Error 101: Your service provider is a jackass!

Freedom, Liberty, Free Will and other such BS, are often claimed to form the nuts-and-bolts of all our Indian laws. I remember, back in school, our civics textbooks sounded a lot of President Bush’s speeches, only a lot less funny and as long as Ekta Kapoor’s scripts. But then, aren’t these supposed to be the foundations of our constitution? And where would our news channels be, if they weren’t allowed to lampoon and feed on the political tamasha? Israel’s ex PM, Shimon Peres, is reported to have said in an interview, “TV has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.” Nevertheless, these are the divine rights, which we celebrate every year in form of Republic Day and Ambdekar Jayanti (when is that?? April 14th). With all these rights in place, where do you think India figures in the world in terms of Freedom of Press? 106! (Out of 175) OUCH! That hurt, isn’t it?

In the present age, the internet is seen as a great "leveler" and a "phenomenon that changed the human civilization forever"; until China came along with its restrictive policies. Next in line was our institute.Accessing the internet from NIT Rourkela is as just as good as accessing internet from a country like Iran (a country where "human rights" are rated above the knock-knock jokes in the funny papers). In fact, in some respects they are better off.

The idea that today's Web is termed "Web 2.0", i.e., it’s a two-way medium, doesn’t go too well with the network administrators here on the campus. They prefer Web 0.5. A filtered, restricted but definitely, more "morally acceptable" worldwide web- free from all the sins and traps our religious books warn us about.

Here’s a simple example to prove that our network administrators are pre-historic oafs and belong in the Smithsonian, right next to the T-Rex fossil remains: Google “Sexually Transmitted Diseases” and click on any link that appears under the search result. The ugly, white, sad page indicating that you are a goddamn pervert flashes instantaneously. Okay, never mind AIDS, Herpes, and all that.
Try visiting Slate.com, often touted to be amongst the most popular current affairs magazine online. Result: Access Denied, under the category: “Entertainment”. If slate.com falls under “Entertainment”, I wonder under which category is the NIT R’s network admin’s page listed. "Circus Clowns",perhaps.

Moving on, 350mn people worldwide use Facebook, NIT R folks can’t.Why? It’s listed under "dating" and dating is outright immoral and against The Great Indian Culture. Never mind the fact that the scriptures on the Sun temple, just a few hundred kilometers away, read like an erotic magazine. All right, for military buffs out there, have you ever tried Googling/visiting any arms and ammunition website? Hah! All right, no points for guessing the answer. Blocked under category: “Weapons”. Never heard of the student who used a ballistic missile to blow up the institute building because his professor didn’t give him an A? Neither have I. But then, an NIT R internet administrator has got to be always prepared for the worst. You never know what the students are up to. Here’s a comparison chart of the restrictive internet policies between NIT R and Iran.

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Sex ed and other dirty-dirty topics

Even though the Indian Government has been trying hard to introduce the science and intricacies of human reproduction, the subject of sex education continues to be a major taboo. Never mind the fact that AIDS is a major epidemic and is a major killer and all that balderdash; we’d rather debate what color robes Lord Ram wore; Red or Saffron? Ah! Now there’s a debate.

Back when I was at middle-school, we had no fancy “abstinence-only program” like the American schools or access to the surplus related-educative content online. In fact it’s interesting how an exciting subject, like human procreation can take the shape of an 8 mark long answer with cumbersome diagram, which isn’t light years close to the image you conjure up in your mind when someone is talking about IT. Luckily, we had help. Shivam was to us...well, what a messiah is to people.

He was about a year or two older than us, but was a lot wiser. His secret behind the exhaustive gyaan: his elder brother’s massive English movie collection. Although none of us got into the real particulars of the entire exercise, the very fact that here was a guy, who hardly knew anything more than us, but still could fire up our imaginations, was incredible. A game of cricket usually ended with an engaging discussion about our incredible Centre Fresh cricket cards collection, and of course, “who has THIS Tazzo card?!” And then, Shivam would take a comfortable seat under a Gulmohar tree and begin with his preaching. The idea of sitting under a tree before preaching anything has been rather widely used throughout our country’s long history. Buddha did it, probably Lord Mahavir also did, Govt. school teachers still do it, and then here was Shivam, doing a service to the bunch of 14-15 year old kids. The precise details and accounts as related by Shivam usually left us confused and full of doubts. Like, Shivam would tell us that it was always considered a bad idea doing it when you are drunk, but then he would go on to tell us that his brother got drunk because he had too much of sex on the beach. The highly improbable idea of sex on the beach being a drink, almost never seemed to occur to us. Much like the fact Genesis 1:1might have ignored a few details; you know, it could have also been Adam and Steve. Not just Eve. Thanks to Article 377, we now know better.

Although we never really got it, it was a welcome break from the lessons we got at school. Where an embarrassed, shy teacher would hurriedly skip through the lesson and would lay all the focus on how the animals did it. “Learning from the animals” seemed to be the mantra. And yes, I’m sure our previous generations were taught just the same things and hence the incredulous population explosion. We don’t like talking about it. But while the others are out talking about it, we’re spending time doing it. Although we did finally graduate high school much better equipped, in terms of the correct practices, it took me quite some time to realize that the ulterior motives of the Indian Educational system was to never make us self-sufficient, happy and Gay.

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TK Nayak and other animals

There are certainly many things we as engineers can boast about once we pass out (that is if we ever make it alive). The true gems of stay in Rourkela are experienced only as an electrical engg. student. Trust me, even a guy with half a brain wouldn't advice you to take up this expedition. People are screwed royally and oh boy the one eyed king of the hot planet loves it. "More rules! boil those bastards, bring in the hot oil" he cries.

The limits of our endurance and patience touched all time highs with the coming in of the jungle priest. Jungle who? Lets just say T.K. Nayak happened to us. The reasons to which remain unknown, perhaps a result of the underwater nuclear tests carried out by some country or just karma.Whatever, we now know that God too commits crimes and now we have solid proof.
Mathematics, he taught, say the people. I don't believe them.You shouldn't either. Nayak's class was a brief tour through a Russian gulag, which came without the incentive of watching pretty Russian women. We have our stock, but they're no match.

TK looked like an ugly,haggered baboon (no offense to the baboon community, but he sure was ugly ) who'd done picking out all the lice from his hair on his head and was now preparing to reach the lesser known areas carefully hidden in his bottom.
Our notebooks, which bore proudly the NIT symbol, now lay bare and done, containing TK's renditions of Mathematics chapters.

As if the classes weren't enough of an encoragement to drive people to the point of suicide the jungle priest wanted more sacrifices,Assignments the bastard would bellow.I can't remember the countless number of hours i've spent copying, carefully reproducing the works of people like Smriti or Faizy. God bless them and us even more.

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iTch bin ein..scratch'er

Different religious books have referred to it as the enemy within.The enemy is merciless, constantly attacking, re-instigating pangs of human desire to scrub,rub and scour. The attack on the nonchalant human mind starts off almost unknowingly and by the time the juvenile being comprehends the assault- they're up, all around you body, raking up your skin, making pathways, through your hair,squiggling across, like the snakes through the Amazon forests. That's when you begin the battle from scratch!

But you know what they say, 'all's fair in love and war' and war, my friend,it is!. The truth is that we all love to scratch.Beards,head, noses,legs,cheeks,ears...you name it- our prickly nails have been there,time and again and have conquered and re-conquered the invaded land.The war against the wiggly-tiggly enemy can perhaps be paraphrased as 'a fight for freedom'.


It is every man's right to be able to scratch, rub and scrub and thus open up the gates of pleasure to a world whose immenseness can only be imagined. When it comes to scratching an itch, the severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the ability to reach it.In fact, I've often felt the need for a couple of more hands- probably projecting out of my back. Well, some of us can afford to employ people to scratch their backs, others like me will have to wait for the forces of nature and theory of evolution to work.
On some occasions - it becomes customary to scratch- almost seen as an indication that the person is thinking. You scratch, rub your nose and fiddle with you eyebrows- Cheez, you are a smart guy."You see that guy, i haven't even seen him twitch his eyebrows, such a dork!"

Then there are people who seem to have gone to war with one single part of their body. Nose scratchers,ear scratchers, scalp scratchers.. darn! the enemy never rests and usually ends with a part of the body bruised up, but then,you know, wars demand sacrifices.

The origins for this scratch virus were seeded probably hundreds of years ago when Adam asked Eve to scratch his back for a minute and Eve refused to do it as she thought it was a gross idea. The Gods up in the heaven cursed Eve to bear sons and daughters who would do nothing all day but keep scratching themselves.
So, whether you are dumb or smart, black, white or brown, atheist or foolish, the yearning for the scrub goes way beyond differences we as humans can comprehend .
So, how many times did you scratch today?

PS: Stop counting, you might just run out of numbers!

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English,my secret code and other languages

One of the nicest things about the invention of computers is that they allow you to type. But so do the typewriters, don’t they? We’ll ignore those finer details, for now. What do you think I am? Pedantic? Anyway, this feature of typing works like a miracle for people like me, who have the worst of their times, doodling sentences which the human mind can comprehend. Nothing scares me more than the thought of having to use a pen on the paper. While others might call their work, ‘handwriting’, my display of prowess could at best be linked to the graphical comic strips created by Neanderthal and his friends after a particularly bad day at work.
I still remember when, my English teacher -a person whom I still respect for having gone through my renditions of the chapters taught with a mountain of courage and patience, called me up in front of class and asked me to read aloud my answer sheet. Now, when I wrote my answers, the prospect of ever having to read it again never seemed to have crossed my mind. I know it takes an awful lot of skill to even make out the script of my language, but really I never read my own writings. You shouldn’t either. “What do you think...” I began cautiously. “Not the question, just read the header, at the beginning of your answer sheet” , she moaned. “Mid –term examinations, subject: English”. “Ah “she said,” English is the keyword over there, really, you know”
A realization of such magnificence has dawned upon late on many other gents and ladies, who’ve gone through the ordeal of ever having to go through my paper and each time it has, it has exposed another innovative approach to the whole idea of writing in English. For eg. , did you ever know that a ’g’ which looks very similar to a ‘y’ could actually a ‘b’? And what seems like ‘bodie’ could actually be ‘basic’.
People call me an inconsiderate murderer, a cold-hearted, insensitive mutilator of the English language, but I consider myself to be an artist. An artist’s work has always been subject to interpretations and misinterpretations; they don’t demean the work of an artist but only add another dimension to the understanding.
Typing out on keyboard too has been taking a toll on me, considering the number of spelling mistakes that I make; I’m coming to believe that i must be dsylexic. Uh,isn’t that dyslexic.? Isn’t English a funny language plus hey, what about the freedom of speech?

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The war on poverty

No. You’re wrong. This isn’t an excerpt pinched off from the latest elect-candidate’s manifesto. So, stop guessing now.
Poverty plays a big role when it comes to winning elections, making speeches, making commercials or to just appear on T.V. Everybody has been heard from on the subject except the poor people themselves. So I decided to go out and interview a poor person and ask him what he thought about it. It’s very difficult, mind you, to get hold of a poor person these days, because nobody likes to admit poor.
So, I finally found a man in the rundown section of the city who was willing to admit that he was poor and was also willing to talk about it.
I started by asking him if he thought he would like to serve on a committee to see what could be done about poverty.
“Mister, if I had any idea about what should be done regarding poverty, I wouldn’t be poor”he reminded me.
“But there’s a school of thought that poor people are the only ones who know the real problems of the poor, and they should be strongly involved in the program to formulate and implement anti-poverty programs.”

“I wouldn’t participate unless they would pay me “he said.
“Oh I’m sure they would pay you. If they agreed to pay you, what is the first thing you would do?”
“I’d move out of the neighbourhood”
“But if you move out of the neighbourhood, you would lose contact with the poor people and you would no longer be able to speak for them.”
“Exactly. Poor people don’t want to be spoken for. They just want to get the hell out of this neighbourhood. Asking poor people how to win war on poverty is like asking President Musharaff how to win the war on terror.”
“You’ve got a point there. But there is a great deal of pressure to have poor people work out their own destinies in the anti-poverty program.”
“Okay, then let them put everybody who is poor on an anti-poverty committee and pay them all a salary. Once they’re on a salary, you’ll solve every problem a poor person has. And they’ll move the hell out of the neighbourhood.”
“On the surface this sounds like a good solution to the problem, but it would put great financial strain on the government.”
“Yeah, but if you put people on salary, you wouldn’t have to make welfare payments, and the poor people would pay taxes, so it would eventually even out.”
“I agree”, I said, “but if you put all the poor people on the anti-poverty committee and paid them, you would eliminate poverty and there would be no reason to have the committee”
“I’m not sure about that. As soon as people get a salary, they can get all the credit they want fromn the banks and finance companies. The more you borrow, the poorer you become. As long as there are credit companies, there will always be poor people.”
“It makes a lot of sense,” I admitted. “You seem to have thought this out pretty well”
“When you’re poor, you have nothing else to think about.”
“I wonder why the government hasn’t thought of it”
“Because they’re afraid we’d all move the hell out of the neighbourhood.”

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I'm not me!

Yes, i just discovered that i might not be me after all or something like that. No, i'm not drunk while i'm writing this. The people at my computer training center have figured out that I'm Rohan Krishna Gutta and so Gutta walks off with the certificate after i complete the course but hey, I get to keep the receipt for the money I've paid.

In other news,I just discovered that Edgar Allan Poe was a wonderful author and many of his works can be found on the wikisource website. But for people who want more, there's Project Gutenberg.

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