Strange Encounters

I'm in Tif right now, typing this thing out. The place is unusually deserted. Not many people around. It is ideal time to pen. I'll narrate a few encounters I've had in recent times.

I was waiting at the GC for a lift. There was this nice red car going past which I was absolutely sure won't stop. So I waved madly wanting to just say Hi! You know one of those times, you like to let go of the sophesticated person you are and just jump around crazily in a stupid attempt to do something whakhy, consoling yourself that your spectators are total strangers? Well, that's waht I did. Yep. And the strange little red car? It screeched and halted. I think it took about 84 nanoseconds for it to stop. My reflexes are reserved for adverseries. So I continued to splash mud around when my PH101 prof waved back from inside the car. Oopsie!


The other day I was in Tif gulping down my food so I won't be late for a certain class scheduled about 8 minutes from then. I was gobbling up my food, when I saw my prof (who was supposed to take class in 8 minutes) peacefully eating. Yay! So I finished my last bite and hurried over to get a coffee. I wanted to finish it off and run; but I saw this prof get up, and get his coffee. He did not seem to be in a hurry at all. I guessed he must have a 2 wheeler while I had to run to class. And I HAD to win the race. So I ran all the way to MSB. As I entered MSB, I saw him park the 2 wheeler. Woo hoo!! I'd won! I took the lift and reached my class with a smirk that spoke of youthful pride only to see the class in session, with half the board filled. Baffled? Completely.

The other day I was sitting at CCD, sipping coffee, when I decided to take a break and have a chit chat upstairs. Tata Book House is a small area of space above CCD. (Nobody really notices it in the huge mess and darkness of birthday parties celebrated on CCD rooftop) There I found a book titled Reflections by IItians. I scanned through those pages to find this very interesting thing said by my fac-ad.

You cannot measure society with a slide-rule, compute culture with a calculator, and you cannot redress grievances by writing reports.

Apart from the alliteration, what I noticed is the rich and wide areas of interests the profs here have. They are not the nerds we label them for our convinience nor do they lead the boring lives we imagine they do. They bring with them, a vast range of experiences and expertise, from which we can only gain by interacting with these men-of-the-mind. They are all mostly nice, friendly and desperate to see some fraction of their enthusiasm in us. It is sad that we don't interact with profs as much as we should. That probably comes from the fact that we are mostly intimidated by their genius. But this should change. And it will.

Ok I'm heading back to room. Thanks for hopping by.

Oh. Wait. Hey!

I forgot the best encounter of all.

So I was talking to a prof the other day and he presented with me with an astonishing fact: The Insti admin keeps track of student blogs! They sort of want to know what the students feel.

Creepy? Very.

PS: When in doubt, praise the lord who gives food, appetite and grades.

Madam Tussauds

Having been i nformed that Wordsworth, in his worthy description of the worldly pleasures one enjoys among the butterflies and the bees in the stimulating season of Spring, would not have been able to do justice to the kind of beautiful weather they were having in his country, and having believed it, I set out on a fortnight long trip to England.
Here's a little story that is my tribute to London.

As I entered Madam Tussauds, I read the board that said :

ALL THAT STANDS STILL IS NOT A STATUE

A shiver ran down my spine. The moment I stepped inside, I knew that I had made a mistake.

I saw the wax models all around, and not in a manner I had expected (or wanted) them displayed. The public had access to everything! I thought longingly of the museums I had seen everywhere else, with anything on display inside glass boxes with a Don't touch! sign put inside the glass.

I looked around with the awe and attitude of a child yet to discover the significance of the greatness that it had the privilege to witness. I watched, in silence, as girls my age hurried to take pictures of themselves with Brad Pitt, without Angelina Jolie who happened to stand on his other side a few nanometres away. Their faces seemed to be filled with happiness that I could not understand and pride that I could not bow to; but I admired, nevertheless, the precision of their photography and the brilliance of their smiles which conveyed genuine delight.

I smiled.

Shrek returned my smile. I gazed at the green figure, surprised that I hadn't noticed him in spite of the fact that he had been looking at me for quite sometime now. I think if anyone had cared to look at me then, they would have noticed my cheeks turning pink. I tried to push my way through the crowd, remembering never to lose sight of him. A kid, who had no business to be six months old, came in my way and I almost tripped. As I regained my footing, I looked up to see -

Holy..! I could not move a muscle. People were taking pictures with him as though he was one of those ugly models, lifeless, cold and extremely boring :X. As though he was one of those spineless creatures that they worshiped! Couldn't they see him wink at me? Couldn't they see the love that transcends through the - well, stinking swarming crowd? Were they blind that they did not see it? I hurried in his direction.

I took my place next to him, unable to hide the pride in my glance at all those people begging to be photographed with him. But as I stood next to Shrek, I could feel the warmth of his gaze - on the girl who was standing in the place I had been a few minutes ago! He was winking at her as I stared in horror and indignation.

And there were girls my age, taking pictures with him, leaving me carefully out of the frame as I stood nanometers away from him. I hurried away in anger and proceeded towards the exit, where I stopped still, stood staring. I might have stopped breathing, for all I know.

"Hey! I want a pic with her" some fool yelled. I couldn't believe that this was actually happening. He wanted to hug me and take pictures with me as he had with all those lifeless models. Yuck! This person - whom I didn't even grant the happiness of looking at him - came close to me, put his freaking fat hands on my shoulders and stood posing to his mom, who faithfully clicked. Can you believe that? I wanted to run, I wanted to remove his filthy hands. I wanted to yell.

But my legs wouldn't budge. I couldn't move. In fact I couldn't move any muscle. My waxy eyes stared up lifelessly at the board near the exit that said:

WAX-WORKS WALK!!

Everyday from 8:30 - 9:00 pm, watch one wax model come alive.

Today we present : LADY FIONA

Caution: Never take a pic when they are moving.

The last thing I heard was the clock striking 9.

The Blogging spirit

Blogs come in different shapes and sizes. And what you realize at the end of the day is that you dont need a reason to blog. There are carefully edited humorously written witty pieces of shit, Wisely phrased careful words of wisdom just when you absolutely don't need it and absolute brilliance wasted away in blogs.
So here's the deal. You have a witty creative pen. (It's a usage :| ) You have ideas. You have time. Infinite. Unemployed creative is the worst kind of creative. You start blogging. It's like drugs. Feels so good everytime you never realize how addicted to it you are. It gives you a feeling of high for no good reason. You begin to see sense in writing about ants and blackadders (thats a reptile) which, in real life were unworthy of mention or touch. Er.

And every iitian has at least one post pertaining to how life at iit is. This, knowing that in nine cases out of ten his blog's viewers are only other jobless iitians who helped him with his typing.

Bloggers, going the Anne Frank way, get senti all the time. There is always this pain and this agony and all that sort of feeling that finds way into blogs instead of journals or diaries. I won't go so far as to calling it pathetic but gimme a break! I know life is sad and it is devastating to be in love. But you don't need to take to poetry so soon. Those blissfully romantic poems in search of a beautiful noble intelligent rich girl (who for some reason falls for you) is pure phart.

And then there are entries who are just filling space. They are there.

Thats when you realize that a blog is a bog. It is a place where you wrap up the scraps of your crap and where wit becomes shit. Verses become curses and every story gets gory. And having stabbed your heart with wretched phart, blogs leave you to bleed and weed.

That is exactly how blogs fill space. Nothing to write whatsoever about. Where's the journalism or the creativity? Where the hell is all the grammar we learnt in high school? Don't content, coherence and delivery mean anything to us anymore? What on Earth are we (s)hitting on? I think if you stop blogging, you'd just be helping me.

Funny Bone

I could yell my lungs out. The event is over and so I can screw it. Perfect.

Now, let me narrate to you something that happened about four years ago..

I had qualified for La Persona (conducted by Loyola School Trivandrum) finals. Unaware of the event requirements, I landed up on this stage in a navy-blue white (Kendriya Vidyalaya school uniform) salwar kameez, with my hair tightly tied in two plaits with (red) ribbons dangling from them.

The other contestents were well.. more prepared. I was asked to ramp walk. I simply had no idea how that was to be done. So I just walked on the ramp and smiled and waved at an audience I knew wanted to boo me down. Multiple rounds of pain followed.

At the end of it, I felt just as good as I had before. (Only) One thing hasn't changed in four years. My I-dont-give-a-damn-what-you-think attitude. But still :P :D

The organizer of that entire fest was a certain guy who was the then head boy of Loyola School.

And Today he was one of my six finalists in Funny Bone.
Aaah revenge!! ;)

Ther's bliss in knowing that I dont have to feel shit in my pants anymore inviting judges who are well.. funny.

The breath of engineering

Shaastra comes once a year and takes your breath away. (There's hardly time to breathe) It brings purpose to life and a sense of fullfillness to the spirit of innovation left in you. It leaves your heart brimming with engineering pride.

To call it the annual technical festival of IIT Madras would be a simple way of putting it. Only, there's much more to it. I, a completely non-technical person actually spent an entire day going from Chemical X to The Ultimate Engineer to The Master Challenge to Shock (it was funnest of all) to math modelling, finally drawing a close with a lecture on why time can't go backwards. That did not surprise me. I do all sorts of weird stuff.

What surprised me was how much I enjoyed it. How much (though I didn't qualify) I "put fight" to solve the problems in math modelling. Trust me, two hours of doing nothing but concentrating on problems you are motivated to solve as though your life depends on it. Two hours of ecsatacy. It is so much fun to solve problems, pushing yourself every second to do it faster, work harder and tax your brains. Yep. My idea of bliss. If you think I'm a nerd, stop reading. You lack the spirit.
For those of you who know Saarang, (IIT's cultural festival) I thought I was capable of enjoying only that. Generally fool around and have fun. ;) But shaastra is fun in a completely different way. Somehow, it brings a wholesomeness to my existence. It brings out that part of me which I never knew existed. Basically, I always knew that engineering had a soul; that's why I'm here, at IIT trying to get a degree in it. What I didn't know and I realised this Shaastra was that my soul has engineering in it.

PS. Aah I feel good now. :)

The end of Honeymoon

When images of Sharav and the associated oat, library,tiff, ccd and gc started invading my dreams, I decided that it is time to blog.

The long vacation that seemed like eternity just a three months ago is drawing to a known abrupt end. Suddenly, I get scraps asking "Hey. When are you returning to insti?". Out of nowhere my mom reminds me of the suitcase in the loft and the dirty clothes pile. I get sweet calls from friends in town saying they'll miss me.

Getting back to insti not only means end of absolute laziness, but also means I can't blog too much. Well, you can't keep the cake as well as eat it. (sigh) I guess I'll conclude declaring this to be the last post of the summer :) so long take care and thanx for all the fish(y comments) ok bad joke but i'm touchy about the transition.

IIT first hand

Scene 1
At MSB 256. A process calculation course in session. Prof. Basak is distributing quiz 1 papers to the chemical engineering batch of 2007.

Prof : The performance is good. Students have done well. The highest is....
(pause)
Prof : Well, can you guess??
(The paper was out of 15 comprising of a 7 mark question and an 8 mark question)
Prof : The highest is 13. Ok. You know the lowest?
(A deafening silence )
Prof : 3 . 3 is the lowest mark.
(Silence gets louder)
Prof : When I call out your number, you shall come forward. Tell me the mark you estimate to get. Then you shall collect your paper.

The atmosphere is so tense you couldn't breathe without feeling noisy. As for me, I knew I had done miserably and the prospect of "predicting my marks" was choking me.

Suddenly,
Prof : CH 04!! (That's me)

I walk up to face the prof.

Me : Sir.. Sir.. (Sweating) .. I ..I did badly. I..
Prof : 3.
It came to me like a sentence. I had actually come The LAST in a class. As I turned to face the class now, I couldn't see anyone. My eyes were teary. I stumbled as I reached for my desk. I couldn't wait to sit down and just bury my face.

Scene 2
At CRC 205. A thermodynamics course in session. Prof. Srinivasan is distributing quiz 1 papers.
Prof : CH 04!!
I walk up to the front, feeling highly tensed, take my paper. I glance at my marks. 25 on 40!! I hide my marks in flushed embarrassment. I had done decently. I should have gotten more.

After a while, everyone has received their papers.

Someone : Sir, what's the class average?
Prof : I think around 11 or 12.
I sit up!!! Wow.
Someone : What's the highest?
Prof : 25.
My head jerks up for the first time in the whole hour.
Prof : I think Akila got 25. (He looks at me)
I stare back at him and show my teeth.
I didn't know what to think. But you know what really made my day?? When my friends actually clapped. God, I could have sat there and cried. I was so moved.

Now as I look back, both incidents are just memories to remember my first year by. I learnt a lot from both of them
From the former, I learnt how it is possible that your worst nightmares come true. I had always thought that if you come last, it would be horrible. But God was too good to me and put me in a class that didn't care. Hard luck strikes the best of us sometimes. We just have to survive.

The latter was a special moment for me. It was the first quiz in the institute. The big, great institute to which I, a girl from a small town had come, with a notion that everyone is smarter than me. That small incident in a classroom there might sound trivial to one who reads it. But to me, it was significant. It ignited a spark of confidence in me that is to come a long way in my life..