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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