Jajment

That my room stays locked for most part of the day is no surprise and to say that it serves as a virtual lodge would be an understatement.Perhaps the only time it finds favour with guys is when one of them drops in to get a good afternoon's sleep(dich,he says my room induces sleep thanks to its 'AC' effect) or when one of them needs the day's edition of the spicy TOI.One of them is jaj!Jaj fancies himself as the official wandering tramp of pearl hostel. You will be forgiven for mistaking him for the wild boar-hogging,Roman bashing Gaul Obelix of 'Asterix' fame. The fat belly of his is really hard to miss as it tries hard to push out of his T-shirt like an inflated balloon. He has a large appetite(pun intended) for words, and he has got the 'balls'(pun again) to smash any english lits event at any place, at any time.
No sooner has he brushed his teeth, he lumbers his way to the vetti wing. He
surveys all open rooms along the way, till he reaches dich's room which is his
obvious favourite.
Jaj's favourite pastime is pulling dich's leg's and in the process adding a few
more Tamil swear words to his already swelling lexicon. Jaj quite dutifully and
successfully fulfills all the 'hostel' duties like staying jobless for hours
together,listening to gossip and doing bakar . If he is lucky he gets charge of dich's comp in the room and then its CS all the way.He has this rather
unconventional stance of playing the game. His fat,bucket-like palms rest on
the battered and bruised keyboard, the fore legs of the chair are raised while
he supports himself on its hind legs. He has mastered this art to
perfection( Not that it guarantees safety to anyone sitting behing him on the
floor!). He goes about on his firing spree till he finds that he is no match
for the BOT. A spell of unmentionables(obviously directed towards the BOT) is
let out in fury, in whatever sparse tamil he knows. Whether its a confrontation
with dich or CS, decibel levels are always on the higher side.

jaj's obsession for his second job is the talk of the hostel now-a-days. He
was made to look gullible when he sat
for a company which presented quite a rosy profile of itself. Unfortunately, jaj was
selected.Since then he has been following the entire placement scenario under a
microscope. He is quick to latch on to anything which he consdiers a clue about
the new companies, their arrival date etc. He could go to any lengths to force
the beans to be spilt- take one of the cic-reps() out for a casual dinner at
a gate and after a hearty meal spend a few hours of mindless bakar and slowly
but gradually sliping in the placement issue so that they let out their secrets.
Unfortunately his indecision isnt helping him either. Raaraa's wise-cracks
only add to his misery.Its been going along for sometimes. Raaraa gives him
assurances about the most awaited 'big ones'. jaj plays the waiting game skipping the 'small ones' for it. But a day before the supposed big-one, jaj dsicovers that is is actually a "tech profile" which leaves him high,dry and frustrated. jaj's gpa doesnt help matters much.
Jaj is probably the biggest placement critic that the college has had for
years. He cant understand the logic behind so many tech companies descending on
our campus for placements. When you remind him that this is a T-school and
there are as many software companies as tech, he is quick to retort that there
should be more of non-software and non-tech offers (Why dont you try your luck
in Bollywood, sunshine!!). He even went to the extent of dashing of a
suggestion-letter titled "i will teach you how to recruit potential candidates
like me" to a particular firm after he failed to make it!
All this hulabaloo for just one thing: A Bloddy, Friggin double job!!!
If you thought this is the end of story, wait a minute, keep your fingers
crossed! For you just know he wants a double job to get out of his OC profile,
you dont know what about that profile scares him,(rather who about the profile
scares him). Well no marks for guessing! Its good old papa!! She was and is
news always, isnt she! She has been the raw-material for jaj's nightmares. The thought of himself and her working in adjacent, AC filled cubicles, sends
cold shivers down his spine. The mere mention of papa scares him out of his
wits.( wouldnt be a bad idea to refer to her as the "You-know-who" or "She-Who-Must-Not-be-Named" ,harry potter fame).

No surprises here, considering his hate-turned-phobia for females.Jaj comes
along as a really spineless dude when it comes to girls. Due his age-old
isolation from the fairer sex, he is facing a crisis of sorts.Stories are rife
that he knew about a girl in school only through his mom and that too
when he was in engg college. The introduction to chirkut
seemed just the right medium to connect with females. At least he dint hav to
talk to them face-to-face and avoid wetting his pants in fear. But paranoid jaj
has his own share of problems here too! He cant get along with any damn female.
He has narrowed his fem-quest only to ..er..well..Pallakkad females.Come what
may,he still cant get papa out of his mind (one of thsoe love-hate things)
. The heart-break after the kau incident explains it.

To give you an idea of how a conversation between jaj and papa would sound,lets
take a quick fast-forward. For more see the post below

Papa's jajment day

Jaj and papa in OC, Bangalore:

Papa: (sees jaj, waves out to him) hey,hi,i have seen before,arent u from NITT?
Jaj: (looks back to check whether its really him or someone else, hesitates).
Er..ya..hi..I m from NITT.

Papa:oh! (strectches out her hand).hi.. I m lux papa!
Jaj: Er..( hesitates,dreads the possibility of shaking hands with papa, looks
around if anyone is watching)..I ..er.. just came out of the toilet now..sorry!
anyways.. Hi..jaj here!aaa.. nice meeting u.

jaj makes a dash towards the elevator to show her that he is busy but she
stalks him all the way. In the elevator:

papa:(pulls out her hanky and mirror from her bag) No probs yaar! (checks her
make-up).. I have seen u around for quite some time.Its strange v are from the
same college and havent spoken for a yr.
Jaj: (doesnt know what to say)..Er..I..I was a bit busy ..i dont think i
noticed you were around!


papa:(smiles, turns on her seductive charm)too busy..or..just too busy for me
jaj: (terrified, sweats profusely)i..i... dont know what u talking about!And in
any case I dont know you that well either.

papa: Oh c'mon, we got selected and rejected for the same companies countless times.Dont u think its something more than co-incidence??
jaja: (nervously) yes, it is something more than co-incidence..We were both useless 7-pointers. And even though u had a better C.G than me,u r stalking me like hell.


papa: Loosu! Why are u getting so frightened of me?? Oh, you thought I am
gonna ask you for a treat,like kau, right?? clever boy!I m not going to ask
anything from you. Is that ok?
jaj: (cools himself down,breathing heavily)Gosh kau!! you took a treat out of
that guy in college! (gets a measure of how powerful she can be,pauses)....ok..look..I
have to go..i have lots of work!

Suddenely the elevator comes to a halt!! The two are stuck inside!
papa looks as unfazed as ever,looks at jaj and flashes a wicked smile!

papa: Your work can wait and anyways it just the two of us here, so there's no
escaping!
jaj:( mutters a few tamil swear words under his breath)

papa: Hey, that! Those words sound soo familiar! arent they part of the dich-
slang??
jaj: yes.He promised to teach me tamil and taught me this instead, that idiot,
dog! But how do you know dich??

papa: aaah dich! shared some good times with him! He was good but not good
enough to deserve me! Had to chuck him and move on ,u know(says it as-a-matter-
of-factly). But he made a good courier-service guy, transporting notes and
stuff ,hostel to hostel
jaj: (Now start to feel a li'l more intimidated and scared of papa)..oo.. okk..
(wondering wat she will do next)

papa: Hey leave all the talk about guys.( Runs her fingers over her hair)How am
I looking today??
jaj: (fear filled, the look of a hostage, still looking at the
floor)..er..well.. nice..yes nice!

papa: Loser!! Cant you even see a girl in her face and talk?? Do I have to
teach you that too?? (Holds his face firmly so that it faces hers). Now tell
me, how do I look?? (winks her eye)

jaj:(limbs totally shaking and shivering with fear, summons all his courage,
looks at her for a split millisecond,turns his face away) nice.. cute!!

papa: (gives him a light slap on the face) Only cute?? nothing more than that??
Anyways,at least tell me how does this dress look on me!

jaj: (just too much for him, he is on his knees now, closes his eyes, shakes
his head) Shiv shiva!!pls forgive this girl n me too!!(slaps himself,prays to god)

Draws the lakshman rekha on the elevator floor with a pen, seperating him and
her
papa: (flabbergasted, half smiling, half confused) Cant you appreciate genuine
beauty? Now Wat the hell is wrong with you, y are u drwing that line, jaj?

jaj: dont cross that line! Dont step any further(his plight is now that of a
helpless woman standing in front of gulshan grover approaching her with hungry
eyes).

papa: (a laugh) Relax da!! Tell me, do I look like someone who would harm you,
I mean considering your size and mine. Do you talk like this to all girls?

jaj: Daddy told me not to talk to girls! My daddy was right!I even hate using
girl names(on the point of crying) Sings the nursery rhyme taught to him.
jajant jajant, yes papa
Seeing girls, no papa
telling lies, no papa
Open your eyes, wah wah wah!!

papa: Hey, that is my name which you are using at the end of every line,dumbo!
jaj: Oh sorry, i dint realize!

papa:cool cool! (stretches her hand out ), friends?
jaj: (looking a bit more composed now) No, I dont have any 'FRIENDS' cd's with
me,all that you wanted has been written and couriered to you by dich!!

papa: Poda mokkai (chaat)!! I was asking ,we are friends, arent we??
jaj: I guess ya! But it will be safe naa, I mean,I havent had female friends before.Daddy says....

papa: Oh shut up!! gr8, then!! Things always happen for the good! lets just say, I am your first girlfriend (grins, pats him on the back). I will add you in chirkut as my 500th victim. By the way , your Tamil sounds awesome, i'll teach much more tamil then wat Dich taught u and (pauses)..much more than tamil too!

jaj: So,..ya.. forgot to ask! Wat r ur hobbies other than filling up CV's and resumes,sitting for companies for a double job, attending interviews . Infact(now emphatic)I have the same set of hobbies, u know!

papa: Wow!!U too!! v have so much in common da! Infact I luv solving crossies,( takes out a crossie from her bag), isnt this a crossword??

jaj: (smiles) yeah... I ll teach u how to solve crossies. Infact very people know that I m the crossie king. They hav no "clue" who i m !!
papa: (charmed thoroughly, hands on her cheeks, open mouthed) wow!!u r soooo good!!

jaj: Oopss.. (rubs his stomach). I just realized... I m hungry now! I wish v could go to the gate if someone sponsors us!

papa: No worry! its on me! I'll treat u at home! I can make good rasam rice, (closes her eyes ,licks her lips) and I m sure u'll luvvvv mom's curd rice! (proclaims softly) After all, The best way to a man's heart is (eyes jaj's stomach) thru his belly naa?

As luck would have it , the elevator springs back to life.People look on as jaj and papa walk out hand in hand.

Regards

Vishwesh

Going Natts !!

Time just flies huh? 3 months have gone by in a jiffy since the start of the
sem.
The 7th sem in the dept has been no different from the previous ones, except
that, its been a li'l too chaat for our liking. But the rules are the same ,
toppers perched on the first few benches scribbling away at will while we doze off
with our eyes open.The xerox process is still followed with the regularity of
an age-old ritual before the cycles ,no matter wat the subject and then we devise ways to mug the xerox copies.
Natts,true to nature, has been going nutts. He is your quintessential gurukul
school master (The ancient "sit on a raised platform under the baniyan tree"
types that you see in those mythological serials).Unfortunately his pupils are far removed from the gurukul system!
Besides being a little hard on hearing, he can be heard only within the radius
of the first 2 rows of benches. Sit in one of the coveted back-benches and you
will be treated to a silent-movie ,characterised by Nattu's sudden modulation and weird hand movements (one of which resembles a bharatnatyam dance move, another which sounds like the karate stance which keanu reeves' takes against agent
smith in matrix...lol)
His new record this sem was a greuelling 2 hour and 10 min session after the
lunch break. He went insanely beserk that day and guys would have wondered
whether they had enjoyed a little too much in the 2yrs in the dept.
Natts takes corrosion . But the first few months of the
sem were anything but corrosion.
He took the whole first month explaining why he was the boss and the virtues of cent-percent attendance(the conclusion: "if you dont atttend guest lectures, your job prospects are in trouble").
The second month was marked by an introduction to good ol' chemistry(his obsession with the Daniel cell is well-known. Good "chemistry" u see... pun very much
intended) .His age-old romance with electro-chemistry, at times, made me feel
that I was back in bhavans college, andheri for a second term. Well, after 2
months of constant belaboring, he came to the point, much to our
relief.Probably he must have seen the subject name "CORROSION" in the time-
table.
Nats has this uncanny knack of chipping in with the most outrageous analogies
and fundaas to explain a certain subject matter!He takes a smooth de-tour
from the topic under focus more often than not , in his quest for "give-n-
take" of information.

Welll.....To give u a taste of it just read the post below this.

Regards

vishwesh

Livin la viva loca !!

The 6th sem and our lab exams were
on.Well, guess who was taking oue viva-voce!!! Natts !
I was the penultimate candidate for the viva session! Excerpts from the viva:

Natts: Come,Sit,(gives me my evaluated cycle test paper which I take instantly
without seeing the marks) What is your name?"
me: (my loudest best) Vishwanath hariharan ,sir !


The name struck him like a thunderbolt. He put down his paperwork and looked
at me.
Natts: Oh! where are you from?
Me: sir, mumbai

natts: mumbai!!oh! where in mumbai?
me: sir ,andheri.

natts: where in andheri? east or west?
me:(now this was getting on my nerves .Even then..) Andheri East, sir!

natts: (pen in hand,thinking wat next to quiz me on, history or geography)
hmmm...Why is it that there is only east and west? Y not north n south?

Gosh.. in these 20 odd years that I have lived in tinseltown mumbai, never has
anyone asked me this and neither hav I been curious enough to know why is
there no south or north.(Heheheh...Imagine borivli south,
andheri north...lol!!)

me: (giving him the impression of a planned, well thought-out answer)Sir, the
railway line divides a suburb into east n west.Sir, thats why there is no
north n south.

(grrr.... stupid answer. "u and ur super-chaat fundaas, vish!!" I thought)

natts:(gave the feeling as though he was thoroughly convinced)hmm..There is a
place called dadar, no? how far is dadar from andheri?

(How far??? Distance in terms of what?? In mumbai ,distance is measured in
hours of travel. But if I tell him that he ll probably tell me that my basic
physics is all screwed up!)

Anyways, I took the safer route and counted ... Dadar,
matunga road, mahim , bandra, khar, santa-cruz, vile parle, andheri.


Me: Sir, 8 stations away! (Perfect!!)

Natts:(His next question, I knew it was coming...hehehe).
How long does it take from dadar to andheri?

me: sir, depends upon whether u trvel by fast or slow local trains! U take
around 15 min by fast and a little more than that by a slow local.

A voice inside my head popped up and said
" Tell him that this is a semester viva voce!! He should be
asking you tech! You hav prepared for 1 full hour before coming here. 1
friggin ,full hour!!!
(Giggling , followed by a smirk)The guy after you (Raavana)has been preparing
for a "tech viva" (Yep,viva voce can be tech or hr, as I had just
discovered ) for a whole lifetime. If he faces the same viva as you, he ll be
heart-broken" Hehehe I coudlnt help but smile at that very thought.

Natts: Okk. There is a new place in mumbai. i dont know whether exactly in
mumbai or not.What is its name.
Me: (wat sort of a question is that?)Sir..er..new place..which place sir??
(heheh..even i was asking him the same question)

Natts: Its a very new place..dont remember what u call it!!
Me: (with a give-me-a-clue expression on my face) Sir ,is it Bandra
reclamation!!

(Bandra reclamation!!! hahahaha...(rollin on the floor with laughter).
"Gimme a break vish, U suck bigtime"! You are probably the only guy on earth
who would have dreamt of bringing up bandra reclamation in a metallurgy viva!)

How the devil did i come up wid that answer,god alone knows!! (It didnt sound
so funny at that point of time...haha..bandra reclamation!!)

me: Sir, is it Navi mumbai(correcting myself), New bombay!

Natts: (liteally sprang up towards me with an expression which
suggested "eureka,eureka!!", smile on his face)
Yes!! new bombay. So ,new bombay it is !!That was the place i was looking
for! It is a new establishment??

Me: sir, it is relatively new compared to Greater mumbai!It is a well-
developed n planned satellite town of mumbai. It houses residential
colonies.Many college have also come up.


natts: hmm..(seeming disintersted in the "residential n college" part)
hmmm...ok So u have 2 parts: greater mumbai n new bombay.What is that greater
mumbai that you said?

Me: Sir,it comprises of the island part of the city.

natts: Where are vashi and nerul ? greater mumbai or new bombay.
Me: Sir, new bombay.

natts:okk! So you have to cross the sea each time you have to go to new bombay.
me: Yes sir.

natts: There is a place which comes on the way to Vashi. I dont know whether I
am pronouncing the name correctly . Its name is mankad i think. Something of
that sort .(Repeats) mankad. Am i right?
Me: (Gotcha, this time!!) sir, it is Mankhurd!!

Natts:(repeating his earlier "spring up" act): Yes Yes!! oh, so the name is
mankhurd! (repeats)


natts" How many stations come between dadar and nerul?
me (Oh god not again):sir, both are different lines.


natts: Oh different lines!! ok ok! which is the line on which andheri comes?
me: Sir, western !

natts: and dadar?
Me: sir on both, western n central, it is sort of a junction!

Natts: There is also another place,(thinks),ya some so... ssomething starting
with S.
Me: Sir, Sion

Natts: sion, sion!!! yes. Its far away from dadar?
Me: no sir, (saving myself another question) sion,matunga,dadar.

natts: (looking much more interested n refreshed now)oh matunga comes after it!
ok!! which is that railway line which runs closer to the sea coast??

(along the sea coast aa??? ...sea coast???
oh achcha,!!! "arre tubelight!! He is referring to the harbour line i think")
Me: Sir, the harbour line!!

natts: "Harbour line!! ok ok!

Natts: I have been to mumbai before also, but I keep forgetting everything!
Me: (listens silently and nods at regular intervals)

Natts: That nerul, there is a big Hanuman statue there, is it not??
Me: Yes sir (Now it was very clear to me wat he was getting at). Yes sir...
....(quickly added) sir, there is also a well known Vedha-paatshaala there.

Natts: (his joy knowing no bounds,he would have got up and kissed my head had
it not been a viva) Oh Yes!!! Yes yes!I have heard a lot about it.

Just when the discussion was at its peak, we were interrupted by an unexpected
visitor, a certain math prof.
I waited outside while they spoke.
When they were done I was called in for the viva once again and this time
Natts fired metallurgy trivia straight away!! (as if nothin had happened at
all before this).
At the end of it he seemed satisfied .

I ended up with an 'A' in this lab, one of the very few ones and (phew..wipes
of the sweat off his forehead)one of the hard-earned ones!!

Regards

vishwesh

Full-too filmi !!!

The period after the placements has been brimming with movies, movies and more
movies, the cycles nothwithstanding. The cycle tests, I am sorry to say, have
been reduced to a mere "come-sit-go" affair, a la cpc's. Nevertheless, cycles
are good timepass! That the number of cycles has been reduced from 3 to 2 and
the assignments have been given additional weightage has turned out to be real
bad news for the aam student junta( especially meta...booo hoo)!
The Pearl-Lapis lan link was mercilessly chopped off this sem.
But it dint make much off a difference for movie buffs like me, thanks to kaly (long time since he figured in my blogs, huh?). His new laptop and the 40 GB portable HD have, by far, been the biggest toast of the season. The HD has been instrumental in
facilitating the exchange of movies between emerald and pearl.
Out of the countless number of movies that we watched, there were a few good
ones,some not-so-good ones which needed a fast-forward once every 5 minutes
and some others where you could figure out what the story is heading for by
merely watching the first 5 minutes of the phillum.
Heeheh.. one of them, is the latest king-khan hit, KANK.Though it has had people
shouting "chaat, chaat" in various site reviews ,its been raking in the moolah
quite steadfastly. The intro scene of the movie had king-khan playing hockey!!
(if you thought that was the height of topsy-turvy'ness, there seem to be more
weird things around you happening these days, like,say, a certain cow milking,fodder
eating minister giving IIM grads a lesson on management or youngsters these days worshipping gandhigiri instead of 'bhaai'giri!)
King khan so effortlessly flashes that melodramatic expression of his( lips
pursed tightly, head suddenly tilted sideways or looking heavenwards,a subdued
smile accompanied occasionally by that irritating giggle of his) with amazing
regularity, film after film!! Its this expression of his which once prompted my mother to say " Oh, this dude has been doing the same thing since his 'circus' days!" KK seems so confused between life and wife, in this film. What is meant to be a film on serious human relationships, ultimately transforms into a wife-swapping saga. Pooh! (Loy's techno is just hilarious!!)
There was this absolute cracker of a film called "Souten", which ..er.. wasnt esactly oscar-winning.
The story: A certain modern
ruler(something something Singh) who lives in a mahal of his in rajasthan,
along with his babe-wife. Babe wife is bored of life 'coz ruler does nothin
but hunting (sheesh.. I thought there was no water in rajasthan, leave alone
jungles). The ruler has a family friend of his, who's younger bro comes from
mumbai(on a british airways flight), to handle "khaandaani" bussiness! Babe-
wife falls for younger bro's love n lust. Elder bro's wife persuades younger
bro to break up with babe saying " such unfortunate things do happen in youth
(???)". So he breaks off painfully! Then ruler's daughter(another babe,the
daughter of his first wife) comes to rajasthan, on a holiday trip. Thats when
you realize that babe-wife is actually his second wife!
Disaster strikes! Babe2 falls for younger bro's love n lust. Babe2
unmindful of bro's previous affair ,sings duets and goes holidaying with
him.Thats when you start feelin " enough is enough" !!Somehow babe1 reveals
everything to babe2. Babe2 now hates bro, does a fashion designing course in
goa and hooks another dude! Finally,bro wins over babe2 with his love n lust.
Poor ruler gets damn pissed when he is told thatt small bro flirted with
both,his wife n daughter and takes his gun. Problem is inspite of all these
years of hunting, his shooting skills are pathetic. instead of shooting small
bro , he shoots his babe-wife(One of the many bollywood rules when the number
of heroes and heroines dont match: one of them has to leave , hook or by
crook). Families unite ...hehehehe!

Then there was a German film that we saw ( recommended by me to everyone..hehehehe)..not such a good one though, which presents 3 possible climaxes to a story, where the hero and heroine have to make 1000 bucks in exactly 20 min: first climax is the one where the hero robs a mall but he is run over by a truck, second where the heroine robs a bank and is shot dead by the police and the third one where the hero robs the mall and the heroine robs the bank but neither of them die.aaaAArrrgh(I escaped getting bumps from my friends for suggesting such a crap film)!!!!

Notable among the good ones is the Gangster, in which serial kisser Hashmi makes an
appearance. His high-voltage lip-locks(which would have scared the daylights out of the newcomer heroine) are interspersed with occasional glimpses of his acting
skills. The story is good though (and need v say anything about hashmi video songs...lol)!
The other good one was Fanaa, which has Aamir khan constantly buzzing with shaayaris in urdu. A good story and great music has had everyone totally fida on it.
Loads n loads of tamil n english movies came our way!
Moving over hindi,tamil (most of which came in the "fast-fwd" category) n english films, off late, telugu films have become quite a rage among the junta in our wing!

As they say so often in our campus,
"Jobless after getting a job!" (2 jobs in my case)

Regards

vishwesh

Write Back!

Howdy!!
I dont hav a count of how many countless number of times you guys have visited my blog address to see if anything new is cooking up (Its a pity actually, there's no recent vistors' list in here.).

Anyways, Sorry for the delay! No dat I hav run out of topics or issues(will never happen in a million years.) Just that I hav been cooling my heels(literally) after placements.
As we guys so often remark, "Jobless after bagging a job", (oops..two jobs)!Festember, our college fest, accentuated that feeling even further. That my cycles' (cylce tests) results are in total doldrums is also testimony to it! But as they say, life moves on.

By the way, psst..for once I have got a chance to use my penning skills for a more fruitful cause. Yep, TPS, the college mag! No worry,blogging continues as usual!
Hope everything goes along well!!

Regards
vishwesh

"Mad for each other"

I guess the Darwinian theory of "survival-of-the-fittest" makes its presence felt everywhere in your daily life,whether you like it or not.
He hehehe ...Read on....
This is the stoy of Dich,papa and kau.

Lux Papa,though,a simple country girl, had this very stubborn-bitchy image
about her which made
her a total turn off for every Y-chromosomed creature in her dept. Everything
from the clothes she wore , the guys she talked (she never talks to females
anyway)to the "lux scandal" which rocked the dept ,raised her "infamous
celebrity" status notches higher, with every passing day. Someone who admired these
developments very secretly was Dich.
Dich was given the coveted title of Dich the Doggie, which only privileged few
in the campus are capable of bagging. As a token of his modesty he had
christened the Coffee Shop dog as dich too. An ardent animal lover, he had a
soft corner for the
cannine species and could be constantly heard saying "Wat a
faithful dog!!" In many a sense, the dog reminded him of the days when he
slogged is backside out to break into the top ranks in the entrance exam to get
into the college,the way he barked and drove out the countless denizens of Pearl hostel who infested his room and troubled him.
This was the same campus where he had met papa,his "figure".
He relived those past moments of how he had "corrected" her,the time they spent
together, in the same class, same bench, same..watever.Group study was always on
the cards. He even took to the "FLAMES" funda to verify whether she was the best
fit for him, by wrtin on the walls of the classrooms. Unmindful of her true
nature,he had built castles n sky-scrapers in
air, about transforming their bond into something substantial.But it wasnt to
be. He discovered to his horror that she was two-timing him. "That is it!!!" he
said. And it stood broken. Dich spent days in tears. OF course, papa was the
least affected as guys swarmed all around her.
2 yrs passed by. Placement season was on. The new-look dich had
blasted his way into MS and topped on all accounts: be it the CG, screwing
the comp(in the name of programmin), his fan following (male n female???). DS was
one of them.DS had accompanied Dich all the way to tinseltown mumbai. Dich
trusted her in every sense and liked her too.their combined pay totalled 2.5
lpm.But dich soon realized that there wasnt that fire that he had experienced when
he was with papa.
Papa's fortunes had just begun to look bright even though she looked a mere
shadow of dich. She got her lucky break in the form of the "OC" profile a few
days after dich. Dich had been on a short holiday to chennai then.
Meanwhile,Kau and his friends(the chennai gumbal) had just reached the station. They spotted a restaurant to get a light dinner before they moved on.As luck would have it,kau bumped into someone really familiar.But he couldnt remember who she was.Girls were never a comfort zone for kau. It was papa! papa too was on her way home and it seemed something much more than coincidence dat they meet this way.

Kau: WAT the SHIT?
papa:(lookin unnerved) i m so sorry.

kau: its ok, boss. so wat u doin her.
papa: doin research on zulu tribes. loosu , i came to eat here.

They sit down in a secluded spot, far away from the others.

papa: I hv seen u somewhere. Rn't u the presi of the "B' club?
kau: Hohohohohho(stifled laughter), Yeah dats me!
papa: wooooow!! I luv dat club so much. can i join it too. I luv drwing n painting.


kau: (feelin amused) All this is CHEAP shit! In a few months from now, i ll be
flyin to the Big apple (shows the sign of a plane flyin with his customary whistle.)
papa: Good, but for dat u need a visa first.

kau: PATHETIC! i thought i needed an air ticket. SCREWWWEED! anyways, What will
u do?
papa: Me will go to Singapore. marriage n stuff, u know.

kau: (whistles, runs his hand through his hair.) CHAMP!!

kau: will u come to US if u get a chance?
papa: Yes i want to daa, but how will I?

kau: Thats so simple! Mug the entire-wordlist, revise it 3 times.All this should
take only 3 weeks. Then give 10 complan tests. dat will take one week. everything over. last day give the exam.and then apply for univ. Damn Simple!!

papa: (by now floored n charmed by kau's knowledge):wow! And wat is dat "Hotel" test ?

kau: "WAT? its not hotel, its TOEFL. I ll give it this month."
papa: "ya watever. You know so much." (smiles flirtatiously)

kau:" Disgusting! In this mock CAT, a girl topped in ourcollege. WAT a SHAME!
papa:(looks amazed n confused,all at once n looks at kau as if he is talkin swahili)

papa: U on "chirkut" or wat?
kau: Ya, i m ther!


papa: So, wont u give a job-treat to a girl sittin with u,huh?
kau: : Sure! (pulls out n checks his wallet, in case..).


The talk went on, numbers exchanged.

papa: Thanks for such a lovely treat. by the way, dont you think your club needs a first lady,right? I m be of help.(Winks)

Kau: I leave 'no leaf' unturned,when it comes to feminine pulchritude.I detest
the adherence to archaic tradition in the club.

The chennai gumbal was left speechless as they saw the "figure" being
"corrected" by kau in the space of minutes.

Dich heard the news and is still in mourning.


Regards

vishwesh

Placement sentiment-1

Hardly a month into the placement season as people all around me get their choicest companies and I go about blogging endlessly. The first of the tech co's for meta was TM and it was the first 'kela' that I got.
The TM debacle wasnt to much of a setback for me!Jobless and unemployed I always was and have no qualms about it even now! Nevertheless,the aftermath witnessed some shocked expressions from the junta,most of whom thought TM was a total cakewalk for me. But alas,they were treated to the biggest disappointment of all times( second only to Germany's unceremonious exit from the WC semifinals.).
Our placements kicked off, the most conventional way (the way its been going on in our college from time immemorial! Two software giants,bulk recuiters,( whose abbrev letters can be subjected to permutation and combination to obtain each others' names), coming back to back! But surprise surprise! All dreams of "bulk" evaporated once the HR and Tech interviews results came! Only 50 were thru (yes 50 thru, and we dont call it bulk, dats our college!). Was this the sign of things to come! There was widespread panic among the "softy" junta who had nursed high hopes till then! News spread rife that our college was no longer on the "favoured" list and that others had caught up with us!
The same week heralded the entry of the most expensive tech recruiter of the non-circuit branches till then(at least for our dept). TM was and is always the talk of the town! But alas they flattered to decieve, if the ppt was anything to go by. The 2 dudes, one a grand ol' man of 60(isnt that the retirement age??) something and the other man a tad younger to him, made their way in to the barn. The ppt was supposed to give an insight into wat the company is all about and y the hell shuld u be part of it. Instead, in half n hour's time, the whole junta was subjected to a series of mindless figures of thousands, various allowances,added benefits,PPF percentages n what not's. The audience was left in a daze as if they had just been treated to the first quarterly returns for FY-2006-07 of TM. Honestly, till then I had only seen such pictures on CNBC India where they talk about turnovers, gross profits, post-tax profits, F&O's and stuff! The young dude seemed to like our campus, because there was (supposedly) a lot of greenery in some areas (the trees must have grown overnight i guess). He compared the campus to their manufacturing facility which also had "big plants" (???..hehehe).Wat still remained a mystery was their profile- marketing or manufacturing?
The written test was held the same day in our net-lab, an online one it was!The same 2 dudes were there as well! The ol' fella was constantly saying something tothe tune of " Attempt every Q. There is no negative("no negative marking" emphasized, bold, capitalized,Italic ...) marking. As if he was endorsing the "matka-maaro"(guessing) thing that we fear doing in tests, due to the negative marking penalty axe on our head! Nevertheless it was a testing one and 6 of us got thru from our dept.
GD was the next round and the all shortlisted candidates were present at the t &p . There were 7 in my group and we were supposed to speak on globalisation! Normally one would smell a fish-market in most gd's here, but today was different! Everything was so amicably done.5 minutes of puttting ur thoughts down and the 15 minutes of talk! I cut loose and blabbered incesantly for a full 2 minutes in my initial burst much to the chagrin of my fellow gd mates who probably must have harboured thoughts of plastering my mouth.Then others got a chance, while I chipped in between,occasionally building on what the others said.
I was one of the 20 gd shortlists. I was the penultimate interview candidate and this wasnt a very encouraging sign at all.The ones who went in before, on an average had interviews which lasted 10 mnutes approx,which were"coolkaal"! My turn came at 7.40 pm, my stomach grumbled harder for food ! "But job u need more than food ", i said to pacify it momentarily!
There were 3 dudes now! The 3rd one had apparently flown in the previous day evening (I overheard their loud phone convo, during the online test.).

To be continued......

Regards

vishwesh

placement sentiment-2

hi, to continue from where I had left.
There were 20-odd guys (by guys i mean, only boys, no females at all!)
shortlisted for the interview/s (v didnt know beforehand whether it was just
tech or only a HR).I was made to wait for a marathon 3 hrs in an A/C room (yep,as
if dat was a consolation).In the 3 hrs ,I made a trip to the snackyteria twice.
People on the way probably thought I was done with the I'view.

Later we were informed that, it was just HR, which made it even more
difficult .With two u had a chance of "making up" if at all u got jacked
in one. But here i had just a solitary chance.The candidates who went in came out, well, mostly wid smilin or non-crying faces. The interview time for each candidate just came decreasing all the time like a geometric series. After wat seemed to be an eternity ,my turn came.

I had observed all the previous guys subjecting themselves to ..well.. wat i would call "pre-nterview check-ups" (clearing the parched
throat,adjusting the straight tie,positioning the belt correctly, shuffling and
reshuffling all the contents of the folder,checkin their pant zip..) ,inumerable
times. I dint feel like doin any of those. Maybe I was too eager to rush into the
interview room and finish it off for the sake of my starved tummy, whose growls had
now assumed dangerous proportions or because I was so confidence
personified (or a bit of both maybe!).

There were 3 dudes in the AC filled room. All of them looked pretty
disinterested n exhausted.I identified the extreme 2 as the ppt
dudes. The ol' man was comfortably perched at the left end of the table, facing
me.The "slightly" younger dude was working away furiously on his lap-top. The
man in them middle (middle man)was the one who ,I thought, would ask me the bulk of the questions. And so he did.

Me: (Opening the door), excuse me sir?
All 3 in unision: Yes Yes, come come!!

Me: God evening Sirs (managed yet another broad, 32-bit smile of mine)!
All: Good evening..er.. Vishwanath. Please sit down. Sorry to keep you waitin
for so long!

Me: (smilin)Sir, its ok. Its worth waitin for a company like yours.
I couldnt help marvelling at myself for such an effortless, spontaneous ,
straight-faced,white lie. I mentally gave myself a pat on the back.

Middle man : (lookin disinterested in my comment as he glanced through my
resume ,at least he appeared to do so)
" So, u are from meta . wat type of job do u want?"(Sir , basically an
investment banking profile wont be bad.)

Me: "I am interested in the marketing profile that you offer."

Middle man:(sounding serious) " Actuaaally, we dont have any vacancy or
requirements in that profile.Any other profile?

Me: "Sir, I have given mfg as the next preference."

Middle man: "hmm... Actuallly even that seems to be difficult." (Sheesh..Was
this some kind of an employment exchange office.)

Me: (sounded undaunted): " Sir,anything remotely connected with mfg or meta
would also be interesting."

Ol' man:( His debut in the interview): Tell me abt...(middle man cuts him
off).. obviously the Q was " tell me something about urself?". A Q which many
dread the most and the need behind so many countless personality-development
classes and cramming "know-urself" notes.

I was just about to open my mouth when middle man (obviously feelin left
out) ,asked
" So , u r prepared for any thing our company offers,huh?"

Me: "Yes sir.It would be a very rewarding association, no matter wherever I
work in ur organization" (Jhoot boley Kauva kaatey!)

young man: (finally breaking his mouna-vrat): " You dont mind travellin also?
Because v have a plant comin up in this state X(one of the "relatively new
states" he mentioned)."

Me:"Yes sir, i dont mind it at all.It would be a new learning experience for
me.New place, new people"

young man: " Good.The profile in the new plant is of Y mfg, (then he went about
the
intricacies.. blah blah..given a chnace i would have yawned there itself.)

middle man: " Tell me something about his state X?

This simply wasnt a test of my geography knowledge.There was something more to
it , I realized by the expression on their faces. something said that these
dudes had already made up their minds on their final list and the were just
playing around with me, giving it the semblance of a casual hr interview so dat
I wouldnt return to hostel disappointed. True realization descended " Vishwesh
u r not getting thru, by any stretch of ur imagination. its over." everything
was over. To bad dude!!

Everything after that ..well.. seemed ordinary, even though it was normal Q-A.

Nevertheless,I politley gave them all they wanted on state X.


ol' man (still not satisfied wid the talk, it was already 8pm): Why do u want
this profile ?"

I built up some fundas somehow conecting meta wid the work in the profile. (No
matter wat the situation,the bluffing continued relentlessly.)

more followed on wat would be the ideal material for a car in terms of the
cost,properties etc if they were to make low-budget one.

I dug out my vast meta prowess. suggested a whole lot of new materials. they
appeared satisfies.
But I wasnt getting thru. that was the bottomline.

middle man: : " Do u have any Q's??"
I wasnt in a mood to ask anything . But I asked them about the allied activities of the organization, their dealings, their recent mergers and acquistions if any (displaying the curiosity of a loyal,retail shareholder.)

i shook my head blankly at the answers, couldnt wait to get the hell outta the place asap.

middle man: " thanks a lot. have a nice day"(shook hands)
Me: (smilin) "thank you sirs."

20 minutes of timepass had ended.

I was the penultimate candidate. I felt sorry for the dude after me. He would soon discover y.

my first "kela" of the placement season!


Regards

Vishwesh

Life ke fundae

It was our 3-credit Economics class.
Most of these Eco classes are a concoction of dry, mundane theory and outrageously bad PJs. I discovered even in the first class itself, that the prof was an expert at giving real- funde/quotes.

The pick of them are here: Read on...

"If you do not get good sleep you are suffering from inso-mania ( insomnia he meant)."

.For a good professional (lol)
" Dream at night, not at sight."

." As an individual, I want to have a good career. Please note I said career, not carrier."

." You see, Each person in the organization is working "as" an asset. 

Please note ,it is "asset" not "ass". Both are different words."


. "Humour is needed in my class otherwise we will walk and talk like zombies(and
shows it with live demo)."

. "A company should work for customer satisfaction and sales growth simultaneously. Like a movie where the hero is fighting the villan and later singing romantic duet with the
heroine."

.You see, these are the 7 principles of management. Buckosh(Because) you are the
manger, not damager!

.You see, Everyone wants profit, I dont want to live a life of celibacy.(????)

. A leader should be dynamic, dont confuse with dynamite.

. A country is poor Buckosh it is poor.

. The AIDA priciple is necessary for marketing. Read it carefully, the last etter is not 'S' it is 'A'.

. A product should be packaged well, 

Buckosh old wife in new saree will always
be in demand. (His version of "old wine in new bottle.")

. You see, 50 years back americans were telling " Be careful with your food or
Indians will take it." Now they say " be careful with your job, Indians will take it."


Regards

Vish

"VET"eran

"Haan Haan, phod diya" I said for the umpteenth time in reply to repeated queries of how the paper was terribly easy( when was the last time u heard that the papers in meta were mighty herculean?). A sigh of relief was all I could manage after the last of the papers got over!The same old feelin of nostalgia(self evoked)of leaving the college campus for a long 50-odd day holiday,packin my mess, waving goodbye to friends etc marked the day after the exams.
Once I got home I wasted no time in switched "on" my "mumbaiyya" mode . Its amazing (pats himself on the back) how I switch "on" n "off" so quickly whenever the situation or place demands.But one hobby of mine still failed to die, that of loggin on to the site which boasted of "building networks between people" and had a whole gamut of new features namely the scrapbuk(where u get to see the trash which others dump),rating ur friends etc etc (i need not say more, huh?). Now, this 'O' site had become quite a rage among the college junta.
I registered as a member on the 'O' site ("chumma" timepass sake)rather late and as a critic I had to eat my words.It wasnt one of those typical "candy floss" sites which I thought it was, there were tons n tons of many good ol' friends (bichde yaar, jinki shakal bhi main pechaan nahi paayaa).
Thankfully (or unthankfully for some people whom I wouldnt mention) I was jobless while my meta dudes were supposedly doing projects which served well to camouflage their 'O' site hobby.
Heheh.. talkin about joblessness,one person isn't far behind at all!
Apparently, Niv too discovered this 'O' site syndrome rather late. A character that she is, her nickname sounds very much like a popular brand of winter skin-cream(??). Skin Cream,well.. she doesnt need any! She has this "i-m-sweet" aura about her n her petite damsel-like face coupled with a charmin, near-captivating smile could make her a complete "10-on-10" in the eyes of any normal guy. If that ain't enough, her "sleeping beauty" avataar just increases her Drool Quotient(DQ) exponentially. And if you thought she's mere eye-candy, think again! There's more to her. Niv has already laid-out a concrete road-map of what she would be upto in the next few years, (that when most of us cant even decide which shirt to wear for today's 8.30 lecture).
She plans to unleash the Doctor Do-little within her, in good ol' uncle Sam's country thanks to a scholarship. Boy, arent the yankees a lucky lot! Rather, the yankee animals! I have always found it really intriguing how animals are notches above humans when it comes to health(never seen an animal wearing glasses or using a walkin stick have you? ). The galli-ka-kutta drinks puddle water n still remains as fit as me( who takes pains to boil water). Anwways,thats not the point! Niv quite easily proved that she isnt any "munnabhai" who takes the easy route. And nor did she want to bust her backside slogging for huge competetive exams. She had different plans for herself! She chose to be a vet! Brave decision,i thought,as my mind raced back to the "bloody"(pun very much intended) zoology labs in 12th when half a dozen girls used to faint regularly when the heart of the dissected frog popped out like a ping-pong ball!
She's a bigger movie buff than anyone you can ever think of and an even bigger fan of Sophie("da vinci" fame)hehehe!!!! .But lethargy n boredom have taken their toll on her and driven Niv to the depths of ultimate frustration ,courtesy this never-ending vacation. As the days pass by she grows increasingly melodramatic. But her eagerness n curiousity to learn more turns out to be her biggest assset . Whether it's about brushin up her foreign-language knowledge, seekin tips,wanting to know more about football or doing an "alcohol research" for the first time!



Regards
vishwesh


P.S: Niv, if u r reading this plz dont get mad! You have achieved the unique distinction of becoming my first female blog character. Infact i did let the cat out of the bag by tellin u this was coming, hehe!!

"Guest talk or Ghost talk?"

Guest lectures are the quintessential ingredients of any great technical event. Arranging for an expert to give a talk on a particular subject is a tough job no doubt. Making the students(read as 'audience') sit throughout the talk is an even tougher task. Of all events the lecture event shows an exponential decrease in student strength, much to the chagrin of the teachers. The students, quite naturally, feel that anything that comes up in the talk is next to Greek n Latin.

One such example was the technical event of our department. Two experts were invited for guest lectures. One from a reputed science college(institute) in Banglore and the other from an organization which boasts of being the world leader in electrical products. Both of them were expected to come by the same train from Banglore and so they did. I was to receive them at somwhere around 5 in the morning (the day when the event was set to kick off)which meant it was a complete nightout for me. Not difficult for a nocturnal like me !

The train was half an hour behind schedule and since I didnt have the slightest inkling of how their faces looked like, I held placards of "NIT welcomes mr X and Mr y to Trichy", hoping to find them. It happened! They found me! I introduced myself and lead them, ploughing through the crowd to the entrance where our car was waiting.

After that I dont remember much apart from the fact that there was an absolute shower of technical knowledge from both sides. It was clearly evident from their talk that they were meeting each other for the first time.

People who are really into "tech or research" inside a campus are real charcaters to watch out for. Inside the car:

Mr X: "So, Mr y, how is that your organization grows by leaps and bounds?"

Mr y: (A short pause) " Hmm, its 'coz we have built up a pool of ours. Good labs spending, (points to me) students , emphasis on research work and more. Then blah blah...

I discovered just form 5 min of talk that Mr X was the most animating type and Mr y was Mr Reticent. Mr X was very spontaneous and instinctive while Mr y almost took a lifetime to ponder over questions thrown at him by X. To be frank Y did not exactly appeal to me as the person who would go on to give a refreshing guest talk. Nevertheless, both had a sound knowledge of their respective fields.

X specialized in nanomaterial while Y dealed extensively in mechanical metallurgy.

Mr X: 'Sir do you know Mr Z?"

Mr Y: (A big long pause which prompted me to think that the guy had reached saturation point). Suddenely there was a reply. " Mr Z? Certainly rings a bell in my mind . Isnt he the one who deals in fatigue mechanics.

Mr X:(overjoyed that atleast there is something common which they can talk about) Yes he is the one. (doles out scoops of praises for Z). "He also works on amorphous systems, the effect of crack propogation on the texturing properties of crytals.

amorphous substances,cyclotronic behaviour , crack behavious in semiconductors, Ti alloys , use of polymers in nano came up.

As luck would have it , we reached college and drove straight to the guest house.

Next, just an hour before the event began, I had the privilege of having breakfast with the 2 gentlemen. This time it was a complete non-technical session , maybe because the gentlemen had enough of each other.

mr Y: (for a change he was questioning) Trichy is an unusual location for a college? Why is the college situated here ? what may be the signifance?

Myself: ( It was a such a dumb question I thought, as if I wanted them to build a college on this barren peace of land far away from civilization. But the need of the hour was to give fundaas.)

' Sir , its because there are quite a few hardcore tech industries in this area. We have BHEL nearby and blah blah.. (mentioned the names of a few more NIT's and explained to him that many of them were in the most weirdest places on earth)" Also explained to him about the impact of the industrial growth in the area on the lives of the ppl in and around Trichy.

Both seemed satisfied.

mrX: (not wanting to be left behind): "there are so many temples around ? but many of the capitals of kings who ruled south india are almost non-existent unlike the rulers of north india?

myself: (A feeling of "uh oh! screwed" but kept the smile on and blabbered endlessely):

"Sir in those days, south ndian kings had a penchant for building temple-cities and not big cities. This made it convenient for them to tour the whole city in very short time. (gave some fundaas on north indian rulers. somehow Shivaji came into the talk. I pumped more and more of history and rulers.)

They were enjoying the convo. Breakfast ended.

We walked our way to the lecture hall. Some more amusing questions and some more mindless fundas but reinforced by apprpriate facts. A prof intercepted us on the way. We reached the hall just in time for the start of the tech event.



And true to nature, I slept thru most of the guest talks.



luv n Regards

Vishwesh

"Words of Wisdom"

Things you shouldnt forget!

Brush Daily- So that you may live.

Bathe daily- so that others may live

For heaven's sake , please dont forget to zip up your pants! Just imagine, if you were on stage to give a speech to an audience of a thousand and your pant stays unzipped, you'll be the town's new clown.

Greet someone only if you really want to do it otherwise it sounds pretty artificial .

Dont wear a sad face unless something really catastrophic has happened! Have a smile ready on your face, it reflects your personality.

Dont smile or laugh for everything, people will feel absolutely sure that you are a lunatic!

Dont get Angry(this is the toughest part). If you are , by any chance, breathing fire :

go to a secluded place or the bathroom and vent your frustration on the mirror (like using the sacred F-word). count 1 to 1000 (dont cheat ok). Take 3 deep breaths (as in yoga)Talking to urself in front of the mirror wont help a bit, build up conversation even with the most reticent of guys by picking up something common between you two.

Dont give a person an impression that you are being friends with him/her just for getting your work done. Wrong attitude!!

Never stay idle! indulge urself into any goddamn activity. So wat if you arent as good as Dan Brown? Doesnt stop you from blogging ,does it?

Dont take anyone for granted, he/she may be the last straw to clutch, if at all you were in danger.

Dont hesitate to ask questions for fear that people may brand you as dumb or the question is too trivial. The fact that you have asked the question obviously means that you wanna know more than others do.

Presentation(both work and looks) is of utmost importance. Get over ur clumsiness, right now! Remember, Good looking ppl are less in vogue than well-dressed people.

Dont talk too much, mouth cancer found a new way to attack you!

And finally, whatever you do, just Be cool and composed. If you feel you are stressed out, start blogging like I do(it sure is a reliever, tried n tested).

Luv n regards

Vishwesh

Fairy-Tale

Once upon a time there was a Buffoon who,through no fault of his own was cast under a spell by an evil witch .The curse was that the buffoon could speak only one word each year. However, he could save up the words so that if he did not speak for a whole year, then the following year he was allowed to speak two words. (This was before the time of letter writing or sign language.)

One day he met Sukhi (ruby lips,golden hair,sapphire eyes,) and fell madly in love.With the greatest difficulty he decided to refrain from speaking for two whole years so that he could look at her and say "my darling".

But at the end of the two years he wished to tell her that he loved her. Because of this he waited three more years without speaking (bringing the total number of silent years to 5). But at the end of these five years he realised that he had to ask her to marry him.

So he waited ANOTHER four years without speaking.Finally as the ninth year of silence ended, his joy knew no bounds.Leading lovely Sukhi to the most secluded and romantic place in a beautiful garden Buffoon heaped a hundred red roses on her lap,knelt before her, and taking her hand in his, said huskily, "Mydarling, I love you! Will you marry me?"

And Sukhi tucked a strand of golden hair behind a dainty ear, opened her sapphire eyes in wonder, and parting her ruby lips, said:



scroll down............






Well, guess what she said ................






come on, guess what could she have said.........................







well, she said..............









"Pardon?"









Regards

Vishwesh

"Materials do matter"

Funny one! this image isnt it?
It just wins hands down in my personal top ten rankings of the best caricatures, I have seen so far!

Each of us in our own way is "material"istic.
More so me,'coz thats my field of study.

I m sure the iron age man never got a chance to have a face-off with a certain regular phenomenon called "cycle test".

Writing a cycle test(CT) is like visiting a temple. A person goin to the temple simply reinforces the fact that he believes in god, irrespective of whether he goes to the temple for paying obeisance to the lord (or his ladies). Likewise, a bloke writes a CT merely as a reminder to himself that he is still in engg, whether he likes it or not. But ,both experiences,according to me, are spiritually enriching.
(Infact, the guy who prays before his "cycles" or sem exam stands a better chance of getting his prayers answered than the one in the temple ,'coz he's the more honest and serious of the two ! )

The cycle test times follow a very stereotypic and predictable pattern.The last week is chacterised by 13th hour finishing followed by confusion among the junta on what actually is the portion coupled with an very intense last week of study,which we are so much accustomed to, by now. It requires us to summon all our years of 'board exam experience" to sit and cram anything n everything in the notes without actually understanding or learning much. Amazing ain't it?

Either you are 'relatively' screwed or 'relatively' flyin high. You just gotta have a peep at the book just becoz your dept mate is doing it and your worried you'll be the ultimate loser.

This, when the students are seen thriving on class notes xeroxed from the top student of the class who sincerely sits on the first bench,day in and day out and takes on every piece of "knowledge" that the teacher passes on to us beloved pupils who are already flat over the desks.

There's one thing common in all our classes, books are "prescribed" by all gurus but the mere mention of the word library has everyone gasping, as if they are gonna be guillotined if they go there. 'Coz u never get your book. Dust-laden stacks pregnant with torn,useless 40-yeard old books are just good enough to get a nice ,cold sneeze out of you when u enter the stack rooms (though I would say that the reading room is never short on "Women's Era" mags.).
If the "prescriptions" aren't available in the market the "xerox" process is followed.



Regards

Vishwesh

Kettle!

Guides:
.This one's on our metallurgy department symosium mettle(modified to kettle, lol) .

.Hai daa is one of our profs.

.Ravan and dheeru are my dept mates (names modified).

. staf-adv is for staff-advisor, Co-Tr is for the Co-Treasure and Co-Ed is for Co-Editor (thats me!) of this event.



Came Feb,the month of no lectures and all symposiums in NITT (our college).
A few "meta guys" had already started pondering over it at the fag end of the previous sem . Their symp "KETTLE" was supposed to be scheduled last. So there it was!But there was someone who was really ecstatic abt Kettle and it was none other than HaiDaa.The very dynamic HaiDaa was the staff-Advisor for kettle. He was in many ways the right person, due to the plethora of contacts he owned.
The next sem dawned and shoulders started drooping under the weight of the heavy-duty cpc schedule.There was absolutely no semblance of a whisper about kettle, in these few months, untill HaiDaa woke up from deep slumber and then spoke aboutt the royal constitution of committees which had taken place last sem.

"Committees?" someone asked.

"What for?" and then a query bank arose.

"Its for Kettle,dude" replied a smart alec.

"Oh, are we having Kettle this year also? Sorry ,totally forgot about it?" said person1.

Apparently a few more days passed and the cpc schedule had just turned into a mere "come-give-go" formality after all.HaiDaa presumed that the time was right to strike the red-hot iron. His first meeting was scheduled at 4.30 pm and only a sprinkling of students had gathered.One of the biggest kelas before Kettle and the inevitable sign of things to come!

"Ok, must be busy with cpc's!" he thought.He looked around the class. "Strength is less,hmmm" as his voice descended to his customary mumble and then he give a smile to "mama" sitting in the first bench.He then looked at his watch and realized that it was worthless waitin for more benches to fill up."Anyway, Kettle is scheduled to take place in March and we have assembled here to chart out("work out" to be precise) the plans. The core comittees have been formed and once again we will go by what we did last Kettle (and what did we do last time?). We would like the whole thing started as early as possible, seeing the pace with which other dept's have started their preparations. i think you must have identified a few areas for getting the sponsorship money and provided we have "pooled" up sufficiently, we can get some good technical sessions. The second years can work for the sponsorship work since they have the time, the pre-finals are busy with their cpc's."
He then glanced around.Wiped the imaginary perspiration of his forhead.Found a bakra.Gave his customary grin and called out the 2nd year by his second name.The chap has no option but to respond (in silence).
HaiDaa then stretched his session like a rubber band, by bringing up the "exposure part of Kettle, rather than the technical aspect of it" , blah ,blah..... It was probably the first of such HaiDaa sessions on Kettle that these 2nd years had attended. The pre-finals had a fair idea on what HaiDaa would speak on. But excess of anything is too bad and he was stretching it to elastic limits. It required just a shrug from the very charismatic,red-bagged Raavan who was till then silent, to finish off proceedings. So the agenda had been set. After all deliberations, Kettle was finally getting shape!
Future meeting and sessions were organized, now on a more frequent basis. Each meeting to decide when the next meeting would be held and what would be its agenda. But, the cold underbelly of the "metas" dept raised its ugly head. The msg "Kettle meeting at 5'o clock" came to be treated with utter disdain and acquired the status of "the most deleted msg" in all cell phones.The strength dwindled, session by session, much to HaiDaa's horror. And so did the interest levels, till they hit rock-bottom.
"All right, the unimportant members are not present. It does not matter." he said to reassure himself."At least the core members are here.Thats enough"Then the session began on spons, exposure, "budget" and finally on Kettle and its guest lectures. On the next meeting many core members appeared late. HaiDaa acepted them, though not with outstretched arms but with a bit of a gingery comment."Core members, the meeting was scheduled at 5." Looked at watch. He then eyed them , though not with anger and permitted them into the class. Some duties were assigned for the members to look after.The talks about fixing guest lectures on select topics had also run into bad weather and the students whom he requested to do so had not responded quick enough for his liking. Absolutely no work had kick-started and it was beginning to show on HaiDaa. They had tested his patience.
The next meeting was just the ideal prick needed to burst the growing balloon of discontent which had built up in HaiDaa over the sparsely attended sessions which were incresingly turning out to be in the normal cpc-mode (come-give-go)and the zero groundwork done. HaiDaa went all guns blazing.It had been an open invitation to the whole of the "metas" dept and only 20 odd had turned up. He chose almost every core member. One at a time.He had obviusly been pissed with the apathy of the "metas" junta and was giving vent to the anger which had agglomerated with each session.
"Your contribution to Kettle has been epsilon, not zero, but close to it.You can only talk for different web designs but when it comes to work, you do nil" he fired the first salvo at dheeru. "Very good ,keep it up!" He thundered. Shook is head and supported his forehead on his fingers, "mourning-style".A slight sarcastic grin translated into a off-color face as he spoke." Last kettle, the then third yrs were very inactive and unfortunately the trend continues." Stops. Wipes out the imaginary sweat again and grimaces a bit." Inspite of this, we had success because of the work done by the then second yrs and the final yrs.I am sorry to say that the overall feedback this time ,mostly from the third yrs,is very discouraging. Infact, there has been none from your side."" The dept is ready to extend support in any form. But this is the response you give. Its a big shame, not only to you, but to all of us." Again head in "mourning-style." "Very good ,keep it up. I appreciate your honesty, very good."I couldnt stop being amused. It had been a while since HaiDaa had spoken in this tone. "If you continue in this fashion,there wont be, Kettle , next yr. It would be doubtful; I wont be there next time around." I could hear a few sighs' of relief from the current third years'. " You will be free to do what you like. And please do not give me those cycle-test excuses. I know how many of you take it seriously." Then he proceeded to give the Ed a sharp dressing down. After finishin it off,he trained his guns on the Co-Ed, who was enjoyin every bit of it like a soap-opera. "And the so-called Co-Ed you are supposed to help him with it."He continued his fire-breathing session to pull up another second yr who had not even given his database info, to be done at the start of the third sem ( the height of laziness! disgusting!).

Another sigh of "I appreciate your honesty and your commitment .Keep it up. Well done."
"This is my last meeting with you and hereafter I wouldnt want anyone to disturb me."Somehow it was concluded.
The next few weeks passed on well, except for the fact that none was workin in co-ordination wid the other,leading to a comedy of errors and ultimately the blame game continued,the Co-Ed being the sufferer on most occasions who couldnt help wondering wat was wrong in his work. As a result of this, heavy weather of the given work was made.Guys went on a regular basis to HaiDaa to get fired.
Amidst this, the finishing touches to the souvenir were given and sent to the press, which had the most primitive of comps,belonging to the prehistoric times, i guess (Everything was transferred using a Cd ,not a pen drive.)
A bright second yr meta, the much-rubbished Co-Ed and the Co-Tr teamed up to design the T-shirt and the caption for it.

Regards

Vishwesh

Festember!!1

Festember,our college cutural fest, was eagerly awaited by most of us with, well.. with mixed emotions I should say. Will it click or not? Even if it clicks ,is it gonna be that interesting to last 3 days? Well there be enuf events to keep us entertained?
"One thing to watch out is the informals," I thought.Dedication proxies blaring out of the "jukeboxes" are always the order of the day whatever be the event,at least in our college.

Then there was this sleepy faced,short guy who with mike in hand,time n again was exhorting the crowds to " chill up", then realized that no one was taking notice. He was quick to change it to "chill out guys". That was not the end of it.
Close to the informals stage, on its left were a few stalls set up.No Not food stalls;they didnt look like either. One stall had empty soft drink bottles. So, they are game stalls, I drew a conclusion.
Not a single soul ventured even close to that area.
Mr short couldnt stand this plight.Again with mike in hand,he started of with " Guys y dont you have a look at the games stalls? They are all for you" (Jhoot boley kauva kaatey).
Then there was a spectaled guy (S-trek)who wanted 5 girls to come on stage to eat the (humble) pie,infact he was begging and pleading " Please I want 5 of you!", "just 5 of you". No response.Then he whittled his demand, " Ok 4 of you please,only 4 yaar". No one budged."just 5 minutes yaar,5 minutes". To no avail. Then he started calling them by their names. Success at last! "Thanks for saving my face" he must have told them at the end of it.
Come festember and everyone's keeping his I-card close to his chest. One small mistake and its taa-taa to your precious,well earned mess bill savings. Personally, I think the crowds werent disappointed by the food stalls. Each of us relishing the food(breakfast,lunch,dinner)as if we do not have to pay for it.Sounds good ,actually, the I-card serves us better than the credit card.You dont need to swipe anywhere. But its less secure though. You dont have a password, just your roll no.
Whatever,basically, it was "Feast"ember for most of us. Anyways, as I was digging into my plate, I got news. Raavan was back in town (from Chennai). So wats the big deal?wasnt he goin to come today morning? I asked. Even then I thought of just meeting him , u know, just formality, when did you come? What the hell were you doing over there?(Too bad you missed 3 days;day 0,day 1,day2 of festember! lol).
Raavan might not know too much about cricket,but he sure knows how to bowl over the 'maidens' big time! He has carved a special place for himself as the pin-up boy of the meta dept.And he goes about his job in a businessman-like manner. Be it his beloved red bag that he carries everywhere or be it his dressing sense,he has propelled himself to the tremendous heights of modern trend-setting. The post of the vice-presi of R-club is just the perfect icing on the cake for him.Well, Raavan was back to form, rejuvenated after his trip to Chennai. Fresh, alive and kickin, he had another guy,a junior from Chennai by his side.They were sittin under a fancy umbrella near the maggi stall. He was workin his magic on a dame. Now for the best epoch-making part It continued for a record 3-4 hours on the trot, mate! With all food stalls around him, he didnt even feel like taking a break, nor did she! The were in their own element, hello can we forget festember for a while? By the way, she too belongs to R-club and she belongs to "scorpion" dept. All I can say is that I n v in the dept are really happy for you Raavan! This really proves that you have come a long way since your Mumbai love debacle,you have got over that unpleasant experience .Thats now firmly behind you and you have moved forward in life thanks to your determination.

Regards

Vishwesh

Champ"IAN"

Giant is always in the news(rather, in my mails),somewhere and somehow. His topsy-turvy ways are always the talk of the town. True to his nature he will be seen poking his big,fat,hawkishly pointed nose into everything.Completely Undaunted by wat the ordinary junta says about him he always wears the "I-dont-care-a-damn" attitude and the true spirit of a Mumbaikar on his sleeve.Well, if you havent been able to catch up with the man lately, here's a brief account of his latest ventures. Read on..
1. The "Giant" Leap: Giant always makes his presence felt! The grand opening of the swimming pool was just another arena for him to prove that he was the best. Since then it has been an all-giant show, the whole week in the pool.Dressed in a comfortable blue lux undy for a swim suit. Take that! He targeted the pool in which the water was 4 feet high. Wat followed was a simply mind blowin, full fledged dive Olympic style. Just then his eyes fell upon the unsuspecting prey whom he has tormented for ages, the prod thambis!He licked his lips in gusto at their mere sight. The feeling of " Tera kya hoga kaaliyaa?" very much written all over his face. Even water couldn't dampen his bossing qualities. Determined to force himself upon each one of them ,he planted himself in front of them. They were shell- shocked as if they had seen the worst nightmare of their life.They were now shivering top to bottom , no not b'coz the water was cold,but b'coz they froze cold on seeing their doom. Soon there was a sudden wrestle of hands and legs, water flying in all directions,Reason: Giant was trying to keep himself afloat in 4 feet water. Anyone coming in his path would face absolute rout. Giant propelled (rather,tried to) his way and suddenely burst into the ranks of the unassuming learners.No one even dared to go within 1 metre radius of Giant's self created whirlpool.In short, he was playing havoc in the pool and in the process knocked the stuffing outta every person . Me swimming in the other pool just happened to come to the "giant" side.He proudly proclaimed something like this " Yaar, Mujhe swimming aa gayaa thoda". I heartily congratulated him and wished him luck. I had a strange feelin (a glimmer of hope clouded in a barrage of questions). Was this "the thing" Giant was really looking forward to? Was this his final destination? Or would he ditch this new found pastime for something else. Well, for the moment he is my "IAN" Thorpe.(pun very much intended)
Champ"IAN":The entire 3rd year junta is well versed with giant's busy schedule, especially cycle test time. But few know about his gaming abilities. Then comes the ruby CS (Counter Strike)contest,which is just the ideal platform where he can demonstrate his gaming prowess. But Giant doesnt have a system in his room (Not even a Laptop?), Wat does he do? No worry. He always has a way out. He comes to Pearl top floor west wing. Comes knocking at the door of "Anna"(Mr Dependable). Introducing Mr Pras"AnnA". For all who havent heard of "AnnA" much, he is one who has always been recogonized as a potential threat to Giant's growing supremacy in the dept simply b'coz he has withstood the giant deluge with utmost ease and a cool head on his shoulders.This has prevented giant from getting under his skin.With one week to go before the tournament started, giant was back to form shooting men, diffusing bombs, hurling obscenities at his mates if anything went wrong(The F-word being chanted every next second). He ate, drank and slept CS (havent v heard something like this before).Then came the day(I think, even Sandra(???? take a guess) was part of his team). But as bad luck would have it ,he went down fighting gloriously after a fierce battle .But , no he wasnt shattered. He just sees it as another stepping stone to be champ"IAN" .Giant will always be remembered for his immense contribution in the field of CS, in the days to come.

Regards

Vishwesh

Air- adventure!

While all u guys had to rush along with things,I should say that among all , I was a tad lucky since my train to Chennai (erode express)was at 22.30 on the 7th of Nov.and the exam ended at 17.00, which meant that I had all the time in the world to do the necessary packing.I think ,about half the college was in my train and it ensured that I was never short of company.But I was too tired even to sit and no sooner did the train start I dozed off.Next , when my eyes opened, the train was just about to reach the destination,at 6.00.On time!My flight to mumbai was at 13.15,hence I had to find avenues to pass time.Since i was all alone and no one to talk to, I bought myself a magazine.Somehow,3 hours passed by.I took a local train and reached the airport 2 hours prior to the departure time.The chap at the departure entry, checked my ticket and cross checked it with the flight no.He pointed out that the air india flight nos were not matching .I told him that it was a staff ticket.He din't seem convinced, but he did not want to disappoint me.He advised me to sit inside and consult the air india office as soon as the air india counter opened."Sheesh! not ominuous signs , even as I enter the airport" I thought to myself.Soon ,at somewhere around 11.30, I had my bags tagged up, went to the counter ,got my boarding pass, passed thru customs check and numerous security checks and was just about 50 minutes away from boarding my flight.I Little did I know that the ticket (It was a staff ticket given to me by my father) that i heldhad 23 Aug 2003 written in it which meant that the staff ticket was valid only upto 23 Aug 2004 and it was 7th nov 2004 today.suddenly, a bearded man(the man who issued me the boarding pass at the counter)appeared from nowhere, called out my name.He asked me for my ticket and tore it apart along with the boarding pass.I was shocked for a moment. I looked at him as if to ask "Sir, please tell me wats goin on?"He told me " Young man,I m so sorry, ur ticket isn't valid any more?You see it is past its validity date."He then went on to take off all the tags of my bags and did everything necessary to "deboard" a passesnger, alerting all the checks using his walkie-talkie ."Call up ur father and ask him to issue u a new ticket" said Mr Beard(as if that was possible with precious little time on hand)I stayed cool and calm and tried to arouse s ome pity in his mind by telling him that I had few relatives in Chennai and not enough cash for issuing a new ticket(I took out out my wallet and showed him the only 100 rupee note I had.)All this happened as he was taking me back in the reverse sequence (thru all the security checks that i had passed)At last I landed up at the counter , where I had started from.I told him that father knew some ppl here and a certain Mr ramesh was one of them.Luckily , he was sitting at the counter.Mr beard took me to him.Ramesh had seen the date(23 aug 2003) on my staff ticket while checking the manifestation status in the sysyem, which no one else hadseen. But by that time I was almost thru all the checks.Interseting thing was that , no one ever saw the date at any point of time.Hence no one stopped me till the end.Funny isn't it!I guess, half the airport was shaken up! Somehow, I felt like a VIPAnyways, Ramesh had received a call from my father(mumbai airport) half a hour back,becoz my name did not appear in the list of boarding ppl(father was monitoring my status from mumbai airport).He was explained the problem and on request I was issued a new ticket (There was a series of 4 to 5 phone calls from mumbai in this process). All this happened in a space of minutes and finally I got into the aircraft at 13.00.I thanked God, becoz after all the drama, I was ultimately in!Flight reached on time.Parents received me at the airport.Adventure or Misadventure, whatever u may call it, sure was a nice experience(becoz it ended on a good note! otherwise I would hav ended up in Chennai cursing Mr beard who was the main "villan" of the whole story!)

Regards

Vishwesh

The Vizag trip

Till 15th of September everyday was the sameday.
Same story; Same bench position (in a class of 30 odd that's very strange).
The positions: The typewriters are the "front"ers inthe second row followed by the "anonymous 3" behind whom the 3 heavyweights maintain their positions. They are followed by the irrepressible Pappu, Kudumi(Lakshmi) and GV. R.S(Rubbu) is unshakeable at first position in the 3rd row and maintains hisplace because he comes to class 10 minutes early.The sleepy-faced Raavan is contented sitting behind him along with kaly(you cant leave him out of action)and balabandar.The 4th row is made for the dayskees (and RaaRaa whenever he comes to class).The only notable change may be Pallavan;occasionally perched on thefirst bench(in front of Rubbu) or at the fag end of the row. Otherwise,everything's so perfectly set!

Meanwhile, I come to the 8.30 class 5 minutes lateor if on time I get a dose of BS chaat(he always smells somethin fishy behind my smile).Most times, RaaRaa is his prime target.Vociferous greets of "Hai daa" fill the air.Then its back to the "pracesses";Rubbu and the typewriters are at work, the loudspeaker squeals a few doubts,there are fervent appeals to the class to refer to the handbooks since the "going-on's" in class are only an "overview".In the midst of all these,Pakoda figures out that its time he asked his so-called logical questions which would serve his purpose of killing some lecture time. "Sir, you said that plasma arc welding operates at xxxx deg celsius, sir wont the metal melt and evaporate?(good question) All eyes turn towards him. There are quiet whispers all around(mostly curses, in the girls section). The class goes into extra time. Attendance is taken.
Gentleman strides in.In chaste language,he makes one of his formal statements which is not some damn P.J which you would normally associate wid a prof butneither a rib-tickling joke. "Once upon a time,I was handling the ceramic class for you." There is a loud giggle around the class as he breaks into a smile."Due to time constraints I had to occupy those classes with iron and steelmaking, but we'll arrange for some extra slots some time later." As if to reassure us that we wont be deprieved of the ceramic classes.He then proceeds to ask a few questions.Recently he has singled out a guy in our class and tagged him "20percent"(sounds like 50 cent) .The guy had once said,much to everyone's amazement and amusement, that the molten iron metal in a blast furnace consists of 20% sulphur. What follows next is an avalanche of indicative values,scribbled figures on the board etc. The typewriters once n for all look as if they cant go on any longer. But Rubbu is ever-consistent. He goes on his "page-filling" spree like a man possessed. These notes make their way to different hostels,rooms and to the Xerox centre where his customers have to spend a fortune to get his books photocopied.

But what followed a few weeks back is totally unparalleled in the histroy ofthe 3 sems we hav enjoyed in the dept. Suri was on his dictation-cum-mugging-cumlullaby marathon, repeating each word at least 4 times. The class was flattenedin less than half n hour. Then he came to the application of a certain polymericmaterial. It read "sprocket". He asked meekily " Anybody knows wat is sprocket?"(I was gonna ask him the spelling). There were blank faces all aroundthe class. Then he said " Even I dont know!" and he smiled. We burst out laughing. "You refer some engg dictionary and tell me ok" he said.That wasntall. A little later he encountered a sentence "Nylon fibres are notoriouslystrong". He asked "do you know the meaning of notorious?". Some of ushesistantly said "bad". He remarked " notorious means brute, tough. Men areall tough ,they are strong. Women are very soft. But in some special cases,women become brute." Laughter all over. Then he quoted a phrase in Tamil whichsaid " The wife can turn murderer."(literal translation). A laugh riot followed.

Mech metallurgy is a sea of stammer(aa...aa...aa aaaaah!),slides(dieter),30's on 30,cracks,stress,fatigue,failure and all the forgettable things of life . The subject is totally dry and if at all you are willing to fall in love with it, you u've got to treat cracks like human beings. A chapter is devoted to the birth of a crack,another on how crack grows from boyhood to manhood.Yet another on what is needed to nourish the crack. The fourth one on good ones and bad ones, different sizes ,shapes... Then an umpteenth one on the last-death stage of crack and you thank god that ultimately the material has undergone failure. Whoa! its like studyingevolution and different life cycles once again. For once we broke away from this monotony!
Anyways, the whole Vizag thing was infact born outta nowhere. We just had noother place in our mind.Rather we couldnt think of any other place. Even 3 weeksbefore the actual iv, no one was willing to budge an inch , each expressingdoubts about the place, most importantly the cost incurred on the trip... blahblah. There were more names on the "I-am-not-sure" list (Every guy was actingdiplomatic lest BS would hit back at them.). Sure enough BS had to meet us alland tell us everything would go off well,it would be a good learning experienceand the cost wouldnt be a worry.A major chunk of us were convinced but therewere a few who still wanted to be part of the "list" and they were ultimatelychucked out as per their wishes. Yep, I wouldnt forgive myself if I dont mention the special volunteering job done by Sincere and Raavan in taking pains and booking the tickets for thejourney. As per plan we had to take Pallavan exp from Trichy to Chennai. Thenhave a 10-hour long stop-over there and refresh ourselves before taking theAllepey-Dhanbad exp to Vishakapatnam, the very night. Now, the first hurdle was to wake up at 4-4.30 in the morning.Waking up before the break of dawnwas something special. There was further joy for many of us since there was nowater in our wing; water-lovers like me trodded all the way to the next wing.BS came all the way to Pearl thinking he could hurry us outta of the hostel like well-groomed cattle. But to his surprise each one of us was ready and kickin by 5.20. The NITT bus was waiting at the Pearl gate and we were ferried to the junction before time. At the station some of us had a small fill before the journey and Igot my hands on the latest "India Today" edition featuring "Akkaa"¨ on its coverpage and her US open exploits. Had a good time in the train with BS doing all the papparazzi worksnapping pics of people who had dozed of as soon as the train had pulled out ofthe station.The pics are just amazing.Again , there was a "Hai daa" every second moment.(From now on his he will be referred to as Haidaa in this mail).Hai daa wielded his DigiCam throughout the whole trip with the dexterity of a skilled warrior. To add to all these mini photo sessions was endless chatter from all quarters. Ok, speaking of chatter,there is one person who instantly comes to mind. Yep, loudspeaker. Decibels levels were always on the higher side throughout the journey, whether in train or in the bus,during the iv or sight-seeing. Her voice stood clearly above the rest.We reached Egmore before schedule (Interesting),noon time.
We broke up into batches wid the word that we would assemble at Central,8.30 pm sharp for our10.30 train. Me got down along with RaaRaa, Rubbu, Padips and a few other guys before Egmore arrived.We then parted ways.This long stop-over was somethin Ilooked forward too.

I spent the day at Rubbu's house. Rubbu's home was a cacophony of electrostatics,differential calculus and organic chemistry strewn all over the table.No its not Rubbu studying for entrance exams once again, its his kid bro.Well,not exactly kid bro, he is as tall as Rubbu, same build maybe a bit slimmer, same glases,same face.Infact, both hav same "study" styles(But he has short hair, so he doesnt adorn the scientist look of Rubbu during the exams.). A fellow of few words,he comes along as an Eminem freak I suppose. Rubbu chipped in wid some advice for his bro on wat to mug for the exam and the "sure-shot" questions.Anyways,I had lunch with Rubbu n dozed off immediately ,to be up at 3.Then we charted out a plan to make the most of our short sojourn. We had a series of phone talks with kaly's"batch" n fixed Spencer's as the place of meet.We reached there in half n hour time did a great deal of window shopping, had ice-cream and a few snaps. The northies were off to another theatre to catch up wid the latest hindirelease while we watched a action-packed English movie.Time flew by and at 10.30something we were inside the train.
Gentleman,the girls and half of the boys were there in the other coach while ten of us along with Hai daa were in the S9 coach.Nothin much that night except for some football talk between RaaRaa and BS(RaaRaa revealed his plans of gettin into Liverpool University, shocking me big time), some placement talk,all of us were dead tired . Next day passed of well ; the andhra heat wasnt a bother and so werent those eunuchs as the train crossed the Krishna and godavari.More snaps taken. We reached our destination at somewhere around 3 in the afternoon,that same day.Vishakapatnam we were in! After long it was a trip to "Gulti"stan.
The bus was waiting for us. Gulti songs blared out off the speaker.The roads were clean , wide and long and we reached The residential colonies of the employees ,the place where we would stay for the next 3 days. It was some 3 km away from the steel plant. We were given to big rooms; one each for the girls and the boys. The remaining part of the day was spent in going around the place and we were invited by the man who was instrumental in organizing the whole steel plant visit, to his house. From now on, the bus was our mode of transport, till our departure from Vizag. It didnt take us long to realise that water was a scarce resource and the tankstorage was limited.But we manged well(Freaks! they used to follow the roll number system to stand in the queue for bathing; I was the sufferer.)
The next day was all iron n steel.We started of early and picked up an officialfrom the training centre of the steel plant to guide us and take us around . Thetotal production capacity of the plant is 4.2 million tons of molten iron perannum out of which 3.65 is employed in the steel making process, read a board.That explained to us how massive it was was even before we entered the security laden gates of the plant. Another board read " customer satisfaction, cost effective, consistency, considerate to environment"something of that sort.The official gave us some serious facts.The plant was established in the early 70's. It has a blast furnace of 3000 cubic m working volume.About 36 batteries of coke ovens are used to convert the coking coal to metallurgical coke which is used as fuel for the plant.Each battery cosists of 67 ovens. The coking coal is Australian but the iron-ore is very much Indian.We saw how the conversion to coke was done by the firing process, a feeding machine ran on rails. Then we saw on our way, sintering plants to shape the ore lump, the large mixing bins for the limestone added as flux,the cooling chambers to cool the coke, the flue gas outlets which were overhead, the raw materials handling plants.Also seen were the slag(by product of iron making) processing plants which converted it into grainy form so that they would be supplied to the cement or fertilizer industries.Then we made our way to the actual blast furnace which washigh and huge, bellowing out smoke not heavily though. As we entered its hightemperature interior, we were amazed to see that it was a complex, crisscrossing of meshes of high voltage electrical and instrumentation systems,thousands and lakhs of them ,top to bottom.Within this closed region bounded bythe systems, the reactions that we study in our books are going on in full flow,at a 1000 deg temp. As we climbed up the stairs inside, we could see from ashort distance,molten iron flowing like water but obviously much thicker andred-hot and burning golden in color.Very much like volcano eruptions that v seeon national geographic , the liquid was jumping out of the furnace violently andflowing, giving out smoke and burning everything on its way. It was continuouslygetting collected in the speical containers(ladles).That is why it is acontinuous process and once a furnace is started it goes on for years ,24*7non-stop. It was hard to keep our eyes on it for more than a few seconds, waslike watching 10 solar eclipses at the same time. We were sweating all the time.Then we went along watching the desulphurisation plant, the gas cleaning plants,the cooling water chambers for the furnaces.It was almost noon by then. We hadlunch in the canteen for employees, a good ,hot n hearty one.Off we were again to the Steel making shop or the SMS as they call it, where the iron produced from its iron ore is further converted into steel. It is much more dangerous than the iron making process hence we had to take special permission from the authorities before entering the SMS. An enthusiastic engineer was kind enough to explain us the entire steel making process as we saw from a glass window how the big ton ladle carrying the molten iron (all mechanised) poured it and oygen supply was given through a lance. There was a violent reaction accompanied by a noise very much like a tremor which had all of us gasping ,hot liquid spilling from it. Then it calmed down. We could see the rinsing operation using an inert gas.This was followed by the cutting and casting of the finished steel intodifferent shapes od finished product: rings, billets,plain etc. the scrap steelbeing recycled.Cooling water used in every step.We also paid a visit to the labwhere they take samples of the molten metal analyse it using techniques likeX-ray analysis to check the chemical composition of various elements.All throughout the plant visit from stone to iron to steel, we witnessed hightemperatures and peculiar metal smell.By the time we were out it was almost 4. We returned and refreshed ourselveswere really upbeat when we were told that the beach was next on plans. It waswonderful, Many of us had a great time , though my mob suffered due to the waterfrom the holy dip.Barring a few like goyal saab,bhandari,rubbu,pallavan theothers found frolicking in water to much to resist.There were photo sessions allaround. Me didnt care much for them.
The next day was all high altitude first to a olace called simhachalam, then tothe city(again a bout of window shopping in a mall named CRM). Then we visitedthe areas affected by the tsunami , also visited the port area and enjoyed theferry ride. It was time for another place called place called kailasagiri on thehill, but near the seashore, with only the highway seperating it from the shore.The sky looked threating and it had already started to come down heavily on us.Nevertheless, it was a lovely place and most of the pics were taken there.Thecable car ride was one great experience. The rain just kept increasing. From theday we came to Vizag the climatic cinditions were very Bombayish. It rained thewhole day and night as well.The very next day our train was delayed by 3 hours. There were cyclone warnings.I guess we narrowly escaped the calamity which engulfed the andhra coast.A trip to remember!

Regards

Vishwesh