Life lessons from the Sixth Semester: Engineering Life means more than grades

As of the record, the last post on this blog was written on November 30th, 2013. So it is almost five months that the random thoughts in my mind  remained confined to my mind and this place which has been my trash can for the last three years has remained quite clean and empty and devoid of any human interactions whatsoever. Storing too much of crap is dangerous for the mind and hence, I am making an attempt to write a blog post again, which I ought to write.

From my classmates' point of view, Semester number six was straightaway a failure for me. From my professors' point of view, my life can be seen as a graph quite close to this

My performance has been a case study for the over concerned professors of my department who have been discussing this over lunch, when they were bored of the same food being packed by their wives and needed something new and spicy to discuss. Even at two instances, they straightaway said the same words to me "Pinaki tumhara performance neeche jaa raha hain" after I scored 79/150 in my Mid Semester examination. Even I spotted a peon giving me a dirty look for hanging around with a female classmate in the corridor because I was late for the first lecture. His face read "Sala Ladkibaaz".

But then for the professors, classmates, peons, life is restricted to grades, attendance, assignments and of course, the boring food that their wives make in the lunch. They fail to recognize the need for bigger things in life and seeing life as a platform to learn infinite things. Engineering life, in fact teaches more than you can even imagine. I have seen people who have screwed up four years of engineering but they learnt invaluable lessons in the four years of screw up and now are successful entrepreneurs, software developers, social media employees and the list goes on.

Anyways, after beginning this article with the point of view of thee different class of people witnessed in engineering colleges, about my performance, let me come back to what I did this semester and why I don't consider it as a failure. If you know me via twitter, you must be knowing how my itch to tweet and tweet more. However, twitter occupies a big portion of my life. It is more than an itch to tweet, now. In the past six months, I have made friends, friends, and more friends over twitter. Exchanged numbers with them, got added to Whatsapp groups, met twitter users off twitter, made a lot of conference calls, witnessed a lot of fights on timeline and so on. Six months down the line, twitter looks like an inescapable part of life. Although you might judge me as an addict (which I probably am) twitter has been a learning experience too. I have seen people who have achieved a lot in life and in contrast, people who have achieved nothing, have non existent real life and hence looked for an escape on twitter. I have met excellent writers who write witty one liners, Shayaris, make trends and are always on high on creative juices. Had I never joined twitter, I would have never met them, I would have never known what creativity is all about, what's happening in Delhi, Mumbai or Chennai. A fair gift life has provided me at the cost of grades.

The second high of this semester was the college festival. I joined the anchoring team, got a partner who is supposed to be a class topper and whom, I naturally assumed to be dedicated and hard working. But work on field was quite different. While we begun writing scripts, I just realized I am putting in almost all the effort and she, just being a fellow spectator in all this, apart from trying to dictate me at times. Those two days of festival seriously kept me pissed off due to her excuses and attitude towards work. There was a lot of load and no team work and here is where I learnt something. Being a topper in the class doesn't make you an excellent person in life.

Coming back to the point, I took it up as a challenge, delivered my portion of what Robin Sharma refers to as "great work" and finally made "our" performance on stage excellent. And the strange part is, my professors and classmates don't have the vision required to see taking up challenges as a parameter in assessing performance.

This semester was more than challenges, I had failed dates, developed a taste for poetry and shayari, became a fan of Ghulam Ali's voice, slept a lot, watched a lot of movies and most importantly "had fun". I don't eliminate the fact that there are students and in fact classmates who enjoyed more than me and yet remained punctual. But then, as a rule, one shouldn't regret anything that makes them smile.

I didn't write a single assignment in the entire semester because I was busy tweeting all the time. But then as an engineering student, nothing is impossible. Yes, we are the ones who spend the entire semester watching a lot of porn, seeking girls, doing "keeda" and much more stuffs, make life dance on our finger tips and yet manage to make something out of life. This is because for us, life is more than grades. It is about your dedication, your willingness to be slightly off route, fail and then come back and deliver a tight punch back to failures.

On that note, let me end this article. And here I am going back to my assignments. I have got submissions beginning on Monday and I have to write around 10 assignments for the two submissions that I have on Monday. The funny part is, I am the only student in the class who hasn't got them checked (yes, check karwana to choddo, aaj likhne baithunga). But then, you just can't give up. If you have spent the semester enjoying, you have to buck up and deliver in the last few days. 

Battle Won

The society compound of Devi Kripa society has always been a sacred space for the little 'chutkus' that reside in the society. In the concrete jungles that prevail today, getting space to play is a bliss, and when it comes to games that are being played in society compound, cricket cannot be missed. Playing cricket in the society compound is almost as ritualistic an activity on a daily basis as watching Chotta Bheem is. Another thing, whenever you ask a grown up male to remember his childhood, you would always find a wooden bat inhibiting a little bit of space in his nostalgia. In the years to come, Anand would also associate himself with a story, a story for his first cricket bat.

Those were the early months of 2012. During cricket practice in the evening, Anad had seen his seniors, the seventh grade students carrying those heavy bats. While returning from the practice one day, Anand stopped his cycle, being dazzled by what he saw. It was a cricket bat in the showcase of a local sports store. With the advent of globalization and the improvement of lifestyle, people can now find a living by selling only those cricket bats and footballs, even in a 'small city'. Anand could see the bat with 'MFR' written on it, which he mistakenly read as 'MRF'. "Sachin's bat!" he exclaimed. He parked his cycle in the vicinity of the shop, locked it with a 'pipe lock' and went inside the store. "It will cost you Rs. 350" the store owner smiled. Innocent Anand didn't exactly knew how much Rs. 350 was, but was pretty sure Rs. 350 was a good price to pay for the 'Sachin's bat'. He went back home, in excitement, kept the cycle key on table and immediately rushed to Maa. "Maa, I want Sachin's bat, it's just of Rs. 350, please Maa". You could see him literally jumping like a macaque while demanding the bat from his Maa. "Ask your Baba when he returns!" Maa exclaimed. 

Baba returned home at 6:30. Anand's face had a mix of excitement, fear and stubbornness. "Baba, I want Sachin's bat, I saw it at the sports store down the road". "Anand, when are your exams?" "Next month Baba, I have a month for it" "No Anand, wait for the exams to end first and then I'll buy you the bat". Anand didn't speak anything and went to his room. His parents didn't heed much attention to the issue. His silence could only be understood some hours later when he refused to have dinner and his parents had to succumb to his stubbornness. Next evening Baba went with Anand to buy the 'MFR' bat. Baba got Rs. 75 discount on the bat. The bat was a good buy at Rs. 275. The battle was won. For that ten year old child, getting that bat was almost equivalent to winning the world.

Unforgettable

This one would remain the only instance when a highly complacent human being (okay I am doubtful about the last two words) was made to switch his laptop on after the first innings ended, get the internet on and directly start blogger's interface without even a slight deviation to youpo.. sorry I mean Youtube. Yes, the occasion's special. This blog post is for the guy who scored a double hundred, the third Indian to do that, giving a sweet message to Sachin that he won't be missed after his thirty sixth attempt to retire from cricket. Hitting sixteen sixes, the highest in a One Day International innings and almost making Virendra Sehwag utter "Behenchod.. mera record gaya". Yes, he is none other than Sharma, Rohit Sharma (you know there is a need to clarify, there is a Sharma in Australian team too (Okay no more Ishant Sharma jokes (okay no more brackets))) . This was one of those innings that completely came off surprise. I mean, how can you expect the guy who was having about a strike rate of 80 initially to score two hundred bloody runs, even when he was not wearing Sir Ravindra Jadeja's jersey? . I could sense the amount of swearing that Rohit was addressed by the blue jersey fans when he was involved in that Virat Kohli run out. But then some overs later, Rohit sensed the urgency and delivered like a true gentlemen, joining the class of reliable batsmen of the likes of Rahul Dravid and Hashim Amla. Another landmark crossed, Rohit made 1000 runs this year.

(Note: This tweet tweeted by me while he was in his 70s made was lucky for him today, just like our assumptions of having a luckyy seat, lucky plate, lucky jersy, lucky Pamela Anderson wallpaper (sorry ignore the last one)) 

Bailey: Kyun India, geeli ho gayi? Rohit Sharma: Bitch please! :)
— P. (@ChutiyaEngineer) November 2, 2013

Of Dogs and Diwali

It was about six in the evening and I was out with mom to buy jewelry this evening, on the eve of Dhanteras. Just as I reached society's main gate, the scene of a few kids playing with a puppy came to my sight. The children were about to tie a string of those tiny red colored bomb to the puppy's tail and burst it. Seeing that I rushed to the children and stopped them from lighting the string that was already tied on the puppy's tail. The latter had no idea what was going on. I untied it and patted the puppy, shooed away the children and left the puppy at a considerable distance. Diwali is not only about praying to God seeking wealth, health and of course happiness. True happiness is found in those little things in life, like saving the puppy from a disaster. 

The new room partner

It all begun with Gaurav washing some Chana in the bathroom basin before soaking them overnight in water. His work was neat, quite neat this time. The next time I visited the bathroom I found just seventeen of them in the sink. The last time he was washing apples, he left three of them in the sink, unofficially redefining what carelessness is all about. Seventeen Chana seeds take much lesser a space than three apples and on a volumetric basis, Gaurav later calculated that he was seven percent more efficient than the previous time. I collected the seeds from the basin and a couple of them were left behind. The next day, we three rushed to college and later in the evening, it came to our notice that one of the seed, even without any knowledge whatsoever made Darwin and Hitler proud of the employment of theory of survival of the fittest. It sprouted and we could see a small white root coming out of it, telling us that our new room partner had arrived. This was the second time in my engineering span that our room had served as a temporary maternity center. The previous time it was during my first year during Diwali vacation, when a pigeon made a nest and gave birth to a baby. We treated the pigeon as our room partner, giving her the leftover to eat along with two bowls of water a day (Honest confession: we had mixed vodka in the bowl once). A month later, the pigeon ditched us, when her child had become able enough to fly. The family left our room and it was three of us again.

However, the new room partner, with its uncertain stay span, had arrived this time. Gaurav, being its unintentional father bought cotton, soaked the cotton in water (minus vodka) and carefully placed the seed on it. Two days later, the white root had changed to green. Gaurav proudly declared his illegitimate child as a 'plant'. A couple of days later we changed the cotton as the previous one started turning brown. The plant was grew good day by day and Gaurav seemed happy about it. I saw the expression on his face and wondered if my dad was proud in the same way when he saw me walking for the first time or not. Our room which hitherto lacked purpose had an atmosphere where the new room partner had all the attention. Things were going good till Friday happened. Gaurav, Ankit and I reached the station directly from college to catch our respective trains and reach our respective cities. We all forgot about our new room partner until Saturday afternoon when Gaurav called me and asked "Kutte, Gaandu ko kaha rakha tha tune?" (FYI the Chana plant was named Gaandu). "I think I placed on in the wash basin" I said. We both assumed that the water on the cotton won't dry out before Sunday and that Gaandu will be safe and sound.

However, destiny had something else awaiting. The three of us packed our bags on Sunday morning to leave for Surat when we got calls from our classmates informing us that a flood is being anticipated and warning us to not board the train to Surat. We were all worried for our classmates, for the beer bottles we had stored in the basement and for Gaandu of course. The next one week was not good for the city. The drainage water flowed backwards to the houses, rain and flood water made it impossible to go out and prices of things sky rocketed. Meanwhile, it was a fun time for three of us, we watched bond movies at ease, listened to songs and the part where our concern for our classmates, beer and Gaandu was present in our mind stared to shrink. Time flied that week and Surat was out of danger by next Sunday. The three of us boarded up trains scheduled for evening and reached the room by night. Gaurav reached first, at about 8. Ankit and I reached the room by 8:30. Gaurav opened the door with a face resembling close to that of Ishant Sharma when he, out of a habit concedes more than 10 runs in an over. We understood what that meant. Ankit and rushed to the bathroom and we found the cotton in which Gaandu was placed to be entirely dry. Gaandu had left us, with its body, which out of seven days of decaying turned brown. Maybe Gaandu was not fit enough to survive, maybe it wasn't any of our fault, maybe it was all a part of the bigger plan that Almighty had for us. However, it wasn't so easy. We were attached to Gaandu. We had lost a room partner. That night, Gaandu's absence could be felt. As we were supposed to be grown ups, we didn't cry, our hearts silently weeped and we went to sleep late that night. The worst part of attachment is that you never realize how attached you are till you have to part ways. However, our beer bottles which were stored in the basement were later found to be safe and that news somehow compensated for our sour mood. 

Thinking of Future

This is the third year of of my engineering course, namely electronics and communication engineering. Longer than the branch's name is the list of unemployed EC engineers who graduated from our university. Maybe some eighteen months later I would join them, adding to India's ever growing 'educated and unemployed' force. Yes the ones that can definitely tell you how unemployment tastes like with a tinge of humor and sarcasm added. Stuff like "Ghar pe khaane ko kuch nai hain" replaced by "Dude! Didn't have either VAT 69 or 69 in the last few days" are common signs of the crowd that I am talking about.  The thought gets scary as well as relaxing whenever it crosses my mind. Scary because most of my schoolmates would be out there in the corporate world, with beautiful girlfriends, ironed shirts, expensive trousers and moreover enough money to buy beer every weekend without the 'pocket money milne pe lauta dunga' debt, whereas I would still be there, in my shorts and t-shits, still recharging my internet with petty SIM card with 95 rupees me 1 GB schemes and then inserting it into a dongle, starting the internet and blogging these posts which don't even get an audience. On the other hand, that phase might let me explore the creative side of mine, making me go for art, colors, journalism, writing and everything that has been confined to a hobby or a mental masturbation scheme during my free time ever since God and the other early things conspired to trap this bastard's soul into an engineering student's body. 

Of Inquisitiveness And Concern

It's really hard to imagine engineering life without a proper dose of tea every now and then. The first rule of tea lovers cease to change, being no matter how unimportant a day might seem to be, it must begin with a cup of tea. I reached the nearest chai wallah that Sunday and on a disappointing note, I found it in a shut down condition. But my tea-deprived body made me walk a bit further on that same lane to a small rickety shop that had small sachets of pan masala hanging, a shelf containing cigarette packets and a kerosene fueled stove with a copper container placed on it containing boiling tea. The gentleman attending the rickety stall was much more older than my father. No matter what his actual age was, the conditions in which he was made to live conspired together to make him look older than seventy. I asked for a Gold Flake. He took a cigarette out of the packet and gave it to me. I noticed his fingers shaking while handing over the cigarette. I took a match stick and lighted the cigarette, exhaled the first puff and asked for a cup of tea.

(Photo credit: 40to40.com | http://www.4to40.com/photo_gallery/picture.asp?pid=102&photo=Tea_stall_on_footpath.jpg&keywords=Desi_Chai )

I asked him if I could assist him and pour the tea in a glass as an act of self-service. The looks on his face turned from that of surprise to anger. "No no! It is my shop, I don't need you help" he shouted at me. I wished to apologize but I prevented it just to not fuel any further conversation which appeared to be heated up at that moment. He handed me the glass of tea placed in a plate. I took the glass, the lighted up cigarette and and sat on an iron bench next to the stall. While smoking, I noticed his trembling hands, those hands that didn't really have even the slightest portion of flesh present in them, with the skin tracing the shape of his veins and bones. I looked at his torn white vest, the red towel that he placed on his shoulder and the old blue lungi that he was wearing. Puffs after puffs and sips after sips I wondered what could have happened in his life. It might have been, like in very common cases that his children grew up and parted off, leaving the old man on his own. Or it might be that he never had any children, and being trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty, he had to work at this age too just to earn a living. I wondered where he lives, if he could afford two square meals a day, how he managed living in the winters and other such stuffs. I had a thousand questions in my mind but the leave-me-on-my-own attitude on his face discouraged me to ask him anything. I finally completed the cigarette, the tea and walked away. I somehow realized that even I am just like the others, with a lot of questions in my mind but actually with a very little concern for the things that they face. I am an imperfect creature, with a flawed inner world and just like the other human beings, I look for flaws in the external world.  

Jobless

Nights actually begin after midnight. I still wonder why midnight is not called startnight yet. And midnight gets good if you're bound to use a road where traffic remains rampant all through the day! However, there is one major transition that takes place. Human beings, with their two wheeler and four wheeler vehicles and the pedestrians of course are replaced by a four-legged animal. These animals are the most over-hypersensitive animals I have ever met after human beings. Their ears remain erect all though the night to sense every fucking single activity that takes place though the night, be it an a pigeon having loose motions, walking tip-toed, looking for a place to shit, in the sense of urgency at midnight. The dogs would bark and scare the hell out of the pigeons just to ensure that everyone remains restless all through the night. Long before movies like Bhaag Milkha Bhaag were made, these dogs we authentic in promoting athleticism. Has your car ever passed though a road inhibited by dogs at midnight? You would have definitely witnessed their act of over-enthusiasm. No one, including dogs seem to understand why they chase the cars randomly every night, all through their life. I am yet to verify if Usain Bolt or for that matter any other athlete can match their speed, because the fact is Usain Bolt won't chase my car if he doesn't get money for it, dogs do. Every time I look at them, the guilt inside me of being highly jobless reduces a little bit. 

Tenu :*

Basically two types of friends exist. One, the sane ones who are too sane to fall into the category of friends and then second, mentally-the-sick-types who falsely convince you of the fact that they need care and then you get just too attached to leave those morons. She, for all reasons, falls into the second category. The worst part is, she never appreciates my efforts to be patient and suffer her. Pretense is her birth right and pointing fingers at me would continue to remain her favorite hobby. There are nights when I find myself awake at 2 am listening to her philosophies on the driving force of Universe and at other nights, I have to suffer her panda-like acts and then there are nights when she would act drunk, just to gain some extra attention, drama queen she is. Life gives me no other options other than listening to her crush stories, her two wheeler rides to the nearest river basin and her obsession with dosa. When I commit to myself that I would somehow bear her crappy talks, she gets even more irritating, accusing me of being a male-chauvinist-asshole and crossing the limits by saying Pink Floyd is shit! But then I just can't stop talking to her. She is the only one who perfectly knows when I need a kick on my ass and when I need a shoulder to lay my head on. She is the only one who can bear my crappy talks and lame jokes and download and listen to the songs that I Whatsapp her ( being well aware of the fact that she hates metal, it's good to take revenge by sending her songs of Def Leppard and Pink Floyd). She is that person who never hesitates to say "tera net chutiya hain" when the texts get time to deliver and "Tu tharki hain tujhe ek Girlfriend chahiye" when I spot her with her hot friends in her whatsapp DP and ask "Yaar wo tere baju waali blue me, uska naam kya hain?".  She has been my support when I was down and she has always been the first person I share my blog posts with. This one's for you. Yaar tenu tu ladki bohot irritating hain par tere bina nai chalta.

P.S: Nothing shall change. I shall continue to find you irritating!

Like a Complacent Engineer

Have you ever seen where the Devil resides? Or let me ask you a better question, have you ever diagnosed an engineering professor's mind? Yes now you know the answer and you already feel like I am exaggerating but no, the truth is, professors are a little more merciful than the guy who came up with the entire idea of killing people in gas chambers. No wonder the professors feel like over-burdening the helpless students with assignments that take about seven million years and some sixty five thousand more years to complete and they literally take a whip and order us to complete the assignments in a semester time. If you were convinced right in the first time that I wasn't exaggerating then I succeeded in manipulating you. Actually, we engineers are the most complacent beings to ever exist on Earth, and in fact even my turtle has approved me that he can't really match my level of complacency (I asked him Shelly, are you more complacent than me? He didn't give a fuck and I assumed his answer to be a no). I get about 8-10 assignments in one subject per subject which makes it about fifty assignments per semester or about ten assignments per month or like one assignments in three days. But, being a pro in procrastination, I, or as a matter of fact all other engineers, try delaying the writing process until we come down to a state when fifteen days are remaining and twenty five odd assignments are left to be written. Yet, the belief that we will save our ass from fire, or the dire need to save it gives us the fire from inside to complete this almost impossible task. Yes, our lives are just like that, with blogging and twitter to more common things like movie, music, love, dating and Whatapping taking place in the initial months followed by mid semesters, followed by normal routine and then the ultra pressure of semester work submission and semester-end exams. We enjoy life like hell and then curse ourselves for wasting time and then promise ourselves "Agle semester me pehle se regular ho jaunga". But being regular is something that cannot happen in these four years, engineering makes us repeat the mistakes seven times, and then they don't remain mistakes, they become a habit, a habit to screw up and accepting complacency as a way of living.