It is no secret that the standards of teachers nowadays in colleges and schools are pretty low. Since most of them consider teaching as just a process to earn money, the ethics and true meaning of being a teacher has been ignored and cast away by them. That being the case, numerous people are out there to take up teaching as a profession.
These days, whenever I talk to someone about teaching, they tell me that it is one of the most easiest jobs in the world. Do you know their reasoning for that remark? They say that you’ll have to work only 2 to 3 hours per day, you will have lots of vacations and if you get a Government teaching job, then swell, you can slack off as much as you like.
Slack off? You have to be kidding me. This is the common man’s view regarding teaching and unfortunately, the views of most of the teachers nowadays too. Since both the teachers and common ma agree with the same idea, there are more and more people trying to get into the teaching profession so that they can ‘slack off’.
However, the funny thing is that there are good teachers among us. But they neither make it to school nor to colleges. I talk from the perspective of a fresh Computer Science graduate here and hence, my views maybe restricted to this field only.
These ‘good teachers’ among us are those who are passionate about what they do and have got an extremely good talent in teaching others what they know. Unfortunately, none of these people have their profession as teachers. from what I have seen, most of these people are in the IT industry, working for a software firm or something of the sort.
What I’m saying here is that the society, and more importantly the students, need people like these. People who have passion and people who actually know what they are talking about. People who can guide the young ones on the right path. People who can be followed.
Alas, these people are unavailable. They work in the industry on technologies they are passionate about and earn a lot more than a teaching job. So what need do they have to teach a few? I think there is a need because otherwise, the coming generation is going to have a hard time thinking straight.
I think it takes an enormous amount of will to dedicate one’s self to teach the new generation just by understanding the situation the young generation is in. I don’t know if it is a responsibility as such, but I definitely know that it is a service only those people can give. I guess no one can blame them for not doing it, but I believe that they can make the world a much better place to live, they can make a change and bring forth a ray of hope.
However, assuming that these people do come to teach, they are not going to do much of a good job if they have egoistic superiors breathing down their neck. The institutional politics is something that they don’t need to put up with because they are there to offer a service. Not to “show” that they are offering a service. Hence, there should be other outlets for these kind of people to come forward once in a while and to be able to share what they know with the young ones.
Pramode sir is one person I have seen as such. He realized he had something to give to the society. He teaches, and the beauty is that he teaches on his own, without any “department politics” or “bossing around”. He took a risk upon himself by doing what he did. To stabilize one’s self in such a way by establishing his own institution. I wish the society or the Government supported such initiatives so that we would have more people like him.
My aim is to become a teacher. I want to learn well and then teach about what I know. I have seen many knowledgeable people in the IT industry who say that they will teach/train if they get paid a huge amount of money. It might be true that what they teach is worth that much, but I believe they are forgetting the deserving ones out these, who cannot afford it.
I agree money is important, but money simply is not everything. I wish, hope and pray that those people who have the skill and knowledge to make the difference in the society, to set aside at least a little of their time to teach those young ones, who deserve to be guided.
“FOSS fan boy”. That term is really scary. It says in a single breath that the person described by that term is nothing but attitude.
“FOSS fanboys will never understand that, because they need to believe that they’re freedom fighters in a revolutionary war, like characters in their favourite animes”
This is what provoked me to write this post. Trying to draw an analogy, during my college life, I have seen a lot of students getting involved in politics. I have always wondered what got them so interested and dedicated to the cause. I used to find it absurd that they spend time on useless discussions, strikes and fights. I even have discouraged many of them from going after politics and “ruining” the time they had at college. As far as my analogy goes, the belief that something great or superior is there to be achieved by our little actions, is what drives the people, and I believe that there is something free software is destined to achieve.
I’m not sure so as to how this belief is instilled in the young minds. I don’t exactly know how even I got into that mindset. But somewhere along the way, I did.
People always like to make themselves believe that they are important. They do that by mingling with the ones who make them feel that they are important. Once they realize which group of people makes them feel important, they will start actively working for it.
I believe that is the truth to getting followers. In some aspects it is easy to provide the motivation because the actions of the group are easy to be imitated. That is the case with political parties as it is easy to be one in a crowd and shout. You can always get attention and feel important without doing much. You just have to make some noise and be somewhere by the side of the mob.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m in no way implying that politics is bad. On the other hand, what I’m talking about is the “Fan” attitude. A more meaningful (and unparliamentary) way of putting it would be “All fart and no shit”.
Another observable example are the “fans” of celebrities. It is one thing liking a certain superstar and it is completely another treating them as God, spending time on putting banners and posters of them everywhere and picking fights with anyone who says he sucks. Most of the youth these days, sadly, involuntarily falls into this trap. The seriousness with which they “fight” to support the celebrity is rather… admirable?
There are still many examples like football fans and cricket fans where all they do is talk without ever having kicked a ball or having held a bat.
Now coming to FOSS. I entirely agree that the ‘fan’ culture is there for that too. Basically, it means that you keep on talking about philosophy without an ounce of technical knowledge. The “keeping on talking” would be fine if you would only spend a little time on it. However, with fan boys that is not the case. They keep at it day and night.
You see certain ‘free software enthusiasts’ commenting about Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman saying that they are not right. These ‘fans’ would not have even cloned the kernel source code yet and they say “Torvalds was wrong to do that, he was wrong to say this” and stuff. I mean, the Linux kernel is such a huge project being maintained by one guy collaborating thousand of developers from across the whole world! You have no clue what that management is like nor any idea regarding its implementation. All you have done is to sit comfortably at your home, open your laptop, read some stuff from here and there and there you go! Somehow you are man enough to advice others. XKCD depicts this wonderfully. Take a look below.
As far as I can see, that attitude is not something to feel proud about regarding FOSS. Let me mention a few people who love FOSS and have done much for it and yet are humble.
The first one would be my brother, Noufal Ibrahim K V. He neither talks philosophy nor tries to correct the “wrong person” on the internet. He lived his college life by tinkering with the internals of the Linux OS and thus learning much about how a computer works. He says that it was the Free Software Movement that brought about the freedom for this kind a thing to happen and thus he respects its existence. He works for the internet archive which is a non-profit NGO dedicated to archiving the whole of internet (as crazy as that sounds!) and yet he does not simply criticize others.
The next would be Ershad. He is just so enthusiastic about computers that he would give his life in exchange for it (Just kidding!). He gets to voice his opinion because he has done much for the society due to his love for FOSS. Not only has he a really good technical knowledge but he has contributed much with it. Both through programming as well as teaching. Personally speaking, he was the main reason for the small light of hope that was lit at our college,
Then comes Praveen ettan whom I have gotten to know over the past few months. Nothing more need be said about him other than that he is a Debian developer! Which means that he spends his time and effort, without any return whatsoever, for maintaining packages for the Debian Operating System. That, my friends, is how you contribute to society. He has strong philosophical beliefs which he puts forward and there is nothing wrong with that because he is one person who tries heart and soul to keep the spirit of Free Software alive not only through words but also through actions.
Now coming to the essence of the post. Am I a fan boy? To an extent I am for my contributions are questionable. Also, since I have been a great ‘fan’ of comic book superheroes like Batman and Wolverine, I’m pretty easy to get excited about “fighting for the goodness of the world”. So the comment at the the beginning of this post applies in my case.
Thanks Sharat for opening my eye. I am not going to be simply “one among the crowd” and shout. Till now all that I have done is to make chances for a few people to come together and learn a little but I see that is not enough. I will try to better myself and one day, I shall speak.
Ah, where would I be without it? More importantly, it was more than enough. I’m talking about my netbook, my cute little laptop. I got it while doing my S3. In 2009 middle roughly. That makes it almost three years now.
I must say that this is one heck of a piece of hardware. It comes with the configuration of 1GB RAM, Intel Atom dual core CPU @ 1.66GHz plus a 160GB HDD. It came with a pre-installed version of Windows XP which is still there only to have been disturbed for about 15 times all through the entire three years. The other sockets being three USB ports, a serial port, microphone and audio jacks, LAN port, an SD Card slot plus a pseudo SIM card slot.
I call that pseudo because one fine day I had inserted my mother’s SIM card into the provided slot. It kept on going and finally decided to stay within. I had to give it for servicing which cost me 300 bucks and the guy told me that this version had just the slot. Only the next version shipped with the hardware inside that slot. That taught me not to get too excited about stuff I guess.
The keys are a bit close. People having used normal sized keyboards have always found it hard to type on mine. Besides, me swapping my ‘ctrl’ and ‘Caps Lock’ did not help this cause at all. However, since I started typing on this, I haven’t had much trouble typing on other keyboards. One of the most irritable things that happen to me at times are the small dust specks that go underneath the keys. These things make it almost impossible to press the keys. Sometime I get angry and crush them with hard strokes and at other times I strategically tilt my netbook to get them out.
This might seem controversial, but I do believe that this is more than what an average college student needs. Let me list what all I have used my laptop for and see if it comes in the scope of a college students.
Watching movies.
Listening to music.
Accessing the Internet.
Photo editing.
Sound processing.
File conversions.
Viewing photos.
Storing data.
Skype.
Chatting.
Playing video games.
Compiling Linux Kernels.
Creating web applications.
Writing and learning Programming languages as well as other tools. C, Java, Python, etc. So compilers for the same. Latex, git, make, etc.
Watching youtube videos.
Installing Operating Systems. I have had 6 of them in one shot. Ubuntu 10.04, 11.04, Fedora, Arch Linux, Debian squeeze 2.6 and 3.0 kernels and finally Windows XP.
Connecting USB devices. Thumb drives, Mobile phones, card readers, External HDDs, BeagleBoard – XM, Internet Dongles, etc.
Connecting phones via bluetooth.
Leaving the system on for almost a week downloading and seeding torrents.
Traveling. This babe has been in my bag under the seats on a KSRTC transport bus almost every week for the past three years. You can hold it just like a college notebook and take it anywhere anytime.
4 to 5 hours battery life on an average.
Wireless connectivity as well as Broadcasting.
Networking.
Slide shows, presentations, etc.
Most importantly, it has lasted.
That’s about it I guess. One major drawback that you could point out is that it won’t run Crisis 2! Then again, it takes a manly system to run Crisis.
Jokes apart, it has no CD drive. But that has seldom been a drag for almost everyone uses a thumb drive these days. Plus, my system gets heated up. It does not turn off due to over heating or anything but you could try and make a bulls-eye on it.
The paint has come off from certain parts. I guess it is because of the heat. Apart from that it makes a ‘throat-squeezing’ sound while powering up and I have had to replace my battery once. That’s all the problem that it has had.
I think it is a bit sad that almost all the students who have a laptop with them (and most of them really powerful with multiple cores, 4GB+ RAM and Terra Bytes of storage) use them only for watching movies, listening to music and browsing the net. I’m not saying that I do a lot more than that but what I am saying is that you don’t need that much powerful systems to do these.
When you look at the laptops of many students these days, you can see 2 to 4 drives all completely filled and the guys hunting for more space. But poke into it and what do you see? Movies, movies and movies. Plus the other term that people use these days. “Softwares”. Another craze is pdfs. Truck loads of them and the funny thing being that not a single one of them would have been read. With all these stuff in their drives, they are walking around trying to “back up” their systems.
You must be thinking why I did not mention games. Frankly, very few do play games compared to how much they use their systems for movies, videos and music. But the ones who do play games, they are like glued to it.
I think there are things that are taken for granted when a computer science student comes to college. Self-learning is fine but it almost always screws up many basic ideas that are important. I guess a student should be taught how to use a laptop. It simply is absurd taking it for granted that he will learn to use it on his own. This is obvious from the people around us. The use that they find are the above mentioned “Watching movies” and stuff. I guess at least Computer Science students should be taught how to use it.
I guess I deviated a bit there. I should save it for another post. Right now I’ve brushed up my hard drive. I’m using Ubuntu 12.04 and that old XP is still there. An awesome piece of hardware that played one of the most important role in making me what I am today. Thanks to my brother for buying it for me.
I thought I would not get a farewell to give my “all-too-prepared” farewell speech. But I did get a farewell. As for my farewell speech, I guess everyone was in a merry mood and did not hear anything that I said which all ended up in me performing my awesome moonwalk in front of my class as well as my juniors!
So I’m writing this post in the hope that some of my juniors will read it and take it to heart. The following is the speech that I wished to give.
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I remember the time when ICC (Islamic Cultural Center) was in existence in our college. I was doing my second year back then and we were giving the final years a farewell party. There was a person named Niyaska in that batch from mechanical. He was one person that I respected and loved in college. A person with a soothing personality, one who had above 70% aggregate for his B. Tech, Kung-fu black belt, college football team player, a person who was there for almost everything good around us.
The words that he said that day comes to mind. He said, “Motivation is an important factor that can change your life and can help you discover skills within yourself that you would never have dreamed that you had. But you won’t find that factor in this college. Therefore, in order to understand and realize yourself, you have to be self-motivated.”
I had listened to that and forgotten it. Now it comes back to me. So what I have to tell you guys is to realize the importance of giving motivation as well as being motivated. As once I had written in my blog, if you are a human, you have the power to give motivation. So help your friends and do them a favor. If they are trying out something, motivate them and help them to realize the skills that they have. That’s what friends are for.
Now that was just the icing of the cake. Let me get to what I’ve been preparing for the last six months.
What all kinds of advice can a person give? I’d say three. One, to preach about something that he practices. Two, to advice others on the mistakes that one had made so that the people hearing won’t make them. Three, the advice that all of us are familiar with. Free advice, which basically means to blabber on about something that guys has no clue about.
Of the above three, which would you say was the most effective one? In my opinion, I would say it was the first one. I say so because the person giving that advice had undergone the hardships and the tests in order to do what he was talking about. He could be a guide to what he was advising others to do. Most important of all, he would have felt what it was like to do that.
As for the second one, it would be effective but much lesser than the first one. That is because the people who are hearing the advice can ask us, “You had all the fun, so why can’t we?”. You cannot tell them how it is possible to not make that mistake.
The third one, well, need I say more about the third one? Anyone, anywhere and at anytime can give it. I don’t know if it will have any effect at all.
Now since we have, more or less, agreed to the fact that the first kind of advice would be having the best effect, that wold be the one I’m giving. Neither the second nor the third.
I have three advice to give you.
One, find something that you are passionate about and follow it. Most of the people nowadays have no passion. They do not have something that they do just for the sake of doing it. You can ask yourself the question whether you have something that you are doing no matter what others say. Something creative.
The reason why most people don’t have a passion is because they do not give their minds the time to find it. You know why? Because you want to be entertained all the time. It is either music, or movies, or gossips, or chit chat or mobile phones. You do not give your mind the time to find something. So “sit bored”. Boredom is one of the ways to let your mind show you what creativeness you have within you.
Of course, boredom is not guaranteed to bring out the creativeness in you, but it helps. It will definitely make you try out something you have never tried in your life and that just might be the thing you are good at. That being said, most of the times, it happens at a certain blessed moment. This is my first advice.
Now, as for my second advice, I won’t say it. If you really really want to know it, you can come and ask me personally. Isn’t that right Manu?
Now the third one. Help and support your friends. This point stems from the fact that not all of you will be interested in the technical aspects of Computer Science. Most of you would just want academics to go by while you are interested in sports, politics or whatever you are interested in. I do not blame you for that is your choice.
But there will be your friends who are, at least a little, interested in learning new technologies as well as programming. Just make sure that you do not discourage them. Do not make fun of them. Instead, support them. So even if you are not interested, do not be a hindrance to others. That applies to Abacus as well. Even if you are not interested in its activities, do not discourage your friends who spend time to keep it alive. Support them.
If you remember a year earlier, you’ll know that most of us made fun of Shalin Jain saying that he was boasting. But now I realize he was giving us the best advice that he could, telling us about something that he did and was doing. He was a role model and he was definitely the person who made a major milestone in my life.
This is what I wanted to tell you. I hope you’ve been able to grasp it. If not, this is not the end, feel free to mail or call me if ever you find that you’ve stumbled upon your passion. I’ll help you work it out.
So enjoy your college life.I sincerely say that no one could have asked for a better bunch of juniors. All of you have given me the strength and courage to face life’s challenges. Many of you, I know personally. Anand, Ashiq, Aravind, Vasudev, Nithin, Ranjith, Ajay, Manosh, Harikrishnan, Jijo, Jibin, Sruthi, Aparna, Aaliya, Sreelekshmi, Hari, Sree Hari, Anjana, Suhaira, Ajumal, Charu, Aksin, Arun, Shyam, Divya… I’m not going to forget any of these guys in a hurry. So keep rocking and all the best!
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I guess that sums up my farewell speech. I had timed it for ten minutes. However I’ve made it a bit elaborate in my writing. As always, take what you feel is good. But don’t dump the rest. If you think some of what I said was not right, then try to understand why I said it and try to see it from that perspective.
The juniors did it. In spite of the pessimistic HOD as well as the ever in-favorable circumstances of our department, our juniors managed to give us a farewell. I’m not going to make this post long by going into all the tiny weeny details, but I’m just going to say that one couldn’t ask for a more wonderful bunch of juniors.
People coming together is always nice and I hope this goes on. Anand, Vasudev, Jijo, Ashik, Ranjith, Nithin, to mention few of the names. Many more are there who have given me the strength and support to enjoy as well as learn a lot during my last year at college.
By the way, today I got my first ever trophy in my entire life and it was written on it, “Haris Ibrahim K. V. – A constant support and a helpful guide”.
Finally, the college tour that I never thought was going to happen, happened and boy am I freaking glad that I did not miss it! At last, we truly really felt we were friends and we felt from our hearts that there were moments in life that could be made memorable only by all of us being together and sharing all the joy and happiness that each and everyone of us had!
It is true. Not only is 1 + 1 = 2 in maths but when everyone comes together with all the little happiness and joy that they have, everything bundles up into one huge unforgettable joyous occasion that is worth living through and that is exactly what happened with us being together. We shared, we laughed, we suffered, we talked, we cracked jokes, together we pulled through and here we are with a bucket load of memories… It was worth it.
I could say that our journey was not only through Pondicherry, Mahabalipuram, Chennai, Hyderabad and Hogenakkal, but also through many of our friends’ hearts.
Writing about the trip won’t do justice to it because I’m sure each and every one of us have our own reasons of finding joy and remembering the tour. So this is just what comes from me. And mind you, visiting the places or being at the places accounted for only 20% of the enjoyment. The rest was being with friends and sharing the moments with them. However, those moments are in our hearts and as such, this post will just be an outline to remember the glory days by.
First of all, I have to mention Ambika ma’am. It is no joke that all of us were really worried what was going to happen if she came along. As in we won’t be able to enjoy the tour and stuff like that. But to all of our surprise, she was extremely co-operative and did not cause any sort of trouble. At her age, with her illness, she adjusting with us and our stupidity the way she did has increased our respect for her ten fold! I believe I have done a great mistake in talking to her angrily and even though I have apologised to her personally, here I do it once again for being a part of making our dream of a final tour come true!
Before starting the travelogue, I have to say that I was desperately missing Jinu. I was almost at the verge of giving up on the tour when it dawned upon me that it was now or never… This was the last time that all of us were going to be together and if I chose to back down from it, that would only simply result in me getting depressed just like our last tour. So happen what may, I decided to go along with the tour.
16th April 2012, Monday, 8:00pm
The bus had arrived and almost all of us were there. While all of us had our own plans to have a good time at the tour, the tour-guy, Rajesh had his own too. Instead of bringing the 49 seater bus that he had promised us, he brought a 39 seater. Blood boiled in many of our veins and it would have been only moments before the entire seen got ugly with us and Rajesh if not Gouthaman and Rahul held us back saying that we were trapped and we had no choice but to get in.
The travel bags were packed in at the back of the bus and we held on to our smaller bags with the critical stuffs in them. Rahul (or ‘Thadiyan’ as we call him) was the key player here. He took upon the responsibility of packing things up on himself and I seriously doubt whether anyone else would have done a better job than him at it.
After a little bit of griping and cursing, we did get in and our journey began! You could say this was the taste of things to come.
Music, laser lights, young hearts, the dancing began and we had a jolly good time. At last it was time to sleep. The movie “Venicile vyapaari” was playing and oh my God was it atrocious! Anyway, me, Chellan and Ponnan were together. I had this small disturbing pain on my left foot’s thumb. However I ignored it and got to sleep. However, all of us had underestimated the power of centralized A/C of the bus and by midnight, most of us were freezing and shivering of cold. While the three of us managed to cuddle under Ponnan’s blanket, many of us had trouble finding warmth that night. But as I said at the beginning, we suffered and pulled through.
17th April 2012, Tuesday, 6:30am (Pondicherry)
The bus coming to a halt made our minds happy with thoughts of a freshening bath and tasty food. We were shown to our rooms and were told to get ready by 8:00am. It was in the midst of freshening ourselves that the terrifying news reached us! The restaurants were on strike that day! Which meant we were ‘foodless’.
However, Rajesh ettan somehow managed to arrange a hospital Canteen for us and all of us had a pretty decent meal. Even though they couldn’t provide me with my order for my second Masala Dosa, I contended myself with a Plain Dosa and the tea there was simply awesome.
We got out and by this time my left foot had swollen a bit and the pain was noticeable. We walked over and visited the Aravindha Ashramam (Forgive me my spellings), and from there on went to the beach. I don’t know how to put this, but it was rocky and not the kind of beach where the sand blended into the blue ocean. We spent a while there, clicked a few pics, had a few ice creams and went over to Gandhi park. We rested a while there and then got in the bus again.
At about noon we boarded a boat to an island about 3kms away from the main land. We were with life jackets and I looked fat! We had a pretty nice time at the beach there. Our lunch arrived on one of the boats and we had a small buffet. We spent a while there and at about 3:00pm we boarded a boat back to main land. Now, that was the second beach today and my leg was hurting pretty bad.
In the evening, the bus stopped and we were asked to get out. We got out and guess what?
Dhe pinnem oru beach!
It was the third beach and it was then that I found that it was almost impossible for me to walk due to the pain in my swollen foot. The beach was fun however with comparatively huge tides and I watched helplessly as my friends were having fun jumping and splashing in the tides. Ponnan had changed to his shorts and T-shirts and had come hurrying till the verge of the beach where when he reached he had a change of heart and decided not to get wet.
We reached back at our hotel at about 7:00pm and we were to spend the night there. My sis prescribed an ointment and few tablets for me which Thadiyan and MR went and bought (God bless them!) Sunil brought food for me to my room as I couldn’t walk and I spent the night watching Ghost Rider and Undisputed 3. Many engaged in their own good times and I engaged in mine, which was to sleep.
18th April 2012, Wednesday, 4:00am(Mahabalipuram, Chennai)
Well, 4am was the time at which we were told to get ready and that’s why we got ready at least by 5:30am. I’d like to mention specially about someone here and that is Sinto. When it was almost 5:15am and we were still not ready to leave, I decided to go and pray. After finishing praying when I got in the bus, all the seats were occupied and there I was standing with my swollen foot. My sis had told me to take rest that day and I could not afford to give any pressure for my left foot. But no one seemed to care and no one gave me a seat. It was then when Sinto stood up and let me sit. That touched my heart and I owe him much.
Well, we left and reached Mahabalipuram at about 7:30am where everyone went for sight seeing while I remained in the bus to rest my foot. So as for what happened there, someone will have to fill in. We had breakfast at a nearby hotel and the bus stopped a little further away. Someone asked what the place was about and guess what? It was the next beach! Augh! Everyone was like “Noooooooooooooooooo! Not again!”. The bus took off from there and much too obviously, we reached Merina beach at about 11.30am.
Now that was the 5th beach! Man, it was kind of getting weird with all the beaches. It was as if we were on some science expedition where we were testing the conditions of all the beaches or something. Suffice to say I did not get down there too. Everyone was back and we stopped for lunch at a hotel where the girls did not like the food much and most of the Biriyani that they ordered were wasted.
While everyone was getting ready to leave from there, me and Gori went in search of a mosque and to our surprise we found that the owners of that hotel were people from Malappuram and Mahe. When we told them that we were looking for a place to pray, they heartily opened one of their lodge rooms for us and we both finished our prayers from there. We left there unprepared for what was yet to come.
We visited some sort of a Shrine in the evening which was again denied of me due to my swollen feet. From there did I make the all-too-dangerous “41 idiots” remark! I hope nothing comes of it.
We started from there at about 4:00pm and saw “Ramjiraavu speaking” on the way. Man, I laughed my heart out! “Baalashnaa, moone baalashnaa!” Ha ha… Lol! At about 7:00pm, we reached a posh looking cafe where we stopped for tea. They had good toilet facilities and teas that cost about 25 bucks! I did not like the baji that they served at all and let ponnan eat all of it.
All of us were hungry and were looking forward to dinner. We started from there on our long journey to Hyderabad! Everyone got in the dance mood and I could only sit and look at them while all of them were on their feet. Even MR was there! Everyone was exhausted and lied down eagerly waiting for dinner. It was almost 9 and we were told that we would reach the “promised restaurant” in ten minutes or so. The bus kept on going while me, Ajith, Chellan and Don were having fun with Chalis as well as actual jokes (Yes, there is a difference between the two!)
The 10 minutes became 20, 30, 1 hour, 2 hours and the smiles on our faces slowly started to fade. At 11:45pm, I got a message from Rahul who was sitting at the front, “Eda, idhu pani kitti” (I still have it in my phone). When it was almost 12:20am (yes, midnight), we pulled up in front of a Punjabi Dhabha and had Roti and Tomato curry from there. Man, I devoured 5 of the Rotis!
As if all this was not enough, stopping the bus there, it wouldn’t start again! And many among us pushed the bus to get it started! Same was the case when just after we had left this spot and the bus stopped at a nearby petrol pump.
To Hyderabad!
19th April 2012, Thursday, 8:00am(Hyderabad 1)
Reached the promised Hotel at Hyderabad and we were allowed time till 9:30 for getting fresh. We had breakfast (again me being denied my Second Masala Dosa). We left and reached the Salar Jung museum first thing in the morning. Man, was the security strict there! The things I had to go through to take my bag inside it! Finally we did get inside and we saw the portraits of a few cool dudes and as you can well imagine, the whole visit was a series of jokes one after another. Seriously, Chellan has a way of making all the occasions memorable with his presence. All through the tour everyone had a nice time with him I guess.
We left there and reached some Mahal at 12.30 which I skipped for fear of my foot getting worse. But how long was I just going to sit there? I decided that’s it. No more sitting duck! After their Mahal visit when they were going to see Charminar and Mecca masjid, Chellan called me and I caught up with them. Charminar was a majestic view and it seemed that the girls had to cover up their heads if they were to enter Mecca Masjid. All of them decided to skip it. But then, there it was right in front of us and some of us couldn’t resist getting in. We did and enjoyed the spacious courtyards and the huge mosque for a little while.
It was almost lunch time and we were landed in a hotel where they served the all too famous Hyderabad Biriyani! I sat and devoured it and was licking my fingers clean while all the renowned eaters of MH as well as the girls were having a hard time finishing it. Triumphantly, I went back and got in the bus.
We left the place and on our way the guide was “To right is, to your left is…” ing us. We finally reached snow world and my foot was hurting. I simply ignored it and all of us got ready with our coats, gloves and boots, the shutters opened and we ran in screaming! From there within it was total havoc! We were throwing snow here and there, there and here and everywhere! It was freezing cold and smoke came out of our mouths while we exhaled. Man, it was really troubling when you got hit on your face with snow. You could hardly breathe. It was attack, revenge, vengeance, team spirit and what not! I’m not going to forget the moments inside that place! As I said, words don’t do justice to what we experienced inside it. It was fun. It was lovely.
We got out at about six and skipped the proposed boating at Hussain Sagar lake to shop for pearls instead. It was done and we reached back at our hotel at about 8:00pm and all went for casual shopping. I took rest for my foot and Rahul, Mr and Pretty together hunted for the medicine to be put on my foot and Pretty finally got it for me (oops! I still haven’t given her the money for it!). We had dinner which was Roti during which Chellan made a certain comment regarding Sariga. Ponnan exploited the situation and made him tell her his comment! He he…
Trying to get the bought medicines into a usable form, Chellan and me finally gave up trying to dissolve Magnesium Sulphate in Glycerine and settled for it simply being a vague mix of the two. He helped me soak cotton with it and tie it up on my swollen foot.
We had good night’s sleep that day.
20th April 2012, Friday, 8:00am
We were up and about at 6:00am and after having breakfast, set off for Ramoji which we reached around 10:00am. We were given the official Ramoji stickers as well as the tickets and were let inside. We boarded a bus wholly for us and went into the heart of Ramoji.
Reaching the destination, we first entered a Blue round-bulging-eyed Head’s mouth and found out that it was a sort of entertainment park for kids with Arcades, Scary house, skating and things like that. After that we boarded a bus that took us on a tour through London, Paris, Taj Mahal (Poor EC guys had to go all the way to Delhi!), Red Fort, Kolkata international airport, the Trichur and Hyderabad National Highways that were both on the same road, multi-branch banks and what not!
We got down at some place and visited a few gardens, the Hawa Mahal and a certain cave (where Afaf just couldn’t take the suspense!) after which we got back to the place where we started from. It was time for the Ramoji movie magic or something and we went on a small trip through a fairy tale land after which we were taken through a series of steps that they used to make Cinemas.
It was lunch time and we had a great buffet. Then we visited the Dynamic motion theatre that depicted bomb blasts and earthquakes at Ramoji with real effects. That was fun. After all of us were terrified of the shaking and the tubes that hissed gas at our feet, all of us went for seeing the spirit of Ramoji, a few dances and entertainment shows after which we were blessed by an awesome stunt sequence in the wild wild west.
The day was at an end and we left the place and stopped at a hotel for dinner. Man, everything being decided, I had to sit with a bunch of girls because I was eating vegetarian! And those other girls were none other than Amrutha, Namita and Aparna. While the first two went on a spree of making fun of me till the food came, Aparna silently supported them suffice to say my stomach was already half filled even before the food arrived!
GKV distributed ice creams to celebrate his birthday and we were on our way to Hogenakkal.
21st April 2012, Saturday
You must have noticed that I did not write any time there because time simply stopped making sense to us. We were in the bus at about 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning when we pulled up at a petrol pump. Some of us got down to use the waterless toilets and stretch our legs and arms. We again were on our way all of us dreaming of breakfast. But by now we should have known nothing good comes of dreaming about food in that bus we were in. The cycle repeated and finally at 11:00am we stopped in front of some hotel (whose footsteps were decorated with shit) and here our dear Rajesh ettan told us to go and eat. We were like, “What!?”. We hadn’t brushed, bathed or anything and for that question his answer was it was to get fresh that we had stopped at the Petrol pump.
All of us lost it and Sinto lost it a bit more than the rest of us and charged at the guy raising his voice. It was a mess and we managed to get a room for our ma’am and her husband and the rest of us brushed our teeth outside the bus and some within the wash area of the hotel. We had our breakfast and were on our way to Hogenakkal on the way which the driver was executing the Dijikstra algorithm of finding the right way by eliminating the dead-end ones! he he…
We reached Hogenakkal at about 1.30pm and 10 of us were stuffed into a small room telling us to get ready by 2.30 for lunch. It was magical how everything gets sorted out with the ten of us somehow adjusting and pulling through and finishing our chores by 2.30pm. We had lunch and went for the renowned Hogenakkal boating.
Man, was it fun! All the round-boats consisted of six of us plus the boat-man and only one boat consisted four of us, the luxury team which was Ponnan, Chellan, Sriram and Rithwik. I was first in a boat with Ajith, Sumi, Bini, Sariga and one more whom I can’t suddenly remember. We went for a short distance, got down, walked a bit and again reached a point where we had to get in. Here a few shuffling happened and guess what? I got the boat with Amrutha, Namita, Anisha, Aparna and MR!
All of our boats were launched and all of us got in the mood. Splashing each other, attacking other boats, going under waterfalls, shouting, laughing, howling… We enjoyed the moments together… Probably the last moments to be together…
We reached a shore some distance away at the other end of which there were strong currents but the water was only waist deep! We could just float and the currents would take us to the other end! From there none of us knew what we were actually doing. We splashed each other a lot, threw stones, pushed others into the water, lost a few spectacles, took a dip, clicked pics and had the time of our lives.
After spending almost an hour there we were on our way back to the hotel to remove our drenched clothes. All of us were completely wet from bottom till top! We bathed, changed our clothes and at about 7:30pm, loaded our bags in the bus and went for the camp fire.
The flames caught on, music was put and we were in the dance mood! I danced my heart out along with everyone and I guess the girls too had a great time there. All of us were exhausted by the end and we slowly walked for the “last supper”. I did not think much of the noodles and rice that they served and ate very little.
We boarded the bus and many of us were asleep the moment we sat down. However, Rajesh ettan brought a mic into the middle of the bus and each one of us were asked to say something. GKV thanked ma’am and her husband and also did Arjun. Ma’am blessed all of us and her husband said we took him 20 years back in his life. Sariga sang a song and we pulled in Ponnan to sing his all too famous “Jo bhi mein”! Applause and laughter and then I came in and messed up saying something. Here I made one of greatest wish come true and that was to sing “We will rock you”. I sang it with the help of the beats from everyone and that was followed by Namita and Anisha singing their own pieces. GKV burst into his rapturous melodies and we had to plead to get the mic back from him! Lol. Chellan came forth with his breath-taking breathless and Rithwik sang a song too.
After all these precious moments were over, we put a few selected songs by Ponnan. While me, Chellan and Ponnan were sitting at the front, the girls came and requested us to go back so that they could dance. We obliged and went back. I was feeling dizzy and sat down. Chellan too sat down. After a while Ponnan came slowly dancing to the music. Then I don’t know what the heck happened because Chellan was suddenly in a superb dance mood! It was almost 11:00pm when this happened and everyone had gone to sleep except for me, Don, Sriram, Ponnan and Chellan.
The five of us were at the back and man, was Chellan an amazing dancer! All of were gaping at his steps and he had his eyes closed and was completely immersed in it! I was sitting and cheering these guys. But after a while I simply couldn’t sit and I too joined them for three songs. We called “JAI” for the five of us ourselves and had a blast till 12.30am in the night! Then we decided it was getting too late and went and turned off the music and laser lights. We talked for half an hour and finally, enjoying the last moments to the fullest, it was time to sleep.
22nd April 2012, Sunday, 3:15am
We reached back at our college and I went to Don’s hostel. The girls were taken to the Railway station and were accompanied by a few of the boys. The tour was at an end and I left Don’s hostel at about 9:30 in the morning.
Sitting in the bus from Olavokkode to Palakkad, while seeing the all too familiar junction where the SAI nursing home was located, a few tear drops watered my eyes. This was it. It was over.
I think this is something that we should all do so that young ones with similar tastes as us can know when they are making a mistake. Let us just say this post might be the answer to the question, “Do you have any regrets now that you are finishing your college life?”. Then again, never let it be said that I don’t have anything to be thankful for in my entire college life. This post resembles the procedure where people use a software and report bugs. No one files a bug report saying, “Good job!”. People complain only on things that they are not satisfied with and that exactly could be what this post means. So here goes. The following might not have any specific order.
1. Not sit in the first bench.
2. Take at least five push ups every morning.
3. Never do a message offer in my mobile phone.
4. Never take an unlimited broadband connection at home.
5. Make sure I took critters.org seriously.
6. Make sure I got on stage for some program.
7. Make sure I did not compromise my beliefs.
8. Make sure I finish reading at least one novel every three months.
9. Strictly tell people to get lost when I get engaged in chit-chats.
10. Should’ve taken a good programmer’s advice seriously. My brother’s.
11. Study just one and only one subject seriously every semester.
12. Sleep early everyday unless something really important was at stake.
13. Go out for as many technical events as possible and find friends who are interested to go with me.
14. Try for paper presentations. (This is one great asset that a person can gain while being at college and I really regret not even doing one.)
15. Learn one chapter of Kernighan and Ritchie, the C programming language, every month.
16. Sit and try to solve the questions at the back with one who loves to try learning programming.
17. Get more attached to people who loved coding.
18. Never to listen to music while doing some other activity.
19. Putting academics apart, concentrate one thing at a time and never to postpone anything.
20. Think and talk to seniors about something like ABACUS. (I really wish I had the opportunities that the junior are getting now).
21. Make sure I knew two programming languages very well. (Right now thinking about it, it could be C and Python).
22. Ask and learn people who know about how computers work. (The things that happen from the moment you press the power button till the welcome screen loads, one at a time).
23. Realize that I had lots of time and take things slow and serious instead of trying to do things the quicker way.
24. Meditate and learn to think about one thing at a time.
Hmmm… I might come back to update this… But that’s it for now!
I’m adding a small video to this post. Its one of my favourite songs in western but the guys here have remade it into an Indian version. And even when we are engineers and this video shows doctors, I think as far as college life goes, we both have enjoyed it.
A few people are going to kill me as they expected to get something delivered into their hands. But hey, its my gift and so its in my form.
All the people whom I have been friends with till now have called me crazy. I’m thinking they meant it in a complimentary sort of way where they wanted to express the feeling that I was different, but one guy (quite a big guy at that), put my craziness in a completely different way. He told me I was ‘a happy and creative guy’. And looking back, that was one of the best compliments that I have ever got. We will eventually come to all that in this post.
I remember last year on New year’s eve me typing in all that had happened in that year and messaging that to everyone. I guess some people enjoyed it whereas some people didn’t.
But today, instead of doing that, I’m going to individually torture each and every single person who has been there with me for the past four years. And guys, that is my Christmas present!
ചുരുക്കത്തില് പണി തരാന് തന്നെയ ഉദെശം.
However, as my class knows, I haven’t been that much of a party person and as such I have miserably failed at getting to know everyone. That is going to reflect here. But I hope you guys can fill in the blanks. So read through and have fun.
Keep in mind two things while reading this.
1. We all have things in college that we don’t want to be reminded of ever in our lives again.
2. We all have our diplomatic stances with certain people.
3. I won’t be using smileys and that doesn’t mean I’m serious when I’m writing every darn line in this post.
Oops! Off-by-one error! (In the memory of the great Dennis Ritchie).
So here goes…
Afaf
Ah! We go a long way back. As long as till February second week 2009. She has the honor of being the second girl that I messaged to in my life. We will come to the first one later.
We’ve been friends (and foes too) till now. One of those few people who had a few similar tastes as mine. (Hey, that is two “fews” in one sentence. So you can guess how little it would be).
Although I’ve never been able to digest and agree with her religious ethics, which are considerably confusing, she really is one of a kind. I remember during first year when some seniors made her tie a scarf around her head!
She writes well and has sent me a few poems which I have still got in my diary. Read one of her poems here:
For those who had heard her seminar, it was certainly enough to know that she was one of a kind. She was not a “byhearter in pursuit of marks”, and I don’t think she has ever bowed her head in submission in front of academics. And I respect her for that. Hailing from Calicut, she is one person whom I will have memories about.
Oh and one thing! She is Chiang Kaishek! Thanks to Jinu, the noodles boy.
Ajith
Here is one person whom I simply loved working with. Dedication is his best quality I guess.
I say this because each time an idea has popped into my head regarding ABACUS, however weird it was, this guy was there to support it and bring me back into reality when I was going too far. I don’t know how to put it more clearly. It is truly a wonderful pleasure when you find a person dedicated to something as much as you are. Even if you were sitting without the thought in mind, they would come and tell you, “Dude, I’ve got something to tell you about this”. And mind you, he never is the, “So, how are things going?” kind of person. I mean he is not one of those people who try to show that they care about what is happening even though they don’t give a shit. He involves himself and becomes a part of whatever happens without any invitation or ordering.
I’ve enjoyed true peacefulness of delegation, thanks to this cute guy who is a brother to many at college.
But that’s not all, he has two addictions. He he…
He is quite a master at cars and bikes. Even a mechanical engineer would have trouble winning a debate with him on this topic. He reads all the freakin’ magazines regarding it and has a say about all the cars and bikes that one can behold.
The second addiction, he acquired lately. And that is Naruto! Can’t blame him for that because he knows how I am with Wolverine.
A really good teacher, a wonderful friend, a darn good treasurer (him being the treasurer of the first trip of our class to Trichur and for the class tour) and one among the few good Java programmer’s in our class, he has found a place in the hearts of almost all in our class.
Amrutha
The princess! He he..
I have no idea if its a pun or if its serious when they say that royal blood flows through her veins. If that is the case, then I haven’t given her the respect that she deserves. lol!
I’m indebted to her for two things. One for giving me the compiler lab programs. Here is the happening.
Jinu : “ആ പ്രൊഗ്രാം ഒന്നു ഫൊടൊ എടുതൊട്ടെ?”
Amru: “നീ ഹാരിസിന്റെ ഒപ്പം അല്ലെ??”
Jinu: “ഒറപ്പല്ലെ! പ്രൊഗ്രാം താ”.
ഞമ്മളു തലയും താഴ്തി ഒന്നും അറിയാത്ത പൊലെ അവിടെ ഇരിക്കും!
The second is for giving me the rest of the question’s answers of the second DS assignment. Well, not me only, but almost the whole class wrote that I think.
I think Namitha will have a much more brilliant say about our princess. Expecting her comments.
അയ്യൊ I forgot! Thanks to her a million times for giving me her stapler during the sessional exams! I don’t know what I would have done without her!
Anisha
Now here is one girl with full of energy. Annie, I call her and Harry, she calls me. My new year friend whom I blessed with a Royce Rolls car. Erm… He he.. Yes. Not Rolls-Royce.
I remember her being the Referee of the small demonstration of wwe during the first year official freshers by “wh കൂതറാസ്” or something of the sort. Wow! She has got guts!
A brilliant talker and a girl with almost unlimited confidence, we all count on getting the university lab exam questions via message once she is in! Come on. Even boys don’t have that courage!
My guide to Calicut, every time I have a doubt regarding that huge place.
I’m pretty sure my words don’t do justice to her. So I’m expecting someone to chip in and put a few words in.
(See comment below by Aparna P. Rajan)
Anjali
One among the many with whom I haven’t talked to except once or twice. Sigh… I really should get to know people more…
(See comment below by Aparna P. Rajan)
Guys, fill in over here!
Anju Mary
A quite and composed girl. But I have a score to settle with her. Ha! I bet none of you remember it. Then here is a reminder for you.
I was our class rep for the first two weeks! And she is the one who took away my title! He he he… I hope you guys remember our HOD’s face when he realized the blunder he had made. But then our good old bundle of knowledge, Sharat MR took over and our lives started!
Sometimes I do wonder whether all that this world requires to be a better place are people who knows to keep their mouth shut and not open it unnecessarily. But hey, I got no say there because I don’t keep my mouth shut.
(See comment below by Pretty)
Aparna
Ms. Romantic! I wonder if that title has been put to the test. He he.. Usually known as കൊച്ച് അപര്ണ. She is a dancer who loves dancing. That day for the placement training with Didi, we were split into batches of five and six and this girl, along with Jayan, Vincy, Sajith, me and one more other dude were in the same batch.
We had to talk about the thing that we loved the most for one minute. And she, who was till then afraid of speaking and finding it hard to talk and deliver her one minute intro package, started to fluently talk away like an expert! She did not even care about the language because all her mind was on dancing. Her expressions changed, her actions became graceful and she convinced all of us that she knew exactly what she was talking about.
Still, I don’t think this description does justice to her. A girl of talent.
Aparna P Rajan
Me being a reader of comic books, I’ve always come across characters who appear to be trivial in the midst of the story, but finally playing the key role in the story happening. In the class, I think of her as so. Putting this down here, I’m in the hope that I can get to know her better before I leave college. And oh yeah, she is usually known as വലിയ അപര്ണ.
I was impressed with her humanities seminar during first year where she was not only excellent with her English, but also she made sense with her class unlike many of us who just wanted to get it over with. She proved her consistency when she came in front of us for her seminar on Flash memory.
I don’t know why, but I just can’t stop this entry without saying she is a girl of mystery. Or its just that I’m absolutely really bad at reading people.
Oh! And I forgot to mention. I was her Christmas friend! Her gift for me of a sitar modeled out of plastic with a Rose underneath that would light up if it was turned on. That all was fine. Except for the music that accompanies the current flowing through the circuitry inside. Man! It is a symphony by Mozart. But due to the loose connection of the battery, you feel as if someone was squeezing Mozart’s throat and pounding on his head with a hammer while he was playing it! Lol!
Arjun
MASTER BLASTER! Ho ho ho… A really awesome sportsman. I remember hearing once that he led his team to victory with sixes! Hey Arjun, correct me if I’m wrong.
Many a times my study partner at hostel, I remember a lot hearty laughs I had with this guy. But hey, beware. He is a skilled charmer. Talk to him for a while and you will definitely feel like he is the best person in the world! Either that or maybe he just is the best person in the world. I dunno.
The candidate for election in our class, with one victory and one failure, he takes that too in his sportsman spirit.
Oh I forgot to mention! He is a bloody photo addict! Pass by his room and he will call you, buy you a drink, listen to all your problems and everything as long as you will look at his photos in his laptop. He he… But he looks good. I’ll give him that.
I remember once when we were climbing the mountain behind our hostel… It was a steep slope and we were crawling on all four to get to the top. But this idiot didn’t give a damn… He wanted photos taken no matter what… And thanks to him we have some pretty awesome pics to remember those days by.
They are an awesome team… Its fun to be with them… This dude, Jayan, Panju, Kannan, Haresh, Shihab… I only got to know him during my third year. But I’m glad it wasn’t any later.
Asha
I’m going to need help to be writing about her. I’m amazed at my lack of socializing.
Bini
Apart from the fact that she has the face of kid seeing everything for the first time, I’m going to need help in figuring her out.
(See comment below by Aparna P. Rajan)
Bose
Known to a few as Sutheesh also.
The person whom I respect the most in our class. The one who showed me through actions rather than through words that nothing was impossible. The person who
DESIGNED A NEW FREAKIN’ LANGUAGE AND WROTE A COMPILER FOR IT!!! And that too as a part of his mini project!
He was just an ordinary lad while in high school. But P. C. Thomas did a few wonders on him I guess. An expert on almost all the subjects related to computers, a core programmer having a superb grip on algorithms, everyone knows that he has answers up his sleeve.
A poet at heart and soul, malayalam poetry comes like glowing pearls from his finger tips!
However! A BIG however… None of us are going to forget his question at the placement training auditorium session! The way he stood up, shook his head to the right, his hands to the left and asked… Ummm… Well, those of us who need to know the question already knows it!
And one more thing… The variable names this guy uses while programming! Oh MY GOD!!! He just presses some random key on the keyboard and that’s his variable name… The trouble we have understanding his program after copying it… Whew!
One among the four who were with me for repairing the networks lab. Read about it here:
The poster child of patience and humor. ഈ പഹയന്റെ ചളികളെ കുറിച്ച പറഞാല് തീരില്ല. അവസാനതെ വര്ഷം ആയിട്ടു ആള് ഒന്നു കുറചിട്ടുന്ടു ചളിയടി. പക്ഷെ നായെന്റെ വാല് കുഴല് ഇട്ടതൊന്ട് നിവരുലല്ലൊ!
The second member of the mission-lab venture! A singer, artist, padippist, chaliyist, handsome idiot who doesn’t know how to ride a motorcycle! He he.. I think we all remember that incident.
One among the very few people whose presence always makes a difference. A worthy friend. I’m proud to have known him.
INTERMISSION: I’ve been at this from morning! Didn’t know it would be this taxing while starting. But don’t worry folks! The rest of you are on the way!
Here we go again…
DD
Dare Devil? Nope. Dincy Davis. Just like saying the x86 family of microprocessors, she is one among the Xincy series. There is Rincy, Vincy and even Fincy! Wow…
Apart from knowing that she is one of the main personalities of the wh കൂതറാസ് , I have not yet had the opportunity to know her more.
(See comment below by Aparna P. Rajan)
Dil
പടചോനെ… ഈ ചങ്ങായി വീണ്ടും വന്നോ?? ഈ കളള ഹിമാറിനെക്കുറിച്ച് ഞമ്മളു ഒരു തവണ എഴുതിയത. അങ്ങനെ ഇപ്പൊ ഇജ്ജ് സുഗിക്കണ്ട ഉസ്ബൂ!
Perhaps the most experienced person among us, she joined us a year later after we had kicked off. Another person whom I really should take time to talk to and get to know.
Don
The name speaks for itself. He is the top man. Also known as hawk-eye. A name that sends shivers down the spine of his opponents. Not submitting to the life’s challenges in front of him, just as the superb kick boxer he is, he fights with life and there is only one outcome. He must win. I’ve always wished to be trained as a Kung fu student or under some martial arts and as such, I find it admirable that he has accomplished so much.
A top notch football player, he has made his mark in many a games. I’m in his team for Samba football tournament. Let’s see what happens.
Almost always the first to have finished writing the series exams, he walks away coolly as if each moment is precious.
A person who doesn’t tolerate bull shit much. If you’re planning to cross him, be careful. I’ve always wondered if his friends are those who gives meaning to his life…
സഗാവ് ഗൗതമന്! Our class’ SFI candidate. For the failure he encountered last time, he has emerged victorious this time. But that’s politics. I know him better as a person.
We have had our differences in the past. But we have sorted them out. He is a guy with a lot of guts and energy. But none of those qualities are what got my attention.
He learns stuff by knowing them. And is never tied down by academics. Unlike me who learns for marks, he just can’t do that. Unless he understands what the hell he is learning, he reaches at the conclusion that its not worth learning anyway.
I hope we all remember how he stood up to Neenu ma’am with his Pazhashiraaja dialogues! Poor ma’am… All the time this guy was talking she was asking me, “Haris, don’t you have anything to say?”. I was like, “What the hell am I supposed to say? I don’t even know what DCS is!”. But Neenu ma’am was not to be trifled with. She researched and came back with a rocking reply. But hey, that was fun.
I remember this guy dancing in the rain during first year… It was in the month of March. It gets hot like hell during those months and one day evening like a beggar finding treasure, we were blessed by a heavy rain! Oh how good it felt. The spray of water coming through the window and the cold wind blowing through the congested corridor… Nice memories.
Oh! And I forgot to mention. He is a wonderful singer. He and Dil entertained us with their musical wonder during our first year fresher’s day programme. None of us are going to forget that.
And the way he took his seminar… Oh boy!
Gori
He just might not be known as Shihabudheen! Thanks to Jinu. Perhaps the most innocent one in our class. But whatever whoever has done in our class, Gori ranks above all of them as he IS the real hero. A hero who saved a life from drowning. I thought that was only possible in movies. But no. Gori did it in real life.
A person with a humongous natural humor sense, almost all the talks and moments you have with this guy will have something remarkable in it.
I would like to mention the walk we had.
After my treat at Noorjehan, almost everyone went to A-Zone. Me, Jinu, Shihab, Dileep and Ajith decided to get back to the hostel for a good sleep and as such we got out. It was 8’o’clock and the direct bus to our college from Palakkad was at 8.50. So all of us decided to wait. But in the midst, of waiting, an alien thought grabbed me by my shirt’s collar and entered into my head.
Why not walk to the college? I was determined in that second itself.
Telling this to the others, they were like, “എടാ നോക്ക്! കറുത്ത ആകാശം!”, “മോനെ! ടാര് ഇട്ട Road!”, and things like that.. I told them I was going to walk no matter what and started walking! (First in the wrong direction. And then back tracking, in the right direction). Reaching Municipal stand, I received a call saying they were coming too! Ho ho… But Jinu had scooted. So it was me, Dileep, Ajith and Gori, the fantastic four on our foot from Palakkad till NSS College!
On our way, we coincidentally, very amazingly coincidentally, reached the A-Zone venue right at the moment when Ponnappan’s drama was starting. I have no freakin’ idea how the hell our time got synchronized like that! We enjoyed the drama and continued our Journey… Talking absolute nonsense and stopping momentarily here and there to catch our breaths and other umm.. primary activities, we made it back to college at about 10.30… Gori had started to dream in his walk about a heaven called room number 36, his hostel room!
Haresh
The person to have killed my pride of being the only person in class having a name starting with H (Really. I was proud about that). He is the only sincere vegetarian I’ve seen in my life. And that too out of his own choice.
Having joined us a year later, he has grown to be one among us in a really short time.
A person who doesn’t go with maths very well. But a person of Kerelian taste and interests. Not the type to accept all the movies that gets released these days. He is a fan of Malayalam literature and as such, has a crystal clear idea and opinion about the movies that he watches.
I don’t know why… But thinking about him, I’ve seen him always with a smile on his face no matter what was bothering him.
Known to a few among us as “സെറ്റപ്പേട്ടന്”.
Jansheed
Hot boy of the class! Well, he shares that title with Varun.
Now this guy is what I call ‘freaky’. The way he dresses, and his hair style! Man oh man…
A brilliant student who when reads a sentence, it stays in his head like words carved on a rock. Except the fact that he doesn’t read much. Lol!
Jayasankar
My neighbor. A sports person as well as one who is present for every moment of enjoyment. You would think that he was someone who would be somehow managing with his academics… Even I thought that until the s3 and s5 results were out.. He has a whopping aggregate of 70%!!! If someone asks me about a guy who has enjoyed his college life, then that is Jayasankar. No doubt about that.
It was for his brother’s wedding Sunil, Dileep and Ajith stayed at my home. He is one among those guys who will always be there for his friends.
I don’t think it would be wrong if I say he was one of the internet providers at our hostel. Ha!
BREAK!
Whew! I’m totally tapped out… This is hard work… I’m stopping for today folks. But don’t worry, I’ll fill up slowly! Merry Christmas to all!
Jiji
Now here is one girl with a completely open attitude. Where usually girls have this shy, reserved attitude, she has no boundaries whatsoever. A friend to all, she never hesitates to open up her mouth and say whatever is being generated in that Brain neurons of hers.
I think Jayan and Jinu have a lot to be thankful to her for… Well, considering their roll numbers, I think you know what I mean.
I’ve made a promise to two girls in my class regarding one thing. She is one of them. While sitting in the PC lab during our first year labs without having any idea what the heck C programs are, there was this rumor that I used to sing. She was sitting nearby and she in a low whisper asked me, “ഹാരിസെ, ഒരു പാട്ടു പാടുമൊ? ‘Show me the meaning’ മതി”. I was like, “What!?”. Fortunately, I had a running nose and a sore throat back then. Instead of admitting that I didn’t know how to sing, I told her that I wasn’t well that day and I promised her that I would sing someday.
I don’t know if she remembers that conversation. But I very well do. And I hope I have fulfilled that promise during our onam celebrations. Even if what I sung was total crap!
Kannan
RAW POWER! The champion of arm wrestling!
“Master Kannan”, as some like to call him due to his artistic co-ordination of the “തിരുതാധിരക്കളി” for our onam celebrations.
I think Arnold Schwarzenegger would have found a challenging opponent in this guy for body building.
A frequent visitor to my room, he is one of those very few who has the patience to sit and listen to all the crap that I speak and actually discuss with me regarding all that. Being in a single room during final year of college, my loneliness is cured with him and Panju being often with me…
A person who wanted to sit and learn Python programming, we both tried hard to find time for it. And we actually did get a good start too. But the overwhelming schedules of our university and college didn’t let us go further.
Kunjunj
Known to a very little few as Sunil Hari.
Okay everyone. I think all of you know how the superstars in wwe wrestling has their own entrance music. Well, this guy has one such dear song and here it is!
A really (seriously) big man, well built, but with kid’s heart. He is curious at all times about what is happening around the world that it is quite hard to get his attention on one thing. An experimenter by nature, Linux security will have a few things to worry about if guys like this exist.
A hacker, he goes into those folders within the computer that almost all of us are scared to touch. But usually he ends up ruining his system. The impressive part is that he fixes that ruined system by himself and again gets on with finding new ways to ruin it!
A dear friend to those who takes time to know him, he is one of those characters in our class that everyone will have a hard time forgetting.
MR
Sharat MR. Let me put it this way. All the mini projects of our class has at one point or another gone through this guy.
All the times when a laptop doesn’t work or a pen drive doesn’t get detected, it reaches this guy. All the times that you want to be entertained while sitting in class, just sit near to him. He’ll keep knocking your pen off and if not that, he’ll dismantle your pen and ship the pieces to 7 different countries!
Does he know Malayalam? Well…
English? Hey, he knows right? Ummm…
Hindi? Kinda… Yeah..
But with a mix of all like the aviyal that we eat, he is one guy who has real knowledge in our class. Experimenting with all the scary things from his childhood onwards, he has been almost through all the circuitry and done almost all the experiments with them. But is it enough? Noppity nope…
He is making a ROBOT!!! And that too as a part of his main project.
I think the guys staying with him at Ambadi hostel will have a lot to add to the description of this jovial character.
Namita (Without the ‘h’ as she has warned me beforehand!)
Me and she are the anti-insomniacs!
A wonderful person with a wicked sense of humor whom I got to know better only recently. She is the kind of person whom you’ll definitely enjoy talking with. Taking everything cool, she does make you feel like everything is alright with the world. Well, the few times I’ve had a frank chat with her, I’ve felt so.
Oh, My Co-sleeper!! An excellent class room nodder. And here I break a small promise that I made her. He he.. I hope she forgives me.
Once when we were talking, I urged her into writing a small article or story for me. She was pretty adamant not to do it. But finally my natural charm overcame her (Man, she is going to kill me!) and she came up with the following brilliant masterpiece! She wrote:
##
MY INADVERTENT SLUMBER.
Every time a teacher enters our class, I make sure that I repeat the words, “I won’t sleep this time” in my head. But sadly enough, those words remain merely words as minutes through the class, I’d be snoring happily…….!!!
Yes, that’s a sad (yet thoroughly enjoyable!!!) part of my life. Sad, because, when I think of the position that I’m putting the teacher in, I mean, imagine that you’re a lecturer taking an important topic in a class and the girl sitting in front of you is sleeping right under your nose..then you can really understand how they (the lecturers) might be feeling..!!! And enjoyable, because….. well….I guess I needn’t elaborate on that one because sleeping is simply so ENJOYABLE…!!
Well, it’s as if when the teacher enters the class, I’m fully charged up or something and the moment she/he (without any sort of gender bias for that!) starts teaching, my brain starts getting dull…as if there’s some battery in there that gets discharged……Slowly and gradually I’m engulfed in the welcoming hands of sleep…..Sleep, that would not allow me to open my eyes, that wouldn’t even let me sit straight!! The sounds around me seem to come from a distance….and most of the times I find Amrutha trying her best to wake me up from the lull…(though it’s not very often that she succeeds!) The poor girl tries everything from pinching to punching and slapping….but all in vain! Now, it’s not that she doesn’t sleep in the class or something…..she does give me company sometimes…although it (the sleeping, of course) becomes some sort of competition between us during others…
Then, when I wake up from my nap and look around to make sure that nobody has actually seen me sleeping….(it’s actually against my prestige, you know!!)…I see a number of smiling faces looking at me as if they’d just watched a very entertaining act. Their smiles don’t help me get over the guilty feeling that I’ve for sleeping in the class though…. The only solace that I get is when I see you sitting on your seat like a perfect statue…eyes closed…dozing away…!! You are in such a perfect posture that any teacher would feel that you are either in deep concentration or are jotting down something important!! But the very fact that there are others apart from me and Amrutha who find the class boring…is well….very comforting…..
Well I don’t take all the blame for my slumber….. The reason that I fall asleep is that either the subject is boring or the teacher is not effective enough to conduct the class, (Wow, it’s so easy to put the baggage on others!!). But still I wish I could avoid it because had I been teacher and had I witnessed a student sleeping in my class….I would have felt really bad… But maybe these are all parts of being a lecturer, I guess….kind of ‘occupational hazard’, or something…. and sleeping in the class is a part of being a student( or may I say, being a student in a professional college), I suppose……
##
I’m most certainly in for trouble!
I remember (it was during the first year vacations, I think) when she was going alone to her mom and dad back in Haryana… She was traveling alone and I had admired her courage for taking such a long journey single handedly. I kept her company almost completely through the trip and I remember teasing her with her trip when she told me she was afraid of university exams!!
A person whom you will surely want to be friends with. The drama queen who was a girl in a guy’s disguise, she most certainly is a part of many of our unforgettable memories.
Neethu
Ah! The nice little girl hailing from Wayanad. I think we all remember her reply to Vijayakumar sir during our first year when he asked her to describe about her home town.
“അവിടെ പശു ഉണ്ട് ആട് ഉണ്ട് …” And everyone burst into laughter with him stopping her.
Someone with a nice smile, she is a heavy walker. I mean you can hear her feet go “thump, thump” when she is walking.
I remember during the end of s3 when her CP fair record was submitted with many a flaws in her flow diagrams. (Oh man! Flow diagrams! Drawing those were a nightmare). Just a quick thought here. Take a look at this: http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/flow_charts.png .
It was given back by… by.. Usha ma’am? Oh my God! Usha ma’am was the in-charge of our cp lab?? Man..
And calling her up, she tells me she is half way home. Suffice to say I couldn’t refuse her pleading request to sit and correct it all and resubmit!
Hey… I just remembered something regarding her. During the TCS placement training… When we were nearing the end of day 1, some of us were selected and we had to talk about a topic for minute which will be given at the moment. The topic given to her was, erm… I actually don’t remember the topic heading, but the idea was, “Domestic violence. Wife to Husband”. She had to talk about that.
And it was really funny how she said that it would be advantageous for them girls if that was to happen! She was like she wanted to kick the crap out of her husband. He he.. No offense Neethu!
Nisha
The cute little girl hailing from Trichur. One among the class toppers, she is a very good Hindi speaker and writer.
And hey! She is the source of our Labour India! I mean its unbelievable how she takes down class notes of certain… umm… ‘weird’ teachers so neatly! Once exams near or a sessional test is announced, no doubt, all the boys get a photostat of her notebook. If the Men’s Hostel guys of CS passes the exams or get good marks, all of us owe it to her. She even took down lecture notes from Usha ma’am’s class!!! AUGH!
Erm… Just a slight boast here. I used to be like that too while at school and first year at college. People would take photostats of my notebook. It lasted until I mastered the art of sleeping under the very noses of the teachers!
She will be an ever living part of many of our memories by being the one to give our class the first chance to be together and enjoy a class trip to her Brother’s wedding reception. Boy, I still remember her brother’s face when he saw the 57 of us barge in at noon with empty stomachs! I’m pretty sure they had a tough time sorting out the bills for meals. Lol!
Nishi
Again my neighbor. However, I’ve no clue why I haven’t got to know her much. Apart from having had enjoyed a few of her wonderful dances, I’m waiting for time to introduce us further.
മോനെ! Panju!
Rahul K. R. അധവാ പഞ്ചു
Mr. Romantic! A very open hearted person who hasn’t the slightest of shyness talking with whoever it be. Girls, boys, enemies, friends, strangers.. He just dives right in and starts talking with them. A person whom I got to be really close to only lately. The one along with Kannan who keeps me company at my times of loneliness.
A great sports person, his sports man spirit in unmatched whichever game he plays. I don’t know anyone in my class or in my college who can’t be friends with him. He is a guy who has even gone to the extent of sitting with me and watching a whole Wolverine cartoon! I’ll be indebted to him all my life for doing that. Even though I told many the excitement I had of watching that cartoon, none even took a fraction of a time to talk and discuss it with me… I don’t blame them. But still, they could have done it just to make me feel better. And Panju here did it.
My exam study mate, all our efforts at studies usually end up in talking about the philosophies of life and love. But an awesome guy to be taught…
The time when Vijayakumar sir caught him for his bit-keeping abilities and analyzing that bit with Sabareesh’s paper thinking it was his always finds a few hearty laughs whenever that subject pops in a conversation at the hostel…
Oh! And a superb exaggerator too! He he…
Ponnappan
Volleeeeeeeeeeeey! Ho ho.. Our stick-like rep! (Ummm… Look who’s talking. I know!)
Ooh! I’ve been itching to write about this idiot. Lol!
I wish I could say, “നീ പൊന്നപ്പന് അല്ലടാ തങ്കപ്പനാ!”. But unfortunately it seems there already is a thangappan! One whom we didn’t have the luck to get to know.
These guys are a trio. Chellappan, Ponnappan and thangappan. And we got only 2/3rd of the entire thing. And boy are we glad we have these two dolts in our class!
The very first thing about him is that I see him as a leader. And my definition of a leader is… Being a leader is not about being friends with everyone and being like by everyone. It is all about being able to take the toughest of decisions and making the right choices no matter what anyone feels. And this guy is exactly that.
A guy of natural positive energy, you just feel good when he is around and talking with you. A crazy addict of Liverpool FC, he has even got his ‘religion’ in fb as Liverpool! OMG! But hey, he has signed for the football tournament this year. Let’s see if he really can show his interest in actual game too!
Although at times we get into a debate for one thing or the other, he usually talks of stuff that he really truly believes in rather than just having heard from here and there. And without doubt, I can say that he is the most popular character of our class. Being there for everything that has the slightest tint of the word ‘enjoyment’, he is a brother, friend and a really good company to all. However, with the rumors of a “ponnamma” surfacing lately, we do doubt whether he is a romantic guy after all! He he…
The third guy to be with me in repairing the networks lab… Man, I sure am going to miss this guy…
Poornima
Currently the topper of our class. A girl who believes happiness is the key to life. Even though I can’t completely digest that point of view, there is one thing that I have to be thankful to her for. And that is to find happiness in things that you feel that are completely sick. It really takes an awful lot of stress to do that because it forces you to look at things in an entirely different perspective from the rest of the world. And as such, I’ve found happiness about my college. About me being here and about all those things that I thought was sick and twisted about my college, I’ve finally figured out that those are not the things that I should be looking at.
Talking to people from other colleges, I see why my college is college heaven. And with the currently elected union, I’m sure things are going to kick off for the better. But enough of that.
I’m pretty sure that whenever all of you think about her, you can only remember her smiling face. I don’t know how she does that, but she does it. And she is almost always there in front for any initiative being taken.
As for me personally, she has been a great support for me. Especially during the starting days of my blog, without her encouraging words, I wouldn’t have done much of a good job on it.
The co-ordinator of our onam celebrations, she is sure to have made a place in all of our hearts.
Praseetha
The silent girl hailing from the vicinity of the silent valley. Unless and until you look specifically for her, you really won’t know she is there at all. But the point is, she has got skills that makes people come specifically in search of her.
A girl brimming with tremendous amount of creativity inside, her graphics rough solution book and her sketches on the board has left me gaping! She even drew the 3-D views of the objects while we were somehow trying to get past the formality called rough solution! She enjoys what she does and she carves for perfection in it. I remember many of us staring in wonder at her assignments even!
Being the closest friend to Sharat MR, she has acquired many a talent in coding from him and soon she will fly away to heights that none of us can possibly dream of reaching. A girl who has drawn her way into many of our hearts, here is all wishes to her for a bright future.
Pretty
Yaoh! The power house of female energy! Its not often that you see her sitting in some place calmly without chasing the guys around the class, beating and kicking them.
A jovial, smart character who is always there for her friends with or without their invitation, she has made many a memorable occasion for her friends. I remember during our first class trip to Trichur.. While I was organizing it, I was a bit depressed and worried about the money issue… And just then this girl calls me up and tells me she has already collected from everyone in lh! That gave me a new energy and me, Sunil and Ajith set out to get money from the rest of the people coming…
I know it was a small happening. But sometimes small gestures like that do make a strong impression in one’s life…
But hey, I think her close circle of friends will have more to put in about her. Expecting their comments!
Priya
The ‘mark’ist party leader! Don’t get me wrong. I did not mean the political party. He he… I meant the team of mark hunters.
Almost my partner sitting at the first bench and pouring questions at Viji ma’am, she is one girl who has her entire studied theory till now in her head. Ask her anything from anywhere and she has an answer.
Mistaken for a nerd, we were all amazed at her graceful dancing steps on our first class trip to Trichur.
I was under the impression that she was all about by hearting stuff just for the sake of marks. But my ego was given a damn good blow when she proved herself worth by acquiring a place at sourcebits! Oh man! I hope we both don’t pour questions at superiors too!
The one and only… PUTZ!
Putz, puttalu, and for the sake of simplicity, just ‘put’ will do. It is hard to restrain ourselves from laughing each time a teacher uses the word ‘put’ for describing something.
However, as much hype as I have put into that title, I know very little of this guy. Another mysterious character of our class, he really has showed that his shyness and reserved nature was purely by choice on the day of our Christmas celebrations. Those who questioned him while on the hot seat got petrifying replies on the spot!
An expert logical reasoner, aptitude tests are like pencil lead in an iron smith’s hand for him. He cracks them fine and easy no matter the complication of the question. One who doesn’t care much about being at social parties, tours and stuff, given the need for the situation, he has all the skill up his sleeve for the desired occasion.
And the number of friend requests that he got through the Christmas letters! I envy him for being so popular among the ladies! Lol!
Rahul
One of those rare people who knows how to handle any given situation. He doesn’t ignore the things that needs attention around him by simply turning his head away from it as if it did not concern him and for that very matter, it increases your amount of confidence in doing something if he is around. Just because you get the feeling that someone is watching your back.
A windows (I mean the OS! He he) expert and a quick paced Linux learner, his contacts and relations cover almost all the software industries! That day when we had an argument on what UST stands for, this guy on the spot called up one of his cousins at Infosys and the call got forwarded to a number of software firms in that instant itself inquiring the full form of UST. But due to the super secret work of the firm, they had made sure that none in the world knew what UST stood for and as such, we were disappointed.
പക്ഷെ ഞങ്ങള് ആരാ മക്കളു!
We, hostelers made three different titles for it in religious harmony!
1. Unnithan & Son’s Tech.
2. Usman & Son’s Tech.
3. Urumisthambaan & Son’s Tech.
Ha! Beat that.
Perhaps the heaviest person of our class, I only recently found out that he was an awesome football player. Oh man! The way he kicked that ball and bent it like Beckham! Can’t wait for the Samba football tournament to see this big guy in action!
Oh! And most importantly, our Maveli as well as Santa claus!
Rambo Jinu
ഈ കളള ബലാല് ഞമ്മടെ കൂടെ 1സ്ട് ഇയര് മുതല് വിടാതെ ഉളള ചങ്ങായി ആണു. J. H. Spice ന്റെ സ്വപ്നവുമായി നടക്കാന് തുദങ്ങിയിട്ട് ഇത് നാലാം വര്ഷം. ഇവനെ പറ്റി കൂടുതല് ഒന്നും പറയാനില്ല. എന്റെ എറ്റവും അടുത്ത സുഹ്രുത്ത് എന്നല്ലാതെ. I’ve written about him here:
A person whom I’m only beginning to get to know better. One among the lateral entries, her quick wit and friendly nature had earned an indistinguishable place among us. I will have to depend on time to fill in more about her.
Rashmi
An awesome singer!! I don’t remember taking to heart any person’s singing before as much as I did hers on the day of our onam celebrations. Her solo song was heart touching and it was evident the silence that fell upon the crowd when we cherished our memories of college drowning in her sweet voice… I hope we have the luck to hear and enjoy her song again…
I was going to write that she was a nice, sensitive girl.. But suddenly something hit my brain like a rocket falling and exploding. The first year fresher’s!! Oh ho ho… One, she had the guts to go and sing on the stage. Two, she sang WITHOUT a karaoke! Three, no matter what the crowd did, booing, shouting, she didn’t give a damn… She just stood there, thoroughly enjoying her own voice and completed the song without even the slightest quiver in her voice! Way to go Rashmi!
Oh and there is one more thing.. But better than describing it BANG!!! Ho ho ho…! Glad that Priya is there with her on the front bench to hold her!
Revathy
A smart and happy girl who is another power house of female energy. “Dhoom machale” is the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of her… Okay. To a bit of personal views here…
We all saw the second girl whom I had messaged to in my life and I’m pretty sure you’re all really curious to know who was the first one. Well folks! Here she is! She has the honor of being the first girl to receive a message from me (if it can be considered a honor at all! He he…).
Another girl with a beautiful sound, she has been there in many of the singing groups. However, her unique sound and gestures accompanying it hasn’t gone unnoticed. Our good old Usbu does a very good imitation of her voice and actions! Lol!
Oh and one more thing… Those of you who have read Jiji’s entry in this post, I mentioned that there were two girls that I had made a promise to. Here is the second girl, again. She had tried to pressurize me into singing during the first year fresher’s. But sadly, I was pretty adamant not to and I regret not doing it. (I might’ve regretted doing it as the seniors were ready to break our legs for participating in it! But GKV & Usbu have come out alive and so I missed a wonderful chance to make a total fool of myself.)
Rithwik
If there is a guy who can tell you about hell in such a way that you’ll actually look forward to the trip, then its him. (That’s actually a pun about lawyers if memory serves right).
This guy is what you really mean by ‘cool’. Because he simply is! You see people walking into class with all sorts of things from textbooks, notebooks, pens, bags to mobiles, cameras, laptops and all. Well, amidst all that, this dude walks in with a novel having bookmark somewhere in between and when after class he leaves, the bookmark is sure to be somewhere near the end.
His carefree attitude and tremendous amount of self-confidence coupled with his immense GK and reading habits makes him almost impossible defeat in a debate. It does not matter whether he is wrong or he doesn’t know the subject. The only thing that you need to know is that he will win. Man, is that wicked!
Apart from all the ‘talking and reading’, he is a singer too at heart. Film songs or nadanpaatu, he has proved his mettle in all.
I got two ‘instant’ poems of his jotted down in my diary. Here they are:
“Thou words so comforting,
it compels my heart to embrace sleep hastily…
ere that, may you have a good night’s sleep,
and wake up to a good and prosperous day,
as is deserving of thee.
Entammo! Swasam Kittunille!”
Next:
“Sun has risen above yonder hill/
and his rays of gold has vanquished the fog/
as if by heavenly magic//
i think of you my dear pal/
may you have the most blessed day of ’em all;/
become wiser and cleverer – and yet
remain the way you are! . . . . Good morning!”
Rincy
Ah! Another one among the Xincy series. Lol! Apart from knowing that she held the pride of CS high by winning the lemon spoon race for our onam celebrations, I know very little about her.
Sabitha
Yet another girl whom I have not much spoken to. But I do believe Usbu will have a few words to put in regarding her, she being his lab partner and all.
Sachin
Little master?? Noooo.. I’d like to call this guy the “I don’t give a shit about you and your bloody academics” man. A person whom the four walls of the class has trouble containing, you can see him zipping and zapping here and there on his altered bike like a hero on a mission!
Hoping I get to know him better in the very few days that are left.
Sangeetha
Almost all the people whom I know little about are coming in one place in this post. Here is one girl whom I don’t know much about. And I doubt whether I will ever figure out this silent girl.
Saranya
Here is one girl whose talk I just simply love hearing! Don’t get me wrong. It is not because she is a flatterer or anything (quite exactly the opposite, if I might add), but just because of her pronunciation. Seriously, I don’t know if I have heard anyone speak malayalam so nicely. Crisp and clear with a sort of… ‘muffled’ voice…That was not the word that I was looking for.. But anyway, I hope you get the idea.
I did not know she sang as well till our onam celebrations. A girl who at times is a bit too tensed about exams, she handles them quite well finally when the time comes. But hey, I’m pretty sure there is more to her than what I’ve written here.
Sariga
The first thing that comes to my mind regarding her is how she replied to our Principal’s, Vikraman sir’s question so as to how a Laplace’s equation can be used to describe an electric circuit with components or something. OmiGod! Man! Me and Jinu were like, “What the…!?”
Now that I think of it, it seems our class is quite infested with singers! Lol! Here is another one among them. She has the face of a little child seeing the world for the first time too. Always with keen open, wide eyes, she is one among us who has nailed the academics.
And not forgetting her beautiful role in the English Drama which drove the crowd into a roar each time she made her appearance!
Shabs
Sabareesh. Even though staying at the Men’s Hostel, I have only rarely spoken to the fellow. He too is one among the “Won’t submit in front of academics” kinda guy. A hardcore SFI fan, I’m pretty sure his friends will have a much more detailed description of him.
Shambhavi
Now that’s name that you don’t get to hear every now and then. Mind you, I’m not referring to the person, but the name. A sister to every-one, even though we had tried to get to know each other, it dropped off strangely somewhere in between. Maybe one day we will pick it up from where we left off.
Sinto!
The one man army! I mean, come on! This dude puts on so many different beards that there aren’t many styles left to imitate! ഇവിടെ താടി എങ്ങനേലും ഒന്നു വന്നു കിട്ടിയിരുന്നെങ്കില് എന്നു ആഗ്രഹിക്കുമ്പൊള് അവിടെ ഒരുവന്മാര് അതും വെചു കുതുബ് മിനാര് പണിയുന്നു! ഇവന്റെ ഒകെ താടി ഞാന് ഒരു ദിവസം കത്തിച്ച് കളയും. ഹല്ലാ പിന്നെ!
Whether it be Mammotty, Mohanlal or any among the many heroes, they don’t stand a chance in beards against this guy. A keen observer by nature, he never fails to spot the shortcomings of an event and give feedback regarding it. A trio, this guy, Gouthaman and Rithwik, they will be anywhere and everywhere they can be.
A bit short tempered by nature, for the ones who knows him, there can be no better a friend.
Soumya
Well, even though she is a jolly girl and the only girl in our class to come riding on a scooter (Hey! Anisha is on her way learning it. So you’d better watch out!), I got to speak to her for the first time only recently. But something tells me we are going to get to know each other well soon. And that something are the words. “Batch Book!”.
Sreejitha
Whoa man! Am I indebted to her! She is the only girl who has shown the slightest of interest when I have talked about Wolverine and the X-MEN! (Really, if any of you want to get something done by me for you, just come and talk to me about a few superheroes from comics and I’ll be all yours! Lol!). She is one among the lateral entry too. (Hey! Is she? I’m having a hard time remembering her not being there with us in the first year.)
One of the others whom I borrow the stapler from now and then. Being seated just beneath Priya, this girl is one who enjoys my weird sleeping postures in class! (I’m beginning to think I’m a source of entertainment in that sense for almost everyone in the class. He he…)
Genuine Sriram XP
The BFG! The BFG! The BFG! He he he… Successfully having won the bet with him regarding what BFG is, I fear no man now while saying that. Although for those of you who have gaming in mind more than reading, your interpretation of those three letters might seem a bit out of the context here. Ha ha!
BFG stands for the Big Friendly Giant! A sort of giant he is! A big, tall guy with lots of random hair trying hard to find their place on his head, he is a really entertaining guy to be with. Both in Humor and in knowledge.
This guy is one among the 4 or 5 MSP (Microsoft Student Partners) in Kerala and has taken various cool seminars for us regarding the tools that he uses to get things done. I think only if he writes about himself will justice be done to him.
The first person with whom I saw a 1TB Hard disk, his appearance on the day of the TCS placements could never have gone unnoticed! Man.. With his coat and suit.. He was teaching the interviewer the basics of algorithm design! He he…
Not so very keen on his academics, he has already made his career. An intern at Microsoft and a keen coder, I don’t think he will have trouble finding his place in the world. Oh, I almost forgot! He plays the guitar! I have only heard him once or twice, but I’m going to make sure that our class is going to hear him more than enough before we leave this place.
And by the way… This is the big guy whom I was talking about in the second paragraph of this post. I regret not getting to know him any earlier.
Sumi
The sweet little girl who is one among the dancers of our class. Even though the sourcebits interviewer short listed many of us through the tech interview, it was this girl who caught his attention with her innocent and nervous replies.
I had made up a joke regarding her once while studying COD I think. There are these instruction set operations like mov, sum, etc.. And when one of the operands is not a register, we have to use the ‘immediate’ operator or something which is done by adding an ‘i’ to the end of the operators. So when we had to do an immediate operation on sum, I told the guys that ‘sumi’ will do it. Ahem.. I do remember none of the guys laughing at that joke however… But you have to admit it was a really cool joke!
Swapna
One among the class toppers, our conversation limits to just the point where she asked me not to ask her questions after her seminar. (Though many of the boys and girls were afraid of me in that matter. But I’m pretty sure that apart from earning them marks for discussion, I haven’t troubled any of them with my questions. But some ounce of fear is always good! He he..)
Intermission:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!!! I’m almost done!!! The end is in sight! Been on this for like six days now! Hu hu…
Varun
Varun AKA Valsan, the Hot boy of the class.
Now I’m indebted to this guy for life (in his own words, “കടം ഫൊര് എവര്”) for just giving me a chance to speak English. There is one more guy who has helped me over the years for it, but we will come to that later.
This dude has a killer smile which no girl can resist. Seriously, even the teachers fall for it!
I’m actually quite scared to write about him because he usually is good at reading people’s minds from their words and actions. So you’ll be in trouble if you don’t watch out! The person who is reluctant till the end to be at class gathering and finally crashing in on the party surprising everyone.
He is a jolly cool character and a friend beyond fun and joy for those who have the patience and bearing to keep constantly trying to be friends with him. But usually, without realizing what they are missing, only a few have taken the tough path of getting to know him.
A guy who spreads the message of enjoyment, he is one among the eccentric characters of our class.
Vincy
The last that our class has to offer among the Xincy series. Apart from knowing that she is a person who takes her academics seriously, I know very little about her.
Cyber Guru
Alright, I don’t know if anyone knows this guy in this name and I have no clue how this name came to be! But since I am using the names that I have saved in my mobile phone to put in over here, I’m using this title for him. The Cyber Guru!
Real name: Manu Govind.
Even though Rahul is our Maveli, this dude is the one who puts that name into practice because you rarely see him in the class! Also, as much as Gori saved that life from drowning, this guy was the one who jumped in and lifted Gori along with the drowning fellow and brought them over to the shore.
A jolly fellow whom you don’t see tensed much, he always adds a bit of laughter to any occasion in which he is there.
Yo Boy
മച്ചാന്! With his stunning Phazer bike, he is a popular figure all around. His sportsmanship and ultra cool English has earned him an attitude that none among us have.
But let us not forget his hair! That noodle like strings staying in perfect harmony on his head maintaining the same look each and every day, I kinda wonder how much effort this guy puts into doing it.
A person ready to help any of his friends in need at any time, he is one among the extra-ordinary characters of our class.
And finally, the last but not the least…
Every-one
Kukkudan, Manu “The man” Mohan, Kaattarabi, etc, etc… എന്നിങ്ങനെ പല പല പേരുഗളിലായി ഇവന് അറിയപ്പെടുന്നു.
Only because no-one should write about every-one am I writing this entry. (Dude, I’m having fun!) Now this here is a guy who has spoken to all and helped almost all the people in our class. Both personally and through his contacts. Just like Wolverine, always in thought of his past, he does a pretty good job of committing and dedicating himself to any relation he has, however small it be.
The dude along with Varun who gave me the chance to speak English, he is one irritating fellow to be with! He keeps on pestering you that you feel like putting him on Earth and pulling down the entire sky upon him. With a constant aim of killing me, his main weapon is irritation and the slight favour of destiny towards him than me. (Hmph!)
Anyway, this guy has been fun throughout my college life and looking back, I got lots of pleasant memories with him.
AND THAT’S IT!!! I’M DONE!!!
But I can’t argue that it is a Christmas present because its almost new year now. So maybe this be kinda both to you all!
Before winding up, I would like to extend a warm thanks to Poornima for the support she gave all along this post to keep me at it.
And hey, three more months left. Let’s rock’n’roll!
You know this certain feeling of responsibility and vigor that comes over you about something you could care less when you are suddenly reminded about that thing’s deadline? Then that is exactly what I’m talking about.
Let it be anything. From assignments, to exams, to paper submissions, to project reports, to even getting signatures from certain creepy people who always creeps up behind you and catches you at the exact moment when you have let your guard down. The list goes on and on and on. And for those of you who have been in college, you know all too well what I’m talking about.
I mean, come on! What’s the whole deal about anyway? If these so called “experienced faculties” who impose these deadlines upon us have at least helped us in the minute sense to get things done, then I wouldn’t be writing this post. But as usual, their words speak louder than their actions. Hey! Wasn’t it the other way around? Yeah well, you know what I’m talking about.
But the funny part is the sudden super sincerity that dawns upon us towards our project or labs or whatever. All of us will be like hell trying to whip up things into shape from zero to a sudden fifty or sixty percentage! Things that we thought impossible and too tough till then becomes all too trivial. From places and resources unknown we seek and get help and finally, no matter how dumb you are regarding the stuff, you’ll have your report or code ready for submission just as those guys who have worked hard for months (assuming guys like that exist). As I said, deadlines work wonders.
I remember during my s5 classes us having Programming Paradigms lab. We had 4 different languages to learn in one single semester without any help whatsoever from the faculties. And that too, not the basics. We were expected to code fluently in them. The following is what one of my friends, Ranjith AKA Chellapan, had to say about it.
“2010 saw the large scale enlightenment of our Java, Lisp and Prolog neurons of our brains. Kudos to the teacher who taught us deadline programming in all the languages we didn’t know.”
But then again, in a really wonderful, amazing and elusive way, we all completed all the programs in all the languages and submitted our fair records in time. How that happened, well… Here comes the technical bull-shit generator!
Usually for labs and all we need not use the above mentioned device as the codes are pretty straight forward when copy pasting. But during the submission of project reports for a deadline and the staff says, “I don’t care. 30 pages and nothing less”, this certain inner hidden power within you awakens that creates bull-shit by the truck load.
I say this because I just did this yesterday.
The coming Friday being our project evaluation dates, we had to show our report before hand and get the signs. And our “guide” wasn’t happy until she saw page numbers! Page numbers and page numbers and page numbers! She was kinda addicted to it. So how else to make her happy but to endow upon her PAGE NUMBERS?
Come on! She didn’t even look inside the report. She just looked at the contents page and said that 3 headings come in the same page! She didn’t even care about what we had written in there. She won’t care what we have written in there as long as our report is like 50 pages… Sacre Bleu!
And then that’s exactly what I did. I sat and turned on my long asleep technical bull-shit generator and paper numbers were flowing!
I don’t know where the ideas and things that I couldn’t figure out for so long kept coming into my head. But it came and the cool device did its job. From a mere 5 pages report, I made it a 20 page report. Of course, she wasn’t happy with it either. But on the promise that we will make it at least 50 pages by the end of our project, she gave her sign.
Whew… I hate myself for all the crap that I’ve written there. But I guess none of us are that different when it comes to this, aye?
This post is from the teachings of Mr. Ambu sir. (Take a look at my last two posts)
Shifting gears, an action we are all too well familiar with. When there is a hill ahead, we down our gears and when there is a straight road ahead we up our gears right?
These two words was the keyword in his entire talk. Our ability to shift our emotional gears. How we behave in the company of various people. We might be a cool, care free guy rocking his life. That would be fine considering being in college among friends. But when you get into the presence of someone with an authority, like your dad, mom, teachers or even into a company, you have to shift your emotional gears to adapt to it. If you try to ascend a hill in 4th gear, you’re not going to make it.
Most of us say you have to be who you are wherever you go. But that is just the irresponsible way of making an excuse just like the “lashing” and “withdrawal” of Wolverine that I mentioned in my last post. We are all busy believing and taking for granted what others say without even putting an ounce of thought into the matter. But Ambu sir quoted an example for it.
He is a busy marketing person and involves in a lot of business which takes away a lot of his time. He is seriously professional when it comes to dealing with his clients and puts on a lot of authority when it comes to fulfilling his role. But, he is a father too.A father to two sweet girls as of now. One 2 1/2 years old and the other 8 years old.
When he goes to them, he can’t be what he was in his business. All his humongous degrees consisting of all the English alphabets means nothing to those two cute girls. They want him to play, care, be foolish, tell them a lot of stories and such… So he shifts his emotional gears and adapts to his children and family leaving all the professionalism behind.
As such, being who you are wherever you go doesn’t mean the way you posture yourself to others I guess. It means the beliefs and morals that you carry within you. Your belief in religion and God. The virtues you have learned from your masters. I mean, I still haven’t figured out the exact meaning of “Be who you are wherever you go”. It has a fine line that divides the things to which it applies and to the things which it doesn’t.
There are some among us, 20 to 22 years old, who talk like they’ve experienced everything and they’ve figured out all the answers to life’s questions. Some people saying you have to be happy all the time, some people saying you have to be cool all the time. They say you shouldn’t introspect, you shouldn’t sit and think of the things that make you sad. I mean, there is a difference holding like a monkey onto the past, and introspecting and learning from it. But these people just don’t get it. They have to be happy all the time. I guess it categorizes under lashing out or withdrawal.
There is no one size fits all solution nor a single solution to fit one’s all. I hope you got that sentence. I agree it is framed a bit weird.
As such, learning to effectively shift gears is what I find as the key to a successful life right now. But as Ambu sir always said, we are humans and there is always room for improvement. Are we all done and ready listening to just one advice? Of course not. My mind is open and I continue to seek for answers.
Ah well. The second day of training. Even before the training on November 1st began, I was planning on attending the sessions of the first day and then skipping the second day entirely. But Ambu sir’s energy and his attitude had got to me. I wanted to be in his presence for more time. So I thought to myself, “What the heck. No one is going to come to me in the future and tell me, ‘Hey! You made a fool of yourself on that training day’. So why not have a go?” and went for the training.
We started off the day with A-Z-Alphabets-included-degree-person Mr. Ambu sir blessing us with his so called “Muul Mantras” (I hope that I got that correct) of life. He was talking about becoming a successful good person and asked us what was the key factor that one would require to be so. Everyone started with humility, responsibility and the usual stuffs. And Ambu sir had this attitude of picking up whatever a student told him and improvising on it. One of the loveliest things in the world.
And while he was improvising on the point of humility, I started thinking vigorously about what that key factor might be and just as if he had read my mind, he said, “You have to be good listeners. Not selective ones. I’m sure you have lots of minimized windows in your brain while one application program is running. And that would decrease the resources available for that running program and also reduce its efficiency.”
I got the point. But how he read my mind, I have no clue.
Then going forward, he talked about the exact things that I had once thought I would speak to a crowd if I had a chance. I was dumbstruck and completely engrossed in his session.
Later on he came to the point of facing various situations in life. Just as he made that statement, I remembered once helping one of my friends with the answer to that. It might the dumbest thing, but my thoughts on it were evolved from one of my favorite characters Wolverine. In one of the stories, it is explained to him by a long dead love of his how he reacted to various situations in life. He had just two basic ways.
Lashing out or withdrawal. He was not ready to get emotionally hurt by facing the situation.
Just as this thought came into my head, Ambu sir came with his version of it.
“You can react, respond or fall back to the situations in life”.
Lashing out = React.
Fall back = Withdrawal.
And the third one, respond, was the advice that I had given my friend. To face it, process it in your brain and the result should be the outcome of that processing you did.
So there again, Ambu sir said what was in my head.
At about noon we had this team work to do. It was really funny. We had to find a few things common to our team, we had to find a few unique things of our team members, we had to find out our personal and our team’s strength and weaknesses and plus, we had to name the team and give it a punch line.
My team was Deepak (EEE), Viji(EEE), Raseena(CIVIL), Ramesh(MECH), Hrishiknath, Aparna(EEE), Aswathy(IC) and myself.
Viji came up with the name Technosapiens and we were like “WOW!”. But I dunno, I still have this feeling that I’ve heard that somewhere before. Anyway, we made up a clumsy chart with clouds and leaves and sun and finally I came up with the punch line, “Processing the evolution”.
Our presentation was not that well organized, but it was short and to the point. Whatever goofing up we all did, Viji covered it all up with her brilliant conclusion and we got off the stage a happy team.
Time went by with Ambu sir’s talk and finally it was time for the mock interviews. 10 of us were selected for attending the mock interview and 6 of us were selected to sit in the panel and do the interview.
The interview was over and it was fun Karthik suddenly going out of the room in those mushy casual clothes of his and within ten minutes coming back with neat tucked in shirts and all! We learned quite somewhat about how the interview would be.
The training was over and all the groups were summoned back to the auditorium for one final showdown. There there was a quiz of 20 questions and whoever answered was awarded a tcs hat! It didn’t surprise me that I did not know the answer of a single question that they asked!
Then there was the final announcement of the best two from each group and guess what? I was one from mine!!
That was a real honor for me considering all those skilled people out there. I’m still thinking as to why and what showed me out from the rest of the 59 people with me. There must’ve been something that clicked in Ambu sir’s eyes about me. Anyhow, here I sit and blog with that Parker pen given to me by TCS in my front.
It was a constructive and successful day in my life. God bless Ambu sir.
It being our campus placements two more days ahead, the TCS “officials” have come to spend some professional time with us. ‘Placement training’, we call it. Us students being divided into 5 different groups, I’m in the first one called ‘Aakash’ meaning ‘Sky’. 59 of us and the day started.
It went on with Mr. Ambu, Phd ABCD MDD FAGP JINFI, etc (He’s got a hell lot of degrees and I only remember the alphabets and not their order!) giving us a talk on the philosophies of life and stuff. He was so full of exploding energy that even those among us who found ‘philosophical talks’ boring, did not feel bored. He went on and on and came to the point of making the remark which is the reason why I’m writing this post.
He came to the distinction between winners and losers and asked us if we could point out what the difference was. The usual answers, “Winners never quit, quitters never win”, “Winners take responsibility for their actions”, etc came from us but none of them was the point he was looking for.
Finally he said what it was. His remark was, “Winners do what they don’t like to do”. And with that our first session was over.
We all went to have lunch and me on my way back to my hostel, felt really weird about his remark. I mean, it has been only 8 months (Wow! 8 months!!) since I started this blog and I had a very good reason for starting it too.
The reason was that for the inauguration of ABACUS, our CS Association, a very renowned entrepreneur had come to give us a talk. His name is Mr. Shalin Jain. He had started his own company at the age of 18 and it is now one of the most successful ones in India. Tenmiles corporation.
As of now, I consider him a winner.
His most important message in the talk was to follow what we loved. And that one sentence he said is the reason why I started my blog. I loved to write. And that belief was contradicted by Mr. Ambu’s remark.
Also Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, said “I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did”. So was Steve Jobs not a winner?
There was something wrong with the perspective. And with all this in mind, I came back for the second session which had three more minutes to get started. Mr. Ambu told us we could ask him anything we wanted. Me being never good at restraining myself when I’m brimming with something within me, jumped up and put forth the question to his cute face.
“Sir, do you consider yourself a winner?”
“Well… I’m trying to be one as in life one has to always look forward and for success”
“Alright.. But I haven’t quite made my point yet. Do you consider Steve Jobs a winner?”
“Get to your point please…”
“Okay sir… The thing is, when you said that winners did things that they didn’t like to do, one of the beliefs that I held dearly to was poked. The reason is that I consider Steve Jobs a winner and what he said is that what kept him going was that he loved what he did… So how does that go with the remark you made?”
I thought I had got him for good. I had cornered him and he would helplessly admit his defeat. But he had a lawyer degree plus he was a part of the TCS HR team and now I know even God would have a hard time winning a debate against them!
“You see”, he said, “You took what I said in the wrong perspective. I was speaking from the students perspective where if you guys are working in some company, an elderly manager might come and tell you to do something that you don’t like. So in order to step up in life, you might have to agree to the request as a mental investment for the future and do that thing you don’t like to do. But all in all, you have to be passionate about what you’re doing too. Otherwise whatever you did won’t have a soul. But just that in this case the passion will be the mental investment you made in order to rise in ranks. Do you get my point?”
“Well”, said I, “absolutely sir”.
And the second session of the training programme started which went uneventfully with each of us going onto the front of the stage and talking about the topics that were thrown to us.
I’m waiting in my cold room, when the alarm begins to chime,
reflecting on my past tries and it doesn’t have much time.
‘Cause at 1’o’clock, they take me to the exam hall,
the sands of time for me are running low.
When the sir comes to give me the papers,
I take a look through the bars at the last sights,
Of a sem that has gone very wrong for me.
Can it be that there is some sort of answer?
Hard to stop the surmounting terror.
Is it really the exam, not some crazy dream?
Somebody please tell me I’m dreaming,
Its not easy to stop from screaming,
But words escape me when I try to write.
Ink comes but why am I writing?
After all I’m not afraid of failing,
Don’t I believe that there never is a pass?
As my friends take me to the college,
Somebody cries from a room, “May bits be with you”,
If there’s a God, then why has he let me go?
As I walk all my leaves drift before me,
And though the end is near I’m not sorry,
Catch my hand ’cause its willing to write away.
Mark my words, please believe my will lives on,
Please don’t worry now that I have gone
I’ve gone beyond to see the truth.
When you know your time is close at hand,
Maybe then you’ll begin to understand,
Study leaves are just a strange illusion!!!
Yeah, yeah, yeah… Hallowed be my name
Yeah, yeah, yeah… Hallowed be my name
YEAH!
Hey there! My exams are just eight days ahead and I’m taking a short break of about 20 days from blogging. So just wanted to give you a short farewell. 🙂
And hey, the above song is not written by me. Its actually a song by “Iron Maiden” called “Hallowed be thy name”. I just kind of raped that song with my own lyrics in between! Here is the actual song.
A 'psycho' path. 