Open Source

I used to think xkcd was funny. Then, one day, I realised that they were just stripping off my pet peeves and posting them online. Was that ever shocking. So, basically, that constitutes violation of free thought, and robbing me of the glory I deserve. But then, I always see that the comic is registered under Creative Commons, and immediately settle down. That, and the fact that my geek wifi seems to transgress spatial and temporal boundaries, and does not seem to require administrative privileges to be accessed.

Now, this is supposed to either cheer me up no end, or infuriate me to a similar degree. I cannot decide which.

Obsessive Compulsive Neurosis

This is great! That PDE exam was a pushover. Three freaking questions! And all of them could have been answered by a first year undergrad! Man, I am basking in the Sun alright. Even if there is no Sun. Did they think they could do me in with that level of exams?

Or did they? Come to think of it, that exam was TOO easy. There is no free candy. Hell, the assignments took longer. And the prof did say there would be fewer questions if the exam was tough. Three questions seems a bit low to me. Something fishy is going on here.

Did I get to do all the questions? Did I read all the problems in the booklet? Well, there were only six pages. Two pages per question. No, that is out of the question. I could not have missed any questions. Then….
But the last question. It asked for the maximum value for the Laplacian defined in the exterior of the circle. I solved it for the formula and got the result from there. But was I supposed to solve it? Now you come to think of it, I think I can prove the maximum principle for this case. Was I supposed to use that? A completely explicit solution would give me the same result. But would I be given credit for that? Oh God, did I just screw up my exam?

I need coffee. Lots of it.

The Madding Crowd

Moving to a new country is very stressful. If you are an Indian, then it will freak you out. That is, irrespective of the language, of how good the people are, or how digestible the food is. I spent the first five days trying to immerse myself in work to prevent the occasional panic attacks. Sure, you are getting enough money (tax free). You have a command over the language that dazzles other international students. You manage to figure out the public transport system within a day and take advantage of the free transport pass the university provides. But then, you approach a familiar face, and it speaks to you in an unhindered American/Canadian accent, and you feel, “Hell, these aren’t my people.”

Academia is different. There are lots of people there, and no one quite feels at home. As they say, if everyone’s special, then no one is. You blend into the atmosphere much like a chameleon into a tree. Thanks to the efforts of a select few, we get assimilated into the society, irrespective of culture or language. And, well, the university has the perpetual feel of being soaked in high school culture. Immature? Yes. Do I like it? Sure! Makes me feel more important.

After I left R-land, I picked up this habit of comparing everything to my memories of the old Insti. “I expect the walk to the market is about as far as the walk from my room to the mess.” “Back in the Insti, we used to have the parantha prepared so and so…” “The coffee in the Nescafe cost half as much as it costs here.” The good and the bad, the profound and the trivial. It seemed so natural to have things like that. Now, the same argument can be extended to my stay in the West. Everything seems so complicated. There are a million little things we have to keep in mind, and none of them seemed to matter in India. Even the less bearable points of your home seem to be second nature. How many times have we eaten in others’ messes without registering. Or how many free bus rides have you had?

Strangely enough (or maybe very predictably), there is a huge Asian population in the university. CanIndians are a dime a dozen, but they remain apart. And, of course, the Far East has reached far here. There is a crowd on campus that I could not find in the city. It may not be the old crowd of familiar faces and tongues, but as it flows past me, I can’t help but be reminded of home.

Adios, mes amis

Around this time tomorrow, I’ll probably be getting my last glimpses of Delhi for another year or more. I did not get to meet everyone from school. I missed catching up high school crushes and college buddies. I have not had the pleasure of driving through the South Delhi area on a monsoon Saturday evening. My last purchase from Midland was Slaughterhouse 5. Could my departure BE any more premature?

I did get to meet the junior junta from R-land a  few days back. It was a whirlwind trip, 42 minutes of work (so I guess), and mostly lazing around, hoping somebody would come to see me just because they missed me. Five hours of general bakar later, I left, feeling a little empty. This wasn’t my home anymore. It was a nice place, with lots of friends etc., but once you know that the tiny room where I could shut out the world, fall into song, hide my worst fears, was no longer the fortress of solitude it had been three months ago, the insecurity is just too much to brush away. If I expected a part of me to be left behind in R-land, someone must have evicted it from that room for sure.

I did get a Doggy treat later, the Poetic Creep cribbing about most things as he usually does, and then stumbling onto DJ and Hari, more than a year since I saw them. So I guess my college life still does follow me around. And then there was much catching up to do with a decade and a half old friends, going through the travails of undergraduate life, sharing the common from different places. The thin sheet of ice that was found was thawed by reminiscence of old and new, with elements of surprise and pleasure only adding to the warmth of the old times.

As a child, it was never my home in Delhi that fascinated me. It was always the far-flung south. Somehow, the green and the grey seemed in perfect harmony there. It stood for all that I aspired- success, money, the luxury of good education and good society, so many things I cannot put into words. Geekiness only accentuated the affinity I felt for the region. Or maybe it was just old connections. Either way, when I thought of home, the fleeting glimpse of a small flat near a huge tower would be followed by wide, tree lined roads with bookstores, geekshops and eateries.

I am still not sure what I expect to find in Delhi. It is another safe place. I won’t ever feel unwelcome here. I don’t have to fit in. I don’t have to choke my imagination. It must be because I lived here as a kid, and the very allure of the place is that of any new place to a child. And, like a child, I find delight in the city in which I grew up, safety in the city that gave me a shelter, and peace in  the city I grew to love.

The Vacant Vacation

It’s that time of the year again. Or would have been that time of the year, if that fateful courier had not arrived to tell me, again, that I shall not be returning to R-land for some time. The extended vacations have been heavily punctuated by marathon reading sessions, loads of comic books, and the rush to gather stuff before going west. In between, there have been some inspired/nostalgic/plain unnecessarily sentimental posts, accompanied by words of wisdom by the many who have nothing better to do than go through the ramblings of old men telling tales from a near forgotten era. I did not become another name in the burgeoning list of the senile retirees of R-land, though it was not for the lack of trying. False starts have plagued me for a long, long time, and, frankly, I had better things to do with my time.

I’ve been rediscovering Batman, in avatars both darker and merrier than the one donned in the Dark Knight. I have also carried forward with my old flame, who never deserts me come what may. Ah, I wouldn’t sacrifice my affair with books for love that lasts a lifetime. At a tome a day, you can’t help but wonder, is there any better way of spending your life? I once remarked to a friend that if I get a single wish to design my own paradise, I‘d make it in the image of a small, paper-musty, but well-lighted room, the air pervaded with petrichor, and the walls stacked with full length shelves of books. Oh, and all the books in the world exist there. Every now and then I dream about this vision, and I never regret that this is the image of heaven as I see it. I won’t mind a laptop and an internet connection in the place, though.

I am stuffing myself on all the good things in life. Come two months, and I won’t be exactly sure what to expect. I am an awful cook, in the sense that I know very little cooking. I can hardly be expected to subsist on potatoes. I hate doing chores. I would love to have company across the hall, but I can’t raise my hopes up. I’ll be barely able to make ends meet. And I need to work really hard. When was the last time I worked that hard? For the Transport Phenomenon course back in my sophomore year. I needed to save a grade, which I did admirably, after hitting rock bottom in the internals. That was two years ago. Or was it a century? Long ago, in galaxy far, far away….

From what I hear, all the people who decided to master management met Machiavellian monsters in their chosen destinations. The only thing that springs to my mind when I ponder over their fate is a chain gang sentenced to 2 years hard labour breaking rocks. I can imagine Lefty’s prided palms being scarred in two months with more work than he has done in four years. And in the west, there are people being left to find solace in Surat. Pity that the journey would take longer than a week’s sleep. I got to know from well placed sources that things ease up after another six months. Hang in there people. At least you get to work.

I have been trying to put the few words I have in verse, with little success. So I’ve just decided to take up reading poetry on a large scale. After my little known quatrains, I do need to put in a more concentrated effort towards writing lines that learned voices never spare. Another of various diversion techniques? Sure, but at least now I can bore you as much as I have been bored.

Finish line

“Congratulations! You are an engineer!” Would you please repeat that, I said. “Congr….” No, no, not that. The other part. “You are an engineer” Again, please. “You are an engineer” Sigh. And sigh again.

I had once hoped I could finish engineering in two years. I still maintain that anyone interested in doing so can finish off Meta in one and a half years. Oh, the first year consists of common subjects. All that I have learned in the three departmental years can be reduced to a single diagram and maybe another couple of courses. Or, as I like to put it, a single Mech. course. Then we could all have been Mech engineers and had more jobs open for us. Too late now.

The last two days have been some of the most frustrating in our lives. A Marcellus Wallace look alike, sans his soul , was intent on concentrating all the evil in him onto us. The simple routine of a viva was clumsily executed, maybe not without intent, making me wish to throw something heavy and expensive at a big, black, smooth, completely detestable surface. There were other factors, but let us just say that we managed to get through it all, or I am sure you will hear an all too familiar story of incompetence, bitching and general depression. Sounds familiar? Check out the Canine’s link on this page.

What now? Awkward hugs and lame, cool guy handshakes apart, I do feel there is a sense of separation floating about. It is all very well to say that we need to make every moment count, but that’s kind of hard if you are flitting between the corners of the institute. The exodus is yet to begin, but the mood has certainly set in. Lefty wants to be the person who sees everyone off, then takes a moment to look around the place where we spent the last four years, then say, oh, what the hell, this place has no KFC, before he takes off. I can’t afford that luxury. Going abroad takes a lot of work. I have honestly never wished more for a world sans borders. No time for any sentimentality as far as I am concerned.

For now, though, there isn’t much to write. Maybe next week. Maybe next year. Living in the moment, I just realized, damn, I may have come in real late, but I sure finished the race. On to the semis, then.

The Old Monk

I feel like a child. Every time I speak to one of my friends, they always counter my view with some high sounding moral logic that I can’t quite answer to. Well, moral as in ‘fitting in with society’. Already, people have started sounding and behaving like professionals. As far back as my second year, I was summarily told to ‘think like an engineer, not as a student’. Ever tried to enter a conversation with adults as a 5 year old? You get the gist, I hope.

I cannot answer to all of my critics as to why I choose somethings, and why I eschew others. To put it in the words of Ramanujam’s biographer, Robert Kanigel, I ‘just do/don’t’. There needs to be no logical reason to my actions, because, over time, some things have been ingrained into me as second nature. The crowd be damned. Why can’t I not care about them? Why is it necessary that I give a damn about what their opinion on the subject is, even if it counters mine? The crowd is a sad entity, in which we fit and adjust to social requirements because someone told us, ‘we have to’. Some of my habits are taken from a social structure of the past century. Some are yet to make headway into Indian society. Either way, these are taboo. And when the misfit is berated for voicing his own concerns as to the loss of his individuality, then society shudders and starts a cleansing ritual.

My individuality demands openness. It calls for lightness and the sole social obligation of doing good. I am not too good at meeting new people on a formal level, and in general avoid it unless absolutely necessary. Plus, for me, friendship is not an agreement signed upon by blood, in which you state you are willing to do anything to please your friends, and not to hurt their feelings. It is more of an honour code by which you stand to do the good and the rational, in that order. It requires no proof other than mere signs of caring, and yet need not infringe on what you are. For eventually, the only reason you are friends with someone is because there is a mutual admiration and affection rather than just the chemistry clicking between you. Friends need not finish each others jokes, people.

And yet, with all my own logic, I stand corrected, nay, bulldozed by my own friends who disagree with me. And at the end of this all, you feel emotionally inadequate, unable to cope with what people think you need to face, and missing out what you really need to face. Sigh. I wish I was 5 again. It would explain so much.

The Bottomless Pit

Thirteen. Thirteen out of forty two in the first half hour. I’d say it is a bumper turn out. I’ve seen two in the first forty minutes. The prof doesn’t seem to mind. He doesn’t even mind that I am not noting down the points that he is dictating. The Don tactically kept the sudoku page to herself when I asked her for the paper, effectively handing me one of those scraps you find thelas use to wrap oily food. Clearly, nobody is studying. Well, save three people in the front row.

Reading newspaper in class is an earache. Fizz, crumple, crackle, crr. No reflex from the prof. He must have been conditioned over the years. Now I’m really bored. Twenty minutes still left in the lecture, plus around an hour’s infringement after that. Bet you he’ll extend it. The poor late comers won’t know what hit them.

There was a moment of hope when he said “I will just stop here….” Ah, freedom! “…and go for the………..” @!$%. One more lamb arrives to the slaughterhouse.

Using symbols for swear words rekindles some fond memories (ironic, eh?). This was a technique oft used by Lee Falk in Phantom. It went something like ‘ “()#%$%@!”*; *- Unspeakable Llongonese word’. My nine year old mind interpreted it as a word that cannot be satisfactorily represented by the Roman script. Asterix took it a level further. &%$&@- Roman. &%$&@- Gothic. Murty, a blog five to celebrate the power of italics.

Thirty odd now. Still five minutes to end of class. No retardation in the lecture, no sign of an end to the monotone, no dampening of ‘enthusiasm’ detected in the prof. He’s talking about cameras. Speaking of which, Nikon has divested the D90 of some of its funkier features to create the cheaper D5000, which, I hear, is a class act. A fine investment, I’d say.

The class has filled up. Tick- tock. The sound of feet and voices from neighbouring classes drifts in, and everyone looks wistfully at the door. A few bold ones make eye contact with the prof and plead. “…..and, at the end, we have the linear detector……” No respite, no mercy. We of the fourth year are cursed people.

Morning Glory

It is not often that I wake up to a call at 6:30 in the morning. After a few minutes of chit chat in which I tried to keep my voice up and not sound sleepy, I grudgingly discarded the comfort of my bedsheet, which was stained red after valiantly protecting me from the assault of a million mosquitoes through the night. The washerman arrived and I sent the sheet for a funeral with full military honours. As I did, the sun flashed in my eyes.

“Oh God! Is it that time of the day already?” Daylight. The sun shone with a benevolence that I had not had the chance to witness for an entire week. Not too warm, not too cold. The light fills you, embraces you and energizes you. In fact, today, it was potent enough to send me off to have breakfast.

Now, breakfast is a concept that is pretty difficult to understand if you have been missing it for the past semester. Eleven o’clock meals do not constitute breakfast. Five o’clock night-out snacks too are out of bounds. So, I expect that the better part of the day will be spent in the analysis of an untimely ingestion of food, which implies that I shall probably miss lunch. Amazing how soon your body clock adapts to unwanted changes in your routine.

It is 9 o’clock now, and I am still virtually the only soul awake in the wing. Lefty has graciously given up his bed to the needy, and the needy (numbering more than one), are distributed among four rooms, the atmosphere in all of which seems to be saturated with the left overs of last night’s revelry. With nothing better to do than wait for the troops to get up, here I sit, trying to piece together a blog post with no matter. It is a good way to kill time, all right.

The Sound of Music

The sports fest in our insti was a bash. Basketball and football golds, great performances in athletics, loads of movies collected and ten-hour sleep routines underlined the three days. For me, though, the sports held little meaning- not that I am not happy that we won that clutch basketball final. I was busy collecting stuff for my- wait for it- 1 TB hard disk. Much work still remains to be done, but with the tests around, I doubt if anyone will entertain a vela 4th yearite. But I got enough movies to last my brother the next year (hopefully after leaving out the seriously strange ones), hope to fill up on sitcoms and series, have an appointment to collect mind your language, and have now got a 60 odd GB music collection, no videos.

On that last part. First, let me acknowledge the contributors. Dela, Sunky…..brilliant musical taste. Especially the Sound of Music original soundtrack. Love it. Also, all that music actually reminded me that I had commitments in other places too. So, it was not without a large amount of guilt and some misgivings that I took the detour to the auditorium in order to just make sure the last musical event of the academic year was going on track. In fact, it was my last musical program as a member of the music section. Little known fact one: I play the violin.

The day before, when I looked in, I knew things could go terribly wrong. Wrong scales, off-beats, faulty mics. As usual. I didn’t tell them anything they didn’t already know. Most of them are virtuosos in their own right, probably far better than I am. But I felt good about trying to be a help.

The next day, I am called up to the auditorium a few minutes in advance. I saunter out, catch a bite, then head off to watch the basketball finals. Fifteen minutes to the end of the game, I am cheering from the crowd, one face among the hundred who had no idea that the program was going to start any minute.

We won in a climactic finish, by a single point. I managed to get Sushi and Triple H to accompany me to the auditorium, promising them nothing, making sure that their expectations don’t reach levels beyond mediocre. Ah, they wouldn’t have anyway. We all took the longer route to the show. Tell you a lot.

First thing that catches our eye as we enter- late- is that a fellow Lit is compering. As she expected, we did ask “What the hell are you doing?”. To each his own, I say. And so we settled down for the rest of the show.

Thinking about it now, this was one of the best performances given by the section in my time here. I finally got to here the new rock artist sing. A brilliant find. The instrumentals were reasonably well coordinated, largely thanks to the efforts of Yella V 2.6 and a second year Meta chap. Vocals were hashed at times. For once, I did not quite tell them that. Many of them were singing their last songs on this stage. I knew my last performance sucked big time, and I didn’t like that.

A concluding victory lap on the stage was boycotted by me for being too corny. It told me where I belonged. I love music. I have had some brilliant time at the section. But I am just not made in the same mould as them. They are passionate, talented, hard-working people. I can’t keep up with that. I can’t function as their group does. I often skipped celebrating with them after every show. Such a close knit group- it would be most other groups envy. But my individuality would not liven that group. It would only be suppressed under the social norms that govern such a body. What a pity. I would have liked to know most of them better. Especially when others ask me questions about who the people on stage are.

I might have been a visible figure in Lit, but I chose to be obscure here. I came and went on a need-to-play basis. I even turned down the offer to perform in Chennai. You can’t have everything, I suppose. The least I can do is acknowledge them as a small, significant part of my life here that I have ignored for too long. So long, farewell…..

p.s. Not sentiaap, people. More of a duty to be done.