Pros ti̱n Itháki̱

A long journey, of laziness, of procrastination, of effort that went only so far as to achieve what I was happy with, not so far as to amaze the world. Well, I guess that’s just me. Its been one semester into my Masters at Cornell and frankly I’m quite amazed. It was quite the surprise when last April I got an admit into Cornell University.

I like to believe that I am like Dimitar Berbatov in my approach to life … Berba once said of his style of play on the football pitch

I am a relaxed guy. I play that way and I can’t change my style. I watch games and see guys who panic on the ball – they look so nervous. I can be calm, because I sometimes know what I want to do before the ball comes to me.

Like he says, I feel that when life dishes out a situation for me, quite often I intuitively know how I need to deal with it … and then I deal with it the way i want to deal with it. Quite often the way I need to deal with it may be horribly misaligned with the way I deal with it ! Well again, I guess that’s just me.

So yeah, coming back to the Road to Ithaca … for that’s what the title reads. The admit from Cornell has made me believe that there is a place in this world for languid, fluent laziness to co-exist with the huffing and puffing road to excellence. I am amazed by the work rates of some of my fellow Cornellians (read Ved). (The guy goes ninja on stuff quite often.) I just can’t.See i’m off topic already. Again.

What it tells me is that there seem to be more people out there like me who have an alarming sense of nonchalance. Nonchalance as seen by the eyes of the world, that is. Nonchalance is often misunderstood as negligence, and that it the worst pitfall for someone as nonchalant as me.

It began with me, in typical nonchalance, giving the IIT JEE in 2007. All I knew going in was that I was good enough to crack the exam. And that’s just what I did. Nothing more … none of the fireworks that some of my friends set alight. Just good enough. Then began a journey through 4 years that will always be described as the best in my life. Never making an effort to actually excel. I always played to a target. Demonstrate adequate mastery of the subject. Amaze in an internship. Get the prized admit. On hindsight I might say, maybe a slightly better CPI wouldn’t have harmed my chances. But then, in order to actually get that, I would have to slightly compromise on the other joys of life. I don’t think I can do that ! Well again, that’s just me.

I can say for sure that I, personally,  value the experience of all out Alcher, all out quizzing, sort’ve all out Inter IIT and a borderline, average 7.52 as much much more than dropping or reducing intensity on something among Alcher or Quizzing or the Inters to scratch an 8 (maybe). I always knew that when it came to an internship, if I can catch one lucky break with a borderline CPI, then my work will speak for itself. I knew I was playing on the edge with a CPI that makes most people think “He knows some of his stuff, but not most of it.” But by playing on the edge, I got to do the things I love, the things that I will be able to cherish the most, all the way to my grave (or ashes, or that cryogenic chamber, or that scientific experiment, or that museum, or whatever else may be IN by then ). Those thing being Alcher and my experiences Quizzing and Swimming.

Well playing on the edge in my first semester nearly threw me off it !! I was left barely clutching the very edge of the edge with a 6.84 and the plan was already going awry !! Well (luckily) another semester in and a much more decent performance in it, and the plan was back on !! But anyways, fast forward to the lucky break. The summer of 2009 afforded me an opportunity to work at TIFR. And that has definitely been my lucky break. Dr Prabhu took a gamble in me (definitely a gamble I have to say). And luckily my work was up to the mark. I remember  discussion I had with him towards the end of that summer. He told me to work at a good research university the next summer and then go on to one of the top graduate programs later on. I was hopeful, but not too sure, since excellence in academics is definitely something a top graduate program would look for. And all I had, was, as I say above, borderline mediocrity in academics.

The TIFR intern made me a bit more sure of myself … and then another lucky break at TU Delft. towards the end of the intern at Delft, I spoke to Prof Urbach about the three odd months i’d spent there. Surprisingly he said my work was good, and also mentioned that I should stand a pretty good chance if I applied to the EM Masters Program !! That gave me an added boost … one (supposedly) killer SOP later … I seemed to be set on the right course … The plan seemed to have worked … and I was on the Road to Ithaca … which is by the way the title of this post …

A midsummer nights … rainy day blogpost …

yup thats Guwahati for you … It could suddenly start raining bucketloads just a day or two after the mercury threatened to roast you alive … well I just saw a fuccha from the lobby begin his entry on the blogosphere with the standard Hello World I’m bored of life so i started blogging post .  So i came to this page, dusted off the cobwebs hanging there since July, and started writing whatever i felt like. In one of my earlier posts here (http://bit.ly/fKmx3r) i had mentioned that come this time next year … i.e. late Feb 2011 non of us would be placed … but how fortunes change in one year and by how I mean HOW !!! Would anyone have thought that Schlumberger, Qualcomm, Oracle, Virtusa, Wipro, Nagarro, EValueServe, Deloitte whatnot and whatnot would have actually come a calling with our names on their mind ?? Or would anyone have had the slightest inclination that Georgia Tech , Cornell, Columbia, ETH Zurich and whatsisname … would have the guts to take upon the challenge of educating such immense fools … but yeah they did … and now its nearly time to end this part of the journey … and begin the next … (this part of the post may be a tad sentimental coz i just watched “Happy Days” -> http://bit.ly/gIqoUq (to the uninitiated)) (i love parantheses within parantheses ) … well, ok the effort put into explaining the sentimental touch has drained my mind of all sentiments … yeh to LOL ho gaya … (a phrase I beleive i helped publicise … just after Virtusa …) …

On a side note this might well be the first post I have written outside of the Midsems or Endsems … itna vella kabhi nahi tha !!! (outside of them exams) … Blogging is an art and a blogpost can be a classic masterpiece or just a few squiggles and scratches passed of as “modern art” … … like say Jackson Pollock’s No 5, 1948 … which is currently the costliest work of art … http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:No._5,_1948.jpg … yep u saw that just right mes amis …

Cheerio from this random wanderer on the blogosphere … i dont write to be read … and that gives me the confidence that I dont write anything worth a read … …

Of some 36 Railway Stations …

The weird thought occurred to me of capturing the various places I went to in Railway Stations. Anyhow over the past 2 months or so I have traversed a large part of Western Europe by train, so this is my tribute to the journeys, the fun, the boredom, and most often the adventures with crazy friends and crazier timetables … This one is not in pictures but in station names and anecdotal captions to try and captre the “Moments” that occured in that place … I hope those of you who are reading this and were with me at those stations and were part of those moments are reminded of those fun/crazy/adventurous times

1. Schiphol (Netherlands) – The one with the Entry !

2. Den Haag Hollands Spoor (Netherlands)  - The one with the chilly midday changeover …

3. Delft (Netherlands) – The One with the TU Delft and all the new friends I’ve made

4. Delft Zuid (Netherlands) – The One that is closest to the room but has no trains going through it … like EVER

5. Den Haag Centraal (Netherlands) – The One with the Aliens Police and Madurodam

6. Leiden Centraal (Netherlands) – The One with Keukenhof

7. Utrecht Centraal (Netherlands) – The One with the bloody Domtoren

8. Den Haag Centraal (Netherlands) – The One with Scheveningen

9. Amsterdam Centraal (Netherlands) – The ONE !!

10. Antwerpen Centraal (Belgium) – The one with the missed train to Lille

11. Bruxelles Midi/Zuid (Belgium) – The One with all the Late Night Drama

12. Bruxelles Noord (Belgium) – The One with the Free Bus Ride to Paris

13. Paris Gare de Lyon (France) – The One with a Midnights Excursion all round Paris

14. Paris Gare du Nord (France) – The One with the TGV

15. Lille Europe (France) – The Other with the TGV

16. Tournai (Belgium) – The One with the Journey through the Belgian Countryside

17. Zürich Hauptbahnhof (Switzerland) – The One with THE 12 Franc Shower

18. Winterthur (Switzerland) – The One whose name sounded funny when the metallic Swiss announcer on the trains said it

19. Wil (Switzerland) – The One where we assessed the people going to Sonisphere … “Yeh apne tarah hai lag raha hai … thoda unpeirced “

20. Schwarzenbach SG (Switzerland) – The One with Metallica

21. Luzern (Switzerland) – The One with the Free Lake Ride which everyone else was dying to take

22. Engelberg (Switzerland) – The One below Titlis

23. Hergiswil (Switzerland) – The One to go to Rivendell

24. Interlaken Ost (Switzerland) – The One with My New Swiss Knife

25. Lauterbrunnen (Switzerland) – The One that Inspired Rivendell

26. Bern (Switzerland) – The One where I got down from an ICE and onto a Inter Regio

27. Schloss Laufen am Rheinfall (Switzerland) – The One with the RhineFalls

28. Schafhausen (Switzerland) – The One in the Opposite Direction (in the hope of finding faster trains going through there)

29. Basel SBB (Switzerland) – The One with Three Drunk SriLankans and One Sober Nepali

30. Köln Hauptbahnhof (Germany) – The One with the Cathedral, 1 Euro Burgers and 4 Euro TShirts

31. Bonn (Germany) – The One with Nothing !

32. Nijmegen (Netherlands) – The One with One Half of a WC Quarterfinal (And yeah the BIG Brown Building)

33. Rotterdam Centraal (Netherlands) – The One with the Tour de France and some alone time in an Awesome City

34. Bruxelles Midi/Zuid (Belgium) – The One with the Waffles, the Atomium, The Mini-Disaster(read Europe in place of Disaster)

35. Brugge (Belgium) – The One with Belgian Chocolates and a quaint city with cobblestone streets and magnificent Gothic Cathedrals

36. Amsterdam Centraal (Netherlands) – The One with the World Cup Final … 100,000 people at the Museumplein … one AWESOME experience … although the Oranje lost … Well Viva Espana

(One Weekend Left lets see if anything gets added)

To nigh on 3 years of Awesomeness (and to a wrecked Sociology Midsem too)

Its been almost 3 years since I entered this institute. For the most part all I have heard from colleagues is “WTF?? Why me?? Why here??” and i kno that they are probably right in saying it because regardless of what anyone may say, the placement scenario IS bleak etc etc. But still I state here that I still love it out here … The best of campuses, 2 super awesome fests every single year which refuse to stop growing bigger and better each and every year and all you crazy freaks whom I can call friends.

You will never ever be able to forget any among the brazen, uncivilised cohort of associates next to whom destiny placed you. Some 4 digit number 3 years ago (3 digit guys are the tiniest of  minorities so shut up you don’t have a say here) put all of us some 2000 km away from home in a real weird place. Hot and sticky with mosquitoes and lizards infesting the rooms. Insect bites the order of the day. (Incidentally that is the only reason for which I have hazarded the use of the insti hospital facility to date with a dangerously infected bite that threatened to consume my left foot whole in the 1st sem) Over the course of 3 years some of the strongest bonds have been woven to connect everyone of us forever. Tested over the course of those same 3 years and most recently over some Antiquity if I remember correctly these bonds refuse to break.

Then of course there’s Alcher. Man its crazy to work with you guys … (not that it doesn’t test my resolve many a time but yeah the fest managed to keep my mouth shut those times!! Well not always   I distinctly seem to remember Broken-Bucket flinging or the likes )  But then where’s the fun if you aren’t allowed to get unhinged every once in a while . Must’ve been what 300 odd days and each and everyone of them was AWESOME lemme tell you. Not one moment among them is one I would like to ever forget. And its unlikely that that could ever happen except some moments during the Alcher 09 DP which will never come back to me however hard I try. While I saw each and eveyone of you working you asses off for that one Dream of just 4 days it made me wonder how such a diverse jumble of people with diversely different attitudes and vastly different work ethics ever manage to collaborate and yet we amazed me. We still clicked !! Still worked together and (no one dare oppose this) those were simply the best 4 days of my life . Over those 4 days one of the biggest lessons of life that I learnt was that after 4 days of running around campus (with a parched throat and no food cupons    ) is that nothing feels better than immersing your sore blistered feet in warm water . I always go through a burst of blogging enthu sometime around the midsems and endsems which might be in part responsible for me not being able to write much when the answer sheet comes in front of me. Maybe this is part of that writing enthu but this post has been long long overdue. None of us (except Golu … GS @%^&$%%#^$ !!! ) is gonna have a job this time next year and yet funnily I find that I really dont care !! Being single is touted by many as being awesome, we can set a new precedent for the unemployed being the new uber cool \m/ \m/ !! This ones to you you fools !!! You’re simply mindblowingly AWESOME

Note to self : You %^&%&#$%# you just spent over one and a half hour of your time writing something no one’s gonna read. Have you ever seen the number of hits on your blog ?? (This is actually unchartered territory on the blogosphere) You could have tried to make sense of the effects of the life of Samoan Canoe Builders and Palauan Dancers on Science, Technology and Innovation

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Spineless …. but why ? Lets Rise and Fight Back

The wee hours of 28th and 29th November . Guwahati .

As I sit here in my room wondering what happened to the Maximum City : Mumbai over the course of the last, 27-30 hours, I see a friend comment on his own Facebook status. His comment triggered off a chain of thoughts in my mind about what will happen now. Politicians will only give grandoise statements proclaiming they are with the people of this country. I say F*#k them. Because of them we have seen years and years of caving in to terrorists. This has given them the idea that India is a spineless creature. Enter the country at will, hit anywhere and get away. Its time that India leave tolerance and non-violence behind it. The way we are going now it wont take time before we simply roll over and die. Spineless now and even then. Its time for the country to show these extremists that enough is enough. Enough of toying with the lives of innocents.

The country has become a kind of sponge for terror, soak it in and do nothing about it. The time has come to stop this. The current crop of doddering old fools who sit in Parliament is going to do nothing. Neither will anyone they are succeeded by unless they are shown the real face of democracy. Vote them ba***rds out!!!! Its time to forget what the old bald fool preached. You know the guy. The one who started the process of destroying India’s spine …. Tolerance, Non-Violence ….. whether or not it worked then. It sure as hell isn’t going to work when the opposite side has RDX and AK-47 ‘s. Believe me …. “show the other cheek” isn’t gonna work here. They’ll just shoot you in the head or blast you to smithereens. Its time to actually fight back and put an end to this. We have to find out who did this where they have their setup and raze their whole organisational structure to the ground. While I may be saying fight back we also have to commend our security forces for the kind of response they showed in the face of a major hostage crisis. There were hundreds of people trapped in these buildings and the forces such as NSG commandos, Army commandos and the MARCOS commandos as well as the Mumbai Police worked to save these people.

It was a distressing image to see the Chief of the Anti Terrorism Squad, mind you not a lower officer even, enters a building with terrorists (wielding AK-47′s) with a 303. The damn AK-47 can possibly spew out a whole magazine in the time it takes for that rusty piece of metal to reload. We must review the kind of equipment our security forces use. Only the premier security forces such as the Army and the various commando forces are pretty well equipped. Our police are simply not equipped to deal with 21st century terror. Terror in the 21st century isn’t a simple game. The other side uses GPS, Sattelite Phones, AK-47′s, Hand Grenades and the majority of our security forces have the bare minimum in weaponry. Tin hats dont stop bullets. Ancient Bullet-proof Vests are only going to stop Ancient Bullets.

This is to all the heroes. And to the Government and People of this nation.For the Political Class i say

Don’t make this a fu**in political issue. Its a war against India not a fu**in war between the Congress and the BJP.

For the people i say

Get a spine and vote these ba****ds out of power. And i don’t say that the alternative is good. Give your fellowmen a better alternative get into the administration.

To India. Lets fight back. Let this act as a catalyst for change in this country.

Endsems…

It happens. The nights get chilly. The days get shorter. In a far corner of India people begin to realise their worst fears. Teeth begin to chatter and it has nothing to do with the cold lithe wind blowing in through open doors. People begin to get closeted in their rooms that again having nothing to do with the chilly outdoors. The sports fields lie vacant. The doors of rooms refuse to open even for a minute of Bakar. There spawns an unholy chill inside people. It starts off as an emptiness in the bottom of the stomach, a hollow feeling of nothingness. It is then augmented by a flurry of gut wrenching quiz results. The hollowness rises into the head and the knowledge little as it may leaks out. The frightening piles of notes gathered over 4 months of lectures (taken down by someone else obviously) seem even larger (as if that was possible!!!). Illness seems to strike me just then (How convenient!!!). Desktops of some (read 327) have on a paused movie or soap which is promptly played as soon as someone knocks. ” Yaar movie dekh raha hoon !! “. Some others (read 324) keep the doors of their room open while sleeping just to show the world ” I’m sleeping …. so now dont say I am the biggest Ghissu!!! “. Why not just say yes sometime ?? Because after all everyone knows the chill that sooner or later creeps up into the head and makes you wonder ” Why didn’t I start this earlier!!! “. But then its generally too late to recover. But so what!!! Then comes the happy realisation of it being the last week of semester. You realise that 5-6 days more of saying ” C**d gayi yaar aaj toh!!! ” and you’ll be ready to self destruct all over again next semester!!! It’s a new experience for me every semester. The 1st sem was more of the try-to-dip-your-hands into-every-bowl-IITG-offers kind be it Techniche Manthan Alcher Inters blah blah only to realise you missed the one the professors had held forth. The second was more of a recovery mission involving a spirited start to sem only to find out that working in Alcher was much more fun. Once Alcher got over it was soaps all the way till the sem self-destructed. The self-destruction of the third semester was mostly niteouts and then sleep out the days. So as I realised I am not responsible for my semesters its the timing of these things that conspires against you. It just doesn’t let you get a good sem in. Live with it!!! Its much more fun this way.

C**d gayi yaar aaj ke paper me !!!!

Alcheringa 09 ….. Its coming

Its coming to sweep you off your feet ……. MI08 its an open challenge

Dreamtime is descending on the Northern banks of the mighty Bramhaputra.
Be there ……
Jan 29 to Feb 1

How I got to 4003 ……. a journey through my first year.

Its been like a whole week into the sem now. Classes are now very different. Gone are the days when 5-6 people linked only by the location of their rooms went to classes together. They knew not the others “really” . I mean beyond the others names and where they were from, there was not much they knew about each other. Probably, one more thing they knew about each other during those early days of healthy, good for the world in general fresher-senior interaction, was “frequency” . More than that they knew nothing. They had just entered a world oblivious to the joys of DC++, of LAN gaming, of Techniche, of Manthan and of Alcher. When they came here they probably hadn’t seen the varied hues of human nature. They got to see that in these very people, accepted their faults and now are the very best of friends. There is the pseudo-dominant soft at heart insecure guy. There is the one who feels he’s always right and won’t accept not knowing something even if its staring down upon him with the barrel of a gun pointed at his temple. There’s the one who whines at the drop of a hat and yet he’s probably one of the most cheerful guys too, Ironic!! There’s the one who is too melodramatic in stuff he writes, be it status messages or be it scraps to a certain someone wishing her on her birthday. And there’s me, insecure probably, a tad overconfident sometimes, maybe a bit outspoken and too sarcastic sometimes. There’s the football, one track mind if I ever saw one . But thats all just perception. What counts is the strongest possible bond, that of friendship, the everlasting kind. And it’s not that the bond has been untested. Late February 08 saw the bond being stretched to its limit. After that what has been established is that it not going to break. The year saw lots of stuff happening, some mentionables and many unmentionables . How some people used to being pretty much the best in anything even remotely related to academics suddenly realised that maybe thats not all they were made for. Some rediscovered the author in them which had been lost since about 6th class i guess. Many others discovered that they had amazing reflexes …… headshot after headshot ensured that . Some discovered that they could down 650 ml of a pretty dilute solution of ethanol pretty easily. Well all of them discovered that they aren’t and never were the best academically. They accepted it and moved on because they still remained better than most. Or maybe they didn’t give a damn. And then they lifted themselves up in the 2nd sem and got much better academically. So infact they all did give a damn even though none actually admitted it to the others for fear of being labelled “Ghissu of the Lobby”. [This distinction lies as of now with the guy who lives bang in front of me!! ]. And then after 3 months of absolutely amazing fun at home. They returned……. and I got to 4003

The Ruin of IIT’s (The Story in Numbers)

There are 1.2 billion Indians

Approximately half of them are supposed to be in the 0-25 age group

that gives us 600 million young Indians

these 600 million are fairly evenly distributed among the 0-25 age group

so about 3/26th of them in the 17-19 age group

that gives us around 69 million indians on the cusp of turning adults

of these only 35% are educated upto the 12th standard level

that leaves 24.25 million Educated indians on the cusp of turning adults

only 40% of these are in the science stream at max

so that leaves 9.7 million Educated indians on the cusp of adulthood who study science

only half of them actually think of engineering as a career

that will give 4.85 million Educated Indian Soon-to-be Engineers on the cusp of adulthood

Only about 30% know their selected branch of engineering really well.

that will leave 1,455,000 Young Indian Engineering Graduates of real calibre

only about 15% go in for higher studies beyond their bachelors degree

that will give 218,250 Young Indian Engineering Graduates Who go in for post graduation

of them half pursue an MBA

that will leave 109,125 Young Indian Engineering Post-Graduates

At the Maximum 5% of them complete a Doctorate

That will give about 5,450 Doctorates in The aforementioned long long classification of Young Indian Engineering Graduates of Some Calibre who pursue and succesfully complete their post-graduation upto the Ph.D level

Of these only 10% will go into the academic field

That gives 545 teachers who are Indian Engineering Graduates of Some Calibre Who have succesfully obtained a Doctorate

But wait i haven’t finished

of these only 20% actually teach in India

The Brain Drain is real dudes ……….

so that leaves only 109 blah blah blah ……..Doctorates teaching in India

of these lets say 40% teach in IIT’s (the “Brand” That’s on its last legs thanks to a certain Mr.Arjun Singh)

so that gives us 43 IIT professors every year

Great!!

Problem is that there are going to be 15 IIT’s plus ofcourse the All – Womens IIT

So 16 IIT’s

That gives every IIT less than 3 new Professors every year

And of course my dear Mr. Arjun Singh do profs ever retire ???

Can an Institution of the level of an IIT (what level people will ask 5 years down the line)
survive on getting just 3 professors of high quality every year ?????

Whew that was tiring

Hope i made my point!!