COUPLE OF OLD ONE'S

There are two reasons for keeping my blog inactive......one obviously is my slackness towards blogging and the other is that i want all my readers to read my first blog.But life has to move on and so should my blog.i will post my two articles which have been published in two magazines of my institute.

( This is a poem written for the" Fourth estate" magazine and therefore many informal and IITM lingo terms are used. please bear with that. Also, this incident has happened truly and happened truly to me during saarang 2004. Bear with this childish poem..........)

A PAGE FROM THE DIARY OF A GUILTY VOLUNTEER…………..

I came to IIT,

In search of beauty

But to my pity,

No one was pretty.

The nature around is a big gain;

The acads here are a real pain.

Frustrated,

I wanted to become a seer,

But in the end became a volunteer.

Yes, saarang is fast approaching,

And I quickly needed coaching

To guide me through the choice of volship,

That will further ensure a coordship.

“Becoming a GA vol is Ghor Aparadh,

Working for ambience

Will lead to ambulance,

Go to hospi coord

And you will be reserving a hospital bed:”

These words as sharp as sword,

Were spoken by the fourth estate coord.

Excited about the grub coupons

I tried to make my pen do gimmicks,

Ended up using hazaar fight,

Unable to withstand seniors might.

Then I realized, to bask in its glory,

Someone needed to be extraordinary.

Disappointed.

Yet I slowly started to “love life”

But the fourth estate saarang special came as a knife—

On its back page was my name,

Giving me undeserved fame.

At last, I was a saarang volunteer

Gaining nothing, loosing everything,

I was a saarang volunteer.

(This article was published in magazine "contour2005" which is a IITM civil depatment magazine.once again bear with the IITM references made.........)

IT’S ALL THE SAME.

Early in the morning I arrived at the main gate of the campus of IIT Madras. I was given a warm welcome by the security personnel holding an instrument which I thought was a computer aided electronic friskometer(!). Within a flash of a second it scanned all my belongings and the following results were displayed on the screen:-

ITEM ---- SEARCH RESULTS

WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION ---NEGATIVE

ANTHRAX POWDER ---- NEGATIVE

GUNS ‘N’ ROSES ------ NEGATIVE

“Guns and Roses! Would roses ever lead to any chaos? ” was my spontaneous reaction.

The security personnel replied in a casual but CLEAR ENGLISH –

“ Roses are colorful but the thorns are harmful, sir.”

Shocked with his poetic genius, I asked him to guide me to the hostel of My cousin. After feeding in the necessary particulars into the computer, there came the display-

Cross GC and a mile

Hostel’s name is NILE.

And then

Room no; one two three

This info is for free

( This is what happens if the Dean is an ardent fan of poetry. )

Anyway, there is a surprise, not only in literature of it but also in its content.

HOSTEL NILE!

“Yes sir, hostel Nile. You read it correct. We ran out of names of all significant Indian rivers and therefore, had to start picking foreign names.

Slowly absorbing all these poetic shocks, I could reach the hostel Nile, but to my disappointment I found no one there except for this boy.

Myself: where have all the people gone, so early in the morning?

Boy: All of them are in the LIBRARY.

Seeing my stunned face he continued…do you know where library is?

M: yes, of course…, it is somewhere near the Sharavathi hostel, right?

B(slightly irritated):that is not how we describe our library.

He started leading me to the library and while on the way,

B: The library of IIT Madras is the biggest one in Asia consisting of two big palatial buildings each five floors high, constructed in four different phases. The top of the building is at a height of 17 metres above the sea level and the latitude of the building is……………………..went on and on until we reached the destination.

M: ok, but tell me why so early in the morning?

B: The LIBFEST is going on.

M: oh my goodness! Now what’s that about?

B: this is a fiercely competed intra college meet where events like Spot-the-book, hide and seek are unique and stand out for themselves.

WAIT A MINUTE! Am I in our very own IITM? Many pearls have been added to its crown ever since it is established. Growing technological inputs,

Scientific research and many such factors have cemented its position as one of the premier institutes of technology.

But Did IITM really change? When I see a student running around with a floppy diskette desperate to get a print out just few seconds before the dead line of submission, or when I see non-stop burning of candles during the Quiz week in the hostels, the nostalgia of this place would rush into my veins. IT’S ALL THE SAME……... The Lingo of IITM, the intra hostel rivalries, the student body election or whatever, it’s all been the same whether in 1960 or today in 2020.