Celebration of a Lifetime

I might be quite late in jotting down my feelings about the triumph of the Indian team at the Twenty20 World Cup, arguably the biggest cricketing achievement of the nation in my lifespan so far. But as it turns out, today marks the 75th day of that indelible moment and might just be the right time to brush up those memories again.

Twenty20 cricket, though popular by that time in England and New Zealand, had never taken our imaginations to a high. India had played just one T20 match before the World Cup. Adding to that the absence of the three batting greats - Sachin, Rahul and Sourav, we always had qualms regarding this form of cricket. But as it always is, any form of cricket where the Men in Blue were competing was enough to take me to the TV Room, although the tournament painstakingly coincided with our mid-sem exams. (Our TV had broken down, and the new TV was just arranged in time a day before the World Cup started).

India kept on winning matches, except the odd loss to New Zealand in the first match of the Super Eight stage. Wins against South Africa and against Australia in the semifinals were always special considering the strength of these teams. The big day, the Finals coincided with the day my exams ended; I was just in time to watch the National Anthems starting when I returned after finishing my paper!

Some of the best moments (obviously not counting the winning moment, the lapsed "scoop" from Misbah-Ul-Haq) to me are best ascribed to in this video.

myth

कुछ लोग ये समझते हैं,
कि वो दुनिया से आगे हैं,
कि वो सबसे समझदार हैं,
कि वो जो करते हैं, उसके आगे किसी कि नहीं चल सकती....

पर अफ़सोस....
हमेशा,
उनसे आगे कोई न कोई निकल ही आता है,
जो उनसे भी तेज़ होता है..

A Lone Battle...

Today I stand alone..
With some shattered dreams, broken promises and lost faiths.
I move as if I am fighting ten battles at a time, all alone....
And with victory in sight in none of them.
Days have come and gone,
Earlier they used to bring with them some dreams..
Appeared to be Hopes at times,
But now there are none,
All what is there is to choose between....
Some self-seeking individuals,
A hazy path ahead, and
A solitary pursuit of scattered images.

What makes a Gentleman

Let's take a not very uncommon situation. You are walking down a street and you find two people fighting over something. Getting curious you come closer and start listening to their conversation. You figure out that one of them is an agent of some insurance company and the other is his client. The agent is trying to take advantage of the client over some issue about which the latter doesn't seem to have proper knowledge. Now you are in a similar profession and you comprehend how the agent is trying to deceive the client. To make it more clear and simple, let me put it this way : You can explain the whole scenario to the client in less than five minutes and this will save him from being deluded. What do you do?

Well, I feel most of us would do the following in such a situation. We would first get tempted to speak a few words. But then suddenly something from within stops us. We come to realize that what good it would serve by getting into others' matter? I was happily walking down the street when I saw this fight. Though I was curious to know what was going on, having found it out and having had my share of "entertainment" its time for me to walk on. Let the poor client be duped by the agent. How does it make a difference to me?. I know I won't be duped in a similar manner. So what's the point in getting into an argument?

By this try to present an idealist picture of ourselves. We say that, I am a person who never indulges in any kind of trouble, I lead a simple life, I am happy with whatever I am and so on. But do we ever think that being an idealist or to be more precise being "simple" in a way amounts to being selfish? Yes, this might be an exaggeration but the above situation might put this in a better perspective.

Of course we need to be protective about ourselves but that doesn't mean we should hide our selfishness with talks of idealism. If you tend to move away or turn a deaf ear towards the problems around you and in your society, you are simply a coward. You can't justify your actions (non-actions actually) by saying that you are a gentleman who doesn't like to get into a chaos. If that does define being a gentleman, then this world would be better off without such gentlemen. Our society is hardly going to gain anything from them.

The Grand Old HALL Has its DAY

IIT Kharagpur never falls short of celebrations. Just the seasons vary but with every new season comes a new form of celebration. But by any standards, March is the most hustling month in the Kgp calendar. The GCs are in their deciding phase and apart from this there is one big contention among the halls that takes centrestage during this month - the Gymkhana Elections. And along with the elections this is also the month when most of the halls have their pleasant and colorful evening, loosely termed as the "Hall Days". (Every hall has its own special version though).tut

Mentioning the Gymkhana Elections and the Hall Days together is not a mere coincidence. Actually apart from the celebrations, a larger-scale motive of organizing the Hall Day is to entice the first years, who till now hardly know anything about the senior halls, albeit their votes count handy in the election. So much so that the full attention in the invitations is paid only towards the first years. Pity those kids. Those very seniors alluring them during the Hall Day Season would present their real guise only in the next semester when they go to their halls!

Following the Kgp tradition, Patel Hall also decided to have its Hall Day this year. (Of course we too had the above-mentioned motives). We didn't have a Hall Day, which has been traditionally called Patel Utsav in my 2nd year. So this year we were all the more determined to present an exquisite celebration. The date was decided to be on 12 March and it was me and my wingies who primarily took over this responsibility.

The budget being limited, we had to bank on sponsorships. Despite our efforts, we didn't have much luck in this regard. However, going to the 15 km far Tamrolipto Park Restaurant did bear some results as they agreed to put up their stalls. They had their weird clauses nevertheless. The publicity was another major task. We organised two different "funda-sessions" for the first years. We also had posters in different parts of the MMM hall and other halls. Apart from this also came up with the invitations cards (these were mainly meant for the profs, who never cared to turn up anyway) and pamphlets (in Hindi and Telugu as well apart from English!).

As for the arena, we came up an idea of replicating a Taj Mahal like scnario. This was achieved by erecting a huge painting of the Taj and a water pool in front of it. To care of the dance we hired a DJ who came all the way from Kolkata. Although he made a mess of our Dandiya theme by playing not so conforming songs, the crowd was still on its feet. There also were some computer games to chill off. The attendance was good. This can be judged from the fact that there was a long queue in front of the TP stall all the time. All in all a nice evening and thoroughly enjoyed.

The Old and the New

The IIT system has seen a glorious epoch of over 50 years. An it won't be an overstatement to assert that these years have been glorious only because of the achievements, eminence and repute of the alumni of the IITs. I don't have to go on counting the names of such renowned and dignified figures. (Sandipan Deb has done it accurately in his book The IITians). The contribution of the alumni in reshaping the world, as Deb calls it has been the major contributing factor towards the creation of the Brand IIT.

Now that the alumni have bolstered this brand, shouldn't they expect some payback from the institutes. Some might argue that isn't the IIT the very institute which made them what they are. Yes agreed. Their names might not have been world famous had they not come to the IIT. But still, IITs have a long way to go in terms of a proper Alumni Management system. The occasional get-togthers and the PAN-IIT meets are more of an effort from the alumni themselves rather than from the IITs.

So it was a commendable effort on the part of IIT Kharagpur to start a "Global Alumni Meet" four years ago. This year we had the 4th edition of this meet on the 6th and 7th of January. It was a good experience for me being involved in the organisation of this meet. The best part though were the meals served during the meet. Beyond doubt those two days were my best "eating days" at Kgp. The meet was attended by over 200 alumni of different years. The participation was considerably higher from the batches of 1957 and 1982 who were having their silver and golden jubilees respectively this year. (They didn't have to pay the token amount of Rs. 1000 as the participation fee).

The meet consisted of addresses, cultural programmes, visit around the campus and to the respective halls of the alumni and a newly-introduced interactive session with the students. In Patel Hall we had the traditional bonfire after the dinner where our alumni (most of whom were quite old now) recollected their wonderful days of stay in the hall.

An Outing with the Wing

It all started in our one of those mid-wing conferences on a sunny morning just before the endsem exams. Out of no where, came up the idea of celebrating the end of the semester in a rather different way, by going somewhere out of this colorless place and our monotonous life. A lot of names came up but finally we decided upon the sea-beach city of Puri along with its nearby tourist spots.

Once the planning was done and the awful endsem days were over, we set out on our journey in the night of the 28th of November. There are a lot of trains to reach Puri from Kgp but we had booked our ticket in Purushottam Express considering that it was the earliest and we would reach Puri in the early hours of the morning. But at times your luck doesn't seem to care for your scheme of actions. We saw all the trains coming and going right in front of us and finally when our train came well past midnight, we had spent more than two hours on the Kharagpur station. At least we got to explore the length and breadth of the longest platform of the world. And at last we were hardly left with any energy to keep awake for even five minutes once we got inside the train.

The train got delayed further in the way and we reached Puri at 9:30 in the morning, 4 hours behind schedule. In the meantime, we had been contacted by various agents from hotels in Puri in the train itself. We selected one of them who took us right up to his hotel. The rooms were good and the location was favorable, that is quite near to the sea beach. The hotel tariffs in Puri in general are much lower than I have seen in many other cities.

Traveling in a group has many advantages but there are some obvious shortcomings. And the major one is the difference of opinion among the members. That's exactly what happened first while selecting the hotel and then on a larger scale when we started to plan out our day's schedule. While most of us felt that we should go to the beach first and the temple later, others had certain reservations about visiting the beach in the sun.However a consensus was reached and we set out for the beach which was hardly 5 minutes of walk from the hotel.

The sea beach of Puri is known for its huge waves. The imposing intensity and energy of the waves there is a simple treat to watch. But more than just the watching, it's getting into the water and being whirled around by the waves is what gives you the real excitement.We stayed inside the sea for around two hours, all the while jumping on the huge waves and letting ourselves being carried away by them. On many occasions I was all surrounded by water for quite sometime and was being rotated round and round by the current.The funniest part was Mandal losing his goggles inside the sea and its subsequent finding out by a lifeguard who demanded a cool 50 rupees for his courageous act.

On returning to the hotel we had a long bathing session and then had the lunch in the hotel itself. That was followed by a short sleep to get rid of the tireness of the morning.In the evening we went to the famous Jagannath temple. Shreyas was too tired and decided to stay back at the hotel itself. And it was then only when we came to know that Rupesh won't be there with us for the next day because of his Inter-IIT practice and he had to return in the night. After coming back from the temple we went to the beach once again, this time not to be routed by water but just to enjoy a walk besides the sea on a cool evening beneath the moonlight. And we also found time to buy some good sea artifacts and sculptures at a very low price. The kind of bargaining that takes place in those small beachside shops is quite absurd. Rupesh bought three conches for Rs 90 when each of them was priced at Rs 180! And I bought five key-rings containing sea-shells for Rs 5 which were priced at Rs 10 each initially. While me,Bollam,Sarkar and Mandal stayed at the beach for a while, Marathe,Vamshi,Saiki and Bharti went to arrange for a taxi for our next day's journey to Konark and Bhubaneswar.On the beach itself we said goodbye to Rupesh and then had our dinner. The prawn fry at a beach stall was really savory.We then went back to hotel, really tired after a hectic day. After some dull moments on television where we watched a James Bond movie andIndia losing to South Africa yet again, we went to sleep.

Our taxi was at 7 in the morning. So we had to wake up early. Soon we reached Konark to witness the majestic Sun Temple.In the way to the temple all of us bought some very cheap but attractive sunglasses.The temple is a 12th century one, made mostly out of huge stones.However a major part is under reconstruction after many cracks and impairings that have occurred in the temple walls. The reason is supposed to be the removal of a huge magnet on the top by a Muslim ruler at the behest of the Mughal Emperor Jahangir. The magnet used to impart strength to all the iron rods which were used to hold together the stones.Also we realised that more than the grandeur and the artistry it is the engravings on the walls that the tourist guides really find worth explaining!

It was around 10 in the morning when we came out of the Sun Temple and set off to Bhubaneswar. In the way we halted at the Dhaulgiri Stupa. Its a nice shrine atop a hill which has statues of Buddha in various postures. The natural beauty around is worth a long stay there but we had limited time in hand.So after spending half an hour or so at the Stupa we went to the Lingaraj Temple in Bhubaneswar which is another huge old temple. There are more than 100 small temples within the complex. We had our lunch on a roadside hotel just before we reached the Nandan Kanan zoo where we were to spend the rest of our afternoon.Nandan Kanan is a huge zoo with all different varieties of animals. But the most fascinating of them were the huge white tigers which were present on large numbers.We travelled over a lake inside the zoo on ropeway which was another great experience.Equally elegant were the cobras,the elephants, the hippos and the beautiful birds.

After relaxing a bit in the zoo itself,we went to the Bhubaneswar station and stayed there talking and talking about each other. We took Utkal Express for our return journey which was just before the midnight. The train took slightly over 5 hours for its journey to Kharagpur and at about 5 in the morning we were back to where we belong-our wing DTE,Patel. This first sort of outing with the wing was no doubt a monumental experience.