If I were to list down the things which engaged my interest and attention majorly during the time I spent a few days back in Madras , it would pretty much have to be :
1. ‘S’ambhar : I saw it everywhere . I smelled it everywhere and hell yeah ! I hogged on it everywhere . Starting from the minute I landed at Chennai Central and had a plate of the ‘ most authentic ‘ sambhar vada of Saravana Bhavan to the numerous sambhars concomitant with the dosas I had at breakfast and dinner time and to top it all the ubiquitous lunch item of sambhar rice . ‘Sambhar Slurpfest ‘ rules my gastronomic priorities hands-down :) here in Madras .
2. ‘S’ilica-Based Nanocomposites : Synthesis of nanosized particles of this material by high energy ball milling was the purported reason I was in Madras in the first place . Research work miles away from the insti. bang in the middle of a semester otherwise marked by an incredibly boring diurnal schedule of alternating between Gtalk ,Heavy Metal , hours of unproductive lectures / labs and the occasional sleep was a really welcome change .
3. ‘S’.. Hadn’t met this good friend of mine for four long months ! And when the opportunity finally came , busy schedules of ‘Work ’ forced both parties to limit the meeting to a fleeting time of 6-7 hrs .However , whoever said 6 hours wasn’t enough time to experience the vibrance of a major city was wrong !! Stopovers at S’s place ( where the sambhar slurpfest continued unabated :D in the disguise of homemade Southie food ) , Coffee Central ( an awesomeMAXX coffee bar in T.Nagar) , Gangotree Chat and offcourse watching the Sun set over the Bay of Bengal at Marina Beach to top it all . Thanks S , for making those 6 hrs the only truly ‘Happy Hours’ I had in an otherwise maddening work-dominated stay in Madras .
4. 'S'leep : Good ole sleep eluded me for 3 nights in a row . After just 7.5 hrs of sleep in over 3 days, on Sunday night , I felt like a walking and talking zombie and thought to myself , “ One more night like this and I am officially ‘DEAD’ “ .
5. 'S'un N 'S'and : The Sweltering Sun and the and the relentlessly humid weather in Madras left me wondering whether I would make it out safely from the city without dehydrating to death . I mean I know what humidity can do to you ( coming from Bombay i.e. ) but it’s a different story altogether here .
I managed to sneak in some time for Marina Beach ( with 'S' ) and Eliiot’s Beach ( with Shawshank ) and mind you for a guy who comes from Nagpur (which is right in the centre of the country far far away from any large water body :) ) the sight of the sea can bring an inexplicable amount of joy .
78 hours in Madras was hence basically a choice between spending time for one of the above S’s which thankfully at times was substituted for time with another S . And in this battle of the S’s , the combination of No.3 and No.5 win hands down :) .
I shall go now and get some of No.4 before I end up writing more mindless blah !
Cheerio ,
Count Grishnackh
Madras Musings II - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
Location : Still in Nanotech Lab , MSB 201 , IIT-Madras
Time : 4.30 AM
One more day of hard work gone by and I am beginning to feel dizzy both because I haven’t had much sleep the last 2 nights and also coming to terms with realising the amount of work I have done in the same period . It is indeed true that you never realise your potential till you stretch yourself to the limits . So , I sit here waiting for Saturday to give way to a much-awaited Sunday !
In general , I am always psyched up on Sundays but also have the infamous habit of having never ONCE in the last 3 yrs of my happy undergraduate life do anything constructive on Sundays . If history were to repeat itself today , I fear some serious repercussions on my project . But a Sunday is a Sunday ( and this one particularly promises to be ‘LEGENDARY ‘ ) . So , I’m gonna have my share of fun today !! Time to SUIT UP & BUZZ OFF !
Cheerio !
Count Grishnackh
Time : 4.30 AM
One more day of hard work gone by and I am beginning to feel dizzy both because I haven’t had much sleep the last 2 nights and also coming to terms with realising the amount of work I have done in the same period . It is indeed true that you never realise your potential till you stretch yourself to the limits . So , I sit here waiting for Saturday to give way to a much-awaited Sunday !
In general , I am always psyched up on Sundays but also have the infamous habit of having never ONCE in the last 3 yrs of my happy undergraduate life do anything constructive on Sundays . If history were to repeat itself today , I fear some serious repercussions on my project . But a Sunday is a Sunday ( and this one particularly promises to be ‘LEGENDARY ‘ ) . So , I’m gonna have my share of fun today !! Time to SUIT UP & BUZZ OFF !
Cheerio !
Count Grishnackh
Madras Musings I - MSB 201
Location : Nanotech. Lab , 201 , Mechanical Sciences Block , IIT Madras
Time : 4.30 AM
Waiting impatiently for the last run of the High energy ball mill .Its been 10 hrs of nonstop work here and I can hear the Ball Mill begging me to stop it and urging me to give us both a break !
So it all starts here ; we ( two enthu punters : Shawshank & me :) ) left Nagpur this Thursday for Tam-Land with the mission ( actually Final Yr. BTP work ) of synthesising Al-Mg-SiO2 nanocomposite powders using the High energy Ball Milling facility at IITM ( excuse the technical blah here :) ) . In short , the experiment requires both of us to be awake for most of a 48 hr-marathon operation period of the machine followed by 10 hrs of analysis on the aforementioned results . Needless to say the project experience sounds demanding enough but the real challenge came up when we were told that our accommodation arrangements ( made in advance ) had mysteriously been cancelled and we had two options : to share a really cramped hostel room with 2 other M.Tech students or else sleep in the lab itself . We chose the latter and hence MSB 201 was to be our home for the next 3.5 days and 3 nights . We would work , eat , sleep , drink , surf the net and offcourse even blog from the lab . Initially , sleeping on newspapers or a thin bedsheet surrounded by huge N2 cylinders and multi-crore worth instruments was a wee bit uncomfortable but we were so goddamn weary to fret over all this and decided to instead enjoy the very few hrs of sleep we were getting .
Both of us were overwhelmed by the trust of the IITM lab guys and the freedom they gave us ( two total strangers whose work benefitted none at IITM :) ) within 10 mins of our stay in the Lab . They gave us the full responsibility of the Lab with an individual set of keys too which helped us work throughout the night too . Sadly , our own Meta. Dept. @ VNIT has never allowed us to use certain so-called ‘ expensive ‘ lab instruments by ourselves or ever stay in the Lab beyond 5 P.M. Otherwise , the weather is a bit too hot to be comfortable and the food is too good to miss !
One day gone ...SO FAR SO GOOD !
Cheerio !
Count Grishnackh
The Lonely root ov Three
I’m sure that I will always be
A lonely number like root three
The three is all that’s good and right,
Why must my three keep out ov sight
Beneath the vicious square root sign,
I wish instead I were a nine
For nine could thwart this evil trick,
with just some quick arithmetic
I know I’ll never see the sun, as 1.7321
Such is my reality, a sad irrationality
When hark! What is this I see,
Another square root ov a three
As quietly co-waltzing by,
Together now we multiply
To form a number we prefer,
Rejoicing as an integer
We break free from our mortal bonds
With the wave of magic wands
Our square root signs become unglued
Your love for me has been renewed
P.S. I conned this from a movie i just saw . Clever shit , isn't it :) ??
Cheerio !!
The Roll ov Morality & Moghe !
On September 5 ( Teacher’s Day ) this year , I was wondering about what this day meant to me personally i.e. if there was truly any teacher whom I respected greatly ( for a final year VNITian like me , this question is bound to generally yield no answers :) ) . I felt strongly about putting down my thoughts on paper but could not owing to several reasons . And this train of thought was fuelled by a sudden contempt for the college authorities ( chiefly comprising of the faculty ) after last week’s ‘UGLY’ unfolding of events in the hostels . So it’s basically the precipitation of a certain solution of thought influenced majorly by some events in the college last week .
Part I : Ov Moghe
In my whole academic life so far , never has any teacher influenced me as profoundly as Mr. D.V.Moghe , a professor who has been teaching me for the past two years in my Dept. in VNIT .
Here are a few reasons why ...
Firstly , He performs the stupendous task of teaching two of the driest ( and by dry I mean REALLY DRY here :) ) subjects in the undergraduate curriculum of Metallurgical Engineering . But you have to ‘see to believe’ the remarkable way in which he infuses energy in the otherwise lifeless subject content . Infact , he has even managed to convince a majority of the students to consider this subject as their favourite or at the least get them to be interested enough to have the heart to attend his classes and the examination .
Secondly , he is one of the very few professors in the whole college who communicates in near-flawless English . Infact , his diction reminds many of the infamous (Word list) GRE-prep book BARRONS .
Thirdly , his sense of discipline might put any army man to shame . In the 3 semesters he has taught us , there has not been a single instance in which he has shirked from his duty. And to complement that , we have responded by never ever ‘mass-bunking’ his classes ( for the uninitiated ; Mass Bunk is an ignominy most of the teachers have to face in the insti . Its a rather blatant way of the students telling the prof. that they don’t give a F*** about them :D . About a week back , he told us about how on the day of his wedding reception he attended the function in the morning and returned in time the same afternoon for his ‘teaching duty’ . Agreed that this act is taking discipline too far but in general it speaks great volumes about his love and respect for discipline .
Fourthly , he is one of the most well-read persons I have ever met . And by this statement , I don’t mean that he is just well-read in his subject field but in all current affairs : from cricket to religion to politics to just about anything . This helps him in peppering his lectures with anecdotes and opinions which keeps us students perpetually interested .
Lastly , on a personal level I have been priviledged enough to share a beer with him when I accidentally bumped into him during my Research Internship in IISc Bangalore this summer . That evening he opened up ( like any man does in the influence of alcohol :D ) to me like a friend and the discussion that ensued was very fruitful .
Part II : Ov Morality
Last week in the insti. The ( goddamn jobless authorities ) spoiled the party for certain batchmates of mine by rusticating them from the hostel for smoking and drinking ( in a rather peaceful manner ! ) in their rooms . This , I feel is the height of Moral policing ; I mean HOW and WHY are the authorities concerned with controlling the habits of 21-24 yr old adults here when they have far better things to worry about . That is a right to which only the student himself or at max. His parents are entitled to .
Part III : The Roll
It all begins in today’s lecture of Moghe Sir who at the end of the class broached upon the last week’s incident for discussion with the students . Firstly , he said he was ashamed of us because we didn’t do anything about contesting this issue with the authorities . It is easier for me to quote him hence “ The authorities have ABSOLUTELY no right to break open the door of an adult male in the college and pry upon his activities ( apparently the students laughed uncontrollably at this :D ) , whatsoever they may be as long as it is blatantly injuring someone else in any sense . If such a thing would have taken place when I was a student here ( in the 80’s ) , the student community would have caused a major uproar and I for one ( smiles ..) , would never have completed my college education had they ever invaded my privacy in the same way as they did now . “ While we were all stunned by his reaction and his overall pro-student take on this issue , he firmly concluded by quoting Lord Macaulay “ MORALITY IS PREACHED ONLY BY THOSE WHO ALWAYS WANTED TO SIN , BUT COULD NOT “ . This peroration of his was not greeted by an expected ovation but I could see that in just one verbal swing he had aggrandized his image among his students to a level matched by none in the department or probably in the college .
Personally , his talk left my mind distracted with the thought or rather the possibility : “ WHY COULDNT THE REST OF OUR COLLEGE AUTHORITIES , FACULTY ( esp. The Director ) THINK ON THE SAME LINES AND MAKE VNIT A MUCH BETTER PLACE TO LIVE IN ?? “ .
Moral of the story : We need more teachers like Moghe Sir in the college and we need them badly and urgently . The authorities have wronged the students and let us down time and again in this period of our 3-year stay in the college . I sincerely believe that the college authorities need to have a major soul-check in the near future so that they can salvage atleast some respect from their graduating batches and the batches to follow .
Part I : Ov Moghe
In my whole academic life so far , never has any teacher influenced me as profoundly as Mr. D.V.Moghe , a professor who has been teaching me for the past two years in my Dept. in VNIT .
Here are a few reasons why ...
Firstly , He performs the stupendous task of teaching two of the driest ( and by dry I mean REALLY DRY here :) ) subjects in the undergraduate curriculum of Metallurgical Engineering . But you have to ‘see to believe’ the remarkable way in which he infuses energy in the otherwise lifeless subject content . Infact , he has even managed to convince a majority of the students to consider this subject as their favourite or at the least get them to be interested enough to have the heart to attend his classes and the examination .
Secondly , he is one of the very few professors in the whole college who communicates in near-flawless English . Infact , his diction reminds many of the infamous (Word list) GRE-prep book BARRONS .
Thirdly , his sense of discipline might put any army man to shame . In the 3 semesters he has taught us , there has not been a single instance in which he has shirked from his duty. And to complement that , we have responded by never ever ‘mass-bunking’ his classes ( for the uninitiated ; Mass Bunk is an ignominy most of the teachers have to face in the insti . Its a rather blatant way of the students telling the prof. that they don’t give a F*** about them :D . About a week back , he told us about how on the day of his wedding reception he attended the function in the morning and returned in time the same afternoon for his ‘teaching duty’ . Agreed that this act is taking discipline too far but in general it speaks great volumes about his love and respect for discipline .
Fourthly , he is one of the most well-read persons I have ever met . And by this statement , I don’t mean that he is just well-read in his subject field but in all current affairs : from cricket to religion to politics to just about anything . This helps him in peppering his lectures with anecdotes and opinions which keeps us students perpetually interested .
Lastly , on a personal level I have been priviledged enough to share a beer with him when I accidentally bumped into him during my Research Internship in IISc Bangalore this summer . That evening he opened up ( like any man does in the influence of alcohol :D ) to me like a friend and the discussion that ensued was very fruitful .
Part II : Ov Morality
Last week in the insti. The ( goddamn jobless authorities ) spoiled the party for certain batchmates of mine by rusticating them from the hostel for smoking and drinking ( in a rather peaceful manner ! ) in their rooms . This , I feel is the height of Moral policing ; I mean HOW and WHY are the authorities concerned with controlling the habits of 21-24 yr old adults here when they have far better things to worry about . That is a right to which only the student himself or at max. His parents are entitled to .
Part III : The Roll
It all begins in today’s lecture of Moghe Sir who at the end of the class broached upon the last week’s incident for discussion with the students . Firstly , he said he was ashamed of us because we didn’t do anything about contesting this issue with the authorities . It is easier for me to quote him hence “ The authorities have ABSOLUTELY no right to break open the door of an adult male in the college and pry upon his activities ( apparently the students laughed uncontrollably at this :D ) , whatsoever they may be as long as it is blatantly injuring someone else in any sense . If such a thing would have taken place when I was a student here ( in the 80’s ) , the student community would have caused a major uproar and I for one ( smiles ..) , would never have completed my college education had they ever invaded my privacy in the same way as they did now . “ While we were all stunned by his reaction and his overall pro-student take on this issue , he firmly concluded by quoting Lord Macaulay “ MORALITY IS PREACHED ONLY BY THOSE WHO ALWAYS WANTED TO SIN , BUT COULD NOT “ . This peroration of his was not greeted by an expected ovation but I could see that in just one verbal swing he had aggrandized his image among his students to a level matched by none in the department or probably in the college .
Personally , his talk left my mind distracted with the thought or rather the possibility : “ WHY COULDNT THE REST OF OUR COLLEGE AUTHORITIES , FACULTY ( esp. The Director ) THINK ON THE SAME LINES AND MAKE VNIT A MUCH BETTER PLACE TO LIVE IN ?? “ .
Moral of the story : We need more teachers like Moghe Sir in the college and we need them badly and urgently . The authorities have wronged the students and let us down time and again in this period of our 3-year stay in the college . I sincerely believe that the college authorities need to have a major soul-check in the near future so that they can salvage atleast some respect from their graduating batches and the batches to follow .
30 Hrs in the Good Bay !
Life has been extremely uninteresting and drab for most of the time this semester in VNIT :( . So I decided to set off on an impromptu jaunt back home this weekend . I had a rail ticket booked 2 weeks in advance ( There's a long story behind that , the details of which I spare u :P ) but made up my mind to go with this 'whim' of mine 3 hrs before the departure of the train from Nagpur to the ' Good Bay ' . Considering I was anyways going to screw around another weekend in Nagpur , I felt that 30 hrs @ Home would be a better option instead .
Fortunately , my train journey was fun thanks to the awesomeness of Aggie's presence ( another equally 'whimsical' person here :) ) & infi. rounds of dozing off accompanied by blissful hours on the iPod . On reaching home , my Mom who opened the door was shell-shocked !! She expected the Chauffeur who generally reported for duty at his regular time in the morning and instead found me at the doorstep . Needless to say , Dad and Bro were equally surprised :) .
Later that evening , we all went out to dine at an amazing restaurant serving authentic Oriental cuisine . But the highlight of the evening was undoubtedly BEER which I had with my Dad ( and ya , rite in front of my Mom :) who btw is 'not so cool' about me drinking up ). That beer was definitely SOMETHING :) .
And here I am , 3 hrs before leaving Bom Bahia ( The Good Bay ) to return to the rut of VNIT life :( doing what I do best when I am jobless ...BLOGGING !!
Cheerio ,
" The Destroyer of Lies "
Fortunately , my train journey was fun thanks to the awesomeness of Aggie's presence ( another equally 'whimsical' person here :) ) & infi. rounds of dozing off accompanied by blissful hours on the iPod . On reaching home , my Mom who opened the door was shell-shocked !! She expected the Chauffeur who generally reported for duty at his regular time in the morning and instead found me at the doorstep . Needless to say , Dad and Bro were equally surprised :) .
Later that evening , we all went out to dine at an amazing restaurant serving authentic Oriental cuisine . But the highlight of the evening was undoubtedly BEER which I had with my Dad ( and ya , rite in front of my Mom :) who btw is 'not so cool' about me drinking up ). That beer was definitely SOMETHING :) .
And here I am , 3 hrs before leaving Bom Bahia ( The Good Bay ) to return to the rut of VNIT life :( doing what I do best when I am jobless ...BLOGGING !!
Cheerio ,
" The Destroyer of Lies "
