The B Diaries – I

The wonderful part about living in the hostel is that you live to do whatever you want to. I was awake last night till 3 am downloading Pather Panchali, saw a part of it and went to sleep. I will get back to seeing it, but I’ve taken an oath of sorts to see no movies while I’m here, I intend to fill up the 320 hard disk my dad bought the day I moved here (without asking for it ) on my way out. I’ll try and maintain this blog a bit too, but only a little, I can’t promise much. Getting down to explaining my absence in the last few months, lets just say I’m writing, but not here.

_ __

The B campus might be the smallest amongst all the other IITs, but its fairly large per se. They have these little buses they call tumtums running all over the place. The name  doesn’t cease to puzzle me either. The job of the tumtums is to cross you when you are exactly half way between two bus stops (because you started walking out of frustration) or to arrive when you don’t have a ticket. Pity I made a months pass, I don’t think I’ll be using much of it.

___

Breakfast is a sordid affair. Achieving the dual purpose of waking up and satisfying hunger pangs is a 16 rupee package of idli-wada-coffee. Everyday. Better join the mess really soon.

___
Doctor (at the IIT Hospital) : Do you have skin disease? epilepsy?
Me: No..
Doctor: Asthma?
Me: No..
Doctor: Breathe in, breathe out.
Okay now you can swim.
___

The campus is like a bubble waiting to burst. Too many people on a campus fit for a lot fewer. With rooms suitable for one person being alloted to two, and at times more, the patience limit has been reached for many tians. What we’re witnessing here is the sort of vengence we have been seeing from groups like the MNS and SS for the past fourty years.

(Seperate incidents, them all)

On the DC++ :

Me: Could I get some help here, I’m new to the DC++
Admin: How can you be new to it?
Me:  It isn’t like air, stupid. I’m a temp
Admin: Can’t help you, junta, he isn’t one of us, ignore him and let him figure it out on his own!
Me: *Whatever*
(and I did in like half an hour anyways)

At lunch:

X: The OBC reservation really messed up things here, we all have room mates now. And its going to get worse next year..
Y: Why are Matkas even there? They’re such a waste..They get their own rooms
(Matkas = MTechs)

Us and them,
And after all, we’re only ordinary men.

___
I was walking down from the first floor to the ground, looking straight ahead and a 7 foot long bull walked where I would’ve been if I was thinking about chicks, what to have for dinner Electrochemical Buffing. Huge thing was walking through the coridoor and finally settled down somewhere. No one noticed. They were all preoccupied.

There is a litter of puppies running around the place. They live off grass and glucose biscuits. Notice the similarities.

___
Me: Cyclone Aila? Tendulkar fans in the Kolkata Met Department?
K: God knows, but they are a mawali lot, the last one was called Bijli..

___

Message from N: Check out Times of India first page. Its some contest by Intel about intentions in 2050. Wanna tell them about our idea (The automatic sex machine for those not in the know, and for the record, I deserve no credit, DM and NS have the gyrating imaginations required for such innovations, one out of pure interest and the other out of pure necessity)
___
D is peeks into the common computer room in the lab from his PhD room and asks, “Whats the deal with DC++ set up” to the general audience. Everyone was fairly surprised when I knew the hub, (one of the MTechs asked me, “Have you been to IIT earlier?”)

Me: I’m not sure why this error is coming, are you sure you’re sharing more than 1 GB?
D: I’m sharing 120 GB. (proud even though his username is precious all in caps )
D ( Translated) : Saucy Knave, how dare you doubt my uploading capabilities?
Me: (Shocked at the general geekiness) Well you still can’t connect. Use windows for God’s sake.

___

The IIT has departments which are non technical too, mostly for the sake of the few humanities and arbit management subjects we learn every semester odd. But these departments actually have PhD students. I had a chance to meet two of them, probably two of four people I know in this entire hostel. They’re interesting people, one of them, probably from the North East is working on the impact of Technology on the Services Sector in the North East, the other on something I don’t remember but what my engineering brain immediately short formed to ICT.

As my cousin said, the social sciences kids are always more extrovertish, because they think they know a lot about life in general, even if they don’t. As I walk past succesive closed rooms late at night with cigarette smoke drifting out and the general din of a movie on in the engineers room inside, I’m inclined to agree.

___

Wada Pav and Chai at 17 bucks. Stupid CCD.
35 rupee rubber chappals which EVERYONE wears?
Ditto for towels.
Hostel Tshirts are allright, but what about that one which just said “Colours” and “Hostel 3″? A little strange me thinks.
Flat screen TVs, Tata Sky, Canteen food comparable to Classic, foosball tables, billiards, music rooms (with guitar amps et al), gyms, clean bathrooms, computer rooms, . In every hostel. I’m not complaining.
Very helpful people if you ask around in general, but a lot less introvert compared to where I come from and thats saying something. The whole marathi thing is surprisingly a non issue, being a central institute et al.

___

I’ve spent about 4 hours of the day in the lab, an hour in the library, an hour swimming and another hour of basketball. I’ve been here only 3 days. Tomorrow is a new day.

Under the Bridge

5:30 am on a freezing January morning, I’ve been awake all night fixing wiring, wheels and making P fix the code. This was my fifth night in college in about 10 days. Autoport should have been working two days ago. The rest of them are fast asleep, on flex banners, on tables, or wherever they found place, warmth and temporary bliss from mosquitoes. As soon as R wakes up, we leave him to guard the PC and the equipment. 

Having skipped dinner the previous night, sleepy as hell, i made P get up and we went to catch a coffee and breakfast. The early morning walkers cross the road to avoid us since we probably look like muggers in the dark. Kings Circle is well lit, yet relatively desolate, with the only traffic being the ST buses racing each other down the eastern express highway along with the ocassional volvo.

“Do Coffee, strong banana” i mumble to him, rubbing my hands together to keep warm. With random topics coming up, P tells me about Kerala and how different people from Kerala are, with parts being the land owners, the elite intellectuals as such being from the Northern region, while the more outgoing, physically fitter mallus being from the southern part of the state and its borders with Tamilnadu. Mallus are apparently very selfish people, something i had never paid attention to, but it seemed to make a little sense even with the little association i could put together in such a state.

The coffee was watery, but a welcome to my acid filled stomach. P opted to run back and continue fixing the code, while i decided to go to Matunga station to catch a spot of breakfast at Ram Asharay. Stepping into warm, lit enviornment all of a sudden felt strange, for the past few days i had been living like a complete nomad, not sleeping more than 6 hours across 2 days, not eating meals on time, sometimes not at all. Stuffing myself with upma and idli till i could barely move, i dragged myself back to college again.

“I’m never doing such a thing ever again”, i thought, ”if nothing else, i’ll paint or dance, not something where even after putting in so many hours things don’t work.”

Scaling the college wall, ignoring all my muscles crying for some rest, i walked slowly to P and muttered, “whats up?”

“I’m done coding, lets burn the microcontroller and try it out”

“Okay, i’ll get the board.”
R was sitting with his eyes barely open (this after a night of sleep), but i was finally feeling awake.

“Ok, lets put it on the truck and see if it runs”

CYNIC, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic’s eyes to improve his vision.

I promise to try and blog more often. Oh and Autoport got best event even though it ran only on the last day.

Damn, India Twenty20

I’ve been watching a spot of Twenty 20 cricket as of late. It prompted me to think of what the future of cricket will be under the very “able”, “elected” representatives of the game who only care about the future of the game, not giving a damn about the kind of power or money the game demands.

20 years from today.

The latest set of rules coming out of the IICC (Indian-International Cricket Council), the main cricketing body in the world today say that Twenty 20 is officially dead, the time is come for 10 over matches! Cricket has become a 10 over affair, with 4 miniovers of 3 balls each. The bowler who was feeling majorly disillusioned with every Yuvraj, Dhoni and  Sehwag even, hitting his best over the fence, has been given some respite with permission to bowl any way he wants, as long as it reaches the batsmen in one bounce. Also in the first 5 overs, the batsmen will be declared out if they hit a sixer. Two 60 degree sections of the stadium can be chosen by the fielding side for 1-D and 2-D. If the ball is lost, the batsman has to forfeit his match fees to buy another one (The average cricket player is paid about Rs. 1000 per match, the rest of the match fees is given to the cheerleaders.) The IICC also decreed that the number of cheerleaders per game must increase from 1 for every spectator to 2 for every spectator, and they must give lap dances to the spectators as well. A source quoted, “No one is watching the game anyways, we’ll get more money by fooling those damned Indians into calling 100 bucks a minute numbers for getting the score or something, and make them listen to more ads)

The cricketing world was set on fire with these new set of rules. Ex Australian Spinner Shane Warne was too busy doing it with Ricky Ponting on his sheep farm in Australia to comment. It has been 9 years since Ricky Ponting got hit in the groin by a cricket ball because he was gaping at a female cheerleader and died of shame.

India still hasn’t gotten over cricket mania even after seventy years of independence and after sucking at it even worse than in Eve Teasing, we still haven’t given it up. The scenario in other sports is just as bad. Shah Rukh Khan has taken over coaching the hockey team while other vague sports have taken over the fancy of our public. 

From India, the country with the worst team on the planet but over one billion fools pouring their money into the game for the past 50 years, Sachin Tendulkar was unavailable for comment, since he was still making random advertisements for his own brand of washing powder (“Aila, CLEAN!”)

Retired India Captain Virender Sehwag (who is still trying to learn English) said, “Kapil paaji is teaching me English nowadays. I’ve lost the will to live”

Indian spectators seemed delighted with the increase in the number of cheerleaders, which means they automatically get to act like bigger perverts on TV by doing a ghati dance in front of them. Eden Gardens promised to increase capacity by another lakh to allow the entire population of Kolkata’s slums to be a part of the jamboree.

Ex BCCI chief Sharad Pawar ironically said, “These people are only after money, what happens to the cricket?”

What cricket minister? I’m too busy drooling over cheerleaders to notice.

one serious post too many?

In class 6, he gave me a DDT*. I hated him and his attention seeking ways.

In class 8, he made me cry again. The Stunner* if i remember correctly. This time i told my mom who called his place and to his absolute horror complained to his mother. He muttered something about him just kidding around (apparently he was just saving his head because i was trying to bang it into a grill, as if I could ever have done that) and it not being serious. My mom had doubts about his closeness to insanity.

In Class 9, we’re still in the same class, this after 2 class shuffles (one of the two people who were).This time we’re made desk partners. The relief of not getting a girl partner was soon overcome by horror. What if this guy does something like last year? I kept my distance, quietly agreed with whatever he said and soon we found a common target, the sardar who used to sit in front of us, and sparking off a religious war between him and this other chap.

It was during the first history period by the very (in)famous Ms. B that I got caught muttering to him. The conversation went something like this.
Me: Who told you she is good for history? She is damn boring!
H: …..
B: What were you telling him, the entire class wants to know. (sure, they already know!)
Me: Nothing.
B: No tell me. What was it?
Me: Seriously, nothing (With a grin, so my lying skills have improved over the years)

After about 5 minutes of the same, she realized she could ask Mr. Honest next to me.
B: What did he say to you?
H: He said he finds your teaching very boring.

(another 5 minute lecture)

B: You know when my brother used to get bored in class he would draw beards on the pictures.

After the lecture I ask the little pigshit what was the need to go and spill the beans, and he says that I have no idea, she can lip read really well, so I decided to say the truth!

(Before this starts sounding like an obituary, no, he hasn’t died, but he will have liver failure soon and die, the forever sloshed one)

By the end of the year we were close friends. I confided stuff in him and the other way round too. He was the one who taught me what hot really means and what I have to look for when I’m checking out a girl. He told me how computers worked, how easy it is to make yahoo booters in VB and stuff I mostly never understood, yet he got me to nod along with. He taught me how much vodka can be taken in neat, and why you should never drink and drive unless you have the kind of capacity he does. One of the most appealing things about him was that he was always happy, always cracking jackass jokes and laughing at them alone, or just turning red and forcing us to laugh along!

He has made our Pune trips the craziest ones and his overnight parties something worth his going. Of course he hasn’t gone too far, just one Qantas hop away, first class as usual, checking out the hot air hostesses and taking their phone numbers down….all in a days work for the brainless one.

We haven’t been in touch for a while now, but that’s only because the pigshit can’t call international sometimes and say wassup. He will now of course, and make an hours conversation, probably on how much he misses Indian food and *ahem*.

* Wrestling moves, off WWE.

Aren’t we just human?

Look around you, in the news, on TV, on the radio, there are thousands of people doing things they are fantastic at. You have impressive actors, singers, philanthrophists, great businessmen glaring in your face. More common examples around us are great fathers and mothers who have given their all to make their kids into good humans. We look at such people with awe, wonder what makes them be what they’ve become. An entire lifetime spent working towards a singular or maybe a few goals really shows.
People hold great expectations from others, to be good in a lot of things, but everyone makes mistakes, not everyone is good at everything, not everyone enjoys doing some things. Behind the brilliant front man, there may be a person who stumbles, makes mistakes, acts like a complete jerk.

Isn’t it true that we expect a bit too much from others? Aren’t they human too? Aren’t we human too? Perhaps if we put ourselves in their shoes we would understand and accept this humaness. At the end of the day, our idols are human too, they have some redeaming qualities that make them our idols, yours and mine. Do we shun others who try? I see no reason to.

On stage yesterday atleast 3 contestants messed up from a little to a lot. They got a lot of sympathy off stage, about as much as the booing on stage, just the way I did last year. I don’t think they deserved the sympathy, because they are better than the rest of the crowd, just because they dared to go up, to try and speak their mind, albeit they were lousy at it. They were perhaps as big winners as the real winners. My congratulations to the winners too, you did a fantastic job. The losers, dare you lose heart, you have a long way to go.

The show must go on. My apologies for the late blog entry.

Week one

Lecture 1 : Applied Mathematics 3

I didn’t wake up in time for this one, but from what i heard it was all about the students giving their own introductions, which were, umm…entertaining to say the least.

“My name is X, My height is 5 feet 16 inches”

“My name is Y Z. My name is Z, Y Z. My name is Y.”

“My name is A B. My hobbies are aero-modelling.” “MODELLING??!!!” “No no, Aero-modelling” (This was a first year sitting in our class by mistake, something he didn’t realise till more than an hour into the lecture. Hopefully the rest of the batch is brighter! )

9 am really isn’t everyones time

Lecture 2 : Applied Thermodynamics 1

One hour through the lecture, slowly i realise that i’m a closed system, energy in the form of sound waves is still entering my body, but i’m trying to kill myself by not breathing, thus no transfer of mass is permitted. Finally my medulla kicks in and i let out a round of expletives, only to be met with another question on boilers a person with an IQ rivalling an autowalla can answer.

Students interested in practical experiments in dilation of time and time travel are requested to contact Mr X in the ME Department. IF he hasn’t been arrested for mass murder or already been killed. Warning : People with low blood pressures do not attend.

Lecture 3 : Strength of Materials

We actually have a PhD teaching this subject, so she’s pretty good. I nod along with some stuff i understand and all of a sudden she smiles at me at the end of every concept she explains. I nod along. More smiles per hour. Till i strike a rough spot and frown. I actually got a one to one explanation for that! Good thing too, she isn’t one to take chances with, enough warning have been received not to skip a single lecture of hers, but the only problem is that once a week its at 9 am. In short, i’m going to be hated by her soon enough and will have to write my journal thrice. Or maybe twice if i cry in front of her. Or once if i wake up on time. Or zero if i give up on engineering right now.

This was week one, quite a melagne, what say you?

Johari

Arena (known to self and others) cheerful, happy, knowledgeable, relaxed, witty	Blind Spot (known only to others) able, accepting, adaptable, bold, caring, clever, complex, confident, dependable, friendly, helpful, ingenious, intelligent, introverted, kind, logical, mature, observant, proud, reflective, religious, responsive, self-assertive, sensible, silly, spontaneous, trustworthy, warm, wise
Façade (known only to self) independent	Unknown (known to nobody) brave, calm, dignified, energetic, extroverted, giving, idealistic, loving, modest, nervous, organised, patient, powerful, quiet, searching, self-conscious, sentimental, shy, sympathetic, tense

Dominant Traits

57% of people think that Raghav Ohri is intelligent
57% of people agree that Raghav Ohri is witty

All Percentages

able (14%) accepting (7%) adaptable (7%) bold (14%) brave (0%) calm (0%) caring (7%) cheerful (14%) clever (35%) complex (14%) confident (7%) dependable (14%) dignified (0%) energetic (0%) extroverted (0%) friendly (14%) giving (0%) happy (14%) helpful (14%) idealistic (0%) independent (0%) ingenious (7%) intelligent (57%) introverted (7%) kind (7%) knowledgeable (35%) logical (42%) loving (0%) mature (14%) modest (0%) nervous (0%) observant (7%) organised (0%) patient (0%) powerful (0%) proud (14%) quiet (0%) reflective (7%) relaxed (21%) religious (7%) responsive (7%) searching (0%) self-assertive (7%) self-conscious (0%) sensible (7%) sentimental (0%) shy (0%) silly (21%) spontaneous (28%) sympathetic (0%) tense (0%) trustworthy (7%) warm (14%) wise (7%) witty (57%)

Created by the Interactive Johari Window on 12.7.2007, using data from 14 respondents.
You can make your own Johari Window, or view Raghav Ohri’s full data.

Tag!

8 secrets/ random facts about myself

1. I have an unquestionable thirst for knowledge. (yeah the rest of it is equally boring)That means about each and everything, be it politics, news, languages..whatever it is, from the most random ad on tv to bus and train routes, to roads. Basically i must take in everything around me, keep it in mind, then make what sound like sarcastic comments about it later, while its actually educating people around me. Oh and this of course excludes anything that can be asked in examinations, oddly that never gets into my head.

2. I’m a very positive person, although that can hardly be a secret. I spend too much time grinning, laughing and looking at the bright side of things to feel much negative about anyone or anything. I might tend to go a bit overboard at time and offend certain people with queer sensibilites, but i generally manage to bring them back over..

3. I’m hardly spontaneous, prefer to think things through and then take decisions. This is a good thing sometimes, but bad at others. It makes me seem shrewd and calculating at times, but shrewd is the last thing i am.

4. I’m a night owl, waking up early for studying or anything healthy isn’t really my thing. I’m downright lazy when i go to sleep, barely managing to drag myself out of bed on weekends, and being shook awake on weekdays at 8 PM sharp. Thank God for the morning lifts to college, the only reason i manage to attend the first lecture everyday.

5. Cornflakes are my thing. With honey poured on top. And a bowl filled with milk to the brim till its about to spill over and i get the look of disapproval from my sister/mom. Don’t ask why or how. I just love the stuff, it really keeps me going. Oh and i really don’t have time to have it in the morning (refer point 4), so i have a big bowl of it in the evenings, this being when i don’t have french classes going on, as i do nowadays.

6. I love those songs you can sing along with, which i really like doing.. guess thats why jazz or classical music doesn’t really work for me. Its really nice music, yes, but i can’t get over the fact that it has no lyrics. I like to sing along with a good tune, till i get sick of the song after listening to it like 20 times and remembering all the lyrics, then listening to something new on Vh1 and repeating step 6.

7. I like tiny bits of randomness, like the Little book of Hope, Large open spaces, Wide roads, rainy local train rides, car drives *provided i drive*. (imagines permanent licence with weary eyes..)

8. I don’t like watching sport. Yes that includes the gentlemens game, the fancy name for football, basketball, hockey, whatever..i’d much rather play the sport myself and suck at it rather than watch it sitting on my arse. Not that i’m anything great at any sport, but i do try.

9. I’m not very certain about my future, about what i plan to do, about girls in general (or even specific) , or anything extremely personal that i’d rather not share. This is point number 9, and here ends my tag. Thank you Pratap, Alok and Sukanya for tagging moi. You were right Pratap, it was fairly easy (partly because i put in random facts about myself instead of deep dark secrets, but you didn’t really expect them on a public blog did you?).

I hereby tag,

1. Kushal

2. Salomi

3. Deepti

4. Hardik

5. Vineha

6. Ameya

7. Myself , for sometime later

8. Kriti (GET BLOGGING NOW!!)

Taj Mall?

Didn’t you hear?

Well, The Taj Mahal has been chosen as one of the seven wonders of the world! This was announced a 9 PM local time in Lisbon (Portugal) on 07/07/07! We really kicked arse with all that voting online and all those 3 rupee sms votes! Boy can we stand up together as a country, India and our symbol of love first as they always say! And not only did we make it to the top 7, but every mediocre Indians dream come true, we made it to the numero uno spot. Looks like all those TV campaigns, “Public Service Announcements”, India TV Specials and Star News Sansanis really helped. Wah Taj!

 Wait a minute, what did you say?

This thing isn’t even recognised by the UNESCO? Aren’t they the same guys who are supposed to take care of this seven wonders stuff? So you mean every paisa spent on those sms’s went to some Swiss Dude’s pocket?

And you say that the Pyramids Of Egypt get honourary membership to this exclusive club,but we don’t? Why’d they do that?

And now you tell me it doesn’t even go to making the Taj white again? You mean we’ll have to rely on the Architecteral Survey Of India to apply Mudpacks costing One Crore on it to make it glow like Akbar would have liked it?

Yeah dude, big difference. By the way, I do know Shah Jahan made it for Anarkali *sticks out tongue*

But didn’t India TV tell us to be patriotic? Didn’t IBN flash that four digit number all day long? Didn’t the Times of India print articles telling us to vote for the New Seven Wonders everyday? Didn’t those Airtel show us the blind kid who oh-so-sweetly asked everyone to vote for the Taj Mahal, even though he hadn’t seen it? Are you saying he wasn’t blind?

You mean we’ve been taken for a ride all along? You mean this very instant Rajat Sharma is rolling in a pool of money laughing his arse off at us?

But aren’t we all just patriotic? We were just defending our country’s honour up there right?

 Well yeah its true that we have a shortage of officers in the army, our beaurucracy is corrupt and our politicians as deep in corruption as Mumbai’s potholes. But there is hope right? I mean, only yesterday we voted 94% YES on that QOTD on CNN IBN. And day before yesterday we voted to help Barkha kicked that politicians ass on NDTV.

You mean they don’t actually care about those opinion polls up at 10, Janpath? But dude 94% of India felt that Sunita Williams is really Indian. We love her, I mean she ate samosas in space dude, they wont make us vote for NO reason at all.

Oh, the 3 rupee SMSs. 

But dude, why didn’t you tell anyone before?

A letter to the railways

Dear Indian Railways,

Lets go back in time to my Rajdhani Journey Between Mumbai and New Delhi. A positive person that i am, i shall not point out too many flaws.

Starting with the creaking door. Imagine now, you, the ordinary man, is tied so that you can’t move, and made to hear water dripping from the ceiling. Chinese water torture is what its called i think. Now imagine paying for that. Thankfully for you, us gentle souls don’t do much other than imagining each persons head exploding in our fragmented and slowly detiorating minds. Similar sentiments are shown towards you, the faceless babu, who was supposed to commission bottles of oil to make the doors creakless. In case anyone is wondering, this is how murderers are made, long train journeys next to creaking doors.

Putting the minor point of the door aside, and moving to more irritable things, i come to the endless instrumental music you seem to be playing 16 hours of the journey. Have you not heard of the saying, “A man creaking doors shall endure, but 16 hours of sitars will blast you on his blog” ? Tut tut, stupid babus.

Also, a suggestion for the next time i travel by the railways…NOT

Make the number of toilet trips someone can make limited, give them a pass or something which can open the place only 3 times in the entire journey, since it seems everyone enjoys overhydrating themselves and then walking through the creaking doors to the bathrooms, with an entire entourage following in pursuit. In case you reads this, you, lady in yellow, pee too much. Seriously, wear diapers. Or stop drinking water, but stop acting like a damned 5 year old. Bladder control is something people learn late, admitted, yet not so late unless you’re a damned retard. No offence LIY, i just wish you weren’t in my creaky half. Also a general thanks to whoever it was who went to the toilet and didn’t flush. You made my day.

Oh and the food, well lets say i used to enjoy it when i was a less sceptical child. Now i just get pissed when i ask for coffee and get tea.

I’d love to thank the train however for maintaining punctuallity, it was only one hour late. Fantastic by Indian Railways Standard eh?

Learn my friends, from the Delhi Metro, run by E Sreedharan. Fantastic Stuff, what?