1/28/2006

Multitudinal..

Saarang's almost done. Over. Finished. A day to go.
I must agree, a plethora of talent showcast.
Well. Saarang shows how an eclectic combination of art, lit and academics can perhaps try to make a good, well informed individual. Albeit, there are moronic enough people here, altogether insane , who cease to use the opportunity, and are of the belief that mugging in the room is the best avenue saarang offers.

Idiots.

Though I'm not informed of the motivation behind setting up Saarang, or Madigras as it was known earlier, the reason is as guessable as the number of eskimos in North Korea. It's a famous fact that IITians are close to, if not the worst in public speaking. Communication, rather. An average IITian can be a connoisseur of art, perhaps as much as a doped Llama appreciates a Van Gogh. So primarily, as far as an IITian is concerned, its a free of cost program to improve interpersonal skills. Unfortunately, many end up improving their concentration skills. Empathise, friends. Sympathise at least. For living with humans, for records. Only for records.

The ability to solve a transfigured hypercrystallized electrothermophotovoltaic 14 dimensional circuit makes no man.
The ability to watch Venkatasaigirighiranjeevi dancing in Piruthamaathiarthuiachoodu, holding your pee, makes no man either.

Its the ability to make people awe at you, magnetise towards you, make them laugh, with secret jealousy, that get you close to being a man. Of course I'm preaching. I can't do any of that either. But at least I try!
Its after all, appreciation. In real life, you do good only if you appreciate the exquisite nuances of your demand, or thoughts. We live in a society. Beg your pardon, society of men. Not books.
No wonder IITians are so good at research.

Anyways, leaving that 'so damn painfully irritating' part, I enjoyed most of Saarang. No success in any form though. Its allrite. I'm not dejected. I know I'm no good a crowd puller, or an expert. Master of none.
This does keep giving me bouts of inferiority complex, can't help it much though. I want to be the best in what I do. God! Now I empathise with Monica. Apart from all the interesting stuff this fest offered, it more importantly told me how people behave(read change) in a society. How those darned looks differ when accompanied by a couple of new people. How people prioritise. So, it tells me, who my real friends are. And who act to be so, in the non saarang mundane period, which ironically runs for 360 days. It helps me judge people. Yes. I've learnt a lot. In a related bit, I also went through about a 3 hours of trauma, mind shattering experience. Its changed my mind drastically about a few people. Made me lose my sleep for a night. I discussed this only with my best buddy(read Paapi). He empathised with me. Note empathised.

And of course, apart from good events, there was beauty in the campus. Some forced beauty though. Didn't like that. Natural beauty just turns me on. India seriously rocks, in that aspect! T'was time again for inferiority complex. Not a millionth of a penny for guessing why. But that's the way life is. Every dog has its day. Hope and optimism carry life forward. Its just another week after all. The grim getting over Saarang period awaits me.

And all you bastards, who mugged in the room, a million rats on you.

1/22/2006

Game

Guys, have fun.
Girls, pardon me.

Try this.

1/20/2006

Vitto

Well, there are four broad circumstances I write under. One, when I'm happy. Two, when I'm sad. Three, when I'm excited about something. Fourth, when I'm pissed off with something.
(The fifth might come up, when I start getting sloshed..)

I'm writing this, coz I'm happy. The reason pretty small, possibly inane. We have this course called 'Electrical sciences', mainly analog circuits, taken by a prof called by those magical letters.

Vitto.

Man, he's GOD.

He's unarguably the best in analog circuits in IITM, pretty vastly experienced, and his teaching, I feel is surpassed by a few(read none). To begin with, I'll let some of you guys help me find out his psychology. In the first class, he just amazed me again with some of the most contradicting sentences I've ever heard in my life. I cease to find out what kinda person he is, coz he's confused me so much, that I just cannot figure him out. His set of instructions for the course in the first class contained the following..

1) Your department(Mech) has given me only 1 lecture per week, to complete this course, which is not possible. I need 75-80 lectures, which means I have to take a minimum of 4 hours a week, possibly 5. Goddamn, an increase from one to four hours. Dammit.

2) I'll start taking the class 10 minutes before the start time, and continue for 10 min after the hour is up. Whaat.? What does he think of himself..?

3) I need to take classes on saturdays and sundays if possible, if we need to.
Is he out of his head..?

4) The class representative needs to inform me at any cost, if a class is free, so that I can take it.
Madar..!

5) Next, regarding exams, it'll be the quiz-end sem pattern. Only design problems, because you're engineers. No theory. And do not write english in my paper. I want only numbers. I do not like reading. Weirdo..!

6) You'll be given full credit if an answer is wrong, provided the logic is correct, but you'll get zero if you mess up with the units, say megaohms, for ohms, coz those are unforgivable.
Scared..

7) You'll get 100 marks if say, you attempt 80 marks and get them correct, but do not have time for the other 20 marks. Oooh..eccentric..?

8) I want complete discipline in the exam hall. I do not want to hear any sound whatsoever. If anyone's caught, no problems. They just have to repeat the course.
Shit scared.

9) If at any point of time, you happen to leave the hall, for whatsoever reason, straightaway 30 percent of your marks are deducted, and 10 percent for every min after five minutes. And you can be assured, if you go out, there are faint chances you end up passing my course.

10) If someone wants to go to the bathroom, he/she can bring a bottle and do it under my supervision. Freako..!

11) Next, the make up exams. Please do not miss a quiz or an exam in the hope of writing the make up quiz. Make up quizzes are made considerably tougher. Its very difficult for students to do well. Infact, no one has passed my make up exam soo far. Zzzzzz...!

12) Regarding the classes, I do not force you to come. You may or may not come. There's no attendence, but obviously, I advise you to come.

13) You can walk in, or walk out at any point of time, but please do so without disturbing others.

14) You can eat or sleep in the class. I do not mind even the whole of first bench sleeping. Do whatever you want in class, but silently.

Now tell me, what kinda guy is he...? Age wise, pretty old. So I guess a bit of generation gap does exist. But, but, I'm in love with him. Reasons coming...

This whole process, the 15 points above suggest to me, that he respects the students. I mean it. There are hardly profs who respect students. Most of them treat us as if we're at their disposal.
He wants us to learn something. Something concrete. Something we never forget. Something at which we are unbeatable. Well, as far his teaching goes, awe inspiring is the least I can say. I have NOT come across any prof who can put forth points so damn clearly to students as he does. Unshakable concepts.

Requisite for the class - Bull-headed concentration. 100 percent.
In fact, its after his classes that I've learnt what 100 percent concentration takes. All that're there in your world, are the prof, the board, and your notebook. Nothing else. Absolutely nothing else.
You see only the prof, and the board. There was something in his teaching which was unique. Which I have never come across in my life. Which took the past 10 days to find out. The uniqueness lies in his style of teaching. After spending these two weeks, I've noticed that he is the prof who can get closest to 'reading a book'. Man, its totally true..! Imagine this. You have an amazing book with you, which is strong in concepts. Incredibly strong. And that you're blindfolded, and someone's reading the book for you. Continuously. While you're reading a book, you can stop at a place where you feel uncomfortable, or difficult. But with someone dictating, the person cannot be stopped, which is the case with Vitto.

Which means, you gotto have a remarkable concentration, and grasping power. You lose it for a mere 30 seconds, Lo.! You're gone..Gone gone gone..No way you can understand. No way on earth..! I'm sure Spanky agrees with me. And that's why I'm so happy. I have been fighting for first benches in this course, and have been following him perfectly, which just makes me feel so GOOD..! I don't know if this is so very idiotic, or unique to me, but learning from any GOD level prof, and grasping points which I feel my mind couldn't have thought of, makes me just sooo happy..makes me want to jump up...I'm so happy once again..!

Long live Vitto..

1/13/2006

Nicks..

Nicknames.

Well, if there's something common to all IITians, its gotta be this. This traditional practice of assigning nicknames to students, when they come in as freshers, by seniors, will remain an incessant one. Well, to give you an example of how much this is a part of our culture, the inaugural lecture at last year's SHAASTRA, our tech fest, was delivered by a scientist, an IITM alumnus(I forget his name). And he started with 'Hi. I am Fungus.'

Practically, this helps us dispense with the names, and helps in quick bonding. Now, come on, you must agree with me that you'll be closer to a guy when you start calling him 'Pussy' rather than ' Rishab'. The freshers are nicked by the seniors during the initial ragging session, where the underbelly freshies make a stupid or a blatant error in answering a question or an opinion. Let me try going through some of the names, and how funnily they arose.

Nicks arise mainly, as I said earlier, due to the stupidity on the part of freshies.

Senior : What's the capital of punjab?

Freshie: ....(Stays speechless)

Senior : Ok. Whats the capital of Chandigarh?

Freshie : Whaaat..? There's something Fishy there.

I goddamn don't know what he was thinking. But that how it is. So, he got the nick Fishy.

Well, next, my very own roommate, original name ' Sandeep Rajpurohit'..

Senior: Abey, gaaliaan de.

He: Madar.., Bhen.., Chu....whatever whatever..

Senior: Nahin, I want more..many more.

So our dear fella doesn't know what to do..just makes up.

He: L.. chussu, Ga.. chussu, B.. chussu, XX chussu....ended giving up some n chussu's..

Thus the nick, Chussu.( Those who don't know hindi, pardon me)

Well, some nicks are awesome, like POPA, which stands for President of Po.. Affairs, or BOND, Bastard Of Nth Degree, or BOFI, Butt On Fire, while some can only earn pity, like Testis, or Dickhole. Adding on, my very own friend Siva, earned a nick Stokes, as on being questioned by seniors on the flow pattern of his sem$$, he actually started working it out. And another guy , who was nicked RP(Randi putr) as he didn't know who his room father was. Moving on, another incident last year, when a freshie was being ragged.

Senior : Ok. Assume you're an ant. And you are right at the bottom of a girl's body. Describe your motion upwards, in the best of language.

Freshie : Said something arbit in the beginning, and at a point said ' I reached a hill with an antenna on top'. Man! Hilarious. So he was christened Antenna.

Of course there are guys who are nicked by what they do, as my friend Anand, who apparently looked like a duck while walking, thus Ducky, or a senior, who always scratched his ba;;s, thus Scratchy. Or a past incident, as Spanky, coz he admitted to have spanked a girl's butt in 9th.
And Paapi, as he lied to a senior, which was a 'paap'. And my friend, anirudh, when asked for the split up of his body weight, conveniently forgot his ba;;s, thus Photon balls, in short Photon.
And a freshie, when asked for the size of his ..., reportedly said 'Dedh(One and a half in hindi) inch'. Man..! yeah, so damn accurate huh..? So Dedh.

Which reminds me of my original supposed to be nick which was changed. When asked when was the last time I saw p..., I said it was in 10th, as after that I was busy with JEE preparation. So they were so impressed by the control I had that they wanted to nick me LC(Lun@ Control)..! Which was eventually changed in a matter of minutes to CB, and for the reasons, you can ask someone who knows, not me..!

Some other good nicks include Motorola, Trauma, Lace, Sania, Virgin, Caesar, Konsti, STD, MGM, POTA, etc etc.

And some other bad ones include DV, abnorm, piggie, etc..not many..

And some other gross ones include Thika, STD, Lauda, Lando, Laundiya, Chutiyaps, Hymen, Randi, Pussy, Yoni, Gandu, well, lotsa them.

Happy naming..!

1/12/2006

well well..

I just had to put up this again. An awesome post.
Mostly Thoughtless: 2005 : A Crappy New Year