Those were the days....

Those were the days...., originally uploaded by kartik kannan.

The 40 minute engineer


We have our convocation ceremony on the 8th of april ,and that would mean a lot to most of us ,as that would probably be the last time ,our gang meets up together before each one of parts his/her ways into the journey called life. I have decided to go by the local trainâ??s to college this time,as I want to get that feel of college life,shuttling in local trains amidst the huge deluge of crowd that keeps pouring in and out and the endless chatter we get engrossed in unmindful of the noise created by the hawkers ,the train â?¦.. I am waiting to relive the train journey to college one final time â?¦

Trainâ??s and travel â?¦both to me have been synonymous with enjoyment for many reasons. I vividly remember the days when ,during univ exams , I used to go in train from guindy to park,shift over and board the suburban 7 15 train from central station to Avadi (the train usually went upto tiruvellore or pattabiram).Generally My frioiends targeted the 2nd or third bogie from the engine as it would be the 2nd last bogie when the train chugged into Avadi , thereby making it that much easier to get down from the train and cross the tracks and make a quick dash to the mercurial college bus(only from avadi-college 7 kmâ??s) ,which could start anytime between 8 10 and 8 30 . As soon we guys get into the train â?¦each of us used to immideately take out books or some Xeroxed material which would have suffered several marks of inks â?¦.in the name of underlining.Each of those heavily ink dosed bookâ??s would be our manifestation of the fact that we had also ..studied.

Each of us would be so curious to know how much the other person has studied, not as a means of wishing well for him , but just to be sadistically happy that the other person hasnâ??t prepared well and he too is sailing in the same boat as the person whio enquires. Then we would have fixed targets in our mindâ??s to complete â?? xâ?? amount of portions within say the next station â?¦.and so on . Invariably ,what I could never cover in 4 months of college ,all that would be easily encapsulated in that 40 minute long train journey ,compressing more information (or data) harder than what fraunhoffer institute did to MP3 or winzip did to files. The session would start with each guy giving his inputs on some important questionsâ?¦and where exactly one had to read to get the answer.If one attended this session and remembered the basic skeleton of the contents of the book ,I would guarantee that he would get past the corridor of uncertainty (pass , I mean) . For us we made sure that the bulk of the learning is made from the time the hooter blows off central till the train stops at a relatively unknown station called patravakkam ,after which we would have a small recap session â?¦.until the train slowly chugges itâ??s way into avadi station which is 2-3 stations away from ptravakkam.

On reflections ,I must say whatever I learnt in engineering was a gross function of the 40 minute journey amidst the din of the overcrowded train. My decription of college life in the trains would be incomplete without the 2 most important tools that assuaged my engineering life.

TOOL NUMBER 1 : The exam question paper leaked versionâ??s
Generally midway through my 40 minute train journey ,some guy would casually remark that â??this koschin , vaery impartant â?? and I bewildered would ask him , why so â?¦to which , the guy would pull out of his pocket a highly crumpled piece of paper ,which had some illegible handwriting, written in extreme hasteâ?¦which on opening the folds ,and after a little fight with the eyesâ?¦.one could see that those were the prospective questions that were leaked out to that guy from some distant uncle who has a friendâ?¦.working near madras university â?¦.and so these questions assumed importrance. The problem was not in the dearth of such questions ,but in the sheer abundance of them,as at each station there would be many such â??leaked paperâ??sâ?? , so to say around 4-5 â??versionsâ?? . During 1st year these question papers had an accuracy rate of 70% ,but over the years itâ??s dwindled and I have learnt that , the best way to use this â??leaked versionsâ?? were to spot out the common questions in all those versions â?¦.and make a note of them ,only to make sure I never waste my time going through them especially when there is an hour to go for the dreaded exams. There were guys ,who religiously read only thoseâ?? question papersâ??s â?? and soon found out that they had a relatively long marksheet â?¦. To such an effect that they even lost count of the no of subjects and how many times they failed in them.

TOOL NO 2 :

ENGINEERING MADE EASY �����..(value for money ).

Thanks a million to Charulathaa publications and Swathi publications for their interest in publishing one of the greatest books to be published on earthâ?¦.yes MADE EASY was our passport to saying â??we wont failâ?? .All our worst fears of an arrear would vanish when we spotted a â??Made easy series â?? book ,which gained prominence solely in those 40 minutes. This book was a great boon to all of us , what those hefty foreign author books couldnâ??t drill I oor minds across a wide span of a semester,â??MADE EASY â?? drilled it in just a few minutes and that too with what results â?¦â?¦ If I have had a blemishless record in my computer science subjectsâ??s the credit goes to MADE EASY SERIES ( why wasnâ??t a â??made easyâ?? there for discrete mathsâ?¦.? I wonder ) . but there was a flipside to it â?¦â?¦.


One of the â??made easy â?? series book for HTML was purportedly written by my college mate (Laxmi narayanan alias aswin kumar ). I was impressed when he told me that , he writes books . I was also shocked that ,these books are actually written by college students and not by professors â?¦â?¦ and on the day of the HTML exam , I saw this guy at 10 15 am ,cramming his head with theory â?¦..for a 10 O clock exams â?¦.and he sights me rushing towards my classroom,stops me in my tracks and asks me â??machan HTML solli thaa da,oru ezhavum puriyamatengaradhu â?? (MEANING ..DUDE TEACH ME HTML ,I CANT MAKE HEAD NOR TAILS OF THIS SUBJECT )â?¦.and that sentence had me wondering â?¦â?¦â?¦.the strange non linearities of lifeâ?¦.the guy who wrote the book ,is now struggling to understand what he wrote â?¦â?¦â?¦â?¦ha ha ha ha haâ?¦


Watch this space for more ,as part of the curtain raisers before my convocation