Stud's Story

There was once a boy in our batch who was a stud. This is his story. Let us call him Stud. And what a stud he was, that despite being in the first year, a female in the fourth year fell in love with him. Things progressed quickly from Facebook to Gtalk to missed calls to phone calls to brief encounters to amorous meetings. Every moment spent together was full of blissful happiness, every second apart felt like an eon. Like out of the pages of a Mills and Boon novel, they found themselves living and breathing the cliches all of us have come to know and cringe at, only they found bliss in it.

But alas! Fate played its cruel hand. The lady passed out from the institute the next year. She lived in Lucknow, a good 4 hours away from Stud's heart. The boy was to remain in Kanpur for 3 more years. But they stayed in touch, exchanging amatory words and secret messages, blushing at what the other said, exchanging their innermost secrets, and living as one soul. Suddenly all the things in the world made sense: the romantic movies, the people risking their lives for love, the mushy conversations that usually make one wince, the fuzzy feeling in the pit of one's belly, the Beatles' songs, being on top of the world, the raw unadulterated happiness, the best half hour of the day when they would talk to each other. As a kindergarten student learning spelling would say, they were in l-o-v-e.

Then one day came The Call.

The girl told Stud that her parents were going to a neighboring town for the weekend. Finally, an opportunity to see the other's visage! Stud wasted no time. He was on a Lucknow-bound bus in 15 minutes flat, and reached her house some 3 hours later, picturing her in his head the whole time. Her colony. Her house. The welcome mat. The doorbell. The footsteps. Her beautiful face. He was rejuvenated by its sight.

He had no time to make any romantic proclamations. A rapping thud on the door announced the parents' return. Maybe they forgot to take their tickets? Why do people always forget their tickets? There was no time to contemplate. Stud scurried up the stairs like an unfaithful husband dashing away from his rolling-pin-armed wife. He zipped into the first room he could find and quickly scanned his surroundings for a place to disappear into. There was none. The closets, locked. The space under the bed, occupied. The space behind the curtains, too obvious. Leaping out of the window from the second storey, too adventurous. Like a video-game addict in a free-to-play arcade, Stud was stuck. 

Trying situations bring out the best in people. Normally, Stud would not have dreamed of being brave enough to jump two floors. But as he heard his lover's parents climbing up the path leading straight to him, Stud discovered a cache of courage hidden deep inside his conscience. As the voices got closer, Stud wasted no time in pulling the latch, pushing the window and hurling himself downwards.

It is no secret that the flexibility and endurance of the human anatomy can be improved with practice.  Certain disciplined individuals can train themselves to swim a dozen kilometers, cycle two dozen and run three dozen, one after another. Other springy individuals can coach themselves to contort their bodies like a mobius strip on acid. But Stud lacked this elasticity, never having had the time to practise leaping off buildings. He knew he wasn't bendy enough to survive this fall unscratched. As the hard concrete ground wrapped his descending anatomy in a loving embrace, his ankle bone bent and pushed up against his calf bone, and Stud let out a horrible, piercing, blood-curdling scream that woke up every non-drugged baby in a dozen kilometer radius.

It took no time for a sizeable crowd to gather around Stud, attracted by the abnormally loud howl of his acknowledgement of his body's shortcomings. The girl's parents were soon at the scene, and things were not looking good for our hero. Based on the location where he fell, an amateur trajectory-calculator could conclude that he had leapt from the house of the girl. The parents undoubtedly had some questions for Stud, but they first asked their daughter if she knew the gentleman lying spread-eagled on their porch.

All eyes were on the female. Stud could hear his own muffled breathing in the silence.

"No, I don't, I've never seen him before. I didn't allow him inside the house, he must have broken in."

Mob mentality is a frightening thing. One does not realize how soon they can be stirred to action with an avalanche-like exponential speed. All it takes is a good initiator. It is very scary. They have strength in numbers. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Good Initiator: "A crook! He broke into the girl's house in broad daylight! Let's teach him a lesson! Don't spare him!"

Poor Stud. He was given a sound thrashing on top of having a broken foot and that too in front of his darling. They always said that love is painful.

The poor girl (not as poor as Stud though, he could literally feel the pain) had to see Stud get pummeled and it was because of her. Once the pugilistic public had their way with him and left, she could not even utter some words of apology and consolation, as she had to shepherd her parents as far away from Stud as possible. Stud's college wing-mates had to come down from Kanpur to put his injured, humiliated soul in a homebound bus.

And this is the tale of Stud, an anecdote of youthful crazy love, which must be kept in secret isolation from the adult society, due to the so-called rules of  proper and decent behaviour imposed by them. The optimistic storyteller would say that one day, lovers like Stud will be able to express their love-dovey feelings in the open, without fear of public bashing and two-storey-falling. But I am a practical storyteller, and hence I say to all the young couples out there: next time, make sure your parents don't forget their tickets.     

Nocturnal

Suraj was facing a problem he could not solve.

As a physics student in an engineering college, this was not new to him. He regularly faced mystical riddles about relativity and quantum mechanics which he could not fathom, let alone answer. He often said that the things he did not understand in those two-hour physics sessions could fill the Library of Alexandria many times over. But it was palatable. He was not the only one, after all. The baffling and complex strings of physics had trapped many a poor student in its 12 dimensional web.

The issue facing Suraj was how to get to the physics class on time. The class occupied the much-loathed 8 a.m. time slot.  But Suraj was a nocturnal fellow. All kinds of productive ideas as well as fun ways to waste time would ferment in his head after the sun went down. It went against his raison d'etre to get out of bed before noon at the earliest. So Suraj did the only thing he knew.

He did not get out of bed before noon at the earliest. And missed four classes in a row. He skipped the 5th one in order to wake up early enough to catch the 6th, but missed that due to the mountain of laziness triggered by the greasy pizzas he devoured at a birthday treat that night. His alarm malfunctioned and the 7th class went down. He decided to take a break from the stressful pursuit of waking up on time and gave up classes 8 and 9 to recuperate. Class 10 was the one. He was fresh, eager and guilty enough to do it. But would he?

Well, he didn't. The guilty party in this case was caffeine. Suraj developed a strong liking for this drug during his recuperation period. The repeated pumping of sweet coffee into his blood stream made him overflow with excitement. To satiate this intense excitement, he pursued and finished a lot of strenuous tasks which exerted his brain and got him tired and made him sleep even more. 

Unfortunately, his absence in ten classes had not gone unnoticed by the eagle-eyed physics professor, Mr. Verma. He was a reasonable man who had been in the profession of teaching long enough not to take things personally.

"At the time of the birth of the universe, there was only a single point. A singularity which exploded and gave rise to everything we see and beyond."

Rajeev was Suraj's best friend. He was sitting in the last row of the Physics of the Universe class taught by Mr. Verma. He was enthusiastic about many things but cosmology was not one of them. At present, he was pondering about the beautiful motion and the delicious violence of the action sequences in a superhero movie he had watched last night in a slightly inebriated state.  There was some physics involved in those fight scenes, so any diligent lawyer could argue that he wasn't slacking off in class entirely.

"And what name do we give to this explosion? You, on the last bench."

In Rajeev's mind, Batman was about to deploy his batarang to end a long, stylish fight when a sudden shake of his shoulder by the boy sitting next to him dissolved the entire scene, and brought up another one, that of a class, with fifty students and a bemused professor looking straight at him. The tension in the room told him that the question had already been asked, and he had not heard it.

"The Big Bang." Someone whispered next to him.

"The Big Bang."

"Yes, that's right."

"Thank you so much." Someone whispered again. Experience told Rajeev to trust this voice.

"Thank you so much."

"Right, OK. Don't get too excited. It would be an embarrassment if you didn't know that, so knowing it doesn't exactly deserve a medal."

Rajeev was too sleepy to taste the snipe. Also, he was groggy and the professor was a soft talker so he didn't exactly hear him on the last bench. One could say that he just heard some mumbling.

"Right, of course. The medal I deserve but do not need right now. Wait, what?" he muttered incoherently.

Fortunately for him, the professor returned to the story of our universe's grand birth. Five minutes later he stopped to take attendance.

"Suraj". He liked to start the roll call with the students he had never seen.

A very long but completely expected silence greeted him.

"Does anyone here know him?"

Several heads turned in the direction of Rajeev, tacitly revealing to the professor the identity of the truant's friend. Unfortunately, in the five minutes that elapsed since his last eventful conversation with Mr. Verma, Rajeev's mind went back to its usual thespian business. It was now in the middle of a tense confrontation between Batman and The Joker.

"Rajeev, is it?" asked the professor loudly.

It's quite amazing how the human brain works. You could be musing about marshmallows and mulled wine in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, but a single sound of a growling predator will be enough for the brain to pump up the heartbeat, focus your attention on the threat and get some of that sweet adrenaline flowing. The sound of his name had a similar effect on Rajeev. It launched a rocket into his hypothalamus, which made him sit upright, suddenly realising where he was again.

"Could you tell Suraj to come to class and see me once in a while?"

"Yes, of course, Sir. I will tell him about the...um...the thing you said."

"Right," the professor said, looking amused and perplexed in equal measure.

Rajeev remembered to relay this message to Suraj later that day.

"Mr. Verma asked about you today in class."

"Dammit, that's the one at 8 in the morning, isn't it? I've lost count of the number of classes I've missed."

"You've missed enough to get yourself to the top of the roll call."

"He starts attendance with me every day? Damn, there goes any hope of a proxy."

"Why have you not come to class?"

"Look, I've been trying, OK? Nothing is working."

"A loud alarm?"

"Snooze button."

"Coffee?"

"Overcompensation."

"Sleeping pills?"

"Woke up 14 hours later with purple pimples all over my face."

"Make a friend wake you up."

"I once slept though a magnitude 8 earthquake, so a mate shaking my shoulder will not be enough." 

"Shaking your shoulder? How about a pail of cold water to the face?"

"That's a bit too dramatic for me. Maybe I'm not cut out to do it. I feel that getting up early is against my raison d'etre."

"Why the &%$( are you using French you pretentious sloth? Have you been reading Voltaire's philosophy again?"

Only Rajeev was nice enough to insult someone in a manner that made him look good.

"I'm using it because it means "purpose of existence" which is the meaning I want to convey."

"Then why not use "purpose of existence" itself?"

"Because...umm...OK, well, anyway, how do I get up at 8 and still be nocturnal?"

"I'm sure a battery of sleep scientists are working overtime figuring that out."

The sarcasm missed its intended target as the target was lost in thought.

"Wait, I've been going about it the wrong way," the target finally said.  "I've tried a dozen ways to wake up early. But what I should just do is stay up all night."

"That idea may just be stupid enough to work."

Indeed, it was. With a combination of caffeine (in moderate doses to prevent the recuperation catastrophe) and combo-heavy video games, Suraj kept himself completely conscious and comparatively chirpy till the chime of his cuckoo clock announced the cosmology class.

"Today we will look inside of a black hole."

Suraj felt like a black hole had taken residence inside his brain. He had been awake for 22 hours now, and a tedious thrumming inside his head clamored his eyes to pull the curtains down. He fought it, second by second, minute by minute.

The end of the class loomed near. The professor stopped for roll call.

"Suraj," he called out, expecting the usual silence.

"Here!" Suraj replied, shattering that silence.

Dr. Verma's curious eyes scanned the room to find the source of the shattering.

"Good morning Suraj, it's nice of you to finally decide to join us."

"Er...yes."

"I can only wonder what calamitous circumstances prevented you from coming to any of my earlier classes."

Fortunately, Suraj had a long and undistinguished history of fabricating petty falsehoods. As a teenager, he once got out of detention by convincing his teacher that a stray cat sneaked into his room, attracted by the smell of his non-existing pet hamster, and ate his homework. ("I tried to catch the cat burglar, but you know how agile those felines are, professor.")

"I had to visit my relatives for a wedding."

"Where was it?"

"Mumbai," Suraj replied immediately.

"What was the name of the bride?"

"Erm...Pooja," said Suraj after a bit of hesitation. Hesitation implied guilt.

"It took you rather long to come up with that."

Unfortunately for Suraj, Mr. Verma had a longer and more undistinguished history of running into fibbing truants. His bullshit detector was in prime lie-catching and truth-probability-detecting form, enhanced by years of practice on nocturnal equivocators.

"Well, they're only distant relatives. I don't know them that well."

"I see. And the wedding took 2 months?"

"Well, no...see, there was also period of recovery..."

"Recovery? So you had to endure a lot of physical hardship during the wedding? Did you take part in the nuptial triathlon?"

"No, I meant the recovery from the nasty cold I got just after the wedding."

"Right. And of course, you visited the Health Center for a certificate right? You know the rules."

"Well, by the time I was feeling fit enough to step outside, the cold has already dissipated..."

Mr. Verma sighed at this shockingly unoriginal fabrication. The students were losing their mojo. They weren't the Frank Abagnale-esque yarn-spinners he had encountered in his salad days. Wrecking their house of lies wasn't even a challenge anymore.

"All right, Suraj. I'll give you one last chance. If you miss one more class, you have to come to my office with some proof of the wedding and your infirmity. Otherwise, I will be forced to send your name to the Dean. Are we in agreement?"

"Yes Sir."

"That was a close shave, what?" Suraj uttered right after attendance.

"I thought for a second that he saw through the whole thing." Rajeev replied as they started walking back home.

"See, that's the thing. I think he knows I was making it all up. I think he just gave me a chance out of kindness. But you know, I've learnt something today. Everyone is unique. We should explore and understand our body clocks and circadian rhythms and be in sync with them. We owe it to ourselves to live our lives to the fullest."

"Aren't you trying to justify all the classes you've bunked by lazily slapping a cliched moral to your sad adventures?"

"I guess that's the advantage of telling your own story."

Astrology is Fraud

Astrology is right up there with egotistic snobs, low Internet speeds, folks acting like exasperating idiots around infants, going "O, what a sweeeeeeet little baby! You're just so unbelievably cuuuuuuute!" and people using the phrase "last but not least" and the word "myself" as "Myself, Harry" or "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show. Myself Roy, your host for the night" on the list of things that make me want to kill a dozen dainty puppies with a sweetass 12 gauge double barrel shotgun. How the hell can millions of people go through the exact same things on the same day? Or if it is an "inexact craft", then how do you interpret it?

The fact that people base important decisions, even financial, based on it really boggles the mind. If that was not bad enough, people also use it as an easy way out. That's right, why blame yourself for your under-par performances or bad decisions when you can pin it on celestial objects millions of miles away? Because of the rampant belief in astrology, idiots like this guy are also allowed to go scot-free instead of being jailed for fraud and wastage of television airtime. And no, he doesn't die, not even due to shame. All this after the basis of astrology has been debunked by scientists. No, really, it has. Go here.

OK, as you can see, I was really bored and jobless when I wrote this. After writing all this, I was still bored, so I typed "horoscope today cancer" in google and went to the first few sites that came up.

From calastrology:

Your personal charm and attractiveness has a positive effect on you at this time. People see you as a loving and lovable person, and as someone who is aware of their needs and feelings, which can benefit you at this time. Others are willing to help and cooperate with your goals and ambitions. Love: 19% Emotions: 40% Intuition: 79% Creativity: 70% Work: 10% Money: 30% Power Numbers: 27, 14, 7, 4, 22, 9 Born Today: Nostradamus, Spike Jones, Shirley Jackson, Lee Remick, Sophie Monk

First of all, what's with the "power" numbers? Do I buy a lottery with them? But what combination? Do I take an average(16.6)? Or a root mean square value(16.09865)? And what the hell do the percentages mean? 19% love? Does that mean 2 out of 10 chicks will say yes if I ask them out? But aren't girls always looking for someone who is "a lovable person", who is "aware of their needs and feelings" and all that tripe? Looks like my personal charm and attractiveness will have a negative effect on them at that time. And don't even get me started on the "born today" list. Last time I checked, this isn't facebook, and I don't know these people well enough to wish them.

From gotohoroscope:

Silence is a very valuable thing today. Try to still your rebelliousness. It is important to prepare yourself carefully for life’s challenges and rein in your impulsiveness.

Oh shit! Remain silent? Then how the hell do I use my personal charm and attractiveness??? No wait, that was another horoscope. Notice how 38.5% of this horoscope(It is important to prepare yourself carefully for life’s challenges) is pretty much general life advice, general enough to be true on any day.

From horoscopes.astrology:

You feel as if you've got massive back-up today, even if you're all alone. It's a great time to speak up for yourself, as others should have a hard time arguing or even disagreeing with you.

*triiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnng* Houston, we have a contradiction! Unless by "speak up for yourself", the thing means "argue with others about the pricelessness of silence", I don't see how I can satisfy both.

From eastrolog:

Today you might have a tendency to criticize everybody at work. You are determined to solve a difficult issue and will resent your workmates' lack of involvement.

You will recover your good mood in the afternoon. Chances are you will have a great time with your friends. Remember: all work and no play is not the way to go!

I am a student, I don't have any occupation, and in any case my vacations are going on.

I woke up at 2 in the afternoon today in a very good mood from all the awesome sleep. After that, I had a long hot bath and some delicious food, and went to sleep again. When I woke up, it was 7.

I've not even come close to being in a bad mood, and the only "difficult issue" I had was deciding which pants to wear.

It is now night, and I have not yet met any of my friends, not even online or on the phone.

Therefore, I win.

From cainer:

'It isn't the winning that counts, it's the taking part.' This is more than just a pleasant platitude, by which life's runner-ups are consoled. It is actually a statement that acknowledges an essential fact. Victory is temporal and hollow. It is merely the other side of the coin labelled 'loss'. Go down far enough and you can only come up again. And vice versa. What's truly required, as we approach the holiday season proper, is not 'success' but stability and wisdom. The ability to be ambivalent but not apathetic. To not really mind if something happens, yet to feel inspired to try. Make your best effort. Remain objective and you will rapidly overcome this week's small astrological hurdle to happiness.

Holy shit! Thesaurus alert! Reminded me of The Architect from The Matrix, though here the ideas are ambiguous more than the words. But still, reconnoitering that agglomeration of equivocation is going to be thoroughly operose and will necessitate a lot of sedulousness.

From tarot:

Wednesday, Dec 3rd, 2008 -- You may have big ideas about a project at work today, but self-doubt could prevent you from telling anyone what you are thinking. Perhaps you remember some other time when you bit off more than you could chew. Nevertheless, your production anxiety is likely unfounded. Sharing your thoughts will be easier if you are honest about your strengths and limitations. It's better to ask for help up front than to promise more than you can deliver.

OMFG! It's all true! Don't you see? I had a "big idea" to make a "project"(blog) on astrology at "work"(on working the brain, isn't it obvious silly??? I mean, work can have so many possible connotations, and I will obviously choose the one that fits me, never mind that doing this could lead to the horoscope reading completely differently for 2 different people, with them extrapolating the surface meaning to their context in a way that will make it true). I didn't tell anyone as I doubted if I would ever finish it. I remembered previous blog posts I started with enthusiasm and never consummated. The next sentence has the word "likely" and hence can never be absolutely wrong. The rest of the horoscope(39%) consists of general life advice, general enough to be true on any day. Therefore, it all FITS!!! It took six tries, but he's really hit it out of the park and into space this time. How the hell did he do that???!!!

So, to summarize the advice given by all the horoscopes above, basically today all I have to do is pursue my goals and ambitions, prepare myself for upcoming tasks, speak up for myself, solve any difficult issues I come across, set aside some time for recreation, try my hand at everything with the best efforts, be well-versed with the philosophy of victory and defeat, remain objective, try to be happy and have a big, difficult idea about something and take other people's help and pull it off.

Whew! Now I see why all the celebs who take horoscopes seriously do so well in life. Too bad most of the day went in deducing all this. One can't follow the same protocol the next day, as it keeps changing. That's why they call it the daily horoscope. Damn you Venus!

Oh, and I've just realised that you can't verify the veracity of the content I've posted from the sites, as by the time you read this, it won't be the 14th of December, 2008 anymore. In that case you can do 2 things:

1. If you believe in astrology, blame it on the wrong alignment of the planets when you came here.

2. If you don't believe in astrology, eat me. Now, where's my 12 gauge?

10 Things That Make More Sense Than Lectures

10. A foreign movie without subtitles, you can read the expressions at least.

52% Consternation

13% Contumely

35% Trauma

9. People spending too much time on social networking websites.

8. Certain Bollywood movies.

7. A banana guard.

Because when it comes to lunch, you can never be too careful.

6. Einstein's theory of relativity.

5. Positive thinking.

A vicious circle???

4. A law in Italy which makes it illegal for men to wear skirts.

3. A portable food cooler.

2. Abstract art.

Visual sensation > depiction of objects

1. No comments.

Infidelity, polygamy, centenarians, sprawling family trees, verbigeration, blink-and-you-miss actor switches, metempsychosis, negative time dilation, philandering, Matrix-esque special effects and good-old-fashioned farce: brought to you one generation at a time.

Rant

Taken from Sid's blog:

This is a collab thingy me and Ashish wrote one night at the cc in our second sem. Right after the endsems, so it was something like 30th April or something. We left it incomplete and thought we'd finish it together sometime else. We never got around to doing it. Maybe we'll add some more courses to the roster if we get frust enough to think of completing this in the future. Happy reading!

A word of caution: For you own sakes('cause neither me nor Ashish care about what you think of us), do not judge the authors by the post. We were a bit too sick of acads and wrote a couple of things we shouldn't have(like abusing Lord Rayleigh, who, by the way, was never knighted). The article remained saved in my blog and hasn't been edited one bit. Just think of it as what went through two lost souls when they finished their end-sem exams(which, I hardly need say, were disastrous).

What we learn here:

PHY103

Why is the sky blue?

Interesting, no? Well get this, it is blue due to the oscillation of %@^!ing dipoles. That's right, ladies and gents, high up in the sky, you have electrons and protons forming nice little symmetrical pairs and oscillating in perfect harmonic motion. Now this is where things really get interesting. A formula pops up, literally from thin air(just like our little subatomic particles) I=aw^4sin^2theta made by some jobless b@s+@rd called Rayleigh(and that Queen b!+{h actually knighted him for it). So now I is proportional to the fourth power of w and since w is highest for violet the sky is violet...no wait things are never THAT simple, even if you are working with pop-out-of-nowhere formulae. So, violet, indigo, blue and all the other high w colours 'superimpose'(that's like intercourse in physics: two things combining to give a new thing that has the properties of both, happens all the time in physics, horny subject, no?) and you see blue.

So basically, guys who've come here to become engineers and who'll never use this formula in their entire life are made to mug it up without knowing where it came from. SAD.

MTH101

Ah...the big one.The biggest reason for sleepless nights after hall days. I'm pretty sure that even if I ever came within an epsilon distance of really understanding what's going on, I would never fall within the delta range of passing. Didn't get it? Neither did I! (managed to pass though, but that was because of the continuity of my friends' answer scripts into mine). This is what the course is: a sequence of mindless discontinuous topics put into a series of lectures. The subject really tests the limits of your patience. Convergence of your mind on the topic at hand is integral as theorems like Green's, Pappus', Stokes' will make your hair curl and you will not be able to differentiate between the various elements of the text.

CHM101

Held at 10am(why, oh why???), it ends the snooze cycle of your alarm clock. That's right, no more "Oh, I'll get up in ten minutes before the next snooze." Wake up by 9:55, hunt for lab goggles and a lab coat, make sure you've worn shoes and drag your sorry lazy butt to the chem lab, still groggy eyed and disheveled.

How chem lab basically works is:

1. Mix A and B.

2. Put some reagent/indicator/catalyst/whatever to the mixture.

3. Put some sort of measuring device in it and measure whatever the device is supposed to measure.

4. Repeat the whole thing to make your reading more 'consistent' .

5. Write a lab report showing how much you've learnt in 3 hours.

Of course, you could just skip the whole thing and copy the final results from your neighbour or any other student in the lab for that matter. But now, why would you want to do that when the alternative is so much fun and interesting and educating? Silly to even think of it, isn't it?

You Know You're in IIT When...

A collab tp article written after the end sems were over to vent all our frustrations at acads and what not. This one was me and Anish. Kinda cliched, I know, but hey it's fun writing something like this.

You know you're in IITK when:

1. The single most used, most abused word that encapsulates life here is.........*drumroll*......... "frust". You are so frustrated with the length of the word frustrated because you use it so many frustrating times that you get frustrated and end up making a short form of the word so you don't get frustrated saying frustrated all the time. Wasn't that frustrating?

But seriously, here you are frust with acads, frust with mess food, frust with the profs, frust with your wingie for not returning your set square which you need in TA Lab and it's already 10:05 and you're gonna be late, frust with the dhobi banging on your door all the time(dhobi:bhaiya, kapde! me: kaun $^@*($#&), frust at the lack of the fairer sex, frust at the bad water supply when you finally decide to have a bath after a week, frust with the ^&%#ing peacocks waking you up in the morning, frust with all the thousand little things that you have to do to survive(bills, study material, recharge, smelly clothes, pending assignments, seniors telling you to do work for them, frequent quizzes, power politics between "friends" etc. etc. etc.).

2. A person who has a bath more than once a week is looked upon with amazement(Wasting water, the ^%$$&*^$!).

3. People either have really long hair or no hair at all(Either way, they look like dorks, so what the hell).

4. The most abused thing on campus are our alarm clocks that are inhumanly thrown/rattled in rage(STOP RINGING *$^$(&*) or just completely ignored. Here's what an IITian usually goes through in the morning:

At 7am

a. Alarm rings.

b. Ignore.

c. When the sound refuses to abate, press snooze.

d. Enjoy blissful sleep for the next 5 minutes.

e. Alarm rings again. Go back to b.

f. Continue steps a-e till it's 9:55am and you have to get up anyway because you have a lab that cannot be bunked sadly.

g. If by any chance, it's past 10, go back to sleep(I mean, aren't you a man of principles? You either attend on time or not at all).

5. There is no such thing as a 'routine'. Impulsiveness is the way of life. A trip to the library is very very very easily diverted to a trip to the canteen on seeing some friends(definition of friend: any familiar face is good enough). Dinner at 2am, sleep at 4am, breakfast at 11am, tennis/badminton/tt/cricket anytime. Notice the complete absence of studies.

6. One of the most common jokes you hear is about the 'male frustration coefficient': the ratio of peacocks to girls on campus which remains constant at about 117.12. Guys masquerading as girls online, making fake Orkut profiles to trick other guys is commonplace here. A guy may not get noticed even if he wins a $&*$ing Nobel but a girl breaking her sandal is &%^(ing front page news.

7. The best place in the whole campus is the canteen. A place you go to at least thrice a day. The mess food is inedible to say the least with people choking on bones and rubbery rotis(what's for lunch in the mess today? rubber pani(some paneer gravy dish) and rock hard rotis that should be used in commercials of toothpastes{look how strong this toothpaste made our teeth, we can BITE this!})

8. Inter-college fests are a time when the entire campus undergoes a major face lift. Antaragni: four days when we see strange species otherwise extinct on campus. Female bipedal primates belonging to the mammalian species Homo Sapiens, also referred to as nain sukh prapti or eye-candy. Freshers and seniors alike try their luck at "The Quest": To get a person of the fairer sex to talk to you. A successful conversation could be something like:

Guy looking glassy eyed and overwhelmed by the sheer tidal force of the beauty around him. Summoning courage, he walks up to a solitary ravishing female.

Glassy Eyed IITian: Ummmm, soooooo, excuse me.....

Pulchritudinous Girl: Yeah?

GEI: Welllll(much to his chagrin, realizing that his otherwise reliable mental faculties are not responding here), are you enjoying Antaragni?

PG: It's good enough, I guess.

GEI: So....(looks left and right for inspiration)....(sees a hoarding for AIDS awareness)...AIDS huh? It would suck having that.

PG: (pretty abashed) What?

GEI: No I meant the shade, it's too sunny here, let's stand under AIDS, I mean the shade. (Sweat glands working in overdrive)

PG: Uh, actually I had to go and meet my college friends...

GEI: No wait, there was something else, uhhh well, your hair....it is really long and uhhh black.....

PG: OK......

GEI: No I mean really, it's so black, like black paint or shoe polish you know. It's like, long, black and straight. Did you dye it today?

PG: OK, I REALLY have to leave now. Uhhh, bye, I guess.

GEI: Sure, see you around...

PG:(mutters under her breath) I hope not, sheesh!

Did I say successful? Yes, because at the end of the day, our GEI goes back and flaunts this conversation to his friends with "minor" changes.

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OK, that's enough IITK bashing for one post I think. Till the next Antaragni, then! 

The Big Question

OK, so I walk into my hostel's reading room and stumble across something interesting going on television. IndiaTV has organised this 'open challenge' of sorts between a rationalist and a tantrik. The rationalist had basically said that superstitions and mantras and all are nonsense and people should stop putting blind faith in holy men. The tantrik's professional pride was obviously hurt, so he said that he would make the rationalist unconscious using a magical spell or mantra or whatever and was attempting to do so when I started seeing the show. The whole thing was called 'breaking news' for some reason, even though it was arranged by the channel itself. But hell, it's become such a loose term these days, used for anything from celebrity hook-ups to celebrity break-ups to.........more celebrity hook-ups :P

OK, so we have tantrik v/s rationalist, science v/s religion, yin v/s yan. The rundown of the show was (basically :P) something like this:

Anchor(let's call him Tom, it's a nice name for anchors): OK, ladies and gentlemen, we are now 10 minutes into our IndiaTV something something something challenge. Remember, the tantrik had said that his spell would work in under 20 minutes. Let us see what the ground situation is with X.

X(now obviously his name wasn't X, but it's a cool letter to look at and all, so let's stick with it): Well Tom, the two adversaries are face-to-face and are beating down upon each other. The clock is slowly ticking away and the tantrik doesn't have much time left to complete his mantra. Let us see what our two contenders have to say.

Rationalist(slightly plump, actually quite plump and in a nicely ironed grey suit with a REALLY REALLY SMUG smile on his face):Superstitions are bullcrap. This so-called tantrik is not going to be able to do anything to me with his so-called mantras. I hate swindling holy men. You people are lame.

Tantrik(in a normal holy man attire and really hyper from all the mantra chanting): Now you will fall down! My mantra will incapacitate you! *mutters weird Hindi and adds random things to the pyre*

Rationalist: Your magic tricks are full of bullcrap. Superstitions are bullcrap. It is sad that in a country like India people still believe in such puerile things. Superstitions suck.

Tantrik: Not so fast! Just wait! It's only a matter of time! *chants more viciously now*

Rationalist:The day we stop putting blind faith in superstitions will be a happy day for the country. You suck. All tantriks suck.

X:Well, dear viewers, 20 minutes are almost over and it seems that the tantrik has been unsuccessful.

Tantrik:Well, it may have not worked now, but in 3 days, this man will fall prey to a terrible malaise! A most ghastly infirmity I tell you!

X:But you had said that it will work in under 20 minutes. And nothing has happened.

Tantrik:Never mind that! In a while, I will unleash a terrible distress over him! *starts mumbling mumbo jumbo again*

X:In a while? What do you mean? We have an audience here. How long do you expect them to wait for you?(not to mention the commercials after EVERY BLOODY FIVE MINUTES) Will it be done in 20 minutes?

Tantrik:Sure, why not?!!

Rationalist:Did I mention how full of bullcrap superstitions are?

X: Well, Tom, in what can only be described as an amazing turn of affairs(OH REALLY???), the tantrik, after failing once, has started the spell again with renewed vigour. Let us see if he can do something this time.

Tom:Wow X, things are really heating up out there. Ladies and gentlemen, the situation is getting murkier by the minute. Will the tantrik succeed this time? Or will he fail like his previous 5 attempts? What about the rationalist? Will the tantrik succeed in converting him or will he be as obstinate as ever? Stay tuned and find out as we return after these commercial messages!

Sooooo.........what do we learn from the whole charade? Let us not go into who was right and who wasn't, the black and white of it. I am not even going to try to write my opinions on the whole 'science v/s religion' debate. It'll be too long, drawn-out and (probably :P) boring. It will be like writing about the purpose of life(which, by the way, according to me is to gain as much happiness in the long term as possible). So I want to leave this open to interpretation.

However, before concluding this, let us go back to the TV gig that started it all. Well, an hour was now over and the tantrik still hadn't done anything, the rationalist's nervous system was in fine working condition. He was totally rapturous at this point, he had finally won and the show looked like it came to an end. At this point even I was bored, and decided to leave without seeing the conclusion. There was a middle-aged man sitting next to me, the two of us were the only people in the reading room watching the show. He turned the TV off and was about to leave himself. As I walked past him, he said:

"These TV people must have not got a proper tantrik for the challenge. They must have just picked up any random pandit that they came across."

Like I said, open to interpretation. :)

Spam Filter

OK, my next entry, you had to write a hate mail to your gf/bf who had dumped you, venting out your feelings for her/him. This is the result of a couple of hours in the CC and some help from Aditya(thanks!):

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Dear 'It was not you, it was me',

Hey there! How are you? Today is just such a beautiful day. I woke up in the morning to the sweet sounds of birds chirping, made more beautiful by the conspicuous absence of a certain someone. Then I went to the bakery and had a slice of delicious cherry pie, man, that would have awakened the calorie-counting freak in you. Hehe I still remember when we in the restaurant that day, you had said "Oooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh there are SO MANY 'EFFING CALORIES in the cup of coffee here, I mean it is more fattening than greasy pork fat covered in greasy pork fat with extra mayonnaise. I sweeeeeeeeeeeeeear I'm putting on too much weight, I mean I've added like 36 grams since last week. " Then I walked past the supermarket, one of your favourite haunts........I'm still haunted by it. How many shopping hours per day was it again? 1? 2? 12? Speaking of numbers that describe your vanity, completed your daily quota of 19 beauty parlour visits yet? I swear the parlour's owner's kids worship you every night, I mean their daily supply of essential commodities like chocolate cakes(with glaze icing, yum!) and sports cars would stop without your 'funding'. Speaking of funding, hope Mr. "Pardon me miss, I seem to have lost my phone number, could I borrow yours?" has enough money to support your jewel fetish. You know I've always wondered as to how you can carry all those precious stones on you without imploding into yourself like the twin towers.

I still remember surprisingly vividly your very intelligent quotes that were told to me when we broke up. "We want different things", I think you said. I mean yeah , I want a girl and you a guy so its kinda obvious really but whatever. "Maybe this is not the right time for us." Yeah, you're right, I just read your horoscope and it says something about getting brain tumour on being in a relationship with a 6 foot 1 inch tall Aquarian with black curly hair, brown eyes and a small hook-shaped scar on the lower part of the left thigh. And my personal favourite "I love you, but I'm not in love with you. " Man, that was DEEP. I mean, I could practically drown in it.....and almost did. It was deeper than the deepest ocean times 10. Mariana Trench is like a rain puddle compared to it. You should write poetry, seriously.

I hope you're happy with your Mr. "Did it hurt? When you fell from heaven?". You two are as compatible as Elton John and Britney Spears....oh wait, never mind. So you DID fall from heaven, huh? Surprising how you never told me. How was the weather there? Saw any cute cherubs? Wonder why they kicked you out in the first place hmmmmm. Maybe they wanted you to suffer for what you did to a certain someone........never mind that either. I heard that this new "boyfriend" of yours, Mr. "Hello, I'm a thief, and I'm here to steal your heart(Do you need extra cheese with that Big Mac?)" has been a regular customer of a place I should not be mentioning. Anyway Mr. "So, you're a girl huh?" and I met yesterday.........a most chirpy and gay fellow I must say. I mean, he was practically rope skipping down the road singing some Backstreet Boys song. All he needed was a pretty red frilly skirt with flowery designs and the look would be complete. We ended up having a very "intellectual" conversation about politics, religion and the big Ken-Barbie breakup and how it profoundly affected our social lives-well that was him mostly. You know, Mr. "Be unique and different, say yes" reminds me of a cross between a boy band and Karate Kid. Oh and his skin is oilier than an Arabian oil rig and has more craters than the surface of the moon and no skin cream accident will ever change that. And his hair, oh Lord! You could deep fry more than a dozen chicken legs in that greasy lump.

I really wish you guys hit it off. I mean, I know for one that he will really love you. I mean, who could not like your 16 layers of make-up? Mr. "Would you touch me so I can tell my friends I've been touched by an angel?" also loves your absolute dominating nature, I could practically see the antennas coming out of his head whose remote is in your hands as I write. I mean, he probably has to take your permission every time he wants to rearrange his doll collection(which he does with alarming frequency, I've heard). I hope you're not being too hard on the poor guy. Mr. "Damn! Somebody needs to write explosive on you, because you are the bomb!" doesn't look like he'll live through half an episode of Pokemon, so your absolute supremacy over him may put his chances of survival below that of a kid in Michael Jackson's bedroom(hey wait, I'm not supposed to be explicitly explicit but what the hell). He may not be as trustworthy as your spare make-up kit or as handsome as Tom Cruise in Spandex but at least Mr. "Baby, if you were words on a page, you'd be what they call FINE PRINT!" is trying really hard to cope up with your Hitler-esque demands.

And what about me? Life goes on, I guess. You were totally right about " We don't do our emotional business in the same way." and "We are not really cut out for each other." I mean, you ARE a cut above the rest so......"How will I know I want to spend the next 50 years with you unless I date other people?" I mean who can stop you from saying that to the next guy.....and the next, and the next....... but hey, who am I to question. You had, I believe, also said "I can't see myself with you when I am eighty." Yeah well, eyesight can be a fair-weather friend when you get that old. "Dating you is killing who I am." Wow, I didn't know that killing you was even possible, I mean I don't think you're mortal enough to have a soul. "Yes, I love you, but I really, really hate you too." Hey, more DEEP(SOS!) poetry! Have you taken my advice on being a poet yet?

Well, here's wishing you and Mr. "You know what I like about you? My arms." a long time together. Maybe he will do a better job than me and actually pass the hundred plus tests you set before him like so many precarious land mines. But hey, if he doesn't, you'll just find someone else. We're all the same dummy dolls anyway. I really hope you're happy after all that you've done because if you aren't, well, tough luck, it's all over. Well, I've taken WAY too much of your time with this (isn't it shopping hour #9 already?) so I'll just say so long, be happy and thanks for all the fish.

Yours no more,

The guy who wasn't 'The One'

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Writing this one was TONS of fun, all the cheesy pick-up lines just made our day :)

Chicken Burger v/s PETA's Veggie Burger

OK, so there was this creative writing competition in IIT last week and being the jobless people we are, I and Saketh HAD to participate in it :) So this was one entry we wrote together. The topic was about which burger is better between veggie and chicken........instead of going all ethical, Saketh got the idea to poke fun at the topic and I was all game. This is the result:

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Well, its time for the grand showdown. You may have already read many of the critical comparisons of the two most tummy-rumbling food products of our time . The two burgers from either side of The Divide provide a yummy debate as to which is the better product. Not since the discovery of The Sliced Bread has the world witnessed such a spicy controversy...But the duck stops here. We provide the definitive answer to the Question with our thorough analysis...

1)The Look

The first thing you do with a burger? Eye it malevolently and do a quick-approximation of whether it will satisfy one or not. It happens within a fraction of a second, and my scientist friends has proved that it doesn't matter at all. Well, Bullocks to my scientist friends as ...

Veggie Burger ~ In the green shorts, we have..The Veggie Burger!(Cheers and plant-chants!)...With a lot of mean green..Soy!, Does this food-product pack a lot of crunch. Veggie Aficionados contest hotly that the Veggie Burger has been the most mouth-watering invention of man since The Water-Bottle. Sandwiched between two juicy buns fresh from the oven..are layers of lettuces, onions, tomatoes, patty...with mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup added as per the sampler's taste. Together,they form a mosaic of breath-taking colors (thats why we discuss the smell separately) more eye-catching than the word Mississippi(eye-count : 4). If you don't believe in love at first sight..well,you'll have to see it to believe it.

Chicken Burger ~ In the other corner,we have ..in the red shorts..theeee Chicken Burger!(Beers and cat-calls!). Looking much the same, fanatic fans of the Chicken Burger claim it has all that the Veggie has...and more. The very look inspires visions of feather-flapping tongue-clucking chickens all waiting to be devoured. But well,that's kinda nauseating. Not at all inspiring. Round One to the Veggie Burger!

But, as they say don't judge a Burger by its outer crust.

Veggie Burger 1-0 Chicken Burger

2)The Aroma(Ahhhhhh)

As already mentioned, these products are breath-taking to say the least and outright lung-bursting, to say a little more. Both have that aroma that wafts through your nostrils, elevating one to the upper-echelons of Gourmet Goodness. But we are doing relative grading here, and the most lenient of the infamous IITK Prof's will agree that what matters is not how you perform, but whether you outperform. And with that little teeny-weeny extra tinge of Chicken ...the Chicken Burger wins by a short beak.

Veggie Burger 1 - 1 Chicken Burger

3)The Taste

As we come to the third category in our much-anticipated Burger-Showdown, the fight sizzles just like 'em Burger Patties being golden-fried in oil on the grill. But when it comes to taste, both deliver what they promise . Mind Blowingly tasty, they send your taste buds to Taste Bud Heaven and back. But the chicken does it again, with an amazing 1 out of 1 person, Mr.Atep Itna(name withheld) saying that the Chicken Burger grossly out-tasted the Veggie Burger. Thats a Whopping 100 % folks! A Landslide victory...

Veggie Burger 1- 2 Chicken Burger

4)McDonalds Bout

Well, You gotta admit, What an average person eats is not what they make at home or the Burger-By-The-Road. As for Burger King,they can be ignored as a negligible variable. What remains constant is that most people go to that big-friendly ubiquitous yellow M to have their daily meal. And seeing as the average guy has a less-than-average IQ, what they like is what sounds good And whether they choose to Super-Size it or not,The McChicken Burger is a much more awesome name than the McVeggie Burger. McChicken sounds all Mc'cky and Chickeny..whereas the McVeggie just sounds plain mucky and gives you the heebie-jeebies. McChicken rules the roost!

Veggie Burger 1-3 Chicken Burger

5)The Big Question

"Why did the Chicken cross the road?" must be one of the most funny lines in Humor History ever. With a billion funny off-springs, it must be one of the most enduring timeless master-pieces. And whats funny is, it actually IS funny, unlike many other jokes(I'm looking at you,knock-knock). Just the fact that there ain't no"Why did the Veggie cross the road?" classic is enough to give this one to the Chicken Burger.

Veggie Burger 1-4 Chicken Burger

6)Google Fight 1

Veggie Burger is the best....300,000 results

Chicken Burger is the best...278,000 results

Veggie Burger 2-4Chicken Burger

7)Price

Not every man can afford that burger-a-hour. So cost counts and counts a lot. After all, it boils down to whether you can actually pay for that sumptuous Burger of your choice, and as is universally known, the Veggie Burger wins this one wings down.

Veggie Burger 3-4 Chicken Burger

8)PETA Expansion

"People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals" are a well-meaning warm-hearted group of blokes standing up for what they think is right. Well,most of them at least. "People Eating Tasty Animals" on the other hand is a distasteful expansion, though it is just about remotely funny. Veggie Burger forever!

Veggie Burger 4-4 Chicken Burger

9)Coin TossWe all agree luck matters a lot.

Coin used~Standard One Rupee coin. Heads to the Veggie burger, Tails to the chicken Burger.

THHTTHHTTH

Tie Breaker-T.

Veggie Burger 4-5 Chicken Burger

10 )Ethics

After all, we should take the chicken's point of view into consideration as well. I mean, who would like to be roasted and eaten. The Veggie Burger is as nutritious and comes cheaper. And whatever extra proteins Chicken has, vegetables do too. And agreed, plants might feel pain too, but cmon, don't tell me animals don't feel it more. And if we can live comfortably by being vegetarian...isn't eating non-vegetarian food uncalled for? Especially when the animals are treated so badly...I think almost all of you agree that the Veggie Burger is more ethical than the Chicken Burger ...

Conscience pursues us to give it to the Veggie Burger.

Veggie Burger 5-5 Chicken Burger

11) Google Fight 2

Eating Chicken Burger will help you get laid ...73,800 results

Eating Veggie Burger will help you get laid..153,000 results

That does it. End of Story.

Veggie Burger 6-5 Chicken Burger

So, there you have it, folks! The Big Burger Battle is over! Eleven rounds of nail-biting edge-of-the-seat action, and the Veggie Burger emerges the deserving winner 6-5. Close..but the Veggie Burger manages to win it at the last moment. So its the Veggie Burger that rules the roost after all. Thats it for this issue...so long, and thanks for all the burgers!

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This article is meant to be taken in a very light vein, as was our mood when we wrote this. It was fun putting in totally random stuff in what should have been a serious debate on morals and ethics and what not. Saketh was the major contributer in this one, lemme know what your opinions are.