Time Traveler!

With 10 days left for my holidays to end, I decided to give my grand parents, who reside in Jammu, a surprise visit.


But before this, I had to spend five days in Delhi. Oh wait a second. Guess I made a geographical faux pas. I had to spend five days in NCR. The need for the correction is immense. From a traveler’s point of view, NCR provides quite an experience. Oh and do add the budget constraint as well as the inclement weather to the melting pot.

Having stayed in Hyderabad for most of my life, I have to say that traveling has never occupied a major portion of my day. The reason for this is because Hyderabad is quite a small city and commuting doesn't really take much time. Its only after spending time in Delhi and neighboring agglomeration that I have discovered what "taking time" really means. My uncle says as I sit there gaping 'Yeah that place is quite close by, just about 9-10 kilometers'

To begin with, Noida has too much crime and Gurgaon has too many rich people. Also, due to the latter, commuting in Gurgaon without your own vehicle is just impossible. Cabs are expensive (as would be the case in any city), cycle rickshaws show too much attitude and take an eternity to reach even the simplest of destinations. And the auto rickshaws’ have absolutely no space to sit. Why no space you ask? Because the public transport is so poorly developed that the working class simply unleashes itself upon any and every auto or shared cab it encounters, like hungry hyenas (sometimes, with shovels). Want a 360 degree turn from Gurgaon? Then come to Noida. Here you will encounter cycle rickshaws wallahs encompassing the entire territory, steering their vehicles with finesse. People are also appreciably less “cooler” if you get my drift. And the crime rates soar high with someone being killed every day (to add to that, Noida is quite close to Ghaziabad border). Thankfully I did not know this, so I had no problems while hopping down sector 34 at midnight.


But as always, life moves on in both these cities.


It becomes a real carnival when one has to travel from Noida to Gurgaon and one has angry friends waiting in Gurgaon. The journey is something I am proud of. My cousins in Noida told me that the journey takes around one and a half hours by a direct bus. Guess they forgot to mention a multiplication factor which equals 2 in this case. Guess they also forgot to mention that the bus would leave me in a jungle from where I’d have to take another bus which was as stubborn as a (pardon the cliché) mule.

It just wouldn’t budge.

Oh but it was a disco, with all that testosterone pumped grinding that I got to experience for those 2 hours in the bus. Too bad that I couldn’t enjoy it for I was too busy clutching onto my wallet with one hand and my cell phone with the other. A true test of resilience and patience. The journey has also sharpened my sensory perceptions. I can distinguish between different types of odour (for my sample space is enriched with a wide variety) more efficiently now.
And so as I waited in Gurgaon that evening after meeting my pals, for time to pass, so that I could take a bus from Iffko Chowk to Delhi’s interstate bus terminus to get my bus to Jammu, I get a call from my mother.

Rishabh, there’s an indefinite curfew in Jammu. You might have to just get
off the bus at Pathankot itself if they seal the border. I’d say reiterate you
trip for the next set of holidays

Sigh! Its 8 in the evening and I’m stranded in Gurgaon. And have 5 more days to spend here.


Photo source: http://chronicleofmylife.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/delhi-bus1.jpg

KCircle comes alive!

The last year has seen Kcircle, one of the oldest Quizzing clubs in India, expand. Today, the meeting place (YMCA, Secunderabad) seems rather tiny, all thanks to the massive participation that every quiz is receiving. The quizzes have too are of the highest quality, with the old and young, the thinkers and the ghotus, the hairy and the hairless, all racking their brains to hit the bullseye. But then that is the spirit of Kcircle. It about participation, its about ethics too, its about working things out when you aren't given much to work with.

But this should obviously not stop any of us to spread awareness of the club. One such way is through having an online presence.
Kcirle's website uptil now?
A miniscule space that resided,dormant on the big web. A page that hadn't been updated since I joined college (and its been quite long folks since that had happened). But, Kcircle now has a spanking new site, which ( I hope) will be updated regularly. It will help in informing many more from the City and hopefully prove successful in cancelling all their plans on Saturday evenings, so that they too can join us for couple of hours of nerve racking quizzing.
The URLs are http://www.kcircle.in/, http://www.kcircle.org/, and http://www.kcircle.net/.

Vignesh Prakash

Vignesh Prakash was a senior at school that I really admired, while at school. It's almost cliched how wacky and brilliant he was. Bringing laptops to school to finish his projects while most of us didn't know what Windows was. The most fond memory I had of his was on the day of their batch's farewell when he jogged up to me with his digicam and put his huge arm around me and asked me to smile for the camera alongside him. According to him, I was one of the very few juniors, "worth knowing".

Years later he buzzed me on Gtalk outta the blue and asked me what I was up to. Upon hearing that I was going to BITS, he told me "Dude, cummon man," and gave me a long list of reasons as to why an American higher education is better than anything India has to offer.

And since then, every now and then, perhaps once in a couple of months, he'd buzz me, just ask me how I was doing and what was happening in life. I can't explain it, but it felt good, when a person, whom you barely knew in school, yet admired, was taking somewhat keen interest in your life.

Last month I found out that he had passed away. I couldn't find any links on the internet nor any sort of information about him. Finally I found a Facebook group dedicated to him by his friends in the US(He was studying at University of Texas and had secured admission at CALTech for his post grad).

I found out that he had committed suicide. For a couple of days, it was all I could think about. There was a very strange hollowness inside me for those few days, where I kept thinking what would drive someone like Vignesh to end his life. From the little that I knew of him, he was exceptionally brilliant and loved the life in the US. Yet his friends tell me that something wasn't right. Whatever it be, I hope he has found his peace. It shouldn't have been this way though.

I mean it, when I say this: I'll miss him.

This is Vignesh's Facebook Profile
This is a memorial page on Facebook

Proto and beyond

Currently, I am like a delocalised electron, shifting from one end of NCR to another.

Last couple of days have been really hectic. Firstly with Proto.in, it was fun. I think a lot of the people there mistook me for a VC, courtesy my attire. The second day was comparatively more relaxed.

Loved the innovation brainjam session that Amit Somani of Google had suggested (based on his own experience at Google). I could see only half of the startups showcased. Missed out on Lootstreet, where my college pal Navin is interning. Apparently it went well. Kudos to them. Lifeblob was another interesting startup that caught my eye. They are an e journal, and records your life history in the form of a timeline. Though initially a little skeptical about it, I later had a slight change of mind. I was thinking that this is something which might be bought by Facebook. But then according to me, this is exactly what Lifeblob should avoid. Facebook, notes also allow tagging, but with all those other applications and clutter around, it becomes crazy, following what everyone is upto.

Proto is also where I met Kiruba Shankar. It was simply amazing hanging out with him.

And there was a quiz. Most of the questions from the prelims were easy, had seen them somewhere or the other, but it was a fun quiz. Proto is also where I met Sumant Srivathsan from the BQC (I introduced myself saying, "I heard you were a student...") and we partnered for the biz quiz which we ultimately won. Samanth Subramanian was the host.

Liveblogging was there, but no wifi, so well, guys were busy connecting their data cables and tweeting from their phones. The results are yet to be announced.

Some really good talks on Day 1. Also for all the blogging, do check out proto4 tags on technorati. I myself blogged about it on Mutiny and WATBlog.

The weather here has been cruel. Not inclement, just cruel.

Then there was the ESPN Quiz. Will talk about that later.

Startup Saturday at Hyderabad

This Saturday, my original plan was to visit Warangal and the neighboring areas. Why you ask? Apparently the Government is trying really hard to convert it into a tourist attraction. Some ministers have gone to the extent of calling it “One of the most beautiful places in the world”. Alright, so I guess he hasn’t travelled much, but I wanted to check the place out nonetheless.

I didn’t.

Instead I decided to go for Startup Saturday which was scheduled to be held at IIIT Campus in Gachibowli. This was the second such meet, with the organising party (who are the same people who organize Barcamp Hyderabad) gauging whether the concept works out in Hyderabad or not.

The meet began on time and within a few minute had enough people to ensure that my neck received enough exercise for the day. With nearly 35 people, including students, professors, Vice Presidents, academics, part time academics, Entrepreneurs, Unsuccessful entrepreneurs (a rather unfair term, for we all learn from our experiencesJ).

Discussions were lively, ranging from iPhone debates to Nirma’s success to importance of filtering in Google reader. Start up Saturday also takes an initiative of inviting entrepreneurs to give presentation and talks. This week it was Suheim Sheikh, the founder of SDG (which is now acquired by 3i Infotech), an Anti Money Laundering software developing company. Suheim’s presentation was witty as well as inspiring. He was also modest enough to tell us that one thing that he felt they didn't do was dream bigger. With nearly 70% of India’s market under them, they should have thought bigger, maybe try to capture the global market.

This is where he brought up an interesting point. Coincidentally, this is the same point that my boss at my internship also highlighted.

Indians are generally very apprehensive to admit that they are the best at something. Because since we’ve grown up, all the theories that we’ve been taught are works of foreign scientists. (Pythagoras apparently came to India and took the theorem back to his native land).

Mr Sheikh was saying that not for a moment did they think that their software was the best there was at that time. Had they given globalising more thought, maybe they’d have been eve more successful.

I was wondering. Apart from lack of the conviction that we can be the first or the best in something, could lack of marketing skills be another reason? Just a thought.

Startup Saturday in Hyderabad:

2nd/4th Saturday of every month at IIIT Campus, Hyderabad. IIIT, Main building. Turn towards the first right in the main building and head off to the third room. 10 AM

Humari Maange Poori Karo

I came back home a minute ago.

I was caught in a traffic jam. So I decided to get off the auto rickshaw and walk the extra distance home. After walking a little distance I saw a few hundred police men and nearly 200 pedestrians look up. Immediately a show called Candid Camera came to my mind, where such phenomenon would be common. Surely this was taking the joke too far, since the traffic jam affected an area up to a 3 kilometre radius. Looking more closely, my jaw dropped.



A man had climbed the billboard. The message was clear.



There was some brouhaha around me and upon asking one of the bystanders there who had been witnessing the commotion I got to know that the gentleman on top, Mr Madan Mohan Reddy, was a resident of interior Andhra and had lost nearly 2 acres of his land. He had tried to contact the Chief Minister many times to seek his assistance regarding the matter, but to no avail. And that this isn’t the first time he’s doing something like this. Already having climbed several billboards this month, this guy is out there to make a point. This particular billboard, as shown in the picture is right outside the Chief Ministers residence at Begumpet, Hyderabad (guess that explains the hundred policemen). Apparently this was a classic case of land grabbing. He realised that the only way to get the CM’s attention is to do something radical. He is sitting (and occasionally standing) there right now, even as I write this article.

My point is; this was what he was forced to do to make himself heard. Upon hearing this, my maid had a glimmer of hope in her eyes. She too had lost land worth 2 lakh rupees and jokingly said that maybe she too should occupy one of these billboards and create a scene. Hopefully, this should give him enough media attention for the CM to take a notice.

Also, quite often what does happen is that these people get beaten up rather badly by the police later. That’s what happened on earlier instances which had a man climb up the flood lights of the Lal Bahadur Stadium in Hyderabad.

Another point: more than half the traffic blockage had nothing to do with the man. It was the police who occupied half the road.

Update: I was just flipping through the news channels and saw that some ministers have negotiated with him and asked him to come down.

Worn those Microsofts today?

I was out shoe shopping a couple of days back. Whilst at the store my eyes fell upon the brightly hued slippers which adorned the hooks

And while they were cheeky enough to use the name, which obviously implied that these footwear were the softest thing to ever touch your feet, the reference to THE ONE was unmistakable, almost as though piggy backing on its brand image. I could only think of one thing. How long before a Microsoft employee sees it and reports it to the lawyers?

The Microsoft lawyers, though, haven’t hogged the media limelight as much as the Nazgul (popularised by Slashdot), but they too are kept busy throughout the year. My favourite incident being that involving a 17 year old Canadian boy way back in 2004. I am sure many of you will remember Mike Rowe, the young boy who thought it would be funny to start a website called Mikerowesoft.com. But well, the MS lawyers showed him that they have absolutely no sense of humour and asked him to take if offline. After which things got a little ugly and MS surely lost a lot of supporters due to that row(e).

On 7k Runs

This Sunday morning, I was violently woken up by Mumma dearest.

"Lets go for breakfast."

"Wathaf...what? Its 6.30 mumma, come on. Just go back to sleep"

10 minutes later the whole family was in the car. The reason? Mom has a verrry busy schedule traveling to opposite ends of the globe in the next couple of weeks. So, the much cliched "quality family time" issue was brought up.

Breakfast it was.

While taking a U turn near our house, and going up the fly over, we saw hundreds of girls wearing tight white tees.

Ah yes, the 7k run. A premier women's college in Hyderabad had organized a 7 kilometer run as a fundraiser for their silver jubilee celebration. And well, obviously they were playing to their strenghts. I did remember seeing girls from the colleges at all malls wooing guys to attend the event. Anorexic guys who didn't look like they needed a run hounded the stall as if waiting for the girls to perform a trick.

The sight on the D Day was amusing. I realised the shirts were not tight at all. It wasnt the shirt. Bloated beauties...huffing and puffing as they took those giant leaps, inspiring the thousand behind them to follow.

The only problem?

Each one of them were given water packets. They realised since this wasn't an environmental drive, its ok to litter the flyover.

Rocket Science and beyond

Every now and then I listen to “It doesn’t require a degree in rocket science to figure out that….” Or “I may not be a rocket scientist but I know that…”

Rocket Science on Wikipedia leads us to a tiny article, 80% of which is:

Due to the complexity and depth of this area of engineering (requiring mastery in subjects including mechanics (fluid mechanics, structural mechanics, orbital mechanics, flight dynamics), mathematics, control engineering, materials science, aeroelasticity, avionics, reliability engineering, noise control and flight test), it is also informally used as a term to describe an endeavor requiring great intelligence or technical ability. More often, the term is used to describe an endeavor that is simple and straightforward by stating that the aforementioned endeavor "is not rocket science".

This is amusing.

I think that as such the courses one does in aerospace engineering (aka Rocket Science for the layman) do require a high amount of intellect, but then so does training at Langley or John Hopkins. I think it’s the whole feel of having thousands of buttons around you and being responsible for manning something which is so colossal and worth so many billions of dollars (with minimum scope for error) that enables Rocket Science to be revered as the final frontier in terms of intellect. As specialisation increases, we perceive the task to become monumental because we start to dissociate from the field . It just happens that compared to other engineering branches, probably aerospace has a very high percentage of people going into specialisation (for I don't think NASA really wants a jack o all trades).

Speaking of specialisation, medicine also requires it, but then I guess, there are just too many doctors around.

I remember asking my mother, one of the best retina consultants in India today, about what she thought was the toughest job on the planet. True, I did expect a standardized answer. I placed my money on Rocket Science. I will never forget what happened next. She looked at me, and gently whispered

"Parenting"

Updated

This week has been quite exciting. Both my Dad and me got to appear on All India Radio. Dad, yesterday and myself on Wednesday. It was quite an experience sitting inside that sound proof room with the RJ on the other side. The show was for 2 hours and was aired on FM Rainbow(101.9)

2 hours! Prime time 8-10 PM

As Shruti put it:

"Even Rani Mukherji doesn't get that much airtime!"

I used the airtime to express my opinions on a variety of topics ranging from the IIT-JEE (and other exams) coaching facilities and how it really feels to be there, to my early years to what malice I am up to these days. I also spoke about my life at BITS Pilani and how I totally and absolutely love it there. Later, I mentioned the various flexibilities that BITS offers, something which I still feel would attract a lot of students to BITS, if only they were aware of it. Then came the clubs and the departments and how they form an integral part of the BITS.

I also spoke at length about CEL and how it fosters the spirit of entrepreneurship and how Conquest, its annual international B-Plan competition is growing day by day, even as we speak.

All in all, I'd say it was probably needed. More and more people need to know about BITS and how its more than an engineering college.

The best part being, I got to select the songs which would be aired during my stay in the studio. Another point being that, since it was LIVE, my first task was to prevent myself from uttering something for which the Central Government might sue me later, for there are no beeps on live radio :P

They did have a wide variety of songs, I asked for Coming back to Life, Smoke on the Water, Fear of the Dark, Kashmir apart from from Hindi numbers like Doorie and Kabhi Kabhi Aditi(this was more of a compulsion, dedicated this one to some close pals)

On jokes

Have you ever heard a joke so many times you've forgotten why it's funny? And then you
hear it again and suddenly it's new. You remember why you loved it in the first place.
                                           -BIG FISH

Its amazing how this happens to me so many times.

Manto Ismat haazir hai!

Last week, as a finale to the TIMES Hyderabad Festival, they had organized a Mumbai theatre group to perform plays based on the works of revolutionary and bold playwrights Saadat Hasan Manto and Ismat Chughtai and was appropriately named Manto, Ismat haazir hai( Presenting Manto & Ismat).

The plays were in Urdu (as they should be) and were well appreciated by the crowd. On my part, someone who is not well versed with Urdu( read the youth and the Gults), it would have been something of a disaster. Disaster because, the USP of the play was the language used, but as such I didn't find the play to be that great theatrically. The dialogue delivery was a little too quick for an amateur like me to understand, but I guess that's how it goes.

The story was quite gripping( if only I could understand it then) and dealt with social issues such as lesbianism, sexuality and war. And for A Woman of a conservative Muslim family or actually anyone to come up with something like that right after partition is something commendable.

But here's the interesting part, despite the just-above average performance, the hall was jam packed. At first glance it might seem like it was because entry to the show was free.

But there was something else.

The play was directed by Naseerudin Shah. And that really had the effect. It really did. What a crowd. Needless to say the management screwed it up by allowing people to enter through one door(when there were 4) because of the shortage of metal detectors I believe.

But I am pretty sure most of the people came hoping to get a glimpse of Naseerduddin Shah, but ended up merely expecting him and never really seeing him.

Advertising works wonders, especially if you attach a big name to it.

On Mercy Killings and Euthanasia

Right above the huge tender was a tiny article about a teenage girl in Siliguri, who was demanding mercy killing. The issue of mercy killing has been discussed several times and yet there is no provision in the constitution about it. The legal hassles involved are just too much.

In the case of the girl, Ms Fulbari Das, is requesting mercy killing, where a person asks for death to end her suffering. It is voluntary. She is requesting her life be ended because she has been suffering from tremendous abdominal pain. After her surgery (to remove the kidney stones), her condition only worsened and for the past year, she has been living under a lot of pain.

I have lost all faith in doctors as I don’t know if my disease or wrong treatment is responsible for my condition

-Ms Fulbari Das

She is currently admitted in the North Bengal Medical College &Hospital.

Now there are a lot of factors that one needs to take into consideration. Now this is a rather complicated case (as most euthanasia cases are). The first and foremost is regarding terminal illness.

I have found no other mention of Ms Fulbari on the net. So based on the information in the newspaper, she is suffering from tremendous pain. I am assuming that’s the only reason why she wants to end her life.

What I mean to say is that I don’t think Fulbari’s case can be proved as terminal illness merely because the cause of her condition isn’t fully known. Another issue which might stop the stop the doctors from taking the step (apart from their inhibitions that they’re breaking the law) might be her young age. It’s quite convenient to think that a young girl like Fulbari might be making a hasty decision and this might just be a solution to end the short term discomfort. One way of looking at it is that it’s her life and now that she is legally an adult she should be responsible for it. Another way at looking at it might be that she is still quite young and has her whole life ahead of her and what if there’s a slightest chance of the pain going away. The question here is, as long as the doctors take their time to find a solution, this woman is experiencing pain beyond everything. Should that or shouldn’t that entitle her to end her life.

Indian constitution hasn’t really helped matters either. Verdicts in the past have shifted either ways, merely because of the complexity of the circumstances. The Indian Constitution says that the ''Right to Die'' is not a fundamental right under Article 21. However for the first time in 1987, during the The State of Maharashtra v. Maruti Shripathi Dubal case the judges at the Bombay High Court felt that the desire to die is merely abnormal/uncommon but not unnatural. They listed several circumstances in which people may wish to end their lives, including disease, cruel or unbearable condition of life, and a sense of shame or disenchantment with life. And finally held that everyone should have the freedom to dispose of his life as and when he desires. That being said there have been many more instances where panels of judges have simply overruled the plea.

I think the authorities should really work on the finer aspects and various circumstances. The reason I say this is because we’re really progressing as far as science is concerned. In the future years the technology might achieve so much progress so much so that we might have support systems which can keep a person alive, just saving him from claws of death but not really giving him a life. What if the person doesn’t want treatment? I think along side the research that’s going on in medicine (or any other branch), we must also keep updating our constitution regarding matters which might be affected dude to this advancement in technology.

Crossposted on Mutiny and Desicritics

Removing Blogrolls!

Innovation seems to be the most used jargon word in today's world (entrepreneurship loses out by a whisker). Every day I see newer feed reading products in their beta stages get their twitter accounts and advertise endlessly and find newer ways to make people use their products. The other day Nayak was telling me about a feedreader called Fresh and about a Twitter client called Alert thingy. Simultaneously I have been checking out a lot of new products too.

All this has made me think. Do we still need traditional blogrolls? Blogger Buzz updates me with this:

Today we’re releasing a new page element for Layouts blogs: Blog List. The Blog List improves on our Link List page element by using blogs’ RSS and Atom feeds to show update times, post titles, and snippets.

And this works well with podcasts, twitter accounts etc too.

But now the question arrives, what if I have a huge list of feeds that I follow on my reader? And I have a list of friends on my blogroll who don't really update.

This is what I do.

One way or the other I do keep on checking blogs that are relevant to me(either students from my college or people I have met or people who link to me), but you don't really need a blogroll for that. (Google status messages, Technorati etc are helpful there). So in order to give my sidebar a more virgin look, I am cleaning up my blogroll and on leaving behind very very few links, mostly because, they're the only ones updating/or if they are really close pals.

Bangalore Mirror

Harshil from WATBlog/Consultancy was kind enough to inform me that my guest article was published in the Bangalore Mirror Tabloid. Thanks a lot.

Also, I found out recently that the verrrry best newspaper of the plateau, oh why not...the entire south, has hit Bangalore. Good, its also their problem now. Here it comes.

Apart from this...a lot of stuff has been brewing up. Have got my self involved in a variety of projects. A long detailed post is due.

Why the Western Invasion?

I was going through Indianroomates.in, a website quite similar to its American counterpart Roomates.com which aims to help and connect (mostly) the youth seeking accommodation. One thing that really caught my attention was the picture of Indian youth on the homepage. As bizarre as it may sound, when was the last time you saw a non-NGO Indian website which had Indian faces? At the most it might have the token Indian or Black person to show diversity, but I think it’s quite rare to find only Indian people. In the beginning I felt maybe such a strategy is employed to show that that company is global (or at least aspiring to be global) but now it just seems like everyone is following the crowd. But then what about those companies which are purely based in India and don’t seem to be expanding outside India in the likely future. I say this because couple of the web based start ups that launched from my college and had noting to do with foreign clients had picture of Caucasian women playing with their Caucasian kids. It just doesn’t make sense. Why should a premier IIT-JEE (Not too tough to guess which one now) coaching institute which receives over a crore hits every year need to put a header picture of some American university students on its website? I don’t know where the problem lies. Is it that the companies ask the web designing team to put in those pictures (in case the work is being outsourced) or the company itself feels its needs such a picture. The whole point being that if your pictures don’t gel with your venture, you end up looking really stupid.

By the way it was really disappointing to see that the moment I clicked on a page at Indianroomates, it took me to another page. And this one had phirangs on it, smiling.

Here’s one solution. The issue of portraying yourself as something doesn’t need faces. It can be done through symbols as well. If you’re ashamed of putting in Indian people shaking hands (though I don’t know why that would be the case), then might as well show only the shaking of hands on your webpage rather than show a Chinese and a Kenyan doing so, especially if you’re a start up based in a small town whose main market is the nearby city.

Cross posted on WATBlog and Desicritics

Archer's blogging blunder

Image via Wikipedia

I guess not much needs to be said about celebrity blogging. Everyday as I read my feeds, I find another name from popular culture entering the blogosphere. Recently I had heard somewhere that Jeffrey Archer had his own simple blog which he was updating quite regularly. It was quite well maintained. With running commentary about his recent visit to India and tryst with Indian cricketers amongst others, the blog got me pretty hooked. And this was only the beginning. It was really this post that got me sitting up straight.

971 emails were awaiting me when I arrived back in the UK- the vast majority of them from India, and I must say that having been teased about calling Mumbai, Bombay, could someone please explain to me why they've changed the name of that city? And indeed Madras to Chennai? But it seems that Calcutta is still to be Calcutta - which I am much looking forward to visiting next year when I shall be opening Landmark's new bookstore.

Clearly not many people seem to be reading his blog for only four kind souls decided to retort saying that Mumbai and Chennai were the original names. It was only once HRM invaded our land that the names were changed. I will not even come to the Calcutta bit, but then this is where I start thinking. Is it Mr Archer’s lack of awareness of global changes showcased here or the global trend? As in, does the world really care whether Bombay became Mumbai again? Besides that, I’m pretty sure a lot of Indians still consider the IT hub of India to be called Bangalore.

Jeffrey, always a gentleman, readily accepted his blunder and apologised in the comments section.

Delhi Duty free flooded with offers

Image via WikipediaIts a wonderful time to be landing at IGI Airport, Delhi. Not only will you have fond memories(hopefully) of your trip, when you come back a surprise will be waiting for you at the IGI Airport in Delhi, well, at leat it was for me when I landed there a week back. The power of bargain works best in India and no where will you see the emphasis on discounts and offers as you will see in desi land. Staying true to the game, Delhi duty free was divided into two parts, one with discounts and crazy offers, nearer to the baggage claim and one a little distance away. And when I say crazy, I mean crazy.

Buy one get one free.

I'm pretty sure that phrase cannot be found anywhere else in the world, it's just so swadeshi. That was all that was required to get me going. I hadn't shopped either at the Cairo Duty Free(well if any of you guys ever visit that Airport you'll know why. Despite all the mysticism and history that helps it get its tourists, that country has one down market airport with hardly any duty free shops worth going to). I am definitely not losing any weight this summer, not with all those Lindtt chocolate bars(85% cocoa, I love my chocolates dark) and wine.

So if ny of you people have relatives from abroad coming over, do ask them to do your bit of shopping. It's worth it.

On attending IPL Matches in Hyderabad

Image by miss_rogue via FlickHaving attending the last 2 IPL matches, I can say without a doubt that Hyderabad, Deccan Chargers, has been the unluckiest team in the tournament. Neither do they have the excuse of Bangalore, who can say that they have a test team. The only excuse they have perhaps is the lack of quality bowlers. Bu hey, this post isn’t about their “vurssht” performance as a team or succumbing in the final overs EVERY single time. It’s about what goes on outside the playing area.

Needless to say, there’s total chaos. As I make my way to the stadium from the main road, I observe 2 complementary trends. One is the price of the cold drinks and water. Albeit marginally, but still rising. Other is the temperature of the bottle, which drops as we get nearer to the stadium entrance. So when the guy says “Thanda matlab Coca Cola” you can’t sue him. However minutes after buying the bottle, we had to part ways for bottles werent allowed inside. Now this made for quite spectacle; for next to the cricket crazy fans trying to get inside, there was a big group furiously trying to finish their water and colas and juices so that their investment doesn't go waste.

Inside the stadium, I can safely say that there’s unless you’re in the balcony you’re missing the action because in the lower pavilions (the 500 and 250 rupees ones), cricket crazy fanatics can’t sit on their seats and have to stand up revealing their tushy to me.

The cheerleaders need to be applauded for only in Hyderabad would they have had to hear stuff like,

Arrey dhang se hilao ji, kya pukkat mein aye kya.

If that doesn’t send any Hyderabadi into rivets of laughter, I don’t know what will. Apart from this, because Hyderabad is still not as big as many would want it to be, you will still run into a lot of familiar faces (something you would not always desire). A strange observation that I made was that, water was sold at rupees 5 a glass in the 2500 Rs pavilion where as was distributed free of cost in the 500 rupees/250 rupees arena. Care to explain the funda?

And now comes the most interesting thing to happen to Hyderabad's sporting history. Induction of a Mexican wave. It is rather amusing watching thousands of Hyderabadis stand up with their hands above their head and take part in this massive wave, but they become memories to cherish once the wave attains perfection and then goes on and on and on, till it becomes annoying.

BITSAT 2008 and changes in admission procedure at BITS-Pilani

This is one time of the year when the number of phone calls increase, even surpassing those during my birthday. Yep, its the examination season and all the mohalla-wallahs want to know whether pappu paas ho gaya ki nahin. All the aunties from random corners of the nation want an in depth understanding of the BITSAT procedure and all Babloo's and Chotu's want to know how many questions to attempt so that they don't screw it up.

So what is different this year?

Firstly all you Biology fundoos now have a chance to get a Masters(Hons.) degree in Biological Sciences or a Bachelors in Pharmacy.

BITS-Pilani has one of the best pharmacy departments in the country and it might as well become your one way ticket to some really good foreign universities for higher studies, for example Purdue University, Max Born Institute etc.

More information about this here.

Secondly, we have three campuses now.

Well four if you count Dubai, but then lets not get into that now, shall we? The Hyderabad campus offers all the B.E degrees that the Pilani campus does. Oh and some really kick-ass faculty is on its way to the Hyderabad campus, bidding adieu to the campus in the desert ;P
So rest assured the BITS Hyderabad campus will not miss out on the "quality" BITSian education which is so revered throughout the educational circles.

But the biggest worry of all the little ones are CUTOFFS. It's like they can't really think beyond this. So let me give my gyaan on the cut offs for this years BITSAT.

The main factors affection this years cutoff are going to be
1.The Hyderabad Campus
2.Increased awareness in the media regarding BITSAT and BITS-Pilani
3.Newer rival institutions being opened

In my economics courses, we use a term called Cēterīs paribus. Cēterīs paribus is a latin phrase, literally translated as "with other things the same." Now when discussing cutoffs, all we can do is take each factor individually, assuming other things to be the same w.r.t to last year and then analyze its effect on the cut offs. Since we can't predict by how each of these factors will fluctuate the cutoffs, we can't really algebraically sum their net effect on the cut off.

The Hyderabad campus, with its increased number of seats will obviously decrease the cutoff you might think. Well yes. That would make it a fair enough assumption. But then there's another effect. Opening a campus in Hyderabad will motivate a lot of students from nearby towns to attempt the BITSAT. A lot of these students are those who would probably clear BITSAT but are so attached to home or are not allowed to trot outside the state and this includes a legion of above average girls who can very well crack BITSAT. So does this imply that the Hyderabad campus gets more booty? Well not necessarily, since it depends on how much the girls score and how many boys want to be in the hyderabad campus(since the number of boys exceed the girls), but it has definitely increased the number of people giving the exam.

As I have noticed after spending two years in Pilani, the general awareness as well as popularity of BITS is increasing. Be it through social media(blame it on the net savvy BITSAT crowd), or the sudden increase in the number of BITSian achievements in entrepreneurship etc, but we've definitely getting more airtime and print space than what we used to earlier and this has helped lure many gullible young ones to consider BITS as their future alma mater. Effect on cutoffs? More students giving BITSAT, competition getting stiffer. Cutoffs rising.

Three new IIT's have been opened. So thats about 360 more seats, minus the reservations.
But with the whole reservation brouhaha creeping in again, BITS has suddenly gained the respect of the people out there in being the only engineering institution of a high repute selecting purely based on merit. I see a lot more serious aspirants giving BITS a thought while going for that JEE counselling session. In-fact I see a lot more of serious preparation for BITSAT even by the students who are confident of clearing JEE because of the reservation.

I'd like to end this sub topic by saying that according to me the cut offs for each branch will definitely fall, but by how much, that I can't even speculate because anything can happen. So if you do score around 250 plus I'd say you're still in the race.

Tips for BITSAT:

Carry a pencil and an eraser with you. For the sake of your favorite deity, do this. Because you will not be given rough pages, you will be given a little booklet to scribble which will fit in your palm. So you'd want to use the space preciously and then re-use it.

Please use unconventional methods to solve the maths questions, if you see a god damn trigonometry question and substitute theta as zero without thinking Well not without thinking but you get the hint. Don't waste time on traditional methods of solving stuff. Grow up.

Accuracy is as important as speed, so its not only about attempting those 150 questions, its about not getting many wrong.

Please please please don't fucking guess blindly. At least narrow it down to two options and then just GO FOR IT. Don't not, NOT guess if you have two options, just guess.


Ah feels nice.
Peace out.

Next post: Myths bout BITSAT!!!