Of naps, yawns and Periplaneta americana

Another TS has just passed, bringing along with it half a dozen highly forgettable grades that shall soon be forgotten, and all that shall remain as 'mementos' of the exams shall be the innumerable bakar (the R-land equivalent of 'chitchat') sessions we had. One such session was particularly memorable. It was at the Reptile's place, and as in most bakar sessions, one thing led to another, and we finally found ourselves discussing our electives in high school. I wasn't surprised by the Reptile's disbelief when I revealed my elective to him. Most people have reacted the same way, more or less, when they came to know that my elective was, put on your seat belts, biology!

What it was that made me pick biology is a mystery worthy of the investigative genius of Mulder and Scully. One thing I never told anyone back then, or ever, for that matter, is that despite all my lousy grades in biology, deep inside, I aspired to become a doctor. I don't know why. I suppose that's what watching Scrubs and reading Robin Cook does to you. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that I longed to have a steth around my neck, and in some deep corner of my ER-addicted mind, I still do. So, despite all that, why did I bunk PMPD (Pre-Medical something. Some exam you have to clear to make it to any medical college in the country.) and spend the day watching a dozen Lis and Wangs walk away with every single medal at the Asian Games, you ask? That is a question that would be answered better by any of the fifteen other bio students in class, or better still by our teacher (who, from now on, shall be referred to as, 'the May Bee'), who tried everything possible to get me studying. Alas, all her efforts went down the drain, and so would yours if you tried to get any of the aforementioned talking, as they are all mugging away to glory in different corners of the world. That means I get to narrate my story all by myself!

Biology classes were very interesting.... at least for the n-4 students who bothered to pay attention. For the quartet on the last bench, they were a laboratory of sorts, where they kept discovering new postures in which Homo sapiens could sleep. The quartet, here, refers to The Geek, The Freek and the Tweak (I have no idea what 'tweak' means, or if it is a word at all, but come on, I couldn't think of another word that rhymed.), and of course, me. Oh, and by the way, 'freek' hasn't been misspelt.

The fact that the others showed an over-zealous interest in the subject did not help our cause either. Not only did it make our lack of interest even more conspicuous, it also got on our nerves. On one occasion, I committed the blunder of sitting beside the God-of-the-Geeks, better known as PSK. It was an amazing experience, albeit a bad one. PSK, as always, was jotting down every single discernible sound wave that left the May Bee's vocal chords. 'She sneezed five minutes ago,' I muttered in sheer frustration, 'why didn't you note that down?' 'Why, of course!' came the prompt reply. Give me strength!

It has been my observation that, by and large, a person's knowledge of biology is inversely proportional to his sense of humour. I don't know how this works or why it is so, but, trust me, it's true. This explains why even some really lame comments like, 'there is a Periplaneta americana on my table' had the entire class in splits. This also explains the fact that though bio classes were okay to start with, eventually, they got corny enough to make Heyy Babyyy seem really funny (or should I say 'reallyy funnyyy').

In retrospect, I probably could have worked slightly harder. A lot harder, actually. But it's all for the better, I suppose. Had I done all that, I wouldn't have ended in this hell-hole we fondly call R-land, would I? Had it not been for the CBSE's absurd notion that guys who can cram a few hundred weird names that would all be worthy contenders for 'The World's Toughest Tongue-Twister' (try pronouncing Ophrys oxhyrrhynyis), and draw a dozen abstruse diagrams make the best doctors, I might have ended up in med. Alas, medicine was not fortunate enough.

To IIChE, his own....

'Twas five minutes past twilight in R-land when the great disaster befell the quizzing community of the world at large and its R-land counter-part, LitSecTM in particular. Satan had turned up at quite a few LitSec events, and time and again, failed to make it to the finals. Intoxicated by a fierce desire for revenge, Satan disguised himself as a quiz, and using IIChE and Arihant Publishers as 'vectors' (yeah, I still remember some of the bio I learnt at school.) he unleashed himself upon the world. What followed was a quiz so lousy, that it is feared that traditional quizzes will lose their charm altogether. After all, when something gets lousy beyond a certain extent, people start finding it funny. (Watch a Bhojpuri film if you want proof of that.)

For more details on the quiz itself, visit http://thenameissushi.blogspot.com/2007/10/jeev-milkha-sing-meets-alfred-nobel.html

And just for the record, we won the quiz (where 'we' refers to The Politician, The First Bencher and me) and ended up spending nearly the entire prize money (which, by the way, was 1000 bucks. Not bad at all) on a treat at the Ravindra Canteen. Hmph!

P.S: Why did I post this, when all it practically is, is a detour to Sushi's blog, you might ask. Well, I wasn't happy with the detail Sushi laid on the fact that I won, and more importantly, self-glorification is something I've always enjoyed, and also something I haven't indulged in for quite some time now. Muahahahaha! I rock

One Night In The Capital

“Desperado... Why don't you come to your senses?”, I crooned for the nth time that night, much to the chagrin of the Bulk and The Hairy Hick who were seated beside me. “I'm trying to catch some sleep here, you ass,” the Bulk cursed, and gave another of his huge, Neanderthal yawns. My habit of singing while travelling has gone down badly with quite a few people, which I must say, is not too surprising. Not that I sing badly. Out of touch, I guess, would be the right phrase. Sixteen more yawns, five 'chole'-vendors and four hours later, we found ourselves in the capital, thanks to a bumpy ride on the rickety Uttarakhand Parivaahan that we have all come to recognize. A bumpier ride on an auto-rickshaw and we finally arrived at our destination- IIT Delhi, and the occasion was their cultural fest- Rendezvous, which, for some reason, is attended (and mispronounced) by most of R-land.

Picture this- you are exercising your bowels early in the morning and halfway through, the taps run dry. Nonplussed? You wouldn't be, if you were an IITD student. Four years in a place like that, and you'll never find any situation in life complicated, thanks to their water-for-an-hour-a-day system and the weird nomenclature of their blocks (A-long, A-short, A-perpendicular, A-parallel, A-tangential, to name a few.). “It's 10, right? Hurry! 'The Best Chick in Town' must have started,” advised the annoyingly huge first-year localite whom the Hick knew beforehand owing to the fact that they were both from the same village. I say annoyingly huge because his 6 foot something height was giving me an inferiority complex. I looked like a schoolboy next to him. I look like a schoolboy next to most people, but even so, a first year?

Anyway, getting back to the point, 'The Best Chick in Town' was picked and awarded. What do you do when some of the hottest girls in the country stand right in front of you? Well, nothing at all, if you are either Dela or the Bulk. True to the spirit of LitSec, all we did was gape at each other. (Oh my God, there is something wrong with me! I must see a doc about this.) “Now what?”, we asked the first year, to which he went on to name a dozen other voyeuristic events. “Isn't there a quiz or anything of that sort?” I asked. “What sort of a geek are you?” came the reply. Proving that I wasn't a geek meant I had to endure a 4 hour long ramp show. Halfway through it, the Bulk fell asleep. “Lets get out of here,” I suggested. “No way! We have bunked classes to come here. There are events for two more days. We can't go back now!” is what I thought would be the Bulk's response. But I was wrong, though. All he said was, “Yeah, sure. Let's go.” In order to ensure that our trip to the capital wasn't entirely fruitless, we had a couple of pav bhajis and half a dozen chuskis just before we left. (And after all this, the Bulk still claims he's on a diet.) An hour later, we were in the same rickety Uttarakhand bus again.
“Desperado....”

The Knights At Fort Knox

R-land has more than its share of absurd rules, none perhaps more ludicrous than the fortification of the sole domicile of the feminine half, oops, sorry, one-twentieth of the insti. What is perhaps even more depressing is that the same fate has befallen the Fachchas. RJB has become completely out of bounds for every single guy who, even remotely, looks like a sophomore. Despite all these huge hurdles that stood in their way, four valiant sophomores, viz. the Reptile Legend, iPot, The Bulk and Dela, took the task of sneaking into the fortress upon themselves. (Yeah, I often refer to myself in third person. It makes the narrative seem less boring.) 'One for all and all for one' was to be our motto, but we realized later that the P&I 2nd Year Batch had patented the tagline. (If you didn't get that, contact me, or better still, contact iPot.)

Like most dangerous expeditions, half our team chickened out at the eleventh hour. It was finally down to just the Reptile and me. At the stroke of nine, while the rest of the world prepared to go to bed, and the rest of IITR was busy planting bombs and detonating them, the two of us set out on our journey....

At the entrance of RJB stood our first hurdle, or rather MY first hurdle, as the Reptile had slipped away to Lipton with the pretext of getting himself a cup of coffee, leaving me all alone with the blood-thirsty security guard.

I found some strength in the fact that if I couldn't come up with a convincing story to get past this guy, noone else could. After all, I was Dela. 'Notice lagaana hai, bhaiya', I yelled to the guard, though my mind was still lost in self-admiration at the brilliant fib I had come up with at such short notice. The watchman, though, contorted his face and gaped at me as if I had just mumbled something in Swahili. 'Notice lagaana hai, bhaiya', I repeated, and this time, I even drew some sort of rectangle in mid air, in a desperate attempt to make the dolt understand. 'TV Room?', came the prompt reply. Disgusted, I was planning my next move. 'He doesn't understand me anyway. I might as well dish out a few of the many Hindi expletives I have picked up during my stay here', I thought. Just in the nick of time, the Reptile arrived, in true Bollywood-hero fashion and two minutes later we were in front of the mess that we all know and hate. Huge posters, in bright yellow, magenta and a dozen other gay colours, greeted us with the message, 'The-Act-That-Must-Not-Be-Named is Banned'. By the way, I'm avoiding the r-word as a security precaution. For all you know there might even be a clause in the SC Ruling that makes even the mention of the word a punishable offence.

The Reptile and I parted ways, as we set off for G33 and F46 respectively, in search of our progeny. I entered F46 and was distraught to find my former room with everything neatly stacked in its right place. What was worse, both my kids were busy studying! My legacy, it seems, has died away. My entry sent my 'betas' into a state of hysteria. They were suddenly were suddenly all, ‘Sir, bait jao, sir’, ‘pani lata hun, sir, ‘blah blah blah sir’ and so on and so forth. In an attempt to gauge my popularity among the fachchas, I asked them, 'Room Baap se mile kya?' I was not sure whether to be elated by the fact that someone had finally understood my Hindi or to be disappointed by the reply that followed. ‘Both our room baaps are useless wimps, sir. They both have pathetic GPAs.’ I was shattered. Damn these fachchas. Why do these guys reduce people to just a number? Son, indeed. I was beginning to hate both these creatures that had been thrusted upon my poor room. I decided to leave the room baaps topic aside, and went on to tell them a dozen tales from the days of yore- all starring, written, directed and narrated by Dela. Their naivete surprised me. I couldn’t believe my luck when they actually fell for the story in which I told them that I was responsible for the bandage that a certain Really Pathetic Man was sporting lately. I felt a sudden urge to reveal my true identity to them. ‘Luke, I am your father.’ I decided against it, though. After all, the moron had called me a useless wimp. Some day, I shall reveal myself to him, and while I’m at it, I might as well chop off his hand. May the Force be with me…

Tag Along, Folks!

‘Lefty has Tagged you’, read the subject of the 3918th unread message in my mailbox. My cursor involuntarily moved to the ‘delete’ checkbox, when I received a scrap to the same effect. A scrap meant business, I decided, and off I went from one matchbox to the other, seeking the true meaning of the message, but my efforts were in vain. (My hopes soared when one of my floor-mates put on a ‘don’t-you-know-even-that’ kind of expression on questioning, but all he could come up with was, ‘A tag is that thing in shops on which prices are written.’ Duh!)

Either because I have been hanging around with too many geeks lately or because I myself have become one, I tried wikiing. (By the way, how do you spell that?) As always, it came up with over five dozen results, ranging from Tag Heuer to triacylglycerol. After a few cursory glances, I made a list of five ‘probables’. Deciding that it could neither mean ‘talented and gifted’ or ‘a type of metadata involving the association of descriptors with objects,’ I finally figured out that checking out Lefty’s blog would be a much easier thing to do. I found the answers to all my questions. Enlightenment, at last!

But, as I would soon realize, with enlightenment comes work, and it was then that I truly realized the depth in the saying, ‘Don’t ever go looking for the light at the end of the tunnel. In all probability, it is from an oncoming train.’ There was no turning back now, for I was the Chosen One, or rather one of the Chosen Eight. To quote Lefty, by being Tagged, I had just been inducted into a pseudo-elite group of bloggers who write random facts about themselves to either extol their inferiority complex driven souls, or just because they have nothing better to do.

You might, or rather, will, find this paragraph better written than the rest of the post. It is only because I, remaining true to the great lineage of ‘Taggers’, that I am now a part of, have shamelessly copy-pasted it entirely from Lefty’s post. The rules of Tagging, that now bind me, are as follows:

1. On being Tagged, the blogger must accept 8 as the answer to Life, Universe and Everything instead of the erroneous 42, and devote his or her energies in proving the same.
2. Having pledged to do so, the blogger must post 8 random facts about him/herself.
3. Next, the blogger is expected to enmesh 8 more innocent souls into the Tagged web. He must post a comment on their blog warning them of their fate and ensure that they have received his warnings.
4. A blogger who does not wish to accept the rules of Tagged on being Tagged would find himself in an imbroglio. It would be prudent for him to play along. If, however, he chooses to do a “Screw you guys, I’m a’ goin’ home”, he must remember that the Big Brothers of Tagged are constantly watching him and he would have earned their ire. Their favourite method of execution is to fill the bloggers mail/scrapbook/comments with Tags unless he of she loses his sanity or the will to fight, whichever is earlier.
537 words, and I still haven’t got to the point! Wow, I have grossly underestimated my ‘beating-about-the-bush’ capabilities all along. So, for those of you haven’t gone to sleep already, here are the eight random facts about myself:
1. Though I was christened Abhishek, for some inexplicable reason, the name has never stuck. I have had more than my share of nicknames- Tyson in kindergarten (though my savage behaviour in class had more to do with it than my biceps), Sundar in Middle School, (which, by the way, always got on my nerves. No offence meant, Dad, but somehow, I never liked your name much.) and of course, Dela ever since. I am tempted to narrate the story of how the name came about, but as it has already been repeated more often than the Bulk’s ‘Ding-dang-a-ding-dang’ drones, I won’t . I shall narrate it sometime, when I have completely run out of ideas for my next post.

2. I have this uncanny knack of tricking people into believing things that never happened- something some people, unfairly, call lying. ‘I do not lie. I make fables, like Aesop and those guys.’
3. Like all the others in my lineage, I love food, but unlike them, I am a big eater. (Maybe Lefty and Matty Boy have tremendous appetites too, but their sizes seem to suggest otherwise, right?) My gastronomic prowess has got me into many an embarrassing situation, the most noteworthy being the one that took place during a buffet I attended with my family. Seeing that the food was unlimited, I helped myself to what some might call a lot of food. The host saw my plate and commented, “What a good boy! He has brought food for his entire family.” Hmph!
4. Another fact that very few people know is that I am a reasonably good poet, though most of my poems, like Phoebe’s books, have only been read by me. I write only when I’m feeling terribly depressed, and so, I myself find most of my poems unbelievably soporific. I haven’t written for quite some time though, my last work being ‘Specs Appeal’, a self-consoling poem I wrote nearly half a decade ago, the day the ophthalmologist heartlessly broke the shattering news that I’d have to wear glasses for the rest of my life.
5. I am a huge football fan and have been one right since the days of Cantona and Schmeichel, though the JEE and CAS created a two-year hiatus in between. Manchester United-Arsenal games are huge rituals at home- awaited with bated breath by my Dad and me, and dreaded by my Mom, because whatever be the outcome of the game, it results in uproar. My living room has now been replaced by the Cautley TV Room, and my couch by an armchair thrice as old as me. I haven’t really had time to notice though, owing to the undivided attention that I give the game. Glory, glory, Man. United!
6. My tryst with music, sadly, hasn’t been a pleasant one at all. Despite my trying my hand at various instruments, my interest hasn’t lasted over a year. My innate singing talent, though, is undeniable and has made me the idol of most of my lesser-talented counterparts. (Readers are requested to refer to clause no. 2 again.)
7. Sadly, there is something in my face that makes me the hot favourite among the Gods of PJs- The Reptile, Jumbo the Junior, The Bulk and most importantly, The Grinning-Geek. (Lefty has been deliberately excluded from this list owing to the fact that he comes up with PJs come-what-may, whether or not I am present is secondary.)
8. Unlike Noida, there were no Kala Sangams in Bahrain, and so, my drawings have gained a reputation of being the worst of their kind ever. I have always avoided drawing whenever I could, but in the school where I studied, drawing was a compulsory course. (It wasn’t exactly compulsory, but we had to pick either drawing or dancing, so I had no choice.) On one occasion, we were asked to draw a horse, and while the others were still struggling to complete their pictures, I finished mine well in time. With pride written all over my face, I showed it to my teacher, only to be spanked by her. “Do you ever obey anyone?” she bellowed, “I asked you to draw a horse, not a dog!” I have never ventured into anything even remotely related to art ever since.
Now, on to the best part- the (un)lucky 8. And the winners are: The Reptile (the obvious choice), iPot (though whether or not he is a blogger is a debatable issue.), The Lazy Labrador (hope he gets out of his bed and reads this.), The Grinning Geek (Yep, he blogs too. Refer to the list of links on the right.) DeeKay (The Geek who Lived!), The Incredible Bulk (Yeah, I know he isn’t a blogger, but sorry, I don’t have a choice. I’m running out of people.), The Hirsute Hick (read previous comment.) and Bihari Potter (read the last two comments.) (Here’s a ninth fact about me: I am pathetic at HTML, and anything techy, for that matter. I guess that explains the fact that unlike Lefty, Matty Boy and my other predecessors, I haven’t provided links to the respective pages of the guys mentioned above. The inconvenience is regretted.) (And here’s a tenth fact: I use brackets quite often.) (And here’s fact no. 11: I can’t think of a conclusion for this post.)

Newton and the Mystery of the Moustache Twirl

You are surrounded on all sides by thugs, each equipped with the highly advanced weaponry characteristic of the typical Bollywood henchmen, ranging from hockey sticks to cycle chains. What would you do? Run for your life? Call the cops? That’s probably why you’re not one of India’s biggest stars. The answer is elementary… All you have to do is twirl your moustache (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIz5pDMgS8k). Now, why didn’t I think of that? No wonder people keep complaining that IITians are technically dumb.

Here are a few more eye-openers:

· http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1lahm1IgZo : It’s Captain, again. Why bother with bullet-proofs when you can frown.
· http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_to_3zAhBf0 : To think, there are people still worried about the energy crisis. Who needs petrol, when we have, ‘Jai channakesava!’
· Sunny Deol in Gadar: I couldn’t find this on youtube, so I’m hoping you’ve watched the movie beforehand. Sunny is driving a truck, and oops, he’s crashed into a car and there’s a huge explosion. No sweat, the car’s gone, but the truck’s safe. The petrol in the car’s gas tank must have fuelled it. Oh no, he has crashed again, and it’s a vegetable cart this time. Another explosion? Err…well, I guess why Mommy made such a fuss about veggies.

Absurd, gibberish, nonsense…. My initial reaction was somewhere in between shame and outrage. I spent the next few hours grumbling about Bollywood, Kollywood and every other ‘wood’ I had heard of. Questions like, what kind of an image would this create about our country in the minds of foreigners, kept irking me.

However, with further thought came a sense of clarity as well as pride. I finally realized that we probably had the best film industry in the world. Come to think of it- the primary purpose behind making movies is to entertain, and a 20 second 'Captain' video is as funny as an entire episode of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. Newton would probably have hung himself had he ever watched any of these videos, a friend of mine comments. Well, probably, yes, but I doubt if he himself could have suppressed a grin.

Train Travail- The Desi Version

It’s that time of the year again. Barely a couple of months have passed since we went back to R-land from our homes, and yet, our zest to return has not decimated one bit. People start making a wild rush for their tickets to civilization, and according to some unwritten law, the ones heading home earlier attain an exalted status. Statements like, “When are you leaving? 8PM? Pah, I’m leaving at 4!” are quite common, and invariably have the listener cursing himself for not booking an earlier train. The fact that four hours is a negligible period of time in a 100-day vacation is a thought that seldom crosses our minds.

After the entire hullabaloo about tickets, packing and, lest we forget, grades, we eventually return home. We return expecting a royal welcome, complete with your favourite dish for dinner and a smile on your dad’s face that says, “You’ve done it, son!” Much to our chagrin, the reception is lukewarm, to say the least. The entire family sports an expression that says, “You again!” After the mandatory, “You’ve grown so thin! Don’t they feed you well?” you’re left to yourself, longing for the welcome that never was.

This time round, though, there was a twist in the tale. No, there was no warm welcome this time either. It’s just that, in my case, the return was overshadowed by the journey.

Though it may seem inconceivable to the guys who know me now, there were days in the not-so-long-past times when I used to read books that weren’t all from the shelf that read, 'fiction'. The epoch of the studious Abhishek started and ended in my twelfth grade, and it was on one fine day then, that I came across an interesting analogy in one of the books that I have not spared a glance since the day I set foot on R-land. The analogy went thus: Picture yourself traveling by a bus. Your destination is A, and to get there, you travel by a deluxe bus with every facility possible. However comfortable your journey is, your memories will always be of A, and the things you did there, and not of the bus journey. A, here, is analogous to the concepts of physics, while the deluxe bus corresponds to mathematics. (I know the analogy is absurd and irrelevant, but I just want to prove that, contradictory to common perception, I can act geeky too.)

The analogy set my rusting gray cells working. I could never think of a situation where the journey could eclipse the destination, until I actually experienced it. As I mentioned previously, I was heading home by the earliest possible train. The fact that I had The Incredible Bulk for company meant I was assured of entertainment, food (courtesy Indian Oil Corp.) and a ride back home from the railway station (courtesy Indian Oil Corp.).

The journey of a thousand miles began with a single step and a three hour delay. Trains do incredible things to you. For the first time in over a year, I was up by six in the morning, though I had to go back to sleep as I had forgotten to bring along my toothpaste tube and the Bulk was still fast asleep. Eventually, I managed to wake up by ten, and much to my dismay, The Bulk was still fast asleep. Frustrated, I shook him awake. He responded with, “Ass, I have an alarm” with the simultaneous thrusting forward of his phone, while his eyes still remained tightly shut. Be it Seat 11, Tamilnadu Express or S46, Rajendra Bhawan, this was one universal action- unaltered by time, weather or location.
The Bulk eventually woke up a tad past the stroke of noon, which meant I could finally relieve my mouth of the appalling stench that a dozen hours of sleep brought with them. With no sign of any interesting events or people in my compartment, I got back to reading the novel that I’d brought along. The lunch cart came, and went. So did Agra, Bhopal, Itarasi and sundry other stations I had never even heard of. The Bulk was behaving strangely, oops, that’s not something new, is it? Let’s just say, he was behaving in a strange manner that was different from the strange manner he usually behaves in. Was this the real Bulk or was it some solar-energy-dependent-alien masquerading as the Bulk? Come on, this was the Bulk. The slightest mention of anything remotely related to food should have made his digestive juices itch for action. Instead, here he was, engrossed in (of all magazines!) Lion, our institute magazine.

As we crossed the dreaded Chambal Valley, I gave up on the Bulk, and decided to work on Mission Food all by myself. India is one hungry country. Nothing turns us on as much or as well as food does. The picture of a typical Indian station is incomplete without a dozen food stalls on the platforms. Traveling by a train passing through twelve states is one hell of a gastronomic experience. Nothing unites India the way food does. Apart from trains, that is.

Nagpur brought with it shrill cries of ‘meedo-soan papdi’ and two Indian Oil employees desperately vying with each other to impress the Bulk. In their attempts to do so, they brought us some food as well. Hang on a second, did I say ‘some’ food? It was enough to feed half a compartment. Though it was delicious, we could barely finish one-fourth of it. Thankfully, India has no shortage of beggars, and on this occasion, it was an old, maimed lady who turned lucky.

Another good night’s sleep later, I woke up at 7AM sharp. There is a common belief downsouth that the first thing/person you see after waking up determines how your day will turn out to be. If it is true, I must have a hilarious time today. I woke up to the sight of the Bulk lifting up and down each of his suitcases, one after the other. “I’m practicing now, so that lifting them won’t be a problem once we reach Chennai” was his explanation. Who needs comedians when you have the Bulk? Chennai Central finally arrived and so did a Ford iKon with the Indian Oil Logo on its bumper. There are some things money can’t buy. For every thing else, there’s Indian Oil.