AG Submissions - March 2010

February !

The shortest, and the most romantic month of the year was one full of excitement here at IIT Kanpur. After the mid-semester exam onslaught, the students got tuned into TechKriti, the annual science, technology and entrepreneurship festival of the institute. The MBA batch was quick to cash in on the readily available moolah. Pushpendra, Tohan, Ram, Hemant and Chetak hogged in a lot of prizes under various business events, owing to their sound business knowledge and . The rest of the batch, happy as it was, basked in their achievements, heartily congratulating them personally and on Gtalk messages (Kudos to the Techkriti champs! ). However, the mood turned sour 2 days later when somebody mentioned a party in the canteen, the champs lamented the perennial shortage of funds, and the status messages changed(currently mine reads, "The judges were bribed" :-P -serves the stingy batchies right !).

The last day of the festival coincided with Valentine's day. The lovey-dovey couples were quick to exit the campus, to celebrate some moments of solitude, while hopeless people (yours truly) as usual, seemed to be busy with the tech fest - "We belong to the Intellectual breed, Yo Man!" / "Girls come and go, but technology is forever!" being some of the lines being tossed around. The insti gardeners, however were a mortified lot, as they suspected the students to be quite cheap, who would rather see the beautiful roses and carnations which he planted with much care in the hands of their girlfriends. Promptly, a fine of Rs 1000/- on plucking flowers was declared, and a copy pasted alongside each flower bed. The plan worked beautifully, as people were quick to resort to e-greetings instead. These greetings have actually found respect in this technology institute, with people vouching for their features (one-to-many, and u get the skills of an 18th century poet to work for you - now neither you, nor your girlfriend understands prose, let alone poetry of that era is another matter!)

To illustrate, I copy a portion of The Reunion, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe over here:

So, with morning pinions brought,
To thy mouth was I impelled;
Stamped with thousand seals by night,
Star-clear is the bond fast held.
Paragons on earth are we
Both of grief and joy sublime,
And a second sentence: -- "Be!"
Parts us not a second time.

Well, if your girlfriend understands this, then there are decent chances that she is a lit professor, and by current social norms, already married.

It is time to change.


Another issue that kept us preoccupied was branding our batch-mates. After the summer internships, people are being classified according to the products that their companies manufacture - Hence, a guy interning at an AC manufacturing company in the operations profile is the AC mechanic - always in trouble in the lecture halls, when the ACs stop working. Another decent fellow, interning in a chemicals/textile/alcohol manufacturing company is promptly termed as the "Bewda" (drunkard). Currently the poor guy has orders of approximately 136 litres of beer, wine and whisky, which have to be delivered in July next (it doesnt matter if he wouldnt be working in the Alcohol division - the booze is key to his safe return). The writer, having the good misfortune of getting into a radio station, is occasionally subject to physical abuse, with people coming and twisting his ears and nose in constant hope that he breaks out into a popular hindi number. When that doesn’t happen, the radio is termed faulty, and is struck on the head several times, as is commonplace treatment with many mechanical devices in Indian households.

And Life goes on... :-)

To end, another feat achieved by one of our illustrious batch-mates was to unsettle a professor in the most odd of situations - apparently, the poor guy forgot to submit an assignment in time, and saw the prof at the chaat stall opposite to Hall 3 one evening. In order to remedy the situation, he stopped by and inquired about the email id, when the faculty was busy popping gol-gappas. Needless to say, our friend got an earful, and a big zero in that assignment.

Till next time,

Au Revoir !!