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).