Rubik's Cubicles .. (..for want of a better title)

Vacation time is the right time ...
with all the free time and the brilliant thing called 'broadband' by BSNL, the author's blogging enthu has seen a new rise of about 52 percent over the last instance. The cause of this enthu has been ascribed to the high rate of 'time inflation' which has left the author with more time to blog than ever earlier. Experts have commented that this primarily could be because of the intense cold during the evenings and the local colleges having exams during the mornings. In a recent mento-interview with Mr Dog-less Adam on this very issue, the infamous auror has been heard commenting about the ramifications of this on the readers of the blog, which our resident experts have claimed to be quite baseless because of the low reader count for this very blog. The survey done by the AC - Knucklemann (the last n added to de-terrorise the surveyees) led to some of the target audience even expressing utter disgust on having to visit this page even once. Some even said 'the damn author doesn't visit the page and update it .. truly an author-forsaken blog'. The author has been advised to get the gap between his front teeth filled when he last made a public appearance on the very popular TV show 'Who Let The Dogs Out After The Baha Men Did ??' hosted by the famous actor and tv hostess Polyflorahaloornatidinnova. It is also said that the hostess was quite hurt on the show when the author had actually sent in a letter with an additional '?' at the end of the TV Show's Title. 'Eet iz our wai of bein nonn-connvensional', she has said and added that the author has displayed poor thinking in not having posted the letter up on his blog and asking for readers comments to get an edited version. Although this again brings us back to the comment on the reader count of his blog, this goes to show that the blog is indeed deserving of a title 'author-forsaken'. Meanwhile, the rise of enthu amidst all these have been receiving mixed reactions from amongst the would be 's of every possible industry. 'It's our time to get the four lines of fame on the local newspapers...damn those reporters, we couldn't even open our mouth regarding the Nandigram issue', said one of the would-be's. This being an issue of minimalistic media attention possessing the possibility of growing in form very soon, the aforesaid items of mortality are all preparing themselves for the media sessions -- the idea of a democracy was never so strong in their being as it is now, every opinion is valuable -- might have a chance to get them their four lines of glory on the "Times and Tides of Bharat", and other national dailies. The reactions have been brought to the notice of the author, and the comments have been received. However, the channel has decided to take out a signature campaign to arrive at a consensus amongst its employees as to whether it should be made public. In the meantime, the rest of the population has been requested by apolitical personalities from all over the world to keep an eye on the blog and report all the changes that appear in it. 'These changes....' was all that we could extract from the famous professor of 'coarse arts and pseudology', who has recently shot to fame with his brilliant work 'Vettical Limit: a pseud book'. The cut in conversation was due to absolutely brilliant weather conditions (the communication line-designs being made to sustain bad weather conditions, hence the engineers forgot the perfect weather eventuality ... much like Private Baldrick did).
So much for now. Keep an eye on this place.
Thank You.

P.S: 1. Needless to say ... was about time I posted :)
2. I have nothing but sheer respect for Douglas Adams ... this article is just a attempt at writing 'something'.
3. All characters and situations mentioned herein are absolutely imaginary... born out of an idle mind sitting in front of a comp for over an hour with nothing to do.

Of Opinions and all that Jazz ...

Well, let's say that this post of mine is dedicated to one of the recent happenings in the campus that has raised quite a furore amongst a significant section of the final year students about to get placed. At the very outset, for the fear of being misconstrued, I would like to mention that the content in this post is just to make people reading this think a bit about the power of Opinions and the right way to express them. Hence I will post the ideas in a point-wise format, and let the reader form his/her conclusions.
So, yeah...the issue at hand is the 'Dow Chemicals Ban' issue.
For the less knowledgeable items of mortality, the context is as thus -- Dow chemicals is the firm that bought Union Carbide Ltd., the company whose negligence was the cause of the well known "Bhopal Gas Tragedy". Needless to say, there are a large number of ethical and legal issues involved with the company and its existence and operations. That being the case, students from some of the national institutes decided to ban Dow from recruiting from their campus this placement season. A certain section of IITM populace decided to follow suit as well.
When it comes to the motive behind this entire movement, I am sure everyone will agree that there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. It is in fact a good thing that such issues were being discussed by people with at least some seriousness.
Having said that let's come to the points that I wish to present forth regarding the movement in our campus:

1. 1. A petition was drafted without the knowledge of a significantly huge chunk of the student community, and there was a signature campaign that was doing the rounds as well. It's all very good, but the fact where it gets debatable is that out of the total number of signatures taken a significant number of them were from a certain section of the student populace who won't at all be affected in any way if Dow decides to come or pack.
2. 2. Dow was supposed to be taking in students from Civil, Mechanical and Chemical Engg. However, when the faculty of these departments were approached for opinion and assistance regarding organizing an event related to the same issue, surprisingly large number of them seemed to not have been involved in this affair at all. Note that if the said company choses or refuses to come, their department students are the ones to suffer from not getting placed.
3. 3. While the students were not quite well versed with the issue itself, their immediate concern was the fact that some of their batchmates might not get placed because of this one company not coming. They decided to bring that issue to the fore front.
4. 4. A certain student group decided to have an open house for the issue so that, considering the fact that no attempt was made to clarify the entire picture to the student community, a proper platform is provided to discuss the issue on a non biased basis. When the organising body of this group went and fixed a certain faculty to be the moderator, he accepted and at the very outset mentioned that he would be a neutral speaker throughout as a moderator even though his opinions were formed. The organizing body also made sure that this point is clarified again and again. On the day of the event the said faculty actually at some stage says that he would like to come out of his neutral stance and vouch for the anti-Dow stance.
5. 5. The moderator had also mentioned that one of the speakers coming in was a victim as well as a social activist, and being a powerful speaker in Hindi, she would be speaking about the victims' perspective. It was quite well known that her speech would sway the opinion towards one side for sure, and hence it was mutually decided between the students and the moderator that this speaker be given a slot sometime late into the session when sufficient number of speakers have spoken. That speaker was sent in First up. Normal people would say that this was indeed a small meandering from the consensus, but no comments for now.
6. 6. When asked about the fact that the petition that was supposed to represent the student opinion regarding this issue was actually in no way a proper representation because hardly a handful of people knew about it as compared to the large number who did not, the faculty in charge of the entire movement (not from mech, chem or civil mind you) actually said that it was true. He agreed that it was not a proper representation but was something done in a haste to start off a movement regarding this, because of some specific issues. Yet, the students around him who helped him in the campaign, chose to deny it, until when the petition was forwarded to the authorities.
7. 7. Media involvement was there throughout. Not quite a view of both sides of the coin however, as it was only the petitioners' team which spoke to people, and the general student opinion went unmentioned.
8. 8. Same happened with the open forum discussion where all the student speakers were asked to speak in one consolidated slot, this in effect ruining the impact that they could have had on the proceedings of the day.

So it happened, that the entire picture was known to only a handful of people in the campus. No one else knew, yet it was portrayed in the media that it was the students' opinion that was being represented. The one opportunity of having a common platform for discussing the issue openly went on to become uncharacteristically one sided and even though content was remarkably good, the impact was not. Finally, the company decides to call the PR of IITM placement cell, and says that they were no longer interested in taking IITM students. Other institute grads were eager to join their firm and that was good enough for them. Motion quite successful one might say. We did manage to keep them out of the recruitment scene, but not by ditching them, instead we allowed them to ditch us. Fair...

The power of opinion and expressing opinion in the right way is remarkable. When mobilized properly, in a democratic nation like ours and many others', public opinions make and break. But thats only when its 'Public' opinion, and not the opinion of a handful of people all directed the wrong way. And with the entire movement leaving out the student community, and relevant sections of the faculty, one might take the liberty of calling the attempt 'incomplete' at the very least. We have allowed one company to ditch us because of all this. In the present scenario when companies are finding no dearth of good students to recruit, what guarantee do we have that some other company won't follow suit as well? After all every major corporate house today has some ethical issue or the other that might be dragged out into the media (but to no avail). And if these firms decide to look into such incidents that we have presented forth, and then say "Let's pack", we have nothing much to do. So much for the campaign. Questions are -- did it quite achieve what it set out for? or did it just leave a few apprehensive minds regarding next year's placements? was it responsible enough to get in the insti's name into the movement and then proceed without considering a proper opinion base of the insti ? or was it responsible enough to bring forth comments in the media, knowing that every of those would actually be presented as the opinion of IITM and not the person(s) making them?

In the end of it all, how good a question does "Are our students so insecure about placements?" make when it comes to the bigger picture involved?

Just a food for thought for some maybe...

P.S: Once again, this is just bringing out the issue as a general open ended idea for people to think about. I would seriously be grateful if people did not take anything personally. :)

Tagged .. and Posted..

My last post was about "aimless" take-offs... and I have shown no signs of being a regular blogger as yet .. so one more time with the same resolve of being regular henceforth I open my blog .. and then I see that I have been tagged by Paapi and Spanker :)...
This is a great way for me to start off posting again .. (and hope I keep my resolve strong :) ) .. so here we go
The rules are as follows:
1. Players start with 8 random facts about themselves.
2. Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts.
3. Players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been tagged.

So then let the facts present themselves as ....

1. I have a theory that "If There Is Heaven It Must Be Made Of Chocolate" (preferably of the 'dark' variety at places). There has to be chocolate castles, with regenerative doors and windows so that if you chip off a lump of chocolate from them and gulp it, the damage is recovered (something like the Gingerbread castle in Hansel and Gretel). Needless to say... the chocolate fairies with 'candy' wands will be something more than a treat to the eye.
P.S: It follows that it would be a huuge understatement to say that I love chocolates... anywhere, anytime.

2. The greatest social faux pas that I can rememer to have committed is to have mentioned "Mohd. Azharuddin" under "Your Latest Crush" column in a girl's slam book in school (...this was way back in time, when I obviously did not know what 'crush' meant, and was filling up a girl's slambook for the first time...)
Needless to say the girl read that, asked me if I had really written that, in reply to which I gave a very confident "Yes", and then the "damn he's a weirdo" look on her face followed by a burst of giggles. As for me, my more knowledgeable friends made sure that I realize what a blunder I had committed, and the giggles made sure I feel wretched to have done something that foolish.

3. I had nothing for music at all when I was a kid. I did not love music as such, and in fact the first time we bought a tape recorder, it was because the kid next door also had one, and he made sure that the volume knob was turned to the maximum whenever he played anything . It was only when I was down with chicken pox at the end of my 3rd standard that I started taking a keen interest in music. I was basically confined to my bed, and all I could do was to listen to music, and watch TV. It was then that my mom also thought of teaching me some beginner's stuff. This kept going on thereafter...

4. I am very enthusiastic about movies, be it good movies, or reasonably good movies or even timepass level movies. I dunno if that alone can explain the fact that I have watched a particular movie about 20 times, and would not mind watching it again. The movie is named "Anand" starring Rajesh Khanna, and Amitabh Bachchan, directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee. I remember my parents telling me that when I was a kid i once cried even as I watched the ending of the movie. The movie in itself is a gem, and if anyone reading this has not yet seen it I would suggest you go watch it. Its a very toucing story, and brilliant performances by the actors. However, I still dunno if that explains why I can keep on watching it again and again.

5. I am definitely someone who has been born with the bad luck of never being able to encash a gift voucher/coupon. May sound weird, but its true. Whatever gift vouche s/coupons I have received till date have all been wasted, never have I been able to use/encash them. The causes have been different, but the outcome has always been me throwing them away or even giving them away in some cases!! All the vouchers that I got from the school fests/inter school competitions/in college etc have had the same fate, and everytime I hope that the next time at least I will be able to make use of one of them... alas !!
(P.S: The fact that I m mentioning this is (obly) because I just discovered that yet another gift coupon has suffered the same fate)

6. My kindergarten days in school has been an absolute nightmare.. not only for me but also for my school security guards, the bathroom cleaners, and the class teachers. Basically, I was not quite fond of the idea of going to school, what with the first time outside home, without my parents around and all that. And the biological manifestation to all this resentment was in a very odd manner which my bowels would be able to explain better. So it happened that every day I had to go to school with a set of spare pants, the moment my first set had been 'dechastised', I was rushed to the toilets by my teacher, then the cleaners took over, and finally with the spare set on, the security guards took me back home. This had quite become the daily schedule, till I was in the middle of my first standard, and then things changed....

7. Among the many Bong traits that I have inherited, the most notable one of them is the "Food connection". I absolutely love checking out different varieties of culinary preparations, love eating my heart out when I feel good (and people who have been around me might testify this)... but most of all ... I take great pleasure in describing how good a preparation was in great detail to someone who hasn't already checked it out. I feel like being the guide who takes people around in an exhibition of food items from different parts of the country (even world if possible) and detailing them about every item there and watch their eyes light up or their mouth water at the sight of some such dish (which I have already tasted). May be weird, but such is the "Food Guy" within me.

8. I have suffered 6 injuries all around my eyes, a couple of them have lend me permanent cut marks, but all of them have been after I started wearing spetacles and never were the specs affected at all. I guess that is some kind of record that I can claim to have achieved. My friends who have been there when I got some of those injuries wonder even today as to how they saw it all happen in front of their eyes...the injury or the smash against my face, and yet specs saved.
(P.S: for all those who are thinking why this is so please let me tell you that even then I had high power spectacles and without them I was practically a goner)
(P.S: also .. I damaged my specs a bit very recently .. so the whole issuewas fresh in my mind)

Lets see... now for tagging ... damn most of the people I wanted to tag have already been tagged ... guess I am very late into this ... anyways... I tag debanjan, louda, sayan, munnu, kawde, reeshav, dharik, galib.