Today I happened to meet one of my college mates,who currently is posted in
Satyam computer's in Hyderabad.He had come here on a short visit ..and I happened
to go and meet him and relive some of our college moments. We call this guy LAN
(lakshmi narayanan).He is quite an enterprising guy..who has an amazing attitude when
it comes to dealing with any work you would give him.Also not to forget , his mouth
when opened is really hard to shut ...as left alone he would go on yacking ...more so with a war like "HAVE MOUTH-WILL TALK" attitude as isthe case with my Other college mate M.S.Arvind.
LAN to me ..was in a single sentence the guy who epitomised the saying "change is the
only thing that is constant in Life.He was a guy who had breakfast in delhi,lunch the very
afternoon at Mumbai..finished his work and snack at bangalore a few hour's later and
finally was home for dinner and all of that within the 24 hour's.This was what he
said while he was in college...and it sure had us in split's.More hilarious than that
was the story where he took a girl for dinner at 8 to the Raddison's and then after a
purse pinching expensive dinner,he took the girl(who was from Delhi) to a movie called
"thulluvatho illamai"and after the movie got over at 2,drove her all the way from Ayanavaram
to adyar and slept the night with her ...(any inference is at your own risk)..and the
following morning got up at 7 30 ..and again took the car from the girl's place and drove
home to perambur from Adayar in 30 minutes flat...(amidst the peak morning traffic heh !) and managed to change his clothes and catch a Local bus to college and was in college by 8 15. (DON'T ASK ME HOW !!!! THAT'S PROBABLY A TACTIC TO SNATCH THE OSCAR AWARD FOR THE BEST and FAST STORY ) .
This story was told ...on that day when we were catching a bus in the evening after college..and I just wondered Whether steven speilberg was having competition..to his JURRASIC PARK , as LAN's story was such a fast-moving racy one....and just as he finished the story with a deep breath,he cooly turned to my side and said "Machan ...nethikku oor suthinathale kaase ille da..oru pathu ruva kuden (TRANSLATED--> Boss, In yesterday's mad rush..I spent all the money ,I am totally broke now,can u gimme 10 bucks).sO Here was a RICHES TO RAGS STORY in 5 minutes flat.
He was a maverick who would go shopping in a 5 STAR hotel and who knows ..barely a couple of hour's later would be seen with an empty purse,thinking twice about entering a potti kadai asking some one for some money (fiver's and tenner's).
He even wrote a Book for engineering students "HTML MADE EASY" which was published in 2003,for which he himself couldnt understand what he wrote and struggled to passthe exam...with the bare minimum....
U see ....he was a highly enigmatic person ..who vacillated on the extremes..he was brainyone second and the next ..would do something really clumsy...
So as we met today we were discussing all our college life and how life's just gone by...
4/30/2005
My MAN " THE L-A-N "
THE NILE OF CHENNAI- the cooum
This was one of the views we had from the station ,where we just sat down and went a few years back into time ,when we were in College. Chennai's cooum is the only lake in the world that offer's u a black backround against the traditional sea blue.
That's Chennai's very own Cooum which is an open drain intergrated with a river....it's so different !!!!!
Actually....basically ......
LAN has often been a guy misconstrued by many people,as a crazy guy...simply because of his mouth that get's him into trouble and he starts trusting people too early in a relationship expecting things too early from his friends.
But amidst all that , what I can see of LAN and interpret is that this guy may be a maverick,but has tremendous potential to fight against the odd's in life.His life was never a bed of roses, as is for most student's but he came up the hard way ...working part time while studying to pay up for his education..and also managing his house.The strangest things on planet earth seem to happen only to him ....but that's LAN ...one of my good friend'about whom I admire a lot for his innate talent and resourcefulness.He is one of the kind,who would speak thing's that look out of the world.,but by and large he seems to have been quite succesfull and looks all set to achieve something in life,which I truly feel he will.. However rustic he might be ..his attitude,determination and mouth are his biggest assets-cum-strengths that annuls his rusticness and the trouble's he gets into.
LAN express...chuk chuk
We had a quiet evening spent at the Chintatripet MRTS railway station ,because of it's
ambience..and of course it's proximity to Mount Road.LAN told me about his life in hyderabad and again he transported me to his roller coaster world....where the unimaginable happen's ..but ...that's LAN ..his world..where everything seems like a mirage in a desert,but unfortunately is true.I enjoyed meeting him ...and would continue to hear from him....
He is one of those different friend's who just are " D I F F E R E N T " and it's tough for someoneto be him.He has been a great source of entertainment ...all through the college day's and even now..I just wish him the best of luck for his life......and ya I will be waiting for dear LAN to come to Chennai in the next 6 months to provide yet another roller coaster-thrilling experience....
4/27/2005
Every damn job in the world at somepoint or the other seems mundane and not worth doing.I've heard so many people cribbing about their job ...calling it an unfair life. Whenever I used to see my parents back from work , I never used to understand how mentally tired they would be feeling.I would naturally feel let down ,if say they had promised an outing somewhere and they dont keep up to their promise. I used to wonder then ,when I was a kid, why were my parents into such job's where they keep cribbing every now and then. I thought they had a problem,but soon realised that this malaise is there with almost every one ,who comes back home after a tiring day at work.
I am no exception to this 'phenomenen' ..as my moods vacillate from one extreme to another,in tune with the pressures at work.Every morning ,the sight of my company inspires me to work harder ...but when I leave the company in the evening (or more so night) I feel so tired , that all I want to do is just go home and hide myself in the bed and sleep like a log , entering my much awaited ,utopian dreamworld that sometimes prevents me from going back to reality(like getting up the next day ). There are day's when I am active after work ,and sleep late at night ,after catching up on some TV,newspaper and magazines,but still find it puzzling ..as to why so much of stress creeps up ..to make me an essential escapist ,to hit the sack as soon as I reach home.
It's actually been quite some time since I did had 'night out's as I seem to be taking care of my health way too conciously after coming to Chennai after my short training stint at Bangalore.The night out's during college time were very frequent as I enjoyed browsing the net and secondly during exam time's when we would stay online ....at night just to know where each of us would be ,with respect to the portion's and of course , how can I forget those lovely SMS night's with my classmates ...where all through the night's we would be messaging important question's (which ultimately were not,on seeing the question paper's) ?
Life then in college was fun ...as it involved lots of night out's ,but no real form of stress.., but life after going for work has seemingly become more stressful ...due to the monotonous long hour's at work,using the brain for long period's trying to search for logic...which the brain only partially supports ,due to which further dependence on the brain happen's and finally the deadlock between the brain and knowledge occurs ...and damn we have no CTRL-ALT-DEL for easing us out of that situation,and hence we go into a state of mental depression,in a place where a lot of emphasis is laid on the end-results ,in a customer driven world.So the biggest block that people in general face , is to motivate themselves after a hard day at work,whichever industry they may be in ...
I must see , whether I can fix this bug over a period of time,so that life eases out ,over the next few months .....whether I fix my bed bugs or the bug's in my code ..now pales in comparison to the task in hand of sorting this attitudinal motivation problem that all we working people face.
4/25/2005
Generally whenever there is lot's of work to be done,I take it one by one ...and prepare my own goal statement as to when I would possibly complete it.Then I also take a few pages because half way down the work,I realise my decesion is wrong then , after some 'brain storming'with my cranium ..I decide to shift the priorities assigned and realize that the work done so far was not much and my estimation about the work was wrong. I realize that the particular specific work needed more time and after finally struggling with with it,burning midnight oil and losing sleep over it ..I finally see that the problem which I assumed as a mole-hill has now grown to be a mountain.
Finally as I finish the problem (which was a part of the whole work) ....I tend to be as euphoric as a NASA engineer ,who just sent the First Rocket to space...but soon reality dawn's that this is just the tip of the iceberg ....and there's lot more to follow. The phase between being high euphorically and realising reality is the all too familiar phase when ...things generally go wrong.
It is here where I generally get lulled into a euphoric and false sense of achievment,after which I start taking things easy ....and proceed to the remaining problem in hand ..in a very casual manner ...and again in the process start it all over again ...assuming a mountain level problem to be a molehill.....and this proceess has seemingly repeated all through my life in an infinite loop.
It takes some-one to be extremely focussed on the task on hand and monotonously still keep coming at the problem like the Australian cricket team keeps attacking the opposition in spite of the successes and failures that tag along with them. So I can see that I definetely need to understand myself much better to change my attitude.
As of now this malaise seems to be a vicious circle that has engulfed me , but It's high time I overcome this little barrier and move ahead.
4/22/2005
It was a great experience at INFY Chennai's own version of Olympics ,trying and coordinating with the team,suggesting new ideas,implementing them and finally cohesively executing them on stage gave me a great feeling of satisfaction.Everyone's part worked to a T ....I was able to make the audience realise that ,whatever mimicry I did ,reached them and they understood the humour part of it,while Sudhin and Nina's parts were also executed with pinpoint precision.The only thing that made me feel,we would not win ...was the fact that the other IBU's/Domains seemed to have put on an equally terrific "variety entertainment show" .It was going to be tough to be among the coveted 2 slots amidst such heavy competition.
Though I had planned on the mimicry part aping cricketers(sachin,srikanth,geoff boycott,tony greig,ganguly) , another team just before us had also done a mimicry .........show where they aped a few actor's superbly ,which actually received a much louder applause than mine. Then came another guy...who seemingly made his team's effort a one man show mimicing various artistes from the cine field and he did an amazing job .......and had every one present there in splits. When such things happen ...on one side , u appreciate the guy, but on the other hand ,one tends to worry ,whether the opposing team may win.
The results were finally announced .......the guy who mimiced the actor's had definetely swung the public opinion and of the judges too.They had instantly made a dent on the scoring table , by coming second.I knew our chances were still there,coz our performance was great considering the fact that it was flawless and we had all sorts of emotion's portrayed ..from being humorous to being desolate and pensive(portaying the tsunami.. skit).
The judges ...just asked the audience......to guess who would be the winner and in unison people said RETAIL (MY DOMAIN) but the judges thought otherwise and said no it's not RETAIL but RETL (THAT'S HOW MY DEPT NAME IS WRITTEN).....and boy! , for that one second my heart skipped a beat ......only to find out that the judge was playing with word's and as luck would have it .....W E W O N ........ and that simply set in the adrenalin for the evening(or night ..it was 9 45 pm when we left).
But that one second where the judge ..delayed the announcement of the result ,My inner thoughts were like the familiar 12 B story .....what happened if we lost , the other side ...what happened if we won .........There were 2 paths ..mentally being created even as the judges were coming to announce the result...thankfully the positive patr prevailed.
That was the case of the VARIETY ENTERTAINMENT EVENT.....today we MAD AD'S , so lets see whether lady luck follows us once more this evening. The photo's will soon be put up.
4/21/2005
It's been almost a 1.08 years since I gave up active partcipation in college level symposiums for events like quiz,adzap,paper presentations etc etc.When I was in college , I was a total enthu guy ,when it came to particpating in events and managing events. What really pepped me up was the effort of teamwork and the willingness to participate more than the result ,given the fact that the enthu levels and the contribution levels of my teammates were not upto expectations.
Now such similar feelings are surfacing again ,as in office we seem to have an intra office contest of skit's ,dances and adzap. For 1 part of the skit I will be performing a 'mimimcry show' later in the evening,and I am waiting with unabated breath for every part of the skit to run smoothly and in a synchronised manner.Our dance team takes time off after work to stay upto midnight and practice,while the skit and mad ads team have just started their work.WE had real fun practicing last night.It's really great to see many people contribute in whatever little way they can.
Whether my mimicry tickles , the funny bone of the audience or the judges is a different matter,but the sheer experience of practising last night has instilled loads of enthu ..waiting to explode into action this evening . I shall try and post some pictures of my show later tonight.
4/20/2005
CLIMBING THE HIMALAYAS
Well That's my friend Kishore who had come with me to last year's trekking program in manali (Himachal pradesh)
N O T Q U I T E !!!
Well That's the state of my road in madipakkam.They have put huge mound's of mud and stone and left it at that.No vehicle can easily pass this road ,as near the grassy regions on the right of the picture u have stagnating water which has turned black in colour,thereby allowing us to have our our own version of the Cooum(That's Chennai's drain river,which is black through out the year).
4/19/2005
The tamil new year was all the more memorable as 3 new infants have been added to our family ,who would be sharing my room along with me.They are SAMSUNG a/c , HP scanner,HP printer and little BENQ dvd writer.
Life @work is getting quite hectic ,more so due to my inexperience.My brain seems to be slower than the legendary 386 ...need to format my brain ,So I have decided to have another leisure trip to break the monotony by going to OOTY in the 2nd week of may (7th and 8th ).
I had a lovely weekend watching Basu chatterjee's KHUBSURAT shown on SAB tv ,which feautered a bubbly rekha and a loving family of ashok kumar and rakesh roshan. I really love movies ,that are simple and fun loving ,to quote a few mostly of the yesteryear's namely RAJNIGANDHA,BAATON BAATON MEIN,KHATTI MEETHI.....mostly directed by hrishikesh mukherjee and Basu chatterjee. Those movies really captivate me into a dreamy simple world where one does not run against time and no unnecesary dance sequences are there. I so much long to live in the 19 50's and 60's for the simplistic way of life ,similar to the life of the fictious Malgudi .
But as of now........it's back to work........
4/15/2005
Madipakkam in peak summer
That's the view from my backyard at my home in the suburb of madipakkam.Our area is a low lying area and it just takes 2 days of rain to make my place an island . Normally ,for the water to dry out it would take 4-5 months ,which would mean lots of insects at night...and the added trouble is that the gutter water mixes with the lying slush of water and makes one heck of a black cocktail that stinks terribly. Sometimes I wonder why we came to this house after spending the better part of my life in Adayar.
Now the corporation had taken some movement of relaying the rod in my street and have just dug the roads,and kept mounds of stones on it,thereby making it extremely tough to park my vehicle or take out my vehicle.Now the slush factor would definetely ensure that this road laying 'project' would take a couple of months to be restarted again...until then I certainly wont be able to take my car out.
That's life....marooned on an island ....
4/13/2005
e n l i g h t e n e d
Neither have I turned a Pakistani supporter,(even though I greatly admire Inzy as a captain), nor am I a GREEN card holder.It's just the halo of enlightenment(READ GREEN ) that is imaginably surrounding me and promises to never let go of me.
This post is all about how much of a learning experience Life was to me over the past year or so .
Interacting with many people ,I feel is my biggest asset and I have learnt quite a lot over a period of a year.Interaction with people gives you a little insight inside their world and helps one see a perspective from a different angle.
I feel glad looking back a year back ,on how I managed to get enlightened ...slowly ....but steadily
A year back,I was waiting for a interview interview call from some of the MBA institutes and after I got selected in the written test of symbiosis ,I was understandably on cloud number 9 ,but was a little dejected that I couldnt make it for the Interview at IMT Ghaziabad ,as it clashed with my symbi interview.That experience of meeting the various people who came for the interview took my out of my mundane rural setting in madipakkam to another world where the competition was thread bare.I realised the importance of having contacts and meeting up with various people of the student community,travelling all alone in a 20 odd hour train journey,spending my birthday in a dingy room , living all alone in pune for a couple of days.That was the first time in my life I was missing our "madras bashai" and I did the unthinkable ...Go for a dhanush movie paying 90 bucks at one of the mulyiplexes in Pune , just before boarding my onward journey train.
Two months after that , was probably one of my most enjoyable trekking experiences along with my friend's to the himalayas,where i learnt the importantance of having the right attitude...as when u climb the mountain's in the heat , it requires one to be in a positive frame of mind before attempting a huge task. Given on a normal day , in the chennai heat , I honestly would not prefer walking from velachery to madipakkam (2 km's),but on the himalayas we climbed mountain's and walked roughly around 10-15 kms each day.That trekking experience taught me to take challenges ,in the right spirit and attitude to scale higher altitudes(pun intended).
Soon after that was my operation ,on my tummy ,where as the doctor put it then "my intestine was in a terrible entagled mess" . Those days where I lived on just drops of water,and terribly painful injection's every now and then ,with bout's of breathlessness taught me the importance of the smaller things in life like "the very drop of water" which I had to plead with the doctor for drinking. It taught me the importance of patience , when all those painful injections were given through my vein's . ,more than that it made me to accept pain and endure it .
Finally when I got through Infy,it was like manna from heaven ...as I had seemingly worked reasonable hard for it.It was a different sense of victory ..as I was a total flop when it came to taking entrance examinations in my 12th standard. I was happy I had worked on those nerves ...and had qualified in the top few who qualified that day.
If that was the zenith ...the nadir was yet to come.The reality of living in bangalore dawned on me ,as soon as I reached there.Living with roomates who pay as much as 4000 bucks for 200 sq feet of living space.The training too was something I would never forget,as It taught me not be over-confident and take things lightly.I was made to work severely and slogged so many COBOL filled nights to finally clear the training.I must thank Infy for that , as the training there really moulded me into a tougher person.who could take on greater challenges at work.
Other than that there were quite a few personal setback's in bangalore that really made me know the world better,to recognize sinner's amongst saints.
Finally ..when I was away at work in bangalore,I realised the importance of my college friend's who were far away in chennai and the importance of being in touch with them regularly.
So to aptly summarize , life has been one heck of a roller coaster ,resembling a sine wave over the past one year.So life is indeed a great experience to live it facing all challenges.
4/09/2005
That's where the journey started ...at guindy station
Let me take u through this small ,but eventful journey of mine.I got up ,fully charged for the D DAY...and took the train from Guindy station.This is where my journey started ... at 6 20 am ,when I came there surveying the fresh morning breeze and calm weather before MR SUN bowls us Chennai-ites out
There comes my limousine ...............
Yo!!!
Saw how big my LIMO was ....It's a 8 CAR RAKE...bigger than Bush's official consort :-)
The Limo was right on time to pick me up ...probably one last time to drop me in my college. This was at 6 40 in the morning.
The railway track ....welcoming me for the great journey ahead...
The railway track ....welcoming me for the great journey ahead..., originally uploaded by kartik kannan.
This track figuratively is like life,where it appears to converge naturally but ,actually is an optical illusion ,and the tracks tend to never converge and tend to go on straight as ever.
Why I compare that with life,is because We think at some point we will meet our friend's ...but as time goes in this great fast paced track of life,life never seems to converge to the point where we meet and keep in touch with friend's but keeps moving steadfast in a straight monotonous line ,in the humdrum of daily life.
I feel really glad to have taken a day off to revisit life...that I had lived for 4 years ...in a not so distant past.
Breath of fresh air ...ahem a little polluted though
travelling footboard in trains is generally never advisable ,but there comes a point where the chennai humidity can sap you..so I decided to move over to the corner and get some fresh air ...as it rapidly dried my sweat and freshened me. The one advantage of standing footboard on the left side of the train(when going from tambaram-beach) is that ,suprisingly no stations come on the left,thereby ...there's no trouble of having to get down at every station to accomadate some more passenger's
AVADI.........station......
Of all memories ,what stands apart is definetely the images of AVADI station..the place where all my friend's would gather in the evening for a chat ,before we board the trains.I've spent night outs at Avadi station roaming about ..with my friend's living in AVADI(ARMED VEHICLES AMMUNITION DEPOT OF INDIA ) in my second year .Every time I traveleld on the bangalore chennai route my eyes would be transfixed on the Avadi station, fondly giving me memories that would last a lifetime. We arrived at Avadi station at around 8 30 in the morning after a 40 minute ride from Central station.In the train were Achut,joshy,sid and Sabari...though lots of other people were also there in other compartments.
Thinking of the 40 minute ride...I was for a minute lost in thought's of the good-ol times when we used to gather together in the second bogie...and keep on yacking till Avadi came ...
YAADEIN HAI...YE YAADEIN........
breakfast time @ ayyar bhavan
AYYAR BHAVAN on Avadi road,parralel to the tracks of the Avadu\i railway station hold's a special mention,as that is the place generally where we people used to go for Lunch or Breakfast.I just wanted to relive those moment's once again...
Prasanna and I had a biased opinion about the other hotel in Avadi called BRINDAVAN ,because AYYAR bhavan used to give us the value add of "somph"(mouth freshner;s and quick service,whilst BRINDAVAN had waiter's who were very Bovine in nature,and it was quite a dull place. so our loyalties still stay with Ayyar Bhavan
Entry to college
This is the point where the road meander's into the college road,while another road goes off into veerapuram another small village ... where I remember to have gone for NSS activities
That's the formal graduation entrance
The graduation was held in our other auditorium called Lord BALAJI auditorium and seemed to be fully decked up.It was an absolutely amazing time catching up on friend's . One could hear the cries' "Machan...Maama" reverberating from all over the place.It for once seemed that I was still in my college days.I was happy to see many people having bunked a day off for meeting on this occaission.A few coudlnt make it ....and I guess after seeing the photo's they'd be ruing for the rest of their lives as to why they missed it !!!!
JAAGO .......MOHAN PYAARE ........
That's Prasanna dozing off ,who was feeling bored by the address given by the Chairman and the Chief guest.He was purpotedly tired after a tiring -train journey from Bangalore the previous night..and arrived just in time , whenthe function started only to catch up on lost sleep.
Moment of truth.........
That's me receiving my Bachelor's of Engineering Degree certificate from the Chief guest. I guess this will remain etched in memory for long.
Hum bhi engineer ban gaye !!!
All smiles after graduation ...and why not ? we've endured a mentally tough journey of spending 4 long year's writing exams,cramming crap,coming to coolege for attendance's sake and what not sacrifices....
L-R(from the yellow robes)
Achut perumbala-benchmate and fellow Infoscion,Joshy-Another benchmate turned Infoscion,Srivathsan-PADIP'S-CTS,SID -A triplicanist...and a mottamadi league cricket champion...@TCS. Arry-(the one in blue)..a.k.a M.S.ARVIND...the guy who farts stories ,faster than he thinks -employed at RAMCO mumbai. and finally Electrical engineer turned software engineer Vinush ,who works at Cognizant.
Katchu ban gaya Gentleman ........
It took some time to soak in the value of the certificate that I had in hand.I am thankful to the college , that gave me a BE degree and a place to stand on my own legs ...and land up in a job with India's most respected company.Emotion's somehow tend to flow when the robe's are put on...more so exemplified after watchingrani mukherjee achieve the same last night at Satyam theatre with Kishore,Arry and joshy.
Mother of all Goof up's
That's SID(Sudhir.B.k,EEE,2004) and Vinu (Vinushankar,eee,2004) who unfortunately coudln't receive their degrees on stage.Infact there were about 10 students who didnt get their degrees on stage ,simply because of the callous attitude shown by the college in misplacing their degree certs in a different bag. So sudhir and Vinu, though dejected ...decided to honour themselves the degree to each other ...with we as witnesses :-) after the function....All of us were angry with the college's irresponsible behaviour ,but at the same time couldnt help laughing at SID and VINU ,who took it sportively ...
In our all famous AVADI BUS
The AVADI bus has to find a mention on this blog.There were certain bused\s that were designated to go from college only upto Avadi to cater to the needs of the students who had not taken the city route service.Our College had a majority of people who lived closeby in areas of Avadi ,ambattur and either sides of Avadi..in the places that were connected by the broad guage local train.So when the college left those designated 4-5 buses....at the stroke of the bell, there would be guys rushing to sit in the bus so that they catch the 4 10 train avadi station.This was followed by a mad rush of booking seats for oneself,and bulk booking's for other's.(more so popularly known in Tamil as "tuniya podu" ).Getting a seat to sit inside the Avadi bus those days was like getting an AIR DECCAN ticket today.... :-)
The Gates of "Hell "
Those are our new set of building's that have come into place after revamping the original entrance.Now the college looks like a fortress with it's high wall's .It was no different when we there,but all said and done..that's the case with most student's who curse the college for any damn flimsy reason and then ...after they leave the place some memories linger
Cooling ourselves on a hot day
It was a really warm day...just like any other chennai day ...but we braved all that and decided we will get go to the other part of our campus where our classrooms were .....and decided to have a trip down memory lane ..
At the "meeting point"
Standing from left to right are
Nanda,steve,prasad,dinesh,prasanna kumar and your's truly......
This was our meeting point ,where endless debates would go on before nd after the test's and exams. One may ask why this place so specifically ..as the meeting point....coz the TOILETS were close by ...and so were the examination detail's noticeboard.
The good ol quizzing days
Well , 0ne of my classmates asked me to go on to the "mini stage " and start talking some crap as I did while I was studying in college.Whenever we had a free period I used to handle the class conducting mock debates and quizzes..and yes some times I did handle classes by giving seminar's ...often ..as that was a good excercise from falling asleep ....and I amde sure that no one one slept in my class ..as I made all my seminar's very interactive..making some funny antics to atract the class's attention. Well These experiences are definetely some of my unforgettable moments of college
Final sigh !!!!!
Well there came to end a journey that I was waiting with unabated breath. The college seems to have artistically evolved after we've left.
4/07/2005
It's that time of our lives when we pose in black robes and atleast for once look academic and scholarly,resembling more of a fancy dress competition (I hear it will be yellowish pink robes) .
The joy of passing engineering is definetely there ,but somewhere deep within the sorrow of missing all the college gang is also there. I remember ,almost a year back ,on the 5th of may 2004 ,when our last exam was scheduled,the day began with a slam book spree and ended with tears of parting away.Emotional scenes were witnessed wit everyone for once forgetting all bad vibes and hugging each other...as we knew a great journey was just nearing it's expected end. I had finished my exam 20 minutes before the closing time,even after going in nearly 20 minutes late(so that would reflect how bad my exam was),as I couldnt concentrate on writing ...when one knows that the final farewell is just minutes away. The best way to have a last hurrah was in going for a holiday together. and having fun ..and we did have one helluva time trekking in the cool environs of kullu manali and skiing on the rohtang pass,tat too just after the damn exams got over . It was sad that the number of people who came got limited to 6 ,with a flurry of last minute cancellations, after an initial promising number of 16.
But somewhere down the line , it was'nt as bad as it seemed as we guys still kept meeting or bumping into each other when we wrote tests in chennai,hyderabad or for that matter bangalore. Then slowly each of us..got employed ....and there went ...the meeting's and gossip which now was limited to a GOOD MORNING and FORWARDS through email,but the bond of friendship between our gang still exists atleast from my side,as I remain in touch with almost everyone i knew from college. We decided to meet again when we decided to take a break from the humdrum of the computing world into the serenading beauty of Munnar on a weekend.
Tommorow will see a mixture of emotions...the joy of meeting everybody in the morning...and the pain of parting again.We will be transported back to our HELLISH little world for a short time when we meet everyone in the college. It is a kind of an inflexion point from where ,one may never get to see some people(as it is some are not turning up tommorow) in your life,and when I think of that possibility , my eyes just stare mutely ......in to the skies waiting for the sky to respond ..but I knowthat wont happen.
Suprisingly , the very fact that I am going to college to catch up on old friends and get my BE degree makes me feel rejuvenated to the extent that I feel like a schoolboy waiting for the diwali night to burst open that first pack of cracker's....It's been a really long time since I have had such a feeling surging through my veins. so I am waiting with unabated breath to start off that long 40 km journey,once again from Guindy railway station to Avadi ...stepping back into time one last time with my college friend's .....when the hooter on the guindy station blows off ...
YUHI CHALA CHAL RAHI,YUHI CHALA CHAL
4/06/2005
Dhoni's swaggering ways at the crease ,his maverick strokeplay .,his simplicity ,innocence and that rustic boldness seems to only add 1 more testimony to the theory of a "method to madness"when it comes to slogging , only second to sehwag , seems to be a treat to watch .lets hope Dhoni get's going at his Home town in Jamshedpur and also hope Ganguly gets past his BINARYPHOBIA ....
4/01/2005
Those were the days....
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
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