Holi Reminiscing

Hiding like people in bunkers during war times fearing being bombed.Hiding like Jews during Holocaust.This is Holi for me.This is what I've turned it into.
I miss being home. The friends who used to stand and shout at the gate. Me bombing and hiding in my balcony. The motorcycle hooligans...and garrisoning near Anuj's place with an army of water baloons and waterguns and eggs and what not.
I miss the holi sweets.Miss massaging with oil early morning.and then getting the colour off.atleast trying to. Mom encouraging me to stay inside,with dad hoping for the opposite.
I dreamt of the park today.I miss the park.
I dont like it here. Sometimes I wonder if down the years I'll miss this place the same as I miss home now. Doesnt look like it.Because I havnt done anything exciting here.havnt gone out of my shell. It has been the same since day one. Same department gossips.Same last ditch effort before the minors.The quizzing and lazying around during normal days.Nothing much exciting.Nothing memorable.
Thats why I made a resolution today.I'll turn it around.I'll create good memories out of this place. I still have two years.

Professor Names

1. Prof. Hanmandlu sounds like hes a malapropism involving the contraction of a very lewd phrase!
2. Pandas might have more brains than their homonymn residing in IIT Maths department.


to be updated and continued...

Well, the Ides of March have gone

Like Lava was the passion

with cracks and crevices developing on the way

Foggy friendships shaken by quakes

All that remains is a cloud of thoughts

and thought and thoughts and thoughts....

Semester 3 Chronicles

Christmas does make you do weird things.I just did something which I have been stopping myself from doing for the past..well..approx.....2 years and 2 months.
Also Look! a mysterious absence of laziness has driven me back to this dashboard for this long overdue post.
I hope the last semester does not turn out to be my best ever in IIT.(in the same way I hope that my 2nd semester was the worst I'll have to face).It was so fast paced that I cant even remember all the eventful moments, and Im sure my summary wont even come close in covering it up to an appropriate extent.

Academics :Linear Programing was a strategic folly,but I'm more or less satisfied with the overall performance.(or maybe so does it feel after the torturous 2nd semester).All the professors were good,and the coursework was interesting.

Quizzing:Aah! This was probably the thing that turned the semester from good to 'wonderful'. I had suspected I might meet with some success in 2nd year,but I didnt know it would come so fast. It all started with a surprise-completely out of the blue- victory as wildcards in the Movie Quiz.Then 2 consecutive wins in QC comps as rep.Then Rendezvous happened,and then Antaragani,and then there was no stopping. I timed my entry in the Hostel Team to perfection as we recovered from a disappointing 4th from the previous event to another win.
The regular Quizzing time-pass with pradeep and gainda were also great fun,as were the Kutub Quiz meets.If this sounds like any self-praising kind of thing,it is because it is my journal ! :)

Swiss music: I needed to write abt it else I would have surely forgotten it. "You need to listen to some cool music to relieve the mind of exam stress" said pradeep- an example of his "so-pathetic-that-it-might-just-work" attempt of convincing me (to join him for the music event) As is usually the case with following impulsive behaviour just before exams,it turned out to be a joyous moment..made memorable by a certain ...Leia Eymann...

Rendezvous: I was surprised that almost everybody found this year cult fest a letdown.
My (attractive?) quizzing secy did bug me a lot,but it didnt stop me from having a great time.
On the contrary,I developed quiet a liking of watching her shout.
Missing out on qualification by .5 marks or starred question did cause a lot of -"Shit I was so close" moments,but the finishing 3rd in Sphinx and a nice Fantasy quiz event with pradeep made up for it.Hitting the last question Connect in Sphinx and rising from 6th to 3rd was my definitive moment of Rendezvous.


Antaragini: As the semester threatened to turn dull after the Rendezvous blizzard(which probably happens every year),I found an escape route to Kanpur. Playing Poker all night with Kumaon seniors,and qualifying for all events except the Sports Quiz and Bolly quiz(thankfully!) made it a better experience than Rendezvous...
(aaah! Sports Quiz hurts....so close..I told 'em teammates to write Clijsters and Burnley and cudnt remem. Fiorentino Perez and Paarko.As it turned out,Aritra also had a similar experience and had his own bloopers,and we missed by 1 mark)
Plus theres an added sence of pride and pleasure when you are representing your college somewhere else.Hats off to Avinash Mudaliar for conducting some beautiful quizzes...
(I'd always remember Et tu Brute and Alfred and Irene Adler !)

The adorable Professor: I dont know in what words to describe my liking of Angelie Maam.When Abhinav said shes just overhyped and is prejudiced etc..I felt like blurting out a bunch of swear words.
Her's was the class I looked forward to all week,rarely missed it on purpose(just once maybe)
.uff...I still cant describe it...The class was just...cool. The way she communicated with students, her extremely friendly way of conducting the tuts etc etc.
I'll never be able to describe it. Maybe after a couple of more courses under her.

Algebra: Well Linear Algebra was a surprisingly smooth ride.Actually the surprising part was I was scoring more than others without studying..and trust me..thats an awesome feeling.Though I still am amused the way I messed up my majors.Modern Algebra was a beautiful subject.
and well..even though those guys think that my Algebra project was not worth a KVPY scholarship,it was a different experience.

Swine Flu Mania: Ha..I dont remember that time much,as it was very early.Though living with parents in the guest house was VERY comfortable,it really hampered my grades.As it turned out I dint really have it,and by a striking coincidence which may appear very suspicious to the public,I came out of illness as soon my test results came out to be negative.

Movie of the Semester : The Sound of Music (last semester's was Star Wars )
Music of the Semester: Western Classicals
Book of the sem: Well...surely there were better books and more acclaimed writers ..but Harry Potter has always been my weakness.
Semester grade: 7.18

Other Notable memories: Optimization TA(lol), T(r)unkush, EEP,2012,Rock Night! , Maths magazine and last but DEFINITELY not the least- Bhattappa and Billi Studappa


I'm sure I've missed many many things,and I'll update this post as they come to my mind.

Things that made Semester 2 meaningful

(In random order)

1.Politics and Seniors: A very emotional experience at that time.Looking back,it was a great learning curve,and easily made up for the interactions I missed with seniors due to lack of ragging.(Even though I had many more interactions than most of my batchmates)..and it made the farewell all the more meaningful to me.
Good or bad,they were colorful personalities I'll surely miss.Also the Football seniors and their valuable ,or rather,invaluable advice.

2.Star Wars and Queen Amidala: 6 Star War movies in a short span will no doubt influence even the most unfeeling, unresponsive, unconcerned of viewers.The Jedi-Sith philosophy is very applicable to real life,and I could straight away relate to Anakin Skywalker.Natalie Portman as Queen Amidala totally took over my mind , until I slowly recovered from the Star Wars fever.The order in which I watched them was 1,2,4,5,6,3...and the last movie was a masterpiece. A fitting ending to my journey in the Star Wars universe.

3.Professor Tripathi: Well I admired him for his maths right from the RMO camp, because I had not seen anyone 'that' good at Maths uptil then.He turned out to be my course advisor,and in an ironic twist of fate,The Quizzing Club President. After all this,the allotment of his course in this semester came as another pleasant surprise.
Even though he has his critics among many Mac Guys including me,I am still under the influence of his injections of Inspirational stories.The Stic Dinner was probably the most invigorating of Sem 2 experiences. I hope I continue to stumble upon him in the remaining part of my IIT life.(or maybe even afterwards).

4.Professor R.Chatterjee:
Though altogether different from Prof. Tripathi, she did what any prof. in the world would have had a tough time doing- made my life in Quantum Mechanics easier. Her insights on the PHP lab practicals was something that really kept my interest going on ,though at the same time inviting accusations by fellow batchmates of buttering and that I liked her only because she favoured me.Maybe it was similar to a self fulfilling prophecy,she expected me to do well,so I kept my interest going in her subjects as I didnt want to let her down.
Thumbs up for her broad-mindedness and interactive nature.


5.Andrew Lloyd Webber: Though I didnt mention this to anyone.This composer literally added a soundtrack to my life. Whenever I was all alone,in R2 or cycling to the Insti..or Library..I would put on his marvelous instrumental music.

6.Quizzing:There was more to quizzing than our hot attractive QC Secy.All the quizzing work I had been doing got official status,and I can feel That after a year,I have gone a level up.I even got selected as a wild card in a Comp and went as far as last 8!
Many things to look forward to next year!{Hopefully they would not involve me and Kshitij blowing up balloons and sticking in invitation cards in them. ;) }

7.Badminton and Basketball:Semester-2 witnessed an increase of Badminton Night outs,mostly with Vipul and Rohan.and I even managed to beat Vipul twice or thrice.Now,mocking him is almost as fun as playing.
With the election of Kshitij as Basketball captain,we made some errands to the Basky Court.Once we even beat a team of outsiders 4 on 4: ME,Kshitij,Raghu,Vipul.

8.Humanities: Hmmm not so much...But Still it showed me a side of IITD I longed for: Art,and Things other than just application-based science.


P.S : Some persons/incidents I might have missed.

Intoxicated

Disclaimer: This work is by no means promoting or glorifying the use of alcoholic drinks.It is bad..very bad and I need not list its endless cons.

He gazed at the glass
His face grew tense
Should I hold back?, he asked himself
or Should I jump over the fence?

His will was driven by wonder...
how it feels to be drunk
So he gulped the liquid quickly
Afterall, he was no monk.

He felt good, he felt happy
His body loosened up,he was on high
He ran to tell his friends
Though he wanted to fly!

He talked loudly, He talked a lot
His friends remarked he looked like a clown.
Shocked they were -never expected this of him
"Et tu Piyush! You let us down."

But for him, it was more of an experiment
- why do people act strange after drinking whiskey,vodka or wine?
Now he knew,now he felt...and when a friend asked..
He could not even tell the equation of a straight line!

And all in all, he quenched his thirst.
Thirst not for the terribly tasting vodka,but of this feeling -
which turned the world upside down
and made the floor look like ceiling.


P.S: 1. It was just a one time thing. No more of this.

2.'Eq.of a line' thing was geeky, wasnt it? Courtesy Kshitij. (I said x+y = c or something,which wasnt that bad.)

3. When asked which of us two was drunk(me or kshitij), two colleagues confidently declared that it is Kshitij.Kudos to you two!

4.WARNING: DONT TRY THIS AT HOME.

One morning in Campus

It was one of those lazy mornings...when you suddenly decide to be not lazy and go out for jog. Just as any 'normal' boy from the boys hostel would , I automatically got drifted towards the girls hostel area. and Gosh..what an atmostphere do those girls live in !
Though I would love to tell any ignorant IITian guy that the girl hostel area is dirty and it stinks (to prevent any despos from rushing there every morning), the truth is it is the loveliest part of Delhi in the morning.It is Utopia.
Peacocks all over the place showing off their plumage looked amazing. (Though these were not the 'birds' I expected to see)....Then just as I stopped to look at a couple of peacocks crying/mewing(whatever) at the top of their voice from the roof of a house, another little one just went pass me.
and then ,at that very moment , something else struck me. What a game nature is playing!
If the peacocks are to girls hostel :: then what is to boys hostel ??
If the peacocks in IIT are analogous to girls, then is the analogy to boys the answer to the above question ??
I have nothing else to say.

They say a diamond is a woman's best friend. and a DOG is man's. and STILL they are the ones who complain about gender bias !!!!