Walk Alone

Went to the IIT campus today. The third time in my life. Yes, I’m one of those people who worship temples of technology. To visit our guide, we have to walk past their Machines lab. Each time I see it (well, I’ve seen it just twice by now), I mentally shake my head and say, “Wonder how Mumbai University allowed SPCE to run a course in Electrical Engineering”. Guess it has something to do with the Rs. 1.5 lakh backlog that students have to pay, according to a recommendation by some arbitration committee for fixing the fees. Thats in murky waters that I’m not venturing into.

Each of the times that I’ve been to IIT, I went by a different route.

• 396 - Andheri, Sakinaka, Powai
• 460 - Malad, Aarey, Powai
• 496 - Andheri, Jogeshwari-Vikhroli Lin Road, Marol, Powai
• 398 - Powai, Sakinaka, Marol, Aarey, Kandivali

Seen a lot of corporate offices and factories (factories? inside a megalopolis like Mumbai?). Different arms of L&T, SEEPZ (not exactly a company), Reliance Energy Management Institute and a host of other companies. For all intents and purposes, I became a tourist in a city I lived in since birth.

The same is repeated inside the IIT campus. Here, it is sort of deserved though. We wander around wide-eyed till its time to meet the guide.

All this commuting is getting me down, no thanks becuase of our roads. Why can’t we tele-conference? Its IIT, for Budhha’s sake!

****

Our BE project is finally crystallizing. Though I haven’t grasped enough of it as is necessary, we are going to develop a library of numerical techniques to analyse the stability of power systems, sort of stuff to analyse the major blackout that occured yesterday.

The professor was using Red Hat with Opera. Cool. Also saw a Mandrake Linux install. The lab was networked; with a networked printer. They had an entire lab for CAPS! We use the common lab. Of course, the scale of operations is different, so I’m not really complaining. But our computer networks could learn a lot from the IIT systems.

****

GMail is quite finicky about attachments. It rejected a zip file containing GIF images, flashing a warning about an execuatable in the zip file! Easily accepted the plain GIF files. The recipients would be mighty inconvenienced. I’ve yet to figure out GMail’s attachments filtering rule. So if you send me a mail with some attachments and it bounces, remail it to rvbhute[at]yahoo[dot]co[dot]in.

guy : Are, shot nako lavus. Dani panchvees madhun tees anayche prayatna kartoy.
Dani : Bus! Ikade chalis anayche vaande hot aahet.

****

Well, the department un-decimated our ranks. Cleared 8-10 people who shouldn’t have been held up in the first place. I got spooked by my friends. They are telling me (and honestly, I’m believing them) I could’ve cleared my paper with grace marks. But hey, seen against the drop I was expecting, this is a Godsend. Another thing is, I’ve come to know through reliable sources that the faculty has been asked to get their skills enhanced. Period. Read that as “Learn the software installed on our machines before the kids kick you out”. Matlab and Tina. And Matlab first and foremost. That has translated into pressure on Thite - who is the “catch-him-for everything” guy for the faculty - for helping the people out. Putting the wagon before the horse? Maybe. Maybe not, in this case.

****

There is a park near my place. It has many paths meandering through wooded areas. Quite peaceful. I visit it since December last year. I would stroll along on any arbitrary path I chose for the day. It was quite enjoyable. Lately, I’ve been forced to avoid some paths. I would have loved to walk on them. But the woods through which they pass are infested with rabid dogs now. They don’t miss any person who walks along the path, even if the person ignores them. Or tries to. For they are upon him in an instant. Snapping. Snarling. Biting. Breaking skin. Drawing blood…

Its a pity. I would have enjoyed the walk.

The “toppers” went for a “heart-to-heart talk” with the HoD. The HoD is unrepentant. Its we who are to blame for the debacle. Another fact which became widely known was the presence of an information network gathering all the news that could be used to effectively shut up the students in a debate/discussion/argument.

****

We (my team, that is) have finally got ourselves a project. For now, its “Visualization of Equal Area using Java applet”. And you guessed it right. I started Perl because of Blosxom, abandoned it. Started Python for my OOAD course, abandoned it. Started PHP because of the wiki business, abandoned it. Started MySQL becuase of MediaWiki, abandoned it. C/C++ is the only language I’m continuing with. And that too, well, in a way that is far from satisfactory. It took me three days (thank God for holidays) to convert two structs and their associated functions to their corresponding classes…

So now, its Java. And of course, C++ is de rigueur.

****

I felt picked upon by the whole world. So calmly skipped college for two days. Or was going to. I remebered I had to fill up and submit the fourth year entrance form on the second day. A mad scramble for the demand drafts and a headlong rush to the college was how the two day break ended in. But well, the time I spent at home was relaxing. Cleaned up long overdue stuff and carried out other such mundane chores.

And now, its back to the daily treadmill.

The results for the notorious Electrical department’s TE batch are out. The gods have declared a ceasefire on me. I got only one KT. But the result reads like a casualty list straight out of the guerilla warfields of Iraq. THIRTY failed in orals. FORTYFIVE failed overall. SEVENTEEN asked to sit out the year. The honours guy gets his record scuttled by a freak KT, because the powers that be refused to jack up his marks to the safety level. The debate lover came second, one point behind the topper. Others in group scurried away with low marks (according to them). My dumbed down friend is angry over his second class result. Varun and Bhise, too have been sobered up. My knowledgeable friend, I guess, has come out on top.

The result has stirred an emotion in me which reminded me of a picture I saw in the 1991 Year Book of the World Book Encyclopedia. It was taken at a neo-Nazi rally. The skinheads were gesturing, not rudely, rather it was a martial salute. And its was clear - the slogans were not being shouted. The skinheads were not chanting or screaming either. They were roaring their defiance of the authorities. Their message was clear. “We dare you to stop us because we are the results of the mistakes that you made”.

Damn. The results are bullshit. And thats the most polite thing I can say.

The HOD (Head Of Department) of Electrical Engg. gave my CR (Class Representaive) [what am I doing - listing acronyms?] a dressing down over books that were missing from the departmental library. The poor guy has been asked to either recover the books or their cost from the defaulters.

As a matter of principle, I don’t condone filching books from a library. Or defaulting on due dates either. But then my CR did not deserve the dressing down either. I argue as follows.

1. There were no due dates. There should have been. And they should have been enforced.
2. A much talked about ID card system was used. It had a friends’s contact number along with your details. Supposedly to catch you through your friend, or increase the mea culpa emotion in the defaulter’s mind. So the department had the information to act upon if due dates had lapsed. However, refer to point 1 above.
3. The library register holds a record of the students to whom the books were issued. Also, a cupboard holds the ID cards of those students. Why were there no follow ups during the vacation, or during the exams? The students could have been asked to “Report to the concerned authority” after giving in his paper. Such notices always result in immediate action.
4. What about the CRs of the other classes? TE? SE?

I rest my case.