Where do your loyalties lie?

In the course of the last two days, about twenty people have asked me who I am going to vote for. In most cases, although I seriously thought it was none of their business, I responded by saying that I was probably going to vote for the BJP. This response was, however, almost invariably, met with puzzled looks and confused smiles. I say almost invariably because there were a couple of instances when my answer induced nothing but sympathy and pity from the person who had asked me that. They looked down at me magnanimously, as if I was a child, unaware of the going-ons of the world. It was only after I explicitly asked one of them what exactly he was asking me for, did I find out what exactly everybody had been asking me for. I now know that these people were not asking me about my political inclinations. They are merely asking me whether I am going to vote for Abhijeet Sawant, or Amit Sana.

So who am I going to vote for, you might want to ask, besides the BJP, of course. The answer is simple. I am going to vote for none of them, because of the simple reason that I am yet to see either one of them actually perform. I have not, I confess, been following Indian Idol with much enthusiasm. And therefore, I have no answer to the question of who I am going to vote for. I, however, feel nothing but remorse and regret for not watching Indian Idol earlier. When vigorous discussions and debates about who is going to be the next (or is it the first?) Indian Idol are going on all about me, I feel hopelessly left out. So decide where your loyalties lie, ladies and gentlemen, and do it now, for being left out isn't exactly the most enjoyable thing in the world.

Besides that, not much has been happening. I recently wrote a loooong article (4 A4 sized sheets, at font size 11) for the IIT magazine, on 'What IIT has taught me'. It is, by far, one of the crappiest articles I have ever written, and I am hoping it gets rejected by the editors, for it has the potential to cause me much embarrassment. I intended it to be a witty article, but midway I ran out of funny things to write, and it abruptly turned into a serious article, and in the end, managed to be neither in its totality.

I watched bits and pieces of 'Bride and Prejudice' a couple of days back, on TV. It is, to put it rather bluntly, a worthless movie. I couldn't watch more than the first hour. What I did like about the movie, however, was the actress who played Ms. Rai's youngest sister. I don't know her name, but I do know that in the movie, she was called, for some strange reason, Lucky. She was, according to me, the best thing about the movie, and here's why.

My experience with girls (or 'the babes', as one of my close friends calls them), limited as it might be, tells me that there are many of them who are hot, and there are many of them who are cute, and there are many, many of them who are neither. But there are, I think, very few of them who manage to be both hot and cute at the same time. Lucky, or whatever her actual name is, was one such girl. You don't really come across such girls very often, and when you do, you tend to take an instant liking to them. The last such lady on TV, if I remember correctly, was Mini Mathur, but that was before she got married and, therefore, grew fat.

That's another thing which is a source of constant wonder to me. How is it that Indian women, with amazing regularity, manage to grow very, and uniformly, fat after getting married, irrespective if their weight before marriage. But I'll write about that some other time.

Right now, I have to go to the SAC (Students' Activity Centre) for an inter-hostel quiz that is being held tonight. Today, the 28th, is the last day of all BRCA (Board of Recreation and Cultural Activities) events at IIT Delhi. Which means that there will no longer be any inter-hostel competitions after classes till the end of this semester. Which basically means that tomorrow onwards, I will no longer have any valid excuses for spending most of my time doing velagiri in college, and will have to return home at 5:00, maybe 6:00 PM. Which also means that my dull life is going to get duller, and I am going to die of boredom.

Before I go, I would like to write on a subject that has, and if you have been reading this blog regularly, you will know that it has, found repeated mention here. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am talking about Ms. Preity Zinta. Two evenings ago, as I was watching the last few minutes of the Filmfare Awards ceremony, I was fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of her on TV. And she was, as always, looking very pretty.

And that's when I fell in love with her. Again.

Dev Anand in my class-room

I attend Physics of Materials lecture classes thrice a week, and tutorial classes once a week, and my Physics of Materials (PHL 120) professor looks a lot like Dev Anand. Physics of Materials is a course I am doing this semester, the professor of which looks a lot like Dev Anand, and Physics of Materials is basically just a fancy way of saying Quantum Physics. The professor's name is Prof. H.K. Sehgal, and he looks a lot like Dev Anand. He walks the same way, he talks the same way, and he dresses the same way. The only difference is that my professor has got ears that are a bit more protruding. So striking is the similarity that I would not be surprised if one of these days, in the middle of a lecture on Bose-Einstein statistics, he suddenly starts singing and dancing around the class, waving his hands vigorously, moving his head in counter-clockwise circles, and rolling his eyes, all at the same time. All he needs to do is get his hair dyed (he is rather old), and keep a couple of paramedics handy (he is rather old), in addition to getting reconstructive surgery done on his ears, and then he will be able to do anything that has been or will ever be done by Dev Anand.

I have quite a bit of a history when it comes to teachers and professors who have resembled TV and Cinema stars. My Inorganic Chemistry professor last semester, Prof. J.D. Singh looked exactly like the guy who came on TV with Zayed Khan on a Pizza Hut commercial that used to be aired very frequently till about a couple of months back. It was a worthless ad, but it was fun to watch nevertheless, because it had my Inorganic Chemistry professor in it, or at least a guy who looked like him. So striking was the resemblance that I, unable to contain my curiosity, inadvertently interrupted one of his discussions in class on orbital-hybridisation once, and asked him if he supplemented his income from IIT, which I hear is not a lot, by doing a bit of part-time acting. Professor J.D. Singh, at this point, looked around bewildered, trying to figure out what part of the class the question had originated from. After about 2-3 minutes of searching, he finally managed to narrow down the search to me. He stared at me for another 2 minutes or so, and then, convinced that I was completely mad, continued, "So the vacant pee or battle of the oxygen atom fuses with..."

Then there was the chemistry teacher I had at school in class XI. She looked amazingly like Shashi Kapoor. Yes, she was a she, and yet she managed to look like Shashi Kapoor. She looked like what Shashi Kapoor would have looked like had he been a woman. Her name, for the time being, eludes me, although I do remember that she had very sweaty armpits. She was known around school for her sweaty armpits. I'm not trying to be gross here. It's just that, during her first class with us when we were in class XI, when she raised her arm to write on the black-board, Aseem Brahma, who sat next to me in class, pointed out to me the enormous damp patch that could be seen under her arm. Not that he needed to point it out to me, for I am quite sure I would have noticed it myself otherwise, the size of the patch being rather prominent, making it anything but unnoticeable. But since Aseem was the one who brought it to our notice in the beginning, he was the one we cursed each day, as Ms. Shashi Kapoor strode into class, and raised her right arm menacingly to write yet another chemical equation on the board. We used to dread chemistry classes in those days, and used to try and engage the teacher in long non-chemical discussions to prevent her from writing on the black-board. We used to switch on all the fans in the class before she entered, hoping that they would make some kind of a difference, but we gave up the practice after a couple of days, because the first thing she did on entering the class was to switch of the fans. She was rather short, and the fan switches were rather high on the wall, and when she used to switch off the fans as soon as she entered the class, all we could do was sit helplessly and stare at her sweaty armpits. Her sweaty armpits had a certain quality to them which made it almost impossible for us to look away. We didn't like looking at them, and yet we couldn't get ourselves to not look at them, and as a result, we usually just kept staring. Attending chemistry classes in XI was one of the most taxing experiences I came across during my school life. What was worse was the fact that the chemistry period was, on most days, held just before recess, and seeing Ms. Sweaty Armpits did not usually have a good effect on our appetites.

But I digress. I was, if I remember correctly, talking about my PHL 120 professor, who looks a lot like Dev Anand. He even speaks like Dev Anand. Which is one of the reasons I can't understand much in PHL 120 class. I don't think I have mentioned this as yet, but Prof. H.K. Sehgal is an amazing teacher. He is definitely one of the better teachers I have come across during my brief stay at IITD, and he has, by far, the best sense of humour. Yet, I fail to understand what is being done in class. This, I think, is because of a strange feeling I get each time I sit in PHL 120 class. It's like I am continuously asking myself why I am learning Quantum Physics from Dev Anand. And since I am continuously asking myself why I am learning Quantum Physics from Dev Anand, I am, in the process, not actually learning Quantum Physics from Dev Anand, because of two reasons. Firstly, it is because I am actually learning Quantum Physics from Prof. H.K. Sehgal, who merely looks like Dev Anand, and is not actually Dev Anand, and secondly, because I am not actually learning Quantum Physics at all, because instead of learning Quantum Physics, I am continuously asking myself why I am learning Quantum Physics from Dev Anand, which I am not.

In addition to not understanding any Quantum Physics in class because I keep asking myself why I am learning Quantum Physics from Dev Anand, I also don't understand much of Quantum Physics anyway, because I find it extremely hard to understand. The textbook is written in a way that is impossible to understand, and the subject on the whole is rather tough. And the fact that my professor looks like Dev Anand does not really help my cause. And not only does he look like Dev Anand, but he also talks like Dev Anand, nodding vigorously while discussing concepts, and waving his hands around for special emphasis.

And not only does he talk like Dev Anand, but also dresses like Dev Anand. He dresses impeccably, and has really funky, and cool-looking multi-coloured sweaters, including red ones, and blue ones. And when he decides to dress formal, he dresses formal with amazing style. He wears clean and well-ironed shirts, couples them with very elegant-looking ties. He wears trousers with irreprehensible crease, and jackets of extremely fine cut and irreproachable fit. To put it in short, he dresses immaculately. There is, however, one basic flaw with his dressing style, and that is the fact that along with such gentlemanly attire, he wears Nike sneakers. And not just ordinary Nike sneakers, but extremely colorful Nike sneakers. White ones, with a hint of brown and black, and a large Nike logo in blue emblazoned on both sides of both shoes. I do not mean to criticize his dress-sense here, but the sneakers just don't go.

But then, he is Dev Anand, and if he can't pull them off, who can?

Reinitiation

It's been a very long time since I last wrote. I have been kept busy, you see. There were classes, there was Tryst-2005, and then there was the Physics Practical lab-test that I had to take in the morning yesterday. Now that all of that is over, I feel like writing again, but I have a feeling that I am a bit out of touch. So what I shall do is write a long, boring entry right now to get into the groove, and tomorrow onwards, you can expect short and funny entries from me again.

Tryst-2005 was fun. It started on Thursday, the 17th and ended three days back, on the 20th. There was not much held on the 17th, except for a show called Hypnotica in the evening. It was, as the name suggests, an event where people were hypnotised and made to do weird stuff like dancing (to Dhoom, a song which I am fast getting sick of. If I hear it one more time, I'll puke), enacting war-scenes with AK-47s, and flying over oceans and forests and mountains. They were also sat on, made to contort their bodies into weird shapes and cry on stage. Ghastly as it all might sound, it was fun to watch. All in all, an extremely interesting event. Friday, the 18th was boring, and not much was held on that day, except for this event called Hocus Pocus, in which some South Indian rationalist explained to us how Sai Baba performs his alleged miracles, and showed us a weird documentary called 'The Guru-Busters.'

Saturday was a day I was keenly looking forward to, as I was participating in Zephyr (A Parliamentary Debating competition) being held on that day. It didn't go very well though, and me and my partner, Mr. Prabhpal Singh Grewal got knocked out in the 1st round itself, when we debated against this excellent team from NLS (They eventually went on to win the entire event, and they completely deserved it. They were good. Well, atleast one of them was.) on a topic none of us had any idea about. What was I supposed to say on why India should not support farmers at international fora like the WTO. The debate was fun nevertheless, and we might have won, but didn't. The rest of the day was spent in a variety of activities which included mainly eating and participating in a couple of weird prelims for a couple of weird events, including one which involved trading of stocks and shares, which I don't know much about. Don't know anything about, actually, but participating in prelims never hurt anybody.

Sunday, the last day of the fest was fun. The open quiz was held, and Mr. Bhavya Khanna, who had to come to claim the prize money he had won at DCE (The DCE chaps who had to pay him were also coming for the quiz. Unfortunately for Mr. Khanna, they hadn't got the money with them, just the certies.) kindly consented to be on my team for the event. We got 11 out of 21 questions right on the prelims, thanks primarily to Bhavya. We, however, didn't get enough to qualify for the finals. I later found out that 12 was qualifying, so we didn't miss by much. I stayed back to watch the final round, which was won by a team from IITD consisting of Mr. Arnav Sinha, Mr. Saket 'Stud' Jha, and Mr. Ashish Jhina, all seasoned quizzers. The questions were good (compliments to the quiz-masters, Mr. Rohan Trivedi, Mr. Piyush Pande, and a small guy with bushy side-burns), the answers even better, resulting in an extremely fun to watch quiz.

Tryst-2005 came to an end that evening with a laser-show (if it could be called that) called Coherence. It was not much of a laser show, and what little of it there was, was interrupted by this weird, noisy band called tan-triks, who played terrible songs all the time I was there (as I said, if I hear Dhoom once more, I'll puke), and started playing good ones the moment I left, which I had to before the program ended because a)I had to go somewhere for dinner with my parents, and b)They played such weird songs while I was there that I would have left even if I did not have to go anywhere with my parents.

Tuesday was PHP 100 lab-test day, which resulted in me getting screwed. It was also the day when I participated in an Inter-hostel quiz, which also went rather terribly. To sum up, a bad day.

Before I go, a very workable sasta for all the IITans reading this.
Q. What do you call an Internal Combustion Engine that has been developed by a student from Jwalamukhi Hostel?

A. An IC Engine.

I, as a matter of fact, am from Jwalamukhi Hostel. Which makes me wonder why I am doing this to myself.

Clarifications

Before I begin on the main reason I am composing (I, for some reason, like that word. Don't know why though.) this post, I would like to spend some time writing about a habit in people which I find extremely irritating. I am talking about people saying something in Hindi, and then following it up with translating and repeating the same thing in English. Every time somebody does that to me, I feel like a stupid retard who needs to be told everything twice to get what the other person is saying. That might well be the case, but the least people can do is not to remind me of it incessantly. It is so annoying, and for some strange reason, it seems to be a habit that is being picked up my more and more people every day. All I seem to hear these days is, "Paagal ho gaya hain kyaa? Have you gone completely mad?", or, "Pata nahin. I don't think I know.", or, "Tere baap ka kyaa jaata hain? What goes of your father?", or, "Tujhe samajh nahin aata kyaa? Can't you understand what I am saying?" Today I actually heard one person protest loudly in the middle of a fight that was happening here at IIT, "Kyaa tere baap ka raaj hain? Is it your father's rule?" As you can see, not only are these exclamations very irksome (besides being unduly obsessed with the listener's father), most of the time the translations are done incorrectly. For example, I am quite sure that "Do you expect me to go by your father's wishes?", or, "Do you expect me to listen to each and every thing your father says?" would have been far superior alternatives to the phrase employed in the above given sentence, but then who am I to comment on such things.

Anyway, moving on to the more important things. As you can probably make out from the title of this post, I would like to make a few clarifications. In a bout of temporary insanity that was caused by my minor tests, I have written quite a few things on this blog that I did not mean to. Therefore, I think that an explanation is required.


"This is my 50th post on this particular web-log, and, as of now, my life is disintegrating faster than a highly fissionable U-235 nucleus which has been hit on the head by an unusually heavy and fast-moving thermal neutron." - Manu Saxena, (On milestones and scientific analogies), February 08, 2005.

Not true. Firstly that was not my 50th post. I must have counted wrong, because on checking again after the post, I found it to be my 46th post. Quite a bit off. But I must be forgiven, seeing that I was in a rather disturbed mental state at that time. This counting error has however, made me realize the reason I did not do too well at my minors. If I can't remember counting, I reason, then there's not much chance I have at remembering thermodynamics, do I. I would also like to mention that, contrary to what I had written in that particular post, my life is still moving along quite satisfactorily. My academic life might be in ruins, but otherwise, I am pretty okay. My non-academic life, and that includes everything that does not have anything to do with IITD, is still reasonably stable. Almost as stable as a house built using a deck of cards, or to use a metaphor that has greater currency among bloggers, almost as stable as a floppy castle (for details, visit Mr. Misra, aka Uncleji, link on sidebar).


"Before I go, I must add that I am beginning to take a liking to IIT. I might have been a little over-critical when I wrote those long blog posts about how dreadful and weird the place seemed at first. Turns out that all one has to do is completely stop caring about academics, find one's niche, and stop going to all NCC-related events, and life at IIT becomes a lot more bearable, maybe even a little interesting." - Manu Saxena, (A pappi question), February 06, 2005.

Also not true. I still hate this place. Almost as much as I hate cellphone forwards. I hate the minimalist building (It is, I think, one of the few remnants in India of the brutalist form of architecture, which, I think, originated in some part of Britain in the early 1950s. I run an educational blog, you see. Enjoyment with education has always been my motto. By always I mean for almost the entire duration of the last two minutes or so.), I hate the professors, I hate my fellow students, I hate the lecture-theatres, I hate the practicals, and I hate NCC. So, for all practical purposes, my long blog posts about how dreadful and weird this place is still stand.


"Oh, and I had my first minor yesterday. Got screwed in it, as usual. But then, I've stopped caring now." - Manu Saxena, (A pappi question), February 06, 2005.

Again, not true. I did get screwed, but I don't think that I have stopped caring. I still care, and I still feel stupid when I do badly at tests. I think it has something to do with my internal make-up. I think it is highly improbable that I will ever stop caring entirely sometime in the near future. But that's just what I think right now. Things might change. Today, however, if anybody asks you, I still care.

Clarifications over, let me leave all of you with something to think over. Have you ever wondered why Indian men no longer wear dhotis. Indian women still wear saris and salwar-kameezes, but for some weird reason, Indian men have stopped wearing dhotis. And don't give me that crap about convenience and ease-of-use. Our ancestors have fought wars wearing dhotis. All we have to do is eat, work, sleep and commute.
Think about it.

Bloody forwards

I hate forwards. I hate them, I hate them, I hate them. I hate them with all the hate there is in my heart. In the past two years, not a day has gone by without some junk arriving in my mailbox. Everyday, I get dozens of mails, with all kinds of subjects. Continuing chain letters, forwarded senti messages that will make my wishes come true, corny jokes that seem completely out of place unless they are seen on Bhavya's blog (under the sasta of the day heading), I've seen it all.

But now a new problem has risen. A problem that totally eclipses the nuisance of email forwards. A problem, that for now, leaves me horrified at the extent of its malice and spite. Now we have cellphone forwards. And they're just as irritating, if not more.

Here's a forwarded message that I got yesterday.

"To celebrate the 2nd anniversary of Airtel GPRS service, Airtel is giving Rs. 300 talktime to all those who are forwarding this message. Forward this message to 10 Airtel subscribers, and win Rs. 300 talktime. Express yourself.

Hurry, it's working."

You can well imagine what my feelings were when I got that forward. Being the gullible freak that I am, and not having received a lot of SMS forwards, and therefore not knowing about the harm that they usually cause, I forwarded the SMS to lots of people. The message said 10, but just to make sure my reward was not denied to me, I sent it to 20, secretly hoping and praying that they gave me 600 bucks instead of the 300 they had promised (I did double the work, after all). Then I sat with my phone in hand, and waited. And waited. And then I waited some more. After about an hour of waiting, it slowly began to dawn on me. I had been had (How's that for legitimate grammar, Mr. Misra), I'd been swindled, cheated, duped. Some bored, stupid sonofabitch had started this, and I, like a vulnerable fool had fallen into his trap.

But my troubles, you see, were far from over. They had in fact, just about started. After a while, I received a rather threatening message from Ms. Ashna Sridhar, one of my friends who had been one of the lucky recipients of the forward I had sent. The exact phraseology of the message can not be reproduced here, in keeping with this blog's anti-expletive outlook, but the gist of it, was pretty much as follows.

"Manu, if this thing doesn't work, you're going to get screwed."

As other people I had sent the message to began realizing the truth, similar messages started pouring in, and in a period of about 30 minutes, I had with me a nice collection of 17 of them. If I remember correctly, there were 6 people who wanted to do things to me that can not and should not be mentioned here, for reasons given above, 3 people who wanted to poison me, 2 who wanted to club me to death, 2 who wanted to shoot me, 1 who wanted to bite off my leg and beat me to death with it and 1 who very unceremoniously told me, in the now renowned words of the Vice President of the USA, Mr. Richard Cheney, to go f*** myself. In addition to that, there were 2 people who wanted nothing more than to disable me for life (very civil of them, I must say).

In addition to those rather horrific messages, I was also started receiving, at periodic intervals of time, the original message that had caused all the madness. It seemed like all the Airtel subscribers in Delhi had caught on in a big way. And every time the forward arrived, it reminded me of my idiocy. How could I have possibly been stupid enough not to have seen through it. The signs were all there. The promising of a huge amount of money, the use of an occasion to justify it, the corny use of the slogan, and the addition of "Hurry. It's working." as an after-thought. I felt so stupid. In retrospect, I think, the only thing the message didn't do was explicitly state, "If you forward this, you're the biggest sucker there ever was." And yet I thought it was genuine. I can see that I have a lot to learn

The end result of this entire fiasco is that I'm 20 bucks poorer, and I'm probably going to be tortured and killed within the next 2-3 hours. So if this blog is not updated in the coming few days, or weeks, do not feel it to be an odd occurrence.

To use somebody else's catch-phrase, So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Exam khatam

Yep, they're finally over. Actually, they got over almost four days ago. Then what have I been doing for the past four days, and why haven't I been posting? That is precisely what I am going to tell you right now.

The past four days have passed swiftly. They have passed in a flurry of excited and hectic post-minor activity. Activity that is going to be described in this post in meticulous detail. So all of you who, keeping in mind my earlier entries, came here for light, humorous prose, must leave now. For this is a most atypical entry, mostly for my own purposes of recording what I did immediately after the minors. Of those of you who come here with stout hearts, and can not be dissuaded by the above given warning, I ask but one thing. I ask them to heed the following advice. Go to the kitchen. Now. And get yourself a light, maybe even a moderately heavy, snack. I warn you, this is going to be long and boring.

My minor tests ended on the 9th of February, at about 9:00 in the morning. It being a fine day, me and some of my equally vela friends decided to play some cricket. We played for about 2 hours. 3 matches were played in this period, but only one of them was interesting, probably because I got out very early in the other two. The interesting one, however, more than compensated for the non-interesting ones. We chased 43 runs in 5 overs, my contribution being a healthy 35, off 17 or 18 balls, including 5 magnificient sixes (4 off Mr. Upayan Mitra, and 1 off Mr. Jivitej Singh Chaddha). After that I left for home, as I had a doctor's appointment to keep. On the way, I witnessed a dog being run over by a Santro, and that dampened my spirits quite a bit. But a wise man once said, "It is impossible to keep a good man down.", and within an hour, I was back to my usual, post-minor, buoyant self. That is not to say that I am a selfish git, who doesn't care about dogs dying under Santros. Just that I don't allow them to upset me much.

A quick trip to the hospital later, I was free again, wondering what I could do with the rest of the day. Thinking, I decided that I should go watch a movie, having not done so for a considerable smount of time. A few quick calls were made, and then I found myself heading towards Priya, to meet a few friends, and to watch Black. It turned out to be the best decision of the past four days. The movie was a superlative one. I'll come back to it in a while. After the movie, I went over to a friend's place, and picked up Angels & Demons, a book that I had been wanting to read for a long time. When I came back from my friends place, I was very tired, almost completely exhausted, and really needed to catch up on some sleep, having stayed awake for almost 42 of the last 48 hours, and therefore, as you would think, I slept.

On the morning of the 10th, I got back to my usual, boring schedule. College at 9:00 in the morning, till 5:00 in the evening. With the minors out of the way, assignment submission deadlines and extra classes suddenly seemed to be everywhere. In IIT, the examination days are actually the ones when you don't have to worry too much about assignments, and classes. You just have to worry about showing up on time at the exam, and about not flunking. But as soon as the exams finish, assignments and practicals seem to abound, and there is mass panic and hysteria everywhere, with people trying to figure out what to do, how to do it, and till when it has to be done. It was in this environment of confusion that I realised that I had a CSL 102 assignment due. It looked like a simple one to me, so I didn't take much notice. But when I started on it in the evening, after classes, it seemed like I was going to have a problem. It was a very simple algorithm, but the program took a long time, about half a minute, just to compile. And when I executed it, at first it seemed to work perfectly, but as the numbers involved grew, it started taking time. The large numbers involved convinced me that I needed a more efficient algorithm, as did my TA's (Teaching Assistant's) constant cacophonous, South-Indian shrieks (Take the sentence "You have to reduce the time-complexity of your yalgorithm, yotherwise it will take ya lot of time.", and repeat it about 20 times a minute, in a high-pitched cracking voice, and you have an idea of what I was going through as I was writing my program.) The more efficient algorithm eluded me, and I left for home at about 7:00.

Friday was the last day I had to submit my assignment, and I had to miss most of my classes, so that I could sit in the CSC (Computer Services Centre, for the uninitiated), and think of a more 'yeffective yalgorithm'. It did finally come to me, and I was successful in sending the program to my teacher by 3:00 in the afternoon. I had to skip lunch though. Thankfully, I had something to look forward to, which was Aasra-2005, a rock-concert being put up at IIT, to help the Tsunami victims. It was scheduled to start at 4:30, and therefore I missed my class at 4:00, and reached the venue on time, but, like all big events, a little bit of delay was inevitable, and the show started at about 5:00. The first band to play was Joint Family. They played well, but not as well as the next band that came up. Braindead Schizos, they called themselves. Then there was a brief performance by Artists Unlimited. I thought one of their self-comps was absolutely wonderful. I met quite a few people from school, the notables being Ms. Aditi Mehta, Ms. Tara Kaul, Mr. Rishi Kant, Ms. Anuva Seth, and Ms. Avani Malhotra. I also met a couple of friends from AIIMS. I wanted to see the Mumbai band Zero perform, having heard a lot about them, but when they didn't come on to play till 9:30, I left, because I wanted to go back home and watch Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship of The Ring, which was on TV. On the way, I stopped for a while at Barista with my friends, finding time to order and consume a Chocolate Excess (which, due to shortage of funds, had to be shared among 4 people). By the time I reached home, I had missed the beginning of LOTR: Fellowship..., but I managed to catch some good parts nonetheless, before dozing off, on a mission to regain all the hours of sleep I had lost during the minors.

Today was a wonderful day. It being the first non-college day after the minors, I woke up late, and had a lot of fun lazing around and doing nothing in particular. I finished Angels & Demons, and had lunch, and listened to some good music (I have been listening a lot to The Kids Aren't Alright, by The Offspring, very nice song), and then went out to play badminton in the evening. Now, as soon as I finish this post, I plan to watch The Incredibles, having managed to procure the CD from one of my friends.

Now, let me come back to the reviews. Two of them. Here they are.

The first is the book I have talked about in this post, Angels & Demons, by Dan Brown. A very nice book. Lots of information. Tons of hidden meanings and double entendres. The usual Brownian dose of secret-societies and obscure symbology. Definitely worth a read, if you have the time and inclination for such books. If you can, try to get hold of it immediately after a minor, when you don't much mind what you are reading, as long as you are reading something interesting. The plot is very well constructed. The ambigrams, especially, are amazingly ingenious.

The second is the movie I saw two days back. Black is a wonderfully made film, and I will not hesitate in stating that it is by far the best Bollywood movie I have seen in the last couple of years. It is a very depressing movie. The plot is a totally new concept to Indian Cinema. The camera-work is brilliant. The movie succeeds brilliantly in what it sets out to do, not only on the strength of the sadness and depression that are integral parts of most of the scenes of the movie, but also on the basis of the sheer magnificience and depth of cinematography. The movie has a profoundness to it that cannot be explained in words. Definitely a must watch, for the amazing story as well as for the creativity and skill that go into making it. Do make sure, however, that you mentally brace yourself for the depressing story, if and when you go and watch it. This is not shallow fare. The theme is completely new, and the narrative, though a bit repetitive in places, boldly goes where no Hindi movie has gone before.
Something tells me that the movie is not going to do very well in India. We seem to have a history when it comes to shunning beautifully made, meaningful cinema.

On milestones and scientific analogies

This is my 50th post on this particular web-log, and, as of now, my life is disintegrating faster than a highly fissionable U-235 nucleus which has been hit on the head by an unusually heavy and fast-moving thermal neutron.

"Why this foul mood, Manu?", you might want to ask. It's because of these dratted minors. I know I had said that I had stopped caring about them, but there are limits to what a man, whether he cares or not, can take, and 3 disastrous tests within a span of 24 hours go beyond those limits.

Deja vu

I just finished taking two minor tests in a single day, and I got screwed in them both, and I am definitely not going to pass in Computers, and I made the silliest mistake possible in Mathematics, and I haven't slept a minute in the last 37 hours, and it's already three, and my next minor is less than 17 hours away, and it is early in the morning (8:00 AM) tomorrow, and I can't remember which one it is, and I haven't even started studying for it (Can't really start studying for it unless I know which one it is, can I now?), and I've got a very bad backache, and I miss school, and I have really short hair, and my life is a big mess, and I think I need to stop now.

Man, I'm in big trouble.

A pappi question

A very good day/night, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to my blog. If you're wondering about the significance of the weird title I have given to this post, and want to know what it is all about, then you've come to the right place, because the next few paragraphs of this post will be devoted almost entirely to that purpose.

My experiences with the word 'Pappi' began a little more than two months back, when I spotted an advertisement for an insurance company on TV. Metlife, I think it was, or maybe New-York Life Insurance. The commercial was one that instantaneously attracted attention. It featured two sardars, and Pappi, if I remember correctly, was the name given to the smaller one, who was, it seemed, having a 'Happy Budday Pappi' party. I took an immediate liking to the ad, maybe because it was a genuinely good ad, or maybe because it had in it, among other things, an overt and generous usage of the word 'Pappi'. I would not be exaggerating if I were to say that the word took an instant hold on me. I became obsessed with the word. I have a rather long history as far as obsession with words is concerned (That is to say, I cannot help myself from repeating words that are fun to repeat. Once in school, when I used to study Biology, I came across the term 'Golgibody', which is a name for some sort of a cell-organelle, and I liked the sound of it so much that for the next couple of days, all I could get myself to say was Golgibody, pronounced Gaul-ji-body. More recently, I had a thing for Pamposh Enclave. Did you know that there is actually a place in Delhi by that name.), but this obsession was like no other. It stayed with me longer than most of my previous wordly obsessions, and during its period of influence took complete control of me. I began to incorporate 'Pappi' into each and every sentence I used, many of which were just a string of 5-6 'Pappi's in quick succession. My friends started avoiding me. My family started using ear-plugs, and even I, under normal circumstances an extremely tolerant person, couldn't help but feel a bit peeved every time the word escaped my lips. I was upset, not so much with the word, as I was with my lack of will-power, for I have been aware for some time now that this obsesson of mine with weird-sounding words is an unmanly weakness, one which should be given up by me as soon as possible, but try as hard as I might, I somehow cannot restrain myself from overly using such pleasant to enunciate words, when I am under their influence.

However, what I must add is that, even at the peak of my obsession with 'Pappi', I never really used the word in any other form than a noun. (Pappi: A derogatory name which can be used to address somebody who is a)Dumb, b)Weird, c)Stupid, d)Not liked by Manu Saxena, or e)All of the above.) The potential of the word as another part of speech was not realised by me, until about two days back, when I was suddenly made concious of the word's limitless possibilities, during MEL 140 (Engineering Thermodynamics) class.

Regular readers of this blog will know that Engg. Thermodynamics is the only course this semester in which I have been able to understand most of the concepts done in class, making it an easy course, by any standards. Due to the ease with which it can be followed in class, I routinely divert a substantial component of my vast intellectual resources in other directions during the lectures, using only a small percentage of them for the task of understanding the laws of thermodynamics. The majority of these resources I use in pondering over questions pertaining to life, the universe, and everything else, or in sleeping. As I don't pay much attention to what is going on in class, I usually become acutely aware of what is happening around me (when I'm not sleeping), which causes me to notice things, such as I did in that eventful lecture class that was held two days ago. What happened, in brief, was this.

The professor, bent on finishing the course for the minors, was rushing through Tutorial Sheet-3, stopping only at questions that which were either important, or difficult, or both. Thus, when she stopped at question number 4, we were all expecting, to be quite frank, a toughie. But contrary to all expectations, the question turned out to be a sitter. It was then that a fellow student, and a good friend, unable to hide his surprise and indignity, hotly exclaimed, "Arre!! Yeh to pappi question hain."

Nobody is more awake to the fact than I, that during the course of this exclamation, my friend did not exhibit much of what might be called conversational sophistication. He was however, it must be kept in mind, in a state of great shock. His feelings could have been compared to a person whose rather unpleasant uncle, who he thought to be destitute, had suddenly died in the pink of health, leaving him a small fortune. It is, therefore, no wonder that my fellow IITan failed to immediately soar to great heights of eloquence, and as broad-minded human beings, we must try to forgive him for it. He did, however, manage to drive his point home, in the process making me realise the infnite possibilities that exist as far as the word 'Pappi' is concerned. Something tells me that the future of 'Pappi' is bright, and holds much promise. Who knows, 'Pappi' might some day even be allowed to gain entry into the Oxford English Dictionary, that revered book, that ultimate authority on the significance of seemingly insignificant words. As of now, my obsession with 'Pappi' continues.

Keeping 'Pappi' aside for a moment, allow me to move on to less important things. My heater got burnt yesterday. "How?", you might want to ask. Well, I was studying, or at least trying to fool myself into thinking that I was studying. The heater was on, as it is bound to be on these cold wintry days. Everything was going smoothly, until I came to this rather tough Mathematics question. Not knowing what to write, I looked up idly from my notebook towards the heater for inspiration, and found it engulfed in flames. When I took it to the repair guy at Yusuf Sarai, he said, with supreme casualness, "Iska to heating element jal gaya hain." He charged me 150 bucks to fix the thing, which means that my plans to watch Black (the movie) in a theatre after the minors have suffered a deadly financial blow, a blow from which they might not recover, and in time die a painful death. Which means that I will have to follow the following algorithm (I will be giving my Computers minor tomorrow, and algo practice is good preparation.) to make sure that I don't miss watching the movie.

1. Convince my parents that the movie is very good, and definitely worth a watch, by citing selective reviews.

2. Convince my parents to go watch the movie in a hall.

3. Tag along when my parents are going to watch it, so that I don't have to pay for the ticket.

That ought to do the trick.

Before I go, I must add that I am beginning to take a liking to IIT. I might have been a little over-critical when I wrote those long blog posts about how dreadful and weird the place seemed at first. Turns out that all one has to do is completely stop caring about academics, find one's niche, and stop going to all NCC-related events, and life at IIT becomes a lot more bearable, maybe even a little interesting.

Oh, and I had my first minor yesterday. Got screwed in it, as usual. But then, I've stopped caring now.

A minor problem

Yep. It's Minor time again. They start on the 5th, and I have loads to do before I can give myself a fair chance of passing them. I haven't even started studying as yet. And there is not a single course this semester in which I have understood what has been done in class. This entry is probably going to be the last thing I do before I completely lose my sanity (some would tend to think that that has already hapenned long back, but I, for one, am pretty confident that I am completely sane right now. Only for the next couple of minutes though). Therefore it is very probable that tomorrow onwards, for the next week or so, this blog is going to be reduced to a place where I vent my pent up frustapa. It is unlikely that my posts over the next week will make much sense to anybody. So if you do plan to give this space a miss for the next week, let me tell you, you won't be missing much.

Besides that, life is looking nice and good. Nothing much has changed over the last few days, except for the fact that I have regained my, till very recently lost, penchant for walking. Uptil about a couple of months back, I used to be an avid (if that adjective can be used here) walker. I used to walk long distances, mainly because I used to like walking, and also because I had a huge amount of free time on my hands. I walked back home (AIIMS) once from Pragati Maidan, a good 8-9 kilometres. I hadn't intended to walk all the way when I started, but once I did, I didn't feel like stopping midway and taking a bus. I was dead tired at the end of it, but I enjoyed it. In addition to walking to commute, I also walked for leisure. I went for long post-dinner walks, and long morning walks, and for long walks all the time in between. But about two months into my life at IIT, I suddenly lost my will to walk. It was sad, but I just couldn't gather enough courage or energy to walk even small distances.

Which was what changed about 2 weeks back. In the last two weeks, I must have walked back home from college atleast 5-6 times. It's not a large distance, but it is fun. I usually walk alone, primarily because I like walking alone, and secondarily because I am usually unable to get much company for something as crazy as walking back home when I can get on almost any bus and reach home conviniently, within 10 minutes. I don't much mind walking alone, and I always have my iPod for company.

Walking is not a boring thing to do, contrary to what most people believe. Just looking around provides plenty of entertainment. People in Delhi are weird, and do the most alarming things, like discussing halwa recipes loudly on their cellphones, and singing/shouting out Punjabi songs with strange lyrics while walking on the road. Lots of fun stuff happens on Delhi roads, like rickshaws tipping over when fat people sit on them, and cars ramming into stationary railings.

The other day, when I was walking back from college after a debating competition at about 9:50 at night, I suddenly realised that Koffee with Karan was about to begin in 10 minutes, and there was no way I was going to reach home in time to watch it unless I took an auto. As much as I like walking, Koffee with Karan is not a program I like to miss. I therefore stopped listening to the song I was listening to (which was a very difficult thing to do, since I was listening to La Noyée, from the sound-track of the movie Amélie, an extraordinary song by any standards), and loudly started shouting to make an auto, which was travelling on the other side of the road, stop. As soon as it stopped, I tore across the street and hastily jumped into it, almost tipping it over, even though I am not fat.
"Drive like blazes", I shouted, or something to that effect in Hindi.
"Where?", said the auto-driver, not unreasonbly.
"Eh? Oh, Medical", I sheepishly answered, after a delay of about ten seconds, which was the time it took me to understand the question. My mind, you see, was somewhere else.
After that it was smooth sailing, until the time I reached AIIMS, when I took out my wallet confidently to pay the fare, only to find it empty. I stared at the empty wallet for some time, and soon realised that I was in, what some might call, a fix. Fortunately, I found one of my good friends walking about just then, and borrowed the money from him. What might have happened had I not found him there then, I shudder to think. I could have been taken to the police by the auto-wala. Or worse, I could have missed a bit of Koffee with Karan (which, as it turns out, I did, because I kept talking to my friend, from whom I had borrowed the money I required, for the next half an hour).

Two more things I need to say before I end this blog entry and then proceed to go crazy.

Firstly, if you ever come to IIT, Delhi, try the gaajar ka juice that is sold at a juice shop here. You can get a glass for 10 bucks. The juice itself is nothing special, just your usual run-of-the-mill gaajar juice. But the process through which the juice is obtained is pretty interesting. You see, the guy uses fresh carrots to extract the juice in front of you. And listening to the 'Zuuuuuk' sound that the gaajars make as they go down the juice-maker (or whatever that thing is called) is so completely worth the ten rupees you spend.

Secondly, about ten minutes back I saw some blog-entries and photos pertaining to the farewell, that have been posted by some of the students who just passed out from DPS RK Puram this year. They reminded me of my own farewell last year. Made me all senti and sad. I had the most amazing time in school, and I'm tearing up with nostalgia right now.

So long, folks. It's time for me to bid my sanity goodbye.