GRE-at Expectations

This is an article I wrote for the recently published edition of my college newspaper "Vox Populi" which currently has me as one of its editors. I thought it would be interesting to share it with other people too... so here it is:

The first two years in this college are sheer bliss. All you know are instances of illustrious seniors lapping up prestigious jobs with mind-boggling pay-packages. Enter third year, and the harsh realities begin to surface. You realise that not everything is as rosy as it seemed to be.

In the last year or so, the economic downturn has just made things worse. The hordes of third-years lining up for placement preparation sessions and the so-called “personality-enhancing workshops” bewilder me. These “troubled times” have also got people thinking about continuing their education and avoid the messed-up placement scenario altogether. This has led to something which I would like to the call ‘the GRE phenomenon’.

Suddenly, everybody is queuing up for the hitherto little-known and “not so happening” city of Allahabad (oddly, one of the two centres for GRE in the north). People who, till yesterday, swore that they would die rather than continue in their current field of study are cramming thousands of words, only to pursue “higher” education in their respective fields. Every place you go, you find people racking their brains over a list of ‘alien’ words and strategizing for the test on war footing. Only, this war has a different kind of ‘Barron’ as its indisputable hero.

These GRE ‘maggus’ are becoming a pain for the other half of their peers, the GRE “muggles”. These innocuous beings are made to brook their ubiquitous “Barron’s”-wielding cronies’ persistent rambling in an array of stilted words. You definitely understand what I intend to convey, don’t you? I mean what were these people thinking when they designed this test. Someone must have said, “Hey! Here is a list of some really nasty and useless words you need to mug up. If you’re ready to do that, you must be really desperate to get to the US and we’ll let you in”.

It is common to see students stashing some “not-so-flashy” flash cards (for the uninitiated, these are word-meaning lists) inside their notebooks, and anxiously taking a peek at them when the professor looks away. So ugly is the rat-race that it has gulped up some totally clueless “muggles” who, realising that their friends were into GRE, have begun vigorous efforts to increase their vocabulary, just so that they are not left behind in any way.

Joining the rats in this race for a successful career are the CATs. They were recently seen to be at the peak of their activity when they were remarkably stumped by an apparently confusing form to be filled, merely to register for the Common Admission Test, which, actually, should have been the puzzling part.

Well, in the fact that all this preparation leads to people joining hands to improve upon their skills and aim for a better future, there is a beauty in this mess. But, as they say, pulchritude has cutaneous profundity... – “beauty is skin deep”, yaar!

An eventful day

Today was a tiring saturday. We had a departmental tour scheduled today which made us walk through incomprehensible mazes of industry shops at the Tata Motors plant in Lucknow. It is impossible for me to put down in words the pain I have in my legs right now. I am not sure why I am writing this post right now since I am extremely dazed owing to the fact that the above mentioned trip forced me to get up at 5:00 am.

I won't be talking too much about the trip. The journey back and forth from Kanpur to Lucknow was pretty interesting, with lots of chips, biscuits, cold-drinks and amazingly loud recitals of numerous cheesy and sleazy bollywood numbers. The place of visit, Tata Motors, was good and yeah, well... that's about all I came to make of it. After spending 10 hours traveling in a bus which painfully ambled to its destination, we arrived back in campus at around 8 pm.

Now, my next room neighbour and good friend, usually called by the name "bong", has his birthday today (13th sept). So we had plans to celebrate it at 12 in the night. And so we did. Surprisingly, in a college like IITK, this guy mananges to party with a group which has more gals than guys. And I am not complaining.

The cake was good. So were the photo sessions. And obviously, the entry of the SIS guards to shoo us away from the place of celebration added to the aura of the moment. For no particular reason, most people were at their humorous best and we spent close to 2 hours cracking and laughing at extremely hilarious jokes. All in all, a perfect end to an interesting day.

I am extremely sleepy and don't know what to write further.

Ciao...

...and that's life!

Whoever said that the final year of college is extremely cool, should be forcefully made to eat his words up and I wish he chokes on them. Right now, there is such frenzy around with respect to academics, future plans, preparations to realise that future, pressure of coping with the recession and a nagging uneasiness that one year hence we will be at crossroads again.

For the umpteenth time in your life, everbody around tells you that if you somehow successfully manage things "this" time around, all will be good with your life. The truth, as we all have realised by now, is that things will never be that simple... ever. And yeah, I am totally cool with that. Life presents its challenges and you waddle through them and also try to enjoy while you are here on this earth. But then why do you take the trouble?

Ok, I am totally digressing from the theme that I had in mind when I started writing this post. Now that I have brought up this point, I would also mention that this question has often perturbed me, as I am sure it would have all of you readers (if there are any!! :D). Thinking about all this is pretty unnerving and it totally screws up your head.

Why do we imperil all our comfort and happiness in the present moment just to realise the same things at a later stage. Why are people expected to live their life to the fullest and have a passion for what they do.. blah blah. When you came into this world, you, as an individual, had no say in it! All this is as complicated as the big bang. Your birth was your big bang! Before that, there was nothing... People have found out ways to convince themselves of a larger motive behind all this. They charted out concepts of rebirth and how you live 84000 lives and try and attain nirvana. The question is if the human being is an imperfect being looking to seek that perfect balance, WHO created this anamoly in the form of a being? All this looks like a divine program code, but who is running this and why? Is God himself seeking some answers by changing the codes and generating new sub-programs? Do we really have a choice in deciding the course of our life or is this just a predecided simulation... slowly leading to an end.

I had taken up a course in philosophy in my second year which talked of concepts like the Deus Deceptor and "brain in a vat" wherein people had deliberated as to the entire world could be a dream that our brain was dreaming. Then, of course, we would never know because there could be no world we could wake up into. At times, I too feel like I am recalling my entire life and am presently a grown up individual. The only evidence for reality are our physical senses and they are as good as anything in our dreams as well. Hence..! Phew... I have had enough!

I guess the best policy is... enjoy the moment!
:D

Back in college...

It has been such a long time since I wrote my last post, I had almost forgotten my blog address. Much has transpired in my life since then.

April was more or less spent in mugging up all that the professors had fed us during the entire semester. I had my US visa interview right in the middle of my endsems and, as a consequence, had to do a bit of running around (What happened to that visa finally will come up later in this post :D). After bearing the shocking sight of my graded endsem answer sheets, I returned home and started waiting for my visa, which had been delayed due to "administrative processing".

I had to come to Kanpur during the vacations as well and compressed some 60-70 metal samples but that is not pertinent to this post. Well, nothing about this post is really pertinent to anybody now. It's just a look back on the past few months which are, well, exactly that... past.

To cut a long story short. My visa arrived by the first week of June. By the my professor in the US Univ had other plans and ... program cancel. I spent the next 1 and a half month at home too. It was incredibly cool and fun. More so, due to the 5 day trip to Rajasthan - Jaipur, Udaipur, Mount Abu. Some sites in these places are amazing and worth watching once in a lifetime.

I also played my guitar a lot during the vacations and it has accompanied me to Kanpur as well. Another semester is about to begin... this being the penultimate one in my undergraduate study. I just wish it goes off well!

Amen!

If you can't beat them, Po'em

Aloha! My friends, I guess it's time,

I always knew I had a knack to rhyme.

Naive, one may say, my verses are,

Give me time I say, I shall raise the bar.


Humor, love - I know my theme not,

A penchant for words is all I've got.

People, places, I'll let my wit jog,

And here goes the first post in my poetry blog!

Galaxy Winner Hall 3... yeahhhhh!!

What an awesome week this has been. I mention this because I was reminded of this by a friend yesterday. A few days before Galaxy began, I was pretty skeptical about the utility of such a festival in an already jam-packed cultural calendar. I was of the opinion that it would nothing to improve the cultural scene here, neither would it be an "enjoyable" affair. I couldn't have been more wrong!

Galaxy not just rekindled the spirit of competition among the people in the institute, it also helps develop a yet unseen level of camaraderie among people of your hall. Throughout the week, we had loads of competitions and due to certain delays, almost every day stretched to 3-4 am. By the last day, we had tallied an almost invincible lead. I really don't want to crib about this. But the shock results of the structure competition (where a canopy of bamboos won over a magnificiently constructed ship) reduced what would have otherwise been a landslide margin (It still was around 120 with the runners-up fetching 700 something). For all those who saw it, the faux pas was pretty obvious. Here, I would like to concede that there might have been instances where the results might have been skewed in our favour but well all this evened out totally).

Leaving aside all this, the ecstatic moment when we were declared winner will truly remain etched in my memory (and for that matter the memory of every Hall-3ite). The roaring mob, the colour-smeared faces, students dancing like mad-men and chanting at the top of their voices. Not a sight that is witnessed every day. Every person in your team, whether he knew you personally or not, not just shook your hand but went out of the way to indulge in a ecstatically warm embrace. The happiness of having achieved what we had dreamt of was palpable.

Any amount of words would not do justice to the electrifying atmosphere that was, so I'll stop writing albeit with a few points.

First and foremost, congos to everyone who worked hard towards this victory... we need to keep this trend going so gear up!

Secondly, people who are making baseless accusations should rather spend their time improving the pool of talent they have. This is not the last time this is happening (unless you really make efforts to ensure that :P). So just take it in your stride and work hard!

Thirdly, amidst all the viciousness in the hearts of the teams which didn't win, there were certain people who bore the risk of coming out when the mob reached their place and congratulated us with a smile. Kudos to your spirit... we need more of your kind!!

Adios...

Galaxy monologues... Day 1

Seven years is a long time, but the way “Galaxy” began, it was worth the wait. I am not really into the Hall ‘funda’, which is such a rage here at IIT Kanpur. However, when one sees hordes of the usually sincere and studious students transforming into frenzied mobs, one’s enthusiasm is bound to rocket. My case was similar. I was asked by certain friends to join the Opening parade and I joined albeit a bit unwillingly. However, the moment I reached Hall 3, the electric atmosphere totally bedazzled me and suddenly I was part of the excited crowd. I got my face painted in the colours of our team and we began preparing for the parade. By now, I was so taken by the enthusiasm that I joined in the people who were playing tin cans in the front. With titillating beats and sky-renting slogans, we marched on the roads. It was an amazing moment, something words cannot describe.

We won the parade competition which set the tone for the rest of the events. However, soon we were reminded of the roller coaster ride that was in store with the shocking loss of our “declamation team”. In the night, we were supposed to take part in an antakshari which, though scheduled at 10 pm, started at 1 am. With the pride of the Hall at stake, our inability to answer in the first few rounds made us fear the consequences of losing the first major event. But then came a unique and rather weird song-memorizing round. We used some logic and it somehow got coupled with total dumbness on part of the other teams. In one round, we shot from being last to sitting comfortably first. The journey after that was pretty smooth with Tanmay (one of my teammates) cracking some good questions. We had some totally hilarious moments with Abhishek aka ‘Chomu’ (the other teammate) making certain other teams the butt of his wisecracks.

We ended the day at 3 am. No wonder, the next day began at 10 am with bunks in two classes. (You see, this still matters to me...  ). Some more events today... let’s see what happens as the day unfolds!