ME & MY WORLD

As per the wise elderly advises, the ultimate aim of 10th standard is to score some freakishly high percentage, high enough to get a seat in a big school/coaching center holding the magic door to IIT. As I entered the big school, I realized all that hype was pure Bullshit. Nothing much had changed. The focus just shifted from percentage to percentile and from marks to all India rank. Entrance exams were portrayed as the most important phase of evolution, life decider. We were made to believe that with admit to IIT or NIT, comes free is a 20 LPA job or a doorway to the great American/European dream. Again bullshit and this time the big time bullshit.

Time @ NIT Trichy has periodically managed to open several holes at different parts of my brain sustaining a continuous outflow of hope. Final review cum grand viva drilled the bottom most. After writing down the thickest thesis in college, I entered the viva hall in order to enlighten our so called external examiner who instead exposed me to the eternal darkness. For a minute I doubted my own multiplication skills. I was either trying to teach computational mathematics to a chimpanzee or I was lost in a parallel universe where the laws of our world physics were no more valid. Otherwise my struggle to explain natural aspiration pressure could have been saved (how hard is it to understand that ambient pressure is approximately 1 Bar)!! All my attempts failed until I got the benefit of the panel’s pity over my plea in the name of mother earth. Any way, the torture got over as our esteemed examiner’s tiny brain was satisfied with our frustration. I came out of the room with a million dollar advice: “DO NOT DREAM so much” and as I was coming back, standing insulted was the front wall of Octa which has been daring us to dream all four years.

But that was it. My trial was over. I was a free bird. The barren lands of Trichy were as disgusting as ever and so was every thought of all those useless theory classes. But something had changed though I couldn’t figure out what it was. May be I was addicted to some inmate(s). The good buy hug to a friend who left right after exam was very strange. Even the most chat and ever blabbering guy was silent on the last day. I was not sad, neither was I happy. It was something very different, something unexplained, something unique. Solitude prevailed as my thoughts were uudecoded. Stood unaltered was absolute cluelessness.

If I look back to the simple days of school, I wonder what were those wise asses thinking before raining down with their lifetime advices? 12th standard was a just gust of wind as compared to this hurricane. The only thing that looks certain is ambiguity and I am not talking about professional life alone. I wish Heisenberg were alive to explain this uncertainty.

Another final-semester evening filled with utter joblessness. If you have read my last post, you must have figured out that my first year was not so enjoyable. The guy who was irritated with the whole ragging thingi is somewhat happy witnessing its downward slope. Indeed many things have changed. I rarely stay in my wing now a days. I guess I have broken the so called shell or rather I have discovered my own group. Indeed made some amazing friends. Each one is owner of some crazy-ass talent [basically all of them are NAMUNAs and no one (including me) is fully normal]. One such namuna bought a bike today, an Avenger 220 and decided to ride 500 kms on the first day. Any way I got to ride it to dhaba and I am very happy about it. Introduction over……

There used to be three DHABAs infront of our college in 1st year and we wise men used to call them as 1st, 2nd and 3rd dhadas. 1st dhaba guy has become rich and has shifted to a new place. Food is still good, but no1 wants to go there (at least my friends). The good old smile is gone, we don’t know any1 related to it now. 2nd dhaba is no more. One chap tried opening another Dhaba on the ashes of the original 2nd Dhaba and the initial attempts were certainly successful, at-least in earning the all important designation; but it could not survive. May be that land is cursed.

That’s brings us to the third dhaba. It is still there, unchanged. The prices have doubled. But it still is cheap. I just had bhatura, gobi masala, chana and a cold drink for 60 bucks. Today as I was sitting there and was discussing about the new bike, I blabbered “Mohan anna, order anna” (anna=brother: tamil). Basically I was asking him to take the order, but he was busy and replied “5 minutes wait anna, please”. But my hungry stomach didn’t like the idea of waiting. Plus I could see the masala they put on Bhatura getting over. That was simple unacceptable, I love that masala and lemon. So I asked “ok anna, no problem. Send Raju anna”. Raju anna took order, I ate twice my capacity (as usual) and came back with a heavy belly.

Now I am in my room and have finished watching everything I intended to. So I am left with the precious time to rewind and think (not that I am going to bring a radical change to society or myself after the termination of the thought process, but still I prefer to call it precious because I like it that way). It’s not the food that drags me there to that Dhaba, it’s those people. We know them by name, every time those people see us coming, they say hi. We always have a brief conversation. Last semester one day, we went there (like dumbfucks) and discovered our pockets empty after hogging like hungry beggars. The owner was like “no problem, give tomorrow”. He was absolutely sure that we are coming back to his dhaba the following day and not going to mess(:P). That day I didn’t feel anything special about it. But now that few days are left, all this seems very important. Every semester we used to wait for holidays to go home. There was always the next semester and we had to come back. But this time as we leave, there will be no coming back.

Everything eventually comes to an end, may be happy or sad. But this case is unique; the aforementioned words can’t provide the necessary description, I doubt any word can. This was the time I used to dream about in my 1st year, the time when I will get out of this hellhole place. But it feels weird as the end approaches. I won’t be able to make another Nittro car ever. There will be no more Pragyans, no more NITT Fests. There will be no more shouting, no more trips to Pondy with friends, no more bums on birth day. No1 will ask me for treats for the smallest possible reason.

I am placed, waiting for admit results. There is a lot to look forward to, but the thing that bothers me the most is that there will be no 9th sem. Im pretty sure its neither the classroom nor its the department that I am going to miss. Studies were never there, so it can’t be missed. I absolutely hate this place and measurably failed to learn the language. So it can’t be the love of the land. So that leaves only one thing. Those stupid people who survived with me the waterless days of hostel and scolded mess manager for the pathetic food, in front of whom I blabbered about Topgear and F1 for hours, bugged them with my weirdest automotive ideas and the people with whom I started going to Gym lately (oh yah, I go to gym now a days. It’s a different thing that the number of visits are still limited to single digit and I do nothing there, but still…). There are some more idiots who were never a part of campus life. It was only electronic contact, but they stood by me when I needed them most and I thank the internet and the cell phone service providers for that because thanking those chaps will be an insult to friendship. I can go on and on but I wont.

Some people will feel irritated or bored after reading this, some will bitch about me. This post is not for them. But there are some who will have a nice smile on their face, who can relate themselves to at-least one word of this post. Those are the ones who made my ordinary B-Tech life special and they are the ones who I will always remember as I look back to these 4 years of my life.


DEDICATED TO ALL MY FRIENDS. THANK YOU FOR ALL THE WONDERFUL MEMORIES. . . .

20th July 2007 morning, I arrived in LH9 along with some other familiar faces. First glance of the big gate and the fountain in front of the admin-block reinforced the existing nice and high image of the college (may be the prejudice pictures of the tri-lettered institution formed at the back of my head made everything look very attractive or rather illusive). Same afternoon met my roommates in Agate Hostel-49 (all from Chennai after the only north Indian guy decided to change the room because of his potting addictions). Strangely I shared very nice time with all of them despite of the “anti-tambism” (don’t waste ur time by looking up in dictionaries coz it’s yet another word restricted to the walls of this great institution) spread by the so called north-indian seniors. But hay; that is not the topic of discussion!! Sorry for the diversion...

Topic starts with my first meeting with the seniors. They made it feel that taking raging is as essential as driving an electric car to help reduce global worming even though no1 gives a damn about the pollution caused by the thermal power plants that produce this electricity (yes, in here ragging is optional. If u opt for ragging, u get to interact with seniors and if u don’t den u don’t get to do the later. But now i know so many seniors who never took the bothering to rag me). Fine, let’s get back to the topic. Ragging!!

The wide range of this classified ragging business included many sub-sections ranging from assigning a pet name to everyone else to doing the most incongruous work possible inside a technical institution. Full shirt (no tuck in, no belt), formal pant, chappals no Dadhi-much style and small hair. Indian army would be nicer. But i somehow managed to wander around in a more comfortable way (of course away for the eagle eyes of my state seniors). Yes, this is state wise ragging inside this 1000 acre realm, don wanna confuse more by going into the details. Back to the topic: Juniors were like the slaves form the British age who are summoned at any point of time to do any shorts of work starting from buying Maggi to taking Xerox (many more things have be excluded for the simple fact that they can’t not be included due to social reasons). Well, this was the easier part of this great ragging if one can ignore the fact that i had to go every day at the 12.10 breaks for supplying snacks to the seniors. I was the so called “Puff delivery boy” with a mere hope that none of the kings will be free at the delivery time so that I can just deliver the order and escape.

Reading the above passage, one might be thinking why I am making a big deal out of these normal engineering college stuffs. But hallo, kahani to avi baki he..... There is this concept of “score” which signifies the number of times u have been slapped. By the end of 6 months my score was 185 (around 60 on the last day itself). Somehow I managed to survive with minor cracks on my lips and went on with the ragging business as everyone was going for it. I just wanted to stay in the group. Mistake, yet another colossal mistake. The group was never mine (wait till the last paragraph).

Huff, again distraction, back to the topic: There were those bizarre days when one particular frustrated and desperate senior would ask me to bring an Intro (needs no explanation) from some cute and sexy girl he saw that day and i wont (believe me there r hardly any girls, forget about any cute girl; this was sure frustration of the guy towards the opposite gender). Guess the result. Scores and more scores...... One of the times i was really frantic with bristling anger (and it showed in the face of that 2nd year guy too). Should not describe this, but it’s the least vulgar thing that can be briefed about. I was shown a contagious nail on the wall. A ring was hanging on it which was even more rusted and contractable. I was asked to envisage and give some description about that pair of junk. Thanks to my awesome mind's eye, it looked nothing other than corroded pair. As usual i was thunderstruck and it pissed off that frustrated freak. I was instructed to visualize that nail and the ring set as Katrina Kaif’s nipples with a piercing on it and was asked to suck it. I stood up and almost slapped him. May be he was petrified for the first time that I might complain to the authorities (which will lead to sure rustication), so he made up his mind to transfer the honor to some1else and make me free. This was nothing; can’t be unabashed to describe the other and rather more embarrassing events. Believe me I lost count.

Let us skip the hard part, ragging over. After FTR (final touch of ragging) my batch mates were all paragons; keen on stopping this violence from the next year onwards. But the summer vacation seemed to expunge all the memories. Soon it was 3rd sem, and we were seniors. Everything had changed. The victim became the culprit. The highest score in my batch was something around 200, but for my juniors had to digest 350. I was kinda left out of the so called group; because I was against this brutality and wanted to keep the slightest peace of humanity intact which I managed to conserve after ragging made me callous. Then my expectation shifted towards those juniors for they will be a little more human. But here I am in 6th sem and no wander, nothing has changed; the guy who slaps most is applauded for holding up the guardianship of the great tradition. I prefer now to stay inside my room and not say anything. Luckily managed to make some friends in the next hostel who never opted for ragging (unlike me who chose to be ragged never to rag any1), time passes well when we talk about cars and engines. But in here it rather feels like that frog who is trapped inside the well but can’t afford to move out. But 1 thing for sure, life in this group (formed on the basis of ragging where i never belong) taught one thing. Do not expect... Man has no originality. The most established and static thing is transformation and change. With a slightest of chance the Prey becomes the Predator and the cycle continues. . . . . . . . .