Dasvidaniya*

My list of 10 things to do before passing out of IIT Madras

Somebody commented that my blog articles are like Aamir Khan's movies - they come once in a year! For different reasons though. While the perfectionist Aamir takes a year to get his story right, I take my time to find a right story!

Being in the 5-year Dual Degree program, I always used to think that I have an extra year to do all the things that I ever wanted to do before graduation. Procrastination certainly gave me something to look forward to all the time. But looking forward now, I have just 3 more months and a lot of things to do before I complete my stay at IITM. This article will hopefully serve as a reminder and motivate me to start ticking things off my to-do list slightly faster.

1. Deliver a popular talk. For me, a talk is popular if it is on a topic interesting enough to pull at least a 100 people to the venue. Ok, I'll be happy with 50 too!
   
   
2. Write, compose and sing a song myself. This will be a tribute to all those who hold a broader understanding of music - that music is a way of expressing oneself, in whatever way it comes out, and not just making some words follow some sa re ga ma tune. And ya, by the way, I am not a singer!
   
   On a related note, it is somewhat disappointing to see the kind of Bollywood lyrics that is selling these days. Even some of the better lyricists in business are making shady Aahun Aahun sounds, using Ishq Ka Manjan and selling Tinku's Jiya, Sheila Ki Jawaani and Munni Ki Badnaami. God save bollywood lyrics!
   
   
3. Resume stand-up comedy. Greatly inspired by over three seasons of The Great Indian Laughter Challenge, I had started doing stand-up comedy myself, even reaching the finals of Saarang 2007 Multilingual Laughter Challenge and winning the Best Individual Performance award at the NCC Annual Training Camp 2006-07 at IIT Madras for a stand-up comedy act. I never really had the opportunity or the enthusiasm to perform again, but I am seriously considering a comeback.
   
   
4. Write an article on How Not To Be a Bad Teacher. Having attended 187 credits of theory/lab classes at IIT Madras so far, I feel a strong urge to let the current/aspiring teachers know what are some of the things I feel they can do/avoid so as not to be dismissed as a bad teacher straightaway. Keep watching this space for the article; it's coming soon!
   
   
5. Pull off a complete conversation in Tamil. Many people know that I had picked up reading and writing Tamil pretty early in my IIT life (2nd sem), but I have always struggled with understanding it, and more so, speaking it. I have had several conversations that have lasted for multiple lines, like the following:
   
   Me (to shopkeeper): Idhu evalo?
   Shopkeeper: Pathu rupa
   Me: Aaru piece vennum. Irukka?
   Sk: Ippo illai Saar!
   Me: Seri, naan nalaikke same time varuven. Ok aa?
   Sk: Seri ok
   Me: Nanrri Saar
   
   But I have always wanted to pull off longer conversations with more complete sentences, and I hope I will be able to do that atleast a few times before I graduate.
   
   
6. Get my pics clicked at 5 of the popular "restricted-access" sites in insti. Possible options currently include the top of a Gajendra Circle elephant, the highest water tank, Tifanys roof, Diro's chair and Jhun's scooter. More/better suggestions?
   
   
7. Cheer India to a World Cup victory. Come February 19, and you'll find me more often in the common room than in my own room or department. With one of the strongest ODI teams ever, familiar subcontinental conditions and most of the squad in good form, if ever India had a chance to win the World Cup, then this is it! And I will play my part in taking India to the title.
   
   
8. Resume drawing and painting. I used to be good at drawing and painting during my school days, and had won several awards and prizes as well. But the two years of JEE preparations ruined it all. Even after joining IIT, I never found any incentive or motivation to get back to the art. But better late than never; I think I should put my pencils and brushes to action very soon!
   
   
9. Say a personal thank you to everyone who, during my stay here at IITM, has helped me, stood by me, made me feel special. I know it won't be possible to reach out to everyone personally, but I'll try to maximize my reach (Oh ya, I am solving an optimization problem currently for my Master's Thesis too!)
   
   
10. Finish my DDP in time. Last but not the least. In my quest for completing the above 9 tasks before passing out, I should not forget that I need to complete this 10th task too to actually pass out.
    

What do you want to do before bidding do svidaniya to insti?

*The title of this article is a pun on the list of ten things that I want to do before passing out of IIT Madras, and is derived from the Russian phrase do svidaniya, meaning good bye. There also exists a Hindi film of the same name.

Short Circuit: A start well made!

(with inputs from Anoosh - my friend and co-coord for Shaastra 2009)

It has been a really long break from blogging, largely due to lack of time, and perhaps, lack of an interesting subject to write about. The 7th sem has begun and is more-than-half over. Acads are going on nicely, Shaastra is just over and I finally have the time and an interesting topic to write on!

It all starts with an idea, they say. This did start with an idea. An idea to prove that academics (read: electrical engineering) can be fun when seen from the right perspective. An idea to start a unique genre of events in Shaastra - tech-unwind, one that has less of tech and more of fun! An idea that later came to be known as Short Circuit!

The motivation

An analysis of the participants' statistics of Shaastra 2008 revealed that out of the 20000-odd students who registered on the Shaastra website, more than 4000 belonged to Electrical engineering and related branches (ECE, EEE, E&I etc.). And how many competitive events did Shaastra 2008 had to offer to them? Just ONE! Something that made us (me and Anoosh) ponder for a few days.

The conception and planning

We wanted to conceive of an event that would entertain the large number of Elec masses who throng Shaastra, an event that would be a crowd-puller! After a lot of discussions and deliberations, during a casual stroll around the Cubbon Park (Bangalore) on one fine summer evening, the idea of Short Circuit struck us.

The plan was concretized. Have an open-to-all prelims with questions that evoke a "Yes, yes! I can crack it" kind of feeling upon first reading and which involve application of nothing more than common sense and basic electrical engineering fundaes. Select eight teams from the prelims, and pit them one-on-one against each other in short, crisp and exciting matches spanning 4 quarters, 2 semis and 1 grand finale!

"Elec can be fun too, mind it", we proclaimed!

The publicity

The Official Short Circuit Teaser Video became an instant hit, recording more than 200 views on Youtube in less than 3 hours of getting uploaded. The Official Short Circuit Mascot, a plug-and-socket combination representing a short circuit, became a cult figure straightaway and won several admirers, including certain profs whose interests in Shaastra 2009 till then were limited only to the laser/fireworks show and the grub stalls.

We brought out a couple of teaser questions just before Shaastra to get insti junta excited about Short Circuit. The response was amazing. The lucky winners of these teaser questions, on the day of the grand finale, walked away with assorted gift-hampers consisting of Shaastra T-shirts, Shaastra key-chains, Open Solaris CDs, NetBeans IDE CDs and copies of Electronics For You, all neatly packaged in bio-degradable paper bags brought from Gurunath.

We were overwhelmed when a lot of our insti friends accepted our request to put flyers on Short Circuit on their GTalk status messages. Our sincere thanks to all of them!

[Click on the pic to enlarge and appreciate!]

The event

The prelims, held in CRC on October 3 (Saturday), saw more than 150 teams (~450 students) turning up, including ~60 teams from outside IITM. The question-paper, prepared after 4 straight night-outs of research, became quite popular among the participants, with many of them coming to us later to convey their kudos. The feedback from the participants was amazing; none of the ratings in any of the feedback forms were below 4/5 (5 = Best).

The post-prelims, conducted on the next day in ICSR Hall 3, witnessed an all-insti clash. A fourth-year undergrad team comprising of Chinmoy, Harish and Kishore breezed through the quarters and semis before surviving a scare from an MS team (Timir, Ankesh, Kunal) in the finale to eventually emerge champions!

The post-prelims rounds would be more fondly remembered by the audience for the unique Elec-dumb-charades that had the entire hall in splits. Raghunandan, trying to enact 'convolution', rotated himself, spun an electron and went to the extent of revolving the planets and the universe, but the convolution never happened. Sathish's love for Theoretical Physics was clearly evident as he resorted to Planck's constant and photons to enact a term as simple as 'frequency'.

The circuit-makers

We would like to thank a few people - Faheem (for making the awesome Teaser Video), Arvind (for designing the immortal mascot), Pavan (for handling all our production requirements), Sagar (our QMS coord), Vignesh-SK-Akhil (the Events Cores, for providing all possible support to our idea of Short Circuit), Gainda-Subbu (the Finance Cores, for being kind to provide T-Shirts and keychains as audience prizes), Raghav (the Spons Core, for arranging copies of EFY as audience prize), Tarun-Vamsi-Kishor-Sunaina-Nitish (our vols, for their amazing enthusiasm towards organizing and conducting the event), Manekha (a photography vol, who captured the dumb-charades moments) and everyone else who helped us conduct the event successfully!

A multitude of plans to take Short Circuit forward is in the pipeline - to organize it on a much grander scale next year, to continue it as part of E2A this year, to organize an all-profs' Short Circuit during the upcoming Elec Nite.

As we take a break and look back, we feel proud of initiating this unique event; it was a start really well made!

Can you please explain?

Bangalore's weather is AWESOME! My internship is progressing nicely. Weekends have been fun as well!

Last Friday, we (the interns and the research team at Bell Labs India) did a bit of trekking, rowing and river-bathing in the Cauvery Wildlife Sanctuary. The trekking was adventurous, the destination (peak of Bheemagiri) was a delight, the banks of river Cauvery presented a serene sight! A psychology game on a tree-hammock on the Cauvery banks surprisingly revealed that Shamik sees 'beauty' in 'beasts' and Adhiraj finds 'thoughts' 'dirty'! :P

What I am more interested in describing articulately in this article are incidents that occurred during the next couple of days. Some of us had been to Puttaparthi to have a darshan of Sri Sathya Sai Baba, considered to be the spiritual guru common to all religions. Frankly speaking, I do not have much belief in the saying that he can perform miracles; what I admire about him though are his teachings, which offer so many good things to learn, his simple messages "Love all, serve all" and "Be good, do good" that have won him followers across the globe and the large number of social initiatives that he has undertaken for the betterment of mankind in general and the people of Puttaparthi in particular.

But a couple of incidents there have left me somewhat disturbed!

1. After a satisfying morning darshan and just before the evening darshan, I realized that my phone’s battery was totally discharged. Since I had not called home since quite a long time and also had a train-trip to make to Bangalore later that night, I thought it was better to charge it at the earliest. I struggled to find a plug-point (it's not very easy to find one!) and placed my phone for charging. When it had charged to 63% in about 20 minutes, I removed it, switched it off, placed it back in my bag (phones are not allowed into the darshan hall) and ran for the darshan, only to reach late and miss the initial part of the session. When I came back and switched the phone on, the charge was just 6%!! Such a thing had never happened before...and has never happened again since then!
   
   
2. Later that night, when I tried playing songs on my phone-walkman, I could hear no audio. I thought there might be a problem with the walkman. I tried setting an alarm to hear the alarm-tone; there was none. I asked one of my friends to give me a call, there was no sound of the ring-tone! I tried re-inserting the battery and resetting the phone, nothing worked! I believed my phone-speakers had somehow got screwed. Back in Bangalore, I tried connecting an earphone to see if I could hear any sound; I couldn't! The problem then definitely didn't lie in the speakers but somewhere else. A service centre was the only option to get it repaired at.
   
   Next day, Monday, I went to a nearby service centre but it was closed by the time I reached there. That night, frustrated, I again tried removing the battery to see if I could be lucky. And surprise, the sound was back! Everything worked PERFECTLY!!
   

I could come up with some sort of an explanation for the first incident. When I removed the charger, it was damn hot! I do not clearly know how a charger or the charging process functions, but perhaps some current limiter somewhere had got screwed up, thereby allowing a large current to flow through and causing the charge-level to be shown high when actually it wasn't! Or probably something similar! Or maybe something entirely different!

But I have absolutely no explanation for the second incident. This, even after having studied cell phones, their hardware and software aspects, for nearly two years!

I’ll be the last person to say that these incidents were miracles or occurred due to divine intervention or anything similar! But they certainly can't happen without an explanation! And I have still not been able to find any. Can you please explain?