AG submissions - February 2010

Brand New Year, same old antics!
This phrase sums up pretty much all of what the MBA batch of IITK has been up to the entire month. With a brand new semester (which was incidentally started 4 days before 31st – the administration was really keen on making us celebrate the new year together – or raking in a decent amount of late fees from people who join after 1st, which was duly explained by the late-registration extended deadline of 5th January) after a month long vacation, the junta was in no mood to study. The Professors however, always being more concerned than the students about their careers, were in no mood to relent and the train chugged off to a sluggish start, picking up steam till about the 10th of the month.
For the 2nd year students, nostalgia had already kicked in despite their still being in the campus – From sentimental gtalk status messages, to full attendance in even the most boring electives, they are really feeling sad about leaving the insti, which makes the juniors wonder what there is to be sad about – lots to be frustrated about surely, being loaded with lectures, presentations and assignments, apart from the endless committees and clubs they happily subscribed to in the first semester calling up meetings every now and then.
“Why the &%$# did I join that committee man? Doesn’t even look that funky on my resume and these jerks keep calling me for a meeting at 12 in the night!”
And life goes on... 
However, the last day of the month surely sprang up some surprises.
A lazy Sunday afternoon at Hall 10 (the farthest corner of IIT Kanpur, and home to 88% of the 1st year junta) was stretching on. The weather is a tad pleasant these days, as the infamous nerve-wrangling Kanpur winters have finally started to depart, and the summers are yet to kick in. People were found dozing, or catching up on their daily dose of sitcoms and movies, blissfully unaware of the readings and analysis to be completed for 3 back-to-back lectures the next day. Suddenly, a random soul, who probably came outside to hang his towel (Sunday being the bathing day, as going on for more than a week leads to professor’s complaining about unpleasant bodily odors) saw a fire in the barren field behind Hall 9 and 10. Apparently, a construction worker had stopped by for a discreet smoke, and left a burning cigarette in midst of the vegetation.
Well, news spreads faster than fire in a boy’s hostel, and soon the entire populace was hanging out of the balconies, eager to have a dekko. Some eager lads quickly ran outside to lend a helping hand to the SIS guards who were trying to contain the flames, but the security blokes had the good vision and common sense to deny them any fire fighting equipment (read: water pipes and tumblers) lest they burn themselves (however, I believe that the actual reason was that students generally tend to aggravate a tragic situation, rather than alleviating it). Thus, having been denied their rightful duty, 3 courageous lads from our batch took to the next best thing – reporting the event live. Armed with a hand held camera-cum-video unit, Chandan, Gyan and Akshaya rushed to the accident site in an attempt to take stock of the situation.
The reporting was quite hilarious to begin with. The enthusiastic trio (camera man Chandan, and reporters Gyan & Akshyaa) would rush to each and every person present on the location, much to the chagrin of the SIS guards. Some of them, who suddenly found themselves facing a camera and a bunch of enthusiastic journalists, quickly assumed that a sting operation was being held, and responded with a, “Humey kuch nahee pata hai, hum to abhee abhee aaye hain” response (I don’t know anything, I have just reached here) before running away quickly. Our manager-journos assumed this to be a ‘prashashanik samasya’ (administrative problem), where nobody wants to answer the aam junta. Students from other halls were not spared either, with their views being sought over the matter. The poor kids obliged too, thinking that it was an actual news channel, even enquiring about the name (to which our reporters enthusiastically replied – “Avant Garde” !!).
We have uploaded a piece of their footage for our readers to enjoy. The youtube link is given below:

With February bringing in the first mid-semester exams of this season, the reporters, the AG team, and the entire MBA batch has promised to put the issue behind them, and get back to studies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9AOv-oF428

Till the next issue,


Au Revoir!

My first article !

My experience at IIT Kanpur

With a mixed bag of emotions, I boarded the train on Monday, the 19^th of July, to come to Kanpur. The industrial town, which also hosts the prestigious institute, was new to me. I have never been here before (barring the 12 odd hours for the interview stage), and was quite apprehensive as this place is going to be my home for the next 2 years. I remembered that night 3 years ago when I faced a similar situation, moving to Bangalore, and took heart in the fact that my stint there was a very enjoyable one. I was determined to replay the same script over here again.

The first thing that shook me was the weather. In the summer months, the heat is really on in northern India, and Kanpur is no exception. The sun is merciless, and leaves you parched and dehydrated. It sucks every ounce of your energy and you really need to replenish yourselves with water after every couple of minutes. Although I am a Delhite, living in the pleasant Bangalore weather for long had rendered me completely unprepared for this scorching heat.

Reaching the campus, I proudly instructed the auto wallah to drop me off at Hall 4, as I was duly informed through mail that our accommodation has been arranged over there. I made it to the warden’s office, where to my dismay; I got to know that we were temporarily to be housed in the SIS barracks!

Well, the barracks are a nice and cosy place. You have lots of cots lined together, some of which have a tendency to kiss the floor as soon as you sit on them, to the amusement of everybody else. Sometimes the fan above your cot refuses to budge from its resting place, in which case if you have been friendly to your neighbouring cot-mate, he might let you align your cot with his own. That too, is quite a dangerous situation, as during the night, he might tend to show some brotherly love.

Unfortunately, I was not able to enjoy this setup for long, as the coordinators shifted us out to Type-Vs, where you get to share a flat with 7 other people. Two such flats share a common guardroom, which is strangely equipped with an AC while the flats are not! The guard duly informed us that this room doubles up as a reading room for the students. We did make good use of the facility for the next 6 days, albeit not as a reading room but as a ranting room... where we would rush in after all the orientation lectures, which were used to test the potential of the speakers as professional sleep inducers, without the side-effects of the traditional sleeping pills.

The honeymoon period was soon over, and we were again shifted to Hall-10, situated right at the periphery of IITK. Looking through the window, I can still see the fence which separates me from the tigers, leopards, cheetahs, gorillas, elephants and other horrifying animals which I am sure lurk around, ready to devour me any instant.

Come next Monday, I got ready dutifully, ready for my first lecture as a postgrad student, and went to study accounting fundamentals.

Dr Sinha has an innate ability to bring out the worst in you. Discussing the first lecture of a course, Sir was keen on getting the class to discuss the definition of accounting. Gaurav obliged and the rest of us followed, uttering all sorts of nonsense to our heart’s content! Much to the chagrin of the German exchange students, who were really bewildered at our ability to exploit the education system.

2 weeks of fun quickly went by, with readings, a couple of quizzes et al. Most of the times, when I was unable to comprehend a word of whatever subject is going on in the class, I observed the teaching style of our dear professors. Varman Sir(OB) is sarcastically brutal, Mehta sir(Ops) has already lost faith in our abilities, Mishra sir(Com) magically gets to know that all of us have done well in the quizzes which he never bothered to collect !

RRK Sir(Mktg) curtails all scope for discussion after a presentation, as he quickly jumps on with the topic. I guess he has figured out our nonsense-generation abilities, unlike Dr Sinha. Puneet Sir(Eco) is quite energetic and merciless; energetic by way of his teaching style in class, and merciless because of the odd hours of night when he assigns reading material.

So you can see that my first 3 weeks at IITK have been quite eventful. And I hope the rest of my stay stays that way. :)

(Something I wrote when I joined IITK... as part of the selection process for AG Editor. I got the job !!)