Random Trivia from a Train journey

• If bottled water costs Rs 2/-, its probably just a misprint.
• There is a spoon. It comes in a yellow packet.
• There's extra sugar as well, even if you don't dislike it.
• Omelette and Butter on Brown Bread is not as delicious as it sounds.
• Lazard pays you BIG money, big enough to save. (and Yes, there really is a company by that name)
• Rave was the first mall in Uttar Pradesh.. and that makes Kanpur an awesome city.
• Padmaasan on a Chair Car seat isn't all that difficult.
• Every chocolate with nuts isn't Crackle.
• Names sound funnier with the 'ch' sound.
• I'm a good observer (blush)
• Not everybody is scared of geeks.

Confidence

On the twenty sixth of August, 2009, during the recession-hit placement season at BITS, a seven point something electronics and electrical engineer appeared for his first placement interview with HP.. In an Adobe T-shirt and cargoes.

"Why do you want to work for HP?"
"I have to put food on the table."

Two months at Google Summer of Code is what gives one balls that firm.

Respect!

An Unfortunate Truth

Life in Bhagirath Village

Its been ten days, and life in Bhagirath village is as laid back as that of a Navy officer after spending six months at sea. It seems like yet another peaceful and uneventful desert town on the outside. Take a closer look at the mess-side (not mess-facing) upper pi wing, however, and you will notice that it isn't all smoke and green after all.

To start with, my namesake and (ex-)wingie Vineet Pandey, who is now a Backlog student, is back on campus. To make things worse, he has been alotted a room next to that of his nemesis. You may think that that is the cruelest joke the random nature of the Universe can play at you until you visit Room no. 258 in Bhagirath, where Rachit Chandra is living next to Nobody.

Cornered on the other side of the wing, Anurag Dutta has been made to study Bode Plots for another four months after a high-tech 'Pen Check Test' conducted by one of the thousand Deans in the highly dysfunctional bureaucratic system of BITS proved him guilty of adding a leading '1' to a requisition letter.

King of DoTA Vishal Vejani, who has made up his mind to set up an empire of Imitation Jewellery, has been fighting hard to gain access to the Temple of Zuma with SunGod priviliges.

In other news, chocolate boy Kunal Batra, who has successfully evaded more than seventy proposals from ovulating BITSian women in the past three years, has finally come out of the closet and publically announced his sexual preference on his GTalk status message.

Also easily noticable (in fact, impossible to miss even on Google Earth) is Binit Ranjan Mishra, who has been alotted the middle room to maintain the centre of gravity within the wing (and also to keep the moon within the Earth's gravitational field). He has put up a curtain in his room as well, to protect his precious and delicate body from the perverted eyes of the three people who will bother to check out what he's upto in the next five months.

While Golden Boot of BITS Sathe Akshay Rajendraprasad and Nine Point Something Mohta Mayank Prakash have been struggling with the name fields on their resume, Rashik Gupta has been receiving fragments of romantic poetry from his secret crush.

Stargazer Amey Parulekar and my favourite gult in the whole world Karteek Addanki, as usual, are Geeks.

With upto six hours of powercuts, an erratic water supply and a disastrous LAN distribution switch, Bhagirath Village has become alarmingly similar to BITS Goa.

Thankfully, Swine Flu hasn't created as much of a havoc so far, but the aptly named Little Green Mofos have ruined Vishal Jaiswal's plans of jerking off with the lights on.

As for Yours truly, Divya Saraf agreed to tie him a rakhi after 'The Dude from Lucknow' Swati Singh, for reasons undisclosed, blatantly refused to do so, causing a minor glitch in her neonatal relationship with a particular StuCCAn of a department that thinks it controls(z) everything.

As the moment of arrival of Dhananjai Gaur, Anant Prakash and Yahoo! Software draws nearer, and as Ayush Saksena, Shailee Jain and Surbhi Chowdhary continue to struggle with the wires and holes on their breadboards, Senti sem at BITS promises to be a 100 day long tale of Intellectual Conversations, Critical Decisions and Situation Comedy.

Here's to Retirement!

By weight

Yes, XKCD has inspired everybody.

Statues, Dalits and Mayawati - The other side

The statues in Lucknow are all over the news these days. I, like everyone else, have condemned the expenditure of crores of rupees on these in the past. However, I'd like to posit some thoughts from the other side of the argument here.

On being asked the reason for building these statues, Mayawati said: "Why doesn't anyone raise a finger at the memorials at Rajghat where the land itself would be worth crores of rupees?"

And right she is.

People criticize Mayawati for building statues at the expense of development. If you give it some thought, the total amount spent on Gandhi-Nehru statues and memorials across the country is far greater than what Mayawati has spent on memorials for Dalit leaders in Lucknow.. and to add to that, all that money was spent when the country was less developed and much poorer. Development must have taken a greater hit back then than it is taking now.

We have grown up in a post-liberalization developing and progressive India, and have never experienced the underdeveloped nation with a downright hypocritic society that we used to be; we've only heard of it.

Starting right from our primary school text books, we have been Gandhi-washed; we've been made to believe that Mahatma Gandhi is the only national leader worth praise and that the Congress alone got us independence.

There is a plethora of unsung heroes who were sidelined by the dominantly Congress government we had till the 90s.

As an example, all of us had read about Bhagat Singh in school, but how many of us appreciated his life, his work and his sacrifice before watching a movie on him? Would you mind if somebody erected a statue of him today? Of course not!

Has anyone bothered to read about all the work done by Dr. Ambedkar and Kanshi Ram for the upliftment of the underdeveloped before criticizing their statues?

Scheduled Castes have always been mistreated, subdued and ignored. Their leaders have never been given the respect they deserve, except by the Dalits themselves, who have always been, rather have been kept, at the bottom of the development ladder.

If Mayawati, a dalit who is at the top of the ladder today, is making it up to them by honouring their leaders, shouldn't we be supportive?

For my part, I respect the woman for what she has accomplished inspite of belonging to both the caste and the gender looked down upon by rest of the society.

In merely twenty years, BSP has risen from nothing to holding an absolute majority in the most populous state of the country, an achievement attributed to the work done by them for the Dalits.

From a more psychological point of view, we have the habit of judging people, specially women, only by their looks. We have branded Lalu Prasad Yadav, who holds a bachelor's degree in law, as 'illiterate', evaluating him only by his bucolic looks and accent.

Similarly, most of us have subconsciously hated Mayawati ever since the day we've seen her on a poster, not because of her work or her policies, but because she is, excuse me, an unattractive woman. In our mentality, this by default means uncouth, untalented and evil. We have simply ignored her capabilities, her educational qualification and the struggle she has faced in life as a dalit woman.

Lastly, stop criticizing her for focussing more of her work on Dalits. Their support and their votes have got her this far. It's her duty, like it is for all other leaders, to work for them and keep them satisfied.

And yes, Mayawati is a 'goddess' to that part of society.

If I was a dalit and somebody finally paid attention to my people's development and my caste's leaders after they've been despised for over fifty years of independence, I'd consider her a goddess too.

Cynical Cyanide

"I have been repeatedly told not to use my blog as a medium of communication. However, I can't resist the temptation at times.

I lack the skill of articulation. Today, PP managed to articulate the problem in humor prevalent in our circles. Most of our humor revolves around criticizing others.

We love being cynics. Identifying things that do not work. Making fun of people's munjis. Talking of change. Conjuring up visions. Hiding behind excuses. I am happy about slowly shedding off the cynic's glasses which shroud your eyes. Now I am a lot more positive.

And as a result, I stay away from the cynics. They are injurious to my spirits."

We love criticizing others to hide our own shortcomings.

We contrive faults in them, find excuses to mock them, conceal our hypocrisy as tafri.

We feed on their misery to make ourselves feel better.

If sitting in a group and speaking foul about those not present is what having "fun" in Social circles is all about, I despise You.

Sarcasm is good, but it breeds Cynicism.

I am glad I can see things positively again.

Thank You Prakhar Prabhakar, Rachit Chandra.

The Saksena Limit

This just in:

Scientists at Xero0ne Labs have finally calculated a criteria for evaluating human behavior.

The theorem, named after its founder Ayush Saksena (BE MSc), classifies all humorous or attempted-humorous actions into two categories:

• Tafri
• Chutiyaap

According to the theorem, above a certain limit, all so called nautanki ceases to be Tafri and becomes Chutiyaap. This limit, derived empirically through repeated experimentation on the Maturity Levels of test subjects from the Despo Doodh group, has been named 'The Saksena Limit' in honor of the founder of the theorem.

However, The Saksena Limit is highly stochastic.

It depends on factors such as:

• Whether or not the joke is cracked by Ayush Saksena
• Whether or not the joke is on Ayush Saksena
• Whether or not a girl Ayush Saksena could have slept with would change her mind because of the joke

The current value of The Saksena Limit has been estimated at 0.8 NPM.

Also, when we examine the graph of the derivative of the function, we can notice that there is a steep change in the function near the Saksena Limit, which indicates that a joke intended as Tafri can easily turn into Chutiyaap, if the almighty Saksena so decides.

Thus, we can also conclude that "There is a thin line between Tafri and Chutiyaap."

Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Kumari Sushri Mayawati Ji has announced a prize of rupees 1 lakh and four marble statues for the founder scientist Ayush Saksena for this remarkable discovery.

About Last Night

Top ten reasons why last night was awkward:

• Ayush Saksena wore a sparkling gray shirt.
• Arjun Krishna took a fifty minute walk on a dark lonely road with another guy.
• Ayush Saksena displayed paedophilic tendencies.
• Arjun Krishna pee'd on the LMGC gate.
• Ayush Saksena was sexually assaulted by two men.
• Arjun Krishna flirted with another guy in his mother's presence.
• Ayush Saksena shamelessly described how he takes care of his pubic hair.
• Arjun Krishna slept with a soft toy.
• Ayush Saksena had a one hour long romantic conversation at One in the night with his "cousin".
• Neither of them was under the influence.

Respect the Red

Note : This article is about the color red on Gtalk status messages.

If you are a Manchester United fan, you were probably looking for this.

If you are a communist desperate for respect, go here. 

अगर आपकी मंगल की महादशा चल रही है तो कृपया यहाँ जाएँ.

End of Note

Good looking people will never stop ruining my happiness.

This time, they've made a mockery of my privacy.

Here's how it happened.

In this world, there are good looking girls. (A)

Also in this world, there are desperate men. (B)

And in any closed system, B's purpose of existence is to stalk A.

In the beginning there was A.

And one day, Google made Gtalk.

A logged onto Gtalk. She was green.

And for a time, it was good.

But soon, Bs found her out, and the next time she logged in, she had a hundred "hi wassup?" messages from Bs.

She had a little conversation with all the Bs, and politely made an excuse to shoo them away. It is, after all, the moral responsibility of every good looking girl in the world to be nice to people to prevent unnecessary testostoronal loss of life.

The Bs didn't understand; they were rather encouraged; they didn't give up.

When A had had enough, she turned red.

And a wise move it was.

Half the Bs thought A was busy and stopped buzzing,

And there came a time when A was always red.

Obscurity had come to the rescue.

Soon, Red became the new Green.

The other Bs, however,  got the trick.

How dare she take away their right to harass pretty girls!

How dare she try to outsmart them to be just left alone!

Busy or not, their "hey how r u?" continued.

And so started the race..

And in the quest of staying one step ahead of her stalkers, A used Pidgin and turned yellow.

And Bs responded with their timed 5-minute-ly "hey u thr?"s

And A had to eventually give in every time.

And then one day, A turned invisible.

And then, there was relief.

She could finally hit on her chocolate boys in peace.

And how did all this effect me, the common man?

Well, I'm old fashioned.

Being an ugly person I'm not allowed to keep up with these trends.

I still believe in the orthodox teachings of Google: the three Colors,

When I'm busy I innocently set my status to Red.

But people just ignore it and buzz me anyway.

I write DND next to the red,

And some continue to ignore it and buzz me anyway.

I take the effort to remove the abbreviation and make it  Do not Disturb. Busy means Busy.

And somehow, Vineet Pandey still manages to buzz me anyway.

Now, either Vineet Pandey is an atrocious disgrace to comprehending the English language or,

In time, the common man has just got used to the mockery of colors done by good looking people.

It is, I believe, the latter.

Today, it doesn't matter what color your status is.

If you're on the list, you'll be bugged.

Good looking people have screwed us up once again.

And this, we believe, is blasphemy and must come to an end, lest we anger the lords.

However, something good has come out of it as well.

Good looking girls, in doing so, have provided us a foolproof way of finding out how good-looking any girl is.. from only her Gtalk status.

Its quite simple to figure out as well.

In every status, the girl says a story.

I'm fat, ugly and desperate.

Or, I'm lonely and vulnerable.

I have a stalker.

Or, I'm just an ugly friend of a hot one.

I'm popular and attractive.

Or, I'm just asleep.

I'm Hot.

And, I'm actually busy hitting on someone else right now.