Are you doing the 'in thing'??

In an age where dressing up, eating, thinking, speaking.. ,well to put in a nutshell, 'living' is influenced by your peers, the average Indian teenager is only but struggling to find his identity. The holidays are here... the whole 'crowd' is 'hanging out', well, you don't wanna be left out do you?

A lovely metaphor that i just thought of.. there's a blind Indian kid in a room.. one side of the room has a fire burning, and the other side is open to a certain-death-due-to-hypothermia land. There are a bunch of other Indian kids (who are also blind) who are ice skating somewhere in the middle of the room (there's enough ice to skate on.. and the air is warm enough to survive).. this group of ppl , ladies and gentlemen, are doing the 'in thing'.. Now why they're doing this is because they've heard about a group of phirangi kids who're ice skating.. and it's just 'cool' to do what they do.. Now what they don't know is that the phirangi kids' parents are reeeeally complacent.. they don't know what their kids are doing right now.. then there comes a point when the Indian parents come to know of their kids' new 'adventures'.. finished.. they're are given a nice beating and shut behind doors.. well.. their time 'serving' for their misbehavior comes to an end sometime or the other.. Now here's the problem.. They go out and try it again.. This time, they're prepared to not get caught.. They go too far into iceland.. and there ends the story of the Ice-skating Indians.

There's only one thing to learn from the above story.. Do what you want to do.. but before that.. just think of all the things that have happened in your life.. ask yourself, if your action will by any means interfere with the ideal that you've been following since you got into your senses.. Do what your heart tells you to.. because your mind is vain.

The era of mobile blogging

It's a lazy tuesday morning and i'm sitting at my dining table eating whatever my mom's made for breakfast.. Wondering if it's possible.. And as i've just found out.. It is.. I'm writing this blog through my phone.. It's simply mind numbing how freedom of speech has truly been given the importance it deserves.. Happy blogging..

The Odd Sheep Out

The second most debatable issue in the avrage Indian's Life, (the first being the efficacy of our education system), is the efficacy of our education system.. (No, that's not a mistake.. I intend to emphasize the fact that the issue wins the place hands down.).


Our third semester is at it's butt's end.. our cycle tests are over.. and we are about to become 3/8ths-of-an-engineer.. and yet, some of us don't know how to use an analogue multimeter... what we do know however is how to get shiny cards (they're called grade cards) with eye-popping close-to-10 GPAs.. Yeah.. I know.. Sad... but true.. painfully true..


Meet Mr.X.
CGPA=9.11
Ambition :
(no prizes for guessing) - Software Professional
Branch: Civil Engg!
Practical Knowledge abt programming: "I can write a code to say 'Hello World!'... does that count??"


Meet Mr.Y.
CGPA=8.96
Ambition : Pilot (#&*k what was he thinking??!!)
Branch : Metallurgical Engg.

Interviewer (Me) : How many 'G' s do you think you can withstand?
Mr.Y. :Donno.. maybe around 13... 14.
Interviewer :(@#$%)!


Practical skill/knowledge is extremely scarce among the three-score-odd people who crowd my classroom everyday during the day and spend thier irate minds innovating new ways to send Short-Text-Messages in class without getting caught.. If only such talent were used toward other viable avenues.. Alas, if only our education system Permits..!!

Scale your skills... Part II

It wasn't as bad as we had imagined.. We had a lot of fun indeed.. and in the process, did bag some pretty heavy stuff(I mean literally.. that one-hell-of-a-heavy trophy, was just short of leaving rashes on my thigh on the way back to the main city, in that one-hell-of-a-cramped bus).. the college was great.. Neat infrastructure, very clean campus.. Yes.. I'm talking about PSNA College of Engg. and Tech.





The first day wasn't bad.. it wasn't bad at all.. we had to write an aptitude test, which scaled right from analytical ability to English skills.. i bagged the Gold in that event among the 84 odd students that arrived there.. But strictly, being students of NIT Trichy, I think the 4 of us had an UNFAIR advantage over the others.. It was the kind of crowd (as I noticed in the ensuing Bus trip) that would make fun of each other and howl at the top of their voices than enjoy some refined humour that had some intelligent wordplay in them.. No, I'm not categorising everybody here.. there were some who would prove my above statement wrong..

After an assorted eat-me-quick-or-i'll-taste-bad kinda dinner, we left in a bus filled with teenage rebels. We slept in a rather awkward arrangement of Dining tables from a marriage hall, and blankets from the i-want-to-be-an-insomniac club.. the outsides were quite deceptive mind you..


[What our night's stay looked like from the outside]


[Contest #1 SPOT-ME]

After a night spent amid lungi-clad natives, looking like aliens from another planet(I'm saying this because we where among the few who didn't know how to wear a lungi and plus, everyone else were rehearsing and re-rehearsing something for a competition that we had gotten to know the name of only a couple of hours back!!), we woke up to find the hall almost empty. For a second i thought we had missed the bus to the college. Tired as we were, we made it in time for the bus to start.

What followed was a full day of hectic activities and competiotions... Almost throught the entire event, I was inly admiring their infrastructure.. Take a look for yourself..


[A lecture hall at PSNA Coll. of Engg.]

Then at the end of the Day came the time of reckoning... The results of the events were announced..

and there it came out of the blue... Arwin Arni , first place in Aptitude test.. Sachin Jay Menon, first place in quiz, group presentation, Ankit Srivastava, Second place Group discussion.. and there we were thinking it was all over.. and then came the icing on the cake..

Rotaract Club of NIT Trichy are the overall champions.. Brilliant.. Just Brilliant!

Scale your skills.. come to Dindikul

It was during Math class that I got a message from Ankit asking me if I wanna take part in a little something called Skill scaler.. I assumed it would be fun and gleefully nodded. The time came when we had to go there.. and we did, the four of us, without an iota of an idea as to what was about to happen. Got the bus to Dindikul, and we were on our way...





The dry and warm dindikul countryside welcomed us with a wisp of hot air from the windows... The hilly landscape resembled more of a masterful rendering on canvas, than a real sight.. it was perfect...





The cacti along the way were only a stark omen of the things to come...





a warm and arid night that feels like sticking a bed of nails on your back and trying to enjoy the sleep.. that feels like trying to fit into a tiny, airtight one-foot-cube of a Plexiglas box..

Oh! Enough already.

These weren't quite what we went through though.. as you can see from the bright wide smiles on our faces..


















So there it was... PSNA (I'm really sorry, but I tried remembering that 24 syllable long expansion, and i failed) the place where we would pit our soft skills and our wits against the other particapants from all over Tamil Nadu... it was going to be war...