Spoken like a True BITSian...

Identity

2009-07-14T03:04:00.001-07:00

Individuality is no less than a definitive feature of Independence, ensuing growth and prosperity; and identity is the basis of individuality. Without an identity, there can be no Individuality, noIndependence and no progress.

The identity of our beloved campus has been seeded, nurtured and cocooned by our mother campus BITS Pilani, to whom we shall be forever indebted hence grateful. We have been bosomed with bountiful love and patronizing care. The dutiful, condescending restriction, in the name of brand preservation has inevitably taken its toll on our freedom of expression.

More than one of us feels stifled under this throttling protection called the “BITS Pilani brand name.” We feel the need to establish ourselves as an individual, self sufficient and robust institute, a sovereign vital entity, not an ailing, dwarfed sidekick of an antecedently established University.

Bottom-line: We need to be proud of our campus, for what it is. Stunted, slipshod, maligned or vulnerable Goa Campus is still ours. It is our responsible, almost patriotic sense of faithfulness that will always wish the best for our campus, no matter how dissatisfied or disillusioned we may become. We have lived with and through BITS Goa’s problems, its problems are our problems, its glory is our own.

During sleepless nights and boring lectures, over Cold Coffee at Ice ’n’ Spice or abominable mess food, whilst watching football matches together in the common room and cramming formulae in the library, we have discussed and dissected every discernible aspect of our college. From the Quality of the mess food to the quality of Manchester United’s defense, to the quality of girls on campus, we have debated on them all. Our opinions are collectively shaped, our perspectives widened and our knowledge and awareness heightened. For the length of the semester on campus, and inescapably otherwise, our personalities are molded and modeled by our dear campus. Our campus provides us our knowledge, skill-set and values, our own identity, our position in the worldly scheme of things. We, in turn shape the image of our campus, contribute to its reputation and strive to build its prestige. We sell our campus not only to our festival sponsors and Alumni, but also to our friends, family and ourselves. We incessantly strive to make real Ashish Garg’s words, “BITS Goa is just as good, if not better and BITS Pilani”

Why then, must the identity of our campus itself be mistaken as that of its mother campus, which has had little or no bearing on our present persona? Why must we borrow our identity from another campus when we possess one of our own, a vivid, robust one at that? Do we still need to be in the shadows of our parent campus when we can rise and shine of our own accord? Rise and shine is, incidentally, what we have done and are continuing to do, axiomatically, almost subconsciously.

What we must realize is that we are, by no means, an adopted stepchild of our mother campus. In fact, we are just as rich and diverse, whether in terms of sheer student talent, clubs, department, associations as well as national level Cultural, Technical and Sports festivals. In a direct, blatant comparison, Goa Campus is much better planned, more scenic and better connected by road, rail and air. The experience of the chilled-out Goan culture, the numerous beaches, forts and scenic hang-out spots place any Goan college apart from just about anywhere else in India, let alone a state-of-the-art institute of Technological excellence; not to forget the exotic seafood and most importantly, essential indulgences at outrageously cheap prices.

We have adopted a sound and coherent departmental and coordination committee structure atGoa that works synchronously and seamlessly, and is constantly setting benchmarks for other colleges, certainly even our mother campus to emulate. Make no mistake about it, Quark and Waves are fast growing bigger than Apogee and Oasis ever were. They may have the experience and consequent establishment through convention, but we have the exuberance of youth, and the momentum of an unflagging pursuit for improvement, tending to excellence.

We may not (yet) be at par in terms of sheer numbers in faculty, e-journal subscriptions, electives as well as placements and Practice School, but what the hell – you cannot have it all! We must remember our campus is but five years old, things can only, only get better from here.

Finally yet importantly, we have tremendous unity and trust among students, not only intra-hostel but also spanning over all hostels, batches and branches. This fact has evidently been manifested more than once, most notably, in what is deemed the BITS-Goa Independence Day, lovingly christened The Maggi Revolution (having symbolic as well as literal implications). Our associations have strengthened through mutual interests (or lack of it) – the hours spent expelling potent, profane interjections on DC mainchat, through evenings spent playing games at SAC or hanging out at Nescafe, through the nights spent (placebo-lically studying) fervently discussing and analyzing football, girls/guys, the campus and ironies of life in general. We have formed mutually inseparable bonds whilst playing, studying, eating and (sometimes) even sleeping together (no pun intended).

How then, can we even think of condemning our campus, our self-constructed realm, our haven by right? Is it not just brilliantly, precisely the way we have wanted and made it to be? Why then would we want to consider any other institute, let alone a Pilani, as superior to our own? It is time we put our thought and belief into action and live by our motto, which rightfully is “Proud to be a BITSGian.” It is time people know our campus as BITS-Goa, in independent identity, take notice of us for what we are, not our parent institute lying in a desert land some thousand miles away.

Galaxalization

2008-10-13T10:25:00.000-07:00

We might not have come such a long way after all. From the Stone Age to the nano age, from spears to nuclear warheads, from jagged paintings on brown cave walls to catalogued digital imaging, from tracking partly eroded footprints to inventing global position systems, from the barter system to globalization.

Eventually, we would meet a multitude of creatures from other solar systems and galaxies, living in different planets. It has significant probability to happen given the relentless levels of options and possibilities - folks of our planet endure during life. The levels of technology themselves, while changing and giving a direction to the quality of life, shall let us come in virtual contact with other, for lack of a better word, aliens. The aliens would meet, sizing each other up, like an endless ritual of wolves. Soon, deals would be made, boundaries drawn, constitutions written, alliances pledged and invasions waged. The world would no longer be our only world. Hypocrites might, however, continue to exist, the battle of individualists and collectivists could continue.

Trans-galactic corporations might come into existence. Or at least we would come to know that a lot of trans-galactic corporations already exist. Every sphere of knowledge, ranging from science to art, philosophy to literature, mathematics to astral physics would undergo a gargantuan change - monolithic in its existence that entire civilizations of species across the universe would get wiped out, eerily extinct making other species flourish, thereby creating a new circle of survival. Some details would be chronicled in the golden annuls of history. Most of them would be forgotten. 38 new species of monster-like-fish have been discovered in Greenland in 2010. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/photogalleries/100421-new-fish-species-strange-greenland-pictures/

The definition and scope of tourism would change radically. A variety of things, places and people would be discovered, invented and pulverised with ample freedom and gore. Multi-galactic cultures would then lead to various new species, which, in turn would coalesce, inadvertently into mere races. Corporations and firms would span galaxies. Rules would be relaxed, constitutions re-written, laws modified. A zillion genres of music would emerge into colors we haven’t seen till date. Terabytes would be a trifle.

Dreams would be different.

Computers and robots would be capable of interpreting and processing yottabytes of data. Students from Cygnus would be drinking Absinthe with students from Milky Way. A guy from Andromeda hitting on an Indian girl living in the Black Eye galaxy, Sculptors from Reinmuth travelling to Perseus to carve a gold stone into a creature with brown eyes. A drug peddler in Maffei galaxy smoking up a jaded bong might get caught by the unruly cops from Keenan’s.
As a matter of a jagged edge of unruly fact, with the laws of evolution in place (with all its negatives), the clumsy end of a confused world is not nearly seen. However, a 1.2 kilogram cerebrum inside a head sees more. Things we haven’t thought of till date, things we did not know existed.

I do not know what I would be doing. I wouldn't mind owning a private galaxy, moving around on a Billion CC motorcycle in space, living in a well-ventilated, strategically located solar system. Living in a stone house overlooking a purple waterfall in a strange, wild country of a colourful planet, modelling warp speed models and listening to thoguza music with under green skies, blue earth, purple water and soft soil.

It is a world of possibilities.

It is left to us what we decide for ourselves. If you wake up at a different place as a different person, would you still be the same person?

I welcome galaxalization. Any aliens out there deciphering this post... let us not have any unpleasant surprises.

You tubed!

2008-02-19T14:04:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAvugZbbK4k

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL

2007-09-15T22:39:00.001-07:00

2007-09-15T22:35:00.001-07:00

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A trip down the memory lane...

2007-06-02T23:17:00.001-07:00

It pays to have a sweet school junior. He handed over his cycle keys to me and I
cruised around on the roads all along the campus. My closeness to profs was
always a double edged sword. I knew every single road and where it led, yet I
could not take the shortcuts to MB through them as next day I would be grilled
mercilessly. :-) I have seen very few sunrises in my life and the one at Gliding
Club remains amongst my favourites. But to be there without a Tam chemicalite, a
bong from shillong and a Mallu mimer would be unfair. The Reunion would be there
for that.

In a series of six brilliant personal posts, Madhurjya (Banjo) takes us on a walk down the memory lane. Oh, how I miss those things... A must read for all!

A Trip Down Memory Lane - I,
II – The Places, III – The People, IV – The BITSians, V – The Food, VI – The Epilogue

On the same note, here's about a small trip I made to Pilani last week: A Quick Trip to Pilani

The goan wave

2007-05-16T11:33:00.000-07:00

Well it has been a long time since somebody blogged here . So i thought why not refresh the blog with some fresh new ideas and what could have been better than a post about the new campus of bits at goa .

started in 2004 this was the second campus of the prestigious BITS-Pilani university Rajasthan . A bustling batch of 600 had joined Bits in the sand of another kind . Soon Oasis became Waves and Apogee became Quark.today the campus has 1800 students and its first batch going for placements soon this year.

A normal bitsian from goa has to adapt to one thing . Those curious glances from family friends and relatives . A normal conversation between a Bitsian from goa and Distant relative (DR) goes on like this

Distant Relative : So where do you study ?
Bitsian ( proudly ) : Bits
DR : huh what you doing in goa , there is a Bits in goa , how strange ... blah blah blah

and soon you join his list not so worthy youngsters . But Probably every person here had made the choice of this life . All the people here left some NIT or an IIT or some foriegn university . All of them came here just on the name of BITS and all of them wanted to be a part of evolution of this body of BITS ...... BITS- pilani, goa.

well once the first hurdle is crossed , campus is actually very good . All the classrooms are a/c and students have single seated rooms right from first year . In place of c'not there is nescafe and monginis here and ofcourse our very own insti and sc cafe .

there is no ANC because actually you have to be back in your hostels by 11 PM . so all the hopes of that goan night life are thrashed . the students have there own student council , the annual cultural fest Waves in which pilani came this year . The annual technical festival Quark , the annual sports festival spree and finally the annual inter hostel cultural competition zephyr .

All the cultural clubs are working in the campus apart from the campus has its own Centre for software development (CSD) and CEl .

the academic system is same as pilani with all its flexibilities .Bits - pilani , goa is probably the only place in india apart from pilani itself where you will hear so much usage of the word pilani . About the campus lingo it is developing slowly because of main chat on the direct connect client where you will find the whole campus discussing on some topic . right now its OB that half of the people in my batch would be thinking about the experience at ps1 which might range from bestest to thuest .

The campus has its own share of technical achievements . whether coming 5 in techfest at IIT Bombay or winning 2nd prize at Microsoft Imagine Cup . it has kept the flag of BITS flying high.

btw if you wanna tour our campus do visit www.bits360.com
signing off now
more about the campus later

BITS ranked sixth in Top 100 engineering colleges -Outlook Version.

2006-07-13T22:44:00.000-07:00

The link to the actual article is here:

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20060717&fname=Cover+Story&sid=5

BITS and pieces - reservation comes to Pilani

2006-06-20T09:26:00.000-07:00

(I had posted this on my personal blog a little while ago. But considering the subject, I thought this might be a better forum for this post.)

After years of resisting Government interference. by avoiding UGC grants and federal funding and being supported primarily by the Birla group, BITS Pilani finally got bullied into the reservation mess by Arjun Singh and his goons. Rashmi Bansal summarizes this fiasco in her aptly titled post Another one BITS the dust?

On May 29, the very day the Supreme Court observed that quotas can divide the nation and asked the Government to explain its rationale behind the 27% OBC quotas, HRD Minister Arjun Singh further tightened the quota screws on the higher-education sector, both public and private.

In a note prepared that day for the Cabinet, his Ministry has proposed a legislation with provisions that give the Government unprecedented power not only to impose quotas in over 100 “deemed universities” over and above 32 Central institutions but also to regulate their fees, selection procedure—and even take punitive action.

So not just IITs, IIMs and AIIMS, the institutions which are brought into the 27% OBC quota net include Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani; Manipal Academy of Higher Education; Pune’s Symbiosis International Education Centre and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

We BITSians have always been fiercely proud of ourselves. We knew BITS Pilani could have had better libraries, labs and furniture if only we went begging to UGC for funding. But we realized that this would come with strings attached like reservations, entrance exam mandates and such. And we decided we would rather have the best students than the best facilities. We were secure in the knowledge that only the creme de la creme of India would qualify to be our classmates and competitors at BITS. We were admired when we graduated, and the BITS brand name was second only to the IITs in India.

Well, say goodbye to the perfect world, because politicians like Arjun Singh have decided to dishonor the sanctity of private and elite universities and bring them all under Government control. I have no idea how the Government can suddenly manipulate the constitution so they can exercise control over institutes like BITS. What's next? Can these so-called OBCs have job reservation quotas in Reliance, Infosys and Wipro once they graduate from BITS and IITs through their reservation quotas?

Don't get me wrong. I believe that India has to have some kind of affirmative action in place to accelerate the development of those who have been left woefully behind in our society. But such over-arching and generic reservation schemes will only do more harm than good - they will further divide our society on the basis of class and cause resentment and hostility between them. More thought should go behind such schemes, and reservation should be done more along economic lines rather than just based on class. The push should come at the primary school level, so that these backward classes will have come up to par and ready to compete on equal terms with everyone else when they are ready to enter college.

Much has been said against this reservation scheme by the public, regular media and bloggers alike. But we all know how this is going to end. Even when all this was going on, I did not for a minute stop and think that my BITS Pilani would be subject to this disgrace. For we've always stood away from the rest of the pack and made our own path. We've always prided ourselves for our independence and freedom from Government-imposed quotas and restrictions. All that has been felled in one swoop. And for what?

I'm glad I graduated from BITS Pilani when I did, secure in the knowledge that I rubbed shoulders with the best India had to offer. It pains me to see that this might not be true anymore. Yes, Arjun Singh and company will leave a legacy behind. A legacy that will be India's bane. A legacy that will leave many a broken heart and shattered dream in its wake.

PS: I would love to hear other BITSian opinions on this issue. This post will be updated with your comments.

Being a BITSian in Bangalore

2006-06-14T09:20:00.000-07:00

I went to an office party that a friend invited me to. And looked around. There were a whole host of familiar faces. The place was teeming with Bitsians. The ones who work for the company and a zillion others who had been invited. It was so full of our kind that if anyone were to pick up a stone and throw it at random it would most likely fall on a BITSian.

At work, there are three BITSians in my team. I never had adjustment problems, there were always three people willing to take care of me without even the managers request.Subsequently the VP heading our team also turned out to be a BITSian.

There are also a lot of BITS people working in other teams. At one random foosball game that we were playing in office, there were about 8 people standing around. And one of my bitsian friends seemed to know them all. She introduced me to them "Bitsian 2k, 2k1, etc etc etc...."

My roomie is a BITSian and so are a whole bunch of her colleagues. The folks I hang out with on weekends are BITSians from several batches.

Once my roomie and I (we werent roomies then) decided to sit at a window sill at Brigade Road and talk. We never got to do much talking to each otehr. Every five minutes (Im not exaggerating) a BITSian or a group of BITSians stopped by to talk to us.

Walk into any mall. Take a stroll down MG Road or Brigade Road, its the same story. BITSians are everywhere in Bangalore.

People ask me why I like Bangalore and why I feel at home.

Need I answer that question?

*grin*

PM addresses at BITS-Goa

2006-05-09T10:40:00.000-07:00

http://pib.nic.in/release/rel_print_page.asp?relid=17488

thanks to Mayur Shah from 97 batch for this link

BLOB Awards are back!

2005-11-05T04:10:00.000-08:00

On a rainy sunday evening, I met up with Sharadha Ramanathan, 98C6PS206, enthu pot and a budding entrepreneur ( I am not sure how to even spell this word and look at her being one!) and was discussing my idea of BLOB awards with her.

I was explaining her how off late, I have been more than faithful to my employer and wanted to get this thing started again - but with a promising BANG! One week later, she sends me this (Amidst all her social, personal and professional responsibilities)!

http://www.meghamedia.com/Projects/BITSBlog/Images/Blog_Awards.jpg

This is a template, along with the images (including the trophies, see! see!) and the color combinations. She's also agreed to host the application on her website (Clap! Clap!). So, that's two huge wickets down now!

So what's left to do now? For starters, the Web application that will play the Voting machine.

It would be great if one among the thousand odd brilliant ASP, JSP, PHP stud would SVP (sil vous plait!) take up the task of writing a very simple Web Application. I have a preliminary draft of the tech specs with me. So, if you have a day or two and want to something creative, off beat and exciting - please do get in touch with me and we can work out the details.

Hope to hear from you SOON!

Google Rules !

2005-10-15T01:21:00.000-07:00

A home away from the home

2005-10-11T05:57:00.000-07:00

Past :

It was an usual winter day in Pilani......cold weather....freezing....frightening to think of that ice cold water.... fog was covering every inch of the bhawan corridor......even the ever active ...ever studying ghottu in my wing was asleep.....It was cold even inside the room......... not inside my rug....yeah....that was my heaven.....i would say ...there was nothing so heavenly.....like.... sleeping inside the rug on a cold winter day.....Room no:257,Budh Bhawan......yeah....that was my room......I never felt like coming out of it...when it was winter...... So did i feel even thatday......

BEEP!!BEEP!!.....hmm.....sounded familiar.....a very familiar sound..... oh.. yeah... that was praga's alarm clock.... it must be 7.55 A.M...... I heard some noise outside my room...... footsteps...... hurrying...towards to bogs....then...again in seconds ....hurrying back to the room....then the shouting started...."lets go to tuts..!!" ....." wake up da....idiot!!" ...i heard all sorts of foul words..... Determination.... yeah....i was showing a great deal of determination....."wont come out of my come....whatever....you say!"......then the banging started.....looked like i can't pretend to be asleep anymore.....i opened the door...unwillingly....hmm... as expected...praga was standing there.....he was telling me it was already 8..... time for tuts....I heard a voice in me..... "curse that tuts man!....why do they have these tuts everyday....! .... which idiot's idea is this tut thing!".....I told myself...."i juz cant take it any longer!....I waiting to get outta this shit..."

I went out.... and got ready for the tuts..... searched for my pen..... couldn't find that.....oh there...it is...it was inside my computer cabinet....safest place in my messed up room...... i took that ...examined it....checked if it was working.....nope...wasn't ......i ran to the H Wing .....knocked the first room.....no reply.....started banging...then slowly...a first yearite...came out....asking what was my problem...i asked him for a pen.....before he gave it to me...i snatched it from his hand....was already.....on my heels.....

The whole budh bhawan......road was covered by fog..... couldn't see anything beyond 10 ft........after a good sprint.....entered the class in FD-2..... even on that cold day....i could feel the heat in my Instructor's look.....oops ...did i call that a look....it was a stare...!..... but nothing was new to me......after all...i was a regular customer.....:) .... then took the tuts paper and went to a bench.... and started turning the Mu-E (Micro Electronics)book..in all directions....(it was an OB tut....else i wouldn't have come!!!) ...... "oh..yeah..there it is!...thats the answer....how could they afford to give such a stupid problem straight from the book.....that too.....in an OB...!".... I laughed....told myself..."Its your day...man!!!".... copied that problem....from the book...hurriedly....before i could finish.....i heard the instructor shout "Time up"...Somehow ...i managed to finish it and returned the paper to the instructor..... walked out of the class....

We guys started walking back towards bhawan.... while other studs left for the class (never had the habit of attending any class)..... On the way back ....i heard someone say..." The problem looked easy...but there was a small twist in that....did any of you notice that?"... thats what i was searching for...."Oh Dear!!! you missed it even today!!!one more zuk!! can't even open the account in this god damn course!!" ....well..i was sad..... not for making a zuk..... but for goin' to that tut.....could have slept a little more......

Then we came to the mess .....checked the breakfast....it was the same...uppma........surely that wasn't the best of my days.....went to the mess biah and asked for bread and jam...got that ....... came to the table....ate that bread and jam ... talked about the Marudhara cup.....that was scheduled for the weekend.... then we started walking towards the bhawan.....there it was....back in my clavern....once again...i got inside my rug...my heaven....sleeping.....with all my heart.....

Present:

The same..usual...typical Bangalore morning.....pleasant weather....I wake up at
8.30....dont hear anyone shout...dont hear anyone bang....... take all my time to get out of the bed..... come downstairs....brush my teeth.... take the newspaper....start reading all the crap...... then...when i feel there is nothing more left in that paper.....go to the bathroom.....get ready......

I come downstairs....lock the house.........take my bike..... "oh man....!!! not again....not this traffic...not the signals....not this...BMTC buses..!"....there it is... I'm maneuvering my bike through the dense traffic....i get to my office at around 11.....time for breakfast....call Bala on his phone....we both have our breakfast..in the 8th floor....come back...."oh..cha...forgot my coffee!"....get my coffee...when i settle down in my seat....the time...is 12.........start the coding from where i left the previous day.....i hear some sound in my stomach....probably some kind of acidic reaction.....is that some kind of a signal..."oh..i have to get something for my lunch!".....look at my watch....it is ten past three.....i go to the cafeteria and get bread & omelette.... then come back to my seat in half an hour...then i realise.... I 'm late for my all-hands meeting....rush to the conference room.....Thank God....my manager has not come yet.....i sit down....with a coffee in my hand.... time goes in a flash....it must be around 4.30 or probably 5.....come back....start doing the correction that my manager had said in the meeting......it is 7.30.....i feel..it's the time to leave home....go downstairs....start my bike......

May be, this is the real world. I ,probably, was in wonderland for all these years. But, it, truly, is a home away from the home! and I'm waiting to get back there!(Of course, I have one more sem there after my PS!)

BLOB Awards : The rules

2005-08-28T11:34:00.000-07:00

Mic testing.. Mic testing.

Good, now that all of you can hear me and given that we have spent enough time on the Categories, I will summarise the rules, some that we have already discussed and some that I shall propose (and would love your feedback on)

The poll contestants will have to be BITSians only. In other words, any blog that is nominated for an award should be a blog maintained by a BITSian.
ANYONE - bitsian or otherwise - can vote as part of the poll. If you have been following a BITSian blog and want to tell him/her how much you love his/her blog, you can go ahead and vote.
The final list of categories are the eleven categories you see here [link].
You can vote at most three blogs for each category.
The poll consists of two stages.

The first stage will be an open event where people can copy-paste URLs of their favorite blogs for respective categories. At the end of the first stage, the top three blogs in each category will be announced.
These blogs will be the nominations for the specified category and the second stage begins here. People can then vote for the nominated blogs and at the end of the second stage, we announce the winner.
The reason for doing this is even people who don't regularly follow BITSian blogs and wouldn't have voted normally can take time to look at the nominationsand make up their minds.
I have a suggestion here - the nominated bloggers can also make a pitch for their respective blogs during the second stage where they can introduce themselves and "campaign" for their blogs. The idea of doing this is to get to know each other through this process.

The nominations carry over the points they have got in the first stage into the second stage. In other words, it's one contiguous voting process.
There's currently no check done to make sure people vote only once. As mentioned before, if someone is voting for the same blog many times it only goes to show how much he/she likes the blog. So, you can vote any number of times you like [the assumption here is there's a healthy spirit of participation as I am sure we are dealing with mature individuals here].
The results will be completely transparent at the end of the stage. All the blogs that have been nominated will be announced at the end of first stage. We will also provide the different votes that each blog received at the end of the second stage.

So, what are the steps ahead?

We have shortlisted a poll site - Bravenet.com - which allows people to create a poll and the poll can be pasted on any site. So, everyone will be able to vote here in this blog. We also have yahoo groups [which however will require authentication and enrollment etc]. But the problem with both these polls are that they allow only multiple-choice type questions. so, having a free text field where people can enter blog addresses is not possible. We can definitely work around this problem but that will involve a little more work for anyone who's voting. A more tailor-made solution would any day be better [And a simple form that can be posted here and a corresponding back end which accepts GET or POST requests and does as much as even send me a mail would be the best :)]

Many thanks to everyone who's passed the word around. We are beginning to get some attention now and that's definitely good news. However, I still haven't got any volunteers for

Any other poll/survey sites that you might know, have heard about, have come across. Please do let me know if you have any in mind. If you don't, please ask around and let me know :)
If you are, or know someone who is, good with graphics and will be willing to spend LITTLE time in designing the "Award" images for the event, that would be fantastic. You will be duly acknowledged in this site :)

Would really [REALLY] appreciate it if you can take SOME time for this.

If things go as planned, we should be starting the poll on September 15th. I am not sure how long we will have the first stage open - I will leave this as an open point right now and decide based on the response we get. Hope that's ok.

As always, do pass the word around; please let me know what you think and make sure you have fed your dog :)

PS: If you have the time to participate in the pilot poll or want to be kept posted on this poll by mail, do send a mail to rathish_balakrishnan [at] yahoo [dot] com or just leave your email address here.

BLOB Awards : The Categories

2005-08-24T09:41:00.000-07:00

Bhaiyon aur unki behnon,

Firstly, danks a million for taking the time and commenting on the post below. And many more thanks for having put up notices in your blogs. I was looking at about 25 votes before moving on with the details. However, 16 comments is not a bad number (especially when three people have contributed to more than half the comments ;)).

I have, as I mentioned before, a couple of ideas for the categories. A blog is not probably the best medium for consensus based decisions or brain storming. But let me know what you think and most importantly, give me the list of categories that you have in mind.

My list is

Daily cup of Coffee Bblog - BBlogs that are usually the first ones you visit everyday (as soon you are done with checking the comments counter in yours ;)).
The Funniest BBlog
The most socially relevant BBlog - Blogs that have a strong social conscience, were of use during times of trouble (tsunami, mumbai rain) or bring to light the actual truths.
Direct Dilse Bblog - Blogs that are very genuine where every post is very heart felt. Makes you feel you know the person by reading his blog.
The Complete Bblog - Guess, this is self explanatory. Bblogs that span a whole range of issues, is funny, witty, touchy, mushy, stupid ... just about everything
The Eng-Lang-Ski Bblog - Blogs that maintain a good standard of language (Dr. Meenakshi raman must be proud that I named an award after her course ;))
The Stunner Bblog - The most visually appealing blog. Bonus points for creativity and expertise in HTML. Nonetheless, doesn't have to have barbies and rockets in the template. Has to be neat and appealing.
The 1000 words Bblog - No, it's not about the length :) It's about the best photo blogs (I am not sure how many are there. Still I shall leave it here)
The Killer Name Bblog - Quote - "... in a blog World full of Randoms, Thoughts, Actions, Stray etc., something must be given to a blog with a killer name" - UnQuote
The Oncampus Spy Bblog - For those who brave the connection speeds and dry winds of the desert and let us know interesting information about what's happening in campus. Bbloggers who compete in this category will have to show their mess bill/ID card/C'not Blue moon bills for proof ;)
The Smart-Spammer Bblogger - The ones that leave their mark in as many blogs with some killer comments!

Three nominees for every award and one winner. There are a couple of ideas that I thought of but discarded. Shall list them to - let me know what you think.

Year-wise awards - Where a blogger from every batch is chosen. We have a good list of bloggers for 97-2000. But for batches before or after, the number is way too small to merit representation.
Awards based on Sex (as in gender ;)) - One blogger (for the complete blog award) from either sexes. Again, do we need bring that factor into the whole selection? I personally don't think so.
The best theme-based blogs - For the simple reason that we don't have many around.
The most often updated blog - There's no point in doing the whole drama of choosing someone. We might as well call Sagnik on stage and give it to him right away. This one's a no-contest!

A few more operational details

Where to host? I have checked out a couple of free online survey boards. But if someone has a server where we can host an application, it will save us a lot of time and will help us come up with something better.
Award designers? I am sure there are a lot of creative guys when it comes to colors, images and photoshop (I personally can think of a lot of bitsians!). Cany anyone volunteer to design and create the award icons? A simple (yet appealing) design should do. If you are interested do let me know. And if you are from bangalore, I assure you a treat once it's done :)
Audience? The more the number of people who vote, the better it is. It would be great if we could let a lot more people know that something like this is happening. At the sametime, I don't want to resort to any cheap attention gathering gimmicks either (Spamming anyone?). Can you think of any e-groups where you can send a mail about such awards. If so, please do :)

That's it for now. Once we have agreed on the categories, we can draft the rules for the whole contest. Now it's your turn :) Let me know what you think.

BLOB Awards?

2005-08-17T11:52:00.000-07:00

Give me a moment while I dust off the cobwebs that have settled on this blog. Ah! now, this is what I call a neat, clean and an EMPTY blog :) It's been around an year since this blog has been started and now that I see it, the list of bloggers to my right is quite substantial. Apart from this list, I have a list of close to 70 odd bitsians in my blog and I am sure that x 20 is the number of BITSians who are blogging. I have an idea and I need your opinion on the same.

How about starting something like BLoggers Of Bits (BLOB) awards (the resemblance to BOB is purely coincidental, let me tell you!). We decide on a set of categories and readers (BITSians or anyone else who is been reading blogs maintained by BITSians) can nominate blogs of their choice. And once the voting is done, we declare the winners and all the winners will get a "BLOB award" which probably will be a logo (Or some sort of "graphic" that people will like to have on their blogs :-).

I personally would love to do something like this because,

It reiterates the original purpose behind starting this blog which is to bring about a sense of community among all BITsian bloggers.
It's a nice way to appreciate blogs that make our days and have become "our daily cups of coffee".
Sharing each one's favorites gives us a chance to showcase a list of interesting blogs that one can add to his daily list.
IT IS A LOT OF FUN! :)

Of course, there are a lot of operational details to be worked out. Not everyone will have the sufficient time. But the big question is "Do we want to do it?" It doesn't even matter whether you are a BITSian or not - if you find this idea interesting, or feel you can help out, or at least are sure that you will take time to vote for the blogs of your choice if such a contest is started, please take sometime off to leave a comment on the post (A simple "I Do" will do :-)

Or if you can think of reasons because of which this wouldn't work, or things that we have to take care of while doing something like this, or just find this whole idea stupid, please drop in your comments too.

PS: I am not sure how many people still read this blog. So, if it's not too much of a trouble, can you post this link on your Blog so that people can read this post and voice their opinion. Thanks again!

T shirt

2005-07-27T03:56:00.000-07:00

I have been working with a local NGO called CRDS (Chengalpattu Rural Development Society) as a UN volunteer for rehab work. As part of the tsunami rehab and reconstruction program, we had organised a street-play in one of the villages called Meiyur kuppam near the Kalpakkam reactor. While gathering the crowd to come for the play, I noticed this guy's T shirt from a distance. So, I went closer and asked him how he got it "therlai Sir, tsunami vanda bodu yaaro koduthutu ponaanga" (I don't know, Sir. When the tsunami stuck, someone had given it to us).

On another note, Dilip D'Souza had written to me about the good work done by BITSians in the rehab work - "You should go to see how the BITSunami effort is carrying on, south of Nagapattinam, excellent work, some PS students there. They are having a review meeting on Sat in Dharmapuri."

An Apping egroups initiative...

2005-07-12T20:01:00.000-07:00

Join The BITSian Apping E-Group

Click to join greenmile

2005-05-23T22:32:00.000-07:00

Our favourite restaurant is not "Anna-Purana" any more, but we still get a "Peace" of Gulab Jamun at Nagarji's Redi !! They rule...

BITS Photos

2005-05-05T03:52:00.000-07:00

Found this on one of the many egroups floating around.

Farewell time again?

2005-04-28T08:03:00.000-07:00

Graduating in another few days, from TAMU. But nothing beats my farewell on campus. This experience has not affected me as much, wouldn't leave tears like my last one, would leave me yearning for those days to come back..Experiences like these ones just don't repeat

Farewell Time..

2005-04-17T12:23:00.000-07:00

hello people,

I wonder how each one of you would have felt when farewells are around. Right now its farewell time at BITS. I am trying hard not to get emotional. But doesnt seem to help. the days are over....write ups...cnot treats...wing lachcha...gussed tuts..courses u dont even remember u did...loads of juniors who make u feel ur old ...and the feeling of leaving this place that has given every BITSian memories to cherish for a lifetime. I am jus gonna enter that phase and it already feels different...words probably cant express it..

feels like i never wanna leave..

1.00 a.m...time for anc..bye

Photos from BITS - April 2005

2005-04-13T04:48:00.000-07:00

Hi,

Srini here (97A3PS091)

Thanks Rathish for the post and the invite :)

Here is a link with more photos from my recent trip to BITS. Flickr has upload limits. So, I have uploaded most of the photos to Kodakgallery.com.

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=18c6qtiq.f8zngtu&x=0&y=hyjns5

Njoi!

Book keeping :)

2005-04-13T03:59:00.000-07:00

Another very non-thought provoking, uninteresting yet inevitable blog - time to do some book keeping. Ladies and gentlemen, below are the e-mail addresses to which invitations to join the BITSian blog had been sent but are still pending.

technodyne at eth dot net
t dot geetha at gmail dot com
sachin_biz at yahoo dot com
fd97091 at yahoo dot com
chocodusk at yahoo dot com
sanketh248 at yahoo dot com
subramanian at gmail dot com
poonam dot agarwal at honeywell dot com
Chandu241 at hotmail dot com
kalyanvk at gmail dot com
milon2000 at hotmail dot com
harismenon at excite dot com
swarna dot subash at gmail dot com
saravanaraj at gmail dot com
f2000356 at yahoo dot com
tp_bits at yahoo dot co dot in
Ravi_Komatireddy at infosys dot com
leelanath at yahoo dot com
f_nazim at yahoo dot com

So, if your email address is in the list and you

received an invite and are a member of the blog (or)
not received the invite at all.

Let me know and I shall do the needful. Also, if any of you want to be a member of this blog, send an e-mail to rathish_balakrishnan at yahoo dot com (with your ID nos. and other details you think are relevant) and me shall take care.

Thank you :)

Images from the past

2005-04-13T03:36:00.000-07:00

I am actually doing a proxy here - Srini (fd97091) recently made a trip to BITS and has clicked to his heart's content - wonderful snaps that he wants to share with all of us. Unfortunately, he's not a member of this blog yet. So, I, on behalf of Srini, request you all to visit

http://www.flickr.com/photos/srinirules

http://www.flickr.com/photos/srini091

For the curious kind, his blog address is - http://matchlessgifts.blogspot.com/

Rathish for Srini.

The Earthquake

2005-04-01T12:57:00.000-08:00

(The earthquake in Indonesia, a few days ago, made me shudder. Another earthquake, another place, had made me shudder…)

My wingies later informed me that the tremors had lasted for precisely eleven seconds…

… The IPC was bustling with activity. Fidgety boys harried their fat books and thick reams of tute papers. Intent girls wore a lugubrious look. Two or, in some cases, three people sat in front of a computer. Some were furiously typing away, while some others were discussing animatedly, pointing viciously at their computer screens. Intent girls look mournful, I said to myself; people do not like computer screens. People do not like CP-I onlines.

Suddenly, I could not help observing a greater hustle than there had been before. And then I saw my monitor trembling. A piece of poor-humoured narcissism led me to speculate if my code was really that powerful. The computer had already crashed twice before, unable to execute my messy code. I laughed within myself and looked up. Unmistakably, people were running out in a panic that was greater than any a CP-I online could induce. Before I could bring myself to terms with the impending catastrophe, five seconds of tremor must have passed. When I finally gathered my composure, I made a dash for the door in an attempt to squirm out before I found chunks of the ceiling on my head. But I stopped midway: I had forgotten to save my C code! Between risking a life and risking a file, I decided, the latter was a proposition with graver consequences. I scrambled back to the VI editor in my computer. Getting the escape sequence of ‘:wq’ correct on the quintessential IPC 486 comp, on which people seldom risked pressing characters other than ‘p’, ‘i’, ‘n’ and ‘e’, took me around ten more seconds. When I finally rushed out (with a freer mind), I saw people trickling back in. The tremors had ceased to shake my monitor, well before I could manage to squeeze out of the building. When the fellows trudged back in, the disappointment writ on their faces suggested that they had been deprived of some excitement in their lives. More importantly, the look of resignation suggested that they had not been deprived of their CP-I online exam tomorrow. People did not, indeed, like CP-I onlines.

I smirked when I sat down heavily in front of the computer, wiping out beads of perspiration from my brow. I found myself unable to discern if I had to thank the Gods for the fortuity, or my computer: the VI screen flashed the prophetic status message, “Dileepan.c saved.”

Nevertheless, I thanked the Gods.

DILEEPAN N
2000A4PS624

Basically the funda is

2005-03-15T02:07:00.000-08:00

Characters change, attitudes change, the setting change, the context may change but the bitsianess in my lingo is not going to change for my entire life . More than we speaking it, its about how we change the people around us to say " guss podu" and " its kind a sac". I was astounded one day when my cousin used the word guss, only to hear that one of her team mates is a bitsian and only the sac out is happening in their team. Many a days have I found humor in the faces of people when they are introduced to words like "Ob" and "comp". The later actually drove the system admins in my company to go mad at one point of time. " Hey sys ad, my comp has conked of again", only to be met by a black staring face going red at the ears.

The most beautiful part is I don't even realise why people stare at me, for me trimming the word computer to comp seems quite a logical thing to do, its been encoded in my chromosomes. Though i should admit that the "bitsian lingo" has been the butt of many a jokes with my cousins and friends, but i ain't changing people. I have lost count of the number of times i have infuriated my mom by using "the lingo"

me( over the phone) : "Amma I am in the insti, will call you later"
mom : where?
me : In the insti ma, as in institute!
mom : how am i supposed to know insti is institute
me : its ob isint it
mom : grrrr !

Here is a funny conversation I had with my team mate

me: Hey i am going to Hyd( read hide) tomorrow
team mate : where under the desk?

( hardest i have laughed in a long time )

It sure has landed me in trouble a couple of times, one wouldn't expect people to use words like "freak" and "fundas" and "gussing classes" in campus interviews. But try telling it to me. Just the other day I heard my friend telling some one his phone number - " nine double eight four three zuk six zuk six one". Well how absurd would that have sounded to people who are used to the concept of calling one of these " 000 " - zeros. All it needs is one month of stay in bits to pick up the nuances of the language, by the time you are at your home for oasis your average word length goes down by more than fifty percent. Before you know your neighbours become sidees and chatting with flat friends in the terrace become latcha sessions.

I heard the honorable mates of Meera Bhavan had some hilarious short-forms -Emily was Emergency
light, BTB was back to bhavan and lots more. Please girls, do fill us up on the remaining gems. So until then - the ever gussed, the ever sac out, basically

Srivats
2000A8PS244

The typical BITSian day...

2005-03-13T23:41:00.000-08:00

The day : One day before a job interview @PS II

The event : Trying in vain to ghot

The outcome : This post ... read on..

So,as I was doing something today I realised I might have a potential job interview tommorow.What!!!! I just discovered the PS mates around me ghotting away to glory.Oh before I continue,it is nothing new for me to doze till midday and wake up only to discover the entire wing ghotting for a test at 3,contributing to the already sky-rocketing summer temperatures.After some more of tossing and turning I would lazily pull myself out of the bed, and believe me,it took me all the inner strength to go up to some room and find out what course is it that we are supposed to have a test on, and and other related stuff like syllabus et al.

Hungry by now,we would all go to the mess which would do no good to my already irritated self.Finally settling down with some chips and *insert all expeltives you can think of* food we would start planning the evening and which cnot restraunt would be the least crowded today.(Oh, not that cnot is a major food court of all exotic cusines..but mind you,it really provided succor for us battered souls for 4 years).

So its 2 o clock.Wingies start explaining some chapters to me.2 30 Some junior comes in, with a department timing problem.Work at 8, and she cant make it because of a wing treat.(*Curse my earlier lectures to them about a sense of belonging to the department,being on time..bla bla bla*).Before your realise it is 2 45.Of course,there is a power cut.We try to get dressed(default :the nearest jean and T shirt you can find)and leave.Of course,we dont have cycles.Run run to the nearest junior and pile on something.Rush.Stop at Budh redi.Enjoy shikanji.

Rush..But to where??*scratch scratch* what is the room number?Ok think think.Which FD does the course happen?? (*What is the course name again??*)Ok .what is the faculty's FD?(*Cmon yaar it is not my fault if "m********" happens to be a male name instead of female's !!!*)Fortutiously,a girl , an inhabitant of my block comes up.(Of course, we dont know she is also doing that course)She is shell shocked to find us in the Budh redi at 2 59.Ok,Rush.1209.(Who even knows those God forsaken corridors other than psenti-goers!!!)*puff puff*Glance at papers.Start the crap.

Go out at 3 15 to flex those tired muscles, and drink water,I see the IPC entrance wondering of any of my friends would be in there already.Go back to the compree!!.More crap.I see K cooly sauntering up and get additional sheet..we both try our best to stop those horrendous guffaws.Get back.Line spacing 3.Write write.Get the extra sheet.Again stiffled laugh.Time is 4.(Me and K have this thing.. whoever finishes first meets the other in ,where else..IPC!!!)I think of those mails sitting in my inbox.Ok fine.I give up.

Not able to conjure up any more stories my "Karpanai Kuthirai" (source of imagination)breaks to a halt.Give paper.Go out.Inside : K giggling away.Makes a sign for me to wait.Struggles to come up with something to finish that half-sentence.Gives paper.Comes out.We laugh our heads out.Ordeal over.

NOW THE DAY BEGINS.Go to IPC.Come back.Gate call half the population-Have a blast in cnot.Go to SUB,have a ball in the department.Today late night perm.Go to ANC at 1.Gate crash.Come back to a wing laccha session or movie session.Sleep blissfully.Wake up mid afternoon..Another test??Oh not again !!!!!!

*Back to present* The Oracle book in my desk is still open.So are the headphones, playing BoneyM's Rasputin.After Orkut,epals,and Blogging,time is 12 50.Lunch time baby!!!!!

A Month of Bhawan's Night

2005-03-04T14:19:00.000-08:00

(The ruling hands of BITS, Pilani have said a firm 'no' to Bhawans’ Nights. But, does the newer bunch know what it feels like to celebrate a Bhawan’s night? I recount, without tempering for the sake of political correctness, the naive pride of then: how it felt to celebrate a Bhawan’s night -- the contagious Bhawan enthu and the vicious Bhawan spirit -- when the Bhawan was the first yearite’s home and there was little beyond.)

It was the time when Mal did not like walls. And, people left their slippers outside IPC when they wanted a newer pair. One had to hand over one’s ID card outside the audi, to watch a RAF movie. Voices were often heard, calling out, “317, phone call! Holding,” or “318, gate call,” from near the common room -- there were no mobile phones. It was the year when aeroplanes learnt to fly through buildings, but Team India had not learnt to huddle. It was the time when Bhawans celebrated Bhawan’s Nights. It was the year of Nihil Ultra 2K++.

“The Bhawan’s night,” cried our H-rep, spread-eagling to the ground, “will, this year, be a Bhawan’s week!” We freshers hailed him and, in keeping with the jollity of the occasion, lifted him up, and gave him another round of bumps. The talent that had been put on display, on that day of Freshers’ Welcome, apparently, had prompted him to make such an epoch-making proclamation. And there, began the talk of Gandhi’s Bhawan’s Night.

Came the second semester: junta ghotted for tests, played QT cricket, gussed classes, but discussed the Bhawan’s Night more than it discussed girls. As the propitious hour neared -- a month before the usual Bhawan’s Night week -- the pressures of preparations having to be soon embarked on were mounting. The seniors, in a common room meeting, announced that our proposal for a Bhawan’s night had been approved by them (few of us recollected such a proposal having been made, but cheered nevertheless), and decreed us to begin our preparations. "This is your Bhawan’s night,” they insightfully added, “And there will be no intervention from us seniors in the planning.” “But, you have our full support, always,” they vouched, reassuringly.

The first step incumbent on us was the task of electing a coordinator -- the coord, so to speak. The common room, where all the first-yearites had assembled for the purpose, remained silent for a minute. A fellow’s hand went up. “I want to be the coord.” His wingies cheered. “Go ra,” they shouted; they were Gults. Then, another hand went up. Both the candidates came forward, their entourages not far behind, and got into severe deliberations. The cheering slowly gave way to a chaotic babble. “He, for sure, has political ambitions,” one fellow hissed from behind, looking askance at the second candidate, “I am sure he is going to nominate himself for H-Rep next year.” After lengthy and hushed parleys, the second candidate came forward and declared himself the coord. The audience let out a confused cheer. “The decision was taken in the best interests of our bhawan,” he announced, putting things into perspective. “This will be the best Bhawan’s Night, ever!” he proclaimed. And he became our coord.

When we had to decide on a date for the event, the coord put his foot down -- we would perform after all the Bhawans had had their turns. The last would be the grandest, he vowed. This criterion was singularly instrumental in the choice of the auspicious date. “But what shall we call our Bhawan’s night?” a studious looking chap asked, overwhelmed by the prospect. In the next meeting, two guys came up with names, but junta felt they were too comprehendible to evoke awe. Then someone came up with Nihil Ultra 2001. The Coord rather liked it, probably because it was more Greek than Latin. Moreover, it could then be captioned, much like big-budget Bollywood flicks. Then, a CP-I (Computer Programming I) stud observed that 2k++ would sound more fundoo than 2001! Whatever the name, “Nihil Ultra 2k++, Nothing Beyond” soon became the apple of every Gandhiite’s eye.

Often, furtive emergency meetings were held in the common rooms, and the heftiest person stood at the doors to guard our secrets against spies from Krishna and Vyas. Raging issues were discussed: some were thwarted by firm opinions; many still raged. Shankar decided, rather prudently, that the best way to bid farewell to their seniors was not a Bhawan’s night. And so the people decided not to inconvenience it by dragging it into the discussions.

Soon summer was beginning to blaze his way through the desert. And, with a mere week separating us from the Bhawans’ Nights, things got hotter than ever. One night, while leaving the mess after the grub, we chanced to find quite a crowd outside the mess. Three fellows were crying, four were bawling their lungs out, and many others were unmistakably chagrined! “The posters!” the wailers wailed, punctuating their wails with less-than-pleasant details of the miscreants’ lineages. Apparently, some malefactors had torn down the posters that the Gandhiites had put up in the messes to advertise the occasion. The posters themselves had not been less talked about. Furious tirades had raged over them. Some creative souls had wanted to write a ‘for’ loop of C++ code to allegorise the countdown to the Bhawan’s night. Some, who heard the cathartic proposal, did not hesitate to show the world that they were miffed. But clearly, CP-I had played on the minds of more than a few, and to a greater extent than one would imagine. And the posters in the messes flashed exactly that: ten lines of C++ code! Coming back to the spat itself, the arraigned were some inmates of Krishna, Gandhi’s neighbour.

Krishna! The very mention of Krishna Bhawan evoked a sense of bonhomie in the Gandhiites. I mean, instantly the Gandhiites all fraternally bonded amongst themselves, and voiced, in no kind terms, that Krishna Bhawan would willingly create all the trouble in the world during the Bhawan’s night, if they could help it. The two Bhawans had already squared up against each other in the Basketball courts, although they did not play in the basketball matches. The biggest fingers had been raised accusingly at each other -- often, literally -- and vile unfounded rumours often coursed themselves into the veins of both inmates and, sometimes, boiled some blood.

The Krishnites denied that they had torn away any poster, but the poor fellow who claimed to have seen it pleaded them guilty. They made it clear that they did not think much of any of our posters, anyway. “Surf Ultra: Something beyond,” they chanted, when they saw a Gandhiite. And the Gandhiite mocked in retort, “Jai Krishna!” And that irked them no end. But, honestly, we never quite knew why they shouted, “Jai Krishna,” -- some scoffed that it made them resemble a certain band which helped build bridges to Lanka with stones, while most others were a little more circumspect in their criticism -- when they could have chosen to shout virtually anything! But the Krishna seniors said it often, and were proud that they said it often enough. And the juniors were proud because the seniors were proud to say it. Anyway, the issues of the poster seemed to only stretch themselves into posterity.

Meanwhile, budget limits imposed by the Wardens had been well exceeded. It was decided that we would build caves leading up to the quadrangle arena. Night-outs followed night-outs, and classes were totally gussed, to say nothing about tests. And so caves were built and makeshift stages appeared out of wing cots. We were to have a number of dances (one among which they called a shadow dance), and a mime whose singular motive, in keeping with the drift of things, was give back all the flak we had got. And, the boys had already invited the girls; there was a lot at stake!

When the gates opened to Nihil Ultra 2K++, the excitement among the fanatical supporters of all Bhawans was palpable. The Krishnites too arrived, rebelliously encoded in black shirts and black lungis, ashes and vermillion generously smeared on the foreheads, and flaunting a C++ primer out to the crowds -- an obvious insinuation at the posters. And then they all shouted, “Jai Krishna!” and, a strange peace descending upon their faces, settled down to watch the show.

The happenings off stage were as dramatic as those on stage themselves. The electricity played truant -- in a manner that only it is capable of -- and suddenly, in the middle of a dance, there was a power cut; the entire quadrangle was plunged in darkness! A huge roar went up and continued until one of the guys, nicknamed after the electrician Mangi Lal himself, ingeniously pulled out wires from the Bogs which were connected to the insti generator! In a desperate rearguard measure, the think-tank decided to advance the shadow-dance to the semi-darkness, and hope that the power was restored before the dance ended. C-Lawns would have, that day, heard the cheers and sighs of relief when the power did, in fact, get back in time.

One would have expected sanity to be restored to the proceedings. But the Gods had already charted out another course of action. One of the comperes, while introducing the next event -- the mime --, for no pressing reason, accosted the Krishnites with, “I am sure you Men in Black will have something to say about it!” The ‘Men in Black’, who had remained as well behaved as petted puppies till then, all jumped up at the mention, threw their C++ books into the air and charged forward with their war cry. And, needless to say, the quadrangle was thrown into anarchy. It took a great deal of exaggerated apologising to appease their tickled Krishnite spirit, before normality prevailed. And then, people watched in wonder. When the dancers danced in a sublime symphony, they were dancing their way into people's memories. The songs resonated in our ears long after they had gone. The show had captured everyone's imagination. It was clear that Nihil Ultra, despite its acrimonious interludes, was a success!

Tired inmates of Gandhi were woken up early next morning by a certain chap from Krishna. Apparently, in the mayhem that had occurred the previous night, his C++ book had been lost! He had a CP-I compre soon, he said, and requested us, rather politely, to return it if we found it by chance. People assured him they would, if they chanced upon it. Nihil Ultra was talked about by everyone for the next few days. Gandhiites and Krishnites gradually warmed up to each other. But I find myself unable to rule out hearing about a certain inmate of Krishna who had to write his C++ open-book compre without a book.

(DILEEPAN N
317 / 234 GN)

A beautiful peice..

2005-02-25T11:10:00.000-08:00

Hi People,

Heres a link I think all of us would enjoy!!

And this..

A Photo Essay

2005-02-24T20:22:00.000-08:00

I got the below link for a friend/colleageue of mine (thanks Sai Sathish for forwarding it). An ex-bitsian visiting the campus and clicking his way through while he was there.

Click here
and watch the snaps if you want to jog down your memory lane.

guss it, it was anyway not sac

2005-02-23T13:40:00.000-08:00

Here in college station for about 1.5 years now. This place is definitely not filled with BITSians. Well, we are a decent number, but given the vaaast campus, it is difficult to meet up and catch up. I guess, unconsciously, I have managed to built a little world around myself and filled it with substitutes of BITSians experiences. The lexicons are a good start, I hear my roomies say:"Enna, laccha again?"(What? laccha again?), "Guss Kaatu, amma"(Guss it ma) to their parents. I am sure their parents are scratching their heads now, wondering where their coy, gentle daughters picked up this strange language from. What filled me with smiles was when my American friend quirked:"Wasn't that sac?".

TAMU campus has sprawling landscape and my B-school has wonderful lawns. So I get my share of lazing in the sun, sleeping with the book on my face :). The village feeling is sure there with abt a hrs drive to cities. But it feels strange to have high speed internet, q-less student computing centers(ipc's TAMU version), lawns mowers without buffalos :).

The eateries department is sure trying hard to recreate itself. My description of Nagar chai, Pramod's sam chat has inspired my roomie to try her hand at making tea. So, I am bombarded with her delicacies: Ginger tea, Red chilli powder tea(!!), asafoetida tea(??), masala tea(well, thatz tolerable), sugar tea(dont even get me started on the amount of sugar in this tea)..oh, did I forget to mention potato mash with sauce, cookies and cream :). My kitchen is my anc, sky and redi, of course, sans toothy smile of pappu, warmth of nagarg and customization of pramodg.
So much, so little, so far away..
till later
Amrutha
My Name is Amrutha Ragavan, sirs and mams
My ID no. is 1998B3A6427,sirs and mams
My room no. was 7101 MB, sirs and mams :)feels nice after a reallly looonnng time

My college is better than yours

2005-02-17T12:28:00.000-08:00

What makes going to a residential college such a profound experience? Nine semesters in Pilani have taken their toll on me. I've become an incurable bore. It's been just a few months since I passed out, but I've already developed a regrettable tendency to start long monologues on how life in BITS was soooo much fun. I've been known to be a bit of bore, but things are really getting to be scary now.

I'm hoping it's a passing phase because otherwise it could create a few problems. I'll never be able to get a date for one. Most of my non-BITSian friends seem to have developed a protective mental shield that protects them from my anecdotes. Their eyes defocus slightly and they tend to look at distant objects and mutter things like "Oh, really? That must've been fun" while I tell them about how my wing deflated the tires of all cycles parked in front of Budh Bhavan one fine winter night.

My story about how we tried to climb the Sardar Patel statue seems to have lost it's zip as well and I never thought I'd see that day dawn. I've tried talking about things that aren't related to BITS, but after about 15 minutes of normal conversation I realise that even sweeping my room in BITS ( which I never did ) was waaay more fun than anything currently being discussed. Once I realise this, it takes very little time for me to let everyone else know how I feel. The result is that I now have a lot of free time on weekends.

Given a choice between jumping under a moving bus and going back to BITS for another 5 years, I'd pick the bus any day, but somehow I can't stop talking about BITS. About how I love BITS. How I hate BITS. How I can't live without it. How going to BITS was the best thing that happened to me. How going to BITS was the worst thing that happened to me. How nobody could have ever had more fun than I did at BITS.

Okay. It's started again. I need a cold shower.

If any others on this list have had this problem before then please let me know if the condition is curable. As a temporary measure I've started a blog. Gushing there will probably keep me straight for a few weeks, but after that....?

An ode to the green door

2005-02-06T22:56:00.000-08:00

If some four years back someone had told me that they are going to paint their doors green, i would have laughed at their aesthetic sophistication - not anymore. The green doors of the pilanian hostels now hold a special place in my heart. They were the barriers between the chaos of the outside world and peace of my room . They are the antique heroes( most of them being as old as pilani itself) who year after year of see dream filled students passing out of the "middle earth" of university education. Beaten by cricket balls, kicked by students, punched by drunkards, angry slammings, they have stood by them all.

Something about them makes me miss them more than anything else in pilani( exclude sky from this). After spending long hours in the insti, the sight of the green door would fill me up with joy, as it held the key to my private world. When i come back to my room after going through the formality of a screwed up test or tut, the mere sight of the green door would make my spirits fly high. My heart bleeds to see the new double room doors painted a kind of grey blue, why would anybody want to do that.When I close my eyes to recollect the bygone era, more often than not the image which reels into my mind is an empty bhavan corridor with the long line of green doors standing besides each other like warriors ready to go for war. If I were the soldier who had to choose between a roaring tiger and beautiful damsel i would choose the door painted with a dark ugly green any day - no matter whats behind.

BITS of fun?

2005-02-05T08:48:00.000-08:00

No way!

As i begin to write this, i want to flail my arms in familiar fashion, make irritating and angry noises, roll my eyes and convey as much agitation as humanly possible. Cos I cant begin to imagine a day without fun at Pilani. Now, that does not do away with those awful days of the lowest lows and "oh u're so worthless" times. Nor does it try and claim the "it's the way u live ur life that makes it fun or otherwise" philosophical high ground. However, I do hope to convey beyond doubt that there was always something that was fun to me and happy about Pilani. And the best part was, there were times when things were fun simply becos u wouldn't live or do them anywhere else. Ever!

Sample? Well, what about baking cakes together as a wing for the 12 o'clock birthday? i continue student life in another school now. The dorm comes with a pantry, a well stocked refrigerator...well, the works. Birthdays are brought in beautifully here too. There is this huge congregation of 70-100 people singing for u, and cheering u on as u cut your 20th/27th/31st/42nd birthday cake. The cakes of course come from this speciality place called "Upper crust". Or was it "cakes and bakes"? Never mind.

You thought that was girls' domain? Try and ask some of those guys from Krishna, who tried valiantly to produce one of 'em chocolate wonders on 'her' special day. With or without cake, you've lived (and survived) a fun experience.

Oh, before i move on, throw in the trips to the dairy farm for fresh cream, punctuated by the more than necessary stops at chimpu's for mango shake.

We're most of us Orkutters I presume. Well, either way, u must check out some of the scraps that the BITSian species leaves at the "sky-heaven on earth" comunity. The best thing about sky was that not everyone became a sky-person. You had to hav undergone sufficient wear and tear changing positions on the sky lawns. You had to hav chosen precisely the most important CDC class of ur student life to devote to the amoeba in order to finish that Terry Pratchett. You had to be possessed at 5 in the evening everyday to walk straight past FD-3 and through those gates, as if in a trance. And finally, you had to be able to say "ek veg moinneee dena rei.." just like only Pappu could. For the uninitiated, that's veg mayonnaise sandwich.

So, u'd think, every college has the good ol' canteen with memories peeping through from every corner. Well, to that, i say, not every one of them comes with a sun dial to laze and sun bathe on. Not all of those canteen's dirty blue green pools are used to good naturedly welcome the new department head. Ok, let's stretch it! None of them houses a Dakota!

By the way, i haven't even begun on IC yet!

I've heard the "conforming" argument often enough at BITS. Of how, by second year u've risen one rung in the evolution chart. The individual is lost and you can only think in groups. Of how, by the end of year two, you are steeped in department tradition, silly club rules, wing defined c'not behavior and well, the general lethargy. I cant claim all of it doesnt exist. But i also think that to grandly label the entire population is a gross generalisation.

If that were true, wud u believe me if i said a coupla crazy friends wore pink trousers and purple shirts a few days in a row simply 'cos they wanted to. That some only grew to enjoy solitary walks more and more as time passed by, never mind if the rest of college was watching "har dil jo pyaar karega". That a particular batchmate wore the most paint stained and food stained crumpled t-shirt on a monday morning, matched with 2" shorter than appropriate brown trousers becos the rats in the lab beckoned and everything else ceased to matter. What about the special final semester DW? The locally defined Kapoor chopsuey?

To top it al, the concept of zero attendance and the freedom to attend the lecture u liked. Everyone made his own decision. To make this clearer to me, a friend once said, " After all, everyday my friend and i wake up at 10, when the common hour's been kissed good bye. VK's abandoned at 5 to 11. I drop him off at FD-1 for a CDC i hate, and proceed to sky. When he's done with two hours of Ghotting, he comes over for the before lunch dum. And then of course, it's off to c'not for a two hour lunch. He's happy cos he's done his day's quota of classes. And I am 'cos i've done one fifth my day's quota at sky:) " They were part of a larger fun loving group of guys. They did a thousand different things and held a thousand different opinions. U'd find them occupying the hallowed parapets or "walls" in front of the c'not stores in the evenings. Hmm...i think for the greater part, they conformed to not conforming:)

True blue BITSianly, i could go on and on and on. And even more true blue BITSianly, i could feel psenti about a million other things. But then, v all hav our little potli of psenti things at BITS. I jst wanted to share a coupla mine that to me make the BITSian experience put simply, fun.

You see it all in a different light when u're on a new plane and absorbing a new system. Comparisons and contrasts showcase the uniqueness in full glare. I've just been able to soak in some in the seven months since i graduated. And i continue to believe, when it's time for fun, i'd love a liberal dose of the Pilani one!

The kheer? 1/2 on 25

2005-02-03T16:27:00.000-08:00

(These tiny stories appeared in BITSAA's Sandpaper, but here they are again).

Tuesday night dinners? Always a little dreary: slopped into one of the compartments in our thalis was a concoction that, we were led to believe, started life as kheer.

When Dinesh and I sit down this Tuesday, that RPA mess servant institution, Girdhari, sports a troubled look. Before passing our thalis out, he turns one over. "Look," he says. "The stuff stays there." The kheer. It does. Stay there. So congealed, it won't fall out.

This is not something to take lying down, or even sitting there. We summon the manager. I speak to him. Meanwhile, Dinesh picks up his spoon lugubriously, sticks the business end into the kheer, and thumps the other end with his hand. The small piece he shovels out of the once-kheer then goes into his mouth. He drops the spoon. Thumps his head with one hand, his chin with the other at the same time. This way, he munches through the stuff. Lugubrious still.

The manager gets the point. Maybe not. Next Tuesday, the kheer is the same.

***

We called Nitin "Bondo" for no apparent reason other than it was one more of those peculiar BITS names. But he was, in the very best sense of the word, peculiar anyway. I know he'll be thrilled to know I've described him like that. Hey Bondo, if you need to reach me, try directory inquiry in Timbuctoo.

One incident summed up Bondo's outlook on life for us.

In a long-forgotten test -- some 3rd year Maths or Physics course, I think -- Bondo came home with half on twenty-five. (I got a big fat zero, but that's another story). That's right, half a mark out of a maximum of 25. Still, that fraction alone was not what made this a special occasion. Good old Bondo picked up his paper and streaked off to the concerned professor's office. To protest. But not, as you might imagine, that he had been given an unfairly low mark. Or half-mark.

"Half a mark is a disgrace!" he wailed at the bemused professor. "Please reduce it to zero!" he pleaded. "At least then I can show my face to my VK wingmates!"

The odd thing was, he was right. When he returned with a resplendent zero, we looked at him with new respect. Then we gave him bumps.

fun - the non-bitsian kind

2005-01-31T20:45:00.000-08:00

This would come as a rude shock to some of you guys there, but lets call spade a spade. Since the day i passed out of the iron gates of pilani i always had this feeling that i would never have so much fun in life again. Corporate world beckoned me and gave a chance to meet a lot of people who were essentially non-bitsians. The one good think about the company i joined is that i was the only bitsian among the 30 lot who joined along with me. I was off for a long time, grudging the fact that i had to spend my whole time with a bunch of losers. But then as days progressed i came to realise that i was actually enjoying the company of these losers.

It was during these days that i realised the kind of fun i am having is quite different from the kind of fun i had in bits and the kind of fun i thought i would never have in my life again. Most of the other guys and girls are form colleges in and around chennai and they know how to enjoy life.In bits there was always a certain amount of peer pressure associated with most things, even the most freakiest of us have kind of long term goal and expect us to do something meaningful in life. But i found these people very different in the sense that they live the moment, a concept lost among many of us. I am not arguing the fact that we dint have fun in bits, but i am just saying that if we think that this is the most fun possible(dont get the IITs into this - there concept of fun is close to view held my peking man) then i am sorry we dint!

The power of the pen?

2005-01-28T13:27:00.000-08:00

Well much like this good friend of mine whoz post lies beneath this one; its been guilt thats engulfed me for long--since the day i got an unusual and most unexpected invite to join this extraordinary and unique experience of 'community blogging'. Somehow had been procrastinating...but thankfully for myself and may not be so much for the others, found my calling today! It was driven by a few factors---of course Chitra having beaten me to writing her first blog is perhaps just one of them :-) Just happened to see this amazing movie 'Page 3' and it stirred up a thought process on something that i have been passionate about- Journalism. It made me think about the state of the press that we had in Pilani and whether at all it qualified to be called one.

May be there are members of the Pilani press on the blogspot here as well for whom i might be stirring a hornet's nest---but then, what the hell, isnt journalism all about freedom of expression? What i noticed in this blog is there are so many BITSians who actually are good with words, who have thought processes that lead to a sensible and impressive construction of sentences and there on...yet, how many of us bothered to ever contribute to the editions of an EPC or an HPC or CF for that matter? And then the inevitable always happens! The show must go on and hence a group of self appointed saviors of the language(from whichever linguistic community they might come!) hegemonize the goings-on and thereby make the group a closeted and dogmatic one. It then becomes a chain reaction where the 'masses' stay away because they feel its the exclusive rights of a priveleged few and the latter strengthen their hold citing the case of inevitability!

Its sad that most of the publications that were brought out were much like the Page 3 stories that this movie spoke about...they mainly covered which celebrities came to Pilani and sang, danced, jumped, hopped or skipped, measured the hemlines and their lengths of the LSR guests in BOSM, the uninhibited activities during OASIS(paparazzi press after all!), Valentine day messages and so on. Hindi press started coming out with these semester-publications where poetry of Mahadevi Varma and the like would be covered---not for once bothering to consider the fact that a majority of the 'target segment' would hardly know if Smt Varma was a poetess or their neighbour's grand aunt's neice's daughter-in-law! And a lot of Student money--(these came under the Union's purview after all) went into all this--so we couldnt even say, we care a damn about what trash our erudite friends publish.

The movie for example speaks about the need for co-existence--of serious journalism and Page 3 snippets. Thats anyday what a sensible press would do. How often did our press speak or probe into problems of Admissions and their skewed nature--though these were hot topics across dining tables in messes or late night laccha sessions in hostels? How many times did they give us insights into career prospects or tips on higher studies or resources we could tap for the same? How often did they give the Administration constructive feedback for improvement? Was the problem posed by monoculturization in Pilani ever discussed threadbare---not to my knowledge atleast. Isnt the press supposed to be the 'voice of the students'?Isnt it supposed to probe problems and issues, suggest remedies for the same----at the same time also carry interviews of Euphoria or an Aman Ayan ali bangash who might have come to campus and swept folks off their feet! The CF ofcourse did keep going through positive changes some years-depending on who the editor was and how sensible and sensitive he or she was; but the monthly/bi-monthly issues were still trash that used to get littered outside mess dustbins after dinner time!! The one time i remember the English press having done some really serious and truly commendable journalism was when they actually confronted the administration in the brutal way stray dogs used to be caught and killed on campus...it was a sight that would move the hardest of hearts; and you possibly cant cuddle up in a razai when a dog outside is howling for help, even as the blacksmiths employed to catch it, pulled it along the road like some aborginal hunt! Full marks and commendation to EPC on this one--something that shook the authorities and made them stop this barbaric practice. Now thatz what i call the power of the pen...The chief warden and the rest might be powerful souls, but a collective public opinion is something even they cant withstand and the onus of breeding and nurturing such opinions stems from the press....which was sadly conspicuous by its absence(atleast in the 6 long years i spent in the desert!)

All said and done, we all have our fair share of blame as i said for not having stepped in enough or participated with as much zeal as we could and should have, despite having the ability to...or people like me who tried tried tried, failed and decided to give up cos of other preoccupations. I just hope someone somehwere--especially the current batch of students who man the press in Pilani manages to read this post, continue not to hate me, take it as constructive criticism for their own improvement ( not reacting violently like some Cf editors chose to at times when criticized for a shoddy job!).

Well, too bad a topic i guess for a debut post... may be reminscing and glorifying the past and taking a trip down nostagia lane would have been a saner and politically more correct option...but just thought that was getting too very cliched and straight-jacket..when u get out of a place, all one can do is eulogize and feel that it was milk and honey that flowed there!!
As some wise man had said- I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody!!

Finally...

2005-01-26T19:48:00.000-08:00

i have been on the list of contributors to this blog for wat too much time now - yet i havent posted anything. everytime i see this blogs name on my dashboard, guilt pangs envelope me and i shamelessly ignore them. this morning, however, i decided to give up my lethargy and finally type out a few thoughts...

haven't been out of pilani for too long to feel nostalgic or think about what it is i learnt from BITS. i am one of those who wouldn't think twice about admitting that i am glad i don't have to go back to pilani again.. though this doesn't mean i won't .. in case i ever feel like i will surely drop in for a couple of days - but surely no more. i know this sis a sentiment that not too many of you share, but i have my reasons for it. lets just say that being cut off from civilizatin is not something i enjoy too much.

i hold nothing personally against the institute or the people there (its given me some of my best friends ever), but i do believe that in the 7 semesters that i was on campus my growth as an individual was stunted. i also believe that a lot of people who felt really at home in pilani, find it hard to adjust to the "real" world. i feel pilani is way too protective and cushions us against the biggest realities of human existence today - loneliness and and change.

in pilani u always find some one to talk to or hang out with, in the real world even ur closest friends don't always find the time for you - and vice versa.. you too may end up being busy when someone you care about really needs you. i don't know whether this is good or bad- but i know its normal... its the way the world works. i am given to believe that some people do manage to find time and energy for it, but surely they do so at the cost of either their careers or their personal space (a concept that is alien to a lot of BITSians that i know atleast). its isn't that bad to be alone, and personally i did make an effort to spend a lot of time in BITS with myself... because if you don't enjoy your own company, no one else will. its something that wasn't appreciated when i was on campus, but i am sure will help me in the rest of my life.

the second thing i mentioned was change.. BITSians love the fact that things in pilani hardly change. yes there are external modifications, but the core of their world is constant. lots of BITSians i know find it hard to make new friends and stick on to their BITSian circle for a long time after they pass out. old is gold , i admit, but unless people expand their horizons and interact with people who come from divergent background and have different lives than your own (hanging out with colleagues is just as bad) you restrict your life experience.

what i would really love to see is for BITSians to develop a more inclusive nature, to be more tolerant to people who are different and unique and not find the need to conform, or make others do the same.

these are my thoughts and highly personal. i know a lot of you will disagree or have furher comments to make. but thats the whole point of the blog isn't it??

A quick request

2005-01-20T05:17:00.000-08:00

Hi, I have a request for all of you.

I am maintaining a personal list of bitsian bloggers in my blogspot. It currently has about 40 sites and am currently sorting the list by batch so that we have some way of ordering it. So,

1, If you have a blog and your name is not on the list, can you send a mail to rathish_balakrishnan at yahoo dot com or just leave a comment in my blog giving me the address of your blog, your batch, your name and what you are doing presently
2, If your blog is on the list and you have sometime to spare, can you give me the aforementioned details so that I can update the info I have on my page.
3, If there are people on the list who you know, but they dont know that they are on the list, do give me their details too :)

Thanks a million for dropping by. You can find the present list here

PS: Talking of encounters with GSu, here's my favorite quote of his - "Bad words are of two kinds - anatomy and relationships!" - Profound!

A benign hello

2005-01-19T08:59:00.000-08:00

To introduce me briefly, this is RL - 1999A7PS035. Presently working for Oracle, Bangalore. I had been waiting to post about something really good for so long, but honestly - I could get nothing - so far. Its just been 2 years I know, but the absence of anything to say - feels kinda odd. Maybe, it hasnt really hit me. So, I just thought I will barge in and say a quick hello!! I have the luxury of staying with a close set of friends from BITS and conversing with many more on a regular basis and I still havent begun missing BITS. Krithika might be missing it sorely for no fault of hers, but "guss", "sac" and a coupla other good-naturedly vernacular expletives are still safely a part of my vocabulary (as is the constant need to check your tongue before it blurts out something terrible before your folks at home). I havent been out of college enough still, to sediment and bookmark my memories into neat racks yet. So, there is nothing much I can add to the wonderful posts so far written. Perhaps, some day when the single thread of BITSian memories dissolves into quanta - an event after another - when I can distinctly remember one over the other, I will get something really good to write about. Not yet....

Visibility in one more dimension

2005-01-18T06:15:00.000-08:00

I am Srini (better known as Namka - 97C6), but glad that my sobriquet is dying fast! My compliments to the folks who have initiated this blog idea and am very enthused about contributing to this blog.

"Camel in the desert"- what could be a better name than this? Most of us are carrying memoirs of our BITSian days in our brain humps and those running their term in BITS right now are filling up their humps with many interesting incidents. If each of one us were to right an auto-biography of our lives spent in BITS, we'll be at our best in jotting down (or should I say keying down our thoughts ?) ;). But that is a different story.

It has been three and half years since I am out of BITS, but my links with BITSians all over the world has never been stronger than what it is today. It was the BITSAA Alumni first and then the various BITSAA yahoo groups. Of course, you always have specific contact modes with your inner circle of friends. Sandpaper has turned out to be another medium of apprising the BITSian community about the Geeks and Gods, excelling themselves in various fields. Sometime last year (not sure though), there was this Google engineer Orkut Buyukkokten who developed the concept of orkut community (They decided to call it Orkut because Buyukkokten was hard to pronounce!). Suddenly, there were hundreds of BITSian communities created along with the uber BITS community as well. As of now it has somewhere around 1900 folks -that's amazing!. I guess the idea caught on with folks so much, that recently I came across a similar community called hi5 (I am sure BITSians are already swarming this community too!)

And today, our new dimension of staying in touch and communicating with each other is through blogging. Blogs have mushroomed so much that the word has been declared one of the words of the year 2004! Having said all this, once again, I am very excited to be right in the eye of the storm. Posting this in the blog site gives me nice feeling and I am sure lot of us would feel the same. Let us all keep the blog rolling and use it effectively.

A note to the on-campus folks:

What is the campus interview scenario this time around? An update on this would be nice to read.

A BITSian is a BITSian is a BITSian ...

2005-01-16T06:54:00.000-08:00

Two years it has been since I walked out those gates ... Got me a regular 9 to 5 job and blended seamlessly into mainstream society ... Nothing to remind me of BITS except the handful of BITSians working in my company ... So I was pleasantly surprised one day when after work I accidentally ran into a BITSian who was just visiting town ... We met on the main road, and stood there talking for over half an hour, oblivious of the time or the place ... We were so excited - we were seeing each other after years! ...

It was a very typical BITSian reunion, except for the fact that the guy was my STUCCAN in my first year ... Here was a guy I barely spoke to as a volunteer, out of fear and respect ... A guy who (I thought) probably did not know I existed! ... And here we were, more than 5 years later, chatting away like long lost sidees! ... After all these years, we had one thing in common - We were both Ex-BITSians excited to see a familiar face again ...

It has happened with me quite a few times over the last year ... In the crowds of a shopping mall or a bus stop, I see a face staring out at me ... A feeling of faint recognition, and then I go over and start an excited conversation ... And mind you, these are BITSians I've never even spoken to before in BITS ... And yet the reunion is no less nostalgic than if I had met my wingie again ...

There's another incident that I just have to recall here ... I was at a multiplex a couple of months back, waiting for a movie to start ... In the distance I saw a senior of mine buying popcorn ... Very soon I saw another senior (his batchmate) approach him ... They exhibited the usual signs of BITSians meeting after a long time ... The hugs, the smiles, the endless barrage of questions ... Very normal, except that they happened to be members of opposite political parties on campus ... Never in my stay in BITS could I ever imagine that two hardcore rivals could mingle with such ease ...

So there you have it ... Within BITS, we are indeed a diverse bunch, with our own loyalties and affiliations ... We have our wing, our discipline, our department, our clubs, our regional assocs ... There are all sorts of people - some we like, some we hate, some we ignore and some we don't know exist ... But all these complex relationships tend to be confined to the walls of Pilani ... Guys on campus might not realise it now, but once you graduate, a BITSian is a BITSian is a BITSian ...

Close Encounters of the GSu kind...

2005-01-14T19:48:00.000-08:00

You know what? I completely forgot how i had planned to start this post. The moment i read everyone reminiscing about the desert, i too wanted to pen mine. But then as usual the klutz in me dilly-dallied so much that by the time this invitation dropped on my lap, i just completely forgot the flamboyant manner in which the curtains were to rise on this scene. Bah! now who needs them curtain raisers anyway?

Now GSu is no stranger to any guy nor to any gal who knows those guys. To me GSu meant stories that would make you laugh...His nonchalant manner in handling rule-breakers, his "knowledge" on swear words in every known language spoken in the desert, his appearance which belied the terror he created...that's about all i needed to know.

It was in my second year..when M occupied the corner room, facing the mess, in the first floor of Krishna Bhawan. It was around 7pm when i went to give him a Gatecall. I stood there for some 10 minutes but not a guy ventured out onto the corridors.I have always believed that guys in Pilani possessed some supernatural powers akin to the Dolphins that helped them disappear just moments before a girl walks up to their gates to call her guy, who inavriably will have a room that's far beyond reach. Anyways getting back to my story, i stood and i sat and i leaned on my cycle but none of this tribal moves brought the male species out...Then i looked at the road leading to the mess. Now i had been told that this is a common pathway which can be used by girls too. But i never wanted to venture into that territory especially when 'You-know-who' lived close by.

Desperation took the better of Intelligence and i started to walk towards the gate.
That was when i saw this boy walk out of the Bhawan. Atlast! He was dressed in some funny pair of jams with a dirty t-shirt. I called out "Can you please call Room no: ***". He just kept walking towards me without so much as a whisper towards that darn room. I lost my cool. I started towards that blessed path to ask that stupid chap why he wouldn't pass a simple gate call. I stopped short of saying 'Hey you!' and just looked at him...my legs refused to move and i started to think of stories to tell my parents on why i was dismissed. You see this was no 'ordinary guy'

GSu walked upto me, gave me a once over while i meekly mumbled a 'Good aft..er..Good evening" and quietly walked home. I did an about turn, walked back to the road and sat on the platform till one good soul ventured out and offered to call M.

I had another encounter with him but then the only thing i prefer to remember from that episode is the way he started 'our' conversation. "Young lady you should learn to control your temper and your words...." I won't say i have succeeded completely but i am making an honest effort :)

Till another day...

2005-01-11T10:41:00.000-08:00

Hi All,

The way blogger works , it needs people's mail id to invite a co-author.So Kumari,Satya,Oka,Chitra,and Srini, could you all please leave your email ids in the tag board?

Also, I was thinking, maybe we can all add links from our individual blogs to this one,so more BITsians come to know of this one. :)

Love-ly

2005-01-08T06:25:00.000-08:00

For starters, a big thank you for this excellent blog. It's great to see BITSians from all over the place (and with a range of diverse memories) blog in one common spot. Wonderful!

I have spent the last three years with engineering students from all over the place and all of them seem to think that BITS is a greater romantic haven when compared to other engineering schools in India. So this post is dedicated to all those lovely couples that made Pilani all the more special for me.

The thing I liked hazzar abt many BITSian couples was that they often followed a fixed routine. Given a time of the day and a location, you could safely guess which couple was likely to be found out there.

X never attended classes; but Y did. So at 12, just after Mod Phy got over, Y would give X a gate call. The two would walk down to C'Not. At 2 they would make the first of their two trips for the week to Gliding Club. At 5 they would get back to their bhavans. At 7.30, after dinner, X would borrow a wingie's cycle (a wingie who didn't tread the MB route) and come down to MB. Y would not come out even after two gate calls. All the girls entering MB at 7.45 would try and avoid X because they would run the risk of having to pass on the gate call in person. Finally, at 8, Y's sidie M and her knight in cotton shirt N will reach the gates of MB. M will pass on the gate call and Y will come out at 8.15 ... etc. etc. etc.

This is not abt X and Y. M and N also had their schedule. So did A & B, C & D and E & F (even though F claimed that she wasn’t going senti with E and were just friends). I loved this constancy. Often, I would not know who some couples were but would associate them with a particular place or time. I remember a certain couple (one year senior to me) who used to occupy the first tree on the little lane outside MB. I never got introduced to them but every time they were not there I would feel odd. The great thing was that nobody else ever occupied that spot for the three years that I saw them - implying that other people knew abt them too. I remember that I used to joke with a friend of mine that the spot will be auctioned off once the couple graduated. The shadow and proximity to MB (so one could sit there till 10.58) made it a highly desirable spot and we were sure that several couples eyed it. We were right. The sem after the couple graduated another couple (this time a batch junior to me) instantly "leased" that spot and I saw them there till I graduated. The C'Not Wall, the little sitting spot outside Audi, the first table in the old library, the space between the pillars of FD-2 ... I associate each one of them with a particular couple. A BITSian junior recently asked me what I miss most abt BITS and I said that it was "sitting and dangling my legs on the dustbin just outside MB". I dunno if that dustbin still exists but some of my fondest BITSian memories are associated with that spot, where you could find me seated regularly between 10.30 and 10.55. If I ever go back to BITS, I would love to go back to "my spot" and dangle my legs again. Yes, that’s Pilani for me.

A wingie of mine had brilliantly commented (albeit in an inebriated state) that "the big things are there every where; it's the small ones that make Pilani unique". How very true.

A "Profession(al)s" Oriented Gathering ?!

2005-01-08T02:42:00.000-08:00

As much as I can identify and relate to Sang's quagmire...I would rather not get started on a whole new train of melancholic thoughts attached to the bygone times at BITS....On a more grassroot level, that's probably the thing that binds us passouts to long for a common forum where we can shoot out ideas and share experiences...Funnily, this is definitely not the first attempt to get bitsians together to build such discussion groups...considering the fact that orkut and the umpteen networking sites, egroups and regional alumni bases had such a thought process as well... I do hope that this new effort does not fade into oblivion like most of the others did or brew into a pad where people stock up apartment and job ads!

So... how do we start?! I guess most of us oldies are wondering about how the new admission process works or who the new chief warden is (Incidentally, from what I heard last, it was Mahesh alias Pottu!!) or how many outstis landed up at Oasis this time around...But that would probably be more "one-way information flow" than a real discussion of sorts...But since Apogee is on the cards on campus this semester, why don't we explore the possibilities of some "industry-institute" linkages ( Nopes, not the PS kinds..) that can be cemented thanks to Apogee? I have no clue how many of you know of the metamorphosized apogee..For starters, the high points are NOT the movies that they screen at the end of the fest or the five days that you get to take trips to Jaisalmer, Nainital or even worse...home!!

These days, Apogee has been transformed into an "event-based" fest rather than being exhibitions-oriented...Last couple of years have seen inventive and interesting competitions like "Whodunit" (An event where you get to the bottom of crime, based on Forensic Science), "KrazyBridge" (For designing a lightest bridge that can withstand heavy loads), "Chaos " (Coding a simple program in the most complicated ways...sort of a coded contraption) etc etc..There are of course the usual flurry of quizzes, the flock of discipline-wise exhibitions, the not-boring-anymore invited lectures etc....

Now that the foundation is carved, why not take it a level further? Bring in industry linkages where such competitions can be pushed to the next level in terms of challenges, participation and prizes....I have been to competitions of these kinds at the IITs...It can work wonders not only in terms of heftier prize money, but also to the ideas that a company can promote, as a result of such events..Personally, I would also like some sort of a NGO backing some event to generate ideas, devices and concepts that have a rural backbone to it...Again, coming back to harsh reality...sponsorship can be tricky when you are at a remote place like Pilani where the only selling point is the grey matter of the BITSians...But hey, isn't that where the focus ought to have been in the first place?

I figure it's easier said than done (especially when you are resting your ass on a comfy chair!!)...but at least it's a start..Not only to a more exciting Apogee..but also to an eventful blog ;)

2005-01-08T01:49:00.000-08:00

Damn you KK !!! Your post triggered this whole psenti-missing BITS thing in me again :)

It was 7 o clock. A crowded New Delhi railway station.The jostling crowd.First yearites waiting to go home.I was surrounded by people. I tried to look around,taking in as much of the scene as I possibly could.My mind was reeling with images - a 16 year old,reaching this very same station with parents, hauling luggages, and worrying about razais and heaters.A bubbly first year college girl,with a new found gang of people,axious to create an indentity,going home for my first oasis.A young,impressionable mind,which could not take in the sheer mind games and politics.A year later,a confused,cynical soul in the middle of a very painful emotional and mental metamorphosis.One more year down,a more focussed,mature person,who found her place under the sun.And, oh yes, the usual career related making jobs, and apping in the psenti sem , to complete it.Here,standing for the last time, I looked around , trying to commit as many faces and names I could to memory.

"Damn, this might be the last few days I will ever spend with a bunch of people I have come to call my family.Damn,why doesnt it pain? Shouldnt I be disconsolate now? " I ask myself,as I laugh at an inside joke my friend cracks,silently looking away knowing it will never be the same anymore.It doesnt hit me that tommorow,I wont wake up to orange juice and cheese sandwiches in sky. My lunches wouldnt be punctuated my the incessant cacophony at the Mal mess,my afternoons wouldnt be a Trisha or Kareena bashing session in the common room.Movies would not be some twenty of us huddling in a small room,drooling over a Fardeen's smile or silently crying seeing Maddy in "Anbe Shivam".My evenings will never be the same without gate-calls,my 11 will never be the same without the chowki shouting "Andar aao,time hogaya".My train journeys will never be the same,without nite out cards,lacchas,ragging and dumbcs.Nagpur will never be the same without some three of us juggling the money and thousand different icecreams for the entire bunch.Even those exams,wouldnt be the same as cramming up sitting in the back seat of an almost punctured cycle with a frantic wingie pedalling hard trying to get in time for the 8 o clock test.

Yes, it has been a whole year now.Is it the place? Is it the people? Is it both? What makes it so dear to so many?

Okay..Lest you think this blog is just about some recent passouts going through the passing out syndrome... We'd really like to get different viewpoints on this and many other topics,and what the whole BITSian experience meant for each of you.

Killing me softly....

2005-01-06T22:52:00.000-08:00

Now that Rathish has set the pace...Giving an intro in the signature bitsian style these days does fill me with a sense of pride...hardly the feeling I had when this disciplinary routine was drilled down my throat some 4 and a half years back ( Boy! has it been that long!)....In any case, My name is Krithika Kalyan, id no 2000C5PS446...BITSian name - thadi or KK..... ex-inhabitant of room no 211- MAL and a flock of rooms at MB...graduated last May....And hell, it's been all downhill from them on....Life after BITS seem to have triggered off some sort of a rampant voyage replete with roadblocks and bumpers and burly bosses and what not...In short, the "crests" of my life seem to have to a definitive halt...Decided to have a drastic change in habitat - from the barren desert lands of Rajasthan to a place where a fresh breath of oxygen is the rarest commodity - BOMBAY....they say it's "the commerical and fashion capital of India"...the city of vada pavs , bustling traffic , overcrowded trains...heavy duty night life et cetera et cetera....I say - BLEH!

Let me get this straight....what is a city if there aren't bitsian roomies to come back home to? Forget that if that's too much to ask for - I don't even see any trace of bitsian blood anywhere in hindsight....Sure,.,,seven months in your job is time enough to get hold of pals at work and all that jazz....But then again, what good is it if you have to explain and elaborate everytime you nonchalantly churn out a "guss that dude". and "sac out maaan" ?! What good is it if you have people raising their brows when you ask them whether you can pile on them for an extra coupla bucks cuz you have an empty wallet.?! What good is it if people sush you when you whisper out some nasty comments while you are watching a movie?! And what good is it if the one or two bitsians that you know stay at a distance which is almost half of the distance to the whole world and back?!

OKay so...I guess this is more of ranting than raving...but seriously... heaving a big sigh thinking of the glory days at BITS will not probably yield anything productive - but the least I can get is spend the after(BITS) - years amongst our kin...I know I might have to take most of the blame of this state of affairs of mine on myself because these days the thin line between my professional and personal line is not exactly a line, but more like a miniscule dot....But the point I am trying to make is - if you know someone is a bitsian, there seems to be natural bond that crops up making you feel at ease....that sort of feeling is hard to get even after deliberately trying to bond with the outsiders (!!) for n+1 months.....I imagine all you folks who have crossed the seas and ventured out into distant lands would have a even worse story to share than me....But hey! at least we have the blog now :) Yaaay!

2005-01-05T20:52:00.000-08:00

There used to be a time,you know in my early blogging days(I have been blogging for a little less than a year now, if you can call that "long"!!)when I wanted to write a post "100 Things about me". My first entry looked like this :

"1. I am a BITSian".

For most of us,being a BITsian is a very integral part of our identity, as is being a Blogger.Being a Blogger,to me entails a lot of things.There are some things you know quite a lot about, some things you just can keep talking all day about or some things you just feel strongly about.I know some BITsian Bloggers who make very,very sound technical writers,some expert movie critics,some political writers and so on.But I guess the one thing we all are really good at,is being BITsians.Yes,you can explain "gussed tuts" "sam-chats" and "anc" in your blog all you want,but nothing like a place where people can get the real feel of what you are talking about.

So thats what this blog can be..Recollect compree niteouts,crib about missing Pappu's chai,discuss "Time Magazine's 25 Most Influential Business Persons in the World names 2 Indians - Both BITSians",or simply why you think Nagarji rocks!!!

What is this?

2005-01-05T01:20:00.001-08:00

Let me introduce myself first - I am Rathish. 1998C6PS289 (feels so good saying it after so long!). Last seen in 119 RP and currently am reporting from A1.107 cubicle in SAP Labs India, Bangalore.

This blog is a wonderful idea - For the last few months, I have been collecting blogs written and maintained by bitsians and have to come to realize that there's a sizeable population of BITSians blogging their way to glory. For all of them to share thoughts, experiences (as brilliantly shown in the previous blog) in a common place is a really nice thing. But it's very important how we place this blog - this blog can be anything from an assorted collection of articles, a newsletter, a bulletin board to a BITS specific forum where ideas and developments (the new admissions for example) are discussed.

Most of you here have an amazing style and I am sure if each of us start contributing blogs, this will soon turn out to be a fantastic read. But there's just one issue - I personally hate to cross-post, as in, publish the same thing that I am publishing in my blogspot over here too. I believe, if someone wants to read it they as well read it from my blog. Also if I have anything to express, I write it in my blog first. So, I am not sure how far this blogspot can work as an assorted collection.

What it can be, however, is "BITS specific forum where ideas and developments are analyzed". I am not sure how many of those listed in the right site of this blog spot are currently on campus. They probably can keep us posted on what's happening and what's changed. So many of us who have passed out but had wanted to do something but couldn't can pool in ideas as to how few things can be changed/introduced. People on campus can then pick cues, argue, slit it open, analyze it and if good enough, can implement it. Of course, there are umpteen bitsaa chapters and the sandpaper etc. But this blog spot can be an unofficial, no-holds brain storming ground that transcends batches, locations or vocations.

Of course it can be much more - but what's important is, it has to be something and, preferably, something that binds us a group than just an arbid list of netizens.

Let me know what you think.

Hanging up my Boots

2004-12-20T19:32:00.000-08:00

(This blog is, I understand, very simply a space for us BITSians to put up our memories of BITS. I am still not quite sure about what will transpire on this blog. But I think, to make a beginning is not a bad thing. And I shall, for a start, begin. I post now, an article from the archives of my blog, not because I think it is a good article; not because I think it is worthy of being published -- in fact, it is as trivial as it could have been --, but merely because it happened in BITS, and it is true. And, probably, a BITSian or two might be able to relate to it.

In fact, the piece narrates the happenings on my last day in BITS: in 181 VK, as 2000A4PS624. When a tint of nostalgia blew small incidents and articles out of proportion when I was packing up to leave the place to which I was leaving behind a chunk of my heart -- three and a half years of it, to be exact...)

That was it. My hostel room – the ambience and the paraphernalia – was now all packed up. Into three large bags and two larger suitcases. Otherwise empty. I would now be leaving BITS, Pilani, the hallowed place, my college, forever. For the first time it hit me hard that ‘my room’ was a mere eight feet by twelve feet by ten feet enclosure; dark and arsenal-like. It had stood witness to many a turbulent struggle that my heart had waged and many an encumbrance that my mind had battled against. It had risen and stood Spartan-like amidst all my emotional upheavals and had withstood the barrage of rhetoric that had sprung up from them. It had been my battlefield of many a soul-searching crusade, the rendezvous of many an unrequited romance. The carefully stuck posters of carelessly clad actresses, the white charts on the wall that flaunted proudly my scribbles of odd hours, the musky smell of my deodorant, haphazardly flung and strewn clothes waiting for the launderer; it had lived me just as I had lived in it. Till three minutes ago. Now, as I said, it was merely an empty eight feet by twelve feet by ten feet enclosure. A dark arsenal.

I would be gone before the clock tower would boom the completion of the hour, leaving the room to the ants and the termites. I surveyed the last remnants that lay derelict in the room – the castaways of the sojourn. Few sheets of papers – mostly hurriedly scribbled reminders of many a day, a pair of worn out Adidas shoes, and a couple of coat-hangers. These were the only things that I, despite my best efforts to be dispassionately decisive, was able discard as useless. Packing had been a painful exercise. Whenever I was faced with the situation of having to discard a particular object, I would really find myself at the horns of dilemma. I would immediately begin to nauseate myself with all the memories associated with the objects. And finally decide that I couldn’t do without it at all! Beneficiaries of these spasmodic moments of indecision were, among others, two rusted razors, bills of the cafeteria, movie stubs, railway tickets, key-chains, bottle caps, and even rupee coins and parchments that I had received from a special few! At the end of the packing ordeal, my heart had allowed me to leave behind only the aforesaid things. I surveyed the remnants one last time and was satisfied with the execution of my packing skills.

“Sir, when are you leaving the place?” It was the local sweeper. A gaunt person of average physical stature, he seemed to me the only and ubiquitous sweeper in the place. He seldom spoke a pleonastic syllable; in fact, if it occurred to him that a mere waggle of the head or a gesticulation of the hand would suffice, he exercised that option straightaway. I saw him idle as many times as I saw him speak. In fact, in that God-forsaken place where people cared only for the small money that they got in return for their work (actually the lack of it) and looked for more avenues to fleece the docile, I thought he was one of the few that worked punctiliously, bothering little about rewards.

“Sir, if you don’t have any use for them…” he was indicating the shoes that lay below the table. The shoes, which I had construed, at one point of time, as my ‘lucky shoes’. Faced with a painful decision to make, my eyes, by now tinted with some gratuitous nostalgia, scrutinised the pair once more. The neglected shoes lay tattered. Bereft of shape and torn at the toes. On a normal day, the first allegory to strike my mind would have been a dead monster – grotesque and mutilated in the battle; one that looks to have died after bellowing heart-rending cries – mouth open and tongue hanging out. But, as I told you, the lenses of my eyes were wearing a different tint today: one with shades of painful reminiscences and remorse. Every time I had worn the shoes for a cricket match, I had never returned to the pavilion without making at least a fifty. The only failure was, of course, the first match that I had played with them on. A first-ball duck. But good beginnings seldom end well. And miserable starts actually shape up quite well towards the end. The tale of the shoes was also in conformity with my self-constructed lemma. After the first blob, I never saw any more. Anyway, by now the shoes were now almost a part of me, after having been with me through my triumphs and tribulations for the whole of three and a half years. Every pore of the shoes now reeked of my sweat, my blood. Regardless of whether they had served me well or whether they had brought me good fortune, they had been a part and parcel of my lone stay through all these days. They were invaluable memorabilia in the most celebrated museum – my heart.

I shook myself out of this strangulating sentimental reverie. I felt quite ashamed of myself for three full seconds. When one departs from a system that one has been a part of for sometime, one really struggles to force oneself out of the inertia that the system has carried one into. In fact ounces of that inertia remain with you as lingering memories and habits. Even the most trivial things inflate themselves to gargantuan proportions and begin to bother you acutely. On a normal day, I would have disposed of these things without so much a second thought. But today, in a few seconds, I had crumbled like a house of cards. Shit. I felt abjectly disgusted with myself. One has to commend the verity of the universal truth that the retrospect view of things, in fact, sanctifies the whole canvas – the good patches and even the not so good. During parting we tend to retain with us only an Elysian view of things. All the unsavoury incidents and thoughts take a backseat. Even if they don’t, one looks at them in kinder light and approaches them with much more leniency. These are, without doubts, moments of weaknesses of the human mind and must be avoided as much as possible. I was not going to make a jackass of myself. I was not going to succumb to momentary pangs of insanity and bury all semblances of common sense.

“You can take the shoes. I have no use for them anyway.” He needed to be told no more. At the slightest cue, he had reached out for the shoes. “Thank you, Saab. I shall be waiting just round the corner. Please call me if you have anything more left to share with this old man.” His voice trailed away as he set about to resume his season-end quest in the next room, “Just round the corner, Saab.”

There was nothing for me to feel heavy about, I assured myself as I saw him turn into the corner. I had done a good thing. After all, to me, the shoes were unusable, mere artefacts, mere glasses showcasing the yesterday; to him they were the currency for a meal tomorrow. In fact, I had noticed a momentary glint of anticipation and contentment in his eyes. I was doing the right thing, the humane thing. I would give him the other things too: more inanimate prisoners of my wildest caprices. I called out to him and began emptying the other things from my bag. I would dispose of them to him. After all, he was desperate for the stuff that henceforth will only be relegated to desuetude as mere adornments at some corner of my room. Even as he appeared within eyeshot, my eyes glimpsed at my shoes in his left hand.

… My shoes. My inanimate co-passengers in a stretch of my cruise that was touted to be my best. What if they were all mine. What if they had brought me luck. What if they had lived though with me for the past three and a half years. What if they reeked of me. What if they had been witnesses to my transformation from a diffident nobody to a confident and self-assured leader of men. What if they were my only floodgates to the portals of my golden years – my youth. What if they carried away a chunk of me…

I ran up to him, grabbed the shoes from his sinewy hand and instead slid a fifty-rupee note into the now empty right palm as some sort of compensation and ran back to my room clutching dearly to my shoes. In no position to match his stare and offer an explanation for my preposterous behaviour, I ran into my room, shutting myself in. The door closed on his shocked face that wore a gape, even as he stood paralysed by my inexplicable act of insanity …

DILEEPAN N

2000A4PS624

2004-12-17T07:57:00.000-08:00

Hi People,
This is an effort to bring all BITSian Bloggers together and reminsce the wonderful times we spent in the desert.Please leave any ids of BITSian Bloggers as comments and I ll add them too.

2004-12-16T10:48:00.000-08:00