How To Screw a Viva…Royally!!

When you make up your mind to screw yourself even God cannot change it. The same thing happened to me. Fortunately God did save me in the end. But it was a close one.

After Pcom viva I was in a terrible mood. Not because I had answered incorrectly. Infact I had answered everything perfectly. The problem was the question which I had answered, where something like a revelation for the others (i guess even for the external). He had asked (now I know most people would think..cut the crap and come to the point..but this is necessary as it just shows ‘how fucked up is the system’) “Which block in a superheterodyne receiver is responsible for selecting the desired frequency?” The other two answered RF amplifier and I answered pre-selector which I later found out was nowhere to be found in the book which they referred. Well I had read it in a book written by a reputed guy (a foriegn author) so I kinda knew it was right. So I was bombarded by questions on this ‘great new discovery’ and I can say from the external’s expressions that he was not pleased. Anyways moving on, the next day was my AOA (analysis of algorithms) viva. I came back and hit the sack. Well, I hit it so hard that I woke up almost after five hours. That was at six in the evening.

Now a normal guy in this situation would get tensed and start cramming the algorithms. At that moment my nonchalant attitude shocked me. I got a great (hell yeah!) idea of calling…ok let’s call her X..better Ms. X. “Hey I hope I didn’t disturb you?”

“no not at all..say”

“Hey I was wondering maybe we could just meet at the juice center”

“ya sure”

…excuse me..that wasn’t in the plan..she had to reject but her alacrity stunned me.
“In five minutes”
“I’ll be there” she hanged up. No cajoling, nothing. That was easy. Rushed to the bathroom. Sprayed bottles of deoderants and poured oodles of collogne. I was ready for this walk-date.

I dashed to the juice center and she was already there (hell so punctual). Diffidently I approached her.

“You told me in five minutes?”

“sorry”

“What’s that smell?Did you have a deo-bath?” crap.

“What will you have?” I asked changing the topic.

“Ya a cocktail.but I’ll pay for mine”

“Ya sure…may be you can pay for mine as well” She gave me that disgusting look ..I loved it. I reached my wallet. Hell I had forgotten it. “eh..may be you really have to pay for me”
“what?”
“I forgot my wallet”
“you are not having anything”
“Don’t be so harsh…” I stopped..man this was crazy. I was almost begging. “kidding re”..I like that baby. After that we decided to walk. Well these were the most happiest moments of my life. I had conjured up ways of talking to this girl for almost a year and here I was on a ‘walk-date’. As they rightly say ‘Labor omnia vincit’ (don’t worry my next post will be on this one). I came back at about eight thirty. Then I remember sleeping again. Dreaming about ofcourse more such ‘future’ dates. The other day I got up at seven thirty. Hazily I stared at the calender. I saw the date 8th of may. “Hell I had something on this day”. “Fuck I have my AOA pracs today” I took shower, dressed up and left for the exam hall. I reached the college. Well everything was as usual. Shetty was studying as if he was going to eat the book. Man this guy scared me sometimes. Srinath was talking about some wierd ‘friends’ or ’simpson’s’ episode. Mennon was walking through the crowded corridor showing thumbs up whenever I happened to see him. Nilesh was as usual no where. Patel and Prasad teaching others and Vikram was engrossed in thoughts of P______ . I quickly saw the algorithms. We were called in to choose a program which we were in the chits in front of us. It was like giving us a choice of death. Tell me how you wish to die- will it be a simple hang or you want to be sodomised to death. I didn’t want any of those. I picked up ( I was praying hard). I went to my computer and opened it. It was selection sort. “YESSSSSSSS” (mentally) God saved me. I saw srinath who was almost about to cry. He had got DFS. I did it perfectly. Showing it to the internal I was now eligible for the next level. The VIVA. It seemed that the external hadn’t turned up and so internal was conducting our vivas which was a relief for most. I sat and next to me was Vikram who’s grey cells were tormented by indexed sequential sort. He asked me something and I was telling him when the internal caught me and asked me to leave. That was bad. After a lot of cajoling she allowed me to sit. She commented “I know you know a lot, that’s why you are teaching others”. Crap! She’s gonna screw me. She’s gonna screw my vivas. HELP.SOS. There was no one. I sat there thinking about every possible thing that she can ask me. The fact is I was praying hard and my prayers were answered. Like an archangel the external stepped in. She took my vivas and they were awesome. Hell this post turned out to be a long one. But there are two things you can learn from this.

Firstly, there is someone up there who really care for you and doesn’t want you to get screwed by some unworthy loosers.

Secondly, never ever think of a walk-date or any kind of date before your vivas. It’s cool that day but the next day is scary.

Truth -The Beginning

 

November, 2004 – I was in eleventh then and was taking a usual stroll on the terrace. I was highly influenced by Swami Vivekananda at that time, thanks to my trip down south to Rameshwaram. I remember asking myself at that time which path should I take. Would it be the usual one, that is go with the life’s flow or would it be something else. “Definitely something else” I remember saying it to myself confidently. Reminiscing I see that I have come a long way. It’s been almost four years now, that I have been searching for the truth only to know it is more complex than I ever thought.

January, 2009 – Even today when you visit my orkut profile you will find my name and next to it I have written “In search of higher truth”. People always scrap what truth. What should I tell them When I myself don’t know anything about it. It’s vastness cannot be explained by me in my own lifetime. But onething is for sure , that the name is not going to change untill I die or the Orkut people themselves decide to delete my profile.

As Robert Frost famously wrote:

 

 

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference”

Four years is a real long time, and I write my journey as it is.

 

A Wierd Love Story

Her frantic looks failed to arouse any sense of emergency in him. May be this was because he hated her. The look in her eyes would terrify him even after fifteen years. He would get up at night soaked in sweat recalling her eyes. He would be eaten away slowly by the feeling that he could have done something untill it became a nemesis. He would curse himself later.

You can love her, you can pine for her but you cannot hate her. That’s what his problem was. He wanted to hate her. But he knew he couldn’t. He saw the doleful details of model town from his window. Her thoughts chided his mind. She was beautiful. Her eyes were enchanting and her face was heavenly. She didn’t joke when she said she was from venus. Her hairs flowed like a river. To watch them resist the wind and atlast giving in and moving with it was a sheer delight. He coudn’t get his thoughts away from her. Her smile was what he always wanted to look at. When she smiled it seemed as if it was an anodyne sent by God to this melancholy world. He was surely being selfish when he thought of having it for himself.

She lay there staring him. “I think you are dead” he said nonchalantly.

(to be continued..)

Viva Maketh An Engineer

There is a general ‘misconception’ that grueling lessons and projects make a good engineer. Unfortunately this misconception is rife and even I don’t think anyone can change it now. But those who are a part of this system know very well what’s the thing that makes a person an engineer- it’s viva.

My vivas just got over today and needless to say i’m really happy and relaxed. Four days, four vivas and four different reasons to get screwed. But truly ‘viva maketh an engineer’. It wonderfully teaches you how not to loose it under extreme pressure conditions. Infact after three semesters of vivas you almost become a doyen of astute manipulation of facts (well, that is what you actually do..isn’t it). I guess the whole process (not to forget extremely painful) can be divided into three stages wait,kill and thrill.

Wait: In wait you don’t have much to do other than just helplessly watch people come one after the other scathed and devoured. Well, the best you can do is that ask people how they were screwed and think about yourself getting screwed in a better way. The bad part is people standing outside the lab pretend to be studying but actually they are too anxious to study. So they say crap things. Like for instance during our Pcom (Principles of communication) vivas we overheard that the external was asking “What is signal?”

Though simple it was tricky.

To this one of my friends started “I’ll say it’s a bloody conspiracy. They don’t want us to know…what frequencies they are transmitting”. What the heck! Can’t help, he is obsessed with ‘That 70’s Show’. But I guess it’s better this catharsis get’s settled outside the lab as external is in no mood for this crap.

Can’t help, even I was asking zany questions like “Hey do you by any chance listen to Korean songs?”

Preliminary training in pressure handling.

Kill: It begins when you are called in for your vivas. Whenever you go in you don’t think about anything. What the external is going to ask? How am I going to get screwed? Will I ever be able to meet my girl friend again?..nothing. Theres this calm which suddenly breaks when you sit across your questioner. Then it starts and it ends. That’s it. Theres nothing between that. Then when you get up to go out.Thoughts which had ceased to come again come to your mind. Then you start analysing the question and the answer. To what extent they were right and uncannily in that brief period of time you figure out what you are going to say when you go outside. The sad part is, it’s not always the same. Sometimes the external pulls you in the viva by scrutinising each and every word you utter and cross questioning everything like a sleuth bent on proving you guilty of a heinous crime and from personal experiences these are bloody freaky situations. So aptly is this stage named KILL, because you are killed anyways.

Thrill: This thing happens when your body returns to normal functioning again. You feel, what thrill? This is a stage before you have actually figured out how your vivas were? Was it great, was it ok or it sucked? But whatever it may be you are thrilled for sure.

Vivas whatever they may be are cool. You win or capitulate. The fun is in experiencing it. I’ll end it up with a typical out-of-the-viva-lab lingo “It’s fucking awesome”.

 

Beauty

I loathe people who flaunt a temporary concept like beauty. Beauty is such a volatile thing. I mean one day you are beautiful, the next day you have a bad accident (may be you have stitches all over your face) and then it’s over. Is that the end? So why not cherish the beauty of the soul which is permanent?

Define God

Recently I was chatting with a garrulous person who asked me to “define god”. Now there are two categories of garrulous people. One who talk sense and the other who talk non-sense. He was from the former category and I enjoyed every bit of this conversation. Maintaining my prevarication I was quick in replying “I don’t know”. This is because I have a tendency of keeping my religious beliefs to myself. Simply put, i don’t like preaching things which are hardly understood by anyone. So by saying that I gave him a chance of “enlightening” me by his perspective of the Almighty.

What he told me is worth writting about.

He told me that the G in GOD stands for generate. Everything has to be generated. Energy should be generated. It’s necessary to generate things. The O stands for operate. The things generated should be operated as there is a purpose for each and everything. The last alphabet D stands for destroying. Whatever created should be destroyed.

Never thought of right!!

Infact the base of Hinduism firmly lies on the trinity of Brahma-Vishnu-Mahesh. The creator, the preserver and the destroyer.

Friends

What is a friend?…I will tell you.

It is someone with whom you dare

to be yourself.

 

-Frank Crane

How true? Recently one of my friends had asked me “what do you mean by a friend?” and I had laconically replied “I don’t know”. May be I should have said the above lines. Is there any better way to describe a friend?

 

 

A Lot Like Love

Love is complicated and even more complicated are women. Whatever it is both are good.

Love is an experience that ought not to be missed. You never get embarrassed even when you act like a fool. That doesn’t mean lovers are foolish but it’s beautiful. Now as I sit here typing this boring blog I’m fumbling to write even the next statement. Maybe I’m in love. Does that make sense? Whatever!!

As I write or try to write rather, this particular Beatles song starts playing in my head. The songs called “I wanna hold your hands”. Why? I don’t know. A lot like love!!

Dude! What the hell am I writting?

Someone spelt ellipsis? May be!!

Now I gotta write about this. It’s beautiful for sure. The only sad part being it’s temporary. Bunk it..I suck!

 

 

That is just what I want to say

 

Yeah, sing the song, Bro’

If the sun refuse to shine,
I don’t mind, I don’t mind,
If the mountains fell in the sea,
let it be, it ain’t me.
Alright, ‘cos I got my own world to look through,
And I ain’t gonna copy you.

Now if 6 turned out to be 9,
I don’t mind, I don’t mind,
Alright, if all the hippies cut off all their hair,
I don’t care, I don’t care.
Dig, ‘cos I got my own world to live through
And I ain’t gonna copy you.

White collared conservative flashing down the street,

Pointing their plastic finger at me.
They’re hoping soon my kind will drop and die,
But I’m gonna wave my freak flag high, high.
Wave on, wave on
Fall mountains, just don’t fall on me
Go ahead on Mr. Business man, you can’t dress like me.
Sing on Brother, play on drummer.

                              -Jimi Hendrix ,thou art GOD.

“The kind of seed sown
 will produce that kind of fruit.
 Those who do good will reap good results.
 Those who do evil will reap evil results.
 If you carefully plant a good seed,
 You will joyfully gather good fruit.”
                                       – Dhammapada