Month: November 2004

When I graduated out of 10th standard, my school gave me an award citing me as “Outstanding student of the year”. All that i had done to earn it was to talk too much in English Grammar class and thus get chucked out. Ever since i got that award, i have been trying my best to live up to the title.

I joined a different school in the opposite corner of the city for my 11th standard. Fifteen days into it, Ms. T, a highly senior and respected and feared teacher caught me talking in the last bench. She asked me to immediately get out of class. Having been emboldened by the award i had just received, i picked up my books, went up to her (the door was in front of the class close to the blackboard), said, “Thank you ma’am” and walked out. Being a newcomer i obviously didn’t care for reputations. I became a hero overnight.

This school proved to be fertile ground for me to display my outstanding talents. A couple of months after i had ‘staged a walkout’, i was caught in the assembly line (yes, this school believed that nursery kids and 12th standard students should be treated alike and hence made us line up everyday before we moved to our classrooms) with my collar button open and necktie pulled down (having been for 12 years in a school where we could wear sneakers as part of the uniform and there was no tie, etc., i could simply not reconcile myself to the idea of a necktie). I was asked to step out of the line and was made to stand in the school grounds for an hour “in the sun”. I found the November sun much better than the chill of the classroom and spent my time making small talk with some construction workers hanging around.

There were numerous other occasions where i proved myself. In my 12th, i was asked to get out of class for not doing my homework. I walked straight into the library and got down to some serious JEE mugging. Then there was this occasion when half my class was suspended because one of us (the teacher didn’t know who) sent an obscene message (something as bullshitty as “how the c**t are you?”) over the network. Remained outstanding until my mom had a chat with the principal after which i was let in.

However i wasn’t awarded the “outstanding student” award as it required that the recipient be outstanding for five years while i had put in only two years. Ravi, the guy who got the award, by the way, is my classmate here in IIMB.

My career took a severe beating in IIT as i had been forewarned by my uncle (who was a good friend of many of my profs) that no “misconduct” will be tolerated and if i attempt anything like i did in my school, i would take a minimum of eight years of B.Tech. I took temporary retirement and an uneventful four years passed during the course of which i became a ‘bachelor of technology’.

However i made a rousing comeback as soon as i stepped into the hallowed portals of IIMB. On the very first day, i had gone out between classes to wash my face and i find the door shut on me. i politely (something i find it hard to do – be polite) knocked on the door and the kindly prof. swamyji let me in saying that i was pardoned because it was the first class.

There was a lull again as i attended all but one of the classes in my first term. However, today, 2/3rd way into the second term, i became outstanding again.

We had a marketing case presentation today. Generally we put night outs the day before the presentation to complete it. Surprisingly yesterday we found the assignment to our liking, started early and would up by 1 am. We prepared an extremely long and comprehensive presentation. Some groupmates wished that we be called to present while i wished that given the length of the presentation we be simply asked to submit the slides.

I had a good sleep and attended the first class (and had a good nap there also). Next was the marketing class. As usual, i paid my respects to the coffee shop nad not so usually, decided to stop by on the way to wash my face.

Shit happened. I go to class at 10:12 (for a 10:15 class) and find the door locked. A polite knock doesn’t work this time (perhaps it was too polite and the prof didn’t hear or preferred not to hear). I open my phone and find that i don’t have the numbers of any of my groupmates! I frantically start messaging everyone in my class whose number i had. Only Ravi (he too was an outstanding student – remmber?) replies. he says that our group hasn’t been asked to submit and may be called upon to present. I vow to write a blog on this as soon as i’m back.

I wait outside the door. I perch myself on the ledge trying to hear whatz happening in class. I decide that if the next group called isn’t mine, i’ll go back to hostel and get a newspaper. After what seems to be an excrutiatingly long time (though it was only 15 minutes), the first group winds up. I brace myself thinking my group may be called and I be screwed. Soon there’s a message from Ravi. He had seen the wrong group number earlier! Our group had been asked to submit and there was no need for me to stick on there. I heaved a sigh of relief and walked back to the hostel. First thing i did on getting in was to start writing this. Now i guess i’m done with my masterpiece. Hope you liked it.

By the by (!!!), I hope to repeat this many more times and graduate out of IIMB with, among other awards, the prize for the “most outstanding student”.

Placement Committee committed a grave injustice to me today. IN the name of helping us all out for the summers and “in view of the larger cause”, i, along with a few others was asked to donate my table for the placement process! You have to place your table outside your room by 5, they said. Else we’ll be forced to debar you from the placement process.

Hence at 4:55 this evening began the painful ordeal of shifting things out of my table and on to the floor, bed and everything else i could lay my hands on. First casualty was my beloved comp. I had to disconnect carefully each and every component and carefully shift them on to… .the floor.

Then came the uncomfortable process of shifting certain stuff back on to the ledge as i found my floor too cluttered… finally after an hour’s struggle, i managed to get things in perspective…

the amount of dust i raised must be enuff to give me a head cold 2 days before placements! four cups of coffee haven’t been able to cure it!

however the most uncomfortable part of the assignment is to work with the computer screen on the floor! i’ve put my chair aside and settled myself down on the floor… my keyboard balances on my lap as i sit cross-legged on the floor with my back to the bed. the mouse is on my side…

and my hands are paining maajorly as i’m not used to typing with my keyboard on the lap. and i’ll soon get cramps in my legs for sitting cross-legged…

hence i stop here… more later…

The last 3-4 days have been among the worst days of my life. I mug all night for a quiz on Saturday morning and royally screw it up, even forgetting parts from my own presentation. Get depressed. Then i make a breakthrough in my Application Exercise (apex) and get maajorly kicked. That is not to last for long as my room is invaded by my apex group-mates who start cribbing, “Rambo (prof) will screw us dude. do something.” I start doing something…

All of saturday evening and sunday morning I work on apex. Sunday afternoon I go for this KQA quiz. There is a question about the sufi equivalent of Nirvana. Clue is that it is related to a 2004 song. We list out movies released in 2004 and yuva is one of them. but we give it the go-by. WE get on with the prelims. prelims over, answers are announced. the answer to THAT question was “Fanaa…. “. two weeks back at a party where i’d gotten drunk for the first time in my life i’d dedicated that very song to a certain somebody. The third line of that song was the status message of a certain somebody else. and i had missed it. can’t describe how low i went after that. quietly took an auto back to campus. started studying for hte marketing quiz. had a thousand forms to fill up. did that. wanted to write that the most significant incident of my life was when Pallavi ditched me. but placement committee shot it down. rewrote the form. worked on apex. continued getting screwd.

monday morning, i go for the marketing quiz with full enthu. five questions. i thot i’d answered two right. for the first time in my life i put 0 in a quiz!! later in the afternoon i give lunch a go-by as i go all the way across town for a big prize money big bullet point quiz. teammates are yet to arrive. me could’ve had my lunch peacefully after all.. they finally arrive. we write the quiz. miss qualification by one point. it was a long and painful (we ran into a couple of Rajyotsava processions) on teh way back. when i got to campus, having tucked in a brown masala dosa on the way, my eyes were burning. couldn’t work for a couple of hours. didn’t find anyone to talk to either. everyone was busy.

ten o clock, i sit down to do my math assignment for tuesday and one of my apex teammates comes in and starts lecturing about how i may be freeeriding in the group. problem is he thinks only those who put night outs work. i don’t have the habit of putting night outs but i work anyways. he gives me a lecture, puts hajaar senti (he happens to be a pretty good friend of mine else i wouldn’t have cared) and goes. i start doing my quant assignment at 12. teammates turn out to be freeriders. and i feeel constrained in CC. start feeling giddy, hungry and tired. but there’s an assignment to be done. put some excuse and come back to my room. do the assignment in the next four hours (quite a shoddy job i must say) and send it across to teammates. they expect me to put fundaes ot them. but i want to sleep. i’ve hardly slept for 2 hours when the alarm wakes me up. i have an hour to write the report and make a powerpoint presentation. put hajaar fight and send it across. class happens to be at 12. turns out all my teammates had chosen to bunk the class!! i was sure to get screwed. sat down in the last row tensed up. there yet another apex teammate comes and asks for fundaes. I start putting fundaes. thankfully we aren’t called to present. Class gets over. I get back. Realize that I had promised to go deliver invites for our fest. Given my busy apex schedule I tell Rachna I want to opt out. She blasts me. There go my chances of getting into FII next year.

I?m so depressed I try to talk to every possible person on bracket. Simply can?t get a conversation going. Get depressed yet again. so I start writing this. Then I see the mail that Rambo has scheduled a 15 min. class at 3 in order to make up for his leaving us 15 minutes early this morning. Leave my blog halfway and go to class. I just came back and wrote this last line.