Sexuality at KGP

I am not going to make another controversial statement here. However I would like to point out an awesome piece of work done by the campus magazine Scholar's Avenue at:
http://www.scholarsavenue.org/kgp-sutra/
I personally participated in the survey and so I can attest to the fact the questions were very well posed and relevant. However if I assume that most of the people did give truthful answers and the guys did not pose as girls just to have fun answering their section, I feel really disturbed by a few facts:

1. That half of the girls have been misbehaved with one time or other in the campus. I hope that was not due to their sex.
2. That very few IITians are actually tolerant of homosexuals. yes 60-70% might seem a large number compared to the nation average. But considering the intellect available here I would have expected it to be at least 95%.
3. That some of the guys have been asked out more than 3 times by girls during their stay at KGP. I find it hard to believe if its not downright false bragging. 
4. That almost half the people have no problem in the net being censured. My pro-pornography stand not withstanding, I say to them "Dude! Freedom of speech". It doesn't matter what I do in private. Nobody can ask an adult to not do something which is not hurting others. Every time some dictator curbs basic human rights, he starts with small things like curbing Freedom of Speech. So down with censuring.
5. That some 10% of the girls think campus security with respect to women is inadequate. I would dearly love to hear what else they want it to be.
6. That some 6% females would not vote for a female candidate standing for the position of VP. I leave those chauvinist males who would not vote for the same, but its astonishing that some of the females have similar attitude.
7. That some people look for their religion and caste while choosing a suitable date! Astonishing! Especially since those who are from the General Caste background constantly complain how the SCs and STs and OBCs no longer need reservations, and those who are from SC/ST/OBC would have ideally like to shake off the stigma associated with coming to IIT as reservation candidates.
8. Some 9% people think that they would pay for sex as long as its out of the country. Imperial Hangover? Seriously?
9. Some 58% of the males said that physical intimacy was not very important. I would not even know where to begin with this point. So I am going to leave it alone for now lest people think I am some kind of deviant.
10. And finally what was that with some people being okay with open relationship only in college? Such hypocrites! Either you are okay with it or you are not! But this way it looks like you are okay with it until you move on to a more stable life. 

My rants not withstanding I am still proud of being part of such a community. Wish the rest of the world were more like us!

still they think we are stupid

I begin with this link:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Five-top-Union-ministers-offer-to-quit-to-revive-Congress/articleshow/12855371.cms

What a joke! The top 5 ministers quitting Congress isn't going to solve anything. Congress still thinks the citizens are just a bunch of nincompoops who can be fed shit wrapped in shiny new package. First let the Gandhi family resign. Let them withdraw all those special allowances towards a nobody named Robert Vadra. Then we will see.

And after all that I have a personal demand. Let "our next PM" take an IQ test. I am sure he will be found wanting in that department. Once that is done, let Madamji treat her son just like any other concerned parent would in this case, i.e send him to a special hospital (preferably outside India) who deal with such autistic people.

A list of things irking me

What can I say. I love making lists. (avoiding deadly PJ about serial killers here)
So here is the latest list of things around the world irking me apart from Religion and fantatics of course, which is going to outlive us all, even if it manages to kill all life on the planet.

• IPL: Seriously, how can people watch it or endure it. Is there any point in being Ravindra jadeja and pasting a bowler like some XYZ Singh to all parts of the ground whose dimensions if reduced by 10 yards or so will become the fielding restriction circle itself. It is becoming any eyesore whenever I visit cricinfo or Times of India. Its like that most annoying song of Salman Khan/Emraan Hashmi you keep hearing at every corner of the street during festivities. And you simply can't shake it off, even though that is probably competing with some of Bappi da's worst music in the world
• If IPL can still be forgiven, what is with this sympathy towards Pakistan cricket. Yes I can understand that coming from the bulk of the other cricketing nations whose knowledge about Pakistani people is limited to the great Wasim Akram and Zaheer Abbas. But it is deplorable and highly shameful coming from Indians. Don't forget the nations is a backstabbing viper, whose citizen Kasab is still stuck to our flesh as a thorn. If the government has done something right is to stop all cricketing relations with the nations. Long story short, India and Indians should just ignore Pakistan. Don't forget the numerous terrorist attacks, the three wars where Indian citizens died defending nothing but snow and sand. In fact whatever land was won, was returned by the short-sighted politicians like Indira Gandhi, who thought she could buy sympathy [Result was simply a praise or two and then it was all forgotten]. Forgive but do not forget. Learn from history.We may not have our 9/11. But the total number of people who dies from various terrorist attacks since the 90's are way more than that in 9/11. I admit that majority of Pakistanis have nothing to do with these attacks and that they are the worst sufferers of terrorism in the present world. They do not deserve that. But a nation has to be selfish towards its own sons and daughters. We have enough problems in our nation to cope with. We don't need sympathy towards a people who have constantly let people like Zia-ul-Haq lead them into such a radicalized state. As the cartoon said, they deserve these leaders and terrorism as much as we deserve our leaders and corruption. So no cricket and no nothing else. That's it. And for fuck's sake stop saying that IPL misses Pakistani players. I do not care a dime about IPL. But Pakistanis deserve no share of the hard-earned money of the common men in India.
• Mamata Banerjee................Need I say more? She might be the most honest politician in India, but the only reason for her existence seems to have been eradication of the plague called CPM. The problem with such an existence is that as soon as you achieve your goal, your life is left with no meaning. Just like Israel has no reason to exist now and nor do Pakistan. I am so exasperated by her and her antics. TMC goons nowadays are as good as CPM goons were in those days. The problem is that in this digital world they keep getting caught red handed even though hardly any punishment is meted out to them, as is usual with any party in power.
• Congress, the Gandhis and their lackeys like Diggi Raja..........These people lower the IQ of the entire nation. After the debacle in Delhi civic polls Kapil Sibal said it wasn't because people thought congress was responsible for the numerous scams that have surfaced of late. He said civic polls were about local issues and not the national issues. I fervently hope that this is not the case and people are intelligent enough to vote against congress for the very reasons Sibal denies. The very fact that Sibal denies them to be reasons is another way of saying "People are just lain stupid. Whatever issue you can present to them they will just gobble it up. Their memory is poor. And long live Congress and its ways". That is just plain insult to the citizens of India. This is just one statement from a Congress member. I am not even going into whatever bullshit that spews out of Rahul Gandhi (like that famous comment regarding his being a brahmin or Hindu terrorism being a greater threat than Islamic terrorism) or the other people of Congress. I will give Congress thumbs up in one issue though, that is trying to bring FDI in India. Though that is immediately offset by their poor commitment to their ambition regarding FDI.
• Roadies, Big Boss and the thousand other reality shows out there. But especially Roadies. They just assume the audience is not only dumb but as dumb as fuck. And to my dismay the audience continuously proves them right. I have never watched a single episode of any of the reality shows. I am just irked by the fact that people around me watch them. And for those who still can't get me regarding this issue please watch the spoof Rowdies on youtube. That I have watched and immensely appreciated. Big Boss is as bad as Roadies. There are many reasons for that. I am going to state just one here. Its none other than Salman Khan who despite being a murderer of human beings and endangered animals never actually had to pay for his crimes. And people worship this guy! 
• People talking about how Tendulkar should retire. To them I say just name a suitable replacement. And no, Virat Kohli doesn't count. because he is already an established player in the ODI team and he can at most fill one part of the huge vacancy left by Dravid and Ganguly in the test team. You say Rohit Sharma? LOL......the guy doesn't even value his wicket. Ajinkya Rahane?..............too immature. First let him play in place of the totally amoeba like form of Sehwag. Pujara?..........same reason as Rahane. Manoj Tiwary?.......Doesn't matter how much Gavaskar praises him. He is simply not up to the standards of even someone like Gautam gambhir. 
• This endless fascination of some people with European football leagues. Don't get me wrong but I love football. That is I love quality football. Like the ones Brazil or Germany play at the world cups, and somewhat about the Euro Cup. And there are few people out there with more knowledge about international football statistics than me. But I can't seem to give a shit about Manchester United or Barcelona. Screw Messi. He might have all the talent in the world but he plays shit if his Barca teammates are taken away from him. The last time I actually liked European Football leagues was when Real Madrid was at its pomp with Luis Figo and the genius Zinedine Zidane creating magic in the field. To me supporting chelsea is like if I say I support the Los Angeles Lakers and keep on talking endlessly about how good Kobe Bryant is. I can debate with you gladly and endlessly about whether Puskas was better or Platini. If Lev yashin was as good as everybody say he was. But here I put a stop. No club level sports please. So stop talking about these pointless leagues in front of me. 
• Most Hindi movies................no comments here. just go and visit The Vigit Idiot a wonderful blog by Sahil Rizwan. you can find why I hate them.

Probably the most important piece I will ever post

When I explained my philosophy to people,

• My close friends took it as my strange sense of humour and laughed
• My not so close friends took it as satire and laughed
• My "non-friend" acquaintances pitied me and laughed
• My parents became over-concerned and tried to convince me their ways
• My teachers thought I was crazy and tried to counsel me

Nevertheless I lived my philosophy. I succeeded in

• failing for the first time
• failing repeatedly
• procrastinating the so called "most important work" to the point everybody became exasperated with me (Actually I never finished it till date)
• I enjoyed obscenely. I still do.
• I screwed up
• I was hated
• People envied me
• People said I am just another attention seeker

And so I LIVED. I STILL LIVE.

Now I see that people are mailing each other this piece of speech:
http://halfhalf.posterous.com/dont-work-be-hated-love-someone

People say that it resonates with them. Still they forget it after forwarding the mail to someone else.
I am not as articulate as the litigator here. May be I failed to explain to the people. It doesn't matter. All that matters is that I have definitely crossed the barrier of "AVERAGE". And this is one thing I am never going to be apologetic or humble about.

I have not loved yet. That is the only thing in their left to be achieved by me. JEE ended my life. I have lived after death. YES I HAVE!

No amount of money will I trade that with...........

My top ten scenes in The Wheel of Time

Needless to say that I am too bored now and hence this post. I am not really in the mood for explaining my reasons here for this list. I will get to it if I find time sometime later. So here goes:

1. Egwene-al-vera fighting against the Seanchan marath-damane captors in The Gathering Storm
2. Galad Damodred defeating Eamon Valda in the most awesome sword-fight scenes in sf & fantasy in the prologue in Knife of Dreams. I was awake for more than 24 hours by then and I was reading the book while lying down. But that scene made me sit up and sweat.
3. Dumai's Wells battle scene between the abductor Tower Aes Sedai, younglings, the Shaido and Perrin Aybara's company and the Ashaman in Lord of Chaos.
4. Rand-al-Thor's unbelievable display of channeling to almost wipe out the entire Trollocks and Dragkhar army in Maradon in Towers of Midnight. 
5. Rodel Ituralde's awesome attack on the Seanchan army in Knife of Dreams Prologue. Matrim Caouthon maybe the best general the pattern ever created, but those guerilla tactics of Rodel Ituralde brought sheer joy to me. (maybe because they were against the Seanchan?).
6. Nynaeve-al-Meara's healing of the gentled Logain Abler and stilled Siuan Sanche and Leane Sharif in Lord of Chaos. Nynaeve-al-Meara is my favourite character in WOT and she has so many awesome scenes, but I could only fit this scene in the top ten.
7. Perrin's fight with Luc/Isam and Egwene's simultaneous attack on the Black Ajah and Mesanna in Telaranrhiod in Towers of Midnight. So finally Perrrin gets the chance to be awesome while not being thick. Especially where he just dispelled balefire. Also Gawyn Trakand has the chance to redeem himself in my eyes.
8. The final battle between the heroes of the horn, the Children of Light and the Seanchan, with Rand-al-Thor battling Ba'alzamon in the skies of Falme and the simultaneous rescue of Egwene by Nynaeve and Elayne from the Seanchan in The Great Hunt.
9. Now comes the skirmishes of Matrim Cauthon's Band of the Red Hand with the Seanchan while trying to escape Altara in Knife of Dreams
10. Cleansing of Saidin in Winter's Heart. Well no point explaining this scene. I am sure everybody is a fan.

So many scenes missed out,and among them these stand out: The interactions between Mat and Tuon over Winter's Heart, A Crossroad of Twilight and Knife of Dreams, the awesome scene between the trio of  Egwene, Mat and Elayne in Lord of Chaos, and again in A Crossroad of Twilight, the scene between Birgitte Silverbow and Mat in A Crossroad of Twilight, Nynaeve-al-Meara's numerous hilarious antics, Rand's exasperation with Dais Daemer scene with Hurin and Loial in Cairhien in The Great Hunt, Mat's other antics (the Robert Jordan written ones. I think Brandon Sanderson failed in this one bit), Eqwene's standing up to the Tower Aes Sedai after capture in Knife of Dreams and The Gathering Storm, Siuan Sanche's interactions with Gareth Bryne, Mat's trapping of the Gholam in Towers of Midnight and lots of others I can't recall right now.

RIP IITJEE......But what next?

Everyone I meet, (by everyone I mean IITians of course) are mourning. They are mourning the end of their precious IITJEE. They mourned when the pattern was changed from subjective to objective. They mourned when the standard of the objective examination fell below that of AIEEE. Now they are mourning the end of that very thing altogether. Yes, unsurprisingly I am one of them. But this post is not another nostalgic bout about those JEE days, nor it is how the politicians erred in scrapping JEE. This post is about what to do next, now that the ultimate sieve which selected the best and the brightest, pushed them to such intellectual limits has been done away with.

Is it going to be any good now that students who excel in their board examinations through sheer hard work and rote learning, will come to join these premier Institutes of India. Let us analyze that first. Some of the people think the hard earned reputation of the IIT alumni that ropes in hundreds of companies during the first few weeks of placement will take a hit. The placements will take a hit because the companies won't want these "substandard" student. This argument has no merit whatsoever because firstly, there are hardly any job these companies offer that require above average intellect. Anybody who has passed higher secondary can be trained to do these jobs. In fact all IITians who join these companies regularly complain about how mundane the jobs are, how anybody can do them and how bored they wanted to have more challenging jobs. So if anybody can do them they why not the future batch of students. One thing, I think everybody agrees on is that whoever comes out of the new system will possess one particular attribute. He/She will be hardworking. And that is all you need to be successful in the company you join. Secondly, most of the IITians leave their first job after four-five years for greener pasture. Because, if you are good enough, and IITians in general are, then there will always be another company willing to hire you for a better salary. But if the new batch students aren't that good, then they won't have another company waiting for them. So they will stick to their old jobs, which the companies recruiting from IITs will actually prefer. They don't want their training to go down the drain when the employee leaves them for a better package. They want to suck every last bit the employee can offer. Therefore the placements won't suffer. In fact these days companies who are suddenly preferring M.Techs to B.Techs at IITs because undergraduates simply don't stay put, will be back hiring the undergraduates by hordes.
The other issue that concerns the IIT alumni is that the quality of research will fall. By research they mean post graduate research. Ans since all of the IITians who are inclined towards research leave India for foreign Universities, even if the quality of research suffers, it would not affect India. Obviously the charm that the IIT degree exudes to the foreign universities will fade with time if the quality of students coming out of IIT falls, but ideally that should not affect the students individually. If you are good enough you can do it from an ordinary Indian Institution. You don't need the push that the IIT Degree gives you. To be established among the best and the brightest one needs to pass through a rigorous examination, If it is not JEE then it will be the one after your graduation when these elite foreign universities will examine all aspects of your life- your projects, your grades, your GRE score, etc because the weightage given to the IIT degree would not be given any more.

Overall I think the system will self-heal. Those who are concerned that the students who are actually skilled in analysis and problem solving won't get into IITs can be rest assured. They will find a way to get in. You ask how can I be sure? I can be sure of it because most of my fellow IIT students that I have met have been school toppers. And personally, I have the confidence of clearing any exam in the world given six months of solid hard work. So I believe the deserving students will find a way to clear the board examinations with distinctions. I won't be surprised if the top marks in the various board examinations climbs a few notch or two because of the competition it is attracting.

So relax guys. Let our juniors enjoy a better college life because one thing is sure to happen. The abysmal sex ratio at IITs is going to change overnight. And after all is said and done, life is supposed to be fun. Its sure going to be more fun for the juniors in this aspect. If they don't discuss the fine nuances of chaos, fractals and relativistic mechanics, so what? As long as the company remains uniform, (uniformly dull or uniformly bright) it is not going to matter.

Reliving a few moments of the past-I

The debates on the pros and cons of social networking are never going to stop. I was introduced to this concept by the mighty SDM. He won the KVPY scholarship in 2004. And as a part of the scholarship scheme went to do a project at one of the IITs. When he came back, he returned wide-eyed (being the only one in contact with real IITians) with the knowledge of Orkut, supposedly the next coolest thing. One fine evening he says, "Do you do social networking?" Me being the proud puppy then promptly say, "Nope". But I refuse to divulge anymore lest he knows that until that day I haven't even heard those words together. A few days letter I find his mail inviting me to Orkut. It didn't take much time after that to engage in the well-known battle of "who's got more scraps in their scrapbook". And orkut being the place where one could send friend request to girls and actually talk to them normally, quickly it became the favourite past time. The talking to the girl thing is important because even though we studied at a co-educational school, that talking to a girl thing never really happened. Girls weren't friends of the boys, except for the cases of a few studs who turned out to be duds later in life (but that's another issue). For us nerds however, who pretended to be brahmacharis at school, so as to avoid being ridiculed by other similar pretenders, Orkut was the cool multiplex to hang out at, meet girls and get the testosterone flowing just thinking about the fact that, "Oh yeah. I am so cool. I am talking to a girl right now". Never mind the fact that everything's in the virtual world.

Then the most uncool thing happened. We went to college. Being an IITian gave us the feeling that now that we are the best of the best, the smartest of the people, we won't have to chase THEM. They will chase us. It never happened. Though the occasional congrats and the regular praise kept coming in, it finally became too awkward to even reply because after a year or so everybody had landed rather badly on the real grounds. The hope of finding the best looking girlfriend never died though. We had resorted to sending friend requests in orkut to random girls of nearby locations, and once we had struck a conversation (read scrapping) we continued that to our newly discovered gtalk. Sometime the lucky ones found it was possible to continue the conversation on phones. The result was catastrophic in certain cases. I remember a particular case vividly. There was one girl (let her remain unnamed) who somehow got into the friendlist of everybody in our wing in first year (Mostly the guys added her and in a few cases she added the guys). All the guys were excited about her, never mind the fact that nobody knew her or seen her. (Those days indian girls from small towns never posted their photos). But everywhere ranging from the mess-table to the DC main chat was abuzz with her. Finally, I don't know exactly how it happened, but three of my friends ended up meeting her at a nearby place (a previously arranged rendezvous). One had a camera and we had our first look at the photos. Our reactions were summarized by one fellow who promptly said, "emma e to kajer mashi re!" (looks like the maid). So that put an end to things there..............except I never actually stopped replying to her scraps. But I didn't have a personal computer then. So being the addict that I was I used my neighbour's machine. And one day the inevitable happened. I forgot to logout. My neighbour julie invited a few others to defile my account and fulfill his lifelong desire of having a proper no holds barred sex-chat with the girl through my account. (Yes, to my surprise she responded. Till then I thought sex was only pleasurable for men in India. For women it was just the thing to do to reproduce and get it over with. And no amount hollywood movies would change the notion, because it was hollywood. Even now I just can't believe that is entirely false). So when I found out about all that, it put an end to my adventures in orkut temporarily. No harm in recognizing that I was immature to be embarrassed enough to remove her from my friendlist.

In the meantime the smarter guys around me had somehow already acquired girlfriends. And suddenly the rest of us were finding the old Murphy's law coming true, "All the good ones are taken". Naive that we were we decided to wait and watch, for we were sure or degrees would attract the best and the brightest of the flock. However we were wrong. Now even the bad ones were taken and none were left. Suddenly I was finding even the guy who could hardly utter one sentence in a group was chatting animatedly on his phone through the night. Even though the chats were highly audible and entertaining ("How do you find the moon tonight?" or "I forgot to wish you good night yesterday") they quickly got irritating.

Soon that chapter was ignored and life went on. Though the idea never really died. Then with a bang arrived Facebook..............Lets continue the story some other time. I am feeling way too tired to type anymore........Too many papers to write

PS: Excuse the English please
PPS: Because this post is only for me...a legible photograph of a long gone time.