A-B-C

When the focus of discussions in my wing shifts markedly from life, cricket, campus and girls to courses, classes, assignments and tutorials, an awkward feeling of deja vu sets in. A feeling that reminds of long nights and hard fights. A feeling that reminds of exams.

But they are commonplace in the department that I am in, aren't they? In the last semester, we faced atleast one of them in every week of the semester except two (out of which, one was the Shaastra week and the other Diwali). Yes! I'm talking of 'exams'. Other branches are yet to see them in this semester...and we have already come across a few! While most others tend to be afraid of them, we have become bored of them.

Last semester
An otherwise good performance in the previous semester was spoiled by an isolated occurence. I secured a 'B' grade, my first-ever since joining this department; in a course titled "Analog Circuits". Some of my mates hailed the achievement and congratulated me, saying, "Sabash, Misraji! Ab aap line pe aa gaye ho!" (Well done, Misraji! Now you have come on track.) Some others, expectedly, tried pepping me up saying I shouldn't feel disppointed over a B-grade, which is, afterall, the most abundant grade in the institute (True! I hadn't realized it till then). But, it was not for the B-grade that I was disappointed (to whatever minuscule extent I was), rather it was for the reason that the incident occurred largely due to mistakes that could easily have been avoided, for the fact that the result was not a true indication of the effort that I had put in for the course.

With assignments and quizzes thrusted upon us every fortnight throughout the entire semester, the journey through this course was another first of its kind. A B-grade doesn't necessarily mean that the victim wasn't able to figure out well what was happening in the course. Infact, in my case, I used to understand all the concepts reasonably well; I used to even solve the assignment problems correctly and in reasonably quick time. Even during those fortnight-quizzes, the first thoughts coming to mind after reading the question paper used to be, "Come on, Rakesh! It's pretty simple. Go for a centum!" But then, somewhere, I would miss a negative sign or use the gate voltage instead of the gate-source voltage or commit some other silly blunder and get the whole damn question wrong! Never before had I felt so helpless over my performance. For not guarding against those cockamamie mistakes in quizzes, for not being patient enough to re-check my solutions, perhaps, I deserved a 'B'! Lesson learnt.

This semester
Things are looking brighter this semester. I seem to have found my feet in all the courses; except, to some extent, in VLSI design. I'm sure many of my classmates too in this course haven't got into the groove as well as they would have liked to. Prof. Vinitha, who greets us with a bunch of MOSFETs on the board every class, gives us 'homework' every other day. And everytime, we go to the subsequent class with blank looks and blanker note-books (as if acknowledging the fact that 'homework' is meant for home and not hostel). Since recently, she has been drawing, on an average, fifty (!) MOSFETs on the board per class (Yes! I'm not exaggerating).

In Analog and Digital Filters, after a brief and brisk opening spell by Prof. Prabhu, whose dictation and numbering of mathematical equations were more entertaining than the equations themselves, Prof. C.S. (Clock Sharp?) Ramalingam has been handed over the "torch" (did he mean "we, the bulbs"?). Possibly run by some atomic clock, he is reputed for ending his classes as exactly on time as beginning them. With his authoritative voice and frequent jokes (which are so subtle that they make someone or the other in the class quip, "Was that a joke?"), he has definitely spiced up this course.

EM Fields and Power Systems Practice are going along fine. Prof. HSR (EM Fields), by conducting 'mini-quizzes' almost every week, has maintained the reputation of our department, that "IIT Madras's Electrical Engineering is the toughest engineering branch in the country to be in" (which, though, is very very untrue, as I had mentioned in my previous article). Prof. Kalyan Kumar (Power Systems Practice) bears a distracting resemblance to SPB that makes me go musical whenever things get boring in his class.

Analog Communication and International Trade & Finance, so far, have been recollections and revisits of already-known stuff.

Looking ahead...
Inspite of all other activities and responsibilities on campus, I've been trying my best to make sure that my performance doesn't 'B'tray my efforts, like in the previous semester. With the first round of quizzes coming up next week, it's time to put words into action. Good luck to all my classmates! Good luck to myself!

By the way, in case you're still wondering how the title is related to this article, A-B-C stands for Analog-'B'-Circuits!

Classmates

An IITM alumnus had once remarked, "If you have successfully got out of IITM's Electrical Engineering, you can successfully accomplish everything else in your career...because you have been able to overcome the worst that could have ever happened to you in life!"

Almost three years into Electrical Engineering at IIT Madras, I still continue to wonder if that senior soul was any true! If his 'worst' meant the most useless, then I feel sorry for him; perhaps, he shouldn't have opted for this course. Obviously, this course will be useful only to those who know what to do with it in future and who are passionately interested in going ahead with it. If his 'worst' meant the most difficult, then I feel sorry for him again; perhaps, he wasn't fortunate to have supportive faculty or friends who could help him out in his academics. All engineering courses are equally difficult (some more equal than others, I agree!); but if you have enthusiastic and always-willing-to-help professors and classmates, you find the going much easier. Oh wow! What a wonderful opportunity to introduce my classmates to you!

So then, I present before you, for the first time ever, my classmates at IIT Madras, in one of our classes. This snap, taken on a recent Monday morning by my friend, Avinash Nagarajan, shows a typical Elec class. Our class of 97 students has been divided into two groups for certain courses; this picture is of one of those groups.

There I am, on a first-bench (as usual), with my typical 'cheese'-smile. Let me clarify that there's nothing shady going on there, as had been suspected by a few who had seen this pic before;). It's just that the picture was clicked when I was in the process of taking out a note-book from my bag. Talking of first-benches, when I was in school, we used to literally fight for it. Our irked class-teacher had once retorted, "I'll talk to the Principal and get a classroom with 50 first-bench seats built for you all. Till then, some of you have to go and sit behind." But here at IITM, no one seems to care for the first-bench. In school, the seats used to get occupied starting from the front; here it happens from behind. Sometimes, not just the first, but even the second and third rows would be left empty; that's when I would need to decide whether to go and sit all-alone in the first row or join the rest of the class behind (and in the past, I have decided for and against both these options at different times).

To my right is Harish. A good friend and, more importantly, an extremely nice person, he is very immaculate at heart, a trait that I always try to emulate. Given his tremendous strength in academics, it's no surprise that he is the one-stop-shop for all of us for any course-related queries or doubts. In the picture, he is sporting a bright new Galla t-shirt that I had gifted him the previous day. This is the t-shirt that I had won in a 3-ball juggling contest at the Galla Informals stall during Saarang 2009. Harish had taught me the basics of juggling at the beginning of this semester and had inspired me to strengthen my juggling skills; this prize belonged fair-and-square to him. Perfect Gurudakshina, isn't it?



To Harish's right is Chinmoy, our BP 1 (the term BP, in our institute, stands for Branch Position), with a bewildering, wide-mouthed smile (Refer the complete picture above. By the way, is that a smile?). Sources say that he spends very little time in "mugging" and that his BP1-secret lies in understanding everything in the class itself. We believe them. Hidden to his right is Kishore, the "God of PJs" of our department. He derives delightful pleasure in paining people with his untimely PJs. Not long ago, for a 'tran'sient period, he had made all of us lose our 'tran'quility by 'tran'scending all limits of PJ-telling.

Behind Kishore and Chinmoy respectively are seated Vinod and Arjun, my closest companions in academics (and in lots of other things as well!). We follow a DAC (Divide and Conquer) strategy of our own for courses that involve a high dosage of memorization (no better example than last semester's EC305: Communication Systems) in which we divide the portion among ourselves and each one takes the responsibility for reading and understanding his respective portion and explaining it to the other two.

The two charming smiles behind Vinod and Arjun belong respectively to Mohit and Mukunda. Mukunda, who can understand and speak but not read or write Tamil, is a perfect complement to me; I can read and write but can't understand or speak the language.




Behind me, in the second row, are Manjunath Kashyap (in yellow t-shirt) and Manikanta Avinash, two very well-behaved and soft-spoken guys of our class. Behind them, in green tees, is Siddharth, another soft-spoken guy whose behaviour is adorably gentle and sense of dressing (usually, tees over jeans) is stylishly cool. Way behind Siddharth, in white tees, is Mukund Kaimal, also hiding his mouth as Siddharth, for some unknown reasons.


Among the girls, the stand-out expression, a smile for the camera, is on the face of Bala (in green tops, 3rd row). Equally outstanding is the expression of pleasant fright on Divya's face (in white, 2nd row). Her friends say she possesses a much wider and weirder range of facial expressions. To her right, in a pensive posture, is Surbhi. A friendly and dynamic girl, she has been my partner in a department-project since over a year.

Many of my other classmates in my group of the class are missing in this picture - Amrit and Midhun (currently in Singapore on a student-exchange programme), Avinash (who photographed the picture), Pokala Rakesh, Anoosh, Sundar, Ashish, Praneeth, Deepan, Sujay, Satyajit, Saurabh, Batti, Anirudh (who has become an epitome of late-coming to class :)), Harish Reddy. It's a pity that we don't have a group pic of ourselves, even after being together for almost three years. How about a group photo session this semester? (I'll pass on this message to our Branch Counsellor.)

All of us are having a wonderful time together. We always help eachother during times of assignments, tutorials, quizzes and end-semesters. The higher BP students generally try to be as approachable as possible and do not mind spending time in putting fundaes on courses to others. More often than not, we have kept the spirit of RG, so very prevalent in the rest of the institute, out of us as far as possible. We have been and shall continue to be true friends of each other.

And ya, if his 'worst' meant anything else, I can do no more than just feel sorry for him again; he, probably, couldn't experience the real fun of Electrical Engineering at IIT Madras!

Ooty! Oo La La...

TRAVEL MEMOIRS Part 3 of 5

Date of travel: 23-12-2008 (Tuesday)

(After Part 1: Journey Bhubaneswar to Bangalore to Mysore and Part 2: Mystique Mysore, this is Part 3 of this series of 5 memoirs.)

The tour had only begun. After a thrilling Mysore experience the previous day, it was time to get high and go high...onto the highlands of Ooty, the queen of hill stations. Wow!

We set off from Mysore at around 6:30 am.

'Bandh?'ipur National Park
On the Mysore-Ooty highway was located Bandipur National Park, famous for Project Tiger; it's one of the 30-odd Project Tiger Reserves in India.



We went on a tour of the reserve in a Departmental Bus Safari. During the ride, I was very amazed to see my co-passengers getting frenzied at the sight of an occasional deer here and there, counting them on their fingers. I quipped, "Mates! If you desire to do this sort of counting at IIT Madras, make sure that you bring lots of spare fingers with you!". But those deer, surviving in a perfectly natural habitat, looked much healthier than their IIT Madras's counterparts.

Except for a few deer and monkeys (which, I bet, can be found in much greater abundance in the campus of IIT Madras), we couldn't spot anything dramatic. The only consolation was a distant maned head of a crouching lion which was so still and far that it could actually have been a statue or a living creature with equal probabilities! Barring these, it was just vast stretches of trees all throughout the Safari. I could only feel for the state of Project Tiger in India.

In the end, all we passengers shared the common realization that the Bus Safari had only made each of us poorer by Rs.95! It, certainly, had "taken us all on a ride"!

We resumed our journey to Ooty in our Chevrolet Tavera. Our driver, Mr. Nayaz Khan, kept us occupied with stories of his previous experience on that particular road through the forest, including an instance when a couple of elephants blocked the road and refused to budge from their positions, thus making him wait for about half-an-hour to get clearance. I told him that I see couples of elephants every now and then at IIT Madras (at the Gajendra Circle, of course!) What a PJ that was! :)

Bend it like hair-pins
As we moved onto the ghats of the enchanting Nilgiris, travel became more adventurous. Thirty-six hair-pin bends now separated us from Ooty. These bends, dangerously sloping up,
apparently over 45 degrees, posed a challenge to any driver. And if you did not note my previous statement, there were 36 of them! Nayaz Saheb narrated a recent incident of an Indica, traveling down the slope on 5th gear, that skidded off a bend and fell down the ghats. Our Tavera crawled up and around the bends on 2nd gear.

(Unfortunately, I do not have any image of those hair-pin bends. I have obtained the picture on the right from Flickr to show how a hair-pin bend looks like.)




Welcome to Ooty!
We reached Ooty at the stroke of noon. There was a touch of chill in the weather. We headed straight to the pre-booked ACC Guest House on Sheddon Road.

A team of three care-takers welcomed us upon our arrival. at that beautiful guest-house It was a pleasant surprise to discover that all three of them were Oriyas! And the lunch, comprising of the evergreen Oriya combo of bhaata-daali-bhaja-tarkari, made the place feel like home. We rested for an hour in our rooms. Gautam Gambhir and Yuvraj Singh were blasting the English bowlers away on the final day of the 2nd India-England Test Match at Mohali as India was pushing for an improbable victory. Both of them, though, were dismissed agonizingly short of their centuries. The match ended in a draw.

We set-off for sight-seeing at around 14:00 hours.

Ooty Boating House
We opted for two 4-seater pedal boats and went boating into the gleaming Ooty Lake. After some initial confusion regarding the steering mechanism of the boat, we pedaled hard and sailed smoothly through the shining water. It was real fun!

Aanoo, Linu and me then decided to play Striking Cars (a fun-game in which players drive mini electric cars in an arena for a given period of time. Theoretically one should try to avoid making contact with other cars but practically, there couldn't be any more fun than hitting someone's car from behind! :)).

I and Linu sat together in a car while Aanoo decided to drive another himself alone. To make things look funny, I intentionally banged Aanoo's car from behind and quickly fled away from the scene before he could retaliate :D. A few seconds later, three other cars jammed into him from all directions and he was caught up in a traffic mess. In the end, he realized that driving a car at his age is not a cup of tea!

The pristine Botanical Garden
A true photographers' paradise! You stand anywhere and take a snap, you can be assured that there's a verdant natural background adding beauty to your photo. I needn't write any more about this place; enjoy its beauty (and mine too :) ) in the images below.





Dodabetta peak
Another wonderful location, it's the highest peak of the Nilgiris. It has a Telescope House from where one could enjoy a panoramic view of the whole district of Nilgiris. One could also view the Chamundi Hills (remember my last post, Mystique Mysore?) from this peak.





Home-made Tea Factory
After having seen innumerable banners proclaiming "Home-made chocolates available here" and "Home-made tea available here", we realized only upon reaching this tea-factory that "Home-made" is in fact a brand name and its products are certainly not "made at home". An official took us around the factory, showing and explaining to us the various steps involved in the process of tea-manufacture, right from bringing in the leaves up to the packaging of the final product. It was a good learning experience.

It was already 19:00 hours and the cold was becoming terrible. There were still a couple of places we could have gone to but we decided to return back to our rooms. It had been a satisfying day, nevertheless.

The chilly weather got still worse as night crept in. In spite of the presence of a room-heater, I had to seek the help of two bed-sheets and two blankets for keeping myself warm. Another unique experience! Deep inside these 4-layers of defence, as pleasant images of the day flashed across my mind, my lips smiled and heart just kept singing, "Ooty! Oo La La Ole Yo...".

Next day, we would return to Bangalore. Stay tuned for Part 4 of this series of memoirs. Before concluding, here are some memorable snaps upon the breath-taking Nilgiris en route to Ooty.