Viva Los Angeles - Chapter 1 of I-don't-know-how-many

Well this is going to be one long blog, I am kind of feeling lazy writing this whole thing. But it is something so memorable, I'll kick myself for the rest of my life if I don't write this down before I forget all this. So here it goes...
What do you do when you have a three week vacation, in which you have to loads and loads of work to do, lot of programs to code up, lots of papers to read...I guess you get the idea. So what do you do in such a situation. Well if you are anything like me, you should go for an exact THREE WEEK VACATION TO LOS ANGELES. Mind you, when I prepared for the trip, I had full intention of working this whole vacation. I had taken all the required papers, and my laptop was all set to work. But probably I should have given heed to the words of my much more experienced sister. When I told her I was planning to work during my trip to LA, her reaction was "Well ok, we'll see how much you work...".
I thought of starting from the beginning (;)), but I don't think anybody would be interested in knowing that I started packing at around 2 a.m in the morning when I was supposed to leave at around 7 a.m., and I was too tired to pull an all-nighter. But the bottomline remains that I reached the airport well in time thanks to 'lalaji' who dropped me off at the airport, and within the hour, I was off the ground flying to LA.
After that I just went though the motions of flying 5 hours, getting my luggage, changing 2 buses and a rail to reach the street where my girl friend lived. Well I won't bore you people with the story of my rejoice when I met my dear friend after so many days. I shall just continue forward. I have this urge to do the whole thing daywise so here it goes:

Day 1

That day was spent mostly sleeping, and eating great food that Rumi prepared. After eating your cooking for 4 months, you can imagine how relieved my palette was to taste actually edible food. Not that her food wasn't great, my craving for good Indian food just made that food all the more awesome.

Day 2

Sometimes I am like a creature from the Antarctic, who can sleep for six months. Because the following few days showed me I could go to the limits, the limits of sleeping. The sunday was also spent sleeping and eating. The reason that we weren't going out anywhere was because Rumi had her end-terms, and she had to study. I can be actually thought of as an inconsiderate boyfriend who does not care about his girlfriend's schedule, but I must clear the air by saying that this scheduling confusion was Rumi's fault and not mine :). One thing other than the primal tasks of eating and sleeping was an internship interview that I had that night. And I am damn sure I pissed off the interviewer real bad by eating his head about a randomized algorithm to find primes although it had no relation to the problem that he had posed. In the end he seemed really frustrated and I am pretty sure he felt like strangling me. I sincerely apologize to you if you are reading my blog.

Day 3

First exam of Rumi. That's the first day I went out for the first time. I walked the streets of LA. Entered the posh "University of Southern California". It was reputed to have really super hot girl, but I think it have really rotten luck because I didn't get to see a single one - much to the disappointment of not just me but also Rumi. Now while she was giving her examination, I was sitting outside with my laptop. Because of my brilliance, I had forgotten to ask her about the passkey to her university WAN. So the first half an hour was spent looking for an unsecured network. My luck being as good as it is (touch wood!!), I did end up finding one. The rest of the time was spent was watching a series called Dexter which is about a heroic serial killer.

Now that her exam was over, we went over to her university village (a place with lot of shops and outlets for stuff required for the survival of students) where we have a Korean dish from a Chinese shop prepared by a Hispanic lady. Then we went over to her library (it is called by a code name called libi library whose meaning I couldn't figure out in my 21 days stay among students of USC. I just nod my head whenever I hear the word because I feel it would be super foolish to ask what it actually means). There Rumi was working hard on finishing off her course work, whereas I was working hard at finishing off all the episodes of Dexter, no lesser task I must add. For dinner we went to an Asian place called the "Panda Express" whose name I hadn't heard till that day (although later on I found out from my sister that it is a pretty famous joint). Then we came back home where we continued with our respective tasks until we fell asleep.

Day 4

Epitome of laziness. Open my eyes for the first time that morning, I hear Rumi telling me "Wake up lazy ass, and have some breakfast" and then leaving for her exam. Next time I open my eyes, I hear Rumi say "Oh my god, you are still sleeping. How can anybody sleep so much? Wake up this moment, brush your teeth and go eat something". The rest of the day was spent in getting rid of the inertia of rest I had gotten myself into, which ended in me giving up and going back to sleep in the night.

Day 5

Hibernation continued. Well I guess I will hibernate now too. So I shall continue with this in the next blog. So wait till the next episode :D

Next episode : meeting the "gang", enter 1282, bath in the freezing Pacific and lots more....don't bite your finger off in anticipation, it isn't worth it

Walk on

"You never conquer a mountain; the most you can ever hope to do is to try and conquer yourself"

- Sir Edmund Hillary

Beautifully put by a man of great character. And I didn't know he was so much more than the guy who ended up being the first to get to the peak of Mt. Everest (with all due respect to Tenzing Norway). I did not know he spend most of his life after everest to the betterment of the lives of the sherpa community in northern bengal. And another fact which I didn't know was that after climbing the Mt. Everest, he spent his years in search for the mythical Yeti - the abominable snowman. But returning to what he said, I think to myself, what his summary of his own life actually means. And as always, I am tempted to diverge to give my own expert comments on this. But I am just to young and naive to do so. I know too little. And that makes me look inside myself and see if there is any part of me that yearns for knowledge. Ever since I read Tennyson's "Ulysses", I wished to be a seeker of knowledge. I wanted to "follow knowledge like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought". I tried to read different things, learn as much as I could about things around me. But then I lost my way. I got caught up with life. But the ironic thing is that I didn't give on my dream because I got too busy, but because I got too lazy. Even as I write this piece, I still can't find that thirst in me. I want to have that desire, the craving to learn, I so wish I have it, but there is a void there. It is weird how even when I know right from wrong, I can't motivate myself to do the right thing. What does that make me? But as I blame myself for not being that committed to gaining knowledge, I am faced with another question. When you learn about something for the first time and you find it interesting, you dive into the details and try to find as much as you can. But as you dig deeper and deeper, you sometimes start to lose interest. The thing seems to have lost its charm. And at that moment, anything new and remotely interesting attracts your interest and you yearn to learn about it. Here it may seem that it is the lack of strength in our character that makes us jump from one topic to another. But I ask why is wrong to do so? I am still gaining knowledge, maybe not in depth, but in breadth nonetheless. And knowledge in any form is a gain. So why is it wrong?
Why is this form of quest for knowledge not as noble? I know it is wrong, but why is it so? I can't find the logic in it. Please help me out here. And somehow this can be extended to more parts of life. You try new things out when they seem interesting and novel. But as the attraction fades and the you have just run out of beginner's luck, you start to see the real work you need to put in. You start feeling bored and frustrated and yearn for a change. I guess that is where your strength of character is being tested. Are you strong enough to strive on and move forward, to follow beyond the utmost bound, or are you just a weak backboned creature, one who changes shape whenever it is a bit hard to fit in. Do you back out when the going gets tough or do you walk on? Well I believe I just answered my own question, by while doing that, I realized a lot about myself. I have realized how many times I have just given up only because it meant a little more hard work. How many times I took the easy way out. Looking back now, I realize how I am missing so many great things just because I was too lazy, too coward.
But hanging on the past never did good to me. Pondering over them just made me lose precious moments in the present, moments when I could do something really significant. What I am trying to say that I have just so long to live, and if I waste my life crying over how I made wrong decisions in my past, things will only get worse. So I shall move forward, pick pieces of the past, and move forward. I guess failure is not as bad as chickening out. So here and now, I make the decision to actually strive on, to try real hard to learn. Learn anything I can, but not give when things start to squeeze too hard.
And to think I was just trying to comprehend what Sir Hillary had said. I guess I did learn something about myself. Now time can only tell if I put that knowledge to any good use. Maybe whenever it starts getting hard, I can get back to this blog, and maybe understand why it is important to not give up.

Long Time Due!!

Sometimes you wonder why you always want stuff you never have. Is it because you actually need those things and thats why you miss them because you don't have them or is it just because somebody else has it and you don't, that is, is it always plain jealousy ?
After putting much thought in it and thinking about it for a month, I came to the conclusion that I had gone totally mad when I wrote the previous line, or maybe it was because I was totally jobless and in the mood of giving people the "funda" about life. But now that I am brought to my senses, I realize that I have no idea about the answer to that question.
Enough about that. Now moving on with my life. Since my previous post, I have been doing nothing much of consequence. Some may say I was trying to do some research, but in the past 3 - 4 months, my learning curve has kind of gotten stuck on a plateau. So my research is, well, still in progress.
Nothing much happened up until the end of the semester, when I ended up partying and sleeping (as a consequence of the partying) most of my exam week. The fact that I made it to the exams itself felt as an achievement at that point of time. But as always, my lady luck saved my not-so-precious behind.
I forgot to mention about the partying itself. Well there were a couple of parties, but the one worth mentioning was the one I had at my advisor's. Well for those who don't know, I was lucky to have a really cool adviser who excepts me work as hard as I can party, but at the same time expects me to party at times too. So back to the party. We were having a quiet evening at his place, drinking beer and talking about music and stuff. Then we were all planning to leave when some people showed up to crash the party. Well these people were basically department senior graduate students. And the first thing they did was taking out the vodka bottle from the fridge and starting off with vodka shots. I must say that thanks to my training in Kharagpur, I managed to fair well in the vodka shots. But alas the vodka didn't last long, and we moved to a bar close to my advisor's place. And there I don't remember how much I drank or what all I did in front of my adviser, but I do remember him laughing a lot at me and he christened me "dimples". That was very embarrassing and I had to face that the whole evening. That evening, over a lot of alcohol, I made some new friends, who became pretty good ones.
Well I guess alcohol removes all our inhibitions, and it becomes easier for us to open up in front of another person and the more we open up, the more they feel comfortable in front of us and let their guards down. Sorry! Couldn't resist giving a little piece of "funda of life".
Now I don't remember exactly when I came back, but I remember the party starting at 4 pm and me waking up at 2pm next day when one of my friends called to check on me. By the way I never did thank that person for waking me up, if she hadn't, I wouldn't have been able to finish my take-home exam and submit it in time.
To clear things, this party was on monday, my take-home exam was due tuesday, and I had another exam on wednesday. And thanks to parties on friday and saturday nights, my weekend was spent in sleeping or being at a party.
Well that was the end of my first semester with a bang! (Sorry for the cliche, couldn't come up with a better expression). After that, come winter vacations, I was off to Los Angeles, primarily to meet my dear dear girl friend. And as planned I reached LA for a 3 week vacation.
Now what happened in LA is a whole story in itself and deserves a blog of its own, and maybe one day soon I can get myself to do that. For now I think I should conclude here saying that this whole blog reminds me a very common thing in maths. We make starts at random points and hope to converge to one global optimum. If you are lucky, it does converge, otherwise, it ends up looking as bad as this blog!

Why do I have so much time?

It seems I come back to my blog whenever I have a lot of work to do. I spend the time I should be spending on reading a textbook on writing this useless blog which is of no consequence. I am pretty sure that this post won't even make it to the blog. If it does it would be a big achievement :D.
What crap man..... I have no idea what the hell I am writing.....I feel like I am going to give up...can't go on...aaaa aaaaaaaa....aaaaaaaaa......uggghhhhhhhh!!!
What the heck...lets just post it

Fitting mixture of Gaussians

I am really really sorry about the title of this blog, I apologize from the bottom of my heart. But right now I am too lazy to think up any other, and this was the thing going through this empty head of mine. But then what is a mixture of gaussians used for?? As fas as my understanding goes in this topic, it is a very useful way of estimating probability distribution in random data. You try to find some pattern in a random set.
Zoom out from the data set to the huge thing called "life". I feel it is just random events, random data points in a ridiculously weird space of uncountable dimensions. (Well there's a thought that might get mathematicians crazy.....uncountable dimensions....for those who don't know and don't care, the difference between countable and uncountable can be roughly put as the difference between 1-2-3-4..... and 1.1-1.101-1.1011....(you can see how many more points can be put in in between the values I have chosen in the second case).)..but then I am just showing of my knowledge and diverging from the topic I should concentrate on.
Well the basic idea I am trying to get at is that life is random and we try to make sense of it. We try to fit these random events into situations and conditions we are familiar to, and once we arrive to a known situation, we now know how to deal with it from past experiences. And if it is a situation we have never encountered, it is basically our training set - we learn from our mistakes and try to reduce the mistakes (minimize the residual sum of squares ..... damn I sure am showing off today :D ).
My life has pretty much has been a series of random events; some I could fit gaussians on, some I used as training set. But unfortunately, my learning curve being very low, it is going to take a really long time before I can handle things with a 95% confidence interval :P.
But then like most of my life, I have been damn lucky everywhere. I have great colleagues and I am in the company of many people who are really really helpful. Trust me, there was not a single day when I felt out of place in this foreign land. I have met all kinds of people, from different backgrounds, with different attitudes; I just wish I could learn from all the people around and make something good of myself.
For once I am enjoying studying, although in a race between motivation to study and slumber, slumber always manages to win. But still I feel glad I am learning new things, I feel excited when something makes sense. I probably need to have done many times more reading by now than I actually have , but still I can claim I am better off than what I used to be.
And as always, I had my share of fun too. Parties with friends, and aaah yes - water polo. Something which I am not good at, but still get a chance to play, and however much I get f@#$ed by the end of the practice session, I kinda enjoy every moment....even when I am doing 800m warm up and cursing the coach and myself (for getting myself into this mess) every millimeter of the way, I am enjoying it...I just don't know it yet ;).
Added to that, the couple of water polo tournies and the parties on the nights we stay over, it is just crazy.....partying like undergrads, so you can imagine......
I think I forgot about the gaussians some couple of paragraphs ago, but coming back to it, I just have one more "funda" I feel like sharing - the more we learn, the more easily can we fit these bloody gaussians....so the best way to succeed is it to keep learning. I realize I am just reinventing the wheel here and everybody, and I mean everybody, knows this!!!!!!
But I still would go on to say that the most important decision we make in our life is the choice of how we want to learn, and what we want to learn. What you want to learn depends on the "dimension" on which you want to make that delta improvement in this world. Some want to do this by curing some disease, some want to do it by having a happy family and making sure that their offspring are people who too make those delta improvement, and not be ones who negate them. And the improvement in any dimension is desirable, some are more celebrated than others, but what good is a cure to some cancer if there isn't a doctor who cares enough for his patient that he/she uses the cure to get rid of the patient's cancer (I wish I came up with a better example).
I wish I can make my delta improvement..........maybe I can help people fit those bloody mixture gaussians that little bit more easily.

Enter USA

A 40k worth bus ride!!!! Well thats what it felt like - the trip from Bhubaneswar to Atlanta.....a freakin' bus ride - a really long and frusth one too.....
All started at Bhubs when my flight was delayed by an hour and a half because of bad weather. And the 40 minutes' flight to Cal jarred my bones as badly as a bus ride on a semi-decent road. Then came the 8 hours' stay at Cal which wasn't that bad since I met up with my friend Sid and we had some fun.
Reaching Cal airport, you could see it as crowded as Howrah railway station; and damn the long luggage check in lines. But truly speakin I shouldn't complain because I didn't have to stand in any of the lines....I had a person with me who took to the front of every line...a kind of back door entry you might say.....and I thank that person from the bottom of my heart...or else my complaining would have been much worse.
Now came the wait for the boarding of the flight, and unfortunately my guardian angel couldn't do anything about it. Then after boarding the flight, I realised it was no better spaced than the Janshatabdi general compartments.
Now one thing I forgot to mention was that I don't like take offs or landings. Felt really bad while taking off and landing on my flight from Bhubs to Cal, but luckily I didn't hurl :D.....And same happened during my take off at Cal. I felt all queasy and all. And to add to that, the guy sitting next was giving me some funa on how people are going into the IT line for more money.....damn that was awful. But later on the guy tells me that he just started that discussion to distract me from the take off and make me feel better. I thank that guy for his effort to help me - his intentions were noble....but unfortunately he just made things worse [:(]....
Now cramped up that bad, I couldn't sleep....and not having the aisle seat, I couldn't get out of my seat regularly and go for a stretch...nor could I go regularly to relieve my poor bladder ;) (poor because I was drinking a lot of water to help me cope with the oncoming jetlag). Had some alcohol to drink so as to get some sleep, but that didn't work either :(....so much alcohol and still no high....and they say that alcohol kicks harder at higher altitudes....
And all throughout this while, the plane was bumping around....pilot's voice ringing out at regular intervals warning about turbulent weather. Eventually I slept, but just for around 3 hours, on a flight of 9.30 hrs.
Eventually the flight reached Frankfurt, and even though there was so much turbulent weather, we reached there 30 minutes before time. At Frankfurt, I found an acquantaince from Kharagpur who was on the same flight as me but his connecting flight was different. We roamed around the frankfurt airport a bit...supposedly the largest airport in the world....but unfortunately, I could not get my eyes on any hot babe :(. Now my friend was hungry because he missed the breakfast in the plane....poor guy had a $5 worth of a single slice of apple pie. I know that for americans this is no big deal, but me being a new Indian to this foriegn land, still haven't gotten rid of my conversion mentality.
Then after seeing him off at his gate, I proceeded to my gate. Unfortunately, I was through check ins very easily and was all set to go an hour and a half before the flight. So there was another long wait.
On eventually boarding the flight, I found myself amidst 5 - 6 americans who were coming back from a euro-trip of a month. The guy sitting next to me called himself Chris. Then after lunch, I busied myself watching 2 movies - Shrek the third....which I had seen earlier but still enjoyed because I believe these kind of movies can be watched over and over again. What was not so good about that movie was that I missed the person with whom I had seen the movie the first time. It reminded me a lot of that person. After that I watched a movie called "Blades of Glory". It was complete bull crap comedy movie about the first male male pair in couples' figure skating. But it was a decent time pass nonetheless.
Even after these movies, I had around 4 - 5 hours to kill on tht flight. And then I started feeling weird in my stomach. I guess the food I had for lunch didn't quite go well with my digestive system and I felt really bad....but maybe it was not the food but the jetlag and the altitude. Trying to get rid of this uneasiness, I tried very hard to sleep. I eventually got in an hour's sleep and felt a bit better.
After that nothing happened up until the landing. While landing, my plane had a bounce, and it felt seriously awesome, but I guess it is a common thing. One thing I forgot to mention was that on this flight I had no feeling of queasiness during takeoff or landing :)
Then came the rushing to the Immigration and Customs counter. There were a lot of people, but I was lucky to beat the crowd and got my clearance work done pretty quickly. The immigration officer was pretty nice to me and wished me good luck....but I guess this general courtesy is the norm here, unlike India. But I had heard of stories of people getting harrassed a lot at the immigrations counter, so I think I was abit lucky here. Then went on the get my baggage. Here too I had heard stories o people losing and getting damaged baggage and all that. I guess I was lucky, because I got my baggage very easily.
Then I gave up my luggage again and moved on to hand baggage checking. That too went by very simply and I happily went out to get my baggage again. After gettng my baggage again , another wait started, this time for the good samaritan who was going to pick me up from the airport. Waiting at the airport, I met up with other grad students who were from India.
Now when my friend came by and picked me up, I said good bye to the Hartsfield Jackson Airport and at my friend's place since then.

Last day of the first of my life

48 more hours, then I would be leaving on a jet plane. Leaving for a place where my life is going to change forever and never going be the same...ever again. But inside of me, I am not at all feeling any different. For me it seems to be just another place where I am going like so many times before and I will start afresh. Life won't be any different.
But experienced others are telling me it is going to change. I can feel their emotions. I can feel my mother's palpable concern for me and also her grief. I wish there was something I could do something about it, but this is a decision I made - there will be casualties in the way, but I hope I make it worth those sacrifices people are making for me.
On this last day, I sit here writing my blog for the last time in my home country for a long time to come, and I wonder. I wonder how things used to be, how life has never been complicated for me ever. I wonder how life might be in the future, my expectations, my dreams, my aspirations, my fears - so many versions of the future playing in my mind. It is funny....I think about how I had pictured my future in the past and how things actually worked out.
On this last day, I still am wondering how am I to say my goodbyes. It is not like I am going away forever and won't be seeing them ever again. But something inside me tells me to say proper goodbyes. I have always been good at goodbyes. Lets hope I succeed this time too. Said so many goodbyes during the last few days in Kharagpur that it doesn't feel like a big deal anymore...not with the advancement in communication systems nowadays. It doesnt feel like making a big difference if we are a state apart or a continent apart. But ask any sane person and he/she would say that distance matters a lot.
On this last day, I pray for a future closer to my aspirations, I pray for happiness, and I pray life doesn't change very much and I can still be the kid I always have :)
Or is this last day I am a kid? Is this childhood's end? Is it time to grow up?

Some forwards

First a funny one:

Munnabhai: Ye saali government drinking aur driving saath saath kyun nahin karne deti?
Circuit: Simple hai bhai. Bhai woh speed breaker aane par gilas gir sakta hai na.

Then a sentu one:

Every desert is but an orphaned beach
thirsty sands that still dreams of ocean's embrace
I am much like the desert when we are apart
My thirsty heart dreams of your embrace
as if I were trying to reunite my soul
with something missing from myself

The League of Extraordinary Not-So-Gentle men

Gtalk:

Nishant: abey jaldi join kar @ 7.254
Me: kaun kaun khel raha hai?????
Nishant: abey sab hi hai....jaldi join kar ...last slot

AOE:
BabarDgr8: teams kya???
AzgarKaDost: me + pussy+ potty + kundan vs. rest
SNap: 11
LiNux: kaunsa map???
Beowulf: michi :D
LiNux: kya frusth log ho :P
@: accha hai...mast se camp karenge
SitheGod:14
SitheGod:14
PottiusRamusI: i am weak ... please dont kill me
The game is starting in 10 seconds.......
Press cancel if you see any mistake
BabarDgr8:10
BabarDgr8:10
BabarDgr8:10
The game is starting in 5 secs.....


And thus started a game of AOE which would last for more than 90 minutes. A million military units would have been sacrificed by a single click, thousands of bombard towers would have been built and broken, trade profits would be in the billions.......And this is how we spent most of our time - playing this game like madmen day in and day out, only taking breaks for food and sleep when utterly neccessary. And to top it all off, we would have long post-game discussions as to where we made the crucial strategic mistake and where we could have turned the game around.
This is how we spend the first sem of our 5th year. And I am not at all being modest when I claim that I was THE worst player of AOE of this group....not that I was inexperienced, it is just that I couldn't do any good at all....
But then came job season and we stopped playing. Then in the spring semester, most of us spent most of the time in TSC playing hockey or footer or watching a cricket match. But never would this bunch of friends spend a single hour for academics until very neccessary.
And in academics, we knew only two things, exams and guides. Classes were like some mythical places where some people still go, but it is not for us any more (not completely true...will verify later). We would spend hours discussing each others' guides and bitching about them, but would never make any effort to do something productive. For us, going to meet our guides would be a very rare and auspicious occassion, and we would be sent off like soldiers going to the warfront.
Now you would be wondering who were the members of this League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (although none of us were anywhere close to a gentleman). Agreed that in the following picture the people look like sane individuals, but get them a couple of pegs and the true selfs emerge. And trust me when I say you don't wanna be on their bad side (especially the guy who looks the cutest in this pic...I am not taking any names).

So let me introduce to you this group: To start with, we have our grand old man of the wing, our dear Satra daaaaaaaa. He is the weirdest most cutest creature at heart and god knows how I have made him life hell in the class and in the wing. Then there is Sweety, the guy who can fool anybody with his face, but underneath it lies a monster, and it just needs 3 pegs to unleash that monster. But be sure to stay at a safe distance before you do so. Then there is the psychotic ferrari fan Deep, the guy who can't utter 5 words without one of them being a gaali. I have no idea how he stays at home and controls himself in front of his parents or how he managed to get through his job interview and his project evals. Wanna hear the weirdest of excuses not to wake? Try waking up Jha ji on one fine morning, and I promise you that you will hear excuses you have never ever heard before. Still then this poor guy was never let to sleep peacefully. But lazy he is not. The guy having the highest laziness co-eeficient would be the genius Kundu. If he weren't that bright, he could never have got through IIT the way he did. But talk about bright and forget ad, or as I love to call him, chut-ad- :-D. Then there was the gult Indra, the guy who kept making weird robotic creatures in his room, and wouldn't give up a chance to show it to one of us. And lastly, I had my two children, my son Pathak and my daughter Pushkal. Pathak was my partner-in-crime in making smart remarks on every one in the group. And since both of us were wella most of the time, we would be in somebody else's room bugging the hell out of him. Otherwise, we woud be busy watching Southparl :D. Well, Pushkal's (also known as 'pussy's') room was actually the hub, and everybody would go there to bhaat or play some game on his computer, or just for the carnal pleasure obtained by molesting cute Pushkal. Cute he may be on the outside, but you better not get into an argument with him, or he will make you regret the day you were born and got the brains which made you argue with him.
But whatever it is we are doing, we do it together. And since we could not study together, we rarely studied until required badly. We did try at times to study together, but you can ask Satra, Prasoon, Deep, AD how painstaking those sessions were.
One thing we loved to do together though (other than AOE, CS, Carrom, Chess, Business, Monopoly,WoW) was drinking. Mostly during the job treats at GI. It would mostly start with the person(s) giving the treat going to everybody else's room asking them to get ready. And getting ready was one prolonged process. Not because we all bathed very rigourously and took a lot of time in dressing up and all. It was basically because all of us were damn lazy and had a very high inertia of rest. Invariably everybody would be sitting in front of their respective monitors either playing some game or watching some series. You would literally have to pull us from the front of the computer and kick us into the bathroom. Now once the wheels were in motion, people would start to get ready in a jiffy.

Then came the thing about getting the main reason we went to the treats: BOOZE!!!!!! One

car would leave early via Billi's while other car consisting of the lazier lot would depart later directly for GI. Once in GI, there were only two things of interest: food and booze. And food was synonymous to "CHICKEN", although we had the poor gult Indra who had to make do with a vegetarian diet. But we hungry animal would still not spare his plate of paneer tikkas and

paneer pakodas.
Now came the actual part about the drinking. The bartender was yours truly most of the times, and I was known for my extra-special pegs :D. On any typical evening, you would see people sharing a drink like gentlemen. Look at Prasoon and Deep. Don't they look decent?
Now once the drinks started and the starters would have been ordered (generally Tandoori Chicken, Chicken 69, Chicken Pakora...basically by the end of our streak of treats, we had tried most of the starters on the menu of GI), people would settle in and start bhaating. Sweety would be busy taking pics of different people while the rest would be involved in their discussions. Invariably, the gang would break up into smaller groups, some discussing WoW, some discussing football, some discussing AOE, some (like me) busy making drinks for everybody else :)...........Now how would you know that the alcohol is starting to kick in??? Take a look at AD. If you can see most of his teeth, you know that he is high. And once he is high, he can't keep himself from smiling; and that the best smile I have ever seen, unfortunately I don't have any pic of that :(.
Then gradually as people start getting high, the main course is served. But since most of us are high, food holds not much interest anymore. Still we complete the dishes, but with a half heart (but thats enough :D).

The next step would be to go outside to the lawn of GI. And there you see what people do when they get high. The favourite thing to do is molest poor Pushkal and take advantage of him. Unfortunately Pushkal was the only one among us who never drank, so we could never go to the full extent of raping him :(. But then there would be other things like GPL. But most people would be too disinterested to kick anybody, so they would end up dropping that guy. And at this time would begin our second photo session.

Here you would see our dear Jha ji with his trademark cowboy shooting pose. And Jha ji was really a cowboy at heart - rarely bathing, wearing the same jeans and clothes from months on end. Come on the topic about saving the damsel in distress and riding off with her into the sunset, Jha ji has been treated with mixed fortunes. While one damsel ended up marrying somebody else, this romeo of ours didn't take long to sweep another girl off her feet with the magic of his fingers (I mean SMSing ;) ).......Sorry I diverged from the topic.
Then we would eventually get so high, that we would literally get high (forgive me for this

relaly really bad joke, just couldn't resist :D). Then we would somehow stuff ourselves back into the car and get back to our wing where we would either sleep off or get back to the business of playing some game. A carefree time like that will never come again in any of our lives ever again, but we can always look back to these times.......the times we worried for nothing, the times when we learnt so little but we lived so much....the times we laughed together even though all of us wouldn't have a reason to be happy, in fact some would be utterly disappointed......but celebrating every moment of happiness together was the norm even if it were 5 in the morning and you were dead tired....
Salute to all you guys.....

Adieu

A life which is to end
Only when I am no more
A life that transformed me
In a fighter to the core

A season for love and friendship
For eternity which will last
In my future to follow
I will long relive this past

Memories of this part of journey
I'll carry all life long
Memories of those precious moments
Which made my life a beautiful song

My eyes go teary
Emotions fill my heart
As my days left are few
Now its time to bid Adieu

A bit too sentimental I know, but I read this on a video on IIT life made by some IITM guys, and it struck a chord.....

The Dep that was !!!

Frankly our batch was never one closed unit, but yes, there were various factions which were very close. In the whole of 4 years we were together, the whole department never ever sat down together except when attending classes and writing exams. And even while attending classes, it would be really lucky to find 75% of the people attending. The only ocassions almost all the great minds came together were the department farewell (May 1, 2007) and one fine evening at eggies and subsequently at F-127. The reason I remember this day is because this was the day almost all of us decided to meet for no apparent reason. The auspicious day being May 14, 2007.
The picture below was taken on the day of our last exam when it is customary to dress up crazily to show our defiance to the system :P. There were some though who were too afraid or too disinterested to do anything and they came the way they come as usual (I was one of them).
Here we see the first faction of our department. I guess you can notice the group of five girls standing together dressed up as rockstars' girlfriends. Let me introduce you to them. Starting from the left, there is the stylish and always-on-the-lookout-for-someone-to-tutor-her Smitalee, followed by the bubbly and mischievous Ranjini. On the left of her stands Mademoiselle Rumi, the maggu and the ever worried about what is going to happen to her (As put by Naween "uske chehre pe humesha barah baja rehta hai"). Then there is halu Poulami (yes, one word is enough for her) followed by the tomboyish and mischievous Priyanka. Together they were the Paanch Paandav. Ranjini and Priyanka were partners in crime playing pranks in the class on some poor soul. I was lucky never to be the brunt of their joblessness, but poor Naween had to :D. And in this group was the only person on the department who was a model student; so much so that there were times when the professor only taught her and the rest of the class was busy in something else (I think you can guess who she is).

Standing to the left of the girls is dear Pandey ji, the man who can make anybody laugh but more importantly, the man whose room became a mecca during the examination week. Thanks to him I had managed a nehli and many people in the department managed a decent grade. Not that he is nerd, not at all. He bunks classes, comes late to class, argues generally with professors and gets them pissed off. He is just plain bright. Pandey ji deserves a thank you from everyone of us :D.

On the left of Pandey ji is Aditya a.k.a. adikooldude, and I guess the name says it all. He was to be my buddy in GaTech, but alas he betrayed me and deferred his admission to join his job. One important thing worth mentioning about him is that whenever be the class timings, be sure this guy reaches class atleast 20 minutes late. I don't know how he managed it every single time.
Beside him stands Shashi babu and sitting in front of him is Saransh. These two patelians were members of faction controlled by Pandey ji ;). Shashi came to class solely because Pandey ji came, and Saransh didn't even care to do so. During the exams, you would find Shashi almost all the time in Pandey's room, but Saransh would come around 1 in the night saying "Pandey padha de yaar nahin to kal g!@#d mar jaegi". Still Shashi and Saransh somehow managed to get comparable results.

On the right of Saransh is Iro/Chaks the cute cheerful guy with a smile on his face all the time. If he wasn't busy spending time with Shashi or Naween, he would be playing drums for his band Dark Project. I wish his music career the best and hope one day he gives me an autographed copy of his record :).
Beside him is the man with not just a big body but big words too. He is Sagarneel/Sagarlaal/.....This guy rarely came to classes, but when he did, be sure to hear the weirdest and most irrelevant questions to the professer from him. He somehow managed to dumbfound anybody with his charms. This guy never gave up on the chance to speak and the questions were a way of venting out his obsession I guess. So much so that this guy came to the department farewell with a 2-page speech prepared.
Beside him sits Mr.YouKnowWho. The man who gave us Scholars' Avenue, the revered president of the department, the eternally cool guy, the guy who oozes with nonchalance, the great Sunny Somani. And we all love him. I am sure anybody who has seen him during his kgp days would remember him carrying a blue bag, with his intently slightly dishevelled hair, and his trademark walk. But this guy writes really great (you should read his blog) and the guy who eventually got me my dep T-shirt :D.
But there are still a lot of people of our dep missing in the pic. The following pic adds a few more names:
On the extreme left you can see Apro. He was a revered G.Sec. of our Gymkhana, but people remember him for the greatest guitar solos he has given us in the Netaji. He is a heartthrob and I am sure many girls have a major crush on him, but this guy manages to be single. You would rarely see him in class, but if there is a rock show at the Netaji, be sure Apro is rocking in there. I am not very learned in music, but I feel this guy is the best guitarist I have seen in Kharagpur in the past five years. But when this guy did attend classes, we would be busy most of the time bugging Sagarneel. Although this guy had very low attendance, I don't know how he managed to convince the profs to pass him. Maybe his juice factor has something to do with it (although I am damn sure that was the only factor when it came to (G)A.(Y) Sarkar).
But talk about juice factor and don't mention the one who take the cup away. Meet dear Ici/Icarus (standing second from the right). He is the cutest guy our department has seen in the past few decades. During his internship in bangalore this guy had tried his hand in the game of hearts many a times only for Pandey ji to mess it up with his charm (or absence of it).
On the right of Icarus stands Calee Kumar, whom I rarely saw in class except during my final year when he did become pretty regular (God knows why??!!!). Never seen him talk much so can't say much about him :(.

All this time, I have been dropping the name of the awesome Naween Kumar. I always found him very confusing. On one hand, he seemed to be frusth of everything in life, but you would also see this great smile on his face many a times. So I never understood what he was actually feeling. But one thing I want to thank him for is the zillion times he saved us all for the gruesome torture of double lectures by asking for breaks. He was always the first one to ask for breaks and we would all join in like hungry pirates. He was always the first guy to every class and he attended almost every class. He even has the record of having 100% attendance in a few subjects. But the same enthusiasm with which he attended classes vanished into thin air when it actually came to studying, bringing him back to the level of us mortals.




But none of them are from my hall. My hall produced a different breed of students. The one who deserves to come first is great Happa sahab. He was the unchallenged, incontrovertible king of PJs in the department, and maybe the whole campus. When he spoke, no one could hear, mostly because most of them had already run away afraid of his PJs. He would be seen in the department much more after the semester was over compared to the whole year put together (mostly because that would be when he would be convincing the profs why he deserves to pass). This guy gave us the Aawas and there was a silent competition between him and Sunny in the department, but there was never a standoff because Happa rarely showed up in the classes. But jokes apart this guy has become the first entrepreneur among us and I wish him the best of luck.


But last and most certainly not the least are these three guys. They were my dearest wingies. On the extreme right is AD. He is unquestionably the brightest guy in the department and also the one of the best CS player in the whole campus. When there was something that Pandey ji could not help me with, I would come running to AD. And he had his unique way of studying. At one time, you would see him playing CS with the notes on his lap and browsing through the notes in between rounds. In you go after some time, you would see him fast asleep
with the notes on his chest. On top of that he has the cutest smile with 32 all out and really starts blushing whenver you ask him about his girlfrnd. And get him high on a peg or two and then it is a different story all together.
In the middle stands our dear Satra da. The guy who keeps writing weird things in his copy and attends classes but does everything but take notes. He is the guy who doesn't care about what other people think. It was because of him I had a lot of fun in class sitting in the last row. Beside him stands the great Jha ji. He NEVER took notes. It would be a great thing if he took a copy of his own to the class. He would buy a copy on the first day of the semester, but invariably lose it by the second day and henceforth took any copy he got his hands on to class, not to take notes but to show the prof that he is taking notes (which he isn't anyways). We spent the whole final year sitting in the last row playing with out cell phones, listening to each others caller tunes, discussing formula one, english premier league football, uefa champions league, and also what we would play in our lowly inter halls. Sometimes we had been so bored that we walked out in the middle of the class. But come exams, these two would come to me and AD to study. But their enthusiasm would be short lived, and they would leave our rooms saying they will study on their own in their rooms. But when you go to check on them, you would see them either sleeping or watching some football match highlights, but never studying.
So these are the great minds of my department, but I feel I failed to mention what department we were all in. Who cares?? I certainly don't.

Katra Katra

katra katra milti hai
katra katra jeene do
zindagi hai .. behne do
pyaasi hun main .... pyaasi rehne do

This seems to be the motto of the BSNL connection...you can be online just for a few seconds in one go....you only get a "katra" and you have to made do with it. But the question is who gets more frustrated, the person who is going online and offline every 2 minutes or is the person who is talking to a person like that???

Ironic !!!!!!!

A singer known as Alanis Morrissette once said in a song of hers (obviously the song's name is ironic):

"Well life has a funny way of sneaking up on you when you think everything's okay and everything's going right

And life has a funny way of helping you out when you think everything's gone wrong and everything blows up in your face"

Correlating these lines with my life gives me amazing results. I have always believed that I am a damn lucky chap. Things have always sorted themselves out and I never had to worry muc about them. Life always has a funny way of helping me out. But then maybe there were not many things I cared about in my life. As in there was nothing that I cared about enough to be afraid to lose it. Maybe thats why life always worked things out for me, because it knew that it wouldn't make much of a difference to me if it didn't.

But then something happened, I started caring. I started caring for one. And somehow that triggered something in me and started caring about all. I was no longer that nonchalant guy to whom nothing made much of a difference. I started caring about how I would be affecting the lives of the people around me. I started caring for my family members. I started caring for the girl who made me start to care.

And then suddenly I start feeling that everything is going right for me and everything's okay. But then something went wrong. The earlier me wouldn't even have cared for it. He would have just taken it in as every other news and moved on. But the present me started caring, started thinking how it would affect the people around him, started worrying about the future.

I was never the kind of guy who got angry or frustrated ever. But now I started becoming frustrated at times thinking about the future. Small things started getting me angry. Since I cared about the people around me, I started taking care in doing certain things. I took special care in avoiding certain stuff. And when those stuff would happen, I would get angry and frustrated. And the worst part is that when I would get angry, I only end up hurting the people I care about. It is kind of ironic. It is for them I worry, and that is what causes me to hurt them.

I worry about the person who made me start to care. I feel there is not much I can give her, and I want her to be truly happy. But I feel that she would happy if she finds a better guy than me. I feel a great girl like her will always find a guy who will love her his heart and soul, and he wouldn't bring along so much baggage with him. I know that given that fact that I didn't have these issues stuck with me, I would have kept this girl really happy. But now I feel I might hurt her in not just emotional way but physical way too. And the thing is that she will happily stay with me through all this; she will tolerate all this without a single complaint, but I can't live through this guilt of hurting her like this. I care too much about her. Or maybe I am too selfish. Who knows??!!

But at the same time, I will hurt her by leaving her now. And knowing her as I do, I don't know if she can recover from it. I can't understand which is the lesser of the two evil.

Same thing goes for my parents. They don't understand that all I am trying to do is not to hurt them. But they are parents, they will care - hell I would have cared if I were in their position. But what should I do?

As in there is also the case of me making too big deal about something that it not worth that much attention. It is not that people do not have a happy life with people having the same problem as me. Maybe I am just caring too much !!! Well I find it funny how I have become like this, this guy who worries so much and makes a fuss over the smallest of things. But somehow I feel these small things might affect others, and if I don't take care, it could be something bad.

And the worst part is that the more I worry, it is the people I care about who are getting hurt. Isn't it Ironic....don't you think !!!!!

But then life has a funny way of helping you out when everything's wrong and everything blows up in your face.......

Snow Patrol - Run

This is a really beautiful song which I thought I should put up on the blog

I'll sing it one last time for you

Then we really have to go

You've been the only thing that's right

In all I've done

And I can barely look at you

But every single time I do

I know we'll make it anywhere

Away from here

Light up, light up

As if you have a choice

Even if you cannot hear my voice

I'll be right beside you dear

Louder louder

And we'll run for our lives

I can hardly speak I understand

Why you can't raise your voice to say

To think I might not see those eyes

Makes it so hard not to cry

And as we say our long goodbye

I nearly do

Light up, light up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I'll be right beside you dear

Louder louder
And we'll run for our lives
I can hardly speak I understand
Why you can't raise your voice to say

Slower slower

We don't have time for that

All I want is to find an easier way

To get out of our little heads

Have heart my dear

We're bound to be afraid

Even if it's just for a few days

Making up for all this mess

Looking on backward and forward

We always are in search for the answers to life, universe and everything. Well, life is too big to handle for me, the universe and everything can wait for now.....

As I was saying, looking for answers to life, we end up standing in front of a mirror. A mirror with which we try day and night to take a peek within ourselves, our hearts, our minds, our souls, because in the end all the answers lie within ourselves.

But not very often are we able to see what we want, and we end up seeing whats behind us, and expectantly looking in front of us to see what mind lie beyond the mirror, the place where Lewis Carrol sent Alice......

What I am trying to say is that right now I am standing here at a point of my life where I am looking back at the "Life as we Knew it", and at the same time, having that bushy-eyed feeling about the future.

And at this position here is standing with me a very very dear friend Rumi Ghosh, whom I lovingly call "football" (name given by Pathak). Both of us look back at the five years that have been. The great times, the Ups and the Downs. The times we will remember for the rest of our lives, and those we would like to forget (but remember nonetheless as "things we like to forget"). And feelings are so very mixed. Sometimes I wish I could change some things in my past, but at the same time I am very happy to be who I am right now, and that makes me feel that my past was perfect, just perfect.

And this juncture in our lives can be so painful, like standing in the middle of a desert with the sun raining its wrath upon you, and it is so bright that you cannot see anything. The pain of missing everything clouds your mind and you can't remember the "wonder years", and having no wish to see what the future holds. But somehow, we are both so happy here. We are happy for what the last five years gave us; the friends, the lessons, the experiences, the growth, and of course, each other.

The first

this being my first blog, i may not be able to put my thoughts across properly, but lets try.....
banchod bhattacharj....true enough it is time to say farewell, farewell to way the way we lived our lives for each other, farewell to the way all we wanted to do is pull the other person's leg, and farewell to the "kzp life"...........
maybe you will long cherish this life, maybe we will be friends for forever (although i would prefer if it werent maybe but for sure), but things will never be the same again..........
I can never be woken in the morning by Amlan who only came to my room to take my toothpaste.....i can nevr slap that gandu daku and force him to take a bath, or for that matter brush his teeth....i can never just go out of my room to yours and sleep onver there in magi's or your bed......i will nevr be able to see amlan giving tava a horse ride (western style!!!!!).....
but remeber this much, when we came here, we never expected to get so much...so we shouldn't be sorry now that we are losing it all.....well not all completely......we might relive these days for while if we ever get a chance to be together sometime in the future.......
Lose i will a lot and hurt me a lot it will, but we always knew that things would always end up this way.....i am not very big fan of shayari and all, but i heard this line somewhere "har mulakat ka anjaam judai kyun hai?"........a hopeful answer to this would be to meet again later and relive those glory days..........
i won't say that we have become a man in these four years....but learnt a lot we have......learnt how to do something good, learnt how to do something bad, so with this knowledge you are living this place ....empty handed you are not at all....a bag full of memories .........
and trust me ....... wherever you are..once you get into a routine, your life goes on and you generally tend to put your past in the back of your mind.....it is only in the time of retrospection that you remeber these days and feel good and bad at the same time, you will smile and there will be tears rolling down your cheeks (atleast amlan's i am sure).....
and thank god i was drunk when i left you guys, or else i would have cried a river.....