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College has become one real bitch this semester. And as the semester progressed, it just kept getting worse. It all began with the branch-change ka mamla. I was declared a prospective mechanical engineer. And that meant I’d have six hours of painstaking humdrum scribbling (read machine drawing) and four hours of niggardly child-labour (read workshop). The new department had its myriad of antique pieces. Mind you, dilapidated machines and the forgotten-old library aren’t the only ones in this museum collection. The knowledge bearers/givers of the edifice, the profs with their unparalleled idiosyncratic antics are undisputedly the most invaluable of antiques. Below I present to you a quick tour around few of the most ludicrous (with due thanks to the timely arrival of that google channel word of the day sms) master-works.

DISCLAIMER: The following is a faithful rip off (verbatim) from our beloved teachers’ lectures. Any perverted connotation attached to any incident reported below is unintended.

1. Computer Aided Gandu-panti: Easily rated the most pharzi course one could come up with, the head kauwa of the department, has been the biggest wannabe cool dude profs. In yet another random lecture of the man, with yours truly dozing away to lalaland, the kayen kayen begins:

This is the fourth time I am catching you sleeping in the last half an hour. Daunt you know the caastums of the class. Sit properly men. Daunt do bastard activities in my class, okay? This is an IIT, not some other bastard college.

2. BC Sutta, Sutta fir mil gaya: This man was the most au-sum teacher on campus. Any course you name, and he can teach it. (For the record, he has taught the mech guys, thermodynamics, C++,  and basic machine drawing before this) Some classy excerpts from his classes, with what he seemingly meant within parenthesis:

• Rock-oh-Bhindro Beer (Yours truly’s forgotten full name)
• “Porn ki proxy kisne maara? Porn, Mere samne aake apne aap ko dikhao, tabhi mein attendance doonga.” (Pawan, ….) (Good Lord!)
• “You pible have come to the sheckond year, and ip you think two bings have graun for you, then you bill go in the wine” (You guys have finally passed all courses in first year, and are sophomorons now. If you act like you’ve gotten two wings all of a sudden, you shall go in vain! )

3. Mechanics of Solids, Indeed: On the very second day of his lecture, he goes on to explain stresses and strains. Both hands at the pelvis, fingers curled.

Maan lijiye, hum yahaan ek halka sa load lagaake latka den. To extension hoga, lekin zyada nahin. Yeh small axial strain kahlatha hai. Ab maan lijiye hum load ko badte rahen, aur bahut bhari load laga den” (Ouch!!) “Ab maan lijiye, hum load ko bar bar bar bar kheenchthe aur ghusathe rahen. Isi effect ko varying strain kehte hain.

4. Shakila Jain: This tall, fair, round-ish ma’am (in a transparent saree, if I may add) from the management department goes on to deliver a lecture on financial accounting. Mind you, I am quoting this teacher verbatim, no additions, no editions.  “There are two kinds of entries, assets and liabilities. Speaking of assets, let me tell you, we all have them. All of us. Some of these, called fixed assets, are accessible to only to us, or other private members. They point out on the top of the balance sheet, and need to be preserved very carefully.” Need I say anything more?

PS. Happy Childrens’ Day People!

Chicken Soup for the Vegan’s Soul

Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen didn’t quite cogitate their inspirational (delicious? Sizzling?) tome being parodied. Uncyclopedia was satirical of the Jimmy Wales brainchild, eternal portals of uninhibited gala of geekdom. Spoofs bring to memory numerous instances of rolling on the floor laughing our guts off. Ironically enough, the weather at R-place has been desperately spoofing yours truly’s mad mood swings.

The Gods of Rain decided to pour down on R at the dawn of this month. On one particular afternoon, a visit to the customary hangout proved to be particularly delightful. An unremitting downpour rendered the place flooded. Bartering a soiled note blessed with the Mahatma’s portrait for three Cadbury Eclairs and the seven rupee worth treat transported yours truly to a state of soothing bliss. ‘T was the Soup.

Soups have always been pleasing starters to a sumptuous banquet. What more could a meagre vegan demand than a bowl of soup with kebabs or schezwan ?!?! Though I do enjoy soups with cream, ones without it are just as fine. And then, there are add-ons like noodles, roasted bread crumps, and so-forth. Coriander leaves and butter glorify the simple, yet special tomato soup, while, spring onions, cream and chopsuey garnish Manchow soup. Corn Soup is fondly embellished with soya sauce, though chilli extract could be an equally adventurous decorative.

There is a particular knack of drinking this sizzling hot delight without cauterizing your tongue. Fundamentally, it requires a passionate, daring hogger. It turns out that the most fervent of soup drinkers, are the ones who have been most indiscriminate to their taste buds. The first tender sip, is generally the one that paves path for the rest of the elixir. The soup thereafter travels down the oesophagus, which feels like a stairway to heaven. One feels particularly calming when the throat feels like its melting. A musical threshold is set. A bite of soup sticks, kebabs or spring rolls adds rhythm. An elite bonanza that comes as prize for enduring the sizzling hot treat, is a groaning belly. This is particularly so, when one is in the mood for a gargantuan hog, more so if the meal is not self-sponsored.

My ode to the soup shall surely lose its charm if I don’t give you a taste of its more versatile Maddu version- the Rasam. Rasams come in a plethora of flavours, principal among them being tomato, garlic, jeera and lime. What more, Rasam could serve as soup, as well as an auxiliary to rice. At home, my meal generally begins with the Rasam manifesting as soup.

Rasam Saadam (Rasam Rice) is one of the finest innovations of the maddus to the hog world. Yet again, there is bound to be a profound paradigm of eating this God-given delicacy  . A lose “slurry” of sweltering rasam and rice, garnished with a spoon-full or more of ghee, when eaten with aloo curry roasted to red-golden yellow colour, is undisputedly the most Godly treat the maddus have invented. Papadams as always are forms a classy supplement.

PS.1. You guessed it right by now, I AM a hogging freak.

2. The soup at the thela on the banks of the Solani Aqui-duct is sheer awesome!

3. Home, Here I Come!

The Week that Wasn’t

Brigade Road was precipitous with heads. It seemed animated with liveliness, the Bangalore junta having the time of their lives before a hectic week that lay ahead. There’s some inherent magic about the city that makes you fall in love with it. As Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr aptly put it, Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. After a delightful hog of French fries and ice tea in McD’s, I ran into a gargantuan bumper of sorts. Truly unbelievable. Yes, I found my soulmate. The 100-watt smile on her face was charismatic. Her eyes, her perfectly shaped nose, her rosy lips, the partially revealing attire she had assumed… ooooOOOooolalaaa…Was this another of wicked Murphy’s tomfoolery? With an optimistic high, I proceeded forward. She walked toward me. There we were, about half a dozen feet apart, my eyes desperate to get in direct contact with her’s. Soon enough, I felt my thighs vibrating. Was I nervous? To add to it, came some sudden fresh music to the ear. It sounded familiar. Was this all some magic? Or yet another shady hindi movie? The vibrations felt stronger, the music more high pitched. I remained frozen, lost in her gorgeousness.

Suddenly, and rather unexpectedly, loud sounds of banging were heard. It seemed unnatural and out of place. Some gaalis followed. It was my neighbour. It was all a dream!   The guy next door was probably shaken out of  his blissful lalaland by one of Nokia’s varied alarm tones. Sigh. It was 1357 hours in the afty. I was at R. BS 13 Jawahar Bhavan. Yet another blighted Machine Drawing Class awaited me. Sigh again. I drowned myself in self-pity. 2-1 of mechanical engineering being insanely loaded with infinitely many practical classes, I spent most of the week at the new department. In the first few days, it was almost a condolence question- Hey, How many contact hours do you have?

The new department has been rather tiring. Profs are mostly old, though there’s one specimen of a young Prof. While the young ones are dull, and dumb; the old ones are make it seem like they are speaking from their graves. Each one has his own style of rendition of a deep baritone lullaby. And not to forget the seemingly sensuous business management aunty in her transparent saree. Radio Jockeys spoke lesser than her in an hour.

As with the litwit-turned-mathematical balding mighty maddu senior, new schemes of nomenclature have begun arising randomly. After all, R is the land that saw me being rechristened to Ragvinder Singh. Then there was Shag-avendra during summer at ISI D, that was shortened to Don Shag. However, things have gone far beyond imagination now. The specimen of a flu-mech prof (who incidentally has promised to show us a flu-mech movie when he couldn’t tolerate being ragged! ) now calls me Rock-oh Bhindro Beer. And then, my MA-563 colleagues- Bhaiyya ji,infinite abelian group me kisi element ka order finite ho saktha hai? Puleezzzzz, I am four friggin years younger than those MSc Final year guys!!! My name is surely not that hard to pronounce!

The sadistic pleasure of seeing my archi fellow batchmates suffer a brutal 42 hours, the mechanical drawing classes of new facchies as I wander about in the corridor of the department , and moor-ta’s assurance that mech 2-2 has just 23 contact hours a week seem very soothing.

And then there’s tennis. Having mentioned that I have dime a dozen names now, how could I forget that I am Roger Raghavendra indeed.

Toodles!

PS. 1.  When will we have courses like mechatronics and robotics  in mechanical engineering?!?!?!?

2. The Jawahar canteen is legendary, indeed.

3. Am gonna experiment making Upma in my abode tomorrow, Be there!

4. For the Sanskrit lovers around, check out this:

yathA shikhA mayoorANAm nAgAnAm maNayo yathA |

thathA vedAngashAstrANAm gaNitham moordhani sthitham ||

La vita è bella

The past month at IITB has indeed been a personal renaissance of sorts, for many reasons. It always turns out that the best of times have to get over in a jiffy. Well, lets call this post a memoir of some kind, that I should probably cherish reading with my grandkids?

Contrary to popular (plausible?) speculation, the past month hasn’t in the least been one heck of a ‘slogging my ar$e off’ session, while others have seemingly been having a blast home or homeland.

The first few days, quite naturally weird, passed rather uneventful , and in getting acustomed to the new setting. IIT B has a serene campus, with the powai lake nearby. The mess food, i must confess is punk, the RJB mess seemed heaven. Anyway, my mentor, the ex-HOD of math here,  was an embodiment of passion, humility and brilliance. Having been exposed to a plethora of ideas on applied math,  my research was on evolution of shock waves, their decay pattern, path and so on. I have been specially invited here in December as well, and am looking forward to a publication in the near future  .My prowess in LaTeX (a mathematical typesetting software) got me typesetting a textbook he is authoring for him (at 50 bucks per page may I add) 

New kinds of people have been met, bulks and sulks, bozos and perspicacious smart alecks. People here flourished in ideas; projects ranged from the simple minded efficient redesigning of gas stoves to the fancy, labyrinthine voice to text converters and human-like robots. And of course, there were us theorists, who worked on the basic sciences.

Research has just been a little part of what I have been doing here. Movies were watched like never hitherto, thanks to Rapster’s  legendary collection. The IITB local LAN surely deserves a mention at this juncture. Never thus far have I seen such a profound collection. A colossal amalgamation of movies, ebooks, journals, and not to forget, exquisite pornography! Having not come to believe in the last category, I didn’t really benefit from its collection. So much so that, my 320GB hard disk (5 months old), has only 51GB remaining. Sigh. Am tempted to crack a geeky joke, they call this phenomenon conservation in math and science. The flux of movies coming off the LAN to my comp  is equal to the negative rate of decrease of the memory on my comp. Sigh.

IITB actually honed the sportsman in me. Before you actually start rolling on the floor laughing your ar$e off,  let me elaborate. I learnt swimming. Yes! Finally. It began with me practising to float (I managed to, I aint that fat!). I gradually started swimming, parabolically though. After much ado, I can finally swim an entire lap. Yay!

Gokarting was rapturous. Ecstatic. Too awesome. The target is to drive ten times around the circuit, set up on a hilly terrain.I drove on the circuit at some 35 kmph. The record being 43 kmph.Came third among ten.

Trekking on the Powai hill top was yet another exhilarating experience. We left early last Sunday morning before sunset. And man, the sight of the sunrise was divine. One could feel the freshness and energy in the air.

One particular evening deserves a mention. Dad’s friend had invited me home. It was a painful hour long bus journey. And the Hindi genius in me had on a bus that travelled in the opposite direction initially. Anyway, on my way, I managed to discover that Woodland was spelt as वुड- लंड in the national language! Wooden Dicks! $hit. Anyway, Finally there I was. Hi Raghav, greeted me an energetic sweet voice. And guess what, it was uncle’s daughter. She did look beautiful, I must confess. We are now good friends.

Towards the end of my month long Mumbai stay (notice the alliteration), I got to visit the quantum physicist’s house. Had home-food after a long time. I tell you, there’s something about home food that makes it special. And then of course, was an accidental rendezvous with the quantum physicist’s friend, a statistical thermodynamician(?). Its strange how people meet, I tell you.

Anyway, I head to ISI Delhi tomorrow, for two weeks. Hoping to have a brilliant time there as well. And then, this very special place called Home.

Hope you guys are having loads of fun.

Glossary: to the Non-IIT R junta

R = Roorkee, IIT Roorkee. Mathematically, our Real line

Quantum Physicist= A brilliant friend at R, an embodiment of quantum physics, table tennis, geekiness and     humour

Statistical Thermodynamician- Quantum Physicist’s friend.

Rapster = A brilliant senior, undescribable in a line.

RJB=  my abode in my sophomore year

PS. Its been feeling weird not hearing gaalis for a month now. Speaking of gaalis, apparently in a certain sister IIT, above the Vindhyas, the fairer sex uses them (among themselves) too. Apparently MC is replaced by PC and BC by BC.

PPS. Believe me, I think a month of such freedom with you doing just what you like is almost a boon.

PPPS. These PPPPPS.’s are rather annoying ,aren’t they?

Of Clichés, Maddu-isms and R-Land

It was a pleasant Thursday morning, that I boarded my Jet bus at 0730 hours in the morning. The National capital to the Commercial Capital. Keen I was about yet another flight journey, for the most obvious of reasons. The previous one, disappointing of sorts, had stewards instead of those tall, pretty… Wait, I must confess, often, it turns out that I have liked being clichéd about certain things I’ve strongly believed in. You see, the horny pseudo-maddu that I am, I have liked it most when airhostesses have been fairly tall, had a not-so-sharp-yet-not-so-obtuse nose, *loses himself in lalaland*… And you see, complacency is warm and lulling. Coffee is best the way it is at home- the Plantation A coffee beans with no chickery that brought ARR to where he is this day. (For the less initiated, have a look at this: ) And that in a steel tumbler. Ummmm, Paradise, Here I come!

I am now in Powai. The campus is quite serene. There are around fifteen of us here for a summer project. Just two who work in the Mathematics department. My mentor, a senior professor in the math department,is an epitome of kindness, in a nutshell. I am to report to him just a couple of times a week. Being a man of mathematics, I have no lab related menace in my project. Which means, I have to work from my room and the library. Loads of movies. Loads of sleep in the air-conditioned room. Interesting food. Dearness Allowance @ 150 bucks a day. Math is fun, you see.

I was on a local bus a couple of days back. Disappointingly enough, no nice looking gal around. On the contrary, there were a couple of ladies (A and B) in the seat in front of me. Forties seemingly. Murphy sure enjoys sadistic pleasure.

A: Hi… *giggle giggle* I haven’t seen C(obviously another lady I presume) in our bakar club for the last one week. Any idea what happened to her?

B: *giggle giggle* Oh Hi yaar, don’t you know the news? Her son has got a 4000-ish rank in the JEE. And hence she hasn’t been very happy about that, and hence hasn’t been showing up.

A: The amount she was bragging… I think 4000 may get her son some low branch in some lesser IIT. Roorkee perhaps? *WTF?!?!*

B: Accha, where is that? In Orissa? I didn’t know Rourkela was called Roorkee. *giggle giggle*. Anyway, D’s neighbour’s sister-in-law’s nephew has got a very good rank. Two hundred and seventy six it seems. I think he will get a very good branch. In IIT Bombay itself. With a stress on the first syllable in Bombay

Before long, (fortunately enough?) the bus reached the Powai bus stand, and I de-boarded. Master Lefty’s Boomerang Theory demonstrated. Clichéd yet again, they have to gossip about every other thing, don’t they? And they call us male chauvinist pigs.

And Roorkee is in North India, not the northern tip of the arctic zone. And it is an IIT. Having been in two different IITs now, I must like to place on record, the hostel messes in both places suck or rock equally. Bird-watching has as limited scope in both places. The two systems do tend to have their positives and negatives.

I don’t intend to sermon on what’s good about each place. But if by chance some to-be faccha happens to be reading this (quantum mechanics does ensure a non-zero finite probability ), I must like to assure you that IIT R is just as great as any other place to study, or have fun.

Anyway, its time I go for swimming now.

Hope you guys are having the time of your life.

The Past, the Present, the Future

Soaring levels of mercury. Velagiri at it’s peak. Poignant moments of separation permeating the air. As the great men have declared already, time does fly. The past journey at R-Land seems to have been peculiarly interesting, and radical of sorts.

Having been a geeky sober Bangalorean deep into myself all through, the shift of domain all the way up north has shaken me up from the sluggish blanket of complacency, to say the least. Albeit obvious differences in likes and dislikes, and the usual misunderstandings, the profoundness of new born friendships seems to be rich, and promising. Despite the nagging thought of tutorial submissions and the same old paneer sabji yet another day at the mess, something about our insti is endearing. Wiki tells me that Alma Mater refers to a nursing mother, and it comes as no surprise that I feel so attached to her, for she will be mine tomorrow.

The Mighty Old Monks, God-like figures around the campus have handed over the baton to their next generation. The series of Old-Monks’ quizzes have been ecstatic fusions of charming spirited quizzing and geeky action, sadly with a hum of melancholia that these would be their last. Yet again, the inevitable torment of separation, as bitter as it can get, is hard to face.

Very often we end up doing things we never thought we would. For one, I have, not even in my strangest of dreams thought I would blog. Possibly I considered it a non-raghav thing. In any case, here I am. With blogging having become a fad on-campus, every other guy advertising his www.crapcrapcrap.blogspot/wordpress.com on his g-talk status, would the mathematician sit back? Clichéd as it may sound, may I humbly admit that velagiri has driven me to spray the net with my quantum of crap.

As I head towards two months of juda from the R-Land fraternity, I wish you guys a brilli-aunt summer.

PS. Scrabble rocks.

PPS. Being a messaging freak, I urge you to take the Air tel national free sms pack.;)