I am not a big boy then. Wait, is this an apartment or is this The Apartment? A bath tub and well stocked fridge means all of life’s wishes are fulfilled. Shall I retire? The infamous trip to Hampi and all those things we can’t talk about.

February: A few good men sit down and try to define power. Chaos ensues . Crazy road trip in a crazier car. Sach ka Samna in the Wing of Fire. How to resign in a kick-ass manner? Watch and learn.

March: Luck strikes. Apparently naval architecture is yet another discipline I am not good at. Master Shifu makes a dramatic entry and changes everything forever. Is it possible that El Dorado actually exists? How do I become a member? Khrushchev makes a quiet entry. As a side note, finally a very cool office address.

April: F1. Wrote a treatise on how to make a fool of oneself. Wept.

May: Called back to the eastern front for the next sordid chapter of the long con. Started impersonating Ian Wright in my free time. The affair with Khrushchev gathers steam in more ways than one.

June: I love fishing. I would have loved it even more if I caught anything. Estonia needs to be quarantined. MBS is born and my career in international crime takes off. Master Shifu continues to destroy my ego with effortless ease. I consider conversion.

July: The con continues destroying all logic and reason in its path. Impersonating Wright yields great benefits. I propose marriage to travelling and she accepts. I swim with sharks. Literally. Khrushchev continues to mesmerize.

August: Conversations, deep introspection and a lot of food home delivered. The sales pitch is finally made. Subservience pays, the pitch is accepted. Exit Khrushchev.

September: (Disappointing) Road show at IITM. Deaths and good byes. Change of perspectives and promises to self. Leave for the much awaited magical mystery tour. Hate aircrafts. Realized how much I missed the classroom.

October: Questions, tests, ghosts, mild flirtations, humiliations, beaches, parties and pranks. Sign off from The Apartment. Solemn goodbyes. A pat on the back.

November: Madness. Sheer madness.I consciously decide to bite off more than I can chew. Chan marries and I miss the show.El Dorado comes closer. Camping is redefined. Do I know how to dance? No. Do I know how to dress? No. Do I know how to kiss? I used to. Not anymore. Do I know how to talk? No. Do I know how to give up? No.

December: Amarda gets hitched. I fly solo for the first time and ruffle feathers. The price of insubordination is paid. El Dorado is dangerously close. The wardrobe slowly begins to transform. The delight from Istanbul and the silly line about the hair. The clients arrive and Operation Vacation is launched with much fanfare. Busses, visas, resorts, shopping, crabs. Operation declared a success and clients leave. Master Shifu wishes me the best and exits.

January 1st, 2011, 11:59pm: A scratch on the bucket list. An incomplete draft of a thank you note. Jazz and Mr Daniels. What a difference a year can make.

Brunei for Dummies.

2010-12-03T23:46:00.017+05:30

In 2007 I had written a ~~highly acclaimed~~ post for people who may want to travel to Germany and avoid rookie mistakes. It’s time for the much delayed next installment which will guide the ignorant traveler intending to visit the tiny Sultanate of Brunei Darussalam.

Quite a few on finding out that I spent a little over a month in Brunei, sheepishly asked where is Brunei? (Some used ‘what’ instead of ‘where’) I envy them. I believe that most of us are better off being unaware of the existence of a country where tax is just a word used on Scrabble boards and driving any car from the last century is considered taboo. But in keeping with the Lonely Planetish spirit of the post, I shall be kind with the trivia dispensing. Brunei is a monarchy, sultanate to be more precise, on the island of Borneo in South East Asia. The two hallmarks of the nation are its particularly loaded Sultan and its astounding luck with hydrocarbons. As far as what you can do as a tourist there kindly refer here. For the more adventurous who want a true ‘feel’ of the place read on.

1. The first thing which one observes in Brunei Darussalam is that people are happy. So obviously I was pissed off the moment I landed. I can make a leeway for lot of things but definitely not contentment.

2. There is just one major road in Brunei running from the east to west. The locals obsequiously refer to it as ‘The Highway’. The time to traverse the whole length of this 120km lifeline is what one would take to travel from Indira Nagar to Marathahalli in Bangalore at peak traffic hour. So unsurprisingly quite a few Bruneians commute daily from the capital Bandar in the eastern corner of the country to Seria in the western corner, where The Corporation which shall not be named has its premises.

3. Anyone living in the small towns in India is aware of the horrible practice of everyone knowing everything about everybody. I had a tough time growing up in a town where every move was noted and quietly reported back to the puppet masters. Brunei citizens experience the same misery but on a national scale. The rare upside to such a close knit country is that when one gets hauled up for speeding on ‘The Highway’ by the police, it is highly probable that the erring driver and the policeman may be distantly related. So the old Indian excuse of,’Sirjee, chota bhai samajhke isbaar ke liye chhor do’ will hold a lot of water in this part of the planet.

4. One of the most striking features of the country is the overwhelming presence of The Corporation at every corner. Never before have I seen just one company have such a remarkable role in a nation’s history and weave itself so firmly into the social fabric. It felt a bit surreal at times.

5. Brunei is a teetotaler’s wet dream. The restaurants bizarrely stay open late and yet after a long day, when one instinctively utters ‘A pint of Guinness please …’, the waitress clears her throat with a disapproving look. You may naively ask ‘But Sayan, you must be having some bootleggers around? Perfect dryness is just a Gandhian theory right?’ I will have to sadly shake my head and say no. Brunei is truly dry, just like the Mahatma intended. My fellow Malaysian brethren and I invested significant time and effort in searching for a ‘source’ including staking out the Army's canteen but all clues merely gave way to wild booze chases. However the problem was finally solved by hopping over the border every weekend. (One can bring in limited amount of alcohol to Brunei but they will need to register it at customs.)

6. This absence of spirits hasn’t dampened the night life of Brunei in any way. All bets are off in Gadong (pronounced emphatically as Gadooooonnnngggggggg) which happens to be where the young gather for phenomenally wild nights. Watching someone throw up in the late hours of Friday nights after having one water-melon juice too many or jostling with people crowding around a flaming carrot juice shots competition, one will be left gasping for breath trying to catch up with the madness all around. When one finally drives through the saucy green light districts in the wee hours, the only thought which resonates is how too much fruit juice can get someone as high as a few pegs of JD. (Disclaimer: I am not advocating fruit juice fuelled intoxication. I disapprove of the use of fruits for any form of self-gratification.)

Statutory Warning: The following statements may induce you to raise an army and invade Brunei. Conventional wisdom suggests it is advisable not to go beyond sabre-rattling as the Bruneian national security has been cunningly outsourced to the Gurkha Regiment of the British Army.

7. There are no taxes in Brunei. No income tax, no service tax, no sales tax, no deduction at any source whatsoever, no surcharges, no education cess, no infrastructure duty. Excise is just exercise spelt hurriedly and Tariff is the nickname of Haji Muhammed T Ariff. Everyone’s education is paid for and it will usually involve a fully supported scholarship to one of the top universities in UK. There are no JEE or AIEEE equivalents. Hospitals are cheap and the police efficient. I find all this unacceptable and a gross violation of my right to see other people crib about their country. In short, we need to raise an army and invade them and bring about some chaos. (Refer statutory warning)

8. If Brunei is about anything at the end of the day, it is about cars. The message was pretty clear on the first day when my recently graduated colleagues drove in on their VW Beetles, Honda Civics, BMWs, Mercs, Mini Coopers, Mazda and the range of SUVs which make you feel like turning into a Naxal and fight for justice. When asked what I used, to go to my office in Bangalore, I had to meekly say Volvo without daring to elaborate further on the make of the vehicle. But thank god for Bruneians and their love for sleek cars for I now know how it feels to be in a two-seater open hatch Honda S2000 flying at 225 km/hr. Divine.

My Volvo doesn't look too bad against their array of BMWs and VWs.

With their close knit society and fascination for cars , Brunei is easily one of the most marvelous places I have had a chance to visit. The people are very friendly and as already mentioned more happy than any community I have encountered. It was their sense of contentment which I found utterly fascinating and at the same time difficult to relate to.

Inquilab Zindabad!

2010-09-17T00:15:00.003+05:30

Last week there was an all India strike at some parts of the country. Having grown up in a town which unfailingly saw a shutdown every fortnight, I have always missed the joy of unexpected holidays due to bandhs in the big cities. When these rare strikes do happen, I always get reminded of the only instance when I had participated in a full fledged industrial action.

This incident took place back when I was in DPS Rkpuram. The hostel food was terribly unexciting and monotonous. But it was the maddeningly drab breakfast which got everyone in a really rebellious mood. There was hardly anything to look forward to at the usual 9am breakfast apart from the fact that the girls dined on a mezzanine above where the guys had their meals. And if one looked up long enough, he would be rewarded with a glimpse of one of the prettier faces or more. Very Dachau-ish but without the killings and the labour. The dissatisfaction with the dull bread, butter and boiled egg menu usually got a voice through sudden pointless thumping of tables. But as protests involving sudden pointless thumping of tables go, it didn’t coerce the administration into corrective action.

One fine evening it was decided that each of us would boycott the next morning’s breakfast and hence by force the administration into making changes. The news of the fatwa spread among the rooms and a consensus was quickly achieved ratifying this decision. One individual however eked out a compromise from the Politburo, where he was permitted to go and have a glass of tea. The reason given was of a medical nature.

So the next morning we all went to the mess gate but refused to go any further. So while there was a crowd of students hovering resolutely around the mess entrance, the wardens and the kitchen staff stood inside with large mounds of boiled eggs and pakodas feeling very stupid with every passing minute. When the lone guy went in and just had a glass of tea, it seemed we inadvertently rubbed the message in pretty harshly. And so the strike was a complete success. Comrades from Bengal would have termed it spontaneous. We were ecstatic. Some of the more naive guys started drawing up prospective menus which we expected our united stand would force the administration to accept. Once the break was over we went back to our classes with a sense of pride and achievement. Some of us started contemplating a career in politics.

The wardens taken aback by this unexpected turn of events conferred among themselves and thought it best to report the matter to the vice-principal. This was our Stalingrad moment and the tide of the battle began moving irreversibly in the opposite direction from hence on. Our vice-principal was a straight talking Jat who had little patience for student uprisings due to culinary issues. What he lacked in way of communication skills, he failed to make up for it by having a sympathetic heart. He felt this act was completely unwarranted and as a penalty, issued clear orders to the wardens that no lunch and dinner should be served to us. This decision was summarily communicated to us by the wardens.

The Politburo discussed the limited options at hand and began to sense the sprouting of dissent among the masses. Whispers referring to the nutritional goodness of boiled eggs started doing the rounds. We also discovered that we were getting very hungry and the prospect of missing out on the otherwise dour rajma-chawal at lunch seemed heart wrenching. In view of the changed circumstances a tactical surrender was wisely recommended. Two hours later we submitted a written apology to the vice principal regretting our rashness and requesting a retraction of his order outlawing the other meals. The vice principal, magnanimous in his comprehensive and crushing victory, promised sweeping changes in the breakfast menu. He kept his promise in a way only he could. From the next day we started getting tomato ketchup with the boiled eggs and pakodas.

I haven’t been a part of a strike since.

Revenge is a dish best served in Vegas.

2010-08-12T23:18:00.003+05:30

I will always regret fast-forwarding the parts in the Mahabharata where they discuss Karma. I do realize now that all the jazz about paying for one’s sins is quite true. Let me quote a recent incident where I learnt that smugness usually results in a diet of the proverbial humble pie.

The story goes back to March 2010. Muski had recently transferred to Chennai and most conversations on online threads revolved around on how he would cope with a lack of a life there. These conversations gave rise to a curious tradition where we used to call up Muski from Bangalore and tell him what we are up to and follow it up with an innocuous question, “What are you doing?” Usually that was the point when he hung up.

I always have had a terrible fault of going too far. So when I was off for a jaunt to KL and I was having an interesting weekend after another, I decided it would be a wonderfully friendly and chummy thing to keep Muski updated about my whereabouts. So throughout the month a number of phone calls were made to Chennai which usually involved me spouting lines like these

• Muski, I am at a Placebo concert. What are you doing?
• Muski, I am going camping to an equatorial forest this weekend? Where are you going? Bessie beach?
• Muski, are you watching F1 on TV now? See if you can spot me in the crowd. Hey wait, Schumacher just got down….bye…
• Muski, I am about to go to a Chuco Valdez concert. Hello, hello, can you hear me? * dial tone*

Of course anyone who knows Jatin Gupta, knows he is not the one to take things lying down. The man knows the value of patience and planning. So when I heard that both he and our good friend Debashish were going off to the US for a couple of months I was anxious. Not only was it an astounding coincidence that both their companies decided to send them at the send time, they also happened to be going to the same city, SFO. Everything seemed to be guided by some divine hand. I knew that time for retribution was near. I was soon proved right when I received a mail whose content conveyed in very clear terms that both of them were planning to spend a weekend at Las Vegas and they felt it would be kind to copy all their online discussions about the trip to me.

I knew it wouldn’t end there. I received a stream of assurances from them that they would keep me abreast of how their weekend went. They stuck to their promise and my inbox confirmed my worst fears today. To paraphrase Muski’s mail to me,

As you already know we were in Vegas this weekend. Nothing much. Stayed at the BELLAGIO(yes, the AAA five diamond award winning hotel and casino on the Strip shown in Oceans 11). Rented a CADILLAC, opened its sunroof and cruised down the famous Vegas strip shouting while drunk. Semi nude chicks roaming on the road waved back at us. Gambled a lot! And had the world’s largest buffet at the base of the Vegas Eiffel tower. How was your weekend?

Check mate. Karma I say.

Where's the DISCO?

2010-08-06T16:53:00.004+05:30

Post Update:Corrigendum

Apparently I have been an ass. As Amrutash has very politely pointed out, my outrage got the better of me and I didn’t bother to dig deeper into the issue before ranting about it. For the benefit of others, I have pasted his comment which brings the matter into a more relevant perspective.

HT has worded it very nicely to make it sound sensational. I'll fill in what they left out / got wrong -- stuff you should've found out before writing a blogpost about it. 1) The quota is called Board of Governers (BOG) quota. 2) Its definitely not a "secret", pretty much everyone knows it in KGP (its definitely not hushed up -- I don't know why HT needed RTI to find out about it, they could've just asked around). 3) To be eligible for BOG quota, you need a faculty parent AND 4) need to QUALIFY in IIT-JEE with a rank (any rank) (unlike what HT has mentioned) (You need 60% to qualify for IIT -- that rule is for everyone). 5) You can apply only for MSc courses in Kharagpur (like geology, maths, etc) NOT for Btech or Dual or Mtech (In 2003, MSc math in KGP would've been ranks 4500+ -- these are seats which sometimes would anyway go empty because no one took it). 6) As far as I remember it was banned for many years, except for the years of 2003 and 2004 (where, 50 odd kids would have gotten through).
I know this as I was eligible.
I think the practice is on par with most schools having a quota for teacher's children (including schools which have a waiting queue for 2-3 years). Not that I am defending it, I am just saying that I don't think its on par with AICTE corruption. By comparing the two, you are doing a Qureshi. It was introduced, as far as I understand as an incentive for faculty with children in middle school to stay on with IIT KGP -- since school education faclities in Kharagpur used to be limited. We are talking about 80s here (Pre-factory era).
The simple reason why the news has received a swift burial is that its really old news. The practice was stopped in 2004. There is no BoG quota to protest now! Besides, there are way many more things worth protesting about in IIT Kharagpur.
A follow-up lies here.

Obviously my complaint about no one from the IIT community speaking up about this no longer stands. However the validity of the ‘rural argument’ can be debated. The discussion would be more nuanced but I agree its no longer a topic meriting much thought. Sigh. I will be more careful.

Original Post

When I read this article on the Hindustan Times about a secret quota for children of the faculty at IIT KGP, I was not unmoved. It existed till 2005 and was removed when the RTI Act was passed. The infallibility of the JEE process had always been one of those totems of a few things which still remained accountable in this country. Of course the process has been faulty at times as earlier events have shown. Stupid mistakes have been made many times before but they were invariably honest mistakes. This recent development is however a departure.

At the risk of sounding clichéd and derisive I don't expect systems to function in India and do understand that its ingrained in our Indian psyche to work around obstacles rather than remove the obstacles themselves. So news about corrupt administrators in AICTE or the MCI or even outrageous lapses in defence purchase or a zillion other scandals are so easily digested by our perversely permissive society, something I have failed to see in any other developed/developing nation. So it is kind of immature of me to share my indignation about this IITKGP affair which seem so insignificant compared to the daily barrage of thievery we hear about. But this ‘small’ matter is wonderfully indicative of the fact that the lack of integrity in public offices have nothing to do with the level of education the person may have received.

My five years at IITM did give me opportunities to look at behind-the-scenes activities of the administration. My initial assumptions that IITs are an oasis of committed and sincere professors, administrators and staff were admittedly naive. The administration did have elements which characterize any Indian bureaucracy anywhere. Ego-driven supervisors and dishonest individuals never failed to make their presence felt. But for every shifty character I could see two earnest ones. My eventual opinion was that the system while flawed usually worked to give positive progress. The guys actually running the institute had taken a pragmatic approach where they tolerated a few of the malevolent elements as long as that didn’t affect the running of the institution and its core objectives significantly. While it might not seem the best strategy to purists, I feel it's perhaps the only one which could perhaps work.

So this makes me extremely keen to see how the IITs respond to this admission of a criminal subversion of its admission process which in no way can be trivialized. This offence is impossible without tacit sanction from the rest of the IITs as JEE chairmanship rotates between the IITs every year. Left to the individual professors, I am sure a majority of them would denounce them in the strongest of terms. They have never hesitated to denounce the ‘quality’ of students which the newer JEE formats have supposedly resulted in. Dishonesty among students has always been efficiently investigated and resoundingly punished in the famous DISCOs (disciplinary committees) across all IITs. I hope I can safely assume that they will show a similar enthusiasm in demanding a more thorough investigation of all their colleagues who would have directly misused their position or indirectly facilitated it by remaining quiet.

Not surprisingly the news has already received a rapid and quiet burial. Apart from the downright stupid defence that ‘It wasn’t just me’ from one of the culprits which sounds more like Shaggy's next song title, no past or current IIT administrator has spoken a word. Some of the criminals remain at top administrative positions. Like anywhere else the heads have nodded and moved on. When I hear people sigh that if educated people were running the country and their institutions, we would see better days, I involuntarily start looking for baseball bats. No amount of education or degrees can change a human’s desire for status quo or self serving systems when in a position of influence.

Or to sum up in a typical IITM style with its love for succintness, " Kya fart hai!"

1-0

2010-07-10T22:44:00.004+05:30

In the mid nineties, I was in middle school. Those were heady days with me trying to understand the relevance of logarithmic tables and whether I would ever get to date Ms Christina, the third standard class teacher. That was also the period in my roller-coaster athletic career when I used to play football. I know it’s difficult to visualize me on a football field but for around three years I was a member of my class soccer team.

My talent was first noticed in the sixth standard by my class captain while I played defence in the annual Students Vs Teachers match. Our school had a devilish custom where every year a faculty versus students football match took place. But the catch was that the student team would comprise not of the best footer players from each class but of people who had ranked first academically! The dastardly scheme was based on the presumption that top rankers were usually athletically challenged. As a result the mostly pot-bellied faculty members would end up looking good and a few of the teachers could then perhaps manage to impress the oh so gorgeous Ms Christina. I apologize for the repeated references. But she is the still the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.

Of course this plot came unstuck in 1996 when the top rankers curiously also happened to be a bunch of reasonably fit individuals with an acceptable flair for sporting events. Yes, I just described myself as reasonable fit with an acceptable flair for sports. I played defence and our team won. My class football captain and his advisors appreciated the fact that I didn’t wince in tripping the vice principal multiple times and pushed the principal into the mud. They agreed that what I lacked in experience in football, I made up in stupid courage of standing in the way of rampaging over-weight forwards and possessed a deft foot which could make a career out of tactical fouling. In short I would make a decent centre back.

My three year soccer career was not spectacular but it wasn’t a disaster either. I committed an average of three fouls per match and usually got substituted after a half. The highpoint of my career was my last match in standard eight where we were playing the other section in the finals. The match was sponsored by Milo and the members of the winning team would be getting free 500gms packets of Milo. The match was a humdinger with the score tied at 1-1 before our defender Srikanth Gupta let in an own goal. With that we lost the finals and the Milo packets. I decided it was time to move on to cricket. The move would have suited Srikanth better who unfortunately continued in football the next year where he scored yet another own goal in the very first match of the season. Till date he remains the only player in Don Bosco’s history to score two own goals in consecutive matches.

Since that fateful Milo sponsored afternoon, I never played competitive football again. Till a couple of weeks ago. With the world cup on, I was losing tremendous amount of money in the syndicate and beginning to feel that perhaps I have completely lost my feel for the game. The fact that the intra-office Futsal tournament was happening at the same time was a happy coincidence and I signed up immediately for the green team. A big indoor Futsal court in the basement of the twin towers was an impressive setting for my return to the game after eleven years. But the huge turnout from the various departments was unnerving as it meant that I stood a good chance of making a fool of myself in front of half of the organization’s staff in the East.

My team gathered around for a mild warm-up session before our match against the yellow team. We stood around in a circle and kicked the ball around without allowing it to hit the ground. Till it came to me, of course. Without getting into graphic details of my comic attempts at keeping the ball in the air, I will just mention that my team quickly developed a fair idea about my proficiency in soccer. My captain showed his tactical genius by not playing me in the starting five. The match begun and I have to mention that indoor footer with its relaxation of a few of the rules of regular soccer did have its thrill. Though the total game time of just fifteen minutes instead of ninety did seem a bit brief to me.

Our team started well. The defence was solid and the way the team was playing, one could see glimpses of Johan Cruyff’s Totaalvoetbal. But frankly with only four players on the field, every tactic would begin to look like total football at some point. A blistering counter-attack in the fifth minute took the opponents completely by surprise as our team put one pass the goalie. Two minutes later as the referee blew the whistle signalling half time, I began to sense that I may play an important role soon enough. We were two minutes into the second half when the inevitable happened. I was asked to go in.

In view of the really limited time, my tactic was to get into the thick of the things immediately. I was mentally prepared to play defence who often made attacking forays along the flanks. There was no strategic thinking behind that plan. I just thought the whole thing sounded cool. It didn’t take too long for the ball to come to me. After a futile attempt on the goal by our opponents, our goalie passed the ball to me. As the yellow team player charged towards me, I tripped over the ball and almost fell. But this inadvertent move managed to flummox the charging player giving me enough time to pass the ball. The spectators gasped at what they considered an intentionally brilliant fake move. Having had a narrow escape where a dreadful error was misconstrued as a skilful shuffle, I decided to take care as I wouldn’t be so lucky the next time. The best way to avoid messing up with the ball I assumed would be to avoid getting it in the first place. With only four minutes of the match to go I decided to keep marking all the yellow team players but stay out of the ball’s way at the same time. The ploy worked beautifully and I was seen doing a lot of running up and down the court without embarrassing myself. Unfortunately my team management noticed that I was actually not adding any value to the proceedings and I was summarily substituted with a minute to go till the final whistle. I spent a staggering four minutes on court and was proud as hell that I didn’t do anything to squander my team’s slender one goal lead. To cut a short story shorter, we won.

The Beautiful Game

2010-06-08T18:07:00.002+05:30

Every four years there comes one month when I wake up smiling every single day.

It makes me ecstatic. I don’t know why but it does. I feel like holding everyone and shake them and shout, ‘ Its the world cup!!’

This is undoubtedly the best football commercial I have ever seen. Thank God for the world cup!

When I crashed a party.

2010-05-28T17:03:00.001+05:30

This happened in March. I decided to take a short detour on my way back from office and thought it would be a good idea to return through the KL convention centre. My destination was the Starbucks inside. I loved the elaborate interview Starbucks goes through before getting my coffee. By the time they finish enquiring about the different boundary conditions for my drink, I usually don’t remember what I ordered in the first place. But then they do make great coffee.

The convention centre is an impressive building close to the twin towers. I was too distracted to notice the unnaturally empty surroundings around the centre, devoid of the usual loitering tourist. At a distance, next to the main entrance, I noticed a fleet of swanky cars. A couple of old men had just alighted and they were surrounded by a group of animated photographers clicking away wildly. There were four colourful dragon puppet like things frolicking around the old men in an apparent bid to welcome them. All this was accompanied by loud and incoherent drumming. Apparently finesse and sobriety were dispensed with in a traditional welcome in this part of the world. Obviously the whole thing was too much of a visual treat not to attract a more detailed attention from yours truly. So I decided to take a closer look and followed the troupe as they entered the convention centre. The old men were the centre of the attention and obviously were some sort of local bigwigs. A few guys in suits and dark glasses hovered around whispering what sounded like Roger, I can't hear you, this is fun, albeit in a Chinese accent, into state-of-the-art walkies.

The ensemble entered the main hall. So did I. The sight inside was stunning. The whole hall was spectacularly decked up with flowers and confetti with a huge crowd in their best evening attire. They were in groups sitting around brilliantly made-up dining tables. The moment the gang I was shadowing entered the whole hall stood up and everybody was completely silent.A deep voice announced over the microphone ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Dato Sri Mohd Najib bin Tun Haji Abdul Razak the prime minister of Malaysia’.

I just had the biggest WTF moment of the decade. To say I was surprised would have been an understatement. Being an Indian, who has grown up watching the smallest cog of the government machinery guarded by a posse of grim faced sentinels and having bragged about the sixty car convoy of our own prime minister which I happened to witness a couple of times, standing at an arm’s length of a head of the government, by mistake, was a situation I was finding very difficult to come to terms with. As Wodehouse would describe it, I was in a pickle.

A huge board at the side proudly indicated that I had crashed into the Chinese New Year Gala Dinner. That explained why most of the guests were in the traditional Chinese attire. There was only one person in the world who would have convinced me to have been bold enough to continue with my bravado and sit out the whole event and pretend to be a guest from the Indian embassy. But he was trying to sell things on EBay a thousand miles way. So I felt it was time to call off the adventure and decided to quietly make my exit. I hoped that no one would notice an individual hopelessly under-dressed for the occasion, listening to an IPod had wandered in and none did.

A big sign outside listed the guests for the evenings. The ambassador from the People’s Republic of China, the American ambassador, the British high commissioner, a host of industry and organization heads, the city administration, the party had them all. I do recall not reading any name from the Indian embassy though. I tried to exit the building with that same confidence with which I went in but that plan ran into difficulties when I discovered I had lost my way. But before I was hauled up for walking briskly with no apparent reason around the corridors outside the hall, a sweet lady comprehended my problem and cheerily showed me the way out.

So what was the LFI* ? As long as you walk assertively without furtive glances, you can crash the most exclusive of parties.

*Learning from Incident. I read quality management manuals with my meals.

April's Fools.

2010-05-16T10:19:00.004+05:30

April sucked. I was ill. I stopped moving about. Metals stopped corroding mysteriously which had an unfortunate effect on my workload. The Greeks stuffed me. Apparently giving birth to the Western civilization also gives you the right to destroy it. But in the midst of all the wretchedness I found solace in two things. Cognitive therapy and the newspaper. While I need not elaborate on the former for the time being, I am all too keen to share why I have chosen Schadenfreude as the word of the month. Never before has the newspapers carried such uplifting news which provided the much needed comfort that there are people out there who are having a more terrible year.

Blank-fined!

The only reason I hate Goldman Sachs is because I don’t work for them yet. One of my ambitions includes working for five evil corporations in my lifetime. I don’t think I have worked for any yet though I don’t know whether the students’ executive committee at IITM counts. GS has had a series of bad press this year. With billions of dollars of bonuses, audacious hiding of Greece’s debts and of course the recent civil suit from the Securities & Exchange Commission, GS is being blamed for everything and anything. Being the most successful bank to come out of the recession unscathed has its pitfalls. Anyone who has browsed through the details of the SEC case would be wonder struck. Let me try and put it in a simple format.

• Hedge fund designs financial instrument designed to fail
• GS sells the instrument to their clients
• Hedge fund bets against the very financial instrument it has created.
• GS doesn’t inform clients that the hedge fund is betting against the system.
• Hedge fund makes 1billion dollars.

The dazzling brilliance of the whole law suit is that according to the shockingly lax regulations, the hedge fund hasn’t done anything illegal. GS’s only fault was not to inform their clients about the position of the hedge fund. This suit has set off a chain reaction of events which has slowly made it clear that investment banks have moved away from their primary duty of transferring capital to where it is required to creating sophisticated gambling systems. I will refrain from turning this into a diatribe against the financial sector and its inability to grasp long term vision. That job has been accomplished exceedingly well by Matt Taibbi here. I don’t recall any description of any organization more brutal than how Mat has described GS.

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

I always assumed these GS folks to be super-smart but I was disappointed to see that they have left an email trail of their shenanigans which led the senators and media scrambling to crucify them. Fabrice Tourre, whose exploits brought about the SEC suit, was so full of himself after creating the financial instrument that he couldn’t hide his glee in a mail to his girlfriend where he called the deal ‘shitty’ and called his work ‘intellectual masturbation’. If only he had acted upon his feeble conscious attack. On a completely different note, I would love to know if there is a study on how many gifted crooks did themselves in while bragging to women.

Of course the naive among us will assume that this series of law suits is just the beginning of holding the bankers responsible for the recession. These suits are a decently clever approach taken by the Obama administration to force the US senate to push through the financial regulations bill. If anybody is expecting GS to go into a decline, they need to be pinched back to reality. But for now, it’s just great reading the papers about GS executives scurrying to save their skin and seeing Lloyd Blankfien fumble on TV.

Statutory Warning: 140 characters can ruin you.

Lalit Modi. The man who got tweeted out of a multi-billion dollar enterprise built by himself. One has to admit that the whole incident is hilarious if not downright stupid. No matter how clever, suave, well-connected, rich and indispensible one may be, there are two things which can destroy any man in a matter of days. A woman and the ego. I am still struggling to understand where Tharoor erred. Did he break any law by charging a hefty fee for helping out a consortium to bag the deal? I do agree he was incredibly stupid to have left such an obvious paper trail. Just for that he should have been fired. If a minister sucks even at hiding his wealth, then he has no business running the affairs of the nation. Indians have no patience for such incompetence. So what if he has done more for India’s relations with African and Latin American nations than any administration before.

Tehelka has a brilliantly done article about what situation led to the huge fracas. While the article makes insinuations against people as untouchable as Sachin and Sunil Gavaskar without citing concrete sources, it’s a tremendous read. And frankly in such frivolous issues I don’t mind admitting I prefer ‘news’ reports which are more suggestive and scandalous rather than drab and colourless one may encounter in the national newspaper of India.

There are a few interesting lessons we can draw from the event. They are nothing new but this whole row has brought it out more beautifully than other scams have. Power and influence is illusory when you do not have seats in the parliament to back it up. Case in point, Mr Pawar continues to play around with food prices while Mr Modi is looking up the yellow pages for names of lawyers who will exploit him further. Politicians still call the shots in this country, economic liberalization notwithstanding. Modi thought the combined backing of Ambani, Mallya and Wadia would save his skin being oblivious to the fact that unlike the Indian public the industry captains can identify with effortless ease whether an issue is inconsequential and when to choose their fights. Modi had started believing the papers which hailed him as an unconquerable foe who had trounced the home ministry, Subhas Chandra, BCCI, ICC, ECB, Sony. He never realized that at the end of the day the only thing which matters is how much of that famed power could make a difference on the floor of the Parliament.

The Androgynous Swami.

This case was kind of unexpected. When I heard that this Swami who has a thing for cross-dressing, was running what can only be described as a training facility for sexually liberated individuals, near Bangalore, I was very disappointed with myself. I considered this a huge intelligence failure on my behalf and berated all my contacts for having failed to have informed me about the existence of such a guild so near to where I stay. But enough about my discontent.

Let’s be frank. While outwardly all single and a few not-so-single men may have been hypocritically denouncing this sect, they would all have signed on to that infamous ‘contract’ in a heartbeat. The absurdity of the incident stems from the fact that the video was released by a woman who was jealous of Cool Dude Nitya’s proximity to this Tamil actress. Now why would some women vie for the affections of an androgynous Swami is mysterious. I have dealt with this topic at length in my upcoming book ‘Why women ~~never~~ seldom fall for smart and witty men. A true Story’.

I however loved how the newspapers dealt with his eventual arrest in Himachal Pradesh. The headline screamed that the three cameras were found with him!! Oh the horror! Three cameras mind you. How despicable and vile would a man have to be to be found with three cameras? He should be impaled in front of Majestic Bus Stand.
While everyone was trying their best to recover from this sordid act, Nitya came up with the gem of an ironclad defence that he/she is a woman and hence by all sexual impropriety suits filed against him are null and void. If this approach is legal, I shudder to think what my female stalkers may be up to. (Yes, therapy woman, I am talking about you. Leave me alone!)I wonder how the conversation may have gone between Nitya and his lawyer before he sprung this defence on the police.

Lawyer: Hey Nitz, you are screwed man.
Nitya: Hmm.....I agree this is a pickle but I have a cunning plan.
Lawyer: Not again.
Nitya: What if I play the victimized woman card.
Lawyer: But you are not a woman....
Nitya: That’s a mere technicality. I will just announce I am. Call me Nitu from now on. It will help me get into character.

The Eyjafjallajökull Conundrum.

Iceland needs to come closer to the Equator. No one pays much attention to them as they are so far away and then they end up doing silly stuff just to get our attention. First it was bankrupting their national bank and initiating the financial crises in Europe and now there’s this volcano with an identity crisis. After all those Hollywood movies dealing with worldwide apocalypse if there’s anything we have learnt it’s that stuff have to go wrong simultaneously at every corner of the world for things to shut down indefinitely. Also the thing needs to be predicted by a renegade scientist/ ancient civilization. None of these cardinal rules were followed before Eyjafjallajökull went kaput.

Iceland needs to get over the fact that world doesn’t think too much of them. I agree nothing much has happened on that island after Bobby Fischer kicked Spassky’s ass and Ronald Reagan slipped a Mickey in Gorbachev’s drink and made him sign a nuclear disarmament treaty. But is shutting down air traffic all over Europe the best idea you people could come up with? Ands what’s with this consonant fetish? Eyjafjallajökull? Really? Kindly get rid of this consonant diarrhoea if you want the world to take you more seriously. But it was amusing to see how much damage just one volcano, somewhere on the fringes of civilization could do. Very humbling.

Good Bye, Dog.

2010-04-18T01:26:00.010+05:30

Mahesh Mahadevan was found dead a couple of days back on the UC,Irvine campus. The police have labelled it a case of suicide by asphyxiation. The circumstances surrounding the case and Nai’s stirring and devastatingly poignant last post on Stumble Upon suggests that the authorities may be correct. And with that act of his, I lost my ex wing-mate, quiz team mate of four years, co-coordinator in so many events and a close friend & confidante.

When Nai first came to IITM, his history of an amazing academic record was stunning even to the haughty IITians. He brought an image of a person so sharp and brilliant and of a level of competence so unattainable that acute jealousy would have made it easy to dislike him. But to his credit, it turned to be the opposite. Perhaps the most affable of all the new guys who joined Mandakini Hostel, he made people comfortable around him at a spectacular pace. Even a notoriously reticent person like me fell prey to his genial company. Thankfully that ensured our coming together to form a team which was one of the major hallmarks of my stay at IITM.

Throughout his four years, Nai could be seen doing everything, everywhere. Everybody knew him and he knew everybody. Whether it’s succumbing to NQA’s assaults for the umpteenth time in yet another quiz with me, or miraculously metamorphosing into a rap star in his final year, his constant propensity to pick up completely unrelated skills and excelling in them at an astonishing speed never failed to overwhelm people around him. He seemed to be in a tearing hurry to master as many things as possible as fast as he could. A lifetime seemed too less for all the things he wanted to learn. Wordplay and quick humour defined his conversations with everyone. The fact that many never got around to grasping the quick-witted repartees never stopped him from jumping at the smallest opportunity to turn a moment funny. Watching Nai with his alert posture guarding the goal posts with his less than imposing frame was a fixed sight at the Mandak quadrangle every evening. So was his presence at every major/minor/completely irrelevant hostel event. His shocking get-up as a promiscuous woman in his first hostel night and his classy get-up as a rap star in his final hostel night has found place in innumerable folders title ‘Mandak Memories’. Bound to be found in long winded ‘fart sessions’, wolf games and practice session of some sort, he was the image everyone associated with life in Mandak and in IITM in general. There are very few compatriots from IITM who have not shed a tear today.

The infamous 12 Angry Men spoof team,2007

His charisma seemed only to increase in Irvine if the condolences messages on his FB page are anything to go by. Not surprisingly he seemed to have taken up the only thing he didn’t get time for in IITM- dancing. His taste for adventure sports which never found a vent in Chennai finally found a medium as he feverishly conquered skate boarding. In the middle of everything, he managed to squeez in mastery of acapella too. His brand of humour didn’t fail in building a clan of loyal fans even there and not so startlingly, he was a darling among the ladies.

Personally, Nai’s was one of those rare friendships I used to proudly advertise as an accomplishment. In his company, I always felt I was doing something clever, saying something intelligent, thinking something different. His charisma forced me to behave so. Effortlessly. Our interests converged on so many topics. We competed with each other to show who loved British comedy more. We threw in Blackadder references just to see if the other got it and appreciated it if he did. We went crazy trying to outdo each other in mastering referencing to Seinfeld at the appropriate moments. He always called me Shayon-da subtly hinting at his displeasure at my abandoning my roots and making people pronounce my name Sayan. For some reason he also at times referred to me as Herr Fuehrer. I never asked him why. I wish I had. Everything he said to me, everything he wrote to me were always so full of references, puns, play and hidden significances that communicating with him was a delight and a challenge.

As a fellow team-mate, Nai was a joy. With him, Chanani and me, we formed a team which I always referred to as the greatest ever Dum Charades team never to have won anything. We had devised codes for the smallest aspects only to repeatedly fail at every opportunity to use them and we laughed ourselves hoarse at the hilarity which usually ensued on stage. We had devised a code for the movie Troy and fervently prayed for four years that by a stroke of luck we should get it once so that we can set a new time record in DC. I will never forget the look on Chanani’s face when he opened the chit at Saarang 2008, our last shot at qualification after struggling for four years. It was Troy and we cracked it in one second. Though it seems so silly, I was so happy that day. And so was Nai.

Quizzing with him was a different experience altogether. Answering the vaguest, quirkiest and most impossible of questions was his exclusive domain. The sudden burst of passion which flooded his complexion as an answer occurred to him, his jumping up to answer it and then inflicting a forceful and albeit painful high five on me to celebrate is an image imprinted permanently in my head. But what I remember the most is the all too often walk of shame back to the hostel late in the night after failing to win yet another quiz. He always gave a quiet ear to my rants about how Pota & Co were ruining enthusiasm by winning everything. I had the time of my life organizing quizzes with him and working on esoteric and arcane connects. With Jayant we formed a great quizzing team. With KV we went a notch higher and formed perhaps a trio which participated just to trip rather than win anything. Watching Nai and KV in conversation was like watching a joust between Messi and Rooney. Today I can only guess how distraught KV may be feeling. I also feel terrible for dear Psueba who loved talking to Nai. Yet another great pair undone.

Me,KV&Nai: Shaastra 2007 Main Quiz

There are just so many images which are flooding my mind right now. The unforgettable spoof of 12 Angry Men where the geniuses of Nai, Psueba and Bhadwa decided it would be an interesting experiment if all the jurors let down their trousers in the middle of the play. The coincidental but unrelated cycle accidents which left both of us bruised and bandaged at the same time and Nai felt it would be a good idea to take a picture. His comments and constructive criticisms/praises on each and every blog post of mine, no matter how inane or irrelevant the post may be. He was the first person from IITM to write me a testimonial on Orkut. He also taught me the basics of basketball, with tremendous patience. I remember the frustration he felt whenever he had me in his team. Perhaps the only time we almost fought. I spoke to him just three weeks back, two weeks before he died. He was excited about me going to the Malaysian GP. He warned me of the noise during the race and promised to meet me when he visited India later in December. We tripped on the brilliance of the Seinfeld reunion. On hearing I was planning to go camping that weekend he signed off with a characteristic quip asking me not get ‘camplacent’- overconfident about my camping skills. Everything seemed so normal. All of the above are small bits from the past, some sound even a bit silly perhaps, but seem so overwhelming to me right now in their entirety.

Bicycle Accident Buddies, 2004

I spent the entire day going through our old mails and gtalk conversations and I was struck by a fact that I had never realized till now. Before every major decision/event in my life, I had consulted him. And he had always replied in clear, objective terms on what he feels would be the right way ahead. I am feeling extremely stupid that this realization just hit me now. The depth and intensity of our friendship seems to have got buried under memories of frivolity and inanities. Its so tragic that its only after his death that I am able to realize how he made life so rich for me not just with his jokes, talents or competency but by being an invisible sounding board on which I had unconsciously been depending on for so many years. I can feel that the realization of what I have lost hasn’t sunk in completely and it will take quite some time for me to completely understand the enormity of the change and how poor it leaves me.

I would like to believe I see life how Nai did. That living is all about learning continuously. Reinventing oneself while staying true to one’s passions. The fact that he did it so much better than I ever could made me value our relationship so much. What frightens me the most right now is that there is a thought out there so terrifying and destructive that when it hit Nai, it convinced him to stop doing what he loved so much, learning and living. If that thought hits me someday, will I fare any better? I am scared.

Please help in bringing Nai back home. Funds are being raised on www.findmahesh.com. Please contribute generously.

Indiblogger: Youngistan Contest

2010-04-13T20:17:00.001+05:30

I am nominating four of my posts for the Indiblogger Blog of the month contest and as it is being sponsored by Pepsi, I need to put in my two pence regarding this ‘Youngistaan Contest’. With a Rapidshare account as one of the prizes on offer, I have shed all qualms and unhesitatingly associate myself with this corporate initiative.

So I need to create a challenge for Ranbir as he tries to lay his hand on a bottle of Pepsi. Here goes,

A bottle of Pepsi lies before Ayesha Siddique. She will give it to Ranbir only when he manages to convince Shoiab Malik to serenade her at the top of his voice with Sania Mirza dancing in the background in a tennis outfit. The catch lies in the fact that Ranbir will have to marry Ayesha if he fails. He also needs to shout Baba Nityanand ki Jai after every ten seconds during the whole mission.

Of flights, tall buildings and convocations

2010-03-16T07:22:00.008+05:30

BIA to KLIA

As I woke up last Saturday to find myself flying over the Malacca Straits, cosily nestled in the non-cattle class of MH193, I asked myself a pertinent question which seemed very relevant to me at that point of time. What the fuck am I doing here? Last I remembered, my team mate offered me a vada pao and told me that it wasn’t spiked after failing to convince me that an issue with metallurgical undertones, required my immediate attention. A glance at my forearms gave me a clue. There was a tattoo which read ‘metallurgical emergency’ and another on the wrist saying ‘KL Office’. I rushed to the toilet to check for more and found ‘solve energy crisis’, ‘one month job’, ’Global Credit Card’ scrawled at various areas over the torso. One week later most of those tattoos have made sense except one on the back which said ‘One Chicken McGrill please’.

The first impressions of KL were clouded by the experience of a horrible flight at an ungodly hour with a brutal thunderstorm thrown in for special effects. Why have a 4hr 5 min flight in the middle of the night beats me completely. By the way remind me to tell you the story why the flight length is exactly 4hr 5 min. Interesting are the ways world economies work. The daft timing was supplemented by a cruel coincidence of my VP taking the same flight. His presence at the executive lounge and then in the seat in front of me killed all prospects of a drinking binge I had planned for the evening. Modifying the recruitment process would have been high on his to-do list if he saw me racing against time to finish a bottle of JD which recent events have confirmed is a difficult thing to do.

But I can say that KL is a striking city at the first glance, just like the way Chennai is not. I always assumed South-East Asian countries to be hot, crowded and chaotic like my motherland and I was very disappointed to find KL was not so. I will devote a separate post to the joys and sights of this city and how the ubiquitous presence of vadas, idlis and posters of Trisha in a pink saree made me feel at home.

Level 19, Tower 2, PT.

My excitement about working at the hottest address in downtown KL and perhaps one of the most striking structures made by man was very short-lived. Once I realized my desk was at the measly nineteenth floor and there are chumps working on a further sixty nine floors above me, my ego didn’t allow me to enjoy the otherwise electric atmosphere around the place. Additionaly the fact that my status message on Facebook indicating my new address proved to be too cryptic to get the number of comments to my liking, disheartened me further. Naturally I dismissed the other possibility that people just didn't care.Inspite of RMZ Centennial being relatively downmarket compared to the Twin Towers, I was at least at the top floor there (sixth) and loved talking condescendingly to the poor bastards in the fifth.

A few of my colleagues have asked me whether the office here is better. The feelings are mixed. The space is less and it’s so quiet that I could actually hear myself procrastinating. They have an inhuman practice of shutting the coffee machines at five which is a bummer of a situation with me trying to get used to a 12 hr work routine for the first time. Of course there are none of those weekly mock drills/false alarms we have in Bangalore where everyone has to vacate the office because someone wanted a well-done toast and got a bit carried away. Evacuation from the floors 18/19/20 has their associated complexities. Of course the ladies seem perhaps a bit friendlier here. Either that or I am taking too much caffeine.

The Zen Convocation

I was pleasantly surprised to see this morning that I have been included in the annual convocation for Zen Masters. The invitation to the event can be seen below.(Source: Uss)

As you can see I am nothing less than the presiding faculty himself. I look forward to this event every year and it’s such an honour to be sharing the dais with such distinguished names.

I will take this occasion to impart some ancient wisdom to the students present. For those who failed remember that failure is but a stepping stone to yet another opportunity- to fail again. So watch your step.

To the students passing, if you misunderstood the trips of your faculty members as imparting of wisdom and dropping of knowledge then my best wishes for a future you are completely unprepared for.

For the PhD candidate, I must admit, that was fast!

For a very deserving candidate of the Egregia cum laude, let me humbly admit that it often felt while teaching you that we were on the wrong sides in the classroom. As the ancient saying goes, the greatest teachers are those who feel like a student. So congratulations on a job well done on of making me the greatest.

To the rest of the faculty members, “Arey yeh qualification resume me daal sakte hain kya?”

A New Blog.

I realized that sucking at one is not good enough. Ineptitude should be displayed in an overwhelming and multi-faceted manner. I always felt the need of a forum where I can post these short, crisp reference-laden one-liners/ notions which keep striking me. When I go back and read them, it feels good to remember how I have been thinking at various points in time. Twitter didn’t do it for me though as I wanted it to look the way it looks now. Of course every statement is so vague, pretentious and inconsequential that either it would make me look mysterious and intriguing or a complete pompous jackass. As my credentials in the latter have been firmly established I decided to take this low risk initiative.

Tip of the Hat, Wag of the Finger - 1

2010-03-03T19:27:00.003+05:30

I know this concept is a lift from The Colbert Report. Stephen and me have an understanding.

Sagai Surprise

Last Sunday as I lay contemplating whether this was the worst Holi in recent memory, my dear friend Chanani gave me a ring. I expected it to be his usual monthly call where he inquires about my bank balance and then laughs hysterically on hearing it. The Schlumberger guys never miss an opportunity to stick it to us. I usually respond by asking how’s pubbing in Rajahmundry and then we call it even. But this time he didn’t venture into any such conversation. After asking whether I was sober, he announced very sombrely ‘I am engaged’. My response was a “Shit!” followed by a “why?” and ended with a “what’s the hurry?” The silence at the other end of the lines indicated he was expecting a slightly more enthusiastic reply. It took me a moment to realize my folly and I subsequently burst forth into congratulatory wishes and told him how happy I was for him.

But my involuntary response had a reason behind it. Chanani and I have shared a scarily similar life path. We both hail from the same area, schooled close to each other, studied at DPS together, both dropped a year, joined the same IIT, stayed in the same hostel, were neighbours for four years, both fought and won elections, joined the same industry and were hoping to end up on the same rig sometime in the future. And yes, both of us were rabidly hated by Rasgulla. So when he sprang the engagement news on me, it got me jittery. Ever since I was unceremoniously fired from a relationship firm I was working at, I realized close human contact is not my thing. So the time has come when I and my dear friend part ways in the road of Resemblance. It was good while it lasted but it is obvious we want different things in life. (Wait! Where did I hear that recently?).

So a tip of my hat to a very dear friend and I wish him a wonderful married life.

TopCATs

A huge tip of my hat to fellow IITian IDR, known more popularly as Varun Mangamoori to newspapers around the country, for topping CAT. The 2005 ED batch has more than its share of stirring characters. To paraphrase for ED2005 context, what Gabbar Singh said in admiration of the women of Ramgarh, ‘Is batch ke logo kis mess mein register karte hai re?’

An equally big tip of the hat to my dear brother for cracking 99.96 and reminding me of his entrance exam days where every rank of his was my equivalent rank divided by 10.

*All congratulatory messages for Chanani can be posted in the comments section. He is a frequent visitor. I am not so sure about IDR though. But I will bring his attention to it, if there are many.

Jimmy Gaddar

The MetaMafia members have unequivocally decided to hate Jimmy. Why you ask? Let me explain. He was the only member of the group who decided to pursue higher studies while the rest of us, wise souls that we were, decided that it would be a good idea to open a bank account and do stuff to ensure there is a monthly increment in it.

Why spend ages trying to prepare HRTEM samples when we can cavort with shapely lasses at pubs in the weekend and buy a Skoda by year end. Of course we had to pay a heavy price for not having taken the elective Introduction to Basic Economics and being disconnected to reality in general. Life became all about paying credit card bills and bundling personal debts into derivatives and selling them to unsuspecting friends.

The current state of all the MM members is sad. The two highest earners are minting money but have been flung to parts of India where their social life is slightly more interesting than those of camels in Gabon. On the other hand in Mumbai, Mr Peace is going crazy trying to decide whether to sell or buy turmeric in the commodities exchange. Fattu Uday Kiran is slogging his ass off only to return to have dinner with his arch nemesis, me, and listen to my latest hair brained scheme to make my blog popular. I, who learnt all my materials engineering from Ironman, am meanwhile advising naive clients to invest their billions of dollars and make their state-of-the-art plant out of plastic. Jatin G remains untraced since his transfer to Chennai and Chaitanya He-is-in-love-pragada is running for life because he played for more teams than the rules allowed in the inter-department sports fest in SAIL.

In the mean time, bastard Jimmy has been spending his vacations in Europe, sipping wine, smelling cheese and posing for pictures with a condescending grin. His Facebook album is full of pictures of him gyrating with ‘graduate students’ and his work description reads ‘helping students in the lab’. His allowance is so generous that rumours are circulating in his hometown that he is planning to launch a new IPL franchise called Warangal Warriors. Not fair. Didn’t following your dreams usually mean years of rejection and frustration followed by an accidental overdose of sleeping pills?

So until Jedi Master KVM writes a stirring article in favour of the salaried class, a big wag of the finger to Jimmy for following his dreams and enjoying life at the same time.

Gulal (of Death)

A huge wag of the finger to fellow gang member and criminal mastermind Anjan Gayen and his right hand Amarnath I-fall-in-love-with-every-girl-I-meet Chakladar. When Anjan said he is going to spend Holi in Shantiniketan I knew nothing good was going to come of it. My worst fears were proved true when I read this. The very fact that they are not mentioned anywhere in the report proves conclusively they are responsible for it.

Note to the reader: The readership of the blog has exponentially increased from single digits to double digits. It is heartening. If you are in anyway responsible for it, I would first ask why and then really appreciate if you play your role to greater effect by sharing the posts you like on FB, Twitter, status messages, Google reader and the likes. Also rate the posts so that I know when I am flirting with human rights violations by exposing the public to such poppycock.

Facebook Layoffs

2010-02-27T19:57:00.004+05:30

A recent comment from good friend Uss got me thinking. He remarked that we have 222 friends in common on Facebook. I shifted from Orkut to Facebook over two years back because the number of people on my friends list was getting too big to handle. It had begun to hover around the four hundred mark and I was pretty sure I didn’t have so many friends. Not with my demeanour.

Facebook looked more exclusive and I decided start my virtual life anew. No more of the wild wanton Orkut days where every friend request had to be accepted unless it was a Brazilian whom I was pretty sure I hadn’t met. Now this was before the dastardly days of Mafia requests and Farmville invites. Facebook used to be a place where simple, sober people used to interact and the wildest anyone got was by throwing sheep or super poking someone. A complacency slowly crept in thanks to an increasingly misplaced sense of exclusiveness. That combined with a host of circumstances like electoral compulsions, graduation sensitivities, romantic liaisons, nostalgic affections and professional commitments made things worse resulting in the screening process for friend request reaching very deplorable limits. The only thing easier than getting into my friend list was sleeping with Tiger Woods.

Now things have come to a head. I can’t be comfortable with over five hundred people claiming to be my friend. What if they all decide to borrow money at the same time? And now that I am no longer fighting elections, have graduated, not getting hitched and beginning to lose memory, it is time to follow the world’s premier corporations in what they do best . Lay-offs. Right. I have decided to lay-off a huge part of my friends and slim down my friend-list. I need to be ready to face the challenges of the upcoming upturn with an elegant, tidy friend-list devoid of redundancy and surplus . In this age it helps to be ruthlessly professional about everything. Even your Facebook profile.

Thankfully I am not at a loss on how to execute this challenging task. My last few months have been spent closely observing how my own company does it and I have decided to replicate the process. I will call it F.O.R (Friendship Outsourcing Resource). This is how it will work.

• A list of the ‘indispensables’ will be created. They include EIC, MM, WOF, Shaastra core members, old comrades whose advice is valued, individuals whose references are valued, HNIs, brother and mom. They are exempted from the F.O.R process and need not bother. Their indispensability will however be reviewed every five years.

• One individual will be selected from each of the top Univs in the US depending on their ability to build networks in their campuses and their propensity to assist me in times of need. They are exempted from the F.O.R but their relevance will be reviewed on a quarterly basis. Friendship will be renewed from the first of April of every year depending on the annual appraisal report.

• The same will be done for all Fortune 500 contacts.

• All females are exempted. They form only 15% of the total numbers. Defunct relationships will be slowly phased out by the last quarter of 2010 and replaced with new initiatives. The idea is to keep the percentage at 15% and increased only in select cases when they seem to add intellect or glamour to the list.

• All foreigners (not NRIs) are exempted till I have travelled enough to believe having foreigners, who are just aquantainces on the list is not so cool anymore.

• Everybody else who do not fall under the above criterions will have to re-apply with a new friendship request with a note detailing why continuing our association online is a good idea and how it may further the individual social development of both.

• The requests will be scrutinized by me and the selected individuals will be offered a two year friendship deal. The deal will include mutually agreed upon commitments on the number of status message comments, likes, photo comments, wall posts and personality votes which we will deliver unto each others profiles. Once we are clear on the deliverables and agree to contract termination in event of Mafia/Farmville invites or reneging on the deliverables, we re-induct each other in our lists.

• There will be quite a few who don’t make the cut and they will be summarily receive a letter of regret. Every mail will be personalized because I believe lay-offs should always have a humane touch. A sample is given below.

It breaks my heart to say this but I think we should we on other people’s live feed from now on. Your contributions to my profile have been immense but as you can understand, to face society more confidently I need people with skills other than yours. Please feel free to call or meet me as long as it just once a year and it is in a public place.

Following the methodologies stated above, I hope to cut up to 60% of the names currently present. I understand everyone who will need to go through F.O.R are speculating exactly on what standards will the applications be evaluated. I want my friend list to get rid of its engineer & IIT focus and have a more diversified portfolio of individuals. I admit there will be an informal 2% quota for genuine sportsmen. People with a background in the arts with an understanding of Bernoulli’s theorem or vice versa have an edge over anyone with just one of the qualities.

We cannot predict whether this pink slip method will improve my social standing and give me more control over my virtual life. A committee of my alter-egos will go though the quarterly results and bring out a review in the annual Facebook profile report ‘Why do I have so much free time and what I do with it’. Pdfs will be mailed to anyone interested in going through it.

If you like it rate it & share it!

Chennai vs Bangalore

2010-02-20T01:01:00.006+05:30

This post is dedicated to good friend Muski’s memory. Recently he had to undergo an inhuman job transfer from Bangalore back to Chennai. He has been incommunicado since and none of his well-wishers are aware of how or whether he has coped up with the drastic change.

I am getting tired of shooting people in the face whenever they ask me which city is better for people like us with lives- Chennai or Bangalore. Getting rid of bodies is no longer as easy as it used to be. So I have listed a few irrefutable reasons below. The whole thing may look more like a diatribe against Chennai than anything for Bangalore. But let’s dispense with the standard forms of debate and comparison in this one instance.

The weather: Bangalore has one. Chennai doesn’t.

The autowallahs: Anybody who has lived in Chennai long enough often fantasize about raiding the auto wallah’s village on horseback in the middle of the night and razing it to the ground. Let me declare unequivocally that the auto-drivers of Bangalore are no saints but at least they won’t start whining ‘twenty rupees more saar’ as soon as we are two miles within our destination.

Language issues: I am all for a parochial approach to the enforcement of the local language as long as it postponed to a future date on a regular basis (like in Bangalore). If you want to call yourself a metro, you need to speak English & Hindi as properly as Tamil. It’s not a question of pride but of pragmatism.

Buses: Either have buses which move fast like in Delhi or have more Volvos like in Bangalore so that while you are stuck in a jam, its seems a wee bit more comfortable. Being in rickety tin boxes packed like sardines while in a traffic jam. Not good.

Alcohol Policy & Pubs: While I have been told that the draconian and Tughlakish alcohol policy of Chennai which stifled most brands out of the market, has been repealed after dire legal threats from WTO and people no longer have to be exposed to the radioactive MGM (orange flavoured, mind you), it isn’t enough. Pubbing in Chennai is like sea-food restaurants in Darjeeling. Non-existent. Either I have to go to one of those Residency series of hotels where I need to take out a personal loan from SBI so as to afford a mojito or I have go to places like Black Pearl where one is advised to carry a bucket so that you have something to puke in because of the stench and filth around.

Multiplexes: The puritans will scoff at me for including this point but my elitist days are long gone. Now I am a man of the masses and will not hesitate to assert that no self-respecting city with over ten million people should have fewer multiplexes less than my home town, which incidentally can be seen only with maximum magnification in Google Earth. It’s unheard off and people should just migrate in protest.

Cinema hall commercials: Don’t we love the trailers before the movie? Usually they are better than the movie that follows. Just like the course description in Meta electives usually read better than what the course ultimately delivered. So when I realize that the lavishly mounted video was not the teaser for the next blockbuster but a surreptitiously directed effort at making me buy hyper-expensive saris or worse, diamond jewellery, I have very good reasons to get pissed.

Culture: Whatever your taste in culture may be, you can indulge in it as long as it is Carnatic music.

Shopping: Why does the dosa shop, towel shop, jewellery shop and everything else in the world shop have to be a variant of the hydra headed Sarvanna store?

Newspaper: What’s with the gravitas in the daily editorials of the Hindu? We are Indians. We don’t care much for balanced editorials, foreign news reports, incisive columns which are not about Kim Kardashian or Rakhi Sawant. ToI rocks baby. And it’s cheaper.

Weather: At the risk of sounding repetitive, I must strongly re-emphasize that Bangalore has one. Chennai doesn’t.

But there is one aspect where Chennai scores in a big way over Bangalore. Did you know that the greatest most awsomest brilliantest place on earth, IIT Madras is actually in Chennai? Surprising but true. (Don’t you love blatant pandering to your biggest readership constituency?)

If IIT had been in Bangalore, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I would still be trying to graduate.

Friday Terror!

2010-02-15T20:21:00.007+05:30

Last Thursday Google Buzz had just got released and in my childish enthusiasm, I foolishly chided a good friend in the public domain for having reneging on a promise to meet up.In true spirit of Achmed the dead terrorist, I went so far as to call him an infidel. The good man, lets call him Keynesian Versus Moniterist or KVM, ruffled by the frontal attack replied with a gem of a mail explaining his frustrations with frequent business travel and the associated red tape.

Taking a page out of Google who violated my privacy by making me automatically follow people on Buzz whom I usually avoid by preferring to get diarrhoea, I am blatantly violating email confidentiality and pasting his mail below.

"O Master, the most merciful and the most beneficent! I was recently greatly alarmed to see, of all places on Google Buzz, that have you summarily declared me an Infidel! My numerous, exuberant, overflowing apologies! I am painfully aware of the unfulfilledness of my promises, my liege, and I only beg to humbly state, nay, whisper, that the current owners of my soul, Messrs. S******, are quite adept at making good use of their purchases.

Since the sale occurred, I have travelled the length and breadth of the country, and unlike Mr. Macaulay, I have not a single observation that will be pillaged and plagiarized by posterity on rediff forums. All I have are arcane procedures to file Domestic Travel Requisitions and Post Travel Regularizations gambolling in my head when I sleep on bus journeys, and in a slight variation to the Kekule theme, I see myself eaten up by the bureaucracy I spawn.

Under such terrifying circumstances, O paragon of virtue, would you blame me for wasting away on Google Buzz? Arise into a thunderous tempest, O ocean of kindness, and send forth a gale of forgiveness my way, lest I continue with the atrocious vocatives and metaphors"

Reading this the first thing on Friday morning put me under tremendous pressure to send a reply at least half as good. But how could I match up to such brilliance? It had references to obscure Indian History, organic chemistry trivia, cult forums and read like the Koran at the same time! I asked my imaginary secretary to cancel all my appointments for the day and walked about the apartment sweating profusely and biting my nails to bits, thinking. Lunch was missed, gym skipped, facebooking shelved. But to no avail. Expectedly I gave in by late evening. Trembling in apprehension and drowning in self-loathing I sent this reply.

"Not even the recently Predatored Hakimullah Mehsud, while having a bad bout of indigestion would have been so ill-tempered so as not to be swayed by such a benevolent and munificent plea for exoneration. The beauty and the wonder of the entreaty lies in the fact that it delicately and yet convincingly makes the wronged feel guilty of his unduly harsh and substantially hasty step of having Buzzed his sentiments publicly.

Fear not the needless requisition forms! For in me you will find an equally maltreated victim of a system which revels in draping themselves in red tape. Disguised innocently in terms as Journey Management Plans and Travel Requisition Forms, the effort involved in traversing the world is half wasted while in the office premises itself. The heart yearns and the mind craves and the body aches for a world where red tape is just a technique to keep the masses away from murder scenes.

So go forth on your tedious missions, cross the borders which separate the barbarians from the rest of us, dazzle them with your mental faculties and the return with the aura of victory and triumph as city belles fawn over you and vie for your attention. It will be then when we sit and spin our yarn over tumblers of ale."

The overriding fear was this shoddy job of trying to catch up will prevent the good man from investing his talents in my inbox in the future. Till the time of writing of this post, my fears have proved to be well-founded.

PS: I miss IITM and her exceptional inmates.

If only it were so easy...

2010-02-09T20:29:00.002+05:30

PS: Oh Google!Why so brilliant? Is there nothing you suck at?

Beware of the Editor: Revisiting Chandrayaan

2010-02-04T11:31:00.011+05:30

This video was uploaded on the blog over two and a half years ago. But the sheer excitement of being on television prevented me from commenting on the delightful way the media absorbs information and spits out complete drivel ruining people’s days in the process. Now that the global oil prices have finally stabilized, I can take out some time to elaborate.

In the year 2007 I was the part of the team which was supposed to be blamed for anything which went wrong during Shaastra 2007. One of the highlights of the event was a feature on Chandrayaan with some of the project leaders telling us about how the whole thing would make the moon (and ISRO) look cool again. Thanks to the media interest, we (me, Muski, Parinda & Jimmy) landed ourselves in this short segment on NDTV. We ditched a class and gave a 20 min long discourse to the reporter on various aspects of the whole project and how it was received by the students. I have given below a succinct version of what we actually told and then how irreverent and imbecilic editing made the whole thing resemble a train wreck.

Input

Me: I expressed my wonder that something so complex could actually be so small and compact.

Jimmy: He discussed at considerable length the details of the two talks we had, describing in intricate detail the technological aspects and future implications. He ended it by quoting one of the jokes of the main speaker about how you could even plan a honeymoon on the moon thanks to Chandrayaan.

Muski, Parida: Discussed their learning at length and their pride at being associated with the event.

Output

The video begins with the anchor saying that one of the aims of Chandrayaan would be to explore the possibility of honeymooning on the moon. Any doubts about whether she is joking is removed by the capital lettered tab below, screaming similar sentiments. Well news anchors are known to have an IQ lesser than Pacific plankton. So she can be excused. But the rest of segment was even more depressing.

Sounding like a wife after the wedding night, expressing her deep anguish about the short-comings of her partner, I am heard saying “Its very small. Its not as big as you are expecting it to be”. The sense of appreciation comes across as complete disillusionment with the India space program just because of sizing issues.

Muski barely manages to mention how proud he was before being brutally cut off to focus on an apparently melancholic and suspiciously constipated Parinda who mentions something about polar ice caps with his body language clearly indicating he doesn’t think highly of NDTV. The fact that he had been speaking for quite a while and may have begun drift a bit comes across as total indifference in the few seconds he gets.

But the worst was reserved for dear Jimmy. None of his astute observations on the event made it to the final cut other than his off the cuff remark on honeymoons with his mistimed snigger making it look as if he needs help in reigning in his mental faculties. The fact that they spelt his name Ukala, leaving out the all important N and making him look like a retarded descendent of a Hawaiian musical instrument didn’t help in anyway.

After this sorry excuse of a news report and ruining our carefully crafted reputations by calling us ‘techies’ on screen, we have refused all future NDTV requests for interviews till date.

Chance Pe Dance

2010-01-27T10:41:00.004+05:30

Willie S: All the world’s a stage.
Me: Shit.

It’s been some time since I have discussed awkward episodes of my life. A lot of it has got to do with my current vocation. All embarrassing incidents at the workplace cannot be discussed thanks to the confidentiality agreement signed at the beginning. I can’t even name the company I work for but its name incidentally rhymes with hell and often confused with the Indian steel maker SAIL. But then chances of anything of interest happening while I ponder over the material selection for a sulphur recovery unit somewhere in the wilderness of Western Australia is remote. Very remote. While my fervent opponents in the Meta-Mafia feel working as a materials engineer specializing in corrosion solutions automatically qualifies me for public humiliation, I have passionately defended my profession. But I digress.

People have often asked me whether I like being on stage (very few actually did). And I always tell them what I told the person who first asked this question. No. My affair with the stage begins long back. June of 1991 to be precise. I had just joined Don Bosco as a brash, cheeky brat fresh out of kindergarten. I held a lot of promise and the world was there to be conquered. I was appointed the class monitor in my first week and as expected at such an age, I drunk on raw power began feeling I was capable of anything. Incidentally I was not and was soon going to find that out.

The annual dance competition used to be among the first events in the scholastic calendar. Within a few weeks of me joining there was an announcement in class asking for people who would be interested in participating. Without going into hours long deliberations before taking a decision like I do now, I immediately signed on for it, much to my eternal regret. Being God’s greatest gift to the human race, I felt that shaking a leg would be like a walk in a very boring park. Like any busy six year old with a corporate mindset, I immediately forgot about the fact that I had signed up for a dance competition once I had signed up. So the days which should have been spent in preparing for my hair-brained initiative was frittered away disputing umpire decisions and running fellow batsmen out on the school playground. So the dreaded day arrived and I was blissfully unaware of the impending humiliation. I was so ignorant that I actually entered the great school hall and joined my boisterous group of friends in the audience and was looking forward to heckling the participants. It was when a voice back-stage announced in a booming tone that the next performer is Sayan Ganguly when it struck me. I was on the wrong side of the stage. The heckler was about to become the hecklee. I was transfixed not knowing what to do as my friends pushed me out of the hall and urged me to run to the back stage. I reach the green room afraid, very afraid about what was about to happen.

All participants were expected to bring their respective costumes and their music tracks to which they were supposed to jive to. I of course had none. It seemed that this was a common occurrence and the organizers had default dance tracks to be played when irresponsible asses like me screwed up. Unfortunately the default costumes consisted of only losing the school tie and suddenly there I was on the stage with the curtains about to go up and a sad dance track beginning to play. I don’t remember which track it was but it certainly had never been on any kind of top 1000 songs of the year lists in any country (even Germany). I closed my eyes and said a short prayer and opened my eyes to discover that my prayer was not answered. I was still on stage and the crisis further accentuated by the second as the curtain went up. That was the moment I realized that my school housed quite a large number of students, all of whom happened to be in the hall. My prevalent reputation of being a trail blazing iconoclast induced an unusually keen interest in their eyes. Most of them felt that they were about to view something different. The delayed start had heightened their expectations. Didn’t all famous shows start a bit late, they told themselves.

Meanwhile the dance track had begun, unnoticed by me. It was a non-descript tune with an irreverent mish-mash of beats generally leading to nowhere, somewhat like my imminent dance steps. The crowd was quick to notice that things didn’t look the way supposed to be. I think me being in the school uniform sans the tie with a sorry excuse for a dance track in the background raised suspicions that Superman was about to be out-witted by a devilish Luthorian plot. Transfixed by the million stares, I could only stare back. It was a classic ‘deer in the head-lights’ moment, with the headlights being of half of the Siliguri traffic. Somewhere in the middle of all this, my left foot had started doing a tap while my other left foot was trying to match step for step. The human nervous system has its own mysterious response mechanisms to nervous situations as I was discovering.

Trying to pass off the involuntary tapping as a start to a new form of revolutionary dance, I decided to attempt an arms swing. It was ill-advised to say the least. It looked like I was trying to give a visual explanation of what a sine wave superimposed on a cosine wave may look like but had got confused about the origin and frame of reference. My stock in front of the crowd was plummeting faster than Satyam’s did in January 2009. I realized that something radical had to be tried to turn the tide. So I started turning in circles. Maybe in some parts of the world, turning in needless circles with arms flaying accompanied with involuntary foot taps qualify as sophisticated dance forms, but my fellow school mates didn’t come from those parts. It was a common tradition in this competition to down the curtains in case an act was going haywire. My performance was reaching that qualification with blinding speed. The pointless circling proved to be too much for my cerebellum and it finally gave up on trying maintaining any semblance of balance and I tottered like Pyotr Arsenievich Smirnov did after celebrating the establishing of his first distillery. The crowd remained hypnotized by the continuously unfolding terror in front of them. Had this happened a decade later, Al Qaida may have claimed responsibility in view of the sheer terror quotient involved. Curiosity turned to dismay which rapidly evolved into revulsion followed soon after by uncontrolled laughter.

As a final attempt to salvage some pride, I decided to explore whether moving about the stage may help the situation. I naively thought that the damage caused by writhing hysterically rooted to one spot could perhaps be undone by wriggling about all over the stage. Unfortunately my sudden movement was interpreted by the audience as the much-awaited conclusion and the hall burst out pre-maturely in tremendous applause. My six-year old brain was perceptive enough to make me understand that the applause was less about appreciation and had more to do with relief. The back-stage manager took the applause as the final cue that the curtains just had to be downed before a mass exodus of the audience, did his job to perfection and in a matter of seconds I was back to staring at the back of the red curtain.

A little voice inside told me that perhaps if I had a couple of minutes more, I could have turned the situation on its head and left the stage after an astounding performance. All the initial steps and supposed missteps would finally been seen as small cogs in the bigger wheel of a divine performance. But a second later that notion sounded so stupid that I bludgeoned the small voice to pulp and it hasn’t spoken up since. As I drudged back after the longest three minutes of my life, the teachers backstage glared at me as if I had made a pass at their mothers. I quietly took my tie and slipped out.

I refrained from entering the hall gain in fear of being mobbed or worse made to do a repeat of the performance for the seniors. Feeling like Bangaru Laxman after being outfoxed by Tehelka, lying low seemed a wonderfully refreshing idea and I proceeded to do exactly that in the second floor corridor. After the whole event was over, I quietly slipped out of school. But my friends, knowing my slimy ways, were waiting to accost me. What they said and the humiliation I underwent the following weeks in school is best left unsaid. Some memories are best left to private blog entries where only I and my alter-egos can read them.

This incident laid the foundation of all my future ill-fated flirtations with the stage. I will talk about them in the follow-up articles soon. But as my record with previously promised follow-up articles goes, it may be pretty surprising if I do end up recounting how I mortified audiences over the ages with my dextrous acting/singing skills (yes, I have dared to sing too). I never danced again though. Who knows, perhaps if I had performed well that day, I might have been the one facing the brickbats instead of Shahid for the horrendous Chance Pe Dance today. And all you ladies, who have asked me out so many times in the past only to get a resounding no, don’t doubt my orientation. It’s only because I am afraid that at some point in the evening, you may ask me to dance.

2009 AD: What a waste.

2009-12-23T22:05:00.003+05:30

As my flight made a sudden lift and barely avoided ramming into another plane on the runway while landing today, I got a bit jittery. This propensity of near misses, each bearing an eerie similarity to something out of an upcoming Final Destination sequence, is getting a tad painful. To be blunt, I am not enjoying almost getting killed anymore. So as the proverbial flashing past of life happened during those vital minutes when it seemed that all was lost, I got thinking. While I grudgingly admit that the overpowering thought was about what would happen to all the money people owed me in case I kicked the bucket, I also looked back on 2009. And they were not what one would call, pleasant thoughts.

What a disappointing year this has been. Nothing impressive achieved, not even thought about or even attempted. Its just been one expensive over-rated dinner after another, irreverent staring at walls, lifting weights and dropping them, comparing different newspapers, strategizing daily beverage intake, making excuses, mocking, evil financial plotting, waiting for downloads to happen and standing in long lines. I paid a heavy price for hubris, messed up great opportunities and whined uncontrollably. I have sunk to such lows that I have begun to like green tea and Orkut. The last straw was when I felt like watching Friends again.

What a bad year. Anyway, lessons have been learnt. Or so I hope. I will go back to doing what I do best and leave mature things to mature people. 2010, be kind to me.

Seasons greetings everybody. Wishing you the very best, and whatever.

The Conversation

2009-10-01T21:23:00.004+05:30

I am back. A long hiatus, I admit. Many things have happened since my last discourse on placements. I visited a steel plant, pulled off unbelievable capers, failed at my most ambitious effort, swam, caught a Maoist, worshipped Larry David, defended my thesis against evil, took crucial signatures, made stupid promises, kept stupid promises, bragged, showed bite marks, lost weight, gained weight, fought, made up, made out, simulated Sach Ka Samna, feel ill at the worst possible night, met Bangalore, liked Bangalore, took up plumbing, rugby, archery and of course broke the forty second barrier. So yes, lots of things have changed. But some things remain the same. Obama still holds promise, Stewart still rocks and vegetarians still need to be guillotined.

The motivation to write again was lurking somewhere behind the nearest KFC when an email hastened my return to the blogosphere. This post is just a representation of a GTalk chat between two IITM alumni. The context has been explained by the victim in his own words. It is an exact lift and there have been no omissions or modifications. Of course all proper nouns have been changed to protect identity.

Main Characters:
Victim: Hamburger
Predator: Old_Monk

Hamburger’s opening monologue.

Prior to reading the following conversation, you need to know this conversation history. Basically the legendary Old Monk buzzed me, asking if I could provide contacts of companies for him to intern at. He asked about firms like Link Equality etc. So I told him that I know this guy BS who interned there. I told Old_Monk that I'll find out from BS and get back to him. The following conversation is what happened thereafter. Enjoy!

Hamburger: hey BS just mailed me. Asked me to give u this email id:Blahblah@yahoo.com. The guy's name is Blahblah and he's an analyst at Link equality

Old_Monk: ok, nice that you informed him prior. I shall refer you as Hamburger, right?

Hamburger: If required u can say that u got the email id from Bhawani Shankar. I dont know this guy Blah Blah!! Reference Bhawani Shankar. Bhawani is BS. He interned at Link equality after 3rd year. clear?

Old_Monk: Ok. That is far fetched. I shall tell what I understood. Bhawani alias BS interned in link equality after third year. But you don’t know him directly. But you know Bhawani Shankar who knows BS. Am i right?

Hamburger: Bhawani shankar is Bhawani is BS!

Old_Monk: So you know him directly, he only contacted you just now, right?

Hamburger: Yup. I know Bhawani Shankar, he was my wingmate, and he interned at Link Equality

Old_Monk: So when mailing him , I can refer your name, right?

Hamburger: My god!!!! Refer to Bhawani Shankar!!!!

Old_Monk: I shall call you I guess. Too confusing. Else you tell full story over here. I shall remain silent.

Hamburger: U got the mail id from Bhawani Shankar, and Bhawani Shankar interned at Link Equality! How difficult is that!

Old_Monk: Mail id of Bhawani Shankar from you. right?

Hamburger: DUDE!!!!!!!!! Why bother about Bhawani Shankar! You mail Blahblah ( blahblah@yahoo.com) saying that u got his email id from Bhawani Shankar who had interned in Link Equality!

Old_Monk: If I mail to Bhawani Shankar, what should I tell him on wherei got his ID from? But who is Blahblah?

Hamburger: U genius!!!! how will u mail Bhawani Shankar???? I never gave u his email id!

Old_Monk: ok, who is this Blahblah?

Hamburger: Dude!!!! He is the guy working at Link Equality man!!! Wake up!

Old_Monk: ok. I underwear**. What is Bhawani doing? I need not mail my resume, right, just a formal mail asking whether they are interested. Right?

Hamburger: That is upto u. I have no clue. See I know nothing abt Link Equality and all.....
*The End*

** Why Old_Monk said underwear remains a point of intense debate among international GTalk specialists. Some say he meant understand while another school of thought feels he meant underwear. But they all agree that it doesn’t matter.

A Vital Question.

2008-12-29T10:02:00.003+05:30

You know IIT placements have taken a hit when you read this.
Even the Diro is out of a job.

But the vital question everybody has not thought of yet is…
Does that make Ananth eligible to sit for placements?
Will he have to pay Rs 1000 to register or will he get a director's discount?
Mr Garg’s job gets a wee bit tougher then.

Extrapolating with some freedom, shouldn’t faculty be allowed to sit for placements too?
I am so eager to see what Parmanand Singh would be short-listed for.

This is the last post for 2008. Happy New Year to all.
Sources close to me have confided that this new years’ eve may be interesting. Very interesting. *Diabolical laughter*

We Indians bargain well.....

2008-12-13T23:12:00.001+05:30

You know how insulated you have become from real life after experiences as these. After an agonizingly busy morning of waking up and pressing the snooze button on my cell, I had my usual lunch of fish and some more fish followed by some fish. Then after bringing the balance of nature back to the local marine life, I noticed that there were no oranges. I usually have oranges after lunch in the winter and now there were no oranges. I decided to solve this problem in the conventional manner. I decided to buy some.

‘40 rupees a dozen’, the vendor mumbled.
‘hah! 40! Are you crazy? Where do you think I am from? Chennai? Local chele aami. I will take 6 pieces and wont pay a paise more than 20Rs’, I craftily mentioned.

He looked at me with an expressionless stare, picked up 6 oranges, put it in a bag and gave it to me.

I gave him Rs 20. Left with a smirk. And then it hit me.

PS: No observation on my mathematical prowess will be tolerated. That has nothing to do with this.

Getting Noticed!

2008-11-30T20:40:00.001+05:30

While my friends have complained that my articles of late have been a tad too serious, there has been an unforeseen windfall. The last two articles have been picked up and linked to in other websites. While they may not be some influential journals but then its a good start none the less.

http://www.topix.com/city/orlando-fl/2008/11/state-by-state-info-declare-yourself : The link on Barack Obama connects to my Obama article.

http://www.youthforequality.com/interact-with-us/view-user-posted-article.aspx : Links to my article on reservation.

Yippee!

Only in America- The Impossible Story of Barack Obama

2008-11-01T03:39:00.001+05:30

The following was my submission to the November issue of the Filter Copy.

“America is too great for small dreams”-Ronald Reagan

As a country America continues to inspire and confound the global community. After eight years of Bush’s de-facto war on anything Islamic and irresponsible economic policies, America might just elect a young black man as their next president whose middle name happens to be Hussein. The global community does not ask whether Barack Obama will be the next president of USA. Rather everyone asks whether USA will let Obama become president as if when we keep prejudices aside, the presidency is Obama’s birthright. Never since the Kennedy campaign has any individual energized the American population in such a manner and the impossible- America regaining the respect and credibility it had before Bush- looks a distinct if not a sure possibility in event of an Obama presidency.

It all started in 2004 at the annointation of John Kerry in the Democratic National Convention. A relatively unknown junior senator from the state of Illinois was asked to deliver the key-note address. The oratory, charisma and style displayed by Barack almost shifted focus from Kerry himself. Political pundits and observers, who were already cynical about the stumbling Kerry campaign, proclaimed Obama as the new boy wonder and predicted a great future. No one then expected him to clinch the nomination just four years later. It would have been just too early. And of course Hillary Clinton’s name had already started doing the rounds for 2008 and a black first time senator stopping the Clinton juggernaut was too farcical to even imagine. But the die had been cast a bit before 2004. In 2003 when Bush laid his plans to attack Iraq before the country, the populace was sharply divided and in retrospect Obama chose the right side. Hillary supported it. McCain vociferously supported it. Obama did not. This foresight put Obama and his sense of judgment several notches above all other more qualified candidates and proved to be his primary way of distinguishing himself from the rest four years later.

Obama is not the first black politician who gained prominence on the national stage and nor is he the first one with sights on the White House. In recent years Rev Jesse Jackson and Rev Al Sharpton have tried and lost. Colin Powell fiddled with the idea before accepting the Secretary of State carrot. And there have been a half a dozen other before them. But Obama’s candidacy has been very different from all previous one for he has successfully avoided the death trap of all black leaders- being type cast as a leader of the African-Americans. Obama ensured that none of his actions or efforts would be painted as being community specific. He went out of his way to court the whites and the Hispanics and chided any voice from within his own community who asked him to focus his attention only on his people. Speeches where he literally scolded black fathers for not being responsible enough about their parental duties may have made him seem patronizing but brought him closer to the whites who felt that there was no bias or any sense of historical prejudice in him. Obama never came across as one out to right the wrongs of the past on behalf of his community.

The biggest asset which caused Obama’s meteoric rise is his oratory. In a short span of 5-6 years Obama has left behind himself a slew of tremendous speeches which will continue to inspire generations. Whether it’s his key-note address in 2004 or his candidacy proclamation on the historic steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, he has held his audience in total rapture by his deft use of words and statesman like body language. He has made a habit of coming out of very tight spots with speeches of remarkable clarity, honesty and forthrightness. Let’s take the Jeremiah Wright issue as an example. In the middle of his historic fight with Hillary Clinton, videos of his pastor Jeremiah Wright surfaced condemning America and her policies. The event had all the ingredients to ensure an early end to Obama’s campaign. Here was a black pastor denouncing the country and the whites and Barack didn’t even utter a single word of condemnation. Showing amazing boldness, Obama refused to condemn the man and in turn came out with one of the most unforgettable speeches in recent American history. He dealt with the race relations in the US and how he views it through the prism of his unique background of having a white mother and a black father.
Obama’s fight for the democratic nomination was a much more complex and difficult affair than his current run for presidency. Hillary Clinton had been fashioning herself as the next president of the United States for quite a while. Here actions since becoming a senator all indicated where her ambitions lay. And the democrats were not sad about it. In the middle of the horrendous Bush years, the Clinton brand rose in its net worth. Democrats repeatedly got nostalgic about the prosperous Clinton years and were getting ready to nominate Hillary even if it meant Bill Clinton would wield powers again but by proxy. Quite a few expected Obama to run too. But it was supposed to be a dry run for a more serious attempt four years later. After all he had spent just four years in the senate and was the least experienced when compared to the seven other candidates. So when he announced his candidacy at the very place Abraham Lincoln had given his ‘House Divided’ speech, he had started out as the classic underdog.

The initial arrogance of the Clinton campaign helped Obama to quietly put his plan his place. He was already very popular among the democratic voters for his unique background and ability to inspire. He publicly refused to take donations from any lobbyists and interests groups and said his campaign would run only on the generosity of the individual donors. This unprecedented step endeared Obama towards the middle class in particular and the money flowed in. Just on the basis of very small amounts from individual donors Obama managed to raise 35m dollars in his first month. For the record that juggernaut had continued to roll since then and he raised 150m dollars last month, a record. A steady source of money proved to be a big boon for the campaign and it also gave early indications that people were considering Obama more seriously as president than the experts would like to believe. 2007 saw one debate after another among all the candidates. Obama held his own in all of them but made no significant dent in Hillary’s popularity. National polls showed Hillary with a seemingly unbeatable lead over Obama. The main issues hampering Obama were the facts that he was less experienced and absolutely no one believed that in spite of his popularity he could ever stop the Clinton monster truck. Then Iowa happened.
The Iowa caucus was the first event in the Democratic primaries and it happened on 3rd January, 2008. Obama scored an emphatic win, followed by John Edwards with Hillary a poor third. These results changed the course of the whole race. The Obama campaign proudly proclaimed that they had proved everyone wrong by actually showing that they can win and that too in such a resounding manner. Somehow the fact that Obama can win projected him in a very different light. All this while he was this brilliant leader who could sway the masses but was not equipped to stop much more formidable and experienced opponents. That myth lay in pieces and the nation rallied behind him in an instant. His numbers started climbing in the national polls and was within striking distance of Hillary. The Clinton campaign, rattled by Iowa finally realized the brilliance of Obama’s grassroots tactics and how he had reached out to so many people in such an effective manner.

Then started the most fascinating primary race USA had ever seen. It was undoubtedly more gripping than the eventual presidential race itself as Obama clinched one victory after another with Clinton barely managing to keep up. The Clinton campaign kept claiming that on Super Tuesday when 22 states would have their primaries together, Hillary would wrap up the nomination belying any initial gain made by Obama. But that didn’t happen. Obama’s new found ability to win propelled him to surpass Clinton on Super Tuesday too. This was the last straw and from then on it was just a count till when Clinton would feel it is no longer possible to clinch the nomination. Sensing the sudden change in fortunes, noted democrats made a beeline for Obama leaving Clinton further in the lurch.

The presidential race have seen a much more mellow and cautious Obama. The race has since been more characterized by the McCain campaigns gaffes and Sarah Palin’s comedic rhetoric than anything else. Obama’s conduct and campaign has been so proper that the infamous Republican propaganda campaign could find absolutely nothing from his history to attack him with. In all the three debates with McCain he came out as a calm, collected and person keen on bridging divisions. He refuted his own liberal credentials by adopting a more central path on key issues like gun control, abortion and gay rights hency by ensuring the conservatives do not fear his presidency. Obama’s performance as a first time senator may not have been amazing but he was always found at the right place at the right time. Whether it is framing bills on climate change and nuclear terrorism or supporting checks on federal spending, he had smartly positioned himself as a leader with a sense of acute awareness of all the important issues. He has also managed to successfully dent McCain’s foreign policy and security credentials by insisting repeatedly that security will always be top priority for him and by crafting bills for the welfare of the armed forces.

The story of Barack Obama has been fascinating and that made him a darling of the press. The media had a good hand in creating the perception of Obama as a new-age prophet who has come to rescue the country from a terrible morass of insecurity and economic downturn. If current national polls are anything to go by Obama should cruise to a comfortable victory. The world is waiting with bated breath for the results of this extraordinary election and is wondering whether America can yet again prove to the world that it continues to be the land of opportunity in spite of being on the brink of losing its sole super power status. Barack Obama knows that a story like his is possible only in the United States and does not shy away from reiterating it again and again. His ways of reaching out to all sections and striving for unity has involved the whole population in a political process they had begun to lose faith in. No one is expecting dramatic changes in their lives and neither does Obama’s record as a senator show him as one who would change things forever. But people do believe Obama is the only one in the current vitiated atmosphere who can try and brig the USA back to a standing it enjoyed in the pre-Bush years.

Why so reckless?

2008-09-19T21:34:00.001+05:30

My submission to The Filter Copy, September 2008

“It is legal because I wish it”-Louis XIV.

India seems to be the place where good ideas come to die. The recent progress in the systematic dismantling of India's premier educational institutions proves that however good an idea might be, the Indian government will eventually ensure its demise. Even if that idea is heralded as one of the greatest ever achievements of modern India.

The fifties saw our country making tremendous strides in virtually every field in spite of a chronic shortage of resources, virtually absent infrastructure and abject poverty. India showed the world that self-belief and an audacity to hope was enough to turn tables overnight. West Germany, Singapore, Japan, all ravaged by the war adopted our no holds barred march towards progress inspite of being reduced to near extinction as nation states. Fifty years later we see ourselves left significantly behind. But yet, we had still a few symbols of that ebullient decade which continued to inspire the nation of the potential within. The IITs occupy the highest pedestal in that short list of symbols.

The motives and intentions behind the creation of the IITs are well documented. The achievements of its eventual alumni even more so. They became the shining examples of a society which showed the world that this is how they train their best. It took decades of churning out top-notch professionals before the IITs became a synonym for excellence. And now that they enjoy such prestige on this planet, the Indian government, headed ironically by a distinguished academic, decided that maybe the time has come when they extinguish the last beacon of excellence in Indian Higher Education.

It has been a three pronged approach by the venerable HRD minister. The increase in reservation for students, the opening of a host of new IITs and of course ordering reservation in faculty positions. Bringing social equality has been the official reason. I won’t delve into the widely discussed issue of OBC reservation for students. The other two decisions, I feel have done more damage to the IIT brand.

Let’s begin with the opening of new IITs. Decision to open more premiers engineering institutions. Excellent. Calling them IITs. Short-sightedness. The concept of Brand Dilution may not make sense to the babus of Shaastri Bhawan but it does mean something in the rest of the world. We do not have twelve Stanfords, fifteen Oxfords or twenty two ETHs. The argument is if we have more IITs then we will have more IITians and hence by more hyper intelligent engineers! But IITs don't make people clever. They just provide the finishing touches to people who are already very smart. And I don't know whether people have noticed but we as a race have always faced a shortage of smart people. By having a few more buildings, we won’t end raising the IQ of the people occupying them. It does not work that way, Mr. Singh.

For some reason elitist has become a bad word in this country. Anyone who opposed calling the new institutes IITs are called elitists who want to prevent others from enjoying the facilities of an IIT. Yes, IITs are elitist. That’s because they were meant to be. The irreproducible campus culture would not have been possible if they allowed anybody in. If MIT allowed ten times the people in, would it have remained an attractive option as it is now? Is being the very best something to be looked down upon? Is propagating mediocrity the way ahead? Rather providing the new institutes with the same facilities but a different name would help in creating a new brand altogether which would build its own reputation over time. The gestation period for these new IITs will be quite a few years and in all probability the students passing out would not help in building the IIT brand further.

And will someone please pay attention to the problems faced by the current IITs before establishing half a dozen more? There is a massive crunch in faculty in all the IITs. While the administration is still trying to figure out how to fill the hundreds of vacant posts, we have another 6 adding to the problem. Recruitment of an IIT faculty member is no mean task. The applicants have to go through the strictest of screening procedures before making it as an assistant professor. Makes sense. They are supposed to educate and inspire the brightest set of people. It is difficult for a student to respect his or her teacher, leave alone learn, if the teacher is intellectually deficient and not qualified enough. So where are the teachers going to come from for the new IITs? We know they are not out there waiting. They would have filled up the already vacant posts then. So what is the ingenious plan of the government? My guess is they do not have a plan. You need people who can think when you need a plan and rumors suggest having the capability to think is a criterion for disqualification if you want to work for the HRD ministry.

Let’s come to this tiny issue called infrastructure. Experts believe, but then aren't they always wrong, that to run a world class institute it is a good thing if there are actual classes, labs, machines, hostels present in the campus. When the 'sudden' decision to start enrolment in at least 3 new IITs was taken for the year 2008-09, the IIT admission was taken by surprise. One primary reason was the absence of any form of basic infrastructure at the new venues. Other than the state governments securing the land, they didn't have more than a few old buildings. And as a result the already burdened IITs will have to help incubate one of the new ones. Incubate translates to harboring the students of the new IITs till the actual campus is ready.

IITG began similarly. It had humble beginnings, the reason for its establishment was political but with time it has come up very well. Something similar to the conditions now. But there is a difference between 1994 and 2008. In 1994 the existing IITs were not as plagued by a slew of problems as they are now. And an increase of one to the existing list did not bring Brand Dilution in to the picture. Curiously enough right now a survey of the standard of IITs among students will place IITG at the bottom. So 14 years and huge investments haven't actually brought things at par. This brings us back to the contention that it’s not the facilities and infrastructure of the IITs but the students joining them which is responsible for its pre-eminence. One may increase the number of IITs to a hundred but the number of smart people joining them will remain the same and they will continue to prefer the original five.

Let’s stop for a moment and keep the pessimism aside. If the current administration actually pulls off what the Nehru administration pulled off in the fifties, we all naysayers will look like idiots. Then in a few years we would have over 10 IITs producing brilliant engineers and this decision will be hailed as a masterstroke. So why are be criticizing before the idea has even come to fruition. Is that not blatant negativism and aren't we unconsciously preventing quality education for reaching more people? After giving this notion considerable thought I came to the conclusion that in spite of the possibility of a success, I would not be too hopeful. Why? The reason is this. This government consulted no one, did no preliminary survey, and took no IIT in to confidence before proclaiming this new idea. Already admission to those new IITs has been delayed because of a lack of preparations. So is it reasonable to expect that a government which is so short-sighted while taking a decision will be able to manage to actually execute it? Highly improbable.

Now let’s touch over a more contentious issue. Reservation among faculty positions. Sometimes I wonder what exactly the thought process behind such astounding decisions is. I would give anything to lay my hands on the minutes of the meetings in the HRD Ministry at the end of which they come to conclusions as mentioned above. But something tells me there are no meetings as such or any thought process either. Just a flash in the pan decision to create a flutter in the urban media and buy over specific constituencies which would suit the purposes of the honorable HRD minister.

How does reservation come in to the picture where competence should be the only benchmark is something which has been plaguing the minds for a long time. Has here been any instance where a proficient teacher was not given an opportunity because of his caste? Has there been even a single recorded instance of a professor from a disadvantaged background being sidelined by the administration? Is it viable to sacrifice quality in the name of social up liftment which will effect the minutest of percentages? The answer is not in the affirmative for any of the one above. But in turn it will definitely end up making the faculty slowly become conscious of their identity and before long a sense of division will slowly creep in. A system as proposed will wreck havoc with the academic structure in the IITs. Sample this. In a curriculum heavily dependent on the concept of electives, the strength in the class of a particular faculty member depends on his ability to deliver. Never does a student bother to inquire about his or her background. But a reservation facilitated induction may bring in questions regarding the credibility and aptitude of the individual concerned. So we may actually have brilliant Profs trying to justify their right to be in the institute just because they may be from the weaker sections. The chances of that happening are very remote but if there is even one such case; it would be an indelible blemish on the social fabric of the wonderfully heterogeneous IIT campuses.

Reservations restrict brilliance. It’s an unfortunate byproduct of social engineering. Hence it should be used as a policy not indiscriminately but in specific areas. Our research institutions and defense laboratories have almost 50% reservation and as a result countless posts go unfilled which would otherwise have been taken up by skilled individuals. Unfortunately the achievements of those very institutions leave a lot to be desired. If we want to push the IIT education structure in to the same well, then one would really have to doubt whether the hearts and minds of the country are at the right place. Reservations were incorporated to assimilate various sections. Misuse and overuse has resulted in the opposite. It has created sense of identities where we wanted to dissolve those lines of division.

It is very heartening to see the administration stand up to the government in opposing this draconian step. Inspite of all these regressive steps, it is hope that keeps the chins up in the campus. Hope that the government will realize its follies just at the last moment. Hope that the illustrious alumni will convince the authorities of the perils involved. Hope that the students and the faculty will stand together to uphold the sanctity of the institute. Hope that complete autonomy will be decreed and it will unshackle the IITs from the government’s whims.

Magical Mystery Tour

2008-08-30T15:29:00.002+05:30

Yes, I was there.

The Exploration & Production Team (North), Shell Gourami 2008.

30th July, 2008.

2008-08-05T09:58:00.002+05:30

11:20 am- 6 :20 pm

One word. Bliss.

Knighted!

2008-07-22T09:44:00.003+05:30

This message is issued in public interest.

The call for a revolution under the Iron-man is suspended till further notice.I am sorry Tony.

My views in this post is rendered obsolete due to something which happened in the weekend.

I apologize for my initial naivety.

The Curse of the Blue Agave.

2008-07-05T05:22:00.001+05:30

The ring of the phone wakes me up. I get up. The head feels like someone else's. Most probably of the Great Khali. I am wearing my Tshirt. The wrong way. I am wearing my pajamas. The wrong way. My super precious Seiko 21-jewels lay in pieces next to me. My right arm is bruised. My palm punctured by my broken watch. Was I in Mandak? Or Duisburg? Not Siliguri definitely. My thoughts swirled around trying to fix my geographical coordinates. My bunk bed did the trick. Ah, Parmelee. As dazed as a Columbian revolutionary who had his hostages whisked away from under their nose, I carefully climbed down. The phone ring hadn't stopped. Unable to frame coherent sentences, I pick up the phone. There was some good news and some bad news.

The good news was it wasn't mom.
The bad news was it wasn't mom.

Damn Mexicans and their only worthy contribution to the human race.

Three Men on a Boat....of Death.

2008-06-29T14:49:00.007+05:30

I have nothing against near death experiences. I have them every four months. As long as they are not too near, I am cool. But I get a little pissed if I am informed in advance that extinction hovered in the vicinity without me being able to do anything about it. Hence the events of last Wednesday left me a little peeved.

Ever since my intern prof mysteriously disappeared and kept in touch through monosyllabic mails, life has been good. In our grief, my lab mate John and me though it would be a good idea if we went fishing Wednesday afternoon. Now when you are fishing in the middle of the week you know your intern has finally taken the right turn. So I readily agreed. So we went off to Douglas lake some miles north of Fort Collins. Offering a soothing view of the Rockies and surrounded by open fields, Douglas lake was the idyllic angler's paradise. When we reached there was just one boat on the lake with the fisherman seemingly asleep. We were to go out on a canoe belonging to John's friend Matt. So it was around 5 in the afternoon when we pushed the tiny canoe into the lake with all of us a little worried about the gathering wind and whether it was a little too strong.

Before things got tough

The next three hours were one of the laziest ever. We slowly rowed around the huge lake enjoying the slowly setting sun. We also happened to catch two huge rainbow trouts too. Now Matt who was pretty good at this told us that its when the sun actually starts setting that we get the best catch. Now during this whole time we had seen not one but two storms slowly approaching from the west and the east. As the whole area was completely open, we could see brilliant flashes of lightning regularly striking somewhere on the western and eastern horizons. By eight when the sun was finally setting both the storms had finally drifted our side. But we were oblivious to the whole thing, excited as we were by the impending deluge of aquatic creatures. As we were admiring a rainbow very close to the shore, a bolt of lightning struck pretty close to where we were. Never a big fan of things which doesn't give me at least a minute to prepare for it, I nonchalantly asked Matt what were the chances of us getting struck by a bolt or two. Both Matt and John laughed and said they have lived in Colorado long enough to know when to be wary of a thunderstorm. I went back to my fishing rod. It started drizzling. Just two minutes later Matt shouted, “get down! Go low!”. Now when one is in the middle of the lake, it is difficult to imagine what we should get low from. Flying fishes? Bullets from the near-by shooting range? I confess I was confused with Matt's exclamations. I looked back to see an equally confused John. We both looked towards Matt who was now lying down at the canoe floor. He whispered, “ I felt static. A lot of it. Didn't you guys hear it?” Simultaneously we noticed his hair were standing kind of erect. Now those of you with a scientific bent of mend will appreciate this. We know that we sometimes get signs where lightning is about to strike. Hair standing on our head, feeling a lot of static energy around you etc etc. Oh wait, thats a coincidence! It took me ten seconds to realize that Uncle Yamraj was near. Another ten seconds of reflection confirmed why. All three of us had these upmarket graphite reinforced fishing rods. Now as luck would have it, graphite conducts electricity pretty well. (Where is a diamond fishing rod when you need one!) So there we were, three idiots, in the middle of a huge lake, during a thunderstorm, pointing three perfect conductors towards the sky. What could possibly go wrong?

Now getting struck by lightning is fine. But being informed a few moments before that you are going to be struck by lightning, is a very different affair indeed. I am sure all of you know that feeling of imminent vaporization. I felt like that piece of sodium which the eight grade chemistry teacher shows around to the class before plunging it in water. The phrase 'sitting ducks' was never more clear to me. Though one part of felt maybe the strike would end up giving me supernatural powers and I could be the next character in Heroes. The worst part was no one knew I was fishing that afternoon. I would undergo a change of state and no one would ever know of it. And even if I survived I would still be in the middle of the damn lake.

That very moment, a bolt of lightning struck right near the shore. Simultaneously our boat swayed sharply to the left. Matt's fishing line was being pulled strongly and it was evident that in the middle of all this melee, we had just caught our biggest fish. Matt, now presented with this conundrum of rowing for his life or getting hold of his fishing line took a quick decision. He chose fish over life. He pulled with all his might and drew the fish close. But then tragedy struck again, the fish turned out to be a huge trout which unnerved Matt further and he let go of the line for a few seconds which was enough for the fish to make its escape. So now we didn't have the fish either and gazillions of electrons could hit us any moment. First thing we did was to stop pointing our fishing rods out and get our wooden oars out. Then the next ten minutes would have done any Onam boatman proud.

On the run

We made it to the shore without getting zapped and packed up the boat in record time and made our way out of there. And we lived to fish another day. Most probably this Wednesday again.

The days final tally

This post is dedicated to Roy Sullivan who survived after being struck by lightning seven times during his career as a park ranger. He finally died after he shot himself over a failed love affair. So the moral of the whole story is you have a better chance with 7 lightning strikes than a woman. May Roy rest in peace. There is another school of thought who believes that a man who could handle seven lightnings but not a woman deserved to die anyway. The reader is free to choose their side.

Changing Loyalties: The Rise of Meta

2008-06-22T02:59:00.002+05:30

This is my second post on Meta in 2 months but I have to do it as the new Meta-evangelist. This post might create sharp divisions in the engineering community. If the reader is offended, I am sorry. It was meant to be divisive.

“The hand that rocks the cradle of molten metal, rules the world”- Recent Chinese Proverb.

Summers are good. Not just because I get a chance to continent hop and taste the best ale ever made. Summers mean the time for Hollywood blockbusters. Somehow the best and most hyped movies always get released in the summer. And the ones which win the Oscar, in winter.

Last year's memorable summer was made overtly memorable with Ocean's 13, Die Hard 4, POTC 3, Spiderman 3 and so on. Can anyone forget John Mclain ramming his car into the helicopter at the end of the tunnel. Or Keith Richards playing Papa Sparrow. So when I saw this years line-up I was pretty impressed. Indi was coming back but without his dad. We were being asked not mess with the Zohan. The Guru of Love promised to solve all our problems. A panda was supposed to master the most complex of martial arts. Maxwell Smart showed he is in control. Hancock pissed us off with his attitude. The Joker promised to put a smile on our face. The Hulk was back. A bit greener and definitely more incredible. And of course Tony Stark asked us why we cant have both fear and respect.

But this is not a review of movies. This post is about a declaration. I have finally decided to change loyalties. Let me explain. Of all the comic book super heroes, I always accorded Batman the greatest of respect. He was the one who didn't have any special powers and yet was so cool. And he always got to fight with the best villains. Not even Clooney's disastrous rubber uniform put me off the dark knight. So when Batman Begins showed the world how superhero movies should be made, I had had a satisfied smile on my face. Needless to say the biggest thing this summer for me was the epic battle scheduled between the knight and the Joker. But then suddenly, a certain thing happened. I met Tony Stark.

Now before I go ahead about Tony, let me talk about the metallurgical aspect of the post. Its of course a well known fact that we metallurgists have been discriminated against through ages. We are like the Jews of the engineering world. In spite of having ages (Iron, bronze, etc) named after our creations, we are never accorded the same respect as say, those insignificant chemical engineers. Have any of you heard of any thing called Age of Transport Phenomenon in history? Well, I haven't. Of course we meta boys are waiting patiently for our time. Its not long before the revolution comes when we and the ship builders (Nav-Arc boys, are you listening?) will once gain take over the world. And all non-believers and heretics will head for the blast furnace. Among the Mech community, we will spare only Pota as he knows more meta than all of us combined.

So when I met Tony I realized the revolution is near. Over many decades we metallurgists have always been portrayed as screen villains. Magneto, Metal Sonic, Blacksmith, Dr Alchemy, Composite Superman, Kryptonite man, Metallo, an array of superbly crafted robots with a taste for fine alloys, the list is endless. Just like the stereotyped cunning Jew of of the eighteenth century, we metallurgists have always been shown as connivingly altering carbon concentrations and modifying microstructures and preparing for the world' destruction. So when Tony nonchalantly said,'Yes, I can fly', I realized a historic wrong had finally been corrected. The world finally got her first metallurgist Superhero. On film.

After watching Ironman, I, with a heavy heart, decided its a time for a change. I had to shift form the camp of the Dark knight and become a loyal Ironsmith. He would lead the revolution. He was The One. He had even solved the icing problem which had been bothering us for centuries. While ideally I belong to the Magneto school of thought, I feel this moment belongs to us and we metallurgists cannot be divided on the basis of ideology. So I give out a call to all my brethren. Lets unite under Tony and get back what always belonged to us. The earth for instance. Lets again have ages named after our creations. If you want this decade to be called the Age of 3016 SS, this is our chance.

And as for the rest of you, join us while you can. And those who don't, the remember the furnace is just getting warmed up.

Try Believing This.

2008-06-16T08:21:00.003+05:30

Date: 15th June
Time: Sometime in the afternoon
Place: Pine View Falls, Poudre River, Colorado

People screaming: Sayan,Shantanu,Abhay,Narayan,Vikram.
People not screaming: Melissa, the guide.

8401!

2008-06-13T13:30:00.001+05:30

Should one celebrate one's 8401 st rotation around the earth's axis?

Well, I have no reason to.

Shaastra 2008- The teaser.

2008-05-09T20:58:00.002+05:30

The Publicity Teaser for Shaastra 2008.

It shows a brilliantly choreographed sequence of IITM students forming various images denoting the influence of science and technology over the ages.

The boys responsible for it: Mamme, Moli, Gowri, Nelson, Shanmukh, DAS & Choreo Team.

Narrative penned by kirtika and Voiced by Hypo

Meta 04- A Tribute

2008-05-09T17:36:00.003+05:30

There are 2 reasons why I am writing this article. Firstly I have nothing to do. Secondly what is written here needs to be documented urgently or else a crucial aspect of IITM between 2004 and 2009 will be erased from the human memory.

I have always felt that Meta boys in the institute have been underrated by the rest of the student community. While I agree our labs get over in 10 minutes and it takes an inhuman effort on our part not to fail a course, it is not reason enough to doubt the capabilities of a batch. But thankfully Meta-04 has changed that. For ever.

I will avoid an endless rant on how great the batch has been. Rather I have listed below some of the major incidents and achievements. The conclusions can be drawn by the reader. And if it doesn’t match mine then the reader is requested to read it again.

We were the first batch to get BTPs allotted to us by the department. Randomly. In our bid not to be outdone, we then attempted to be the first batch to reject BTP allotments. A meeting called up the acting HOD saw no turnout and no one met their allocated Profs as a sign of polite protest. The result: Overturning of decision and Re-allotment. And in cases where it wasn’t done, the student(s) got down their parents to the dean’s office with subtle threats of suicide in view of mental agony.
We all began our Meta dream under one of India’s foremost scientists. After heading one of the nuclear plants of the country for a decade and serving the country in multitude of ways he decided to continue his service by teaching Meta first years. But an individual who the US thinks is too dangerous to be given a visa, wasn’t good enough for us. We demanded a change. And we got it.
For years have Meta batches been complaining about the P factor in their final year. Countless names have been sacrificed at the annual December massacre. Every year batches proclaim that this is it and they are going to take one final stand. No one ever did and the killings continued reducing the plight of students to an Insti-wide joke. And then P met 04. Already bruised from the BTP allotment scam, P failed all. Except 8. What followed will be called the December Revolution in the future. Cutting across a massive morass of red tape, one of the greatest compilations of anecdotes, proof, data and history took place. A case, which Crane Poole Schmidt would have been proud of, dragged on for days before a specially constituted committee. After an agonizing month, the impossible was achieved. The results were over turned and finally the P was replaced. Meta was never going to be the same again.
Even the famous trip to Jamshedpur got rescheduled for the first time ever. In an unprecedented move, it happened in the middle of the semester which earned the students a 2 week holiday from classes.
Meta parties reached a new level altogether. What once upon a time used to be limited to MSB 104, doesn’t happen in anything lesser than a full fledged beach resort.
A department famous for its students apping in droves saw a mind boggling 2 people going out this year. Interestingly another first has been the BP 1 not being one of those 2. Instead he has decided to drill holes in the ground.
One of the curious things which happened which sent shockwaves through the Btech community was the unprecedented conversion of three individuals from Btech to Dual. The Whys and Hows of the incident has never been answered but the batch will always been known as the one where 3 converted to dual.
We almost got a course and its end-sem cancelled when one of us exclaimed it was too boring. The lessons were dispensed with immediately and all of us given projects to make life interesting.
We made the biggest Amalgam ever possible. Yes. Finally Amalgam, big and success were in the same sentence.
Slots were shifted. From morning to afternoon. From afternoon to evening. From 3-2. From 2-1. Labs supposedly happened. Courses were supposedly taken.
The batch saw 3 institute secretaries, a host of hostel secretaries, 2 core members, substantial insti sports team members, brilliant thespians, inspirational singers and a political godfather of the institute. Yes they all sat in the same class. Listening to Guha.
The comeback of Topa: if there were any comeback stories, this would top them all. A guy who wasn’t seen for 3 years hands out his notes to the rest of the class today. Pure class. Period.

I am sure I have missed out on a multitude of other anecdotes. I do have a bad memory. But what I do remember is there was hardly a boring moment in the last four years. And that’s saying a lot when you have been learning grain boundary movement since eternity. Please inform me if I have missed out on anything substantial and I shall update it.

Here’s raising a toast to Meta 04.

The E Company- Where life is a celebration.

2008-05-08T05:15:00.004+05:30

Well here it is finally. The Greatest Ever Wing Video.

Its been Legen......wait for it...... dary!

2008-01-27T22:34:00.001+05:30

11 reasons why I shall remember Saarang 2008.

11. The Brilliant Grub at Saarang village. Special mention for Gujrati Thepla & Rajathan Kulfi

10. Waking up daily to Prof Maiyya’s phone calls asking about ticket counts.

9. Getting introduced to a crack of a song ‘Louie Louie’ thanks to spent prelims.

8. Making the wonderfully self indulgent Bacchan LVC.

7. Waking up at 9 30am and realizing am 30 mins late already for my most waited quiz of the year.

6. Watching Mash and Haridoss decimate Stella Maris.

5 .A saarang in which Pota didn’t win anything! (Incidentally he didn’t participate in anything).

4. Successfully executing my dream coordship- India Quiz!

3. Watching Udaan perform.

2. Finally winning something at saarang. That too in the last ever saarang quiz team-up with Nai. Also the record of me, Nai , KV coming second in every quiz together continues.

1. Watching Lucky Ali perform the classics. (That’s one major thing off my bucket list)

Redefining VTOL.

2008-01-21T23:25:00.000+05:30

Source: Arun & Team's valiant effort this afternoon at the stadium.

2007-11-22T00:20:00.000+05:30

Saddlepoint?

Return of April 2006. With a distinct twist.
I hate these situations.

2007-11-11T23:15:00.001+05:30

Placement Tips

The placement season is about to begin. And its time for yet another of my ‘help the fellow beings’ post. So be afraid. Be very afraid.

Now we all know Hollywood movies are immensely popular in the campus. Many a day have passed watching the numerous classics in our dark rooms and then brooding for hours over the brilliant performances we had just witnessed. No doubt, it has had an effect on our personas. Hence one isn’t surprised when some one smartly quotes memorable movie lines in the course of a conversation.

But playtime’s over folks. Most of you will be giving you job interviews in a few weeks. These interviews will be crucial and all of you will be trying to make an impression. But we have to ensure that doesn’t end up with you making a fool of yourself.

One very common fallacy is quoting the Hollywood greats during an interview. As long as they are placed well, its fine. If not, then asta-la-vista to the job, baby!

I, very generously took out time from my busy schedule of visiting ATMs and investing in foreign currencies and compiled a list of probable interview gaffes which might occur if one is in his/her Hollywood mode. Here goes.

Catastrophic Starting Lines.

“Yippe-ki-yay motherfucker!”

“Today, I consider myself the luckiest man in the world”- will not earn brownie points in your first Mckinsey interview

“Ever since I remember, I always wanted to be a gangster”- when asked to tell about yourself.

“Show me the money.”

“Heeere’s Johhny!”- a tad too euphoric a way of entering the interview room.

“Do I make you horny baby?”

During the Interview- The Don’ts

“Frankly dear, I don’t give a damn”- a reply to the question whether you would like to know about your job profile.

“I am big. It’s the courses which got small.”- when asked to explain the low CG.

“You can’t handle the truth!”- on asked why you have applied for a finance job inspite of doing no relevant courses.

“I will have what she’s having”- pointing to the second lady interviewer when asked what pay package you expect.

“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers”- when asked why you expect to get the job.

“ I am going to make him an offer he cant refuse”- when asked how you will convince a prospective client.

“ I love the smell of weed in the morning”- when asked to describe your day.

“The prof always said that the course was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you gonna get.”- when asked to explain the erratic grades.

“I see dead people”- when asked to talk about your talents.

“You are trying to seduce me. Aren’t you?”- in reply to a tough core question.

“You make me want to be a better metallurgist”- During Tata Steel interview.

“They may take my degree but they will never take my freedom”- on why you are a 5/4

“Et cetra et cetra et cetra”- second line when speaking about yourself.

GD blunders

“Attica!Attica!”- an useless GD tactic.

You talking to me?”- in the middle of a tense GD.

“say hello to my little friend”- while waving your resume in front of fellow GD students.

Houston, we have a problem”- the first words out of your mouth in a GD

“First rule in this GD, you don’t talk during this GD.”- irrelevant fight club allegory.

Avoidable exit lines:

“say goodnight to the bad guy”

“I will be back!”

“May the Force be with you”.

“I think this is the beginning of a wonderful friendship.”

Miscellaneos Situations

“I knew it was you_______. You broke my heart. You broke my heart”- to a friend who got the job you wanted.

“Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.”- after going through the Cap One test paper.

“ La-dee-da, la-dee-da”- ending you SOP with this phrase isn’t a good idea.

“just when I thought I was out they pull me back in”- on making it to an unexpected shortlist.

“Hoo-Haa!”- on finally making it to your dream job.

All the best guys!

Ref: http://www.afi.com/Docs/tvevents/pdf/quotes400.pdf

2007-11-04T11:49:00.000+05:30

DOWned Spirits.

The recent issue regarding Dow Chemicals has created sharp divisions in the campus. Actually it would be an exaggeration to say divisions. It has taken shape of a face off between one very small but highly vocal anti-Dow campaigners and the rest of the institute who very unfortunately haven’t bothered to speak up loud enough. I belong to the big group who feel Dow should be allowed in the campus. No, I haven’t sold my soul to the devil. Neither am I a right conservative with no solidarity for the people of Bhopal. But I strongly feel preventing Dow from coming to the campus will be a grossly unfair action and might have unfortunate repercussions.

It all started with the innocuous notice about the proposed presentation regarding placement by Dow. Immediately a host of individuals launched a protest regarding how Dow has a number of liabilities regarding the Bhopal tragedy. It also brought out the fact the huge list of litigations pending against the organization throughout the world. They made a fervent demand for Dow to own up responsibilities for its actions and as an addendum said that it would be a travesty if IIT Madras allowed the company to recruit students for then it would give some semblance of legitimacy to Dow.

A lot of water has passed down the polluted Adyar since then. Petitions have been sent around. Discussions were held and numerous damaging media reports published. I personally spoke to the people involved in this and got a clear picture of the whole issue.

The primary argument is that its time the institute has a screening process for recruiting companies. It should start with Dow with clearly documented evidences of corporate negligence. Then the example should be extended to other companies off ill-repute like Halliburton, Lockheed Martin. Some were even suggesting that Tata Motors and Reliance too shouldn’t be spared.

The route adopted by the protestors had its glaring irregularities. While a coordinated campaign for informing students through films and literature is totally acceptable, there were some steps which the engineering student community found shocking. Let’s start with the signature campaign. A majority of the people who signed the petition were from the humanities department. How much thought the students put behind the signature is questionable. I doubt whether they had conferred with the students whom this petition was going to affect directly. Neither did they make any effort to understand how placement works. They read it, and signed it. An attitude many of us feel extremely irresponsible especially when it was an issue which didn’t concern them directly.

The biggest irony of this skewed and ill-conducted signature campaign was its representation before the media. Students were astonished to find themselves reading on rediff and the Telegraph about the ‘growing consensus’ among students from IIT Madras against Dow. Two IIT alumni hold a press conference in Delhi and implore the institutes to blacklist Dow. They also appreciate the growing support fro the students. In the middle of all this the fact had conveniently disappeared that the campaign was supported by smallest of minorities.

Reflections took it upon itself and organized a panel discussion. The anti-Dow campaign managed to emotionalize the issue brilliantly by bringing in victims from Bhopal and other social activists. The discussion was surprisingly ‘moderated’ by a member of the faculty whose bias against Dow was well known. The whole event was high-jacked by the group with the student representative’s arguments getting sarcastic replies. The whole thing was described as “well rounded discussion” while in actuality it seemed like a discussion on the nuclear treaty moderated by Prakash Karat with the audience comprising acknowledging comrades.

Let’s get to the arguments now. Dow has responsibilities. It’s true. When they bought Union Carbide in 1999 fifteen years after the Bhopal tragedy they did inherent the accompanying legal mess. But the very people who are so virulent against Dow are not seen signing petitions against the highly corruption ridden distribution of the relief funds. They are not seen demonstrating before the Madhya Pradesh government why the whole area hadn’t been cleared up inspite of the Union Carbide campus being in their charge. They didn’t bother to question the out of court settlement the government of India reached with Union Carbide. So why the protest against Dow suddenly? Is it because it’s much easier to send out petitions from the cozy confines of IIT Madras than going to Bhopal and asking the more relevant questions to the right people? And isn’t it easier to attract the media this way cause even if a cow poops in inordinate amounts in IIT, the media will be there to cover it.

Dow is the biggest chemical company in the world. There is hardly any hour when we don’t use an item which might be somehow be related to a Dow innovation. Plastics, paint, Styrofoam and rubber products form a major part of it. If one is that indignant about a company’s practices wouldn’t the logical approach be to boycott its products? But then everyone knows it would make life virtually impossible and we come back to the question of doing what is easy and doing what is right.

Once we ban Dow where does the buck stop? The production of napalm by Dow for the US government during the Vietnam war has been used as yet another example of their destructive practices. Hence we ban all companies and organization which have been associated with the war efforts of their individual countries. The list will read GE, Boeing, Dow, LM and virtually every big company from the US. BP, Shell, Volkswagen, Bayer from Europe. And of course all research institutions including our very own electrical and aerospace departments who have consistently collaborated with the Indian armed forces in developing methods of killing countless poor Pakistani soldiers. Does the irony register?

I have to state that the faculties who have supported this cause have shown poor judgment of the placement process and student sentiments. They have placed the placement team in a huge quandary. This team works throughout the year and spares no effort to get the best and the biggest of multinationals from every corner of the world. It is to the credit of the placement office that we have one of the most well-organized placement sessions in the country. The placement committee and the elected representatives were left stranded after the sudden rush of irresponsible media reports. Dow has already begun to show its reluctance to come to IITM. In view of the total absence of any such protest from most of the IITs and the media scrutiny on IITM, the obvious reaction will be to recruit from the other institutes. Hence inspite of an overwhelming opinion in favor of having Dow in the campus, due to the actions of a very few, our students will most probably miss out on an opportunity to work with the biggest chemical company. The argument that if one is really interested to work for Dow, can apply off campus clearly shows how out of touch the faculty in the HS department is with the career sentiments of the engineering students. They have no inkling of the anxieties through which batches go during the placement week and how the only concern is to get a good job as soon as possible. Applying off campus is an indication that one has been rejected in all the on campus interviews. Which student would like to risk that?

These incidents are terrible PR gaffes. They act like prior warnings to other MNCs who would rather stay away from IITM and avoid probable embarrassment. The only one losing out are our students. Dow is setting up a 100 million dollar R&D facility near Pune. If it doesn’t get researchers for that lab from IITM, it will take them from somewhere else. The Indian government who is supposed to fight for Bhopal is going out of its way to ensure Dow invests millions in India. The company is willing to invest millions in research among the cash strapped labs of India. How aware are the people who are protesting of the current state of research in the country. Do they keep track of the abysmal funding and conditions under which our PhDs and professors strive to produce quality work?

Finally this is what it all boils down to. The campus agrees that informing students about a company and its activities is a fair idea. What is not agreed to by a huge majority is the following.

Petitions led by departments who do not have the real stake in the issue.
An extremely unfair representation before national media about campus mood.
Ignorance about placements procedures and student sentiments but interfering in the whole process.
Lack of consultation with elected student representatives and jeopardizing their year long efforts.
And the biggest one of them all is judging students from the perspective of their moral high ground.

I was clearly told that the whole thing has come down to whether we choose to show solidarity with the victims from Bhopal or we place our careers above it. Please do not skew the issue by passing such impossible judgments. We are students of science and we keep things in perspective of reality. We know banning Dow from the campus is not going to get any extra relief for the victims. It won’t change anything. We also know that showing true solidarity is not sitting in one’s comfort zone and picking on things which are easy to pick on. Never should one dare doubt our feelings for our countrymen. There are these elements from outside the campus who take this purported moral high ground and mock us for our ‘blind lust after a pay cheque’. I request such negative people to stay on the other side of the main gate. Instead of pontificating before us, please do some actual work which will improve the lives of the affected. And also stop exploiting their miseries.

This is nothing but a throwback to the sixties and seventies where anything associated with the west is evil. The desire for success is considered unnatural. Eyebrows are raised when students vie for the best jobs. Aspiration for a better lifestyle is translated to selfishness and disregard for the fellow being. I would like to request these people to see the real world around them which has drastically changed. We aspire to better our lives. And that means a better India for the future. The world has finally opened its doors to India. We will not miss this opportunity at any cost. And no number of petitions can change that fact.

2007-10-22T15:26:00.000+05:30

To the (Honey)Moon & Back

2007-10-22T15:17:00.000+05:30

It doesn’t happen Everyday.

I think I am going to value this mail for a long time to come.

Dear Sayan
I am really very pleased that you took so much care to make this work. I was very apprehensive as I know it is not like a live performance but it is better than nothing and it can be ca 80% of one as the powerpoint should come down quite well. In these days of serious concern for the environment I am sure that what we have just done together will have important impact and that many more scientific initiatives of this kind will take place. I am keen to do something specially for you in the future. I am now committed to exploring the way the Internet may become a major medium of science communication and I am most concerned that we explore ways that it can help to develop global citizenship at a time when nationalism and other racially divisive dogmas are rampant. The only nationalism I consider acceptable is on the Cricket pitch and I am delighted that India and Pakistan got to the final. I am pleased you recognised that there is a team involved and that nothing would have been possible without my friends and colleagues Davis Simpson, Steve Acquah and Colin Byfleet and of course my wife who ensured that the logistics at this end were kept under control. Once again thanks for making this happen and I look forward to future collaborations
Best wishes
harry

2007-10-20T23:04:00.000+05:30

When Logic Stood Still

Review of the Movie classic Gunda.

Can I review Copolla’s Godfather? Can I re-asses Sgt Pepper? Do I have the audacity to comment on Dali’s later works or give my take on pre-war German expressionist movement? No I cannot. And I wont. There are works of art and then there are works of art. The ones mentioned above fall in the second category. And they are best left untouched by amateurs like me.

So when I was asked to review Gunda, I was in a conundrum. Should I overreach myself and try to accomplish something which hasn’t been ever done before. But I decided to give it a try. Here lies an honest attempt of trying to decipher the most avant garde of bollywood movies which turned film noir on its head and redefined entertainment for ever.

There are two types of people I would put to death the moment dictatorship is handed over to me. The ones who discuss Gunda without having actually seen it. And the ones who have seen and don’t discuss it. But before going to the movie we should begin with the traditional paying of respects to the two stalwarts who have provided solace to the millions of Indians desperate for three hours of escapism. Prabhuji- whom some rascals just call Mithun and Kanti Shah on whom everyone from Tarantino to David Lynch have based their directorial styles. Kantian philosophy is much more profound and populist that that of the highly boring and totally irreverent Immanuel version. It follows a simple path of a congregation of the vilest of men who decide that it would be fun to ravage the life of a guy usually from the lower strata of the society. All goes fine till it is revealed that the protagonist is capable of extraordinary rage and destruction and the movie ends in a cataclysmic showdown. Sounds simple. Doesn’t it? Not when Kanti Shah is in charge and Prabhuji in the lead.

First the facts which separate Gunda from the rest. The movie is in verse. Poetry so insightful and so reflective of our times that one is forced to go back and hear them again just to be sure of what they just heard. A sample,

aaj gundagiri aur netagiri dono eki baap ke do harami aulaad hain.

Har kadam par khoon hai, har kadam par paap, paap karne mein yeh insaan, shaitaan ke bhi baap

I won’t give out the plot. I don’t want fatwas against me. But when you do watch the movie at one point you will realize that things like plot, logic and sense which forms a vital part of normal movies lose their meaning in Gunda. It takes you to a completely different level where you eagerly wait to see to what heights can the screenplay reach and what miracles has the action director have in store for you. The climax is like none other you have ever seen simply for the fact that it consists of countless number of remote controlled auto-rickshaws. Another vital nugget of information I would like to draw your attention to is the way each villain introduces himself. The list goes thus

Lambu Atta – “Deta hoon maut ka chaanta”
Bulla – “Sab karta hoon khullam khulla”
Chutiya “Acche acchon ki khadi karta hoon khatiya”
Pote – “Jo apne baap ke bhi nahi hote”
Ibu Hatela – “Maa meri chudail ki beti, Baap shaitan ka chela, Kyon? Khaayega Kela?”

Many critics have vociferously debated the significance of the reference to bananas in the last quote, but no explanation could conclusively prove anything. But then that’s just one of the numerous references peppering the screenplay.

The acting is top notch. When you have veterans like Shakti Kapoor for whom the role of the hermaphrodite was almost like playing himself in real life. Mukesh Rishi’s portrayal of Bulla is still referred to in the acting schools on the lanes of Byculla. Mohan Joshi, Ishrat Ali and Harish Patel still receive fan mail for their legendary rendering of Pote, Lamboo Ata & Ibu Hatela. And of course I can’t commit blasphemy by trying to comment on Prabhuji’s work. Prabhuji yet again proved that Rajnikanth isn’t the sole authority on logic defying stunts and mind boggling sudden assortments of rocket launchers and hordes of white ambassadors.

Now the final section is for people who have already seen Gunda. My suggestion: Watch it again. This time try to grasp the underlying vivid imagery and only then you will realize the magnitude of Kantian philosophy. Gunda is nothing but a brilliant satire on the turbulent nineties. “Rakhta hoon Khulam Khulla” is nothing but an allusion to the open market economics. Chutiya’s crave for ‘Sex ki Goliya from London’ is a subtle jab at the advent of the MTV-Channel V nexus propagating social immorality. Pote who proudly claims to not care for his father even is a brilliant portrait of the wanton violence carving mobs from Ayodhya. Each and every character is but an image of the various facets of the nineties.

So come on, join the cult. Trust me, you will define your life into two sections, the naïve pre-Gunda years and the significantly illuminated post-Gunda years.

* I am eternally indebted to Arnab Ray(Greatbong) for introducing me to this classic. His analysis of each aspect of the movie has helped me write this review. Please visit his website greatbong.net for a more detailed review of the movie.

2007-10-07T18:58:00.000+05:30

7/10/2007

7 pm

Been there, Done that.

2007-10-01T00:31:00.000+05:30

Nearing The Abyss.

“Its never too late after its been too late”- Stephen Colbert

3 days to go. I have never been so unruffled before. Something must be wrong somewhere!

Alas, the seven month madness is coming to an end. I will miss it. I will miss sounding important.

PS: In relation to last article I want to make it clear that every thing about I-banking dreams are but mere figments of imagination.

2007-09-16T03:28:00.000+05:30

At some point in the last semester I realized that a course in creative writing is very much required. Creativity comes at a premium these days hence maybe a course could help. Of course with great creativity, comes great redundancy. Nonetheless the boredom was significantly punctured when along came an assignment. To cut to the chase I was asked to write a story titled, “If God came to IIT”.

Now fiction used to be my forte a long time back. But that’s because I used to read. A habit, I have discontinued since the last century. Hence currently my level of expertise in fiction matches that of George bush in quantum theory. Nevertheless, I had to write. And I wrote.

Now I must do issue a statutory warning, the story ahead is so ghastly that it falls in the “it’s so bad, it’s good” category. You may call it the Gunda of short stories. All the best.

*The following is a piece of fiction. As of now there haven’t been a any reports yet of any resemblance to anything factual.

GOD MUST BE CRAZY

You may scoff at what I am about to tell you. I hope you won’t turn up your nose and quip “that’s bullshit. I will have to take this story with a barrel of salt.” Not that it matters what you feel about it. Let me tell you how my name got added to the long list of people like Abraham, Moses, Muhammad, Joan of Arc, Mother Teresa & Keith Richards. Lies before the story of how I met God. In IIT.

After an unpleasant three hours watching the mind-numbing Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag, I was on my way back to the hostel. My friends, who were too unnerved to find their mental balance after the cinematic venture, had gone off to the beach to recuperate. Not being a beach person I decided to return back to the institute. It was like any other serene summer evening in the institute. It was while I was in the parking shed that I noticed him. Standing at the bus-stop with an incredulous look. It was evident that here was a man looking for help. My boy’s scouts instincts took over and I walked over to the gentleman.

Ordinary, commonplace, discreet wouldn’t be the words I would use if I was asked to describe his appearance. Immaculate to the T, the person was one of the most striking figures I have encountered. Judiciously tall and surprisingly well built for his age, the white hair and beard gave him an air of quiet authority. Estimating his age seemed futile. But he was definitely pretty old. He was dressed in a pristine creaseless light brown suit. Must have been an Armani or a Versace. Needlessly to say I was reasonably impressed even before I had spoken to him.

‘Sir, can I help you’? I asked. The man looked up and stared at me for a while thorough his horn-rimmed glasses.

He replied,

‘Actually yes, it seems the buses are not running today. Can you guide me to Gajendra Circle?’

‘No problem sir. I am going the same way. We can walk. It shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes.’

As we started walking, he turned to me and asked, ‘So sayan did you like the movie?’
I thought I misheard him. “Excuse me?” I asked.

“How was aag? The reviews weren’t good.” he queried with a deadpan expression.

“Do I know you sir? How did you know my name? May I know who you are?” I asked totally flabbergasted.

“First of all drop the sir. And if you must know, then the fact is that I am God.”

“What!”

“I am God.”

“God?”

“Yes. God.”

“What God?”

“The God.”

“The god?? You mean the temple one?”

“Well that would be a trifle unfair. Also the mosques, churches et al. the whole deal.”

“Oh in that case I am Luciano Pavarotti. Would you like to hear me serenade?” I blurted out. Realizing that I had been a bit rude, I apologized.

“I understand your conundrum,” he said with a cherubic smile, “But trust me. I am God. Didn’t you pray for Real Madrid’s victory today morning?”

“Holy Shit! How did you know that?”

“And didn’t you promise in Tirupati that incase you got India quiz coord-ship in Saarang, you would come back again the next semester”

“Good Lord! You are God!”

I still was doubtful regarding the person’s identity. Running into the almighty on a Sunday evening was not how I though my day would progress a few minutes back. Nevertheless he did know some freaky details about me which no one did. Especially the fact that I am closet Real Madrid fan. Hence I decided to refrain from asking him to ‘go to hell’ and continued humoring his role-playing.

‘Well if you say so its fine. What do I care? So why this sudden emergence in IIT?’

“Well, it’s an intriguing affair. I have been getting a huge amount of requests from people for quite some years now. It’s seems the young students are desperate to be in this place. Ironically, I also receive request from people within this campus desperate to get out. I just had to check out what the whole thing is about.’

“Ha! That’s crazy! Aren’t you supposed to be omnipresent and all? Know what’s happening everywhere and all that stuff.”

God broke into a devilish grin. “I think my employees have a little over-zealous. I did reprimand Jesus and Muhammad for creating a hyped image. But you know how rookies are. Desperate to prove themselves. But then I think my ego got the better of me. I should have been a little more discreet in my methods. Anyway, I am not present everywhere contrary to popular belief. I do have very efficient staffs who keep me updated with things they feel I should know.”

“You mean like the CEO of a company.”

“Ya, something like that. For example yesterday I was in Iraq.”

“Iraq! Well, I must say, you really cupped there.”

“Cupped?”

“I mean failed. Institute Lingo.”

“Oh. Ya, Iraq has been difficult. A really bad day in office if I can put it that way. But as you humans yourselves say, the fool can create more problems than the wise can solve.”

“Actually it’s ‘a fool can ask more questions than the wise can answer’ but I get your point.”

“So tell me how is life here. Why do people spam me like this with endless series of requests to get in and as soon as that happens they want to get out?”

“Spam! As in email spam?”

“Ya, we went electronic a decade back. Ever since the atheism industry took off, Recruitment efforts have taken a hit. We lost some good people there. And of course the religion field has stagnated. Heaven has lost its place has the most prized job perk. It’s all about I-banking now. So we cut down on staff and went electronic.”

“Hmmmm. Interesting. Anyway I feel if you really want to understand what IIT is all about I suggest you come as a student. Only then you can understand the mystifying dichotomy prevalent here. And by a student, I mean a B-tech student. Those half-hearted masters won’t do the trick.”

God grimaced. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

I retorted, “And why is that?”

An embarrassed look came upon His face. “Well you see, I did give JEE. But…well…actually…to tell the truth….I didn’t pass.” He looked extremely apologetic. Then suddenly turning defensive he exclaimed, ‘It’s needlessly tough!’

I had started guffawing by then. “You couldn’t pass an exam!!! And you call yourself God! The purveyor of all thing living! The One with all the answers! The Creator Himself!”

God stiffened and said somberly “I do know all the answers. Answers to the deepest mysteries of the universe. The answers to life. It’s meaning. Its purpose. Answers to questions which wouldn’t even occur to you or any human on this planet. But yes, I do not now what will happen when you mix ethyl benzoate with phenolphthalein. That’s because it’s extremely insignificant”.

“But the didn’t Einstein say that God is in the details”

“Sayan, for me Creation was Art. Not Science. Science, Knowledge & Intellectual pursuits are creations of man to understand the universe and hence me. Nothing else. And anyway Einstein just wanted to sound profound by mouthing all those inanities. That presumptuous prick. Who’s he to say whether I play dice or not?’’ said God obviously referring to the man’s famous retort to Bohr.

The sermon on creation had left me a little flustered. Trying to bring the light banter back on track I commented, “Well then, do you play dice?”

“As a matter of fact I do! It helps me when I have tough decisions to make. For example when I had to decide on how to wipe off dinosaurs I was torn between an asteroid strike and a gigantic flood. While the former offered an opportunity of tremendous pyrotechnics the later would have been more fun to orchestrate with effective cloud management involved. The dice roll went in favor of the asteroid”

“Well you seem to have a devil may care attitude about your work style”, I quipped slyly.

Spotting the jibe, god smirked. “Its not as easy as you might think it is. With great power comes great responsibility”

“Whoa!! Now you are lifting lines from Spiderman!!”

Visibly unsettled at the fact that his quote source had been revealed he said, “We have digressed too much. We were discussing how I can have a comprehensive overview of life in this campus. Obviously coming as an engineering undergraduate is ruled out. I am surprised you can’t give me an intelligent suggestion and you people are supposed to be the clever ones. What was I thinking when I made you!”

Not willing to enter into an exchange of barbs with God himself, I took a moment to think. And then it struck me! “In view of your leanings towards the Arts, I have a proposition. It seems you are unaware of the fact that since last year the institute has been offering under graduation in humanities. That should be ideal for you. “

“Really??” shouted God with a disbelieving tone. “That would be perfect. How come I wasn’t informed of this? Ever since Confucius took over the petty complaints & miscellaneous Information division, the updates have been deficient. I will have to give him a dressing down tonight. Sayan, thank you for this excellent suggestion. May your I-banking dreams come true”

“How did you know!” I cried out and then immediately realizing how stupid the question was.

“So”, I continued,” now what?”

“Well, I will be getting the details of the humanities thing as you mentioned. Then I am will take a vacation for a week. It’s been quite some time since I took one. The last one was in September, 2001. It was wonderful meeting you. I am sure we will meet again. I guess it will be here itself. Of course I won’t be in a brown suit. And I won’t look this old either.”

“Vacation eh? Where do you intend to go?” I asked curiously.

“Where else but Kerela.” he grinned.

I chuckled and looked up. He had disappeared.

2007-09-09T01:34:00.000+05:30

Waltzing with Death: The Brilliance of Pervez

Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount- Winston Churchill

History is replete with examples of ordinary men heroically leading their people in extraordinary times. And extraordinary men falling prey to their vanity when their country needed them the most. It’s too early to say to which group General Pervez Musharaff will be consigned to in the pages of history. But the man has definitely been the pivot around which the events of the twenty-first century have unfolded. This article will make an attempt to review the actions and motives of this enigma who has continued to astound the world not just by staying alive but maintaining a vice like grip on one of the most turbulent nations in modern times.

When Musharaff took over power in 99, not many were surprised. Military coups are but a periodic phenomenon in Pakistan. Exiling Nawaz Sharif followed the bloodless coup hence by ensuring no further opposition to military rule. And then came 9/11. Richard Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State of the United States government landed in Islamabad and met the general. He had a simple message for him. If Pakistan didn’t cooperate with America then they would be bombed back to the Stone Age. Those were Armitage’s exact words. And Musharaff took the biggest decision of his life. Turning his back on the Taliban. For the last ten years the Taliban and to a huge extent the Al Qaeda had been mollycoddled by the Pakistani secret services leading to their huge influence and power. This abrupt u-turn by musharaff was the biggest shock to the fundamentalists. Those of you who are aware the customs of the Pashtuns will know that there is no greater sin than disloyalty. Loyalty to one’s tribe and people is the only guiding principle in the otherwise lawless ravines of the Hindu Kush.

Musharaff signed his death warrant that day itself when he agreed to play host to the US army’s maneuvers before the final onslaught on Afghanistan. But he did exact his pound of flesh. Musharaff has always proved to be a better businessman than a general. After all the Kargil fiasco was his brainchild. He got billions of dollars of aid in return for becoming a frontline ally in the war against terror. He gambled that an improved economy might divert the nation’s attention away from his duplicitous foreign policy. And this did work wonderfully well till around 2005. And then things started falling apart.

Americans, true to their nature always ensure that their investments show a high degree of return. They coerced the general into making peace with India. He was forced to pull the plug on organizations like the Lashkar-e-Tayabba and Jamaat Ul Dawa. This second betrayal strengthened the resolve of the fundamentalists further. They were extremely incensed for they felt that the general had been using them for his own needs all this while and had discarded them when the purpose was over. It was at this point that Al Qaeda and Ayman Al Zawahiri in particular made it their top priority to get rid of Musharaff. This resolve was evident in the periodic release of the al Qaeda propaganda CDs. Interestingly Musharaff has been able to something that America had failed to do all this while. Create divisions in the Al Qaeda. Many in the organization felt that challenging Musharaff would be a diversion from the primary aim of engaging the Americans. That Musharaff had enough capability to make Al Qaeda presence in Pakistan difficult was well known. Hence reports do mention of a widening chasm between the Libyan and the Arab factions of the Al Qaeda with the former wanting to leave Musharaff alone.

India never had a very amicable relationship with General Musharaff. The disastrous Agra conference was the result of the clash of egos on the either side. But the Indian establishment was quick to realize that musharaff was their best bet. With him gone, Pakistan would be at the mercy of nuclear weapons wielding fundamentalists. The worst possible nightmare. Prime Minister Vajpayee was so concerned about the general’s safety that a couple of assassination attempts were avoided due to the timely tips from RAW to the ISI. For Musharaff the peace process had a downside. In the past the Pakistani leadership in their attempt to hide their incompetence would blame all ills on India. But in this atmosphere of goodwill that escape route had shuts its door on him.

The inception of the peace process with India, the slow and steady crackdown on the terror apparatus and a growing economy kept the general in the good books of the international community who were more than happy to turn a blind eye to his total disinterest in laying down his uniform or his rigging of elections. But the internal turmoil had begun to get out of hand. The unrest at Balochistan was handled terribly by the military junta resulting in a prolonged low intensity conflict which threatened to escalate into a full blown civil war. The troubles in Balochistan were nothing compared to the ones the government faced in Waziristan province. Situated in the lawless tribal lands in the north-west, Waziristan had become a hotbed of militant activity. From sheltering the higher-ups of Al Qaeda to hosting foreign militants from all over the Muslim world, Waziristan had become the biggest thorn in Pakistan’s relation with the Americans. In face of growing accusations of non-cooperation the general was forced to send in forces only to withdraw later with a humiliating ceasefire agreement with the tribal leaders.

The virtual granting of independence to Waziristan was among the first signals of the unraveling of Musharaff’s power. Of course by then the assassination attempts on him had begun. A series of close shaves later, the general decided to take some punitive action against the home grown terrorists. While arrests had been going on since 9/11, the attempts on his life spurred the security apparatus into action. Finally the Pakistan government was seen serious about the promises it had been making for quite some time.

2007 saw a major turn in his fortunes. And it came from the most unexpected of quarters. The judiciary had always played second fiddle to the leadership. Chief justice Iftikar Chowdhury who before 2007 had a very unremarkable career suddenly showed traits of judicial activism. Most of them were directed against Musharaff’s policies. Anticipating complications during his re-election bid he asked the chief justice to fall in line or to step down. The chief justice declined to do either. This standing up to the president enthused the anti-Musharaff groups like never before. Justice Chowdhury became the rallying point for all the anti-government protestors. Yet again the junta showed poor judgement. They tried to divert the nation’s attention and suppress the growing popularity of he protests by creating the Lal Masjid crises. Creating wouldn’t be a fair thing to say actually. Discontent had been simmering in Islamabad for quite some time with the Lal Masjid playing the mascot for the fundamentalists. But it wasn’t a situation which couldn’t be controlled. But Musharaff had begun to show signs of desperation. The Iftikar Chowdhury protests had grown out of control after some deadly rioting in Karachi. Lal Masjid offered the only possible diversion. As a result a week long drama played out before television crews. Musharaff came out as the leader who played tough with terrorist. When Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the militant Imam, wanted to surrender according to the terms presented, by an interesting coincidence his cell phones were found jammed. The ambush followed and scores were killed.

But this just worsened matters. The fundamentalists reaffirmed their faith in destroying the general. Another attempt on his life followed. The battle on the chief justice front too failed. Musharaff was forced to reinstate him hence by showing how much his power had declined. Like vultures over a caracass, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif declared their intent of returning to their home country. The stage was set for the final overthrow.

Musharaff, a commando by training, has stunned the world by his ability to come out of intractable situations. The world waits with bated breath to see whether he has saved his best for the last. The Americans have finally had enough of him. They desperately want a seamless transfer of power to a democratic government. The usual suspects in a general election have started gathering forces. The fundamentalists are still planning their assassination attempts. Musharaff always has the honourable exit option. America will ensure his safety in case he chooses that option. But will he?

A man who has been guided by his huge ego and strong survival instincts finally seems to have reached the end of the road. Very few will disagree that he was the best possible leader Pakistan could have who could have extracted them so brilliantly from a post 9/11 morass. His strong leadership saved the day for Pakistan. But like all dictators he has ultimately become a victim to his own vanity. The next few months will show whether he chooses head over heart and takes a quiet exit hence by avoiding the unfortunate fates of his predecessors. Or does he have a last trick up his sleeve?

* This article was my contribution to FC September, 2007.

2007-07-25T02:10:00.000+05:30

And now for something completely different.

Well, I have been always a little ignorant of technology. Especially when it has got to do with the computer. When I saw my peers lapping up everything there is to know about softwares and the internet, I made a conscious decision to sit out this revolution. I had to be different you see. Even at the cost of common sense. So that’s the reason why my blog has such a barren look. ( I prefer the word minimalist). No favourite blogs. No counter. No design. No funky stuff at the sides. Why? It’s not that I don’t love counters and funky stuff. And I have a number of favourite blogs. Yes Greatbong, I am talking about you. But I have no frigging idea how to incorporate all these stuff. It seems some thing called HTML is involved somewhere. Whatever.

As a result of this self imposed isolation, I am a loner in the big wide happy family of bloggers. I never get tagged for anything. No one requests me to unleash my creative genius. But I have had enough. So I TAG myself. What do you think about that, you pinheads!

Now that tagging is over, I have decided to write on this curious thing doing the rounds. 8 things which people do not know about you. Well, why 8? I would love to say 80 things if it got me a little more attention( read comments). Again for the sake of being different I will say the top 10 things people do not know about me.

The more perceptive of you might have noticed the subtle tribute I just paid to my good friend the Rt Hon David Letterman.

The list.

1. I don’t believe in reality. As a mater of fact I consider it dangerous and should be done away with at once. I believe everyone has a right to believe what one feels like. How close that is to reality is not a point of concern. Well that’s how I explain the length of my resume to people.

2. I want to die before I turn 45. Among the sighs of relief I notice a few raised eyebrows. Here is the motivation. I don’t want to get through JEE again. I mean obviously my children will be sitting for it. And it’s a worse quandary for parents than the children. FIITJEE, VMC, Brilliants again?? No way. God, I am coming home in 2030.

3. I support the war on Iraq. Without it seeing Bush and his administration’s press conferences wouldn’t be half as fun. I know I am being insensitive to the thousands dead but then they didn’t do much for me anyway.

4. I believe P G Wodehouse is the greatest ever author ever in the history of the universe. Try writing one sentence like him you punk.

5. I strongly disagree with people who say a man must know his alcohol. (Ya, Kini. I am talking to you). I feel too much time is being wasted knowing alcohol instead of drinking it. Academic pursuits should be left behind in the lab. And in some cases in Wikipedia.

6. One of my greatest faux pas was when I was caught eating a double layer chicken burger wearing a PETA t-shirt. It was one of those situations where none of the clever one-liners you mugged from Wiki-quote is of any use. But I did plead ignorance by claiming that I thought it stood for Prevention of Ethical Treatment to Animals. Some political pundits point out that it might have been one of the reasons why I lost the Mandak lit-sec elections in 2006. Psueba is a vegetarian you see.

7. I am very touchy when it comes to my privacy. I think some things should remain private. I don’t believe the people have any right to know that I have a love-life so barren that I am planning to begin hitting on Insti girls.

8. I hate Orkut. Yes I do. I think it’s a travesty of egotistical justice that one cannot write a testimonial for oneself without having a fake account. Why do they think I can write testimonials about people I have never met but not for myself whom I know since…well as long as I remember. And 1024 words?? Are they kidding me? I don’t see word limits on articles praising Brin and Page. Why then have a limit when it comes to us? Me in particular.

9. When it comes to a choice between populism and elitism, I will always choose populism. There is not better place to hide mediocrity than in a large crowd. And of course when the revolution comes it’s the elites who head to the guillotine. Revise your history you psuede buggers.

10. And finally, the most important thing that you all don’t know is something not about me. Its about Shaastra 2007. It gives me great pleasure to let out one of the biggest secrets of this year. Shaastra 2007 is going to be the awesomest, most wonderfullest, greatestest ever spectacle ever seen in the history of mankind since whatever. Even King Leonides spanking Persian asses will not come close to the passion one will witness say in the Shaastra 2007 press conference. And that’s just the mildest part of the 4 day extravaganza.

And now you know.

PS

1. Had to say the last few lines. It was in my core contract.

2. Insti girls have always had my greatest respect.

2007-07-02T21:16:00.000+05:30

SELLING NATIONS

Brand Slogans have become such an important part of everyday life. Marketing of anything begins with the search for the appropriate tagline. Brand identification among other things depends hugely on the accompanying catch phrases. ‘Thanda matlab CocaCola’ being one of the most brilliant one to come up in the recent years.

While pondering on this led me to indulge myself in a little bit of fantasizing on how nations could be marketed. While quite a few do already have their commercials inviting tourists, they are not the sort I had in mind. The phrases I had in mind were more general in nature portraying the image a country enjoys in the current world.

And jobless as I am, I came up with a small list.

Pakistan- Creating Tension, Since 1947.

Saudi Arabia- You Drive? High-Five!

Great Britain- Great things come in small packages.

Bangladesh- Where Gratitude is just another Word.

Canada- Prosperity Through Irrelevance.

Israel- Where Rules are Truly made to be Broken.

India- Keeping Order, Through Chaos.

China- The World. Made In China.

Japan- For the smarter things in life.

Sri Lanka- Where Tigers are not endangered.

Russia- I will be Back.

Australia- Does Size Matter?

USA: The Grass is always greener on our side.

Iran: Where Diplomats get their PhDs.

Palestine: The Original Fight Club.

Germany- We make Things. And break them.

Iraq- We have Oil. Take it…. if you can.

Brazil: The Biggest Party in the World.

Sudan: Shortcuts to Population Control

European Union- Miracles do Happen.

United Nations: Redefining Redundancy

2007-05-24T18:59:00.000+05:30

TEUTONS FOR DUMMIES.

The lonely planet is a great thing to have when you are in a new place. It’s very difficult to say what is wrong with the book. It lists basically everything. For example who knew that’s its impolite to ask for tap water in a German restaurant. Or Germans when angry lower their voices. Pearls of wisdom indeed. Information one won’t get in the run-of-the-mill travel guides.

But as I soon discovered in the last few days, LP doesn’t give you everything. There are valuable lessons which one learns only when he is finally in the new place. Most of them are learnt through unfortunate personal experiences. So I thought wouldn’t it be a great philanthropic gesture if I took out time from my insanely busy schedule of checking mails and reading news, and wrote down some Do’s and Don’ts for a novice resident in Deutschland.

So here goes.

Beer is NOT cheaper than water. All of you who plan to save a buck by having Becks or König-Pilsener after your meals instead of Adam’s Ale, kindly go back to your drawing board. Cheap beer is the greatest myth about Germany. If you want cheap beer, stay in India (which by the way is the greatest country in the world as I now realize. I will never complain about the costs there EVER)

Nothing is free here. Nothing. My first visit to the supermarket entailed that I didn’t have any carry-bags. I saw a heap of them lying in one corner of the store apparently there to be taken. True to our great heritage, on spotting something apparently free, I grabbed as many as possible and happily progressed towards the cash counter with my trolley. What followed was the unhappy situation of trying to explain to the lady at the counter why I had 6 bags with me while I had just bough sausages and egg. When I was unable to give a coherent reply thanks to my vintage skills in the German language, an unhappier situation followed. I shelled out 6 cents for each of the polythene bags. From then on, I have never touched anything in this country without looking for the price tag.

Know your football. To be more precise, know your Bundesliga. It’s the easiest way to start a conversation here. First thing I did after I reached here was to mug the current standings of teams. I assure you it will be very helpful. Knowing the players is obviously an added advantage. But be very careful about what you say about teams. Always discreetly find out whom the person you are talking to supports and then base your further statements on that fact. Nothing fuels more passion – and fights than soccer. For example shouting ‘Schalke sucks!’ anywhere near Gelsenkirchen might make things uncomfortable while proclaiming the same thing loudly in Dortmund a few miles away might get you a free beer.

It’s a bad idea to eat in trams. You might get thrown out. Trust me. I know.

It’s a very bad idea to travel ticket less in any public conveyance. German police normally don’t see much action and this is the only instance they can assert some authority. So don’t be surprised when you get surrounded by a mini army the moment you are apprehended. In case one does get caught, best line of defence is ‘I just came from India! I don’t know where to get a ticket.’ It always works. But don’t over-do it. There is a high probability you might be saying the thing to the same person twice.

Always carry your passport. Thanks to out jihadist cousins, there have been too many cases of ‘over-zealous’ officers just doing their ‘job’. This point can be further discussed with Prof V Sundar of the Ocean Dept who had an officer holding a gun to his head.

In the work-place never claim to know something you don’t. Germans verify everything. I will paste a certain conversation which took place.

Prof: Do you know how to use the TEM?

Certain Person we know: of course. I have used it many times before.

Prof: Oh good. Come with me.

Enter a TEM room.

Prof: ok, show me. Use this machine.

Certain Person we know: Hmmmm. Well I meant I have seen people using it many

times before.

I was informed by my well-meaning friends that German girls are supposedly easy to score. At this point of my stay, I may grudgingly agree. But what I have realized is that language forms a very important part of the scoring process. You might be at your Sunday best with your Indian charm (!) oozing out but much advancement will be difficult if you are unacquainted with the intricacies of the Teutonic tongue (I refer to the language here. The literal aspect comes in later in stage 3.) English will not get you anywhere. The whole rendezvous will end up looking like the first lessons of the local Helen Keller Society chapter.

Lot remains to be told. Especially about the all-important Byzantine Factor. I hope these pointers are of some help to some unfortunate fellow traveller who remains perplexed by the bizarre oddities of this nation.

2007-05-07T23:31:00.000+05:30

Here Comes The Sun

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
And I say it’s all right.
Little darling it’s been a long cold lonely winter,
Little darling it feels like years since it’s been here.
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
And I say it’s all right.

2007-02-16T23:19:00.000+05:30

OPENING THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through' narrow chinks of his cavern.” – William Blake.

The future, they say, cannot be predicted. It has never been. Never will be. I started my schooling in the year 1989. The last 17 years of education I received is supposed to be in preparation for my career which will roughly last between 2010 and 2060. In short, I have been preparing for a future without any idea what challenges it holds for me and for the human race. Isn’t it surprising?

The current education system in India as well as throughout the world is rooted in a nineteenth century mindset. The whole approach was such so as to meet the steady demands of industrialization. No wonder topics like mathematics and science are right at the top of the subject hierarchy. And dance and drama right at the bottom. And this trend continues even today. Especially so in India, where the insatiable hunger for manpower from the services sector results in the churning out of thousands of engineers and IT professionals. Among these thousands are quite a few brilliant dancers and actors and artists whose natural urges of creativity have been stymied by the narrow minded perceptions of their elders and society.

If we continue on this path, we stand to lose an unimaginable amount of human capital. More people are graduating now than ever before in the history of the human race. Academic inflation is rampant. Suddenly degrees have become worthless. It’s high time we move away from the present system of education as evidently it is not suited to the needs of the twenty-first century. Now we must value creativity at par with literacy. The current system is such that the worst thing one can do is to make a mistake. But how can one dare to dream and try something new if the constant fear of being wrong lurks round every corner. Children have an extra-ordinary capacity to be inventive. We adults have lost that capacity. Right now we are educating people out of creativity rather than it being the other way round. The current system rewards one’s academic ability. In that case, the superlative human would be a university professor. But we know that’s not the case.

We have to stop equating intelligence to academic ability. There are innumerable cases where brilliant and highly talented people think they are not so. That’s because what they are good at is not valued by their schools and teachers. We need to reconstitute our view of education which should be based on harnessing the immense human ability which surrounds us. We need to incorporate the fact that intelligence is diverse, dynamic and distinct. The current system mines our mind for something very specific. This method will not work for the future.

Let us create a new concept of human ecology which celebrates human imagination. Let’s work towards a system where a child can dance and sing if he wants to. Instead of suppressing his natural talents lets educate his whole being. Let’s open their doors of perception. And then as Blake mentioned, the possibilities are infinite.

“Every child is born an artist. But very few remain one as they grow.”- Picasso.

* I am thankful to Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk for giving a proper shape and direction to this train of thought.

2007-02-05T22:30:00.000+05:30

"Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day’s occupations,
That is known as the Children’s Hour."
- H W Longfellow.

2007-01-29T23:52:00.000+05:30

Saarang 2007.

25^th-29^th January.

Stella Maris. Rs 500. 29C. Lufthansa. To click or not to click. The disheartening fusion. KK’s tricks. Tchaikovsky on Shuffle. Rs 100 Coupons. Fish Burger. Seinfeld. First ever SpEnt qualification. Shoes stolen. Theo Walcott. The Huge Humiliation. Noah. Marooned on an island. Troy. Rich dad, poor dad. VIP gate. Sunny B. AS. With Baille at Tiffany’s. Salaam-e-Ishq. Morning at 1 pm. Newsletter. Qutub Minar. Coffee. Mighty Ducky. Mr India. SMS. Sensex. Bobby. Interrogation. Videography. Origin dice. Litchi juice. Temple. Stadium. Arya. Oat at 12. Kabala. Stephen Colbert. Defeat…Yet again. 3am. Aloo Parathas. United Colors of Benetton. Vatican city. Netaji. Decent score for a change. Defeat. Room. Eleanor. Goteborg. Douglas Adams. Oliver Stone. Wikipedia. Business greetings. Evening sleep after so long. Paining jamba. Student burger. Microsoft powerpoint. Lan after 1. Pota at 6. Apple. Empty CHLT. Kayfabe. Oliver’s story. Flash drives. Road blockade. ICSR. Finals. Sarcasm. Kakkar. Bulb. The whole grub. Credit Suisse. Kabala again. Final defeat. Winners list. Extempore. Thank you ladies and gentlemen. The walk back. Pizza hut. Anne Hathaway. The devil wore prada. And finally…….Meryl Streep. They don’t make em like her anymore.

It felt good. Even when we lost. Even when we almost won. And even when we just watched.

2006-12-16T00:07:00.000+05:30

WHY DO THESE THINGS HAPPEN?

RABLINGS ON DESPERATION.

Ever since I was declared socially unfit by my family in the year 2001 AD I have lived with the fact that I can never be one of those suave, smooth talking characters Shahrukh Khan normally plays on screen. Along with that came the realization that the chances of impressing village belles with my boyish charm or city girls with my retro/metro sexual demeanor were highly improbable. Diffidence and coyness have perpetually plagued me like two huge plaguing things. Needless to say I am yet to have a girlfriend though there have been times when I came close to having one. At least I would like to believe I was close to having one. Before I go any further let me state that the following chronicle of events is dedicated to all those friends of mine whose social awkwardness especially in front of the opposite sex have come to characterize the average IITian. My message for them: Fear not for you are not alone!

Much has written about the skewed sex-ratio in our institute. Various remedial measures have been suggested. Some are revolutionary, some pure drivel. A few over enthusiastic individuals have even gone as far as to suggest an unofficial “quota” ala the IIMs¹. Obviously all these things won’t help. Girls have always found the JEE a needless waste of time and have found better avenues to channel their energies. Watching John Abraham movies or deciding which contestant to vote for in those grotesque reality shows are a few examples where they would rather invest their time. So any hopes of improving the ratio ought to be laid to rest.

The ratio undoubtedly has had a terrible effect on the societal skills of the average IITian. Little or no interaction between the sexes has lead to an amazing level of desperation and despondency among the students. Let me give you some examples of a few pick-up lines used by people to disastrous effects. Our man is at Spencer’s. He sees a hot girl and approaches her. The following conversation ensues.

Our Man: Hi.

Hot Girl: Hi.

Our Man: Can I have your phone-number? (readers keep in mind that this is the first meeting)

Hot Girl: Why? ( we must agree that this was a highly justified question)

Our Man: Ah well…Hmmmmm…. ( thinks hard for a great one-liner, fails, and duly returns to his Gumbal)

Well not all of us suffer from these sudden bouts of tonguetied-ness ( if there is such a word.) One of my friends happened to be completely misinformed about the residential origins of his object of interest. What followed was another memorable conversation.

Misinformed Friend: Hi

Object of Interest: Hi

Misinformed Friend: Are you from Bhagalpur?

Object of Interest: No. ( our friend finds himself in a difficult position, but notice how he bounces back from the brink)

Misinformed Friend who now knows he is misinformed: oh! Well…..but I am from Bhagalpur. Pleased to meet you. ( and departs while leaving the girl dumbfounded)

My personal experiences in this regard have been interesting to say the least. The recent one happened right after Lit-Soc dramatics. After all the plays were over, a few members of our dramatics team and me were making chit-chat outside the CLT. For some bizarre reason I happened to be explaining them the finer points of the Intellectual Properties Rights Policy of General Electric. Along came to join the group another member of our team along with his Swiss girlfriend. Now most of you will agree that being seen in the company of female exchange students have always been listed very high in the “51 Things I want to be seen doing in IIT”². The elated looks on my compatriots’ faces was proof enough of the restrained sense of jubilation they were currently going through. Now the topic of conversation has always been regarded as the fundamental moot point on which depends how long you would enjoy such exalted company. Everything’s fine if you have the right topic, say the experts. What the experts never explained in detail is how to know choose that elusive topic. Anyway, I decided to take the initiative and begin the conversation. A loud voice spoke to me in my mind, “Keep talking about IPR. That ought to impress her.” A smaller voice shot back,” Are you insane! Keep your mouth shut!”

I made the fatal mistake of listening to the louder voice and began “As I was saying, the Intellectual Property Rights division in GE ensures……..” No sooner where these words out, the pleasant countenance on the Swiss Miss’s face transformed in to a grimace. Realizing that the evening can be better spent she politely excused herself from the now thoroughly engrossing discourse on IPR by me. This was followed by an uncomfortable silence. I of course had apprehended by then from the looks on my friends’ faces that something was wrong. It didn’t take long for their restrained jubilation to transform into unrestrained fury. The next fifteen minutes were spent by me exploring the MSB at a very fast pace trying to save my bones at the same time. Moral of the story:

1. Don’t discuss anything remotely related to Intellectual Property Rights while in company of Swiss girls.

2. And always listen to the small voice!

A good vocabulary always helps. So please pick your copy of Barron’s and get going. To prove my point I do have yet another example. This happened during Saarang. A certain acquaintance mine asked a girl out for dinner. Now he knew her barely for a day³.So pat came the reply “You just met me and you have the audacity to ask me out!” Now this guy was known for his witty repartees and we all were expecting a sweep-her-of-her-feet reply. But that was not to be. He apologized and came back! As expected we confronted him angrily and asked him why he let us down in such a miserable fashion. To that he replied, “Hey, what does audacity mean?”

All these anecdotes might give the impression that most of our brethren are social disasters. But there have been instances when spunk has prevailed. It was the last day of Shaastra. I was conducting this terribly tiring lab visit for around 6 batches with fifteen people each. One of these batches had this breathtaking beauty who had come all the way from Shimla. The loveliness had such a captivating power (Do I sound like Keats here?) that all the voices in the head screamed. “Get her name! Get her name!” Now I am not the ‘going and getting the name’ type. Or else I wouldn’t be writing this article. So I couldn’t achieve much beyond gaping like an ape. The visit was almost over and she was about to leave when it struck me like a brick. A plan so simple yet so shrewd that you could put a beard to it and call it Shylock. I boldly went up to her and asked, “Excuse me, could you please give me five minutes and fill this feedback form for me”. Never in history had that piece of paper with those terribly boring questions been better used. Now this wasn’t the standard QMS form we are talking about but a highly inquisitive one we had specially got printed just for our event. In a few minutes I knew everything about her except her father’s salary and occupation. Name, number, email-id, address, everything.

Well, we can’t expect feedback forms to solve all our problems in life. But the point I am trying to make but have failed miserably to do so till now is that it’s not about getting phone numbers or going on dates. We need to understand that learning to handle a person of the opposite sex without appearing to be a sex maniac or a wooden toy is as important as any other aspect of campus life. I yearn for the day when my female friends (Ya, I actually have a few) stop remarking nonchalantly how desperate most IITians are and how they send endless requests for companionship in social networking forums. I yearn for the day when my friends will stop interpreting harmless ‘Hi’s from any girl as a proposition. And finally I yearn for the day when “Fraanship & Loveship” requests will stop emanating from the Orkut accounts of fellow IITians.

I make a plea. This plea is not for the people who date Stella Maris girls in the weekend or receive Friendship Day greetings from MCC girls. My plea is directed towards those innumerable faceless IITians who day after day send those hideous and revolting messages from their rooms to unsuspecting girls like the one below.

“I am a smart guy studying IIT. I can solve fast differential equations. I won the inter-hostel contraception contest. My favourite book is Dan Brown(!). Will you be my friend? I promise to be a good friend and keep all your secrets(!!!)⁴”

No civilized society can tolerate this for long. So please STOP! And if you can’t at least replace the first I with N!

1. Ya. Its true. Contrary to what Sharavites might have you beilieve.

2. A treatise often referred to in some parts of the institute.

3. Not an uncommon occurrence during Saarang.

4. Profile Source: http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=18077701848837078120

2006-08-19T10:36:00.000+05:30

BLOGTHINGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You Are 35% Left Brained, 65% Right Brained

The left side of your brain controls verbal ability, attention to detail, and reasoning.

Left brained people are good at communication and persuading others.

If you're left brained, you are likely good at math and logic.

Your left brain prefers dogs, reading, and quiet.

The right side of your brain is all about creativity and flexibility.

Daring and intuitive, right brained people see the world in their unique way.

If you're right brained, you likely have a talent for creative writing and art.

Your right brain prefers day dreaming, philosophy, and sports.

Are You Right or Left Brained?

Your EQ is 147

50 or less: Thanks for answering honestly. Now get yourself a shrink, quick!

51-70: When it comes to understanding human emotions, you'd have better luck understanding Chinese.

71-90: You've got more emotional intelligence than the average frat boy. Barely.

91-110: You're average. It's easy to predict how you'll react to things. But anyone could have guessed that.

111-130: You usually have it going on emotionally, but roadblocks tend to land you on your butt.

131-150: You are remarkable when it comes to relating with others. Only the biggest losers get under your skin.

150+: Two possibilities - you've either out "Dr. Phil-ed" Dr. Phil... or you're a dirty liar.

What's Your EQ (Emotional Intelligence Quotient)?

You Have Your Sarcastic Moments

While you're not sarcastic at all times, you definitely have a cynical edge.

In your opinion, not all people are annoying. Some are dead!

And although you do have your genuine moments, you can't help getting your zingers in.

Some people might be a little hurt by your sarcasm, but it's more likely they think you're hilarious.

How Sarcastic Are You?

You Are An INTP

The Thinker

You are analytical and logical - and on a quest to learn everything you can.

Smart and complex, you always love a new intellectual challenge.

Your biggest pet peeve is people who slow you down with trivial chit chat.

A quiet maverick, you tend to ignore rules and authority whenever you feel like it.

You would make an excellent mathematician, programmer, or professor.

What's Your Personality Type?

You Are Somewhat Machiavellian

You're not going to mow over everyone to get ahead...

But you're also powerful enough to make things happen for yourself.

You understand how the world works, even when it's an ugly place.

You just don't get ugly yourself - unless you have to!

How Machiavellian Are You?

2006-07-24T09:23:00.000+05:30

AND THE SPIRIT LIVES ON……….

One of my friends forwarded me this messages just days after the carnage in Mumbai.

I found it mighty interesting. It is reproduced here below.

Dear Terrorist,

Even if you are not reading this we don't care. Time and again you tried to disturb us and disrupt our life - killing innocent civilians by planting bombs in trains, buses and cars. You have tried hard to bring death and destruction, cause panic and fear and create communal disharmony but every time you were disgustingly unsuccessful. Do you know how we pass our life in Mumbai? How much it takes for us to earn that single rupee? If you wanted to give us a shock then we are sorry to say that you failed miserably in your ulterior motives. Better look elsewhere, not here.

We are not Hindus and Muslims or Gujaratis and Marathis or Punjabis and Bengali’s. Nor do we distinguish ourselves as owners or workers, govt.
employees or private employees. WE ARE MUMBAIKERS (Bombay-ites, if you like). We will not allow you to disrupt our life like this. On the last few occasions when you struck (including the 7 deadly blasts in a single day killing over 250 people and injuring 500+ in 1993), we went to work next day in full strength. This time we cleared everything within a few hours and were back to normal - the vendors placing their next order, businessmen finalizing the next deals and the office workers rushing to catch the next train. (Yes the same train you targeted)

Fathom this: Within 3 hours of the blasts, long queues of blood donating volunteers were seen outside various hospitals, where most of the injured were admitted. By 12 midnight, the hospital had to issue a notification that blood banks were full and they didn't require any more blood. The next day, attendance at schools and office was close to 100%, trains & buses were packed to the brim, and the crowds were back.
The city has simply dusted itself off and moved one - perhaps with greater vigor.

We are Mumbaikers and we live like brothers in times like this. So, do not dare to threaten us with your crackers. The spirit of Mumbai is very strong and can not be harmed.

Please forward this to others. U never know, by chance it may come to hands of a terrorist in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iraq and he can then read this message which is specially meant for him!!!

With Love,
from the people of Mumbai (Bombay)

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, I now announce before the world, that India has developed the most exceptional counter terrorism weapon ever devised in human history. It’s called….the SPIRIT!!! In development in the clandestine labs hidden in the labyrinthine Mumbai suburbs for the last thirteen years, SPIRIT 6.0 was finally unveiled in the wake of the 7/11 attacks. The scientists of the elite SIRDO (Social Indifference Research and Development Organization) proudly declared a completely successful launch. There were the usual initial glitches when the people were helping the wounded and asking uncomfortable questions regarding public safety (imagine the gall!!!). But soon things were back to ordinary and when the city returned to normalcy in a few hours, the operation was declared an unqualified success. Before going any further let’s delve into the history behind the making of the SPIRIT. It all began in the year 1993 when Dawood Ibrahim showed his displeasure about the way a few Mumbai buildings are designed by well…… blowing them up. Unfortunately his henchmen made a mess of the timer thing (the old AM\PM muddle) and around three hundred people had to pay the price. The whole incident was immediately declared a “terrorist attack”. Poor Dawood! You just can’t express your opinion in Mumbai anymore, can you! The Indian government promised to deal with the menace with a “firm” hand. A hand which proved so firm over the times that it’s been rendered immovable hence not achieving anything substantial. But wait. Before jumping the gun and blaming the government of inaction read this. In the days that followed the supreme decision making body on the nation’s security C-CIP (Cabinet Committee on Insecurity and Procrastination) debated vociferously and sometimes violently (ask jaipal reddy if you don’t believe me) on what course to take. Finally they decided upon to a plan the result of which we have today SPIRIT 6.0.

The elder statesmen of the country came to the conclusion that to blunt these terrorists, the only way was to toughen the MORALE of the people. And toughen it so much that the severest of attacks would trouble the general populace as much as a fly in the proverbial ointment. The aim was to make the public completely apathetic and unmoved to the threats the country might be facing. Internal or external. And have they succeeded!!

After losing two hundred of its people Mumbai resumes work the next day as if absolutely nothing has happened. And here’s the best part. The sensex actually rises a hundred points!!! Oh! But a few more blasts and I can break even on those blasted HMT stocks I bought last month. Compare the situation with 9/11 (yup these militants have a thing for 11) the NASDAQ remained closed for almost 4 days if I remember correctly and when it did reopen the points took a huge plunge before you could say “Ketan Parikh”.

Shame! The patriots scream. How dare you compare those jaundiced New Yorkers to our sanguine Mumbaikers! Some nerve!! Mumbai is a great city. The financial capital of India! The Sydney of the north. The Shanghai of the west. But as things are turning out, I feel it will soon be Kabul of the south or Baghdad of the east. My not so sincere apologies to all of them.

SPIRIT 6.0 wasn’t achieved overnight. It required a lot of revisions, upgrading, amendments and subtle adjustments. The aftermath of 1993 saw the launch of SPIRIT 1.0. Gradually as more attacks took place the next versions were released. The effects were for all to see. The public stopped asking questions regarding their own security. No queries were made regarding the perpetrators of past strikes. Blasts and shootouts became as common in the Indian bazaars as vegetables and adulterated kerosene. A few of us had the temerity to ask, “What’s the government doing about all this?” Stoically the government replies, “We cannot allow this to happen” with a few usual phrases like “no stone will be left unturned” thrown in for good measure. In the meantime they pledge that nothing will affect the “Peace Process” for that would mean playing into the hands of the terrorists.

“Peace Process”. How long will this carrot be dangled before us? Where’s the f@$%ing peace!! Here you have a country waging a proxy war against us for the last twenty five years and we are still trying to talk peace. This peace will leave our country in pieces one day. And that day we will have finally played into their hands. Frankly speaking, I feel something is terribly wrong with us and our country. We have lost our voice. We don’t know how to fight back anymore. The anger pent up within is affecting both the society and us personally at various levels. The frustration is let out during those all too frequent riots. And we end up hurting ourselves more.

Wait a minute!!!

What’s all this voicing of self-angst and resentment doing here??

We are here to praise the government’s “efforts”. Not to censure them!! Its time for unity.

Lets not “play into the hands of the enemy” by raising prickly topics. That wouldn’t be a clever thing to do. And of course, one never knows when his blog gets banned because the Department of Tele (mis)communications (the new vanguard of internal security) feels it is speaking too much of the truth. Oops!

So let’s sing paeans of the astonishing SPIRIT shown by our Mumbaikers. Let’s congratulate them that they could nonchalantly resume their work the following day as if nothing had happened. Lets forget how none of them asked, or ranted on the streets so often as they normally do about other trivial issues (some statue fiasco), about why the life of an Indian is so cheap? Why an 18 year old will have to stay crippled for the rest of his life just because he was on the wrong train? Why we lose our people again and again and yet we are unable to hit back? We have all forgotten how to ask “why?” But then do we need the answers in the first place? After all we do have the SPIRIT. We will surely tide over this too as we have done over the past occasions. Are we to behave like those timid Israelis who bomb countries (they do things in style don’t they?) just because a couple of their soldiers been kidnapped? Or like those paranoid Americans who spies on anybody and everybody and detains people like we collect stamps. No. we are not like them.

But then maybe an Israeli or an American life is worth more than that of an Indian. We Indians might pooh-pooh the American style of confronting their problems but it is true that after 9\11 there hasn’t been a single strike on American soil. Osama might rant and rail from his caves but he too knows that he will need one hell of a plan to repeat a 9/11.

Comparing Hezbollah and the LET (Lashkar-E-Toyabba) is like comparing Tendulkar to Lee-Huan (You might not have heard of him. He is China’s top batsman.) Yet we have never managed so much as to even throw a stone at any LET camps. But of course, lest I forget, we have a “Peace Process” to take care of. What credibility would our great nation have if it tried to defend itself by hitting extremist camps in POK? We could then risk losing the tag of “a responsible nuclear nation who shows restraint amid extreme provocation”. Name me one country which could claim to hold such an esteemed position on the world stage.

Let’s not be too one-sided in the matter. Of course the government has a very effective and time-tested way to handle all such matters when the security of the realm is at stake.

It’s called the MACFOO (Make A Complete Fool Of Ourselves) Strategic Plan. It has a rigid framework working within the following guidelines.

1. C-CIP meets to “review” the situation (read having snacks and tea while watching the latest updates on the event on TV) hence by delaying where immediate action is called for. Ex: Hijacked plane in Amritsar fiasco.

2. All and sundry condemn the attack in the strongest terms. (A routine procedure. The number of deaths determines how strong the condemnation is. This scale of condemnation will remain a mystery forever.)

3. The “Foreign” hand. This is proclaimed on national TV before any form of investigation is launched. Actually there is always a scramble among cabinet ministers regarding who gets to say it first. Once an over-excited minister declared it even before the strike took place! Ok just kidding.

4. “Hundreds” rounded up. How? Why? What happens to them later? Did it help? We never get these answers.

5. A week later a few arrests are made! The concerned men’s faces are covered as they are brought to court. Why? Do they have a reputation to take care of? Why do they cover the faces!!! Well maybe they are some not that good looking to be caught on camera.

6. A couple of years later all are freed due to “lack of evidence”. Ex: The Red Fort case.

A follow up question regarding this. Sir, did u look for the evidence in the first place?

7. Of course I missed out on the mandatory encounter when one of the guys was caught “trying to escape” and hence gunned down. Come on people, you have overplayed this “trying to escape” routine. Think some new ones. “He was eating too many parathas” could be a good reason for a change.

8. Back to square one. Wait for the next set of blasts. Repeat the whole routine. And of course launch the next version of…..SPIRIT.

Insider sources reveal that Strategic Plan MACFOO was the brain child of an enterprising minister who somehow was extremely impressed by the FOR-NEXT routine in the C language. (Non computer geeks try not to make much sense of that. I have to cater to the wishes of my readers u see. Namely me.)

In the case of extraordinary situations like the parliament attack (now that’s one plan which I wish had been successful) the administration moves a few army battalions from a few places and puts them elsewhere. This Age Of Empire style tactics is employed in the fervent hope that the public will think something is being done. And it does too. So you see, the government does something after all. A few critics still remain. They still doubt the great mandarins in the north and south blocks. They ask,

Wait a minute.

Hasn’t this been our policy for at least the last fifteen years now?

Surely not!

Come on, we have the third largest army.

The fourth largest air force.

The fifth largest navy.

Oh yes, we happen to be a nuclear power too with an estimated 200 nuclear warheads ready to deploy at a moments notice.

Not to mention an imaginatively named intelligence agency which is considered one of the most secretive in the world.

And yet….. We can’t defend our people!!

Come on you morons!!! Haven’t you guessed why we have such impressive armed forces and weaponry? Really your IQ seems to be in the single digits. The reason is to give Doordarshan that one day in the year when it can boast of the highest TRP ratings. Yes folks. All that defense expenditure is just to have a great parade on 26^th January. The whole world’s watching you know. And of course it’s a great source of employment among other minor reasons.

So that’s it people. Yet again we proved how great a nation we are. Perhaps the only one who defends its citizens with a metaphysical shield called the …. SPIRIT. If this doesn’t get us a permanent seat in the Security Council nothing will. Kofi Annan please take note.

PS: I have a little query for my dear government. A couple of days following 7/11 I took the local train in Chennai (just for kicks) to see what steps the police have taken in wake of the recent catastrophe. In Guindy R.S there was just one constable who was drinking tea in one corner reading a paper whose headlines screamed, “Nation on High Alert”. The situation begged the question. Which nation did you mean exactly? Or maybe the militants don’t know there’s a metro called Chennai. Maybe soon they will. Maybe soon you will too.

2006-05-03T07:44:00.000+05:30

DARJEELING.

here's something i came across about the queen of hills on the net.

Only in Darjeeling...
...people sit in the dense fog and watch an entire
soccer match, without knowing what the hell is going
on in the field

Only in darjeeling...
...people go to buy laangshyaa and end up watching
carrom for hours

Only in Darjeeling...
..do you walk through the town once, and meet the same
people ten times

Only in Darjeeling....
....do doodhwalas sell milk with less fat than skim
milk

Only in Darjeeling....
....do the unemployed dress up better than the
employed

Only in Darjeeling...
....the best dishes on the menu in any restaurant are
thukpa and momo

Only in Darjeeling....
.....do you find distance in Kilometres and places in
Miles....Chha mile, Dus mile, Baarah mile, Biis mile

Only in Darjeeling...
...can you jump off a train...take a leak.. and catch
the train again...

Only in Darjeeling...
..the prettiest girl always eloped with a driver

Only in Darjeeling...
Boys carry two different love letters in their back
pockets. Nepali and English written

Only in Darjeeling …
Mann mann mai love mann mann mai break

Only in Darjeeling …
a train gets caught in a traffic jam

Only in Darjeeling...
...do you go to sleep with a bottle of hot water for
warmth in winter....and wake up in the morning and
”daant moluus" with the same water.

Only in Darjeeling...
.....people eat iskus ko munta and jara everyday and not get fed up.

Only in Darjeeling...
.....people go to watch the same movie as many as 15 times.

Only in Darjeeling...
....people will spend all day leaning against the paan dokan, chew pan and
exchange humjayga jokes.

Only in Darjeeling...
....jobless playboys manage to keep 3 girlfriends at the same time.

Only in darjeeling...
...people can sit around the "angaiti" the whole night.

Only in Darjeeling...
.... every teenaged student is attending either the Government College or
North Point.

Only in Darjeeling...
.....can a jeep carry twenty passengers.

only in Darjeeling...
... you can take your date for ek rupee ko aloo bhooja wit tittiri ko jhool at bhola...and make her squeal with delight

only in Darjeeling
...a bawoon and a lama sit together at dara
...and pray for the same god

only in Darjeeling
....at hashel hushel
u will find muslims, nepalis, tibetans, biharis
....beating the same drums

only in Darjeeling
......Singamari taxis carry 8 passengers..4 in the front and four at the back
...driver being the 9th gets to drive on half seat....

2006-04-03T00:06:00.000+05:30

perhaps.......

u turn or dead end?

"Karmanyevadhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachana, Ma karmaphalaheturbhurmate sangostva karmani"

lets play ball.

2006-03-12T22:55:00.000+05:30

THE GREATEST EVER.........

Australia	434-4 (50)	Runs	Balls	4s	6s	SR
A Gilchrist	c Hall b Telemachus	55	44	9	0	125.00
S Katich	c Telemachus b Ntini	79	90	9	1	87.78
*R Ponting	c Dippenaar b Telemachus	164	105	13	9	156.19
M Hussey	c Ntini b Hall	81	51	9	3	158.82
A Symonds	not out	27	13	3	1	207.69
B Lee	not out	9	7	0	0	128.57
D Martyn
M Clarke
N Bracken
S Clark
M Lewis
B Hogg(SS)
Extras: 19 ( b:0 lb:4 nb:10 w:5)
Total: 434-4 (50) \| Curr. RR: 8.68

FOW: A Gilchrist (97-1, 15.2), S Katich (216-2, 30.3), M Hussey (374-3, 46.1), *R Ponting (407-4, 47.4)

South Africa	438-9 (49.5)	Runs	Balls	4s	6s	SR
*G Smith	c Hussey b Clarke	90	55	13	2	163.64
B Dippenaar	b Bracken	1	7	0	0	14.29
H Gibbs	c Lee b Symonds	175	111	21	7	157.66
A Villiers	c Clarke b Bracken	14	20	1	0	70.00
J Kallis	c and b Symonds	20	21	1	0	95.24
M Boucher	not out	50	43	4	0	116.28
J Kemp	c Martyn b Bracken	13	17	0	0	76.47
J Wath	c Ponting b Bracken	35	18	1	3	194.44
R Telemachus	c Hussey b Bracken	12	6	2	0	200.00
A Hall	c Clarke b Lee	7	4	1	0	175.00
M Ntini	not out	1	1	0	0	100.00
J Peterson(SS)
Extras: 20 ( b:4 lb:8 nb:4 w:4)
Total: 438-9 (49.5) \| Curr. RR: 8.79

FOW: B Dippenaar (3-1, 1.2), *G Smith (190-2, 22.1), A Villiers (284-3, 30.5), H Gibbs (299-4, 31.5), J Kallis (327-5, 37.4), J Kemp (355-6, 42.1), J Wath (399-7, 46.3), R Telemachus (423-8, 48.2), A Hall (433-9, 49.3)

NEED I SAY MORE........

THANK YOU SMITH& CO. THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

2006-02-25T09:46:00.000+05:30

VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE…………

It was not a stormy day though it ought to have been. A day with the usual Chennai sun blazing away to glory. Nothing in the air suggested anything untoward. Incidentally it also happened to be Valentine’s Day. Also the first day of our quiz 1. For the fourth semester. The exam for that day was of phase transformation

I always looked forward to my first exam for phase transformation. The reason for this strange yearning lay in the fact that it was going to be my first open book exam. Those people not accustomed to this paradoxical concept, it is an exam in which you are allowed to bring your notes to. Funny, but something we all dream of. The night before the exam I had a terrific time going to every room and mentioning cheekily what a pity it was that they had to work so hard for the next day’s exam. While all I had to do was go through the pages once and ensure I wake up in time.

Well, that little detail about getting up on time did me in. Over confidence led to utter disregard for a certain crucial element- setting the alarm. Under usual circumstances, I have strategically placed alarms in three vantage points in my room. These points were decided on by me after some complex geometrical calculations, for I needed them to be at the farthest positions from where I sleep. Topping the three mechanical alarms, I also repose faith in human alarms. Namely, my wonderful neighbors who happen to believe that getting up early in the morning is a good thing to do. But my pertinent taunting the previous night as mentioned above resulted in them “accidentally” forget that I too needed to be awakened. So much for the human alarms then.

So, in view of this catastrophic failure of my convoluted wake-up buzzer system, it was not surprising that on waking up I was slightly ruffled. The time which my watch dial showed suggested that unless I had been bitten by a radio-active spider or had kryptonite shoved down my throat while I slept the chances of me making to the exam-hall in time was close to naught. Nevertheless, I pulled off an astonishing performance and found myself in the hall only seven minutes late and totally out of breath. I had missed the initial instructions but considered that after all there was nothing more to know about.

I sat on the first row with none of my batch mates in the near vicinity.

Of course, in all this rush, I had not forgotten the all too precious notes. With a song on my lips and mirth in my heart I took up the question paper and glanced through it. Just as I anticipated, it was a piece of cake, rather a slice of pizza as the Italians would put it. Three direct theory-based questions preceded by a long numerical which was the only thing which required me to work the grey cells. The concept based questions required direct lifting of material from the notes. So I wondered the need for having an open book exam. It seemed a futile exercise. It was more like, in terms of Microsoft word a test of one’s copy and pasting skills. On the other hand I told myself not be concerned about such mundane stuff ad rather concentrate on replicating things properly. So I laid out my notes and got down to business. Time flew and before I could realize I had only five minutes and the whole numerical remained to be completed. I had taken so much care to write the rest that my time management suffered significantly. I managed a shoddy solution and submitted the paper. Incidentally, we were also supposed to attach the question paper with it. Something which had escaped my mind altogether. Thankfully, I become conscious of it immediately and asked for my sheets back. Prof Haridoss handed them back and I attached the question paper. On resubmitting began the legendary conversation which will haunt me for a long long time.

He asked,” Have you attached the formulae sheet?”

I replied with a frown,” Which formulae sheet?”

“The one you had with you. The one in which you wrote all the formulas for the exam.”

“I didn’t have one. All the things I required were in my notes”.

“Notes! You mean you had your notes with you? Why?”

“Why? What why? It was an open book exam! That’s why!”

“Open book exam! Who told you that? I had specifically told in class that only formulas were to be brought and then the sheet attached to the answer paper.”

“What! You mean….. You mean…..I mean…..mean…well…..oh god!”

I was speechless. I was without speech.

“Yes, you are right. It was NOT an open book exam. I think someone needs to do some explaining here.”

“Well, basically sir, what I thought was………….”

What happened next is yet another long story. Surprised, stunned, dazed, upset, traumatized, appalled are some adjectives which can barely describe my state then. Prof Haridoss was as shaken as I was. He never knew that ignorance and stupidity could reach such depths. Just imagine. Those 50 minutes in the hall, I happily sat with my notes strewn over the desk copiously noting down the smallest detail and no one even noticed. And not for a second did I comprehend that something was horribly wrong. Whenever, I think about it I can’t help but laugh….To salvage some lost position I did ask him not to mark me for all the theory questions in spite of all this being unintentional.

Nonetheless, from now on I deserve some respect. For I am Sayan. Lord of the Idiots.