Review-of-sorts: The Hippopotamus - Stephen Fry

Watching Blackadder and Jeeves and Wooster, you do get a feeling Stephen Fry (Melchett in Blackadder, and Jeeves in J&W) has a flair for humour. And that’s what convinced me to buy this book.

I wouldn’t go to the extent some people go to, and elevate Mr. Fry to the level of Wodehouse, but I should certainly say he’s got a style of his own.

Getting to the book… I had no idea on what to expect. I hadn’t read much contemporary British fiction, save Harry Potter, Artemis Fowl and Bridget Jones, and those would definitely not be anything to go by.

The blurb reads, Ted Wallace is an old, sour, womanizing, cantankerous, whisky-sodden beast of a failed poet and drama critic, but he has his faults too… That got me right into the novel.

It opens with the aforementioned Mr. Wallace getting the sack, and not very long afterward, running into his long-lost god-daughter Jane.

It soon turns out that she’s dying of leukemia. The conversation turns to Jane’s uncle Michael, in whose mansion, miracles are whispered to be happening. And Jane engages her godfather to investigate the mysterious goings-on…

Most of the novel is told from Ted’s perspective. His cynical viewpoints, monologues full of dry sarcasm and passionate digressions are a pleasure to read. At times, you do happen to feel it’s Fry speaking, especially the cynical tirades, and the language at these points might seem showy, but it’s so engaging and entertaining, you are tempted to tolerate it. On his digressions, Ted says,

No, I fart this noxious guff in your faces not because it’s important or new, nor because I want to engage in a sterile debate about it, but because you have to understand something of my mood and disposition the day Jane found me and dragged me off to Kensington.

On looking at the interior decorator Jane’s house, he says,

“This is one of the most revolting rooms I’ve ever stood in all my life. It is exactly as hideous as I expected, and exactly as hideous as ten thousand rooms within pissing distance of here. It’s an insult to the eye and as fully degrading a cocktail of overpriced cliche as can be found outside Beverly Hills. I would no more park my arse on that sofa with its artfully clashing and vibrantly assorted cushions than I would eat a dog-turd. Congratulations on wasting an expensive education, a bankload of money and your whole sad life. Goodbye.”
That’s what I would have said with just two more fingers of whisky inside me. Instead, I managed a broken “My God.. Jane…”.

The narrative fits the story like a glove - most of the novel is told in the form of letters from Ted to Jane. There are short replies that suit to direct the reader’s attention to different aspects of the mysterious happenings. There are also letters and faxes from Jane’s other correspondent in the mansion, her friend Patricia who’s also heard of the mysterious healing powers of the place and is there to recuperate from a break-up. And a diary entry too, from the diary of a homosexual ex-padre friend of Michael’s and Ted’s who’s got “a cute lover and acute angina”, who’s also at the mansion for “some much needed R&R”, where R&R “is Eighties-speak and means Rest and Recreation, or possibly Rest and Recuperation, at a pinch, Rest and Relaxation. Not Rock and Roll, nor Rhyme and Reason, nor Rough and Ready, nor Radicals and Revolutionaries, nor Rum ‘n’ Raisin”.

There are also glimpses from the life of Michael’s son David, who seems to be at the epicenter of all the mysterious healing that has been going on. These serve to increase the suspense and shock value.

A backstory is also inserted in the form of an extract from the biography of Michael that Ted is supposed to be writing - an excuse for Ted to probe deeply about the nature of the miraculous happenings.

The story and the writing ensures there’s not a single dull moment, and the book does have its unputdownable moments, but there’s also this bit in the middle when it all but becomes apparent the nature of David’s healing powers, when you feel like having been invited to the wine cellar for ginger ale. But only for a page or two… Ted’s cynicism and sarcasm soon puts things into perspective.

All in all, a nice read, timepass, but certainly not a one-time read. It’s nothing deep, but the rich, fruity language and choice of words make for brilliant reading and re-reading. Story is straightforward, nothing complicated, but sort of can get you thinking on what social conditioning can do to an individual, if you are jobless enough. Full marks to the style of narration - the way the plot twists are unveiled to the unsuspecting reader, the way the facts are presented in the letters… all these we’ve (read I’ve) seen before only in books that took themselves too seriously, or where authors took the books too seriously for their own good, but the amazing lightness of this book along with the language and narrative are a brilliant combination.

I’d recommend it to be read. Preferably in a cynical state of mind - the empathy you’ll find in the first few pages will simply be mindblowing…. Ted says

If you’re a halfway decent human being you’ve probably been sacked from something in your time… school, seat on the board, sports team, club, satanic abuse group… something. You’ll know that feeling of elation that surges up inside you as you flounce from the headmaster’s study, clear your locker or sweep the pen-tidies from your desk. No use denying the fact, we all feel undervalued: to be told officially that we are off the case confirms our sense of not being fully appreciated by an insensitive world. This, in a curious fashion, increases what psychotherapists and assorted tripe-hounds of the media calls our self-esteem, because it proves we were right all along. It’s a rare experience in this world to be proved right on anything and it does wonders for the amour propre, even when, paradoxically, what we are proved right about is our suspicion that everyone considers us a waste of skin in the first place.

Addendum 1: Oh, and I also read Such A Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry… good read, loved the bits about R&AW, but they turn out to be damp squibs at the end… except for the threats and allusions to possible means of eliminating Sanjay Gandhi and Indira Gandhi… but you have to remember this book was written much after both their deaths. Mr. Mistry calls his work Indo-nostalgic. Thank God it’s more Indo than Nostalgic unlike most diaspora writers we’ve found in the past couple of decades. Got a kick finding this book… I’d seen trailers of the movie version around ten years back… with a young man telling his parents, “I’ve had it with your constant IIT, IIT, IIT!”. More than anything else, that line stuck with me… and I’ve had opportunity to use it a couple of times in the past ten years, and whenever I felt irritated, I’ve taken solace in that one line…. there you go, Indo and Nostalgic.

Addendum 2: Don’t watch an Indian-made whodunit (in my case, Ramesh Arvind’s Accident, which actually is pretty well-made, though the script could have been aeons better… still beats any Bollywood “thriller” or “whodunit” hollow… except maybe gems like Manorama Six Feet Under.) after two days of continuously devouring Feluda stories. You’ll end up laughing your head off at the cinema hall and inviting stares and nasty threats.

Addendum 3: It’s amazing to find so many people riding on someone else’s popularity wave… next to this book, I find a stack of books by “Stephen Frey”… no dry British humor, just cheap American pulp-fic. You also can find books by “Dale Brown”. Barry Trotter, The Da Vinci Cod… *sigh* the very sight of these makes me want to cry.

Fire-on.

So I have unlimited broadband, and freedom from Ironport.

Installed Hardy Heron aka Ubuntu 8.04 inspite of dissuasion from TheG. I simply had to… Firefox kept crashing on Gutsy (that’s the second-latest release of Ubuntu - Ubuntu 7.10 - Gutsy Gibbon… you have to be really gutsy to try it out. I was foolish.), Gutsy suddenly stopped recognizing my CD/DVD drives… and tons of issues besides. Hardy is faster, Firefox 3 is simply brilliant… but my system doesn’t hibernate… and TheG, you’re welcome to say “I told you so”.

By the way, Donald E Knuth uses Ubuntu.

All that apart, I stumbled on to this link which tells you how to write a Firefox search plugin.

I’ve always wondered how come there hasn’t been a Google Image Search plugin when there’s a Google Search plugin.

So here it is…. google.co.in ImageSearch.

Pretty simple to use… just runs Google Image Search on whatever string you enter in the Firefox search bar.

Just click on the link. It takes you to a page where you have a single link. Just click on the link (Don’t open it in a new tab or window). It installs the search plugin for you. Oh, did I mention, you need to be using Firefox for all this to work successfully. I don’t quite know what happens with other browsers; I don’t have any others installed that I could try it out.

It was pretty simple to write, too. Ten minutes is all it took from start to finish. My code looks like this:

<!-- My first firefox plugin
I wrote this on 30.4.08
-->

<search
version="7.1"
name="images.google.co.in"
description="google.co.in Image Search"
action="http://images.google.co.in/images"
searchForm="http://images.google.co.in/images"
method="GET"
>
<input name="q" user>
<input name="f" value="q">
<input name="hl" value="en">
<input name="sourceid" value="Mozilla-search">
</search>
<browser
 update="http://mycroft.mozdev.org/update.php/id0/google.co.in_imageSearch.src"
 updateIcon="http://mycroft.mozdev.org/update.php/id0/google.co.in_imageSearch.gif"
 updateCheckDays="7"
>

So…. what more can I do with this? Do install the plugin, a few seconds is all it takes… try it out, and tell me what’s screwing up with it, what more would you like to see in it… and any gen comments you might have.

I still have no idea on most things about this… like versions and updates, but I hope to be finding my way about these things soon.

The most exciting thing I’ve heard of with search plugins is someone writing a Firefox search plugin to post updates to Twitter. Bril, eh? Pity Twitter no longer lets you post via this plugin.

Update: I added two more… one for Youtube Videos, another for Youtube Channels. Check ‘em out here.

An EPIC saga

Nah… I don’t have a good enough post to merit this title… getting my Voter ID passed off without incident.

Unless of course you count all our addresses being printed wrong, to some location that possibly doesn’t exist.

Or the guy with the ragged shirt and the gold chain, watch, bracelet and ring.

Or the ladies agitating that the ladies line moved slower than the gents’ one. And the policeman saying the ladies’ comp was virus-infected, and hence, slow. I offered to fix the virus with Avast, and the policeman vainly declared that no power on earth could fix the problem, and if it was so easy *mean look at me*, the nation would have developed many years back.

Nothing that really HAPPENED, or is worth blogging about. Just I don’t feel like passing up the title.

Emotional Baggage

So in the last one week, it became a regular feature to be at the bus stop between 9 and 10:30 pm bidding goodbye to good friends, best friends, and acquaintances, and then come back and roam around the campus getting even more senti, and occasionally (and later, mandatorily) becoming teary-eyed.

First we saw off Nam, it was the cockiest of farewells.. our very first goodbye, it hadn’t yet sunk in. And by the time we were seeing Swat off, it had sunk in enough to merit tears.

We were used to farewells by the time we had to say ‘bye to Sin, and we didn’t think it would be a big deal. Then came the shocker.

“Thirteen pieces of luggage? Thirteen?“, I asked.

“It’s okay da.. my mum’s here no”.

I wasn’t convinced… Shruthi assuaged my fears with “It’s okay da… she is sturdy and so is her mum”.

“Gati?”

She shook her head.

“Devre Gati only, I guess”, I said in way of jest.

Many hands make light work, and it was easy enough getting all the bags and boxes down to the ground floor lobby. It took two rick trips to get the luggage to the bus stop.

Huge GB gang turned out to see her off, and we started joking around and singing senti songs and the like. Then Shruthi suggests we get senti right now itself, as we might not be able to do so when the bus arrived. We do so.

We assume an almost-military stance to load the luggage into the boot of the Ideal bus that was expected any moment now, trying to pre-empt any juniors who might fill the boot with their bags.

Half an hour passes, and Ideal is late as usual. We’ve considerably slackened by now.

The bus turns up out of the blue, but pauses a few metres away from where we had assumed it would, thanks to the still-waiting Manjunatha and Sugama buses.

All our war-footing was useless now. The alert juniors waiting there had already finished filling the boot. We started lugging the boxes one by one. Stab and I were carrying the UPS… god, that thing weighs a ton… and we desperately wanted to get the damn load off, but No! the Ideal man tells us the boot is too full, keep the damn thing in the front. We negotiate. Tell him Sin has twelve more pieces. That she’s cleaned out her room. Please consider.

He’s too stubborn. Thankfully Avi took the load off our hands, phew! We were beginning to feel our backs might give out.

Then a mass-loading operation starts. The chant on everyone’s lips is “Pass! Pass! Put it in!”. People who didn’t even know who Sin was a few minutes back were helping load her luggage in. And people who didn’t even know which was Sin’s luggage were helping load it in too…. “Oi, take this suitcase! Take this one!”, I was yelling, passing a tan suitcase to Varun, and there appeared behind me a scared firstyear girl screaming “That’s not Sin’s! It’s mine! It’s mine!”.

“Missy, we’ll take whatever we are able to load in here today, ask your friends to send you the rest by Ideal tomorrow”, said the Ideal man. “No, we friends have our own luggage tomorrow”, I said. The man gave in.

By now, everyone there knew Sin’s name and 13 pieces of luggage.

Finally, all the bags went in, and formed a regular fortress around the driver’s seat. The man appeared only slightly flustered, to his credit, and said he wouldn’t start the bus unless they were taken off from around him and redistributed elsewhere around the bus.

We heard later that two seats were used to pile the luggage, and four people slept in the space meant for two.

And then the bus started. People were hanging out of the windows desperate for some air…. No… wait.. those people were trying to get out of the bus. Some who had gone to see off their friends or load the luggage in had difficulty getting out thanks to the stack of boxes by the door.

Finally all that was meant to reach Bangalore was in, and the rest were out of the bus. The bus moved off precariously.

The goodbyes had been forgotten!

We call Sin a half hour later, and hear that the bus was still at Kulur. The legendary Ideal bus had broken its own records for velocity, helped by the large mass being transported. We get Sin’s message at 3 pm the following day saying she’s reached home safe and sound. Egad.. Yeshwanthpur at 3 pm? Another Ideal record broken.

Pooh asks Sin what she would have done if she had gotten onto the wrong bus

Later, in all seriousness I chide Sin on her extreme cockiness that brings about nerve-wracking edgy situations like this.

“Tsk… wasn’t it that much more memorable for all of you now?”, she says.

Oh, man…. it sure was. It really was.

Venting frust, Putting funda

So a couple of friends of mine finally decided to say balls to block timings now that we’re graduates. I don’t see the point now… Mangalore sleeps at 9:00 pm. I hated the city the moment I saw it. And I still hate it for having no culture of its own, save a few instances like the kite festival. And I also hate it for making sure that the student population has no need whatsoever to learn Kannada/Tulu. No self-respect, no whatever. God, and I thought Bangalore was bad in that respect!

Oh, and the malls! So there is this place that calls itself “99 Varieties of Dosas”. I ask the man at the counter, “Ondu neer dose“. He laughs and says, “Adhu illi sigalla”. This is Mangalore only, no? How come no neer dosa? I ask. He smiles back.

Go to hell, I’m pleased as can be that I’m getting back to my own city with its myriad darshinis and places like Nammura Hotel where I don’t have to shell out half the GDP of Vanuatu every time I want to eat out, and where I get to eat the cuisine I’m used to, and love. I hate it that inspite of being so close to Udupi, there are hardly any Udupi restaurants in this damn place within easy reach. And I hate it that I’ve not combed the streets of Mangalore looking for them anytime in these four years, and just taken it for granted the cuisine of Mangalore is to be found in the desserts at Cherry Square.

Oh, and Manipal. Billboard city. Not a single tree, or even a blade of grass. I hate it more than I hate Mangalore.

Bangalore… I hate it that our culture is now officially Pub City. Identify the whole damn population with alcohol, paint us all with the same brush, go on. “You don’t drink?? I thought all Bangaloreans drink!!”, a Kolkatan friend once said. I’m not pissed with the alcohol bit… just that it’s too broad a generalization. “Pensioners Paradise” implies it’s just a great place if pensioners want to live here, not that every Thomas, Richard and Harold is a pensioner. Why does no one recognize the polyglot culture, the fact that we are the only city in the world apart from New York to show movies in six languages or more? Why don’t people talk of Suchitra Film Society, or Gayana Samaj? Or even Alliance Francaise, Max Mueller Bhavan, Indian Institute of World Culture, or that we have one of the best chapters of Toastmasters’?

I haven’t quite figured out why yet… when I’m neck-deep in last-minute coding, my mind runs in all sorts of absurd directions and comes up with lines like “The model eating the banana split was worried it was all going to waist”, and “Hardly anyone goes to Crumbz (known for its pastries) these days… it’s so desserted”. I also take to singing songs like “Lal lal hoton pe gori kiska naam hai”.

I’ve also realized that there are a few people here I’m really glad to get away from. And tolerating them these four years or less was an experience all by itself; something I’m glad for, for now I know the sort of people I should avoid.

And another thing I’ve found out is that it’s very hard to find people who share all your interests. And that you need not have much in common with someone to be good friends. And having things in common is no indication of a great friendship.

Something Pooh said comes to mind now… “It is easier to find someone to marry than to find someone to work with”. I don’t know about how easy it is to find someone you would like to marry, but finding someone to work with is downright hell, I’ve found. But when you do find someone, there’s nothing quite like it.

I feel there’s a certain amount of disgruntledness in everyone’s mental make-up, and that’s the driving force behind any sort of action. Cribbing is a normal facet of life, a necessity, I would say. It helps you analyze things better, makes you more articulate, and lets you acknowledge you have a problem. And no amount of making things better can remove the minimum quota of disgruntledness a normal person is supposed to have.

And at the end of it all, I know I’ve left a lot unsaid, or half-said, or said very badly. A couple of months back, I compressed four years’ worth into one line which indicated nothing except in a nutshell… no point … I know second chances are hard to come by, but I can only hope.

My most memorable times have not just been all the Incidents, and the Engineers, but also a great number of incidents and with a good many engineers.

PS: I know the last line sounds slightly meaningless… but I just had to say it for its own sake..  kindly adjust.

I’ve also begun blogging at…

http://statusmessages.wordpress.com/

Dedicated to chronicling status messages. (And maybe email sign-offs.)

‘Coz it’s about more than Available, DND and Idle.

So check it out, add it to your live bookmarks, your feed reader, digg about it, stumbleupon it, reddit.

Contributions welcome there.

This isn’t a real post.. just for information and publicity. The latest post as of now remains “Saying Goodbye” - my senti outpourings about leaving NITK. Scroll down, or click here.

Saying Goodbye

I’ve thought and thought and thought some more on how to say farewell on my blog to the place that has been my home for the past four years. Should I mention each person I’ve known here individually? Just some sort of a time capsule and googlebait that if any associate of mine decides to ego-surf someday twenty years later, (s)he’d end up on my blog… and maybe relive his memories of this place. But the glitch is that I don’t want to chronicle everybody… meeting such a large number of people has its side effects - there are some people I simply want to fuggetabout. And there are so many people I’d want to mention…. but don’t have much context to mention them with… or if I do, it might not be right to put it up on a publicly viewable searchable space like this.

And what do I do about those who I miss out by mistake? That’d be downright insensitive on my part… but then, you know how my memory is.

The memories of this place… I’m not sure the best of them should go up here - they involve a lot of people not all of who will like themselves being known for single acts like that.

I thought I’d go right ahead and do it in spite of all I’ve said above.. but I simply am at a loss for words, especially when it comes to talking about people who matter to me. It sounds clichéd, but I simply don’t want to make my relationships with people here feel less important than they are by putting them up on my blog.. I mean, this is for not-so-close-to-heart stuff, right?

Anyway…. guess I’ll filter it down to what not being at NITK means to me.

No more being nocturnal!!

Guess I’ll have to settle down to crashing at 11 pm and keeping sane hours. My life has always started post-10 pm here. Celebrating birthdays - that’s how we started keeping awake late. And then those innumerable nightouts before exams.

Movie marathons. Especially during the weekends. Sleeping until the sun went down.

Project nightouts. I’ve always flown solo on my project and mini projects, and so the week before submission was one of intense nightouts and extensive coding. Madness it used to be, with many visitors, the number thinning as the night wore on, the music mellowing down as my roommate drifted off. I’d once taken a break and gone walking around the GB when I saw one of the most mindblowing sights I’d seen - first there was this cat, walking around normally. It suddenly froze, brought its four feet together, fur stood on end, eyes glowing in the dark, ears up, neck muscles tense. Two seconds later, two dogs jumped at it. And the cat just jumped sideways!! And again and once more, before finally running away. Cats.. really have nine lives.

Segmentation faults used to be the death of me, until I learnt to use gdb. Thank heavens for the Internet where I would always find some or the other page explaining gently to me why my code didn’t work.

Which brings us to the second fallout of leaving NITK:

No unlimited broadband at all times

Well, I do have Net at home, broadband.. but it’s not exclusively for my use, is it? True, we had/have pathetic Net at college at times, we have Ironport, which bans us from accessing anything that comes under - Entertainment and a variety of similar themes. But we’ve always, always been able to google anything we want to know in the twinkling of an eye, wiki films to review them, GOOGLE ONLINE PICTURE QUIZZES (and win), and most, most importantly to me, BLOG.

And any unfair blockages, we have a plethora of workarounds.

And Mr. PGM sir, you’ve been a great sysadmin. I particularly was bowled over by your changing orkut to localhost at the DNS (am I right?).

No more exchanging arbit fundae and links… atleast not as much as we do now.

The Net wasn’t always there, but LAN and DC++ hubs almost always were…

No more DC++ and unlimited access to media

I just read a NY Times review of Juno, search for it on DC++, and watch it. I hear of Kite Runner, immediately search for the ebook, and discover it’s been made into a movie. I’m reading English, August, and Ogu puts on a Scott Joplin record. No, there isn’t no Scott Joplin, but there’s Janis Joplin, and she has a new fan. When Ogu’s listening to Neera’s present, I, too, feel like listening to
Ella Fitzgerald singing I love Paris. And the next moment, I have ten Ella songs on my playlist.

Now I’ll actually have to pay for music and books… I know it’s the right thing, but I feel the current costs and packaging is simply too exorbitant… and selling individual songs would find more takers… Like Madhavan says in Aayutha Ezhutthu, Never buy the entire liquor shop for 100 ml.

Think I’ll drop by every few months just for the DC++ hubs. I hope someone comes upto filling the very large void that will come into existance after Bo… leaves.

No more arbit conversation

People in the outside world, the real world, are too sane for my liking. I don’t think I can discuss threadbare statements like “There are as many opinions as there are heads”, and face criticism by people pointing out that the fallacy is that there might be two-headed people… and argue by saying that that is offset by the number of headless people. I don’t think I can loop about saying “He’s so cuuute yaaa..” just to irritate people and bring out their best sarcasm. I don’t think anyone other than folks here will get my PJs or crack the sort of PJs I consider classy. I don’t think I can just run to someone and say “You know what just occurred to me…” and have them hear me out.

No more LAN Radio

http://172.16.xyz.abc:8000/ on every other status message. Shoutcast, Icecast, Ices2, Darkice, Darksnow, Amarok, Winamp plugin, VLC, alsamixer… I remember getting my playlist to stream across the LAN for the first time… the amount of trouble it took me… all because I’d missed running alsamixer… And the times when it was a fad… “Listen to my playlist da…”… As I’m writing this, I’m listening to Joe Sat on a friend’s playlist… last few times…

No more long post-midnight chats

Venting frusts. Cribbing. Bitching. Gossiping. At the very fag end of the day. Getting advice. Giving advice. Planning schedules. Pouring our hearts out to each other. Making resolutions. Fixing broken hearts. Philosophy. Pragmatism. Analyzing what’s wrong with this place. What’s wrong with us. What’s right with the world. Current affairs, ranging from reservations to Tibet. Religion. Palmistry.

No more status message wars

Needn’t elaborate.

No more all of the above together

My current state. The last few times.

No more front-row headbanging

My last Inci done and gone.

No more GPLs

Only burday bumps. I don’t think any other place has such an elegant name for lifting someone in the air and raining their posterior with the choicest of kicks.

No more club/class/fest Tshirts

True, they were mostly oversized, but…

No more running to the beach on impulse

I didn’t want to say “No more beach”… surely I’d visit coastal areas…? But I don’t think I’d live five minutes from the sea anywhere else.

And… there are a few things I certainly won’t miss - the tiring laundry, the filthy wash areas, unhygienic people, limits on mess food - call it whining and dining, being half an hour from anywhere worthwhile, the intellectual stagnation you experience without the Net, the hard water that causes hairfall, the power and water shortages… and a few people here and there.

But what the heck, all that fades into insignificance at the thought of leaving the place where I really felt I belonged, which has made me the person I am today, that has given me some much-needed self-confidence and taught me to make my own decisions, to stand alone in the face of resistance, to never give up hope even when I’m in the doldrums, to mingle with just about any crowd that comes my way, to dream, and to work towards what I want, to separate the sinner from the sin and the saint from the sainthood, to not be afraid to walk alone when I’m on my way to what I want, to respect others and their space, not to forget their culture and preferences - a right old mini-India here.

And also brought me in contact with some of the most wonderful, most inspiring people I’ve ever met… I’ll treasure all the friendships I made here… everyone here has something in them worth emulating, worth thinking about. I’m sure I’m never going to be so close to such a wonderful set of people again.. I’m gonna miss everyone - my wingmates, my classmates, my hostelmates, my juniors, my seniors, my batchmates, including a good number who I just know fleetingly.

And gave me some of the best experiences I’ve had, some of the best music I’ve listened to, some of the best movies I’ve watched, some of the best onstage acts I’ve seen…

I’ve had the time of my life.

PS: I had this thought irking me.. “You said the same things about school”. But then, it’s just not the same. Fresh out of school, I was thinking of troubles with fitting in, doing well… but NITK has given me the confidence that anything I do, there’s always a non-zero probability I can do it really well. I know I’m going to get over the “missing college” phase fast, but I also know the memories will endure forever, and will be recollected with a smile or a grin, and without the twinge of regret at the end that it’s over.. balls to the cliché, I’ll really be glad it happened.

NITK: First impressions

I find I’ve not really talked about the wonderful place that is NITK much on this blog. I’ve talked about the life we’ve led here, the quirks, the travails we’ve had to face, the fun we’ve had during our fests, and occasionally some conversations I’ve had… but nothing really about the college and what it has meant to me.

I’m sure this is not my final take on the college. I’m sure my perspective is bound to change once I enter the real world. Which will be hardly a couple of weeks from now. But I just want to preserve what I felt about this college these four years someplace… this page is getting used to being used as a time capsule.

My first impression of Mangalore was when I looked out of the window on a Manjunatha bus around July 12th, 2004, to cries of “Jyothi Circle, Hampankatta, Mangalore!”, and saw a whole array of mold-covered buildings. I wrinkled my face.

I liked the frontage, the Library, the Additional Teaching Block (ATB.. some people call it the ATB Block), the Main building… but walking towards the Girls’ Hostels, I stopped short on looking at a one-room structure called the Ladies Common Room. Moldy. Bad paint job. And one look inside gave me the heebie jeebies. Until now, common rooms were the Enid Blyton sort - music system, tables and chairs…. nope.. this place had broken furniture and tons of dust. Only later was I to find out we never did use it.

Then the Old Block…. “Ma! I’m not living in this Bhooth Bangla!!”, I said, my eyes taking in the more-black-with-mold-than-pink-with-paint building with vegetation growing out of its roof and its walls. “It’s like a chawl in here!” I said, looking at the rooms around the open courtyard. And went on to happily spend a year there, watching the rain fall into the open courtyard, play badminton, throwball, tennicoit, volleyball (Phoenix time ) at odd times of the day and night.

My roommate had arrived a week before me. I would have normally had apprehensions sharing my room with a “northie”, considering the stuff I’d heard and all, and might have asked for a room change with people I knew from before… but the moment I said hi to her, something clicked… and we went on to share more than just rooms for four whole years. Whenever I felt homesick in those initial days, I would look across the room to this girl who was a week away from home, and who would go home only once a semester, and suddenly my worries would all seem insignificant. And all those times I’d fallen sick… when I was down and depressed… when I’d wake up crying from nightmares(!)… when I got an interview call, when I was ecstatic with happiness… Mal, I’m so thankful you were there for me sharing both my joys and my sorrows.

It was tiring at first, having to do my laundry myself. There were others who skipped baths and laundry… and many other essentials… simply coz they couldn’t fathom the depths the hostel conditions were here. Thankfully, I had come with my expectations at rock bottom, and they only got lower after the initial Bhooth Bangla shock. Laundry was a new experience… especially when I found a lizard-snake maintain eye contact with me throughout the duration of my first washing.

I mailed my old friends pretty often back then. They, of course, with their CET tensions didn’t find much time to mail back, and they didn’t have as easy access to the Net as I did in the GB net center. I remember writing to one such friend asking him to occasionally remember to mail back “the poor little girl growing littler doing her laundry”. And yet another friend got to hear about the fan in my room that had a weird drone, that one day Roh thought my mobile was vibrating. They all wrote back encouraging stuff telling me to not be homesick, to enjoy my stay there… but heck, enjoy was all I was doing.

So many weekend activities. I remember my MLTR and Blue experiences.

Getting used to the rains. Returning back to my room soaked to the skin every single day. Mum had given me a raincoat, but I found it was useless… umbrellas were better anyday. Being demented with shock after seeing my first snake on campus. Staring for hours on end at the black worms with yellow markings.

And the friends!! My room was a regular thoroughfare in those days, with both Southies and Northies haunting the place, thanks to the diverse bunch of people me and my roommate met. The initial days meant arbit chatting in arbit rooms with arbit people, sharing snacks from home, narrating school stories, talking about the teachers we had, about what the seniors told us… I remember one incident when I wanted to turn in early at 9:30 (I can see the folks who know me now keel over and faint), but there were some people in my room (who later went on to become my closest friends) who were talking to my roommate and simply refused to leave! And I was too diplomatic those days to ask them to clear out. And no conversation went on around me back then without active contribution from me (I have learnt since, to shut up when I have to), so I ended up chatting. Slowly, people started coming in. Then some people moved out, and falsely raised my hopes. Then more people came in and joined the conversation which went in arbit directions ranging from Verma wondering how come I say something in Tamil and Sin understood it and replied in Gult… we told her we were both talking in Kannada….. “Oh, all south indian languages sound the same to me!”.

My bed in those days would flip if more than four people sat on it, so the floor was filled. The outside of the room looked like the entrance of a temple or a computer center.. so many slippers! Slowly, girls from the other block joined in… then I found out why my room was such a thoroughfare - it was right next to the water cooler!

Finally it was 3 am when everyone started thinking of clearing out and letting us sleep. My very first almost-nightout.. yay!

Hanging around with a mainly Hindi-speaking bunch, I found that my random statements like “I’ll be meeting up with him…. chumma” enticed double-takes. Those initial days were replete with such misunderstandings and misunderestimating-people-from-the-other-side-of-the-Vindhyas… Bond (from Agra) once asked me in course of conversation if I knew of the Ramayan And on my side, I was amazed folks from Tripura were so sophisticated (Pubali, that’s a compliment, take it) and not in grass skirts. Again, it was Bollywood, ML Khanna, Irodov and HC Verma who united us.

I was also overwhelmed by the girls:boys ratio - 1:10! I guess the shock would have been much more for girls from all-girls environments. Prag (who studied in MCC) and I still sorely miss hooting and passing comments for male performers… which we discovered was possible only in an environment with a more balanced sex ratio.

… and there were so many other firsts, so many other things I got used to… Girls Rep elections, the fact that Gobi Manchurian is a side-dish and not a starter here, talk of dress codes, having no one to pass comments with in class for the first time in twelve years, having long conversations with people you’ve just met, the whole funda of “seniors”, talks of “party funda”, first crossie, first quiz - where the name NITK Numbskulls was first coined, first DJ night, first rock concert, first musical night, first surprise test, first assignment in the library, first C programs, teachers aren’t god - the library is, xerox notes are the easy way out…….. oh, man… quite a journey.

This isn’t a well written post, it’s more of raving/ranting. I just wanted to get back to blogging after weeks of unstable Internet. More coming up on NITK. Watch this space.

Will blog soon.

I’ve been wanting to write on

• This blog and where it’s going
• A news item I read which says that most Jehadis are engineers
• A Gurumurthy column I read which talks about a Sudarshan (of RSS fame) comment warning against idolizing and idealizing women who put their careers ahead of family
• The whole concept of ‘testimonials’ in Smriti (That’s our yearbook), and the character limit on that, and what that character limit might possibly have done to my -for want of a better word- testimonial for Tuna.
• Ponniyin Selvan by Kalki Krishnamurthy. Dushy, waitup… you’re gonna be mentioned in this one
• My first few impressions of NITK.
• Saying goodbye to folks I’ve been with for four whole years and who I might meet only occasionally.
• Reminiscing about the good times that I’ve had.
• The Tibet situation, the spineless Indian government, Myanmar.
• Right-conservatism in the Indian context.
• How and why I turned so blatantly rightist, and where the hell am I going with that.
• Use up 3 GB of WP space to host the ebook collection I’ve accumulated over the past four years. Copyright violations, I hear that… but no, I just mean to use it as storage space. No downloads. Except for the free non-copyrighted stuff.

Whoa! I had no idea I had so many post ideas when I started writing this.

Between Ironport and Segmentation Faults, I haven’t been able to log on to wordpress for a sufficiently long period of time so that I’m able to write a decent post on these topics, most of which merit long posts.

I’m glad to say I soon will be able to do justice to some, if not all of these.

Segfault?

I’ve often noticed that I don’t remember common everyday things. And I simply don’t try to… Google’s there no? If anything, I’m rather proud of it…. mark of genius, my sister says…. I choose to ignore the sarcasm and accept the text.

Like this morning I was talking about my project, and I forgot the word ‘bioinformatics’, (which I just needed to use fleetingly in conversation) and instead blabbed on about protein sequences, using suffix trees, predicting gene expression, hidden Markov models, and what not.

Once in the past, I’d forgotten Colin Firth’s name, and had to Wiki for it.

I once had to hear this: “You’re probably the only girl in the world who can’t recognize Tom Cruise in a fraction of a second, and mistake him for George Harrison”.

I’d once heard a godawesome World AIDS Day song. And when I was describing it to my friend, he asked me for the artiste - I promptly blabbed on about Heaven, Hell, Angels, Satan, Judgement Day….. the artiste? Peter Gabriel.

I forgot the name of a B-school in the US once…. and instead started muttering cornflakes… chocos…

It has often happened that on bus routes, when the conductor reaches me, I give him the exact change needed to get to Jayadeva from Banashankari, and still say “Ahhh………”. Some folks used to this say “Olle channagide… daily adhey routealli bartira, tirga marth hodri”.

I was discussing Shashi Tharoor’s The Great Indian Novel, and I said Pandu was mapped to … er…. what’s the guy’s name…. the Azad Hind Radio guy….. his wife is Emily Schenkel… his daughter’s 63 years old now…. she’s a professor of Economics… her name’s Anita Pfaff-Bose…. Oh, yeah! Bose! Truly the forgotten hero, nein?

A similar one was “Heck… what’s that Black female’s name… Mark Twain got folks to sponsor her education… “. I was talking of Helen Keller [Black here referred to the Amitabh-Rani starrer].

A lot of my arguments go like “Tell you what…. read <link>/<book>/<article in the newspaper xyz dated dd/mm/yy>. Rebut those arguments if you want… and then we’ll continue this discussion”.

For some idiotic reason I constantly mix up Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz… dont ask me why, I myself don’t quite know.

Just ten minutes back, I was talking to my uncle about engineering colleges in Bangalore. The “Bull Temple Road” college got a lot of praise from me.

Couple of days back, I was irritating Tuna for the correct term for a bootlicker. It struck me just as I was writing this, that the term is Sycophant. There was a time when I forgot the term called “irony”, and sadly, no one around me could understand what I was looking for.

My sister’s reading this over my shoulder, and in her usual way, fires a sharp question: What’s your name? As if on cue, I go like “uh……”.

And… I guess I need to post a disclaimer: Every single incident described here is darned true, no exaggerations whatsoever.

I’m amazed…

… that I came up with this.

Someone: I got blasted because 90% of my report was from Wikipedia.
Me: Tchah….. why didn’t you just say you wrote the Wiki article?

Or maybe it’s just cryptomnesia.

Cause for celebration

Yes, Yes, that is right. Your eyes are not deceiving you.

Canines have indeed been thrown out of my hostel block.

Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.

More than two years after this, and a month after this. A culmination of all the complaining we ever did, all the struggles we underwent to make this happen. Swa, awesomest Girl Rep. You make things happen.

And GB juniors, if any, who might be reading this, do not fritter away this hard-won canine-free environment… keep the gates closed, and if you see any four-legged being, however cute, DO NOT FEED IT. COMPLAIN, INSTEAD.

Whoa, I guess that gives me the distinction of being the one and only dogbite victim of GB. Guess there were none before, and hopefully, there will be none after.

PS: Nothing to do with the rest of the post, but yesterday was when I heard second-hand of one of the most entertaining, most WTF-inducing context to the usage of the phrase “Let’s Just Be Friends”. The incongruity of it all has me laughing still. Oh, and there was another a month or so back, but that wasn’t half as entertaining as memorable.

PPS: This post isn’t really a ‘post’…. the latest one is this one, on Engineers, Engineering and the like. Go ahead skip to it.

Engineering Education, Engineers, and Discussions

Guess I need to really get a life. Most - and here, I mean most - of the people I know happen to be engineers. Yeah, I mean the BE/B.Tech sort.

I know very few folks doing commerce and related courses. A couple of them doing pure sciences. And very, very few in Arts. And just, just ONE person pursuing fine arts. And anyway, these aren’t people I interact with on a daily basis - just old friends who I get together with once in a blue moon in the name of a reunion.

Around where I live - no, not my hostel, which is obviously full of engineering students - surrounded by software folks, and those who aren’t SEs are mechies. At home… my parents aren’t engineering graduates, but thanks to their jobs, most of their friends turn out to be engineers. Or at worst, architects.

The obvious fallout of all this is that my interaction with non-engineers is minimal. It reflects in conversation - we can convince you Halloween and Christmas are the same ‘coz oct31=dec25. We understand the universe and God in terms of operating systems. When someone switched from deathVocals to demureVoice, we said we were ‘amazed by the context-switch time’. The level of discomfort on a sleeper bus to Bangalore has to do with the passenger’s inertia. We try to analyze the ‘railway ticket booking and allotment algorithm’ while waiting in queues. And queues are where we crib about people not optimizing using queuing theory. It is not uncommon to hear of Rayleigh scattering being spoken of in context of us enjoying the sunset on the beach. And we are also the sort who commit very less to memory, for everything is available on the Net - it is commonplace to have a conversation like “Bridget Jones… what’s that guy’s name….” *wiki for ‘Bridget Jones film’* aha! Colin Firth… ” - so much that our idea of the ultimate terrorist attack would be to bomb the Google servers.

It’s reflected even on my blogroll - Of around 40 links, I have one economist pair, one espionage agent (but then, he established NTFO…) , one radio jockey (who I guess graduated in commerce), a whole bunch of linguists. - they teach computational linguistics, so guess they can come under ‘engineer’? - , one doc, and one lawyer…. and everyone else is an engineer.

When I first started blogging, I’d written a post mentioning an umbrella and its octagonal shape. The first feedback on that came from Karthik who analyzed why octagon is the most optimal shape for an umbrella. And on his and other IITian blogs, I’ve come across gems like “May the m.dv/dt be with you”, and “On this day of Nov 18, may you be curiosity personified” and kill the CAT. Urban legend goes that an unsuspecting non-engineer once asked an IITM student how to get to Marina from the campus, and was told to catch m buses first to reach <arbit destination in Chennai I can’t recollect> and then n buses from there to reach Santhome - and this hapless non-engineer patiently waited for a bus of the m-series to turn up.

Getting to the point, I find that most of my favorite blogs and op-eds are written by engineers. No, these aren’t just techie blogs about Data Mining, Information Retrieval or the latest advances in Toxicology or Pharmacology, but also about current affairs, religion, movies, food and humour.

I’m not saying engineers make the best writers - there are people like Chetan Bhagat and Sidin Vadukut - or even that non-engineers do - there are bloggers like Silverine and Rashmi Bansal, too. I’m not even saying the best bloggers are engineers - our very own Monkey Man is a notable exception.

Just that when I like a piece of writing, the probability that it was written by an engineer is very high. And vice versa, too.

I wonder why…. It could possibly be because:

• The number of engineers who have blogs are indiscriminately high compared to other professions. So by sheer numbers, engineers win. This might be because
  • Engineers use computers and the Net more consistently and regularly than others, and so tend to have more Net-related hobbies
  • Engineers are more jobless and blog more often.
  • Others have other outlets of expressing themselves - more notably the electronic and print media, where being rational is a cardinal sin.
• I’m a frogInAWell; been with engineers and only engineers for too long, and hence appreciate only this way of thinking
• Engineers write well, reason well, organize their arguments well, and are more logical and convincing when compared to other professionals which could be because of
  • Engineering education
  • People who are good at stuff like this to start with all go into engineering

I used to be all for Mr. Shashi Tharoor a couple of years back. Not anymore.. I find his generalizations too broad and the foundations for his premises extremely faulty, apart from finding his conclusions and line of reasoning too prejudiced towards being politically correct - but then, he’s a BA in History.

Reading Arundati Roy - I don’t think she gained anything from her stint at the School of Planning and Architecture, other than a husband - gave me an insight into what I essentially find wrong with non-engineers and their writing - passion, command over language, verbosity and rhetoric is no substitute for substance, and any engineer can spot bilge when (s)he sees it, having put enough in answer papers and presentations. And the two engineering exceptions I mentioned before - they survive because of the inability of the rest to tell the difference between bilge and real hi-fi writing, and they know it

The USP of engineers is that apart from being very diverse, we can have a perspective on engineering issues as well as other issues, whereas others can’t quite, with the possible exception of economists (freakonomists?). And that’s what irks the rest.

Other professionals, like doctors and economists have always had a say in issues like development. As for other folks like historians and littérateurs, you folks can almost never prevent your own prejudices from seeping into your work and making a dog’s breakfast of it (and whattodo, your job is but like that) - but the world doesn’t quite realize that. And you journalists, the breed I used to want to belong to once upon a time, I’ve lost all respect for you lot in the past few years, and also in the past couple of weeks when I’ve seen press coverage of my college’s techfest become an op-ed with snatches of random informal conversation thrown in for good measure - Mr. Reporter, you never did get the whole spirit of Engineer, or engineers, did you?

For too long, engineers have been branded socially inept, verbally and grammatically challenged, ignorant of art, dispassionate, unfeeling and a host of other things that have made sure our point of view isn’t taken seriously. Hopefully, that’s undergoing change, aided by Blogosphere.

And also examples like Sujatha, Dr. Abdul Kalam, culfests of the IITs and NITs, Brian May, Jorge Cham, Randall Munroe, Nagesh Kukunoor, Rajeev Srinivasan, Shankar Mahadevan, Anil Kumble….. and maybe the engineers on my blogroll.

PS: For Spunky Monkey and those who read his blog - This is not a counter-post to his rant on medicine where he abuses engineers, and it’s not a continuation of my passionate comment on that post. Just something I’d been meaning to write since a long while.

PPS: Nothing to do with the post or why I wrote it, but there are some times in life when Ella Fitzgerald seems to have envisaged all that you’ll ever feel and wrote songs for the whole gamut of emotions you go through. This is one of those. And no, Lady Ella was not an engineer… she was a highschool dropout. But then, she was born and raised in a pragmatic, sensible, open-minded world, not one like ours where our thinking is defined and limited by the media, textbooks, and other symbols of modern mass-communication.

Aaaand…… the rest of my Last Inci as a student at NITK - An Incident - 08 post

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Warning: Long post ahead, with pics.

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Day 1 of Inci started off quite nicely with India Quiz. This guy and this guy had put together a nice set of questions for the prelims. “Good questions”, I complimented Vishwas, to which he replied “Wait till you listen to the answers”. The answers ranged from Antaragni and Raghu Dixit to Idli to Mohammed Haneef to IIT Roorkee…. and finally in our final year in our final Inci, Swati, Tuna and I made it to the finals. It was an enlightening one, where we got to know that Deepa Mehta’s Water is loosely based on Romeo and Juliet, and that Rajaji wrote Maithreem Bhajatha. Those apart, it was pretty slick, especially the connects, and we had a great time though we didn’t win.

Inauguration was replete with the Best of Bharat Darshan (Bharat Darshan is a programme NITK holds every Republic Day to showcase our cultural diversity) setting the stage on fire, and the UV dance. As it happens every year, us FinalYear girls were all looking our best in sarees and the evening extended into a long photo session And…. Crossfade - the DJing contest, didn’t quite go down well with me; I’d been roaming around for too long and was way too tired. Early night for us.

Day 2 was the big day. The KK Concert. Or, in keeping with my dislike for redundancy, The KKoncert. I took one look at the Lone Wolf question paper, and gave up. Watched JAM prelims. Pretty entertaining, after some experienced folks started jamming. Nice work by the JAMmasters. Tried my hand at it, got extremely lucky, but guess I need more practice.Concert that evening. I reached late… colossal mistake I made there. The front rows were too crowded. Squeezed in next to Prat and Prag somehow.A really really sad opening act, so sad that it was pretty tragic to watch people groove to those songs. I don’t remember what they were called, but they seemed to be the sorts who perform at weddings of tasteless people. The singers were sad imitations of Kannada playback singers who think they can sing anything and everything well. And one of them was this fat bald man in a black - no other word for it - costume, and sunglasses - no, I guess he’d call them cooling glasses. The look seemed to be inspired by Mr. Wallace in Pulp Fiction. It was hell the way he sang, and you’d think he too, like Mr. Wallace had sold his soul to the devil and the deal had gone horribly wrong.

As if that was not enough, they had a bunch of dancers who looked like some out-of-work extras from the Kannada film industry. These dancers had a name, to boot - The Skyrockers.Oh, and our Dean took stage, gave us respite from the singers-and-dancers-from-hell, with his Sapnon Ki Rani.

The hell-rockers had sufficiently irritated me that I took a break and decided I’d come back only for KK. Colossal Mistake #2. When I came back, I found that my place was taken, and there was hardly any place for my feet, even. The only reason I didn’t fall down was because of the crowd around me - felt like ants in hibernation. Thankfully it wasn’t a very sweaty night. There was hardly any place to swing your head in tune to the music, or dance around like we’re prone to do, simply because there was no elbow room, and all you could do was stay still.

And in my case, take pictures and videos. I really wanted to shoot KK up close. I was rewarded amply, I guess, for all that I had to endure.Guess everything happened such that I would appreciate KK a lot.

And I guess we all did.What energy he possesses! What talent! There’s nothing else that can transfix a crowd of close to two thousand (unsure of the stats… correct me if need be) to stand around grooving to a short, stocky, not-so-young man with a face and build so common you wouldn’t notice him if you saw him on the street, who was dressed in jing-jang Tshirt and jeans.

It is in the concert I felt the difference between an artiste/singer and a performer. And why some people are more successful than the others. Why KK is such a successful singer - his dedication, his effort, his talent, all shine through. His crowd chemistry is amazing. He knows what we want, and gives it to us. And with such a passion and love of performing. He seems to be enjoying himself at his concert so much that it’s infectious.And what a voice! It is just like the guy-next-door, at the same time, so mature, so full of feeling, so straight-from-the-heart. For once, the voice at the concert sounded like the audio file of very, very high quality. The voice makes you appreciate the song. The voice doesn’t overshadow the song. It blends in so well with the rest of the song that you feel no one else and nothing else could have made the rendition better; it is the best you can get. Unlike singers like Shankar Mahadevan whose voice and personality is heard, and feels like “Shankar Mahadevan is singing some song”, not “The song is so lovely”.

You could simply close your eyes, not watch the energetic singer prance around the stage and enthuse you with his spirit, and still manage to enjoy the concert. Tadap Tadap was so full of feeling, and tugs at the heartstrings much, much more effectively than the one we hear on the HDDCS soundtrack. So was Sach Keh Raha Hai Deewana.

Nostalgia and romance never had it so good, as they did with Pal, Yaaron Dosti, and Tu Aashiqui Hai. His high-energy tracks like Aapki Dua, [which, by the way, is my favorite KK song], and Uyirin Uyire had us up on our feet. He talked about his college days and sang Summer of ‘69. He wound up with It’s the Time to Disco and Koi Kahe.

I would have loved to see Banda Yeh Bindaas performed… but then, two of my alltime favorites - Aapki Dua and It’s the Time to Disco had been sung… so I’m not complaining.

We came back wishing it had gone on for much longer, but hell, we were so tired after it all, wonder where KK gets his energy from, and if he had gone on for any longer, would he have had any energy left for it, or come to think of it, would we have!

I got a few videos, of Pal, Aapki Dua, Disco, Koi Kahe. I can’t upload it onto Youtube thanks to Ironport from Cisco. It’s on the LAN, though. Here are a few pics:

Day 3 started off with Centerstage, the dramatics contest. There was a really nice play from RVCE [I think], and the next one was NITK’s comedy. Great effort by everyone, and the result was pretty good, as we all saw. Nice mix of elements from various movies and series like Blackadder and personalities like Johnny English, Woody Allen, Bob the Butler…

Watched a bit of the Debate finals… dunno why, I’ve begun to feel most people are incapable of analyzing issues properly, and I’ve come to feel debate, while being an art by itself, is insufficient as a method of analyzing an issue in depth. Then there was Mock Press, with personalities like Britney, R2D2, Mojo Jojo and Johnny Bravo. The participants, as far as I watched, weren’t entertaining enough. There was a completely local Britney, who was introducing herself with a Wiki article-style explanation, and talked so sadly that Maloo exclaimed, “She’s Britney-amma!”. And heck, Tuna, Pubali, we should have worked on the Cartoons Club idea… people can’t do a Mojo Jojo accent, nor can they talk of anything apart from World Domination as far as Mojo Jojo is concerned.

Crossie was quite simple, but my teammate and I still managed to screw it up bigtime, thanks to our being so out of form. Our low mood was alleviated by news of Swati getting an admit from Columbia (Congrats again, girl )

We watched Gili Gili Magic by Shankar and troupe. Tejasvi aka Shankar Jr. really rocks - I used to catch his show on Doordarshan - and is so fit and goodlooking and youthful that you won’t believe he’s thirty. One thing I noticed about the troupe - they like to keep things within the family. I guess that is quite essential in a competitive profession like Magic. As for how competitive it can get, watch The Prestige.

Then was Pulse, the semi-pro Nite, along with a performance by Bhoomi. Heck, we need more girls attending this event. There was this band from Chennai with a leadsinger who looked like he couldn’t say boo to a goose, and who’d worn a checked formal shirt. Laughs from audience. Then he says “Check!” in a deathlike voice, and makes a face and bares his teeth in a manner reminiscent of Dr. Hannibal Lecter …. audience bows. Next, he switches to demure voice that says “More guitars on the monitor please”. “Whoa! Look at that context-switch time!” I say.

And then there was Slain from Bangalore with a drummer who’s studying in -wait for it- class 9.

I missed Sixth Element as I had to pass on my keys to someone, and came back for Washed Clothes from Chennai. Really awesome female lead singer. They got a lot of rave reviews and oohs and aahs.

Then Bhoomi. They didn’t play as popular covers as Galeej Gurus did last year; they played a lot of originals. Here’s a pic:

Really thin crowd. Which was, in a way, good. Some really passionate headbanging was seen. The first pic here is on request from Logik. Not for the faint of heart.

I got back with a pain in the neck….. but heck, I guess this might possibly be the last time I get to be in the front row of a metal concert. Possibly even the last time I’m in the front row of any concert… it normally is sheer hell for girls. And many thanks to all you great guys - Logik, P, Arun, Maiya, Pondi, Varun…. I had one great evening.

Last day of Inci - 08…. passed off without incident. Except when Swati, Sudarshna and I were coming back from the digital photography workshop (for dummies, to be frank), and when we entered the Girls’ Block, suddenly, an egret (Not too sure… just take a look at the pics and tell me what it is) flew in and landed in front of us. We all had our cameras on us, and immediately started snapping away. We were apprehensive about how the bird would take it, when another one landed really close to us! They posed, looked at the camera, and didn’t seem to mind us one bit! They snapped up insects in their long yellow beaks, they pecked away at the dry grass, they didn’t even mind when we got really close - I didn’t even need to zoom in. How often does it happen, when you have a full sun, a camera, two birds who don’t mind being photographed?

And these pics had certain far-reaching consequences characteristic of me, but completely unexpected… never mind, anyway.

I thought I’d have an early night and ditch the fashion show, but as it happened, I went out for a lassi and thanks to P, ended up with breakfast at Thadambail - according to Logik, this is the biggest darned crowd Thadambail has ever seen - every Thomas, Richard and Harold seemed to be there that morning.

All in all, my last Inci was a lot of fun. It wasn’t the best Inci I’ve had, but it’s certainly the most memorable, thanks to so many never-before and so many never-after experiences. After Engi, I began getting into the Senti mode, but now it hits me even harder, and there are only 45 more days of college left. I now know which of my friends matters most to me, I now know what my limits of tolerance are. I appreciate the best in my pals even more now, and I accept their worst without question, as they do to me.

Like one of my friends said, it’s time to optimize. And plan. And make a list of last _____ ____s. Like “Last arbit pic of main building”. “Last Some-Like-It-Hot”. “Last ……….”

My eyes are misting over………

Last Inci - First Day. And farewell to S. Rangarajan aka Sujatha

Now Listening to: Some darn good fusion version of Raghuvamsha Sudha by an unknown artiste.

The day started off not very good, and YouKnowWhoYouAre (I suppose you prefer you_know_who_you_are), if it’s any consolation, I feel really horrible about how I started off my day, and possibly, your day.

Anyway…. getting to Inci Day 0….

I slept through Slam Dunk!’s inaugural basketball match, and woke up just in time to have dinner and head to Bandish. Earlier on, when I’d not yet bothered to check the Inci schedule, Maloo told me about Bandish. We’d assumed it was a performance by The Bandish Projekt, (they’d released a song/album called Bhor a long, long time ago, which should have been called Bore according to me) who IMO sound like absolut losers. But heck, it turned out to the Eastern Musicals

Shiny, Kosu and I took turns getting photographed under the bulbs hung by the way which were covered with really ni-i-ice lampshades, trying to look like we had some bright ideas. People nightouted last night making the lampshades… and the result it turns out is FANTABULOUS.

[pic to be put up soon]

Eastern Musicals @ Inci this time surpassed everything I’d seen before. The average quality of the performances was very, very high this time. Not a single performance could be called boring, or sub-standard. Every band was able to keep our attention, and most managed to impress

NITK’s performance was, as usual, brilliant, with talented performances by all, and a great choice of songs, which were both crowd-pullers as well as which showcased our best. We came third.

The second prize was bagged by BMS. Quite a departure from their previous years’ performances, this one was. The singers all seemed to be trained in Classical Vocals, and it showed in both their excellent performances and choice of songs. Guys, your brilliant performance would have been better appreciated by the crowd if only you’d chosen better songs, songs which people knew.

And…. one of the bands did a bloody massacre of Pal by Strings and Sagarika (They did it WITHOUT THE VIOLINS!! How could they!), and another one butchered Dum Mast Qalander, after which I messaged a friend saying “Yeah… the next band will also come, they’ll play my favorite Indipop number in such a way as to completely ruin the evening for me..”. And as it often happen, I was proven wrong. No, make that WRONG.

This band takes stage, starts off playing Paisa by Agosh. That’s enough for me and Tuna, we’re already impressed. They didn’t have to do that svelte transition from Dhoom Pichuk to Sayonee, or sing Luka Chuppi. But that original number which was a fusion of Hindustani, Carnatic, and Western… phew! I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a large standing ovation EVER in Eastern Musicals (or Western, for that matter) before!

Message for the team from BIT: Never before have everyone unanimously felt that someone deserved the first prize. Here are some of the nice things people were heard saying about you guys:

“What a lead singer da! He holds the whole show together!”

“Man! That lead singer guy is totally in control!”

“Whoa! What a goodlooking backup vocalist” - they meant the guy in the green kurta.

“If I’d not known Dhoom Pichuk was different from Sayonee, I would have thought they were the same song”.

“Perfection, da”.

“Paisa! Don’t think any other band has had such guts in the past”.

“They made my day”

And a request from The NITK Numbskulls, and our friends: Could you please, please, give us an audiofile of your original composition? You can mail it to till.im.no.one.again@gmail.com

And I’ll say it again… You guys were godawesome.

**************

I came back and among my feeds [from LazyGeek, who is THE biggest fan of Sujatha I know, and has the privilege of Sujatha himself commenting on his blog. LazyGeek has closed down both his blogs for the next one week as a mark of mourning], found one that informed me of the sad demise of S. Rangarajan, the guy who supervised the design and production of Electronic Voting Machines in India, and who is more popularly known as Sujatha, the author of over 100 novels, 250 short stories, ten books on science, ten stage plays, and a slim volume of poems. He is better-known for his scripting of movies like Iruvar, Boys, Kannathil Muthamittaal, Sivaji, Aayutha Ezhutthu.

All I knew of him were his movies, my inability to read Tamil coming in the way of my appreciating his writing otherwise. His dialogues were so realistic, so full of life, the sort that struck a chord in you and stayed with you for days, or maybe even years. One dialogue that comes to mind from Aayutha Ezhuththu: Esha Deol tells Surya, “Enna ni, enna oththrum-illaada theatre-ko, Pondicherry-ko kootindu poegaama edho oru graamathuku aleichindu porai….”

Tamil cinema has suffered a great loss. And like Vishwas put it, Director Shankar has a dog’s chance of ever having another hit to his name.

Personally, I feel a loss, for he was not just a talented and prolific writer, but an engineer as well, and hence, to me, a role model, an idol, an ideal to live upto. If I ever end up learning to read Tamil, Mr. Sujatha, it will mainly be to appreciate your stories and other works of fiction.

From what little I know of him, he seemed to have led a full life, and accomplished a good bit in both his chosen careers. May your soul rest in peace, and may your legacy and huge body of work continue to inspire people like me.

And on that note, Mr. Rangarajan, I bid you adieu.

Young blood in Politics - A follow-up post.

I wrote this post on the decline of student activism a while ago. Since then, a lot has happened, more notably, Engineer-2008, and more specifically, Last Word @ Engineer 2008.

I won’t go into the details of what happened, though I really wanted to a couple of days back… I’ve somehow lost the enthu. But the point of this post is a bit of what Mr. RK Misra (winner of Lead India) said.

Someone said something about inspiring students to get into politics, and them “being the change”. Mr. Misra replied, addressing the students,

Don’t get into politics this young. Make money first. If you have your family backing you financially in this, then do go on. But not otherwise. Make money first. Politics is not a regular-paying job. You get paid only IF you get elected. You’ll have to come under a big politician at first, and all you’ll get, if anything, will be crumbs. You will be so hungry that finally when at age 40-50 you get your first taste of power, you’ll start eating, eating, and never stop eating.

Makes sense for once, doesn’t it?

I still stick to my stand. It is our duty as voters in a democracy to be as well-informed as possible so that we can make an intelligent choice. And people need to feel from a very young age that they can make a difference to the way the country runs, and that they are involved in the country’s progress. Being disillusioned with the country and scurrying off abroad like rats deserting a ship helps you, perhaps, (I am not grudging people who leave the country for better opportunities abroad - I just feel the general feeling that there are no opportunities left in India and that going abroad is the only key to more opportunities needs to be changed. And fast) but is not really going to help the country.
And you need to stay informed, coz it’s not like you’ll suddenly be the paragon of awareness and conviction on your 40th birthday otherwise.

Oh, and catch CNN-IBN this evening (24th Feb 200 6 PM. A report on Last Word is being telecast. Watch maadi They Stabbed.

(Aside: As for the press person covering Last Word who called another national newspaper a porn rag and went on to say his paper went against the tide by denouncing the “India Shining” campaign when everyone was lapping it up… your leftist paper is no different, and the motives behind your denouncing of India Shining was no different from the motives the er.. “porn rag” has when it’s running with the hares and hunting with the hounds.

And these opinions, I assure everyone are mine and my own, and don’t necessarily reflect the opinions of my friends, or blogmate, or my college.)

A Bitchy start to a doggone morning

(Only thumbnails of images are on the post. For clearer images, click on the thumbnail).

So I end up taking pictures of birds one evening. There are the usual constraints - bird too high up the tree, bird too camouflaged in tree, bird too quick…. but the worst was bad light. The light keeps getting worse and worse as you keep getting more and more into the groove. Ideal solution, I thought, shooting in the morning.

I’ve been trying to wake up early for the past one month, and I’m glad to say I finally succeeded today…. every dog has its day.
It was a two-dog morning (Australian expression that indicates the number of dogs you need to cuddle up with to keep warm) - the dog days of summer are not very far away, though. I woke up early enough, put on the dog, and stepped out.

Now there happens to be a dog and a bitch in the Girls’ Block. The damn things haven’t been chased out, and are not on Animal Birth Control, and have happily had a litter of five.

These darling pups are just monsters in cute suits:

But so far, they didn’t mind my clicking their pics, and weren’t put off by the flash. But what the hell, love me, love my dogs - They could bite and scratch among each other for all I cared as long as they let me photograph the whole thing. They were even used to me, I could say. This dog won’t hunt, I thought. I was as happy as a flea in a doghouse.

So I thought I’d start the morning taking some easy, nice shots of the five pups, before trying to capture that elusive Racket-Tailed Drongo or Tailor-Bird. Maybe I’d even walk all the way to A1 juuust for the parrots you see there, and those other green birds that don’t fly away even if you are real close. And I need such birds - the crow that won’t fly away when I clap my hands near it, will take wing the moment it sees my camera. My C663 is a very effective bird-repellant.

I found the pups all cuddled up at their usual spot - oh, goodie. All asleep. Aww…. what a cute shot it’ll make… Snap!

The black pup on the right stirred. First gave a whine of recognition. Then growled. The others stirred, too. And growled, too. Barked. Gave chase. They ATTACKED me! I looked like someone had just shot my dog. The bitch came soon after. And so did the dog, hackles raised. Good God, I was in the doghouse! After my episode two years ago, I knew I had a dog’s chance of getting out alive if even one of them caught up with me. I ran like my legs would fall off.

Oh, and I’d be a dog-faced liar if I didn’t say the rest of the pics I took came out looking like a dog’s breakfast.

Power shuts down now. Life’s a bitch.

PS: GB inmates, if any of you are reading this, kindly take my advice and DO NOT feed the pups or the dogs, don’t cuddle the pups, pick them up, or even take their pictures. Apart from that, complain as much as possible to the authorities to have them all removed. And in future, DO NOT encourage dogs or cats or animals of any kind - we don’t want GB going to the dogs now, do we?

Snake

Whether Im waiting for some one, Just after class, Just before class, In the queue in the mess (that
is if i have my phone with me), On the way to Mangalore in the bus, Or even when I’m just lying down
and relaxing my aching back, my finger automatically goes to the Game part and Snake in special.

This, I have been doing for almost four years.

I play at the highest speed, and no maze. I use only one key to move the elongating line. I invariably
pick each and every dot-like-thing and other designs.

But… WhyOWhyOWhy have I not been able to cross 836 ?

Nerdiness. Engineered

Okay.. this post is meant for everyone’s eyes except one person’s…. you know who you are, and you’ve been told to wait for this… so until you get back to college, do not under any circumstances scroll down or read any further; we’re assured your reaction is going to be priceless and video-worthy.

As for the rest of you… here goes.

There’s something called the Pumping Lemma for Regular Languages. And there’s something else called Marathon @ Comps Events @ Engineer 2008. Now Marathon is a multistage team event spread over three days of Engineer 2008. Let me digress here to say it went off pretty much godawesome… great work, guys. Anyways… the first round was a mixed bag of questions, and along with having to guess “Pirates of Silicon Valley” from the poster, the names of all the authors of CLR, fooling around with an inverted binary tree, Maloo thought it’d be good to state the Pumping Lemma and ask people what theorem it is.

And PersonWhoIsNotSupposedToReadThis, please quit right here, coz we are coming to the crux of the matter. As it happened, people said the movie was called “The Cryptographers”, “The CodeHackers” and whatnot, and that Introduction to Algorithms was written by Clark, Liebermann, River… but what took the cake was one answer we got.

KK was in a state of complete shock as he read out “This is Theorem 8.13 (Chandrashekhar and Mishra<that’s the name of the book we learned the lemma from>). The rest of us did a double-take and gave the usual expected reactions. The next line read “Seminar(ed) by XYZ“. Most people didn’t quite follow that, and those of us from the IT class burst out laughing - XYZ had taught us the Pumping Lemma as part of a seminar (pretty well, too, I must add). I recognized the names on the answer sheet to be of a bunch of my friends. Now these friends are known to be übergeeks and toppers (that’s a compliment, btw), and I correctly reasoned this was their joke. And a neat, effective one at that. It proved to raise a good laugh, and was a good story to retell, and we got some godawesome reactions too.

Just a couple of hours ago, something happened that took the bakery.

XYZ of the seminar fame was christened Pumping Lemma due to this, and someone went to him to explain why.

The story was repeated.

Reaction was watched for.

XYZ’s reaction: Cha.. that’s theorem 4.3, not theorem 8.13

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So… What’s your reaction?

********

I’ve written only 426 words so far… too short by my standards. So I use the rest of the space here to yap about Comps Events @ Engineer 2008… VBounty…. awesome questions, awesome servers….. awesome quality participation. Tul, Gudur, great it was, working with you… the best part was when I discovered the night before the event that a toughie I had set was invalidated because the page which contained the answer was taken off the Net! And Mr. Sahoo… that was a really great interface you had designed. I have no words to praise it.

Marathon… damn fun to try out, four rounds that were crazily taxing for us, especially the comp-based events, but man… were they fun or were they fun. KS, SKLD, Vijeth… too awesome a job. Nice memories made… of Maloo and me turning off all the systems before we realized that we need to upload all the contestants’ entries on to the server, and then we didn’t know which systems had been used and which ones not! It took us an hour and a half to get all the answer files uploaded…. all to do with the temperature. Then we found Engi mess was closed.. hadn’t even had breakfast… and NFC was too crowded. Lunch at Amul and man, the airconditioning in DigiLib saved our lives, and possibly that of others who would have been at the receiving end of our irritated diatribes. And the question-setting for the finals was some Level last-minute job, as was also the ppt. The best bit was, an outstation team came and told us it was “very professionally done”

Kode Kombat… great to watch bots fight it out… the fragging, the suicides, the indiscriminate bombing, the attacking bots, the defensive bots, the learning bot (I think)… Great work from both sides - the participants as well as the organizers. SKLD, Sagar, Pondy… and the team from VNIT who couldn’t be present to watch their bot win. Guys, your bot was godawesome…. if you do read this, put algo details.

And… Rectify…. our debugging event. It was a great idea to have a TopCoder-style Challenge Round. For people unaware of what a Challenge Round is, you have an arena with some n people coding a few problems. The server gives them points for their solutions - that’s the first round. The second round is where everyone’s code is visible to everyone else, and you can challenge other programs with test cases that cause them to fail. A successful challenge reduces the other program’s marks to zero, and gives you points, while an unsuccessful one simply loses you points.

And here’s a round of applause to the brilliant guys who actually got this working… I don’t think any other techfest has had such a round anywhere. Vaibhav, Bharat and Anup, full credit to you guys and your enthu. We’re damn sure next year will be even better with you folks at the helm. I’ll say it one more time… it was godawesome. *Standing Ovation*

And… the rest of us who set prelims, Marathon finals, and other problems… and gen other stuff… had a blast working together, didn’t we? I know I did. And this is one memory I will really treasure.. All the stabbing, the participation being fully throttled by other inconsequential events, the accomodations we did, the tensions, the 11th hour question-setting, and THE PJs… right from when we first created that googlegroup, right from when we were wondering if geNetSys would be a good name for a network design event, to the moment when we started off the Marathon final quiz, to when the Events co-ord said Kode Kombat can easily get a lot more sponsors and audience next time to “It’s all over da… our last Engi done…”. We know we made a great team, and I really wish we could do this more often. Maloo, Bigshow, Prat, KK (no, that isn’t Kode Kombat, or the guy who sings in the movies and is performing at Inci-08), Koli, Pradhan, Sarvesh… and also BK, Seena, Arun and everyone else who made this such an enjoyable experience. Oh, and two admits too, which came in right before and right after our events . Bigshow, KK, congrats again.

Now we have only Inscription left. Do tell all the coders you know, that this is happening on 23rd Feb 2008, Sunday, teams of three. Participation open to ALL, irrespective of nationality, education, age…. no bars whatsoever. All you need is a C/C++/Java compiler, and a Net connection, and possibly two friends.

And again…. CS/IT rocketh. Totally.

Bug

My mobile said “sms memory full”. So I did a “delete all”. While my inbox was being emptied, a message came in.  And the inbox was duly emptied. I don’t know who the message was from, even.
Does this happen in your mobile, too? If it doesn’t, what’s the model you’re using?