The 4 am letters – I

0355 hours

Dear Chip,

I am sorry I’ve had to inconvenience you with the blight of having to actually fish out my messages from your  spam-infested gmail inbox, as opposed to the socially accepted norm of reading them off ‘Whatsapp’ and your Facebook account. Staying in touch with people who matter should be simple and effective – ‘working hard at relationships’ is over rated. I mean my friends do not mean any lesser to me if I throw them a virtual ‘sheep’ or ‘cow’ on Farmville from time to time. Its just as good as a ‘Howdy’ (Au Contraire more Texas country style). But about the social networking sites I’m missing from right now – I am frankly quite tired of the information influx. For instance, why do I have to know that Vicky is going to UCLA or that Meet needs to upload the carefully weeded out ‘presentable’ pictures from his stint at the Google Complex. I mean, these people were dumb as soup till they were 16. When did they get so smart?

As for the ‘Whatsapp’ situation – I accidently ‘dropped’ my phone. Again. And please refrain from urging me to buy a Blackberry now – That Blackberry messenger is a cruel trap and a consumerist decoy, fueled by the adolescent need to fit in. I mean, I actually miss the original ‘Blackberry’ boys – with the song and the shiny shoes and the black suits. I will content myself with a phone of lesser distinction but higher merit. I miss my music player dreadfully right now, ever since I got to Siliguri. I knew there was no way of restoring Phillis ( Yes I name my electronic aids) after the deluge. I don’t think the water logging damaged the little gadget as much as ‘blow drying. I think I must have frazzled the circuitry inside to powder.And no, please spare me the ‘Apple’ marketing pitch. I will be replacing Phyllis with her closest cousin available in the market 2 years after her time – I like the liberty of being able to drag and drop my ‘illegally’ downloaded songs and not having to mess with syncing them to device-specific software.

For the future I have noted that I am never to repeat the frazzling exercise with Lenny. I mean the laptop is all I’ve got here once I’m back to my cabin after work. Oh yes, I have a cabin here – all to myself, Other than the occasional scorpion or rat snake crawling about the porch, the place is neat. Its walking distance from the site and I can hear the gushing of the waterfall. And every evening at sunset, the distant hills light up like Christmas – Darjeeling and Kersheong. I plan to go up there some weekend. If time permits, maybe Gangtok. This will be my fourth visit, if we count the industrial tour in Sem 6. You know I sometimes do believe in the power vested with the universe to make our wishes come true – If we honestly wish for them hard enough. Like the time we were closely engrossed in the prayer chants at the Monastery (the effects of which were sufficiently aided by the trip)- I clearly remember frantically fabricating images in my head of what it would be like if I could permanently settle here.

I do hope you can visit sometime. I’ll show you around. If you come after the book release, then who knows – maybe I’ll drive you around in a black SUV. On a serious note, I’d add that I have found time for writing. If I get better with the sketching, then perhaps I could churn out a graphic novel.

Give my best to Lexi. I am so glad you two found a house in Bombay. Lexi is a terrific roommate – in the never mind the idiosyncracies and the early arrest of his personality at the Freudian anal stage. The personality traits are rather fun – they eliminate the banality of daily living that a regular roommate might subject you to. Between you and me, do make sure that you keep all manner of stationary fluid out of Lexi’s reach – your tube of Whitener and the Gum bottle. Locking your medicine cabinet might also be a good idea if you regularly stock it with Iodex and cough syrup. And you might want to stay clear of the baked brownies before heading out to office. Its quite like living with a Gremlin – 1. Don’t feed it after midnight 2. Do not expose to water and 3. Keep away from light. Alright not quite the same rules but you get the drift.

Wish you two good luck ‘shacking up’.

 

Before the Sprint of D.K Bose

Owing to my previous post, wherein I made an exception and explored chic-litism and tripped over clichés that women in the 21^st century are still blind to, I have been brutally slotted as a frivolous writer groping for substantial content. The pithy works will take some time to materialise however, for now the layman take on films, music and television should do to redeem me.

A lot of us thronged the caramel-reeking halls last July to applaud ‘coming of age cinema’ with the release of ‘Delhi Belly’; to take one for the team re-christened as the ‘multiplex audience’. For two successive months, every cell phone in sight exploded into ‘D,K Bose’ and girlfriends added ‘Hate you like I love  you’ to their very long list of clichés to text hapless boys.  A generous peppering of expletives and a clever reference to ‘Maggie’ cutting her hair from ‘Mill on the Floss,’ got us hailing the film as the bandwagon of intelligent humour.

Just when your cellphone explodes into DK Bose

But as a child of the nineties, bred on DD1 and DD Metro (If you don’t know what the acronyms stand for, please go back to your ‘Angry Birds’ and let the grown-ups do the talking), I can point out a similar trend that took over the film scene back in the early 80s – not serious enough to be slotted as ‘parallel’ cinema but not star-studded enough to count as mainstream. Here is to fence-sitters and those who refused to be slotted (ME! ME!). No exotic locales, no “mera baap chor hai” theatrics, no cabaret – just some brilliant acting and a fresh storyline, which I will not give away. You have IMDB for that.

The Walking Dead

Satish Shah plays the walking dead to perfection

 Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron (Kundan Shah,1983) – Naseeruddin Shah and Ravi Baswani have you rolling in splits as two photographers gallivanting about in search of a story at the behest of a shrewd calculating scribe, only to find themselves towing about a dead body all over Bombay. The suave and sophisticated Shobha Sen, with the socialite air and the chiffon sarees, was perhaps the first character of its kind in Indian Cinema. But from being carted off in a coffin to taking the stage as Draupadi being disrobed, Satish Shah’s limp walking dead act is played to perfection. The climax at the stage dramatization of the Mahabharatha is perhaps one of the shining moments of Hindi Cinema.

A Suitable Boy

Baaton Baaton Mein (Basu Chatterjee,1979)- The stereotyped to death Anglo-Indian family takes centre stage and yet this story comes through and rises above the clichés with fabulous performances by Pearl Padamsee and of course, Amol Palekar. Rosie Perreira’s grave calculations to find her daughter the perfect match (read biggest paycheck)– right from her nagging over compatible salaries to contemplating over sketching cartoons as a serious career option – they get you grinning in no time. Tina Muni makes an unusually appropriate choice as a female lead.

B***-C*** sutta

How to drop smoking and pick a girl in the 80s

Chashme Baddoor(Sai Paranjpe,1981) – Back in the days when the heavens did not fall if you brought a slice of real life to the silver screen, showing your protagonist enjoy a smoke at the neighbourhood tapri – Forget the swashbuckling heroes who died in the climax, our three main leads are DU students of differing temperaments. All they have in common is the sutta and the mysterious Miss Chamko (Deepti Naval). A take on hostel life and college, way back in the days when getting a girl’s number was a lot harder than having that smoking scene evade the scissors of the censor board.

OrCHestra

Struggling actor, disconcerting gay landlord and eccentric don - this flick has it all

Bombay Boys(Kaizad Gustad, 1998)- Rahul Bose is perhaps the only memorable character from this dark tale of the looming shadows of Bombay. Much loved for the ‘Mumbai’ soundtrack by Javed Jaafrey. Struggling actor, disconcerting gay landlord and eccentric don – all make for an eclectic bouquet of characters vividly sketching the city. I need not mention that Naseeruddin Shah delivers beyond compare. Tara Deshpande, the original Poorna Jagannathan of hindi films has taken leave of the medium but left this bit of herself to remember her by.

 

Why this Kolaveri di? Give the boys a break

If you have perhaps been jobless enough to observe, I may not have to point out the sudden influx of blogs and web content targeting certain sections of social strata – Sometimes its a geographical distinction (Read “Open Letter to a Delhi Boy”), sometimes a case of backgrounds (“Why I hate all defence boys”) or some professional rivalry (“Open letter to all SPCE boys”). 

Looks like your ticket to fame is just one outrageous blog away – pick a community you have personal vendetta against, pad out about a 1000 words spewing outrage, click ‘Publish’ and voila! Get your ginormous sunglasses out because the shutterbugs and fanatics are waiting outside your door to get you. Perverse curiosity has the hit count reaching astronomical numbers and the authors suffer bouts of Megalomania. The following blogposts  by Shahana are a testimony to that (Yes, I am obsessed with the ‘Broken Morning’ blog to the point of affliction). 

And what do all these incendiary rants have in common? A serious issue with members of the opposite sex. And more importantly, the authors are all women. As Dhanush would put it, “Why this killer rage super mama?”.  Remember the pre-teen years when we walked around mooning over the skater boys or the footballers or (in my case) the math geeks. The inability to reciprocate on their part would lead us to remonstrate very articulately, “He is so mean, I hate him!”. We may not be 12 anymore but we definitely act like it. The pithy essay-writing may be a lot more eloquent, but here is the deal – Who the fuck cares? They boys sure don’t. How many times have you seen a response going, “Open letter to all the girls who broke my heart. boo-hoo”

After having done my bit of field research (Owing to nearly four years in a girls hostel) and a lot of reading (‘He is just not that into you’), I have a little message to share with the women who may not blogging about it but are perhaps nursing the same antagonism. I generally keep this blog space free of chiclit-isms but I am obliged to make an exception here. Since the boys have better things to do (football, food, sex, wait… football again…GTA 3…. football.. FiFa worldcup.. oh no, more football) than devote time to this nonsense, it is safe to assume that I address only women here.  There is so much we can really learn from the menfolk and put in practice. Here is a list -

1.) They have their priorities straight – While some of us spend 90 percent of our think- time mooning over boys (Why won’t he call me?.. Why did he call me?… Should I call him?… Hey! He just texted me. YE YE YE), the menfolk prioritise efficiently. Most of the time its football on their minds. I take the liberty of using football as a synonym for anything that embodies a passion for men – it could be aeromodelling, rollerblading or marking victims for his serial killing ritual. So in terms of generalising, if he is not playing football, he is watching it on TV or simulating it on his PC (FIFA WORLD CUP) or blogging about it. Even his arguments with his mates root from whichever football team he supports. Its marvelous how this pre-occupation leaves him no room for dreading and sitting by the phone, biting his nails.

2.) Utterly straightforward plan of action – Here is an end to the question “Does he like me?”. Kindly stop reading into ‘signals’ and ‘hints’ or whatever the fuck those Cosmo and Femina covers promise are definite signs that a guy has got you on his mind. If he likes you, he will ask you out. Period. There is no such thing as a guy too shy to pick up the phone to ask you out. And no, he is not too busy either. And if, darling, he is not asking you out – he just does not want to. See, its as simple as that. There are boys buried under a pile of work and are complete pipsqueaks when it comes to talking to girls but if its a girl that matters, he will get passes, make time, arrange a place to meet – do all the hard work to ensure he sees you. Anything less than that and he is not interested. Seriously.

3.) Cross-wired  thinking – If you in fact continue communicating with him and find different ways to show that you care, what he will read into that is “Man, she really hates me and there is definitely no spark between us.” However, when you do not respond to texts & messages, watch the phone ring and not pick it up, they take it as a sign of real ‘spark’. Don’t ask, but that is how it works. In fact 8 out of 10 women will probably tell me that the guys who continuously keep calling and checking in are the ones who are ignored to death. Perhaps they are the ones arranging the passes and putting aside time for you on their very packed calendars. And no matter how many times you refuse, they just go back to their football, and after two days, try their luck again. And if you at all bother to respond to the endless stream of calls and he picks it up in between his precious football match, for the love of God, MARRY HIM.

4.) Unanimous taste in women – Its easier to conform to an expected standard when its uniform all across the world. The rules are the same everywhere. Stay skinny. Grow your hair long. Growing a personality is optional. And don’t talk too much. Men have evolved into a species with such a similar pattern of likes and dislikes, that now its easy to predict what they like. And even easier to mould yourself into it. Skinny bimbo is the safest bet.  And don’t try too hard. Remember, they LIKE to do the hard work themselves. Gives them a real kick. 

5.) No hang-ups – Have you observed a bunch of boys addressing each other? Its hard to distinguish between endearment and abuse. Imagine walking away unscathed after calling out to your best friend saying “hey fuckface, pass me the jam. ” Even after heated discussions over Man-U vs. Chelsea, they’ll resume conversation after a mere 15 minutes and act like nothing happened. No grievance-redressals required, no grudges held. And no, they do not need to talk about their feelings. When an issue is buried, its buried for good.    As I said, a minor scuffle is easy to get over when you have other pressing matters on your mind, such as finding ways to make that motor-vehicle your racing team is fabricating, a 100 kgs lighter than it was the previous year.

6.) They do not over-think, they do not over-analyze – Nothing comes in the way of a good plan as long as the plan appeals. There is no dithering over ‘what to wear’ and how its ‘not my scene’ or ‘what will ‘they’ think?’. Anything than needs to be done, whether it is hopping on to a bike,driving off to Kashid or asking that really hot girl out, is decided over in a matter of minutes. No questions asked. If it’s too cold on the beach, you carry a jacket and if she says no, there are other fish in the sea or try again tomorrow, after football. Remorse is pointless waste of time and they know it. They do not drown themselves in a deluge of self-doubt weighing their merits against the other contenders in the game. They just play. 

So why all the drama and  theatrics? We are anyway in short supply, as my friend Avijit once pointed out. So go out, sit pretty and do nothing about the guy-situation. It’s not your job. Just find your own ‘football’ and keep yourself occupied with that. The phone will ring when it has to. 

 

Diamond Awwa Newsflash

Groggy-eyed occupants of defence-based Hostel in Kalina, stumbled into the Dining hall(for brunch) on Sunday morning to find it jam-packed with fellow hostelites sitting and listening in rapt attention to a heated discussion between a representative of the management committee (who will, for all practical purposes on this blog be referred to as major saab) and a slightly flustered member of the boys wing. As is common knowledge, the co-ed hostel has two separate wings for boys and girls but the ground floor, inclusive of the reception, the dining hall, the boys gym and the laundry (and the entire compound, extended to the military tank placed in the ground for cosmetic value only) is common to all. There are no rules and regulations regarding separate timings for boys and girls on any of the above-mentioned locations.

Owing to longer distances travelled by students in the hostel and the culture of the city, the in-time at Diamond Awwa has been 11 pm, since its inception (circa 2006). However due to recent unprecedented events (irrelevant digressions best left for another blog post), the authorities found the need to bring down the in-time to 9 pm. As to how this move will aid to curb the incident of ‘indiscipline’ within the walls of the hostel, is only known to the authorities who decided to put a notice on the walls barely three days prior to the 1^st of October (the date from which the rule is to be implemented).

The spurts of protest that sprung up due to this ruling led to a meeting with the concerned authorities on Sunday morning. Venue of the meeting was the dining hall. Hostelites, still groggy and sleep-deprived after the exploits of the previous night (details of which will not be disclosed for security reasons.. it would be safe to say that all persons involved were equipped with legal night-out passes), were filled with a sense of purpose as the agenda of the meeting was the need for the new in-time.

Unfortunately the agenda of the meeting was avoided for a long time as the authorities had other pressing matters to discuss regarding the entries in the food register and the quality of the dosas served for breakfast on Fridays. We take food very seriously here. After much discussion on the amount of oil used and the variety in the menu, hostelites finally brought up the agenda with great caution and subtlety.

As questioning authority is second nature to us, the first point that arose was “Why the need to shove us in at nine NOW, after five years of an 11 pm in-time?” To this major saab had only one answer – “ The in-time at Awwa hostel Delhi is 7.30 pm so why should Bombay be any different.”

(Warning – this account is now going to get verbose and less pretentious, owing to the intensity with which we genuinely want to DISREGARD this STUPID point)

Oh- for- the- love- of- God, are you actually comparing us with Delhi????? DELHI, of all the places? First of all, Awwa DELHI is a GIRLS hostel. Have you seen what Delhi is like after seven pm. It is pitch- dark by 6.30 pm in Delhi and PLEASE NOTE – women get RAPED in Delhi after its dark. I know it. Everyone knows it.

If tomorrow I tell my father that I am walking around in Shorts in Colaba in the middle of the night, with my girl friends, he is not going to hyperventilate. I have hailed a cab, all by myself at 2 in the night from Churni road and found the roads crowded enough to be stranded in traffic jams in the middle of the night and reached santacruz safely.

Bombay is a city where the office culture is such that employees are expected to attend meetings, regardless of what ridiculous hour in the night they are to be held at. And no, you are not to be made an exception of, just because you are a woman, for safety issues. Because, darling, what do you mean by ‘safety issues’ in BOMBAY? Same goes for projects in all kinds of professional courses (engineering, law, media, fashion. . .)

So tomorrow if I have to stay back in my college for a prolonged placement procedure, I will now have to call up my father and ask him to fax a request letter to my warden. Or if I figure out I am really not in the mood for the unsavoury dal and bhindi on Monday nights in the hostel and I must go have veg crispy at Two Star, again… My father must fax the warden. Our parents must now put aside all their meetings and conferences and site visits and sit by the fax machine 24 X 7. Also, it has come to our knowledge that all requests for extensions beyond 9 pm must be processed by the Commandant in Colaba. Like a Lt. General in the Army has little else to do than process about two dozen requests from 20 year olds sitting in Awwa Kalina  and sign the incremented charges for extra messing (AS IF!)

Also, a new rule states that no girls are allowed to sit at the landmark of the hostel –The TANK, beyond 7.30 pm. WHAT Bull-f***ing-S—t! What kind of regressive, small minded thinking leads to such decisions, I cannot fathom! The reason cited for this move was “Snake bite in the night.”  So it seems even snakes have gender biases, is it?

Such discrimination at Awwa hostel has never been experienced.

More of such points were brought up in the meeting with major saab on Sunday. His last words were “ I shall try and convey to the authorities that the hostelites are NOT HAPPY with the new in-time.”

The tremendous outrage caused by this mother of an understatement was evident when everyone yelled in unison “ We are not just NOT_HAPPY.. we CANNOT adhere to it.. In Bombay, 9 pm is IMPOSSIBLE.”

Please forgive us for having work to do in our colleges and our internships and trying to balance a social life with it as we go along. This new move is not going to curb the stray incidents of ‘indiscipline’ in the hostel.. it will only serve to poison the environment of an otherwise perfectly happy family. Moreover, your fax machines are going to choke, splutter and die owing to the rapidity with which they will be churning out applications.

 

“You are wanting aenything from Dally, Just Say Me!” – Delhi boys and their many well-publicized shortcomings

A certain young woman has set the blogosphere ablaze with her very ‘open letter to all Delhi boys. As a journalist in the making (and not to mention the fact that she hails from the South of India which automatically gives her an intellectual advantage over many), she has been eloquent, funny and charming in many parts of the public address. It takes real grit and fervor to address an entire community on a public forum and bring to light their moral bearing (or the lack of it), their patriarchal ways, their preferences of skin color and other burning issues of the day.

It starts out as a hilarious description of the Delhi boy. Its not hard to miss those here in Bombay either – with their ‘SUV’ flaunting, their Punjabi accent and the serious confidence with which they approach women. Its harder not to laugh because you see, they are bloody serious. I have unflinching respect for women who speak their mind (a.l.a Shahana), even if it means painting their rantings in ‘black and white’ stereotypes and threats to elements of certain communities. I do not remember clearly, but I believe there was some talk of ‘coconuts being  shoved down something or up something, causing genitalia to sprout coir. After a hilarious beginning, which all of us could relate to, the tone of condescension was stepped up and the inevitable occurred – it got personal.

On the Fair and Lovely fixation

She speaks of the North Indian (specifically Punjabi) obsession with fair skin. Call it a remnant of post-colonial trauma, but it seems that Indians all over have not recovered from this fascination. Men, more so (I know more women such as me, who dig dark, tall kinds). Instances of Tamil Brahmin families asking for a fair (not wheatish) toned bride are not rare. Or for that matter, the fact that national and regional (yes, SUN TV included) television is thronged with countless ads for fairness creams (or ‘;special formulae’ as they call it these days). But who are we to define or defy someone’s definition of beauty? He likes them white let him have ‘em white. Not all South Indians are dark (the range is from ebony tones to glowing white) and not all North Indians fair. A guy once told me how he did not think Priyanka Chopra was pretty because ( and I quote here) “her skin color is same like you”. More than wanting to throw my chair at him, I wanted to fall back in my chair and laugh. Before you judge these men, please take into consideration the backgrounds and upbringing that they have been subject to. Not that well brought up, urban men have any wider range in taste. What Shahana says about South Delhi girls, I could say about girls hailing from any uptown area in any city (be it Bangalore, Chandigarh or Bombay). Just goes out to show that attractiveness is a function of the time and effort and money you put into grooming yourself. Boys are a confused lot.  They get carried away by what they see and as long as its packaged well, who cares whats inside. I am not going into biological details of why this happens. This is why, we have a Priyanka Chopra with her nose job and even a Shilpa Shetty with here scalpel-sculpted body, hogging air time. Cosmetic surgery is not a prerogative of the north, you see.

Media and social fabric

It might be unparliamentary on my part to mention that while Delhi boys may make offensive comments regarding ‘Tandoori legs’ and ‘Gori chamdi’, certain South films are clearly offensive to women too, with flab-ridden moustached men making obscene gestures with nubile starlets. Also, South cinema is not exactly the kind that the intelligentsia (I am sure that is a majority there) might enjoy. Having to sit throught 3 treacherous hours of Robot made even  me, a mere North-Indian girl with my limited mental faculties, want to retch in despair.

On Delhi women

I may not hail from Delhi, but I do take offence on part of the many Delhi girls, when they are labelled as pretty faces without any substance. Now I can tell you that these women have not survived (and managed to not get raped) in Delhi ) in this city, by dancing to the whims of ‘money throwing pigs’. They can take you down with their D.U styled English and they can tell the pigs to bugger-off in perfect, Jat-accent lined Hindi. As for the lack of articulation on part of the Delhi boys, not all of us have been exposed to English-medium schooling. Kindly broaden your spectrum and drop the elitist attitude.

“I want to Explain you this”

Please do not hold it against me when I point out that even South Indians have their linguistic fallacies in English. Its not ‘YEm’. Its just ‘M’. And its not ‘pray-jheere’. Its simply ‘pressure’. And it would be easier for us to follow what you are saying to us, if you speak in the one language that was intended to unite us, not in the vernacular of your state. Hindi is our official language – kindly accept it and move on, will you?

 

And of course, the point where our South Indian counterparts were attending Bharatnatyam classes and studying M.S Subhalaxmi and cracking the IIT JEE while we sat in our homes straightening our hair and buffing our nails. That brings us back to the stereotype that all South Indians since birth are programmed to pursue science (preferably engineering) and a phD in the same field. That we all know is not true. For people belonging to our social strata, parents encourage us to pursue our interests and dreams. This is why we have models, Disk Jockeys, Musicians and dancers  (there is Kathak and Odissi too, you know) – all earning an honorable living. I can name one of each kind right here. And at the same time we have Kota, a North-Indian city, the hub for all JEE aspirants. Or resident of Delhi, H.C Verma, who can actually afford to charge lakhs per month for IIT physics classes. I can assure you, his students are not all South Indian.

As for rights to women in the South – its a subjective matter. There are homes where all hell breaks lose when parents find out their darling daughter has a little boyfriend in the closet (metaphorically, not literally). And please give our mothers more credit as their jurisdiction extends beyond choosing the style of wedding ceremony. South and North do not define how much freedom women exercise in their homes.

What women want . . 

All women are deeply attracted to a  man capable of talking beyond his SUV(with the blaring speakers), what night clubs he can take you to and how much money he has to throw, at his disposal. We think with our heads unlike men, who think with their.. ummm… (only when it comes to women). And there still are numerous cases where boys choose substance over looks.

In this age, and especially with us defence background kids, it is hard to distinguish on the basis of regional divide. I am a Protestant hailing from Lucknow, now settled in Poona and studying in Bombay, Or my half-Punjabi, half-Tamilian roommate who consumes Rasam and Sambhar with as much relish as she would, a plate of butter chicken and naan (Just so you know, we too were busy trying to crack the JEE and she did, in fact).

So if you happen to be an olive-skinned girl with long, dark wavy hair and helluva lot of spunk, you are just Indian – no other regional tags needed. This is not a tone of heady jingoism but more like the voice of pure and simple reason.  And I love your spunk and the effortless fervor with which you write.

Love

Protestant Bhaiya Girl

 

Margarita Mondays and Casual Fridays!

The rains could submerge all of Andheri in a deluge of muddy water, but that doesn’t dampen the spirits of the enthusiastic young undergrad engineers on the campus, who take the effort to match their ties with their shirts and wear trousers to college at unearthly hours of the morning. Why? Because its placement season that’s got everybody on their toes. Aspiring candidates sat for a presentation and an aptitude test in the selection process for an engineering giant – one of the first few to come and pick the best ones off the campus.

Around a 100 students from the core branches attended the presentation, during which they learnt about the growth opportunities in the company and other relevant facts which would usually comprise a very good marketing pitch. After the presentation, many students came up with serious questions and doubts that the representative of the company was only too happy to clear. A lot many people seemed to be worried about the location of their employment. It is common knowledge that most people born and brought up in Bombay seldom can imagine anything beyond and above the limits of the city. In fact a certain student even quoted his preferred choice of area as ” Bandra (E) to Santacrus (W) “… No kidding.Also, “Sir, do we get sundays off?” The civil engineering students had more major issues to discuss, with regard to the atmosphere and culture of the working environment. The did ramble something about “Are there casual fridays and ‘Margarita Mondays ?” and also about smoking during office hours. These questions however were not really entertained and the civil people wondered why.

After having cleared the aptitude test, the candidates travelled to the head office for the big showdown.. the interview ofcourse. After three years of spending semester after semester pouring over books and spitting out answers only in the examination hall, it was now time to put ourselves in the line of fire. A lot like the much dreaded viva sessions, the interviews were held by a panel of very amiable men determined to see right through your soul. Within a couple of questions, they pretty much figured us out.

My advise, study and hope for the best and don’t begrudge the opportunities you don’t get- Keep looking until you get the right fit.

 

B.E Whatever You Want to B.E

A lot of us from nondescript engineering colleges have to suffer the ire of school mates who have out done themselves and gotten into better known institutes. For instance, the IITs, BITS or the NITs. If you are  not from any of the three categories, you have to spend a few extra minutes trying to explain exactly where your college is located.. like its not an institution, its some restaurant or pub people need to be taking directions for. Have you ever had to give instructions to people to tell them what IIT is.. “you know, the big campus opposite Hiranandani complex in Powai” ?

The need to appear well-to-do and comfortably settled in spite of not gathering enough merit to bag a premium college seat, grips you. However, we fail to make an impression as our sodden BE degrees can hardly match the begrudged B. Tech. And then comes the question of, how are you doing? “To be honest, I am dying here, with little chance of getting placed in a decent core company, as all those are bagged by University toppers and colleges like MIT and Harvard refuse to even allow our applications to pass their thresholds…At most the infosys people will come for the big hunt with their truck and shove everyone in like cattle and if I am lucky, I will be part of the livestock.. But everything else seems fine. you tell me how are you? “. And ofcourse,  the dreaded reply, “Ah.. nothing much.. just bagged an internship with Mercedes. Got a few job offers.. can’t decide between Myu-Sigma and Transgraph.. Also, got through IIM A..” . What is worse is that everytime you meet such people, you have to again recount to them the full name and location of your college. Because unless its class A, people tend to forget.

After resenting and trying to avoid such situations for so long, I learnt to face these episodes with a different strategy. If you meet one of these high flyers again, don’t tell them you are doing engineering.

You can instead cook up any other lie that can sound better than doing engring from a lesser institute. You are free to fabricate any image of yourself that you might like. I like to tell people that I dropped out of engineering and that I now peddle drugs for a living. Strictly organic stuff. No chemicals. I even offer my number. I am working on perfecting this charade by getting business cards printed with my name and a marijuana leaf on the side. I sometimes toy with the idea of telling people I own a paan shop right across the street, but I figure that is a bit extreme.

 

Texting Etiquette for Dummies : A Live Social Experiment :-) :-( ;-) :’-)

Text messaging in the new world must be a blessing for the verbally challenged and the sociopaths. Now, to attract people, you no longer need to be eloquent, articulate or elegant. All you need is an inconveniently bulging out phone in your pocket and the world is your oyster. Your facebook friend list is accessible to you at all hours of the day and any time you are stranded, you just need to switch on your GPS and well, whenever you are embroiled in an argument over who actually directed ‘Death Proof’ or over whether you are  shorter than Tom Cruise, you immediately google it out. Well, for those who are curious, Tom Cruise is 5 ft 7 inches tall. And Death Proof was directed by Quentin Tarantino (beats me too!)

As for communication ‘skills’, you don’t need any. Even formal conversations online or on texts is limited to absurd abbreviations and sentences completely devoid of any structure. No wonder all of us are in dire need of GRE classes. Whatever language skills we may have picked up at school are going rusty for pure lack of opportunities to use them. At least, a few years ago, we were compelled to spell out complete words, thanks to T9. With the advent of the Qwerty keypad, even that saving grace is redundant. Who can blame us?It has never occurred to manufacturers that accommodating the 26 letters of the English alphabet on the tiny frame is a near impossible task, unless you are designing phones to be used my mutant humans with toothpick fingers. Punctuation marks and articles might as well be extinct. It is no longer customary to space out words and begin every sentence with a capital letter. Now perhaps our messages look like this -” my numb is outta ntwrk, pls cll on my lndline” or “ttyl .wl cll l8r. peace” (I am inwardly throwing up as I type it)

Another worrying outcome of  this form of communication, is the ease with which we can continue to correspond, hiding behind our digital selves. Our ability to express emotion in writing is replaced by the smiley or the even more hateful ‘lol’. Well ROFL and LMAO are other variations of LOL. There is a smiley for every emotion- You can stick your tongue out at people :-p, you can grin toothily , you can wink slyly . I was recently introduced to the ‘weeping’ smiley :’) as well. I did not even know it existed until a few weeks back.

You can pick up the nerve to convey anything to anyone with the aid of a text message and pepper it with a few ‘LOL’s and some odd smileys and nobody gets hurt. For instance, I can say “You are such a bitch .. lol.. haha”  to my friend and somehow, the silly smiley would neutralise the effect of the first five words, which would be harsh if read out in isolation.

Sociopaths in the making are getting more comfortable with member of the opposite sex, as the do not need any personality traits to get chatting. Long back, before I even owned any personal electronics, I used to use my mother’s cell phone and the household desktop to type out lengthy texts and emails to correspond with friends. To impress boys, I took pains to sound eloquent and well-read, using words I picked up from studying Shakespeare in school and spending an  adolescence pouring over Austens and Brontes. And over the years, wisdom won over and I learnt that the art of getting people interested does not lie in cooking up witty replies. There is a new set of rules that neurotic people such as me can barely keep up with.

Maybe I should enlist some of these rules here. For instance, the longer your text message, the more desperate you sound (or I should say.. ‘read’). Use of an enriched vocabulary and fully spelled out words show that you took time and effort from your busy life to reply to someone and that you cared too much to do so. And you do not get a ‘kudos’ for a prompt reply either. The keyword is to feign indifference by replying late and stifling your literary vein by substituting words with lol’s and smileys. In fact, sharing and soul baring revelations are not important. I actually demonstrated this aspect of socializing to some of my friends by carrying out a text-chat with a boy and keeping him interested in my conversation for more than 3 days. I fought against every instinct I ever possessed with regard to sentence structure and grammar. Imagine this, this boy was actually replying to me as long as I sent him stunted replies like “OMG.. haha.. lol” to every message.

Boy :”hv u hrd dis awsom song…pls listen it is vry nice”

Me:”not yet… lol”

Boy:”so wt u up to’

Me;”nthin much… haha.. lol l”

Boy:”u r a vry intrsting gal.”

Me:”haha.. lol”

I made my point. Well, I could not keep up this facade for 3 days. On the third day I broke down, and used the word ‘prosaic’ in a sentence, and that was the end of this correspondence. Hence, proved. If you want to end electronic communication, use a long word in a correctly structured sentence. People at the receiving end will treat you like an alien to this century.

In a nutshell, texting etiquette is to have utter disregard for punctuation, articles, spelling and grammar and for somebody else’s precious time— keeping them in knots for hours while they wait for your ‘prosaic’ reply, which rarely consists of any earth shattering information.

Observation – People put their phones away for hours when expecting a reply from a promising prospect. Its as if the reply from their muse(s) will magically appear from nowhere if the phone is not watched.

 

If Cars Could Moo. . .

I promised my friend and confidante Parshva Shah that some day I would choose to write about something other than SPCE, SPIT and engineering. I also gave my word that in my next post I will resolve to address an area of his interest. As all those who know Parshva Shah would swear by it, the subject most appropriate for this purpose is Automobiles. Parshva is passionate about anything on wheels. In fact, certain sources even confirm that he once chased a concrete mixing truck down Peddar road. On being asked for an explanation for the inexplicable behaviour, he managed to convince enquirers that the said cement mixer was actually loaded with girls from Sophia college. Parshva maintained a no comments stand on what Sophia girls would be doing on top of a cement mixer.

Now my knowledge of cars and bikes is limited. In fact, after a certain guy bought himself a snazzy Royal Enfield, he called me to ask for my opinion on his machine, as a mechanical student. I remember my opinion being a crisp and polite “Its so shiny!” Also my relationship with machinery is exacty like my relationship with dogs. We do not understand each other. My driving instructor would vouch for it. We are very close. Today he showed me pictures of his teen aged children, just so I understood his point that he would like to be alive so he can watch them grow older.. not die in a car crash aided by my disastrous driving skills. Well, being the oldest driving student with only a learner’s license, I have to say I can barely compete with these 13 year olds who have learnt to ride like the wind. I am afraid I accept the generation gap with dignity.

Well, as for the approximate disasters that may have occurred while I was in the wheel, I can firmly say that I alone was not responsible. You see, there are certain other cars on the road that definitely cause me to get nervous. I guess all those who have spoken to me lately wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Toyota’s latest family car.. the ‘Innova’ tops the list in this category. Everyone has their idiosyncrasies and well, I have mine…. the aversion to this particular make of SUVs. I have my reasons too. To begin with, the TOYOTA Innova is just an ENORMOUS moving hazard. It probably should not be on a road, least of all a narrow two lane gully in Kondhwa (Pune)…. the thing should probably be on a runway. When it slides next to me while I “drive” (the quotes are necessary), I feel like I am being ambushed by a Boeing or an Airbus. Not that the shape of the innova would look any more becoming if it suddenly sprouted wings and took off. And God forbid, it is taxiing (yes, that is the correct verb) right ahead of you. It feels like you are trying to overtake a mooing cow. How do you find parking space in India for a vehicle of such an astronomical size. And why can it not decide for itself whether it is an SUV or a Sedan car. Like if it is indeed an off road vehicle, why is it trying so hard to be all urban chic with ill placed curves all over it. Also, its ubiquitous. If you watch the road, when not driving (of course) and pay attention, you will know that every six seconds, an Innova crosses you and my insides churn in agony.

Well, of all my eccentricities, this is perhaps the only one I can share online. Well i am not alone as far as biased, unreasonable judgments are concerned. For example, my roommate Karen despises the music of the ‘Beatles’. Now is that not ridiculous. Or for instance, another friend of mine does not listen to commercial pop, for the sake of principles (He is a purist, he says).

I hope Parshva, you will appreciate this effort at branching out and diversifying the readable content on this blog.

 

The Engineer’s Map

I am at home for what seems like an eternity, thanks to longer semester breaks (the meager privileges of Autonomy). I took a break from my busy schedule alternating between watching Mallika Sherawat movies and reporting the same on my Facebook profile, to get some spring cleaning done. My study table cabinet, being my private space, has not been touched since the time I left for Bombay in the pursuit of widening my horizons and learning to fend for myself and live off the land (Do not scoff at me..As a writer I am allowed the freedom of theatrics in writing). Except of course my 15 year old sister has taken liberties with my private space and amused herself with readings from my journals and other sources of classified information, kept in said cabinet.

After 3 years of neglect, my cabinet houses relics from the time I was in junior college. Scavenging through the articles, I could almost make a map of our journeys from being ill-prepared 16 year olds, aspiring to be engineers… to the.. well, equally ill prepared final year students that some of us here are.

My first discovery was a certificate I had earned after an internship of 4 weeks. The carefully worded letter boldly described me as a budding engineer, eager to learn and showing great acumen for the craft. My internship guide probably did not write that.

Then, taking me back a little further in time, were the three identical looking hall tickets, bearing the university logo and the unsavory stamp sized snapshot. …two of them belonging to each semester of that year, and the additional one for the KT paper. To all aspiring engineers, my counsel is this…in all your life, you are going to get that one KT you do not deserve. You may give in your papers for revaluation, but it is almost University policy to give you your reval marks, only after you are done taking the KT exam. They will make you suffer till the end. Also, your letter announcing the fact that you have been passed after your revaluation may NOT reach you at all. So you can spend years assuming that were flunked in the reval too. As to who the letter may reach…. Well, it may reach your name sake, who if you are lucky, might belong to your college too.. ask Ankit Aggarwal of SPCE mechanical. In my case, I consider myself lucky for finally getting my revaluated marksheet for first semester, a week ago. And I am in my final year now.

Digging further, I found older hall tickets….. for the endless entrance exams I had to take… the MH-CET, the AIEEE, the VIT entrance exam.. and ofcourse, the JEE. Clubbed with those, were my test scores. The JEE score was just the cherry on top of the icing. It brought back the memory of the result declaration on the website. It simply said “You have not qualified”. They might as well have put in an icon of a tongue sticking out or thumbs- down.

And the final memory surfaced in the form of the old ID card, from the coaching classes I used to attend, all those years back. Taking the JEE is one thing, attending preparatory classes however is a unique experience. Right from day one, they steer you into this world where you honestly begin to believe that there is nothing beyond or above the IITs. In most cases, it inspires one minded focus and sincere commitment to the goal.. and in some, severe bouts of self doubt and despair. And for those who prepare for ‘lesser’ examinations such as the CET, these places are a clear waste of time. My advice, if in the first two months, you fail to make a mark in the mock tests, be kind to your parents… ask for a partial refund of the astronomical fees they have charged you and run far, far away  from any place they mention IIT. Also, don’t bother taking the examination. It’s a six hour long ordeal, where you get a lot of time to doubt yourself.

As reason would demand, I have gotten rid of these articles carefully. My waste paper basket is brimming with ripped out documents and I cards. ….. I have of course preserved the internship certificate. It may be over done, but some part of me believes that it may not be entirely untrue.