Year End Review - The Long One

Well, it’s that time of the year again, when retrospection is at an all time high, and people all around are reminiscing about the year that was, what they could have done and what they should have done. I am a big fan of retrospection, as is visible from my previous posts. Hence, I will do my review, but not of the whole year since I have done most of the first half here, but post 2nd semester.
The 3 months off after 2nd semester were the first time I experienced holidays in the true sense of the word. Ever since I remember, I have always had holiday homework or some sort of studying for the next year to do in the summer holidays. But it was also the longest stretch of boredom I have ever endured in my life. Time slowed down. On the academic front, my grades in the 2nd semester were bad. I screwed up big time. When almost everyone else had gone up from their first semester GPA, I had gone down by a huge margin. I traced the cause of this drop to the acquisition of the new laptop combined with a lot of extra-curricular activities in the form of Saarang, Lit Soc and football. This is not to say that I was disappointed with my 2nd semester. It was the best 4 months I have ever had, and much better than 1st semester. I learnt a lot on a lot of new fronts. However, I reminded myself to not go easy on my studies and be more careful in the next semester.
Towards the end of the vacation, I was really eager to get back to college (partly because I was living in a new city, where I didn’t particularly have friends). Oh, and yeah, I learnt driving in the holidays and got my license. I wasn’t particularly thrilled about this (unlike a lot of people I have met) and strangely enough, given a choice between a bike and a car, I prefer a car. This leaves my mother puzzled as she thought the experience of riding a bike with my hair flying in the wind should be thrilling for me. My hair is pretty rough, and the chances of me going at a speed to make it fly in the wind are pretty low, so it’s pretty improbable for me to fulfill that image. Coming back to the end of the holidays, it finally ended and I was back at the college. New semester, new room (right next to friends) and more importantly, no longer first years. I looked forward to …err…… ‘interacting’ with the juniors. In the meanwhile, after a huge debate (at my home, you don’t have arguments, you have debates) I convinced my parents to send my huge keyboard to me so that I can further pursue music. That happened, and I was thrilled and started widening my musical horizon, diverging from classical music. Apart from what I have already said in previous posts, the semester was largely uneventful. Shaastra saw me Vinayak and Advaith come 2nd in the Main Quiz, which was completely unexpected for me. All of us were convinced we wouldn’t even get through the prelims, but somehow we did, and we actually breezed through the semi-finals and the finals (we were 2nd in both by a comfortable margin. The team that won in our semi-final won the final too). A huge chunk of credit for this goes to Advaith, who was insane in the quiz and was responsible for more than half of the points we got. It was his show through and through.
After Shaastra, life was chugging along, till the last LitSoc event of the month came – WM Solo. Now, I had started preparing The Entertainer by Scott Joplin a long time ago, and realized that I can do it in time for this competition. So I started practicing more to put up a decent performance. I knew my chances to actually come 1st, 2nd or 3rd were actually really slim due to the presence of a lot of good instrumentalists, but I wanted to put up a fight. On the day of the event, my fingers froze up, I completely muddled up the opening to the song, and hence, the whole song. I was very disappointed. Glucon’s really awesome rendition of Within Attraction did a lot to bring me back up, but when I returned to my room, it struck me again that I had failed. The reason why this was so important for me was that I always used to think that I screw up something when I go up on stage. This has been true for every time I have gone up on stage, barring last year’s WM Group performance (for which we had practised for a month). I wanted to remove that burden from my head, but not only did it stay, it grew heavier. I still need to figure out a way around this stage fright of mine. I figure it is going to need a lot of practice, and I hope I am up for it.
After the semester, I went on a holiday to Munnar with my friends, where I had a blast. It was 3 days of fun. Also, since I was a Mallu, I was the one who did all the talking and planning, so I had fun doing that too. In the end, it was time and money spent in the best possible way. After Munnar, I went to my grandparents’ place and a lot of travelling ensued, the boring details of which I will not force you to endure.

So how has been my life this past one year? Pretty good, I say. To summarize it -

Highs:

Redemption in grades in 3rd semester. I got what I wanted at the beginning of the semester.
Setting up my keyboard and playing it in my room the day I got it.
SMQ.
Munnar trip.

Lows:

Fights with people that I shouldn’t have had.
WM Solo.
Liverpool’s performance in the league.

Resolutions for next year -

Try not to be egoistic.
Don’t lose the grip on studies.
Play a lot more music.
Improve my quizzing skills by exploiting Wikipedia and revive my lost reading habit.
Watch still more movies.
Watch more football, and try to improve my skill on the field.
Read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy again.

So I hope you had a Merry X’mas and that you have an awesome New Year and success in sticking to your resolutions, atleast till the first month gets over.

Year End - the Short One

Its been the holidays and I have been travelling like never before. I am making a post on the year that was, but till then, here is a questionnaire I came across on Facebook.


1. What did you do in 2009 that you had never done before?
Went on a holiday with friends. Got bored in the summer holidays. Discovered macro mode in a camera, and went crazy.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolution and will you make one for next year?
I forgot what my resolution was. Next year.. well lets see.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No.

3. Did anyone close to you die?
No.

5. What places did you visit?
Madras, Delhi, Trivandrum, Ernakulam, Bombay, Rajkot, Baroda,Munnar,Kodaikanal (stopped over at Madurai and Coimbatore)

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
More stamina, common sense, lack of arrogance, ball control on my left foot......

7. What date from 2009 will be etched in your memory?
Oct 3. Came 2nd in Shaastra Main Quiz.

8. Your biggest achievement of the year?
Has to be SMQ and my 3rd sem gpa.

9. What was you biggest failure?
WM Solo LitSoc 2009-10.

10. Did you suffer from illness or injury?
Slight cold here and there and minor bruises.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Since I bought my laptop last year, has to be my phone - Nokia 5130.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
Advaith - for an awesome SMQ
TI - awesome in WM and LM group 2009.
Glucon - Within Attraction.
Lolli- Hourglass.

13. Whose behaviour appalled/depressed you?
Bob - to be really frank and honest.
mine - ditto.
Raj Thackeray.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Food.

15. What did you get really excited about?
Getting my keyboard to my room from my home.
Munnar trip.
SMQ.

16. What song will remind you of 2009?
Lazarus - Porcupine Tree.

17. Compared to last year, are you happier or sadder?
definitely happier.

18. Thinner or fatter?
healthier.

19. What do you wish you'd done more of?
mug (2nd sem)
played the keyboard
played football
watched football
quizzed

20. What do you wish you'd done less of?
be arrogant
pain other people
be egoistic

21. How will you spend Christmas?
Already done it at home, eating pizza.

21. Did you fall in love in 2009?
Pain of Salvation, Elisha Cuthbert and ..............

22. How many one night stands?
none.

24. Favourite TV programme?
That 70s Show.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate last year?
Bal Thackeray.

26. What good books did you read?
Google Story, Freakonomics, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Pain of Salvation, Saras hostel band.

28. What did you want and get?
A good sem in terms of academics, an awesome winter vacation.

29. What did you want and did not get?
musical enlightenment.

30. What was your favourite film?
Pursuit of Happyness.

31. What did you do on your birthday?
Got kicked on the butt, gave an App Mech exam, attended Workshop and Physics Lab, got kicked on the butt again.

32. What thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
I'll pass this one.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept for 2009?
in a bandana, shouting "totally hardcore!"

34. What kept you sane?
kept me? that train has long passed my friend.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?
Thackeray vs Tendulkar

36. Who did you miss?
a girlfriend

37. Who was the worst new person you met?
I try to look at the good side of everyone.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
lots of them.

39. Valuable life lessons you learnt in 2009?
if a drams has more than 20 people and u have less than a week, u r in for big trouble.

40. Quote a song lyric that best describes your year.
i never really pay attention to lyrics, but if i can describe it in a song, has to be Feeling Way Too Damn Good.

Almost a month

Let me define knowledge as knowing the meaning of something.


"I know the meaning of knowledge"



Random thoughts do strike one's mind when one is emptying his/her bowels, especially when it’s after an exam and with no exam in the horizon, which means that you can dwell on thoughts which are not academic (although this is academic for me as I have a philosophy course which covers a bit of epistemology, I never considered it a serious course anyway). The recurrence in the above statement is pretty amusing, but after a while it gets boring and you get on with life (and get outside the bathroom).

Anyway, coming back to the real world, life has been really generous with me these days, with almost everything going right, risks paying off, and most of all, inner satisfaction which arises from eating a grand meal off someone else's pocket. Also, I have been able to utilize time more fully, thanks to constant retrospection. Last semester I had vowed to watch more movies, because sometimes I really felt out of a conversation, and being made a complete dumbass of in the Lit Soc Main Quiz due to a question on Pulp Fiction didn't help either. This semester I finally got down to working towards reducing that deficit by watching at least one movie in 2 days from the list that I had prepared. I keep updating the list at intervals.

Lit Soc started off pretty well for our hostel, with we garnering decent amount of points in Fine Arts (although there was some weird business in some event where the judge apparently didn’t evaluate some themes at all, we aren’t complaining – it’s of absolutely no use). Queen of Sheeba was awesome this year, with our hostel coming first. Queen of Sheeba is this event where you are given a list of assorted items (some are really tough to find). Some of the items from this year’s list were-

Photo of guy with a unibrow, ship in a bottle, scabbard, cracked cell phone, light up shoes, diary from 1996, broken pair of Bose headphones

Now obviously the people who prepare this list, even unknowingly, will give an undue advantage to their hostel. Last year another hostel had 2 coordinators, and they won. This year we had a coord, we won. So whatever defense we try to put up against the allegations of cheating heaped upon us, other hostels won’t back down from their moral ‘high ground’, so I didn’t bother putting up one against my friends. However, the coord in our hostel told me how they had prepared the list, and trying to be as just as possible, I felt it was pretty fair for all hostels, and the advantage of the coord’s hostel is nullified to an extent. For very obvious reasons, I wouldn't want to disclose it here, or anywhere.

Choreo Nite (the inter hostel group dance event) was a shock, because the judge said he couldn’t give our hostel a position in the top 4 because its last sequence was copied from a dance video on the net. That to me seemed unfair, but I really don’t have the sufficient knowledge to comment on that. When a hostel band covers some actual band’s songs, it is not penalized for it. It might be different for dance, but it was really unfortunate because the team had put in a lot of effort and the plagiarism accusation notwithstanding, they were pretty amazing and definitely deserved a place in the top 3, even according to the judge. But still, from a guy who has quite a few left feet, the top 4 performances were pretty good.

Mono-acting was an event in which we didn’t have any high hopes on, and needless to say, we didn’t get anything from it. But it was a fun event to watch, with the last performance going through the ceiling and far far above, in terms of entertainment. If by some weird luck you ever get the chance to hear the musings of an eccentric hardcore Communist Mallu who has a huge grudge against someone and doesn’t need alcohol to lose inhibitions, please don’t miss it.

Next on the agenda is sports. Liverpool’s woeful form continues, which seriously makes you wonder why Liverpool have traditionally always had poor bench strength. Maybe that is the reason they haven’t been able to win the Premier League which requires good performances every weekend, unlike European League which comes only once a month on an average. Also, Lucas is definitely not a good replacement for Xabi Alonso, and until Aquilani starts playing, Liverpool are going to remain in their current state. According to me, Chelsea has the best squad in the league, and from being 4th on my list of favourite clubs in the EPL, it now is 2nd, demoting Arsenal to 3rd. Manchester United will remain 20th on my list, although Ryan Giggs is the awesomest left footed football player I have ever seen, and my dream is to run down the flanks with the ease of Giggs, and put a perfect cross into the box. As usual, I haven’t been following cricket, mainly because of the TV being in a common room, where going frequently doesn’t appease to my lazy side.

I won’t bore whatever readership I have left with further mundane details of my life. Consider it to be more of an update post, than one on something solid. I have been trying for a long time to write a post on the objectivity of morality, even more after this –



Me: Sir, I think morality is subjective, like almost everything else in the world.


Prof: I promise to take this up some time later, and making you say with your own mouth that morality is objective.




Interesting.






Post Script. Any comments on the fairness of Queen of Sheeba are not welcome from people with whom I have chatted directly. It is a very pointless argument going nowhere, and we would rather not start it than start it and leave it unfinished. Comments on anything else are welcome.

St. Augustine's Problem of Evil

I know it's been a long time, but won't go into the details. Lethargy and inertia are the main culprits. This is an essay I submitted as an assignment for my humanities course - Introduction to European Philosophy. I must say that trying to understand other people's philosophies, keeping in mind the timeline, is rather engrossing.


The problem of evil has been a longstanding problem in the history of philosophy. To quote the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “The epistemic question posed by evil is whether the world contains undesirable states of affairs that provide the basis for an argument that makes it unreasonable for anyone to believe in the existence of God”. In simple terms, if God exists, why is there so much evil in the world. This essay is to understand St. Augustine’s approach and interpretation of the problem of evil, but for that, we first need to understand what the problem is.
To understand this self contradiction, we first need to define the term God. God has been interpreted in many ways since time immemorial by different schools of thought, and broadly we can divide them into two categories. One is a straightforward interpretation, adopted by most of the religions, that God is an omnipotent, omniscient being, whose existence is to satiate the basic human beliefs that good wins over evil, truth over lies. The other definition of God is a metaphysical one, where God is the prime cause for everything in this world, the driving force, and the ultimate reality to which we cannot apply our concepts and perceptions of the world. Now the problem of evil arises in the first definition of God, and very simply it can be stated as follows – If God exists as an omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect being-
1. He knows of the existence of evil because he is omniscient.
2. He is powerful enough to remove all evil.
3. He would want to remove all evil, because he is morally perfect.
4. Hence, evil should not exist, because God would have removed it.
However, that is not the case, thus bringing a huge question mark in front of the existence of God or rather, proving that God doesn’t exist! Thus the problem of evil puzzles many.
St. Augustine’s views revolved around the basic fact that without good, there is no evil – without darkness, there is no light. One analogy he used for this is as follows-
What happens to vices when they are not in the human body? Evil is not something that is fully real but something that is dependent on something more real, for there can’t be any disease (evil) without a body (good).
Initially, when Augustine was associated with the Manicheans, he perceived evil as a tangible material substance, with its foul and shapeless mass. However, as he increasingly distanced himself from the Manicheans over the years and embraced Christianity, he formed a view that God, who is supremely good, created all things, and though they are not supremely good, they are good when taken individually. But taken together, they are really good, because they encompass the universe which is a creation of God. In other words, evil doesn’t exist in the physical world. This transition is explained in detail.
According to the Manicheans, good and evil existed in this world individually, and it was the fight between good and the evil, and the balance between them which resulted in any action, or physical consequences. Everything that happened in this world was for maintaining the balance between good and evil. This was the first point where Augustine disagreed with the Manicheans. He said that the very fact that there is a struggle between the good and the evil shows that God isn’t omnipotent, something he very vigorously believed in. That evil could, in some way, spoil the clean white clothes of God was absolutely unacceptable to him. Also, since God created everything, he would not have created any evil, because he was supremely good.
The next point where he disagreed with the Manicheans was when they said that it was not your material substance that was doing the evil. Rather, it was more like your material substance was suffering from evil. So you had no control over your sins, as everything was part of the cosmic balance. Augustine was a strong advocate of free will, saying that humans were responsible for all their actions. The major difference in this theory and the Manichean’s theory is that while Manicheans point to God as the source of evil, Augustine points to himself as the reason for all his sins, as a result of his free will. This was a radical departure from the Manicheans, and eventually he left the unorthodox Manichean sect for the more orthodox Christianity, under the Bishop of Milan. Augustine says, "when I willed or did not will something, I was utterly certain that none other than myself was willing or not willing" -- that is, that any evil that came about as a result of his actions was his fault alone, as he was the one who made the decisions that preceded and resulted in the wrongdoing. However, this raises the even more difficult question that why is it that we have the power to reject good and adopt evil. Why has God given us such a power, when he would have wanted good all over the place in the universe? It is here that we get to know Augustine’s actual views on evil, and how he perceived it. He first asserts that anything that can be evil is good, because only good things will be liable to corruption. If something is not good, there will be nothing to corrupt. If evil were a substance, then it would have had to been good, and since evil as a substance cannot have any good associated with it (as Manicheans said), it cannot exist as something tangible.
In conclusion, St. Augustine says that his earlier theory of evil was built on flimsy grounds, and it pointed fingers at God’s omnipotence and omniscience, something that he believed in. Hence evil, instead of being something tangible, should be something more corporeal, and rather than being the complete opposite of good, it is just a lesser good. Also, God is supreme, and all the evil in the universe arises from us, due to the power accorded in us by God in the form of free will.
In my humble opinion, I concur with Augustine’s theory in saying that Manicheans’ theory of evil was wrong. Also, all evil in the world arises out of free will. But according to me, this is unavoidable because good cannot exist in this world without evil. At one point of time, one will face a choice between a good and a lesser good, and the moment that happens, the lesser good will be termed as evil. It is impossible that good is uniformly spread over the world – such an extreme utopia doesn’t exist. However, I agree with the Manicheans when they say that every action is a result of the struggle between good and evil, with a minor difference. It is not that good is fighting against evil, it’s just an individual who has to choose between good and evil, and the struggle in the thought process behind that decision.



Acknowledgements-
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
www.everything2.com
www.wikipedia.com
www.google.com
History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell


p.s. My latest addiction is the DOS Game Zatacka, or Achtung Die Kurve

Reservation for Women Bill – How it is not double standards

The Bill for reservation of seats in the Parliament for women has been there in the Parliament for an enormous amount of time, but nothing solid has been achieved upon it as it has been thrown around, delayed, thrown some more, and delayed a lot more. It has elicited a lot of public opinion, many NDTV Big Fights would have been held on this, and similar to this, many blog-posts would have been written. It basically says that one-third of the seats in the Parliament should be reserved for women, because of the current woeful representation(59). Some politicians like Sharad Yadav have made it clear that ingesting poison would be better than passing this bill.

The idea for writing on this came from a post my friend made here. Now if you read his opinion, the point which he makes is that the same liberals, who oppose reservation on the basis of caste, have no qualms reserving 33 % of the Parliament for women. Now, from this statement, my first conclusion is that since I agree to this, I am defined a liberal. And as a justification for my argument, I would say that I am not opposed to reservation on the basis of caste as such. During the Arjun Singh fiasco, when he introduced reservations for OBCs in educational institutions, I was not aghast at reservations being introduced in “premier” institutions like IITs and IIMs. I was rather against the fact that reservations are still needed, when they were supposed to be phased out after implementation in two 5-year plans, i.e. if this was 1950, I would not be against reservation on the basis of caste. Even now, reservation on the basis of financial status, albeit a little lesser than 50 % is fine with me, it is almost equivalent to giving scholarships to people who need it so that they can study. But reservation on the basis of caste now, I am against it simply because it has lost its status as a means for supposedly lower-caste people to join the mainstream and has become a shortcut for ‘affluent’ ‘lower-caste’ people to good education and jobs. I mean, the Gujjars were creating a riot 2 years back because they wanted to be declared as a ‘backward’ caste! Is that signs of a successful reservation system? I don’t think so.
Now coming to the reservation for women in the Parliament, I support it because of the same reason that I would have supported caste-based reservation in 1950 or financial status based reservation now – the representation of women in the Parliament is low, and it needs to increase. Now people may say that since this is a democracy, everyone has an equal right to being a representative of the people, and there should be no reservation in the Parliament. I disagree. I say, that would have been true, if ours was a perfect democracy, and women were treated here like they are anywhere else in the world. Since that is definitely not the case, hence rules for a perfect democracy cannot and should not be applied to India. Instead, we should bend the rules a little bit, so that India moves towards that dream democracy that it is not, but is trying to be. My idea is, reservation for women should be introduced, but with a clause. It should be phased out after 5 elections. Hopefully, in the course of these 5 elections, women will start getting adequate representation in the Parliament, things will start working out better for women in the country, and then, we should remove the quota in phases to find that the no. of women doesn’t substantially change, even though the quota is gone. This was the basic idea behind caste-based reservation way back in the 50s, and hence I support both of them.
There are some people who are saying that caste-based quota should be introduced within the women’s reservation in the Parliament. But as there is no caste-based reservation for the men in the Parliament, why is there such a need for women. Also, caste and vote bank politics ensures that welfare of ‘lower caste’ is adequately represented in the House. Ergo, I am against that too.
Bottom line is, I believe that supporting reservation for women in the Parliament while opposing caste-based quota in educational institutions and jobs is not hypocrisy. The Women’s Reservation Bill is long overdue in the Parliament, and I believe it should be passed.

Nothing Else Matters

My piano cover of Nothing Else Matters by Metallica. This version is heavily inspired from the performance of Saras Hostel in our inter hostel WM Group Competition in LitSoc 2009 (especially the interlude). Its on a KORG SP200 and the weird camera angle is because i wanted it closest to the amp. I have a made quite a few mistakes here and there, and need to improve my pedalling.

Should IITs be expanded?

Read this-

IITs to introduce medical and law courses

Kapil Sibal’s recent announcements as the HRD minister have evoked a lot of response, especially from the student community. First of all, I would like to say that compared to Arjun Singh, he seems a lot better and for once I think we will see more of people-centric decisions than caste or vote bank appeasing ones.
Coming to the announcement of IITs to become universities offering medical, law and other courses, I feel that it is unnecessary more than useful/harmful. I mean, it won’t do any harm, but it won’t do any good either. Just associating with the IIT doesn’t mean that the quality of the courses will by default be good. Besides, it’s an Indian Institute of Technology and if the above move takes place, we would have to rename it. (though that is of least concern possible)

The logic behind this move seems that since IIT is a premier institute when it comes to engineering, people will automatically think that a law (purely for the sake of example) course from an IIT is also good and hence we can go on creating top-level courses for each discipline by just offering it in an IIT. This is flawed according to me, and I can give an example for that. IIT Madras offers a 5-year MA course, through the entrance exam HSE. Currently, only a small fraction of the students studying humanities (students mainly studying in South India) write this exam, even though I am sure that this course is pretty good. The reason that it is not popular is because it will take some time for its reputation to build. Its first batch is yet to pass out. The same applies to what the HRD Minister is suggesting – even though it will be offered from a premier institution, any course will take some time to become popular among students as one of the best in the country. If this is the case, then you need not club it with IIT as a university – you can as well start a new college or like IITs, a number of colleges for, say medicine or law (for which you can increase the number of National Law Schools, which are to law as IITs are to engineering). The reason for saying that IIT should offer courses is pretty much bunk, is what I am trying to say. Instead of starting new IITs all over, the government can do a favour to students by starting medical colleges on the lines of IITs, because I remember even when I was in 10th, people intending to go to the medicine field were meticulously told by family and friends, that the number of colleges in the country is low, but on the other hand engineering students are always told –“kahin pe to ho hi jaayega” (which translates to – “you will get into some college or the other”) because of the surplus engineering colleges in the country. That is the reason why engineering has become the foremost option in any parent’s mind when it comes to their child’s career.

When I was discussing this with my friend, he argued that this decision was good because slowly people will start treating humanities and commerce students on par with science students. This is pretty baseless according to me because of two reasons. One, this consequence is based upon the assumption (rather fact) that parents of students today are crazy just about the brand IIT, whatever the course may be. And two, I agree commerce and humanities are treated with disdain and there is an urgent need to remove this bias, but I feel this is not the right way. For example, would you compare a literature or economics student from Oxford or Cambridge with an engineering graduate from MIT or CalTech? You simply cannot, because they are just different, as different as apples and oranges. We should aim for a similar educational structure with world-class institutions established for all fields. Does MIT have a bachelor’s course in literature? If it has, would you be as awed as you would be of an engineering graduate from MIT? So instead of offering other courses in IITs, let us create new premier institutes for these courses. In fact, this should have been done long ago. If they are anyway planning to open new IITs, they can instead open IIMSs (Indian Institute of Medical Sciences, for example) instead.

Even in terms of infrastructure, the present IITs are almost exploding with students, struggling to cope with the increase in intake of students every year. I have the privilege of living in the campus of an IIT myself, and I have seen and appreciated the flora and fauna of the campus. In most of the cities where IITs are situated, the IIT is located in one of the greenest areas of the city. Expanding an IIT would mean that a lot of trees would have to be cut down, as a result of which an IIT loses one of its charms.

Bottom line is, instead of exploiting the people’s love for the word IIT by opening a lot of them, why don’t you try diverting it to IIMS or NLS? This will do good to a lot of students who would have otherwise ruined their life taking up engineering simply because there aren’t enough opportunities for them to pursue their higher studies in the field of their choice in a premier institute.

P.S. I have never intended to discriminate between students of any stream/discipline or treat a law/commerce/humanities student with contempt. Please don’t treat this as the high-handed rant of an IITian, just treat this as a commoners viewpoint on such a move. If this has caused offence to anyone, I apologize.

Fun way of math learning

Check this out.
I wish I had the aptitude (or rather appetite) for learning math like that kid.


Today, I had one of the most refreshing debates on facebook. I dont know if non-friends can access it, but I am posting the link anyway-

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/note.php?note_id=114270495118&ref=mf


For the article which spawned this debate, click here.

Phew! Thats a lotta travelling.

Okay, that has been a hectic one and a half months, which saw me travel large distances. As soon as my exams got over, on May 1st I left Chennai for Delhi, where I was hoping to meet some old friends and school. That happened, and it was fun visiting the school once again, being introduced by your teachers as the smartest kid in class, best quizzer etc. (I was never good with modesty, though I loved being honest). On my last day there, I made the mistake of spending a 150 bucks to watch Watchmen, which according to me, was a very weird movie, the kind of which you have to wiki afterwards, so that you get those Ohhhh-so-that-was-what-that-was-all-about moments.








I am sorry Doc, but I just didn't like it.







After that and a 45 hours spent in a train in which they serve food for people with minuscule stomachs (they serve 2 rotis, so small that you can feed them to ants, and still they will be crying for more), I reached God's Own (mine too) Country's capital. 2 days later was a cousin's wedding, in which I had good traditional food after a hell of a long time, and boy, was I a wolf that day. In Kerala I met up with a friend and had nice game of football. Otherwise, my hours were passed in eating, sleeping and playing badminton.
After that, I reached Mumbai on the 4th of June, where I enjoyed Vada Pav, and some quality reflection time in front of the TV, where I realized that India wasn't going to win this World Cup T20. On 12th, I boarded the Saurashtra Mail, and here I am in the land of Milk and ....errr....well, not sure there is a lot of Honey here, but still its fine.

This entire trip around India saw me put on fat, and with no sign of any physical exercise for the next 2 months........I am told that the future is clouded by tachyons (Thank you for that insight, Doc Manhattan). I ate a lot of stuff, and most of it was awesome. I developed a love for fish, all kinds of them - be it fried or curry.






Karimeen Pollichathu - One of my favourite dishes, which involves doing some kind of cooking that I do not know to a fish which is peculiar to Kerala backwaters.






Now that I am in a city which can hardly call my home (I have stayed in this house for only 10 days, and know absolutely no one here except for my dad’s colleagues) my days here shall be passed in driving lessons, playing the piano, watching TV (lots of it), reading books and whiling away time on the Internet. I leave with a question which has disturbed me quite often –


In a movie theatre, which arm rest is yours?

Travelling

Its been a long time, but I have been travelling in the last 2 weeks, and after going to Delhi from Chennai, I am now in Trivandrum with my grandparents. Due to unavailability of Internet (I am in a cybercafe now), I won't be posting till I reach home, which will be somewhere in June. So till then, adios amigos.


P.S Oh yeah! needless to say, the food here is awesome.

Year in Review - and Plans for the Future

As my first academic year in IITM nears the end, I have discovered that there are some things, which I would like to pursue for all my 4 years here (3 more). One important thing that you have to take care of if you want to make full use of your time here (apart from academics) is to prioritize. I and my friends have had a lot of discussions on this. You can’t keep on trying stuff till 4 years get over and there is nothing you have gained. I am of the view that all the trying should be restricted to a maximum of 1 year, and then you should prioritize, pick and practice (wow! I came up with a 3P prescription………make that 4P). I have made a list of 4 things that I am going to pursue over the next 4 years – music, football, quizzing, and LitSoc in general.
Till now, I have always played music alone, which is interesting, but not half as much as fun as when you play in a group. When you play solo, you don’t need to take care of coordination, volumes of each instrument, tuning, and other things, which are very crucial when you play in a band. It is also a lot of fun when you play in a band, the late night practices, grub sessions, and the general banter (in insti lingo- farting) in between practices. Here I discovered the joy of playing with other people, and I want to do that for the next 3 years also.
I think it was around class 11 when I gradually shifted from cricket to football. I do play cricket occasionally, but if you ask me to pick one of them, it will always be football. Even in my JEE days, I played casual football quite regularly. When I came here, I saw that I wasn’t very bad compared to others, so I started playing here too. I bought my first football boots after coming here (and have already worn out 2 pairs here). I got through the NSO selections (which by the way is a very big farce) and made it to the hostel team, which ensured that I played football almost every day. I plan to keep playing football till I can, and am going to try to get into the insti team next year, as I heard that both the left wingers are passing out this year.
Quizzing for me starts way back, in 3rd standard where I was gifted the whole set of Bournvita Quiz books by my parents. I was a big fan of the show when it used to be good (and when it used to be quiz, before it became a talent show) and it was like a religion – watching it on TV at 12 on a Sunday. Throughout my school days, I quizzed and enjoyed quizzing, and I carried that enthusiasm into college, and though the quizzing style here is very different from what we had in school, I still enjoy quizzing here. Recently I put up a quiz of 15 questions for the Quiz Club Meet, and my questions were appreciated (though almost all of them were very easily answered).
LitSoc – Here is one thing that I realized very late into my 2nd semester, quite recently. I had planned to pursue my other 3 interests even before coming here, but LitSoc is one thing that caught my attention and made me interested in it. For the uninitiated, LitSoc is the inter-hostel trophy for LITerary and SOCial events. Competition has always thrilled me, and I thrive on the competitive spirit, bordering on RGing (there simply is no non-insti lingo word for this, so please forgive me). So I thoroughly enjoyed the competition between different hostels, and was disappointed even more to lose it to a rival hostel (and later, even lost the 2nd position). I have decided that next year onwards, I will work towards getting the LitSoc trophy back to where it belongs (we have been winning it for 3 years, before this year).

Western Music videos

Here are the videos of our hostel band performance in the LitSoc (non insti people, read: Inter Hostel Literary and Cultural Competition held throughout the year) WM competition. We came 2nd, which is quite an achievement considering that we didn't have a drummer! For all those who laughed at us and said that we can't play WM without drums, in your face!




This is Lazarus by Porcupine Tree. TI on the bass, Sayash/Rubber Band on guitar, Sutta on tabla. Dandiya on vocals, and yours truly on the keys.








Pure Narcotic by Porcupine Tree. Same instrumentalists as the previous one.





This is Nightmare Cinema, and instrumental medley. TI shifted to his natural instrument, which is the keyboard, and, in insti lingo, "raped" it! This was the best of the lot.



The winning performance was by Saras, which was truly amazing and out of this world. Here is their own composition, called Hourglass.





This was also partly the reason for lack of posting in the last few days. All the LAN hours used to go in practice, and I used to return to my room at around 1-2, when LAN would have gone. Nevertheless, I learnt a lot from this experience. Till now, I had played only solo. I had never played as a part of a band before, and trust me; it is very different from playing alone. There is an enormous amount of co-ordination required, and dedication and practice. This year, TI played a big role in us winning the 2nd place, right from song selection, to the last song, which was practically assimilated from different sources by TI and Sayash. TI is passing out next year which will leave a staggeringly huge void in our music group. I hope we get some musically inclined freshies next year, and more importantly, I get the hang of band performances.

Long Time

I had almost forgotten that I had a blog to update, when I received a mail saying that a guy (who will henceforth be referred to as Lead) had left a comment on my blog. Now, you see, if it was any other guy, I would have taken my time. But a reminder coming from a guy whose post frequency is vertical lines, I simply had to post, and then I decided that I will post on Lead. So here is the story of Lead.

Lead is a very clever nickname devised by one of our common friends (henceforth referred to as Ramen) describing an anatomical part of the former. It is rumoured that Lead and Ramen are involved in a relationship, but then there is this another theory that Lead has a girlfriend back in a place (henceforth referred to as Digland) whose existence has technically not been proven yet, leading to yet another friend Vuthshir coming up with a theory that she doesn't exist.

Imagine an elephant. Now scale it down to human size, and decrease its thickness to half. Now decrease its stamina by a factor of thousand. Make it very homesick. Now, make him sit in front of a TV/Computer Monitor, with a mobile to his ear. Now draw a speech bubble around its face, and type any 10 random words picked from these-
"Shit, amazing, awesome, incredible, shit, movie, scene, shit, acting, blog, shit, sooooo, Bangalore, Sweety is hot, shit, noodle, gay, shit.”

The image you get is roughly what Lead looks like.

Once upon a time, in a place where every fish lived in rivers, there was this place called String where everyone used to go and have dinner, when the food from the king of the mountains used to be bad. One fine night saw me, Lead, and a few other fish (namely PI, Pooj, Babu, and Kayaniv) having dinner there. Here is how the conversation goes-

Lead: “Hey! Have you guys seen this movie called blah blah blah? The acting done by XYZ fish in that is sooooo incredible! Please please watch that movie!

Babu: I will watch that once I get my own computer. Since I have made up my mind about doing this, this will have to happen, and this movie WILL be watched by me.

Me: I am not interested in watching this genre of movies.

Lead: Ooohh! Then you should watch this incredibly amazing movie called blah blah blah blah, which has awesome cinematography.

Me: Ok, I correct myself. I am not interested in watching any kind of movies.

Lead: Ooohh, then you should watch……………………………………………


(This pointless discussion goes on, till the discussion reaches a stage, where everyone is discussing about their rivers)


Pooj and PI (in unison): Our River is super awesome. We have so many fish who can pick up musical instruments at random from the river bed and start playing them.

Lead: I wish I weren’t in Kala River.


(Everyone turns towards Lead, with a shocked expression on their face. You see, in this land, it was preposterous to think that you didn’t like your river, however bad it was. So even if Lead was justified in hating his river that way, he shouldn’t have made his thoughts public, and hence this shock)


Me: What the fish dude. Why are you so negative about your river?

Lead: You shut up. Your vaGOD river is so full of fish who are very talented, and you keep getting such people every year. My river is one of those rivers where you put in all those fish who come from somewhere near bryderahad so that due to the large number of such fish, we die of lack of oxygen.

Pooj: Dude, how many fish in your river can you talk to, like you are talking to us right now?

Lead (thinking):……………………………………………………


(Still thinking)

(After a full 30 seconds)


Lead: There is this fish in my school, who I can greet by saying Hi!

Me: Is that all. I mean....

Kayaniv (all this time, he was silently brooding): Hey, but.........

Me: Shut up. Don’t interrupt me. (Kayaniv gives me a pleading stare, and goes back to his brooding silence.) If you stay this passive, what else would you expect from a river. Let’s take an example. You like playing water polo, don’t you?

Lead: Yes.

Me: But if a guy comes to your nest and asks you to come out and play water polo when you were watching a movie, would you do that?

Lead: Errr…… Errrmmmm……………. No. I would go back to watching the movie. Yesterday I was watching this movie called……………………………………………………….


(After a long and winding description of a particular scene from that movie)


Me: Coming back to where we were, if you don’t go out and interact with other fish, then how do you expect to not feel bored and unwanted in the river.

Lead: But no one I can talk to lives next to my nest.

Me: It never happens like that. Are you so lazy that you can’t swim a short distance, or are you scared that you might pass out on the way?

Lead: Errr…… Errrmmmm…………….


(The conversation continues like this, with a lot of Errr…… Errrmmmm……………. from Lead, till it reaches a point where everyone discusses about what they want to do. I will skip to the most interesting part, which, as you may have guessed by now, is Lead’s)


Lead: I want to quiz, write, play water polo, learn to play the guitar………………….. (and a countless number of other things)

Me: Dude, you have to prioritize and choose which ones you really want to do. For example, when you already know how to play the mandolin, why do you want to learn the guitar?

Lead: But the mandolin cannot be played as a part of any group here.

Me (laughing): That is the lamest reason ever I have heard for learning the guitar, or rather anything. What happened to your creativity dude?

Lead: You don’t talk about creativity. Your vaGOD fish came with up a creative writing entry which sucked balls, because I didn’t understand it.

Me (laughing harder): I stand corrected. THAT is the lamest reason for anything ever.

Lead: Hey, parodying the fish from South India and is sooooo much cooler!

Me: It’s already been done by someone.

Lead: Oh. Shit.


(Here the story ends, because “my creativity ends at midnight” and the time now is 1205)


Elements of the story are fictional, but most of it is true and accurate to a fair degree.

Plumbum, you are going down.



P.S. To know more about Lead, click here

The Grand Theft

Sorry for the long delay. It was because of a combination of quizzes, lethargy, sleep, laziness and general boredom. Today, however an interesting thing happened. I lost 1500 bucks; or rather stolen would be the more appropriate word. I forgot my wallet in class today, but remembered it before leaving the class, which is about 3 minutes after I left it on my table, but by the time I got back to my table, it was already gone. Pretty obviously, it was taken by someone in my class itself, which includes all students of Mechanical, Aerospace, Civil and NavalArch students. I first frantically checked all the desks in the row I was sitting, but to no luck. I checked with the people who were sitting beside me and behind me, but there also no luck. I finally started spreading the message through SMS that I had lost a wallet. I was very scared by now, because it had my ATM card, student’s ID card (which requires Rs. 1000 for a duplicate one) and Rs. 1500 in cash, with which I was planning to treat my friends for my b’day. Fortunately, a good soul came and returned the wallet to me in my room, saying that it was found near OAT, which is quite far from where the classes are held. It had all my cards, but zero cash. Also, my mess food coupons were also flicked. My first reaction was that of extreme relief. I had told my parents by this time, and even though they didn’t make that big a fuss out of it, I knew that I had blown it big time here. Slowly, the feeling of losing Rs. 1500 started to sink in. Then, that of amusement, that the guy who actually flicked my money, also took the care of emptying my mess coupon booklet worth some 40 odd bucks.
All this got me thinking into one direction – the people who study here, are supposed to be the cream of India, and even though I won’t make any assumptions as to these people would be the ones who will lead India and all, but these are the people who can make a huge difference. But if some of these people don’t have the ethical sense of returning a wallet to its rightful owner, especially when it has a card which tells the finder about the owner of this wallet, then doesn’t it make you feel uncomfortable that some of these may actually become our leaders in the future. Do we really need to wonder where our Ramalinga Rajus come from? My final emotion was that of disgust because of the fact that I am studying with such students. This proves one fact - moral sense cannot be drilled into a person, it all depends on your character and upbringing. I am not saying that I will not be tempted if I see 1500 bucks just lying around somewhere. But if I know whom it belongs to, I will definitely give it back, because I know that losing something that expensive, causes a lot of stress. This comes from personal experience, because I myself am quite careless.
This, by the way, should in no way be treated as the general trend. I have made some really great friends here, who I can trust to any extent. We have helped each other countless number of times, and I realized that the friends that you make when you are in a hostel are especially close, because you literally live together. But a few people like these can indeed spoil anyone’s impression of the whole lot. I learnt my lesson today (as I did when I lost my mobile, my pen drive, my keys etc.). Be ultra careful with your stuff. Not everyone is your friend.

Coming of age

Today was my 18th birthday. Even though it was my 18th, it was the least eventful birthday I have ever had, because of the quizzes going on. My 18th birthday was spent in the workshop and the physics lab!
My friends gave me 2 awesome gifts and a card.


a pillow for the eternally sleeping guy!!


a doll which is supposed to be my daughter (whose name by the way is natasha)!



thats supposed to be my birthday card.

Quizzes

Before I had come here, quizzes meant a lot of fun. A guy asking random stuff about some guy who did something which is completely unrelated to what he eventually became famous for, was awesome fun for me, and I could participate (or watch) a quiz all day long. In 11th and 12th, I used to surf all these online quiz blogs, and I, along with a friend (and later another friend) started one here, though it died very soon, because of the pressure of studies in the latter half of 12th. Fortunately, here I have a lot of opportunities to pursue this passion of mine. But all this is history. Now, tell me that a quiz is coming up, and instead of jumping up and down with joy, googling, wikiing (and rereading the H2G2), I will probably ask you if you are sure, and then again, and then again............. and after that, when I am positively sure that you are right, I will remove the dust off my books, pick them up and start studying, stop sleeping in class, and ....... oh yeah, before all this, I might even die of a heart attack. You see, quizzes here refer to the periodic tests that they conduct to see how much we suck at a particular subject, and then give the best grade to those who suck the least. Honestly speaking, that’s not true for all subjects, but for most of them, this is the case. As you might have guessed by now, this post is coming from a guy who is in the middle of his quizzes, and has screwed up his first one badly.
I am not so much against the concept of 'quizzes', as I am against the way some subjects are taught here. I agree that a student of engineering might require knowing the basic concepts of quantum chemistry, but according to me, the professors just breezed through the syllabus, and I can assure you that more than half the people here would have just mugged up the formulae, vomited it out and forgotten all of it by now. And this is by no means an accusation, because I too am part of that fraction of the population. So basically, we spent 3 hours every week for 2 months, just to remember it for the end semester exams. I don't get the point of doing this.
But I can't blame this on anyone, because obviously the teachers teach with the purpose of making every student understand the concepts. It is probably our fault that we don't get it, and more importantly, we don't let them know that we haven't got it. No feedback reaches the teachers and hence batch after batch are made to recite Hamiltonians and what not, like parrots, and forget it soon.
Another interesting phenomenon that I have noticed after coming here, is that majority of the people lose the motivation to study almost completely. I mean, after slogging for 2 years preparing to get into this place, people completely lose interest in studies after coming here. I know that it's very clichéd, but it’s true. The popular reason is that once you come here, you have run out of the mental stamina that you put in for clearing JEE and you want to enjoy your life, and hence studies take a backseat. However, I don't agree with this reason. First of all, I don't think that something called mental stamina exists, and I don't think that you can get tired of studying after doing it for 2 years. That people want to enjoy life after coming to college, is also a lame reason because you can easily enjoy the availability of facilities and opportunities for extra-curricular activities here without it affecting your grade card, and there are pretty good living examples here in some of our seniors. The real reason for the drop in this motivation, I think, is the basic structure and method of academics. There is a very major and fundamental difference in the style of teaching in college and school – spoon feeding. Whether you like it or not, you must agree that we were spoon fed concepts, problems, theorems, their proofs and all, in school. However, here you are required to do a lot of homework on your concepts. In school, careful attention is almost enough to understand everything. In college, listening in a class carefully is not enough (doesn’t imply that you sleep, like I do). You have to do a lot of homework and come to class, or go back to your home and do a lot of reading. But the most crucial point here is that no one tells you all this. You are supposed to get it, like you are supposed to get the stuff they teach. Here, students lose out. Early on, due to lack of this knowledge, students start appearing lost in class, and then finally lose interest in the subject. This leads to students losing interest in academics, and just turning into high quality parrots.
I might be sounding like a big and monstrous hypocrite now as I, even after knowing all this, sleep in class and am not interested in some subjects. I won’t even try to defend myself. I caught on to this line of thought somewhere towards the end of last semester, and since then, I have been trying to develop a genuine interest in class, but in some subjects, am failing miserably. I intend to correct this as soon as possible, so as to make my stay here in college easier, and much more fun.

DISCLAIMER: All the views expressed in the post are solely of the author, and any suggestion/criticism/opinion/brick-throwing/hurling abuse is welcome in the comments section.
P.S. If you find this post weird, I tend to be philosophical like this at times, especially after I have done badly in a quiz. Don’t worry; I will be back to normal in a few days (assuming I don’t screw up any more quizzes).

Superman

I'm more than a bird
I'm more than a plane
I'm more than some pretty face, beside a train
It's not easy, to be me.

Very meaningful lyrics, of a song called Superman, by Five For Fighting. I recently heard this song, because we were planning to play this for a competition, and the lyrics just touched me. The mind of Superman is very beautifully described here. We always think of him as a guy in red and blue who would just swoop down on (not always) damsels in distress and rescue them. That he might feel lonely when he is flying alone through the clouds(without Lois Lane, of course), may have never occurred to us. The song is also very soulful, with a nice blend of the piano and the guitar. Listen to this on good speakers, and it really soothes your mind. No wonder this song became very popular in the US, as a song for healing following 9/11. It's right up there on my list of soulful songs, along with Home by Michael Buble. Home was awesome because I was feeling a little homesick towards the end of first semester, and I chanced upon this song just about that time. I could totally relate to it. Not surprisingly, that song also has a lot of piano in the background.
I feel that the piano is the best instrument for songs that calm your mind down, followed by the saxophone. Somehow, I always relate violin to the peppy Balkan kind of tunes, which remind you of the Hungarian tap-dancing that we see in cartoons, or very melancholy Ilayaraja tunes, in which it almost sounds like the violin is crying. Acoustic guitars are also there, but they don't touch me as a piano or a sax piece does. You can call me biased, maybe because I play the piano, but then, its a matter of opinion, isn't it?



P.S. A Happy Valentine's Day to everyone. Hope that people like Ram Sena and MNS don't spoil your day. My day, was rather subdued, spent with David Griffiths trying to understand the intricacies of the Dirac Delta Function (rather unsuccessfully).

hello world

weird.
awkward.
sleepy.


That pretty much describes how I am feeling right now. I don't even know why I am doing this. Maybe, its because I have exams next week, and I am feeling bored, or maybe because "some" people can't maintain their blog frequencies. Whatever the reason is, as I am here, I have to tell you about me. Here goes.....
Name: Achyuth for some, Tempo for some.
Sex: still a virgin.
Age: 17.
What: 1st year student of B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering in IIT Madras, Chennai.
Why: exactly my point, why?
Where: err...... nice question. You see, I am an MFDNIGSIC (Mallu From Delhi Now In Gujarat Studying In Chennai). Not seen many of them, have you?
How: this doesn't fit in here, does it?
When: 18th February, 1991


Now that we have covered the questions part of the introduction, I think I may tell you more about me. I am a eternally sleep-deprived student, who fulfills his nocturnal lack of sleep in a building called CRC here in college. I love football, Liverpool, Spain and Torres. I also love music. I occasionally quiz, though I want to make it a more serious passion of mine.

I think thats enough about me now. Other aspects of my life will unravel as we go along (hopefully atleast into double digit number of posts). I think I better start studying something now.



P.S. the last sentence has been extensively repeated in a lot of conversations that I have had in the last few days, though it has never materialized.

P.P.S. 42.