A two week-blur

I am aware that this is a much-delayed post, in spite of my best efforts to get it in somehow. Assignments, submissions, Alankar, events, football in the hall, meet-up with friends, etc have just eaten into my time. Add my inherent laziness to that, and it should not be too difficult for you to comprehend the reasons behind this sabbatical. It has been gratifying to find people asking for updates. Trouble is, since my last post, so many things have come to pass that it is a little difficult for me to put it all into one. However, I shall try and recount as many of those as possible.

First things first, though. Especially for people from IIT Kharagpur reading this post, please check out this post by phippogriff. It is disappointing to know about the treatment meted out to Indian Ocean here. And I agree completely with phippogriff when he says it could have been handled better by the people in charge. I mean we all know they are under a lot of pressure during that time, but it is disappointing if people go back from Kharagpur with the kind of experience these people had, and don’t want to come back. I mean, besides the fact that IO happens to be a top class band, I don’t think any kgp-ian would want people leaving the campus determined not to come back here. I sincerely hope other guest performers in the future receive better treatment than them. And I guess, IIT Kharagpur owes them an apology of sorts.

Now, onto the life and times of Lancelot!!! Over the last couple of weeks.

The Saturday right before Friendship Day was the worst of my life. I mean, it just couldn’t get worse than that. My cousin had been married in the US, and they were in cal for a reception on Sunday. Sunday was the submission date for my lab assignment. I got sick with fever and all on Friday night. As a result, I was in bed whole of Saturday morning. My lab assignment didn’t get done, and I couldn’t go home on Sunday, as a result. Started getting an absolutely splitting headache towards the end of the day, probably due to the fierce concentration staring at a comp screen for so long. Blew up big-time at my girlfriend for no good reason. Needless to say, she wasn’t too happy about it, even though we made up.

Friendship Day. Not particularly a special day, even though I did wish everybody on my friend lists. Highest point of this was provided by a friend who set up a common friend with a date. What happened there belongs to the Wodehousian genre of comedy, farcical in places, with the most inexplicable coincidences to further put the proverbial cat among the pigeons. I do want to describe it in detail, but I guess I should ask for permission. Besides, it would take a post all by itself.

UPDATE THUS FAR:
1. I did actually manage to finish the assignments.
2. I did, unfortunately, miss the reception though.
3. Illness perfectly OK, for anybody concerned.


POST-FRIENDSHIP DAY STATUS:
Work for Alankar, the annual magazine of the Students’ Gymkhana, has begun. It’s been great, so far, with all the enthusiasm of a new team, and could have been better, if I did not have so many submissions breathing down my neck

Convocation was on Saturday. It was great to see the seniors come back for their final hurrah, in the sense that the receipt of the degree is the finale to their stay in this grand institution. Of course, we all hope that they keep coming back, and let the good times and memories flow.
Flow it did though, with general doses of alcohol going around.
Meetings, assignments and submissions did not allow me to partake of this aspect of the revelries this time, but it was a great time nonetheless.

Some of my favourite seniors are in the US now, some in the IIMs, others spread across the length and breadth of the industry, all of them exploring new avenues, having just embarked on perhaps their longest journey.
It was strange to think, as we embraced, that just some 7-8 months back, I had been sitting with some of them, choosing pieces for elocution, planning strategies for debates, practicing for WTGW, and through all the nights spent in the common room during drams’ practices, how quickly those months had passed, and that in a day, they would be oceans away.

The open-IITs have begun.

Started off with debate, spread over Friday and Saturday, tiring indeed, for the judges, and for the participants. Unconfirmed news says that I made it to my first Foundation Day Debate.

Yesterday was the quiz.
My four member team, which also included acroyali, DT and BS, made it through the qualifiers, another first for us, (pretty easily actually, which sent our hopes soaring) before proceeding to get totally screwed in the finals. Not a nice experience, that, I can tell you.

And at the end of that weekend, extended to Monday by Independence Day, its back again to the daily grind. Hopefully, the next post will not take this long.

PS: By the way, I have been riding a cycle over the last 4 days that belongs to someone else. I don’t know who it is, but it’s been a big help, with all the running around. If anybody hears its owner lamenting, you might ask him to get in to touch with me.

Of a Man and a Machine

I guess I had better make use of the fact that I am finally here to type out stuff I have been meaning to for some time now, but have been prevented from doing so by a combination of work, classes, my social responsibilities and my immense laziness. So I'll try and finish it before the sloth catches up again.

Most people would have read about the demise of Mr. CR Irani, editor-in-chief of The Statesman. In case any of you haven't and want to, you can check up a hundred and one sites about it; you may check out this link just so you have only a hundred left after that.

It is, of course, not possible for someone who doesn't know another person personally to say whether or not the latter actually believed in and lived by every one of the ideals that he preached. But, as far as CR Irani is concerned, at least he had the right ideals in place. Whether they were, or were not, a true reflection of the man that he was is not a debate I wish to enter into right now.

The reason I am writing about him at all is probably because he was one of the verrrrrrrry few "eminent" people I had occasion to meet face-to-face. Even that was for a very short time at an inter-school meet at South Point school, where I had a silver in the Creative Writing section, and he happened to be the chief guest. And we exchanged maybe two sentences each at the end of the function.

When I read the news in the paper, the image of a dignified, aging man, completely dependent on his walking stick, yet standing erect, flashed in front of me. Like I said, I have no idea in the world whether the man actually lived by the ideals he advocated. But, if it were so, then it a sad loss to a nation where the number of people with his kind of courage and conviction is dwindling rapidly. One can only hope that "The Statesman" will continue to aspire to the standards of ethic and reporting quality that they eulogise him for today.

Pray for him and the aforementioned standards.

And that the nagging doubts about all this in me be put to rest.

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If you have read this post by DD before reading this one, then you might remember that I ran into him, while he was on one of his short visits to Kharagpur, outside the shop where I was assembling my comp.

That particular shop and its owner are together an excellent example of how everything in life seems to even out. In that shop lies collections of fairly sophisticated and reasonably advanced computer hardware. Pretty close to the latest stuff available as far as the basic comp requirements are concerned. And then there's the owner of that shop, who works at the kind of speed that would have put all the abacus-handlers of yesteryear to shame.

He is the kind of man who will make you comprehend why the wise men of the ages gone by have advocated the principle of doing things without expecting anything in return. If, for instance, you were to ask him a question, then it would take a pretty good memory on your part to remember what the question was by the time he gives you the answer. Also, do not expect, when you place an order, to get the configuration or the specifications that you asked for, notwithstanding the fact that you are the one paying for it. You might, like me, have ordered an all-white system, go there, pick a cabinet of your choice, watch the motherboard, hard disk, RAM et al painstakingly installed in their places, and then be told,"Sorry Sir, but white monitors and keyboards are not available. Would black be a bother??"

Would it be a bother?? It better not, if you are in my shoes.

Thus, at the end of the whole sequence, you find yourself in a situation where you return to the hostel with a white cabinet, temporary monitors, keyboards and mouse, so that at least the comp can run while the stuff you ordered are sent for again. Dire threats and abuse, its worth mentioning at this point, are completely useless coz the lad just doesn't have the ability to compile all that.

So you do what I did, quietly submit to his data output, and take what you get, praying that the rest of it turns up on your doorstep by some miracle. And you also realize that because of the excruciatingly slow speed of working of this man, you have spent 10 hours just to get that much done.

Fortunately for me, at the end of the day( which was around 1 o' clock at night, DD, a couple of his friends, and acroyali were there with a few drinks to help ease the pain. And then Chhedi's and bed.

My adventures with the comp did not end here, but the rest of the honeymoon period needs to wait for its chance on the blog, because a bad connection forced me to retype this one once already. Besides, I gave my swimming slot a miss yet again, and I somehow fancy that quite a few people would not mind giving me a feel of the rough edge of things, given the inter halls are less than a month away. The only reason they haven't is coz they probably realize(rightly) that I won't make to big a difference to our chances.
There are a few more things apart from my teething problems with my comp that I wanted to write about; such as my 5th semester so far, being a (ahem!) senior at IIT Kgp, meetings with last years passouts who are going their ways, and life in general, but I must stop this one now and go feed my tummy which has been making protesting grumbles for some time now.

Auf wiedersehen.