The Weaker Sex

The Weaker Sex (Earlier ‘Varanasi Revisited March 2008’)

“… They called their marriage ceremony off and returned groom back home without marriage because they were asking more dowry than they initially asked for. …”

Refer Indian Express 18^th May special edition news about 3 girls who returned grooms back home.
(Author’s Note: I always think what happened to them. This story reminded me three other stories that I have came across. In this post, I raise a question, not putting my point of view)

I had been wondering all through my education why there were always a section called “woman’s condition” whenever they describe a society in any age or under any ruling? Perhaps the reason is that if woman, the weaker sex, had better condition, then the people at the bottom of the pyramid are treated humanely. When history would read early 21^st century, it would say women were treated equally to men. The sad thing about history is it doesn’t reads below the layer and perhaps for good. See no evil, do no evil.

I find it very visible that female is still suppressed half of society specially after seeing these three real stories.

Story 1 [Bangalore]: An educated, born in respected family, software engineer who lives in a posh area of Bangalore and is a – so called – typical of gentlemen. A guru, supposed to have practical solutions to all real life problems from ‘how to clean carburetor’ to ‘how to find your real love.’ Let us call him Mr. Guru. This story, I found three months before leaving Chennai for Varanasi.

Mr. Guru cites this example of having happiest family life that “he” built. The example has big part as his initial marriage life which is full of frequent beating of his wife to straighten her out to make her follow his way. And when father-in-law interfered, he said that she was either a daughter or a wife, if father thought that she was his daughter take her to her paternal home, else – let him to handle her. One time in the story, Guru makes a comment that is rather explicit to mention here, where he says she liked beatings at some other times. And asks the audience why the father shied away when he mentioned this fact (Likely, this might be a fake to spice the story up)? At this moment, pupils (listener) make a laugh and agree. Supposedly, few months of beating made his wife a good woman. And they lived happily ever after.

Story 2 [Chhattisgarh]: This guy is a heavy drinker, almost lost his job due to alcoholism, once, but being in a government office no one expelled him. He was married eight years ago when he was presented as a responsible, educated and real shy guy from a very reputed family background. We will call this guy, the Drunkard.

The next month after wedding the wife of Drunkard reported his habit of drinking and occasional slapping and beating which were ignored by wife’s family as initial unsettlement. Then later Drunkard got notice of being expelled from office because of absenteeism (as the wife reported, it was due to husband’s alcohol love). Although that didn’t take his job away and he had started drinking heavily. The wife found out he had been a big drunkard and lazy even before the marriage. Beating was a daily routine now and more brutal.

Wife’s family, afraid of her life, took her back home; kept her happily for seven years. Now, she had become a social shame and financial burden to her parent. Moreover, second marriages are more a loose character issue than a symbol of ability to take strong steps in India. So no one would marry her. She went back to Mr. Drunkard.

I met her on the way to Varanasi. On asking how Mr. Drunkard behaves now, she replied this is a part of life all she hoped that he would stop daily beating, someday and she didn’t care whether he kept on drinking.

Story 3[Varanasi]: The guy is a philanderer, married at 32, a typical of UP guy, full of ego on nothing – a government employee. The relationship went smoothly with wife for almost six months until the girl wasn’t pregnant. Afterwards, the guy’s skirt chasing became visible to blind eyes. Call this guy, Womanizer.

Womanizer used to squander all of his money on women, took debts from friends and finally wife paid. This cycle went on until a big fight between the couple, the guy left home leaving his wife alone in last months of pregnancy. The girl didn’t call anyone until the condition became critical on the day of baby’s birth.

Girl brought back to paternal home for couple of months, the guy never showed up for next few months. After few months, the initial decision to leave the guy and live independently seemed to be against social security as well as social reputation. Remarriage was impossibility in UP and remarriage with a girl carrying a baby is next to impossible.

Now (when I was in Varanasi), my friend was describing that the girl’s parent and the girl were agree to send the girl back to Mr. Womanizer on his terms. The guy was tightening all the bolts to make sure that his side of business kept running.

The question is whether the glass is half filled or half empty? Are we correct when we say marriage is an institution - A custom that for a long time has been an important feature of some group or society? Aren’t we forcing to see half full glass? Is it possible that glass is actually half empty? Is it true, by our animal behavior, that female is, in fact, the weaker sex?

Reply: Uneducated Literates

Rarely you get a comment that is a mix of suggestion, criticism, answer and question. Here is one and I really liked it. Reply to this comment would be so explanatory and justified (may be controversial) that I could brainstorm in discussion for hours. Here is the comment posed on my previous post Uneducated Literates and follows my reply.

You went for nightouts for your projects, you studied and toiled with all reverence and you landed up doing a job where mere diploma-holders could suffice. Who asked you to do a job like this? Who stopped you from doing R&D? Who asked you to join the herd of sheep or that of penguins for that matter? The answer is simple dude, its "you"!! You could have sought a challenging career even as a photographer, you could have excelled as school teacher with all your knowledge. But no, you from the very beginning were after something else. And let me give you a simple suggestion my friend, very few places give you both of what you seek. So, stop cribbing about what companies are doing, because you yourself are in that very mess(i suppose). Go and join CERN if you want to do some high-level research and drill down your brain to the brink. You are talking about India as a country, look at yourself dude, "you" are India and so are all of us. Cribbing is the favorite sport for Indians. So let Mr.S be happy with what he is doing, rather stop your whole body from burning and do some good.

-Anonymous Comment


I am not sure what you mean by 'cribbing', I use cribbing for copying. But from the context that you are talking about, I feel you mean 'frustration outburst' when you use cribbing. So, lets take one-by-one bottom up questons of yours.

First thing, I am not writting something that is a consequence of some 10 minute frustration and I shed it down on blog. Yes, I was frustrated at the very moment when Mr. S described, but afterthought made me realize that the dream he was running behind could have been achieved some three years back, plus he would have been a specialized in the work he was planning to do.


If he could have joined a NIIT J2EE Expert course, he could have been learning technology specifications for 2 years, a certification from Sun and we would have had a strong Java developer. He could have add-on more expertise during his career.


The problem here is career guidelines are hazy. We follow mob psychology, so if Mr. S's cousine did his B.E. in Civil Engineering then he joined Infosys, and now, after 3 years in Infosys, he is on on-site assignment in USA. We follow that path blindly without looking at inefficiencies in that. And, actually, that's justified for it is verified. But... had there been a open minded thinking over the process, you see a guy learnt Civil Engineering for 4 years, does some hefty swift course for a quater of a year that enables (and perhaps specially made to enables) him to clear Infosys interview process. Do you find it smooth? I do not.

The same could have been achieved in a better and effective way. People know that Civil Engineering isn't paying. And if paying, it's not the craze. It is not the one where mob push lies. And moreover, we have tracked path to USA with the guy's brother as example. I ask why would anyone bother trying anything new? (Although it saves few years.)

It itches when you see all these potential, who could have started adding values long-back, is doing interview passer courses that enable them earn 8000 INR/month. And then they wait clock to tick away 2 years so that, they can apply a job where they ask 2+ experience.
It is too procedural. It is boring. Are we having all these branches, engineering colleges estabilished and mashrooming up to produce software engineers? You cant deny the preciding statement. And if you agree, then I ask another question. Is it correct? Isn't it a removable inefficiency. All my post says why dont we have courses that creates software professionals by keeping courses based on real market demand, instead of openning engineering degree colleges that make Biotechnologists, Mechanical engineers who later become software developers.


Now let's take on why I stress people doing diploma in engineering instead of degree. I am not sure whether you are following or not Ranbaxy is in rumour for ownership change. There have been long debates about IP, about patents, R and D and about egnineering and pharma grads. The main thing out of this story, India is a developing country with lot of cheap labour and heavy natural resources. It is economically favorable to be a producer than being inventor, at least for the present times. To be a producer you do not need engineering grads, or at least, you do not need bulk of engineers because you are importing alrerady-in-use technology from some foreign country which is well verified and approved. The technology won't break on daily basis in a manner that need engineering skills, all it need diploma guys who can manage them efficiently without getting frustrated. And, if you want to know the truth, India's current biggest automobile manufacturer RnD unit is a joke.


Let come back to "me" being India part. You are correct that we are the youth of the nation - we drive the country. I have that realization. I did had childhood dream of having my own version of R2D2, could be easily achieved by joinind Honda or probably I may go for higher education, some heavy duty RnD. I like those stuffs. But it is hard to stay sane when see lies opening up. You go mad when you see the best of our country labs are miles behind the sophistication they claim. You break to find out some of really nice labs are as useful as Pandora Box because of several reasons.

It is frustrating to see misguided talents and at the same time to find out misused resources and bubble boasts. So, who told me work in mob's way? I reply, I decided. I chose not to work in an area where we aren't frontiers. I decided to accumulate talent and streamline them. I dream to make an invention driven, innovation mativated environment. I look for the next big thing. And that is why I decided not to go for CERN but to create another CERN. Are you with me?

-Nishant

SLOG: Uneducated Literates

SLOG: Uneducated Literates
SLOG means Small bLOG

Mr. S is my roommate, a nice guy, about to complete his bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering in next one month. One day during talk I asked how his project work was going. He replied that he, like other guys, had paid INR 18,000 to some company which would create a project for him, work on it and before the presentation; they would finish the project and give the software with document and presentation to him. All he would need to do is read through the presentation during the seminar.

On asking the knowledge of this fact to the professors he replied that everyone knows and all the students do this.

I had got burned from my top to bottom listening this, but after giving a thought I found out that this phenomenon is almost omnipresent in India. The education is just a tag; it is not a meter of knowledge. And for the developing country like India, it is job what matters at the end of the day. And for a job you do not need to perspire on a useless project that is, anyways, going to be assumed to be a fake owing to the massive fake CV culture.

We don’t have massive demand of technical guys at R and D level for the reason that we are not at technological forefront as a country, so we don’t have companies doing research. All we have is companies that buy the technology and they need technical guys who can just take care of the process as an inspector. For doing so, you don’t need a project to be done. In fact, you don’t even need a technical degree; a diploma would be just as fine. So what is the purpose of going through night outs for a lousy worthless project?

I do not understand why we have so many degree colleges, especially in technical fields when all we need is diplomas. We need persons who can understand technology and work on them effectively. This requirement is completely fulfilled by a diploma holder. And a diploma gives you early job opportunity. After your high school (std 10), go for a three year diploma course. Done, you are a jobseeker at the age at the age as low as 17 years.

I do not understand why even after knowing the reality we don’t change, why education is more like a blind man showing path to another blind man or rather it behaves like a herd of sheep or perhaps, thousands of penguins at the edge of iceberg.

SLOG: To Mr. Tharoor

SLOG: To Mr. Tharoor
SLOG means Small bLOG

March 30^th, 2008, in Sunday Times in his column, Mr. Shashi Throor writes a fiction, “An IIT graduate walks near a pond, gets a speaking frog that requests and then begs to kiss it so that it can turn into a real beautiful loving princes. The IITian guy replies that he has got no time for girls but a talking frog is cool.” [Rephrased from: Why some engineers become terrorist]

For your kind information, Mr. Tharoor, engineers are frustrated variety of human being. A kind of people, who get frustrated when everything is the way as they wanted, for the reasons why everything have to be in their way; and the other way, they have got reasonable reason.

They are frustrated. If there is no work, they feel wasting life, if too much work then a slave. And in case there is good work-life balance, then they feel making no positive impact on the world by living like any other Tom, Dick or Harry.

Mr. Tharoor, frustration is the 47^th chromosome that an engineer adds up in its DNA during education. This chromosome pairs up with 48^th chromosome as terrorism in later phase of its life. Now, depending on dominating circumstances, either the engineer turns into more common spouse torturer or less common terrorist.

I am pretty much sure that you must have never been to pond for a walk. If you go, you may find some engineer catching every second frog and kissing to get a possible princess convertible frog.

-Nishant

SLOG: Dogs and Long Hairs

SLOG: DOGS AND LONG HAIRS
SLOG means SMALL BLOGS

Annanagar is a decent posh area of Chennai. Everyone, from people to dogs, is friendly unless you are weird in their sense.

I love walking on the wide and beautifully brighten dead late night roads of Annanagar. It feel good when cool wind blows against me, for the reasons it feels soothing and it feels nothing less than a Hollywood hero (who appears against dark horizon after having deadly fight with werewolves), when you see your shoulder blade reaching hairs waving in air without any constrain.

But, that was my description, a person who owns long hairs. For a decent and totally non-drug-addicted dog, it is stranger than fiction to find out a six feet long walking Hydra with his active one foot long tentacles being super excited to see living being dwelling around for a good dinner. This dog makes sure he wasn’t hallucinating and decides to save human race from this over grown Hydra. He follows me closely.

I, completely unknown to the dog’s psyche, feel something’s following and growling. I turn back to find out a dog, barely inches behind my leg with its jaw open. I start a panic run. The dog, now completely sure of the evil, runs behind me… and then I pick some pebble from road throws back to the dog that hits it in its ribs. It runs away. Phew…

Suddenly, it reappears out of nowhere, jumping on my legs to catch a fleshy part and pull down the villain. Now, I – out of my wits – also start jumping. I don’t know what to do and never remember afterwards what I did. But somehow three-four security guards appear from the nearby ATMs and I am saved – barely.

This is one of the three similar occurrences on that day. And that day was one of many similar days when I leave the office late without hair band.

Terror Trips: 2

Terror Trips – Bangalore Bruises (Part 2)
This story runs into 2 parts. Read Part 1>>

With my laptop in hanging side bag (hanging to left) and my airbag hanging to right, I started running up the flyover. At the top, I found it was barricaded. ‘Shit!’ I almost shouted watching I have lost one more minute and then thought that I wouldn’t go back via subway. I just jumped over the barricade. And then broke into a run.

It must have been very funny seeing a plump jelly bag running with two bags jumping by the side of it in perfect synchronization. A good example for a physics student to explain how forced oscillation works. But I was not in image makeover mood. The last thing I wanted this time was a phone call (not really, nature’s call could have been the worst). And it did ring. I cut it.

I was by the side of the road. (“Use subway.” you are not supposed to cross road here – the black painted words on yellow isosceles triangular board were barking on me.) ‘Now I need to cross the road, jump over high divider, then run through the parking, cross ticket booking counter, look at the electronic board for platform number, cross the over bridge to get to the appropriate platform. Get into any of the coaches. And the rest would be dealt later.’ I was straightening up the plan.

I was amazed by the speed I ran. It was 11:42 when I reached here.

I had got stuck now; vehicles on the road were not getting me any chance to cross the road. For a moment I thought I couldn’t do it because all I had was three minutes in hand and a job which was daunting for a spineless serpent. Then I recalled Uncle’s formula, ‘desperate conditions need desperate measures.’

You can call me extremely lucky because I ran through the road without even looking on coming vehicles. All I realized was Marla Singer from Fight Club (2002) movie was right and I should not follow these kind movies!

Now I was on the station side of the road and no big boundary to break, so I ran without caring who I bump into. It was 11:44, I was near information center. Surprise! All the information boards were black. No information about any train. Which platform should I go? Without wasting any other moment I ran to platform one expecting the display there would be working. Alas! Blank screen! “No, it cannot happen to me. I still have one minute in hand.” I was aggressive this time. (Which is the rarest of my emotions, for most of the time I am depressive.) I could see trains on platform 2 but cannot read the number of the train from platform one. I jumped climb over the flyover that connects platforms when I reached at the top I could see that trains were there on each of the platform 2, 4, 5 and 6. And no display was working on any of the platforms or on the flyover on which I was.

‘I cannot climb down each platform check and climb up until I get right train. If my train is on platform six, I would surely loose this way.’ I thought and I ran on the flyover and reached to a place right above platform two. I started shouting to people standing on platform two, ‘Hey! Hey you! Hey Man! Bro! Oye!’ No reply. I ran down to platform two to find out that it wasn’t the train I wanted. I asked one fruit vendor at the platform about the train. He thought for two or three precious moments and said, “may be on platform five.”

I was high on adrenaline, I had almost ready to do the most courageous task at the moment. It was 11:44 when I was on platform one, I did not know how much more seconds I had got before the train would whistle and depart. I didn’t have luxury to think and evaluate the risk associated with going via flyover (which may risk catching the train) and going through the rails, crossing one standing train which may move any second (which may risk my life). I chose the second one.

Jumped, crossed the rails with my head turning left to right frequently and horribly looking for any clue of any coming train. Then I crossed through the standing train. And here I was on platform five. The digital clock says 11:45. The train before me was 6221 Chennai Express. I asked Ticket Inspector, confirmed with travelers, and reached to my compartment. The birth was empty. I jumped over it and lied down. Curled myself in, perhaps, a perfect circle the way balances forces make perfect circle of a head to tail tied string when it is put into soap bubble to show tenth standard guys an example of surface tension. I started feeling pains and response from different parts of my body which was never ready for a Die Hard kind of adventure.

My thighs were thumping hard like drum skin, gut was wrenching. I found that I had smaller lungs than I needed at that time. I was breathing heavily. I was drenched in sweat and was dying of thirst. I was the least of the surprises of the day to find out that I forgot to take water bottle. I wasn’t angry rather I was very calm. Perhaps I was too happy with myself or perhaps I didn’t have enough energy left in me to be angry, whatever.

I think the next time I would plan Bangalore trip carefully.

---- The End ----

Terror Trips: 1

Terror Trips – Bangalore Bruises (Part 1)
This story runs into 2 parts. Link for Part 2 >>

This was the fourth time in last six months – every time with more commitment to make it more organized and fruitful the next time and, evidently, ending up doing exactly opposite. This story is about my last trip to Chennai from Bangalore.

First time, in September, Chennai Central railway station 4 o’clock in the morning Saturday, I had no idea what to do – one thing I knew that I had to go to Bangalore today, at any cost. I was lucky got Shatabdi express at six.
Returning was the same. Sunday, Clueless on Majestic bus stop Bangalore. A cunning broker gunned me down for twice of the cost for a private bus seat. I took countless big red etching spots all over my body as a souvenir for one full week by bed-bugs provided by the bus service.
‘Organize the next time’, I decided.

Second time, first week of December, coming back from Mysore trip, I cut short the trip detoured to Bangalore while coming back. I reached there with very foul feeling in my stomach.
Returning ticket was at quarter to twelve on Sunday. Unclear whether I’d get a bus at that much late night from the place where I stayed (which is a remote area), so I left the place at nine and reached at the station at ten. Rest hundred and five minutes I kept on counting – counting number of pillars on the platform, counting numbers of LEDs in the big digital watch etc.

Third time, December end, perfect plan – got up and down journey tickets reserved by bus. Came by bus without any warm clothes, at morning 5 o’clock I reached to Bangalore almost half dead by cold. I had two glasses of hot tea before starting from bus stop to Nihar’s place.
While returning, surprisingly, I lost the return ticket and when reached to the bus stop (without ticket), I found the bus stop was too confusing that when I got to the place where the bus stands it had already left ten minutes ago. Withdrew money from and overly crowded ATM, re-reserved in next bus which came seventy five minutes later.

The fourth time – this time I have got up and down train reservation one week in advance which was in waiting but had got confirmed by the journey day. Left office at 7:30, planned to catch a bus from nearby bus stop to my place at 08:30. I thought that I had too much time, but I was panic before I could reach to my place. It was 08:30, I had not packed yet. There was no guarantee that I would get a bus from the nearest bus stop (from my place) for the railway station. And even if I got one, I wouldn’t be able to get the train which was scheduled to leave at 09:30 at night.

Sijju Joy came to rescue. I asked him if he would be able to ride me up to the train station in ‘FIFTY’ minutes. He misunderstood it with ‘fifteen’ minutes and took it as a challenge and asked me keep watch of the time.

Chennai roads were very busy and full of one-ways that makes a rule following excellent bike driver to take a minimum of thirty minutes to reach from my place to the station.

Sijju told me that if there is no traffic police he would do all the malpractice to make the trip shorter than fifteen minutes duration. Then he started. He saved times by turning using smaller radius at higher speed and at highest possible inclination, sometime by jumping over red light which was green a moment ago, some other time by overtaking the vehicles from wrong side, some time by escaping from very narrow gap between two vehicles and sometime just by shouting on the preceding rider for neither riding fast nor giving pass. And once he drove through a one way from wrong side.

I was sure that the ride was going to end well within fifteen minutes. At the end of fifteen minutes either we would be dead or on the station – in any case Sijju was going to keep the promise of making the trip within 15 minutes.

I reached safely with my heart exploding inside my rib cage. Thanked Sijju for helping me out in such an odd time. (And also for not killing me)

Returning was weird. It was GP’s job treat – Barbeque Nation Hotel, enjoyed, overate and at the end of the dinner we realized that returning to Nihar’s place, packing and then running to rail station by bus would be a sure shot method to get late for the return train. So, Nihar triple rode – GP and I were looking curiously for any traffic police who could catch us, so that Nihar could strategically run away. We reached back Nihar’s place safely.

When I got the bus from Nihar’s place to railway station, it was five minutes to eleven. The train was at 11:45; and in general it takes more than an hour for a bus to reach from Nihar’s place to train station. It may take fifty minutes or less because it was night – I thought for a moment and then, instead of abandoning the journey, I took the risky decision to take bus and try and fail (or pass). Bus ran unexpectedly fast and I was there at the closest bus stop to railway station at 11:36 as the station’s tower clock said. I was yet around half a kilometer away from the station.

If you haven’t seen me recently, you can assume me as a plastic bag full of jelly, the way you think blob may look like or perhaps boneless cheek flesh stuffed in closed skin. And note that sports and me are antithesis. Now this piece of utterly lazy meat was in pathetic condition. I was in a sport challenge without practice. The distance that I take 30 minutes to cross, I had only nine. I jumped from the bus and was confused because I didn’t jump where the stop is, I jumped before it to save time, to make short cut but the place seemed to nowhere connecting to the way to the station. I ran in Brownian motion, sticking from all possible knowledgeable blokes in my circle of visibility – in the same manner nucleophile searches for a positive rich site in an organic reaction. Finally started running towards the way where the bus would have gone had I not jumped out of that. Reached to the place where bus was stopped. I got it. Yeah. This was the subway that connects bus stop to the station.

11:39 tower clock said. ‘Now I would go through it to reach the other-side – the railway station side. But wait. Remember? The last time when you came here it was closed half the way. No I wouldn’t take risk. I would use the flyover and then cross the road. But it is rule violation. Let’s risk it. I had nothing to lose.’ I thought these things in nanoseconds or perhaps picoseconds whatever.

Read part 2 >>

B.U.F.Y. 11: THE END?

Baby, Uncle and the Final Year (B.U.F.Y.) 11: THE END?
Links for Part1, Part2, Part3, Part4, Part5, Part6, Part7, Part8, Part9, Part10
[This is the last part of the series]

F**k you Tavant Technologies: Tavant Technologies is one of the worst things that ever happened to me – they are one big cheat. On 27^th of April they informed us that our joining date is December the 10^th, which means six months of unemployment – or in other words, they were saying that they have hired us but they aren’t capable to pay us so we should get out in the market searching another job for ourselves.

There are many aspects of this organization which I knew from my different sources inside Tavant at the time.

1. Their major (perhaps only) client which accounted for 70% of the revenue had pulled off their project from Tavant.
   
   
2. At the point of out recruitment, a wave of resignation was dominating inside Tavant. Their recruitment spree was a fail-safe, or may be a show off.
   
   
3. They didn’t have the courtesy to respond to our queries.
   
   
4. HRM never talked to our Training and Placement in-charge, in fact, they rudely behaved with Professor Sinha. Professor had got pissed off but he couldn’t ban the organization from Training and Placement. I do not understand this. Perhaps it was heavy load of getting higher placement percentage or ignorance or lack of gut, which refrain him from blacklisting Tavant. All we could get out of him is ‘wish you all the very best in your future endeavors’ which I readily translated into ‘guys, see I have thousands of other important things to do than cleaning the mess that you have made. Go get yourself something that suits you and get off my back. I, hereby, declare my surrender.’
   ‘You are lesser of the two evils, sir. Thank you for not wasting our time.’ I thought.
   
   
5. When we came down to Bangalore, we met this really friendly employee of the company who advised us that we are luckier not to join the company.
   

And for my miserable sixty days, I will never forgive Tavant Technologies.

See you Kgp: May 10, 2007, I was a winner. My presentation was one of the best and my guide was personally congratulated by the invited invigilator. After presentation my guide called and congratulated me for a really great presentation and asked me whether I would like to work more on the project and get it published in technical journal? I denied. Had you asked me, one day before this day, about my professor, I would have told you he one of those non-believers who thought students can never do anything worthwhile. But now, he kept on appraising and I melted.

Throughout Kharagpur’s life, I have been blaming this institute for the reason that except for the days of Robotics events, my life was too static there – doing nothing, there was nothing else that kept me interested there. I was one of those guys who dragged the years of their higher education second by second, or may be millisecond by millisecond. Still, leaving Kgp was a painful experience. Once it was decided that we have to leave, we were fractioning every second to get the maximum out of it. We were trying to pull the sun hard to prevent the end of each remaining day. But then one day, no one knows when it came, we were moving out. To my disbelief, it hurt.

Ask me three best things in IIT Kharagpur. I would say,

1. Central Library: The richest library, I have ever seen. I was in absolute love with this place from the first day when I saw it and the love kept on growing. Anything and everything, you can get on pages, were there. Muse yourself, explore anything you want, surprise yourself. It is one of the least utilized resources of IIT Kharagpur. Majority of Kgp think that it is good for nothing, I certainly couldn’t convince them but neither could they to me.
   
   
2. Robotics: I had this wish to own one of my R2D2 robot. Frustrated as anyone with that kind of wish could be, when he comes to Kgp to find a white elephant namely, iLab which runs IIT’s robotics society headed by a know nothing Tuglaq – Prof. CS Kumar. It is one of the examples of how bad an organization can become when its values are rotten by student politics of accruing certificate for doing nothing but praising seniors and professors; and whose sources of inspiration, the professors involved, are busy in self appraisal. It reminds me Defence Against the Dark Arts Professor, Gilderoy Lockhart from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
   
   I was lucky enough to find two really serious guys who were damn interested in Robotics and extremely hard working. They were confident of making a robo-servant, R2D2. I feel myself really blessed to have them with me. They are G. Vijaysagar and Kiran C. I admire them.
   
   It used to be high time for us; once the problem for institute’s national level robotics competition problem is out. It is, usually, start of November when we start thinking, January is full of work and excitement. February start is anxious because we used to have only a few days to the competition. And somehow we would manage to finish our robot by the day and have something, really, to be proud of.
   
   We started from 2^nd year failed to even make a working robot this time, learnt it a very hard way of failures. We were at a point of being breaking off after this failure, but then situation stabilized when we did some projects and participated in some other robotics events. Finally, got prepared to win the 1^st prize the next year and then again next year.
   
   I used to resurrect in every November to die again in coming February from 2^nd year to 4^th year.
   Amazing days… huh, all I wanted to do is to make a team with my wing-mates but they had other priorities – I was a dreamer.
   
   I still am.
   
   
3. LAN: Hardly anyone can deny that Local Area Network (LAN) was one of the list toppers for everyone’s ‘Things I miss after IIT Kharagpur’ list. It was alive, dynamic. Like the library, anything that you can wish for a computer can hold, is there on the LAN.
   
   Aladdin must be jealous of IIT Kharagpur’s LAN. For everything, Kgp is dedicated to the service of Nation but the LAN. LAN is dedicated to service of the students, in all possible ways.
   MOTD: Bow to the mighty little green Dinosaur.

E for enjoy Electronic City: June 2007, with the clear picture that Tavant had screwed us, Uncle and I were calculating our chances of getting a job in next 30 days. Later we knew that we were wrong with our initial assumption of 30 days.

It was 06:30 PM at Electronic City, Nihar and GP were back from their office. Uncle and I were sitting on the Hall bed waiting of their question what we did that day (for job search). I was frustrated because I knew that we did nothing that could assure them that I had moved one step ahead in the quest of my job search. And they did ask. I was thirteen year old again and my father asking how I managed to fail in History. Although, in both the cases, they were thinking the best for me, but I felt like micro organism being viewed with single weak naked eyes of a giant from over the universe. And just then, my phone rang, I ran to the roof with the mobile. It was fierce wind with drizzling. Opposing wind, then, felt like saying that everything is against me.

I clicked to pick the phone, the first few letters that spilled out of the receiver, were ‘Student life is over, dude!’ It was Saumya Kant Sahoo, trying to make me realize that the time has come to put off the pink glasses. It was more a sort of irritating babble which followed this line and I, really, never cared what he said after this line. It was a sort of chanting that had started running into my mind – out of my control – ‘Student life is over, dude!’

Standing on the roof of the four storied building, sky grayed with depressed watery clouds, with cold wind to trying to throw me out of the roof, lights in neighborhood coming alive one by one, the balloon at e-Inn and I were strongly in conflict with the environment with our (balloon and me) feet steady on the ground (assuring each other) and then, suddenly, the surrounding buildings started shattering down one by one as someone had put a mass destruction plan all over Electronic City and here it goes, as end scene of the movie ‘Fight Club’, with loud heavy guitar with lyrics
‘ With your feet in the air and your head on the ground
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
Your head will collapse
But there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself

Where is my mind ...’

……. End of the Series …….

B.U.F.Y. 10: Ready to fly, Ready to fight

Baby, Uncle and the Final Year (B.U.F.Y.) 10: Ready to fly, Ready to fight

Links for Part1, Part2, Part3, Part4, Part5, Part6, Part7, Part8 , Part9(Links to future parts will be available in comments)

Dhoti, Kurta and Bang-Bang: In fifth year, we were able to create a new synergy among the people of 5^th year Mechanical Engineering of Manufacturing Systems and Engineering (by ‘we’, I mean all fourteen students and all professors who taught us that year.) This used to be a dysfunctional, throw mud on others group. I kind of started feeling a personal attachment with the group and the year ended too soon to relish.

We decided that all of us fourteen would wear dhoti and Kurta on the last exam of our last year of the course. Arrangement were made, dhotis and Kurtas were brought from Gol Bazaar from a shop which provides clothing for drama groups. They were distributed to every person. Cameras were checked, rechecked. We were kind of fearless from the exam, so we went with minimal preparation of exam that made sure that we did not fail - the bare minimum.

In morning, between a lot of confusion and hubbub, we started moving to examination hall from our hostels – five minute after the exam had started. We reached to the examination hall at 9:10 to find out that none of us were there in the hall – AND IT HAD ALREADY BEEN 10 MINUTES SINCE THE EXAM HAD BEGUN. But as I said, we had become fearless by then. So we asked the invigilator to come in. And here comes the show stopper – the party pooper professor releasing a fatwa of either to go back change the cloths with something more sober (and I used to think that Dhoti-Kurta was an Indian dress!) or come next year again but sober.

We all hurried up to the nearest toilet. Fourteen people inside the toilet hall – all changing cloths – was a bit uncomfortable for the people who were already in there relieving themselves. They left the toilet immediately with a weird look and fake smile as if they were saying, ‘what a nuts!’ We did not deny.

Wrote the paper and we all came out around half an hour before the final bell rang, buried the question paper in a hope that ‘may god provide peace their poor souls, which always bear the burden of turning a normal person into anything but sane, on a mere flick of a professor’s hand.’

We went back to the same bathroom – all fourteen again – shooed off everyone inside, changed into Bengali Dhoti-Kurta and roamed around the campus, Clicked every single corner of campus wherever our legs took us. Had a nice lunch at Harrys, talked all big air-castle plan around our near future. Obviously, we were far beyond the ground reality when everyone of were claiming that they know the world out there.

I was just 22 days away to learn the first lesson of “ground reality” when I boasted my semi-truth claim of ‘I know because I have seen!’ (And tighten my neck as a proud crane.)

I am attaching few snaps that you may find interesting.

Uncertain goodbye: I thought it to be a joke when Uncle came to my room dry mouthed, half worried and gasping to inform me that Nitisha and he were provided with a joining date of December 10, 2007 by Tavant Technology which was the same organization I was placed in. I thought it as a trifle matter that would be solved by some talking. And I wasn’t much involved until I had got the same.

I was ignorant until I realized that IIT Kharagpur’s Training and Placement department was as feeble as we were. All they could do was to say ‘we hope the best for your future endeavors.’ The moment these words came out of Professor Sinha – the then TnP in-charge, I felt like someone punched a powerful kick into my gut, I was on periphery again. All plans were subdued. When everyone else were calling home to inform that they would come on the certain date, I was playing juggling with my plans, spreading a confusion whether I would go home or Bangalore – switching back and forth, I was one poor soul asking for mercy from someone whom I did not know for something which I did not do. I was desperately searching for panic button.

B.U.F.Y. 9: Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Baby, Uncle and the Final Year (B.U.F.Y.) 9: Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Links for Part1, Part2, Part3, Part4, Part5, Part6, Part7, Part8 (Links to future parts will be available in comments)

Uncle’s Bear Bottle Bottom-up: With yet another treat by Bio-Techies for the reason of why-do-we-need-a-reason-for-after-placement-party. Uncle came, drunk, straight to my room and announced aloud that he had managed to drink a full bear bottle without getting sleep in between. For your information, Uncle used to be a great drinker in his boasts only. Uncle had this habit to doze off after having half a bottle of bear, at most. I disbelieved and continued listening Iron Maiden. Uncle left the room in frustration.

Half an hour later, late in mid night, Baby knocked the door to go and check whether Uncle was alive. Uncle was watching South Park with immense concentration and was cutting the skin near to his thumb’s root. (It always gave me creep!) We sat next to him and kept bugging until he shut the show and was ready to dance on ‘Namak Ishq Ka’ song. (I really amazed how we had come to this decision.)

Dancing, dancing… suddenly half the way of the song, I didn’t know what came to Uncle’s drunk brain, he popped his shaking bums out (as if it wasn’t a part of his body) and pulled his tracks down showing his bare posteriors. I certified that Uncle had had a full bear bottle inside his belly.

This was the third time in two semesters when Uncle did it without any regret in future. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention the second time. It was the time when Dharmu came to Kgp for our placement treat and Uncle made a camera captured show of his pee-pee.

Uncle, Baby, Kgp’s Psycho and all about ‘Indian Flag on Mars’: Very few notice that the iron giant of Frankenstein age that stands next to Tagore Open Air Theatre (TOAT) near IIT Kharagpur institute gate is supposedly a coal refining plant. It is a group three great tin cylinders, one main cylinder of 25 – 30 feet height and 2 feet diameter is accompanied by two relatively smaller ones in height and diameter. All the three were having a conical cap at the top, like a chimney. The main cylinder had pipes connecting it to the auxiliary ones and a big iron pipe coming out of the main cylinder and going into the ground by making three weird elbow turns. The color was Communist Red with rusty red variation in hue which was giving it a perfect look of a ‘once a great technology now abandoned’ look. (Unfortunately, it was painted with water-proof shiny color in mid 2007)

With our now (after placement) more frequent visits to staff canteen and Nescafe, we happened to talk about this ferrous crap occasionally – comparing with all kind of thing that could remotely look like this (believe me you are not going to like if I tell you all the stuffs we compared it with). Uncle and I came up with this fantasy story about ‘Did Indians Land on the Mars?’ It was a conspiracy theory, which proves that Indians actually went to Mars in AD 1952 much before USA guys claimed to flag Lunar. We, actually, had a plan to create a video documentary on it but could not.

The theme follows closely with ‘Did we land on the moon?’ except the motive. This documentary proves that Indians did land on the Mars contrary to the mentioned one. The story goes something like this.

Characters:

R and D Center: IIT Kharagpur.

Chief Design Engineer: Prof M. Ramanujam. (Mechanical Engineering Department)

Astronauts:

1. The mad Bengali Communist whom you can see shouting on the road with a side cloth-bag. Legends tell that he was a research scholar at the institute when he got lunatic (or marsite). Since then he never left IIT Kgp campus somehow managing his living necessities. One can easily find him near Harrys’, barking in Bengali mixed English – some time on real big issues like American monopoly and intrusion in Iraq.
   
   
2. A weird red dog. It was one of those dogs that give you a shiver in spine – not because they are monstrous but because they look like one of those Resident Evil dogs. You feel pity and angry at the same time.

The Martian: Imagine someone whom you enjoy to torture.

Continue reading >>>

Did Indians Land on the Mars?

Did Indians Land on The Mars? - A Documentary

Very few notice that the iron giant of Frankenstein age that stands next to Tagore Open Air Theatre (TOAT) near IIT Kharagpur institute gate is supposedly a coal refining plant. It was a group three great tin cylinders, one main cylinder of 25 – 30 feet height and 2 feet diameter - was accompanied by two relatively smaller ones in height and diameter. All the three were having a conical cap at the top, like a chimney. The main cylinder had pipes connecting it to the auxiliary ones and a big iron pipe coming out of the main cylinder and going into the ground by making three weird elbow turns. The color was Communist Red with rusty red variation in hue which was giving it a perfect look of a ‘once a great technology now abandoned’ look. (Unfortunately, it was painted with water-proof shiny color in mid 2007)

With our now (after placement) more frequent visits to staff canteen and Nescafe, we happened to talk about this ferrous crap occasionally – comparing with all kind of thing that could remotely look like this (believe me you are not going to like if I tell you all the stuffs we compared it with). Uncle and I came up with this fantasy story about ‘Did Indians Land on the Mars?’ It was a conspiracy theory, which proves that Indians actually went to Mars in AD 1952 much before USA guys claimed to flag Lunar. We, actually, had a plan to create a video documentary on it but could not.

The theme follows closely with ‘Did we land on the moon?’ except the motive. This documentary proves that Indians did land on the Mars contrary to the mentioned one. The story goes something like this.

[read this story real s--l--o--w.]

Characters:

R and D Center: IIT Kharagpur.

Chief Design Engineer: Prof M. Ramanujam. (Mechanical Engineering Department)

Astronauts:

1. The mad Bengali Communist whom you can see shouting on the road with a side cloth-bag. Legends tell that he was a research scholar at the institute when he got lunatic (or marsite). Since then he never left IIT Kgp campus somehow managing his living necessities. One can easily find him near Harrys’, barking in Bengali mixed English – some time on real big issues like American monopoly and intrusion in Iraq.
   
   
2. A weird red dog. It was one of those dogs that give you a shiver in spine – not because they are monstrous but because they look like one of those Resident Evil dogs. You feel pity and angry at the same time.

The Martian: Imagine someone whom you enjoy to torture.

The Story:

IIT Kharagpur is India’s first national engineering institute. There was a reason why unlike all other IITs, this IIT had no foreign collaboration in its foundation and why is it situated in the mid of unknowns of a remote jungle in the least developed area of west Bengal. The reason was secrecy. IIT Kharagpur was founded for development of World’s first attempt to send a life form to Mars. The institute was named as an engineering education institute just to deceive the world and this fact it still a truth – you don’t learn anything there.

The documentary starts with black and white footages of weird places like automobile lab, people working as concentration camp labors in foundry lab and other weird yet technical places of Kharagpur. It talks about how they captured brainy guys of that time and turned into highly sophisticated bio-robots (zombies) that work relentlessly, environment friendly and efficiently.

The conversion from genius humans to genius bio-robots is a batch process namely, Manufacturing classes and labs where they are psychologically dosed for three seemingly never ending hours a week and then three hours of lab a week to actually screw the sensible part of the brain out. After 8 months of such treatment you are left with insane bio-robots. At this point this documentary shows black and white Nazi looking video footage of a three fourth sleepy class in fully packed Raman Auditorium. This may be a scene from Chemistry lecture of 1^st year. And another footage with similar effect which shows Transport Engineering Lab or Machining Lab. Few more footages goes in this section which shows acting-monkey guys and girls from Spring Fest (SF) and the narrator says that they are the bio-robots that went out of control and then it focuses towards SF Control Tents which, narrator says, is responsible to keep out of control bio-robots busy in monkey-act and keep them from disturbing the project.

The second part of the documentary starts with the present video footage of the coal refining plant. Narrator says that it is actually a space craft that flew up and down between Earth and Mars, Indians had renamed it to a coal refining plant to avoid any attention to the great machine of all times. The narrator then explains the technical sophistications of the spacecraft. And a very short launch film of the launch is shown with a shaky camera in black and white. This footage is hazy and unclear with salt and pepper noise and was taken from a big distance. At the corner of the footage red ‘EXCLUSIVE’ would be blinking.

The narrator now announces that now he is going show us some footage that our eyes would never believe and our consciousness would refuse to accept the fact. He continues with a pause, ‘this exclusive footage and documents were provided by one of the key member of the project who agreed to hand over a copy of the material on our guarantee of not to disclose his name and one day Bandh in West Bengal.’

Here starts the footage of mars.

We decided to shoot this part of documentary on an abandoned red ground near IIT Kgp, which looked perfectly like a Martian land in red lit evening sun during March. The special effect would be done in a manner that looks the video a very crappy ‘50s color video with a lot of blurs and audio and video noises.

The footage starts with blinking red ‘EXCLUSIVE’ at the top left corner. This guy, the astronaut, totally wrapped (which looks like someone hastily done the job of wrapping) in Aluminum foil with a one foot long antenna, also wrapped, coming out of his fore-head – jumps out of the spacecraft. Unable to manage to stand on the surface he rolls and then stands up embarrassed. And the screen freezes at the moment and a Windows pop up message comes saying, “A small roll by a man, a giant gyration by Mankind. To continue with the video, please click ‘Agree’ button.” The video continues when the narrator clicks the agree button. Now, the astronaut starts picking different stuffs from Martian ground sniffs, analyses and some time licks the things and puts them into his side bag. (the cloth bag)

The narrator starts, “The keen eyed and brilliant minded astronaut sneaked out some very crucial things from the Mars which laid the path of modern technology on the earth which includes diet Pepsi among the others.” Then the footage shows the stuffs that he picks from the ground. It shows the man is madly picking up stuffs. First he picks up Diet Pepsi with the message “for obese Americans of late ‘90s”, then he picks up a credit card, followed by a CD which is labeled as

‘Hotmail Installer.

Password of this CD is the name of Sabeer Bhatia’s mother. Wait till he takes birth’

Uncle’s Suggestion: In the back ground of this scene, we would show the dog, which went with the astronaut wrapped in aluminum foil with antenna projected normally his forehead, is fucking a red colored naked human-like animal (a Martian, in fact.). When finished, the dog picks something from ground and goes back in spacecraft. Later in footage, the dog is shown with a packet clutching in his mouth. Camera zooms in the packet, the label reads, “Condom. This is only for the prevention of the virus this animal is taking with it. It cannot be cured on the Earth because it needs a Mars grown herb. Thank you, visit again.”

The Mars part footage part ends here and the narrator starts with the documents given by the man.

The documentary shows an old paper with a very curvy dotted line joining Mars and Earth. The dotted line has a cross mark directly above the Earth, precisely above Pakistan, and a continuous red line joining the cross to Karachi. The narrator says, “Indian had this plan to drop an atom bomb on Pakistan from space. A very clever plan which is now being copied by USA under the name of Star Wars, the plan was failed because it crashed with a trial rocket projected by Russians. Unfortunately, Russians recorded it as mission failed due to technical malfunction while in reality, there rocket was perfect if it hadn’t collided with the atom bomb.”

The documentary proceeds with the current scene in IIT Kharagpur. It shows this astronaut shouting in Bengali mixed English by the side of ill faced dog. The narrator says, “This dog was the reason of HIV spread on the Earth. I still wonder how it passed to human and spread! [Pause]The astronaut was de-memorized. When shouts like a mad, he sometimes leaves sprinkled information about the mission in his seemingly mad talk.”

The scene moves towards Prof. M. Ramanujam. The narrator says, “The professor, who was the chief-designer of the project, was too obsessed with his work that after completion of the project he had gone out of his mind. Rumors have it that he was asked to design a water tank for PAN loop. He, supposedly, took Martian value of gravity and mis-designed the water tank and the result is that PAN loop of Kgp still suffers water problems.” Documentary shows few lunatic clips of the professor.

The narrator paused for 10 seconds when all the main clips are played once again.

Narrator starts, “So, the big question is why India is still mum? Our sources say that India is keeping a silence for its coming project. Indians are the biggest consumer of the world. They are eating up the resources like anything and growing big in population. Once the Earthly resources end up, their plan is to shift to Mars. Their next project is to consume earthly resources as fast as they can and then they would dig out whole India from the Earth, and pull it up to the Mars and settle there. In the way they may drop a neutron bomb on remaining earth to end up left outs misery and any future intrusion in their future earth – The Mars. Are you ready?”

The documentary end with the question

----------------

Authors Note: It is a hypothetical story.

B.U.F.Y. 8: Secrets Unveiled

Baby, Uncle and the Final Year (B.U.F.Y.) 8: Secrets Unveiled

Links for Part1, Part2, Part3, Part4, Part5, Part6, Part7 (Links to future parts will be available in comments)

Dharmu and My confession: Dharmu – I guess, I would never find a person who worth making friend more than Dharmu. He is a typical of My Best Friend essay that we used to write in school.

After everyone of our trio got placed, he came to Kgp to share our long awaited job treat. I drink vodka, then thought, ‘Okay! When doing sin do it completely.’ and drunk 3 vodkas, 3 cigarettes and guess, 2 beedis.

After this we went to TSC at night around 10 o’clock. With lying flat on our back, on dew drenched green grass and no light around us, January night’s moderate cold air was hovering over us from our feet passing over our tummy and getting obstructed by our noses, telling us that we were the centre of the universe for the moment. We started open heart discussion; I confessed a lot of good and bad of me, and of others. (Don’t have much to write about)

Dharmu was real emotional and for the first time I knew he was serious about someone. His talk was a mix of a responsible person’s thoughts (a less of Dharmu-like) and an emotional regular Dharmu talk. He seemed to miss his Kgp life too much and unlike now he didn’t like his job then. But then most of the time I found he was really frustrated about the fact that he didn’t have someone special… a girlfriend. (A summary of what Dharmu told on the day.)

We all felt so light hearted – no one was complaining there but it was something what AOL folks would say a ‘opening your heart’, we had one of the most emotional discussions of our Kgp life (I rate it one of my top 5 emotional discussions at Kgp).

Baby opened Uncle’s Biotech Biasing Discussion*, Uncle tried to give some toothless reason to back his point. Needless to say anyone was caring because it was not about what actually happened, it was about seeing yourself from someone else’s eyes – especially someone who doesn’t belongs to biotech group yet always less preferred over them. (As told by Baby on that day)

Uncle talked about Baby’s heavy dependency on his leaching friends, Baby was defenseless. He kept on talking making friends who eventually started over powering his own decision that he made for himself… talked about Mr. S. Singh, Mr. R. Agarawal, Lamboo and few others. But then moved back to his 2^nd year and repeated the story of an alumnus coming to Uncle’s room (which, then, was shared by Dharmu, Baby and Uncle) with his wife and daughters only to find himself in an embarrassed condition when he saw dirty porous inside-out under wears hanging in a row on a rope starting from door to one corner of a double room, and then the three universally unique cartoons somehow hiding their body with small knickers, who were in equally amazement of the moment and dilemma of playing goodie good with a previous student of institute or playing loafer and skimming the girls with their lesser girl-habitual eyes – supposedly they kept their speechless mouth open and eyes wide open, and remained movement-less until the visitors left the monkey show. (As told by Uncle on that day)

But again, it was nothing like blaming, accusing or getting an answer but more like opening up to the people you believe in. We had great 6 hours, probably the best 6 hours in the whole 5^th year.

* Biotech Biasing: This is a phenomenon in which Uncle shows his biasing towards his Biotech classmates. Uncle waves hand, shouts to his Biotech friends, who most of the time seemed to completely ignore this act of Uncle. Sometimes, Uncle leaves the companion who he came with and forcibly sticks to Biotech friends who, again, are not found happy to have Uncle with them. It doesn’t bother Uncle if a truck runs over the person he came with, if only he gets a glimpse of a Bio-techie in his range of view. (As described by Baby)

Bangalore dream and Supremo’s Extinction Plan: Here is the list:

1. Settle with GP and Nihar in a decent 2 BHK in a better place than Hebbagodi in Bangalore.
   
   
2. Get a decent broadband connection and old heavy tring-tring black dialing phone.
   
   
3. Recreate wing-like life.
   
   
4. Weekly mall view, movies and decent weekends and general hang outs.
   
   
5. To become a pain in Supremo’s ass: Who is Supremo? Supremo is some AB C college grad, who had got selected in Tavant Technology and was over –happy. He is the idiot behind the idea of starting a new James Bond copy-cat community for people who were selected to Tavant from 2007 batch namely, Tavant007. Supremo was the guy who gave this idea to place order for hand-bands exclusively for 2007 Tavantites which says – TAVANT 007. Stupidity has no start and no end, he also had this plan to show this band to their seniors and make them jealous.
   
   We realized that Supremo must be screwed; we decided to support his stupidity and amplify it with more stupid add-ons. So if he says to order a hand band, we would advice to order T-shirts saying – ‘TAVANT 007 – seniors were too idiot that Tavant had to hire fresh batch of lesser idiots’. And we knew he would like this idea with clapping hands and jumping feet.
   
   
6. Uh … oh, I was forgetting this plan to buy a Gramophone.
   Uncle Help me with other plans of ours I am kind of missing all the things that we had listed to do.

Baby and Suku-Suku: Baby has started taking long times on phone, long chats on phone with occasional suspicious smiles (blushing). We researched and found out, a particular girl keep on filling Baby’s Orkut scrapbook without caring the response from Baby side. Many times it is one liner like, ‘Kaise hain aap?’ (How are you) or ‘Aap to jawaab hi nahi dete.’ (Never answer you) and I am forgetting the typical word she used to call Baby with, I guess it was Natkhat (naughty) or Sharmeele (Shy honey-pot) or perhaps ziddi (arrogant).

(Uncle, Help maadi**… what was the exact nick name of Baby that Suku-Suku used to call with?)

**Kannada verb: used for action

Uncle (tirelessly) tried everything to get her name out and Baby never uttered a single clue even in drunken state. One thing was sure that Baby liked talking with her because he never ignored her scrapbook entries and was in contact with her even after his number has got changed lately.

Baby kept this too secret to get us some material to make a story. We started referring her Suku-Suku – a word invented by Uncle for our reference. Suku – Suku and Baby’s story is still alive I guess, and it is going good. All I hope that in near future we would be able to know her name and if got lucky he would show us her picture and we would be extremely lucky if Baby let us meet her but it is unexpected looking on Baby’s behavior towards her!

B.U.F.Y. 7: Déjà-vu, Premonition and Eventuality

Baby, Uncle and the Fifth Year (B.U.F.Y.) 7: Déjà-vu, Premonition and Eventuality
Links for Part1, Part2, Part3, Part4, Part5, Part6 (Links to future parts will be available in comments)

Placement and déjà-vu: I was over confident, something inside me kept on telling me that I was going to make it big. I found myself in contrast with reality. But then many other who thought they would fail miserably, found themselves in contrast too. It was our campus placement time when conflict with negative reality could an unaffordable deal… and it was.

Surprisingly, Uncle was too calm by appearance until Jan 21^st when he got selected in Tavant Technologies and then he expressed it in all possible ways of expression a monkey and a human can give together. There was a moment, somewhere twenty days earlier to this day, when I made uncle so frustrated that he went for Flextronics placement process where he was the only non-Matka (Matka: M.Tech. parallel entry. we assume, they have lower intellect.) Uncle thought he under estimated himself. It was a fun to listen this story every time he recites it with expression.

Baby was utterly frustrated as me, we used to sit and compare others with us for hours. Sometimes it gave a feeling of comfort to find better guys lacking success and all other times it was a pain. Baby kept on blaming himself for not taking IBM’s sure shot success interview and Tata Motors, Jamshedpur campus placement process.

Tata Motors, Pune gave him a chance to dance.

For me it was all down, as I said earlier, I was over confident. So every day, in evening, after failing some two to three written exams (leave interview alone)we used to go to Harry’s, order Medu Vada and Tea, discuss and vent out our frustration, veil, moan, howl and do it again the next day. It was more like repeating the same day again and again. Uncle named this phenomenon – déjà-vu.

There were two important turning points

1. Uncle had got another chance to get interviewed by BPCL for some biotech scientist post. it was a decent job and in some concerns better than Tavant's. Uncle had good chances to clear it because two other selected candidates were from chemistry background while Uncle had a biotech degree.
   
   Uncle missed it; call him ignorant, lazy-bone, unfortunate or over joyed… your wish. Baby and I call him back-stabbed biotechie. The story is this, Uncle, after placement, reduced his frequency to visit placement notice board to very close to zero, and so did we. Someday between Tavant’s placement day and Tavant’s disaster day, a notice came that Uncle and two other blokes had got selected for the final round of interview with BPCL. This information was there with one of the Uncle’s very close ‘biotech’ friend who revealed this, days after the interview day was gone. Uncle could have two jobs in hand and we started teasing him that he was stabbed in the back for the second time by one of “the biotechie.” Uncle had rather simple answer to defend it that he wasn’t interested into that job. We stopped teasing soon.
   
   Then the day came when Tavant ditched (third dagger in Uncle’s back) and Uncle push himself very hard to accept the fact that only if he wasn’t chiseled, he could have suffering a lot less pain in his you-know-where. (He used to accept this with three trouble lines on his forehead screaming that he could kill this guy if he was found at the moment.)
   
   
   
2. The second was Baby’s similar chaos with Force Motors, Pune. This organization was paying lot more than Tata Pune and the interview panel was visibly impressed by Baby’s skills. He had got shortlisted for the final round of the selection process and in next two weeks they would process his information and send him a return air ticket to Pune and would also bear all the expenses. Great.
   
   After this Baby had got placed in Tata Motors within a week, yet he had all the right to go for the Force Motors interview – which he really wanted to do at that time. Someone – don’t know who, but Baby would say disgustfully that one of those idiot selfish selected Matkas’ it was – reported to the training and placement cell that Baby was trying to hog on two jobs. And our overly fair training and placement department mercilessly cut his name out.
   
   I guess Baby would get red hot with anger if I would tell him that Force Motors is going to own a F1 team for 2008 F1 championship!

Jan 1^st, James Bond, Nagina and Non-sense: Had many reasons to cry out loud but Casino Royle was the main. None of us was placed, didn’t go home, IBM was gone and many other.

It was January 1^st. They say last year was unlucky New Year will bring happiness with it. I say it is only matter of time when you’ll repeat this.

We planned to watch Nagina with Coffee and Kurkure treat. Change of plan, we had to watch Casino Royle. Did a lot of non-sense and danced a bit. At the end of the movie it was clear nothing was going to change in this New Year, it will suck too. And so did it.

Tavant Drama: It was mere a reason to go home that I have got placed in Tavant Technology, otherwise days were going so hard that nothing seemed to favor me. For placements, they did all the drama of test then test again, then GD then interview. Uncle and I have got selected.

Happy but not satisfied at the time, eventually I adjusted myself (too lazy to try anything else) and Tavant seemed fine for a career starting. We were two months away from Tavant’s real fraud. We found out Tavant was an over-priced deal – the placement was just a backup for them in case of large resignation from their already revenue and customer losing company.

As the time window of this story slides two more months from now, you’ll know more about Tavant’s fraud – in coming parts of B.U.F.Y.

B.U.F.Y. 6: Betrayal near Cheddis'

Baby, Uncle and the Fifth Year (B.U.F.Y) Part:6 - Betrayal near Chheddis'
Links for Part1, Part2, Part3, Part4, Part5 (Links to future parts will be available in comments)

Uncle and Mr. Trouble Maker (TM)*: Had I not been with Uncle, I would have described TM as utterly boring, big head muggu and must have told you that he never satisfied with whatever marks he got in examination and used to go to professor and ask to increase his marks by one.

Now, I describe him like this. Had it not been TM, the hottie from Chandigarh would have been Uncle’s girlfriend. (And we could have got more chances to make a feast for eyes)

In short, Uncle persuaded this real babe girl to join Kgp and TM was the one who was taking all the fun from Uncle’s hard work. Unfortunately, TM and the girl were bold enough to make public display of affection (including clinching each-other’s butt) and every time Uncle saw this PDA he felt like TM was nailing long, thick, rusted and blunt nail into his heart and then shaking it to widen the hole!

Once uncle was eating corn (Bhutta) TM came sneaking from the back and snatched it (and obviously started eating.) Uncle turned back to find out TM and then the hottie by the side of him. TM was smiling on his clever trick of snatching the food from Uncle. And Uncle was busy in calculating the amount of damage that TM had done to his ‘to be life’. TM had already taken the girl from him and now he was on his food too. All that Uncle could say at the moment was, “Kya kya chhinega mere se yaar tu?” (What else do you have in list to rob from me? Hmm, buddy?)

Poor Uncle, I feel sorry for you (and for us all)

*Mr. Trouble Maker: Mr. TM’s name is replaced due to strong opposition but believe me, Mr. TM does exist.

Gandi Maggie, Naale ka kinara, Chhedi’s and the Cow before the Train (Filthy Maggie, Drainage Odour, Chhedi’s and the Cow before the Train): A typical description of the most famous night hang-out place of our times, for IITians at Kharagpur – Chhedis aka 6ds.

[I am sorry that I do not have an image of chhedis', I would appreciate if someone provides me with one]

SCENE: 1

3 AM at Chhedi’s, order Maggy and Tea. The boys, who worked there, were ambidextrous cleaner, waiter, cashier and cook… all in one, they lived shabby. Here is a list of activities of a boy that you can watch once you have placed your order. He goes to pee in bushes with slipper on; the way to bushes is dusty which makes his feet dust-full. Then while coming back through the dusty path he realizes that he saw a small dirty (perhaps spotted with red spit of Pan) piece of paper submerged into the dirt – the paper usually has a semi naked photograph, nothing else can be more exciting than a semi-nude woman pretty dirty and totally covered with dirt. Can anything be? – so he picks it up, sees it, momentary pause, then he runs to Chhedi’s to share it with other worker boys. They laugh. Then the boss comes and kicks their butt, and asks them to serve food to the customers. The guy with dirty, dusty and unhygienic hands, takes the steel plate full of Maggy in one hand with his four finger dipped inside hot Maggy and on other he carries four glasses full of tea, again four fingers dipped in four glasses (one finger to each customer’s glass, fair distribution) and he starts moving towards customers – mind that he hadn’t washed his hand yet – but then, on the way, he finds out that his slipper’s strip is loose. He puts the Maggy on one of the several benches lying by the side of road, where a stray dog smells the Maggy and finds nothing interesting to fight for. This guy tightens the slipper strip with Maggy dipped hand and holds Maggy again in same manner and serves us. While going back to serve other customer, He takes all the finished plates already cleaned by a lurking dog’s tongue.

SCENE: 2

There flows a very-very smelly sewage very close to place where you sit and eat your Gandi Maggy.

Chedi’s itself is a uniquely attractive place; they misplace the orders, make a delay and that gives you a reason to talk more and blame Chedi’s service for it. If you ask for more sauce you may not get it at all, but you would surely listen a reply from Michael (aka Mohan) that ‘Abhi saadi nahi hui hai humaari, saas kahaan se laayein’ (I’m yet a single where would I get a saas (mother-in-law) for you.)

SCENE: 3

And one more attractive ambience is ultra slow moving goods train. So whenever a cow or a goat or anything alive comes into the way of the train the driver stops the train; comes down and gently make it go out of the rail. He patiently does it again, if the animal walk in again.

We love chhedi’s for the reasons that no matter whether it is your worst day or the best, it gives you unknown pleasure to hang out in Chedi’s with friends or without them (I went there many times alone in the 5^th year.)