IIT education goes to the dogs!

I have always feared that with the way the congress govt. is systematically screwing up with the IITs, the IIT education is going to the dogs. But I never thought the day would come this soon.


A file photo of a professor teaching a dog in IIT Delhi

Thanks to Kashyap for the image :)

P.S: found more on youtube :)

PCL: The Politically Correct Dinner

INRIA (Rennes, France) had quite a vibrant culture. To celebrate the ethnic and cultural diversity within the institute, they have this annual International Food Festival during the summer. The idea is simple; everyone brings a considerable amount of homemade food, whatever is unique to their culture and they have a grand buffet.

The buffet looked gorgeous and smelled great. French, Italian, Spanish, Mexican, Chinese, Thai and Indian cuisines neatly arranged with little foot notes about the dish itself and who made it. The unfortunate thing(for me) was that there were only two vegetarian dishes in the whole of the buffet! One was a vegetarian Galette and the other was Sambar and Papad!

I tried the Galette which is basically mashed potato and cheese rolled inside a (non-crispy) dosa kind of a thing. It was completely tasteless by Indian standards. So, I was eating it with ketchup when a colleague pointed out that it is considered rude to eat any homemade dish with ketchup. (It turned out that the French gentleman happened to be the one who brought the dish!) I apologized and settled with Sambar and Papad (so much for the “International” Food Fest!).

The next day, the same colleague got me a dabba of vegetarian food cooked by his wife especially for me because he felt sorry for me. I thanked him and his wife for the wonderful gesture and we sat for lunch. The vegetarian “dish” which his wife “cooked” happened to be boiled rice with freshly cut fruits in it. Yes you read it right, yucky sticky globular Vietnamese rice with strawberries, grapes, slices of apple, pineapple and banana thrown in it. (I couldn’t even get any yogurt or ketchup this time because of what happened the previous day!) I would rate it as the second most uncomfortable meal I ever had so far! I couldn't find the right image so I "cooked" it up in photoshop ;) Also please suggest a more universal name than the telugu-standard Bangala Bow-bow for this dish.

P.S: I had a roll with the desserts in the International Food Festival :)

The Implications of the Pigeon-Fool Principle

For those who have not read the pigeon-fool principle, please click here before reading further.

The pigeon-fool principle though intended to look funny on the outside, is much more than a mere extrapolation of a funny incident. It is, like a lot of funny things, reality at a higher level. The results of the poll are compiled and as of now, there were over 100 hundred people who read the blog entry but only 36 have decided to vote with almost 90% (31/36) of them preferring pigeon poop over the fool’s mucus on their shirts. The result though hardly surprising made me ask myself, Why the difference?

If you look at the situation objectively, both pigeon poop and fool's mucus have very similar outcomes when they fall on our shirt. Both are equally unfortunate and equally disgusting things to happen to anyone, they take the same amount of effort to wipe and wash the stain etc. But still people are biased towards one of the options! This proves my notion that, given a choice between two equally bad options, people choose the familiar one.

The beauty of the whole argument lies in the parallel we can draw with the elections in India. In most of the constituencies, people are forced to choose between pigeon poop (congress) and fool’s mucus (BJP and allies) and people choose the familiar pigeon poop. And not surprisingly, a lot of people choose not to vote at all (Voter turnout was 43% in Mumbai and 35% for my poll, which is good enough considering that TATA Tea did not sponsor a “Jaago Re” campaign for my blog). Hence even after 5 years of dismal governance, the congress party is back to power in Maharashtra.

Unless we figure out a way where deserving people can rise up to the leadership level, India will always remain a flawed democracy that is more of a “Deeply-Hippocratic-Cheaply-Oligarchic-Republic” as opposed to the “Sovereign-Socialist-Secular-Democratic-Republic” we are supposed to be going by my 7th class civics text book.

P.S: the content of this blog turned out to be much more serious than intended by the author (me) but what the hell!



P.P.S: The artist (me again) intended the bird to look like a pigeon and the guy like he has a cold and he is not sure how successful he is.

The Pigeon Fool Principle

Chapter 1: Somewhere in IIT

A little while back, I was walking around close to some building with a friend and something fell on her shoulder. She reacted with the saddest “Eww”, worrying about her (then white) shirt whereas I looked up to find the culprit. I found a couple of pigeons flying around and one guy on the third floor corridor holding a hand kerchief. We assumed it was the pigeons (as it happens quite often). The whole incident killed the pleasant conversation we were having so I thought it would be a good idea to put forward my theory to raise the spirits.

Chapter 2: The Hypothesis

My theory was that it could well have been the guy who is blowing his nose who did it. The pigeons just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. I was arguing, rather animatedly, that my hypothesis could be correct. The more I thought it through, the more I was convinced that it had to be the fool blowing his nose and not the shitting pigeons.
She desperately wanted it to be the pigeons that she was giving arguments that make just as much sense as religious fanatics when they talk about their religion. All I can say is that she did not take it in the right way and it definitely did not raise the spirits. Soon things “blew” out of proportion and I was in deep “shit”.

Chapter 3: The Pigeon-Fool principle

Life is all about making difficult choices and you are about to take one now. There is no way you can escape from this situation. You have two and only two options available. Both of them happen to be awful (but that is life) and you have to make a decision.

P.S: the poll is completely anonymous and you can vote more than once if you have strong feelings towards one of the options :p





A day in the Life of a Shrink

TOI doesn't want us to read the news

Yes, The Times of India, the largest selling English newspaper in India doesn't want us to read the news. If you think I am exaggerating, fair enough. I am giving TOI, the benefit of doubt. May be they do want us to read the news, but clearly, they don't want us to go past the first two headlines. How else would you explain this?



The layout of the website is perfect. On the left, we have the "Top Stories" and on the right, we have things to distract us from reading the "Top Stories". Even if you are really curious about what is happening in the world, the crap on the right keeps popping into your head while reading the stuff on the left. So there is a good chance you might mix the two and end up reading the news like this.
* 'Grounded' US plane cleared for taking off Best Cleavage in B-Town...
* Pakistan's military said on Sunday that 60 Taliban militants and five soldiers were Babes dare to bare!

I think TOI is the only newspaper that has got its priorities right:
Topless pics first, OTHER TOP STORIES later.

P.S: Hindustan Times and DNA have their homepages full of real news. No wonder neither of them is "India's Largest Selling English Newspaper"

STATUTORY WARNING: This is what too much of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart does to you.

the G vs Y graph

glossary of terms:
G = number of girls you can "technically" hit on
Y = number of years in IIT
UG = undergraduate (B. Tech/DD)
H11 = PG girls hostel



P.S: Inspired from an intriguing conversation with Deva
P.P.S: If text is not that clear, please click on the image for a bigger version... but don't forget to comeback and comment ;)

Leadership by Ineptitude

Chapter 1: Birth of a new idea
Circa 1998 AD

Mom tells little g2 that he is not a little boy anymore, so he has to take responsibility for his stuff and that also includes ironing his school uniform. Now little g2 as we know, hates ironing (he hates any form of work). So this is what he did- he started the ironing and did it so bad that mom was worried that he might burn his uniforms. Soon she realized that doing the work herself is much easier (both emotionally and economically) than making him work.

Chapter 2: The idea reaches puberty
Circa 2002 AD

g2 and his bunch of friends have just screwed up things real bad. They cooked and pillow-fought at his friend’s place and the whole house is a mess. They have less than 40 minutes to get the house back into shape lest all hell breaks loose. The girl at (whose place they made a mess) was paranoid. Everyone hurried; everyone was scared, everyone except g2. He took initiative and coolly started rearranging the furniture (intentionally) at places they didn’t belong. The others saw what was happening and quickly asked him to step aside and they cleaned up the mess in record time.

Chapter 3: The idea is bald
Present day

g2 is sure that his idea, with all its counter intuitiveness has the potential to be the next big management fad. He calls it Leadership by Ineptitude. It basically comprises of three simple, reciprocatable (g2 is not quite sure if this is a word) and highly scalable processes. They are as follows.

1. Take initiative with an air of arrogance giving out the message that no one else can do a “better job” than you.
2. Do it so bad that others should feel like they can do a better job and are motivated to do a “better job” just to prove a point.
3. Let them do the “better job” and you take credit for taking initiative and motivating them.

This is beneficial for the company in two ways. Firstly, the most useless people are moved up into the senior management- a place where they can do least damage to the company. And two: they make place for more efficient people. Think about it. (Edit: May be this is how governments function)

A collage of some psychedelic photography using only LEDs for lighting (thanks to Prady and Apoorv):

Sense of Humor

Part I: Monkey in the lab part II

I was there getting into an international flight for the first time. My luggage was like 5 or 6 kilos over the limit and my dad waiting outside, kind of worried if they would allow it or not. After checking in my baggage, I wasted time loitering around in the airport without going to the immigration (to be honest I did not even know I was supposed to go to immigration, I thought it was for losers coming into the country ;)...) And soon I realized it is for losers leaving :( So I slipped my phone into the pocket of my new cargo pants and zipped the pocket(no idea why I zipped it... may be because its there).

Traveling by air is not at all fun. Even the little excitement about the trip is killed in the airports. At least for me it did. Standing in a stupid security checkup for an hour was boring to say the least. And just when my turn was about to come, my phone started to ring. It was my dad, I knew it from the ring tone. I wanted to answer it but the zip got stuck. The phone was ringing and vibrating, the security guy asks me to hurry up, I had two pieces of hand baggage in my hands, the flight leaves in 20 minutes, the passengers behind me in the queue were getting impatient and the zipper was stuck! Something's gotta give!

I let the person behind me go and tried to open it, it was stuck in the awfullest of ways in the cruelest of times. I tried to break it open but LEE happens to make some really strong pockets! I asked someone else for help. He was holding the zip and pulling out as hard as possible while I was struggling with my balance! No luck either. Then I asked another woman with a baby in the next line if she had some kind of a sharp object that could cut through jeans and she looked at me like I was some kind of an idiot. (Of course she would... who carries sharp objects that can cut through jeans to the security check in an airport!)

So I went ahead with the security check with the phone still inside the pocket (ringing)...

Security guy: What is this?
Me: It's a phone
Security guy: You are supposed to keep it in the tub there.
Me: I know... but the zip of the pocket got stuck and I am not able to take the phone out...
Security guy: Look please, there is a lot of queue, don't waste time.
Me: stepped aside and gave place to someone else. Tried to tear open the zip but no luck
Security guy: Now... make it fast.
Me: I'm trying but am not able to.
Security guy: ignores
Me <in the nicest voice possible>: Do you have a knife or something. I want to cut this open.
Security guy <Serious stare>: No knife, only gun!

D for Dogmata

The other day I was in the bus stop waiting, whistling and generally feeling good and then I saw this really cute dog being walked by this really hot girl(I just had to mention it). Then the dog pooped and the girl picked it up! This never happens in India and just the thought of it made the "generally feeling good" feeling vanish almost instantaneously! It reminded me of this Seinfeld monologue.

"On my block, a lot of people walk their dogs, and I always see them walking along with their little poop bags, which to me is the lowest function of human life. If aliens are watching this through telescope, they're gonna think the dogs are the leaders. If you see two life forms, one of them is making a poop , the other one's carrying it for him who would you assume was in charge?"

But I didn't just stop there. I started imagining how the world would look like if this were true. For 2 days, I saw everything in that frame of mind and it was quite funny. Try to think of a design for a car that a dog would like... Like really big wheels on which you can pee and stuff like that!

So eventually my mind went on to the entertainment industry... and guess what...

gToosPhere is proud to present a few snapshots of the alternate universe.

1942: Casablanca

The legendary line from the movie,

"Here's looking at you, kid"

would have to be slightly modified for the audience...



1974: The Godfather would of course be


2001: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone would be

Doggy Potter and the Philosopher's Bone

... The story would be pretty much the same, our little "Doggy Potter" is just another pup which is treated like a "dog" at his guardian's place and then a huge hairy guy comes and takes Doggy to the "The Dogwarts school of Bitchcraft and Dastardly" and then yada yada yada... the philosopher's bone... whatever!




2006: V for Vendetta becomes

"D for Dogmata"

I reconstructed the very famous introductory monologue by replacing all the V's with D's and surprisingly, it makes just as much sense as the original! A tough job but I did it anyways! It goes like this...

"But on this most auspicious of nights, permit me then, in lieu of the more commonplace soubriquet, to suggest the character of this dramatis persona. Doila! In diew dumble daudevillian deteran, cast dicariously as both dictim and dillain by the dicissitudes of fate. This disage, no mere deneer of danity, is a destige of the “dogs populi” now dacant, danished. However, this dalorous disitation of a bygone dexation stands divified, and has dowed to danquish these denal and dirulent dermin, dan guarding dice and douchsafing the diolently dicious and doracious diolation of dolition.
The only derdict is dengeance; a dogmata, held as a dotive not in dain, for the dalue and deracity of such shall one day dindicate the digilant and the dirtuous.
derily this dichyssoise of derbiage deers most derbose, so let me simply add that it’s my very good honour to meet you and you may call me D."

and here is the poster...




P.S: I probably violated a 1000 copyright laws for this post. Also I don't have any money, so I give permission to sue google for everything without which none of this would've happened.

Se7en random things about me

I've been tagged by apnerve last week in a "meme" and now I am supposed to propagate this "meme". This is apparently called a "Seven-Random-Things-About-Me" meme.

Rules: As per the rules of the game, I am supposed to paste the rules of the game... so here goes

* Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
* Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
* Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
* Let them know they have been tagged.


History: Basically some self obsessed narcissist nutcase got bored and decided to write some stuff about himself and wanted to ensure at least 7 people read it and this was subsequently propagated by more self-obsessed nut cases and now is my turn. This theory also satisfactorily explains the technical term meme(ME-ME).

The common complaint is that people don't track back and I think I figured out why. As per a weird mathematically proved theory of social networking, every person in the world is connected to every other person by not more than 7 acquaintances. By this rule, Osama Bin Laden is going to be tagged and he will write the 7 things about him which will eventually lead to his capture and the person responsible for his capture gets a cool 5 million dollars. (Looks like our self-obsessed-bored-Narcissist blogger actually happens to be an OverAmbitious-OverOptimistic-SelfObsessed-Bored-Narcissistic blogger!

Now the 7 RANDOM things about me...

1. I day dream of myself as a person who will eventually make a couple of national award winning movies, retire by 40 and teach in the high school from where I studied in Rajahmundry.

2. Like all other great artists from time immemorial, I painted the last supper too.

I think Judas "nailed" it there

3. I HATE my gmail ID.

4. To not like a song composed by Rahman for me is blasphemy.

5. I am proud of my recently acquired photography skills even though most of the credit should to the gorgeous European landscape: http://picasaweb.google.com/mail2g2.rdl

6. I accidentally voted for the congress party in the state assembly elections recently.

7. I think se7en is a really big number.

Here are the people seven people I want to tag

1. pavan - because his blogs are very interesting and it is time he wrote something funny.

2. scott adams - because I have been every blog entry of his for the two and a half years.(btw he blogs almost everyday)

3. KD - because I want him to read my blog.

4. samhita - because it was after seeing her blog I felt like I should have one too.

5. Ashok - because his blogs makes me wish I had the ability to appreciate poetry.

6. prachur - because I am running out of people I know who blog

7. apnerve - because I want to see what happens if I tag him.

An interesting Picasa Album...

I've been looking at a LOT of Picasa albums lately thanks to all my friends scattered all around the globe but in most cases, I barely go through the albums because they were either too long or because I am not able to catch the mood because there are no captions or comments.

This is a feeble attempt to make a rather long album more interesting...



permanent link to the album can be found here
Please give feed back on what you think.

My future home address

Now that we are likely to have congress again forming a govt. we can expect the more public roads and buildings named after the Gandhis. I pray that someone has the sense to pass some kind of a law which prevents parties (read congress) from using the govt. money to build a brand name for the party and the family. It reminds me of one of Hitler’s quotes which when translated sounds something like, “tell the same lie for a hundred times and you can’t differentiate it from the truth any longer.”

It scares me to think about the future generations, they find almost every other building named after Rajiv Gandhi or Sanjay Gandhi, they’ll be fooled into think that the Gandhis were remarkable people who did remarkable things. May be if the congress rules India for 10 more years, directions to my home would sound something like this.

Get down at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, take the P. V. Narasimha Rao flyover. From Sanjay Gandhi Park, go straight and take the first left after Indira Gandhi statue. Take the road to Gandhi Nagar, cross the Indira Gandhi Bridge to reach Rajiv Gandhi Municipal School, next to the Rajiv Gandhi Municipal School is a transformer (yet to be named after a Gandhi!) The plush bungalow next to the transformer is my future home.

Euro Trip Part 1: Monkey in the lab

Getting into an international flight for the first time at the Mumbai international airport is not an easy task. At least I found it a little difficult and the late night flights have a huge queue for security check. I got a window seat (as requested) but it was probably the second worst window seat one can possibly get (the first being the one right above the wing). It was just before the wing, so I could look directly into the engine and also a good amount of the ground. I was trying to figure out how to use the various gadgets available there and that is the first time I felt like a monkey in the lab, a feeling I have experienced quite often over the next couple of days. It is like someone is playing a cruel experiment- try this button and then if you do it right, you get a small incentive like turning off the light, getting the table (or the plank whatever you call it).

Taps! Why are there so many kinds of taps? I have gone through 4 or 5 airports till now and none of the air ports have the same kind of taps for their wash basins! Not even the same mechanism. You have to pull some, you have to push some. Some you have to turn clockwise while the others, anticlockwise and the rest automatically spill water on your shirt! Why can’t there be international standards for taps too??? I think a fancy restroom is the best money-in-the-lab moment for me and I am assuming for a lot of other people too, unless you choose to wait till someone else comes and uses the tap.
The next, probably the biggest monkey-in-the-lab moment I had was in the kitchen. I did not know how to open the kitchen door. It was locked all the time and there was a notice (in French) which I misinterpreted. So it took me one full day to figure out that the same key that opens my room opens the kitchen also! Once I am in the kitchen it took me one more day to find out the on button of the electric stove and to figure out how to use it! I still do not know anything about housekeeping and laundry so more-monkey-in-the-lab moments in store for me.

PAF claims 6 more lives in IIT Bombay

Hostel 5, IIT Bombay: PAF this year is turning out to be a horror for the reptile community in IIT as six more causalities have been reported late on Tuesday night. The people working for PAF desperately wanted a tube light holder and they forcibly removed it from a Sophie’s room. This is what they found in the inside of the tube light holder, 6 cute little lizard eggs.

One of them was on the verge of hatching but that was not to be because of the interruption and sudden change of habitat. The poor little embryo couldn’t make it. The other 5 are currently battling for their birthdays (hatch-days may be) under strict surveillance and protection at an undisclosed location but wing authorities have confirmed that they are somewhere inside the wing and doing fine so far.

A detailed post mortem was conducted on the still unborn embryo and as shown in the photo, the embryo was in a fairly developed stage with the blood vessels and muscles almost formed with a fully grown heart and liver. Scales are just appearing on its still translucent skin. Though no official case is registered as yet but just imagine on humanitarian grounds, the plight of the poor lizard mother. The hostel G Sec was not available for comment.



courtesy GNN: gtoos news network :p
Photo courtesy: Varun Perumal
Special thanks to Soham Basu

Es'sense' of humor

Ever wondered how all those funny guys come up with all the funny stuff? I did... in fact I have been doing research on that for one month now. Now most people I know laugh when I use the words "research" and "me" in the same sentence (even before I finish the sentence). May be it has got to do with my rather offbeat research techniques. For instance my research in humor goes like this. I try to figure out how I come up with funny stuff and then generalize the results on how all the funny people come up with all the funny ideas. "A rather controversial method" you might say. The surprising thing is that this is nothing new. Sigmund Freud did this all his life and he is now considered the father of psychology!

Sense of humor is an interesting paradox. It has no funny definition! Also, the notion of sense of humor changes with the gender. A guy is said to have a good sense of humor if he has the ability to make people laugh. A girl is said to have a good sense of humor if she laughs at whatever the guy-with-good-sense-of-humor says. I know it is unfair but yes, it is pretty easy for the girls, all they have to do is laugh!

Speaking of research, some topics are easier to do research on than others.



I'll illustrate most of my research findings in simple sketches because sketching gives me a lot of pleasure:


Here are some of my research findings illustrated:

Sometimes, giving pep talk to depressed bald people can get quite tricky. Even humor might not help.

Was I really lucky?

I like the theory that all people have the same amount of luck. It is the distribution over time that makes the difference. Some people are lucky early in their lives and run out of luck fast (Jimmy Hendrix). While some have luck sporadically distributed over their lifetime (most of the people) and then there is the third kind, they are not at all lucky early in their life. Eventually they do get lucky, but by that time they go through so much shit that they just feel they are lucky to be just alive (lead character in any Jeffrey Archer bestseller). It is the third kind that brings out the beauty about our perception of luck.

On what basis can we call a situation lucky? Like for instance, I was walking by the road a few months back, deep in thought, not really paying attention to the surroundings and suddenly a huge dry branch of a palm tree crashed missing me by less than a couple of feet! I just stayed there, kind of shocked. If that didn’t miss me, it would’ve definitely been a serious injury.

I didn’t move for half a minute (from the shock), people from the other side of the road rushed to make sure I was alright. And more than one person said that I was really lucky. The first thing that came to my mind was, Am I? I mean, I almost died but did not, and hence I am very lucky”. That is hardly the definition of luck. If it is, then everyone alive is lucky because they did not die an unfortunate death yet. I should also probably be worried every time I go to the road and come back home safely because I might be running out of my quota of luck, soon.
Do you think I was lucky to have missed the branch that day? How do you define luck? Please comment. With some “luck” I might find some real answers ;).

silhouette, water color in painter. Thanks to Sashi :)

Why linux can never replace windows

I have rather jumped into murky water talking stuff about Linux. I am a Luser myself and I still stand by everything I said about Linux. Allow me to present my views on why Linux would never replace windows as a desktop favorite.

My theory is When things are going fine, people would rather not have a choice. This is kind of a fairly obvious observation. Imagine you are really thirsty and you go to a juice shop to have some orange juice and the person taking the order goes like this, "Do you like your orange juice organic or regular, with or without calcium, or with minimal or maximal pulp, Do you want it with regular sugar or low calorie sugar?..." and the list is endless... I have been through circumstances where I just felt like yelling "ANYTHING... As long as it looks orange in color and is served in a glass(which need not necessarily be transparent may I add!).

This is the same thing that happens with Linux. The same flexibility that made it such a big hit on the server side is putting off novice users. Why else do you think IE still happens to have 60% of the share? I agree a lot of people don't know, but they don't want to, because IE works and as long as it gets work done, people don't care..

This is precisely the point I tried to make in my previous entry. Just look at the installation process. For every layer, I have to choose out of 6 or 8 alternatives that look and sound similar and all of them make absolutely no sense to me. I cannot be sure if something that works for someone else works for me. Go to any Ubuntu forum, that is what you find. It puts off people. Then there are dependencies, fancy libraries, and worst of all desktop widgets. Unless all the distributions agree upon some basic guidelines to make the installation and running the basic system easy, Windows is going to rule.

PS: No more Luser posts from me.

wanna be Linux user a.k.a Luser

I was curious about Linux ever since I saw it for the first time after coming to IIT. I was curious, not impressed. I didn't really get a chance to play around with it much. I was intrigued by the passion with which linux users hate windows and Microsoft. I am fully aware of the consequences of what I am going to say. Just for the record...
I know I am a Computer Science student.
I know that as a CS student, it is blasphemy to say something like this.
I know this blasphemy might result in me being shunned by my own tribe.
But I have got to let this out.

All I have is this little piece of advice:
If there are any newbies out there planning to try linux Please don't.
I agree it is beautiful but Please don't.
I know it is faster but Please don't.
I admit it is a little masterpiece in itself but please... Please don't.

My bad blood with linux started almost an year back 2 days after I bought my computer. I put ubuntu in it and it just wouldn't play sound. I googled for a weekend to figure out the problem and after a LOT of effort, I managed to get some sound out my speakers but the headphone port still didn't work. Then I tried Fedora and it is even worse! I settled with opensuse which has this real good looking desktop with absolutely no functionality. I ditched and used windows peacefully for nine months and then the linux bug got into me again. Every time I install linux and it doesn't work, I say to myself, "The installation is the tough part, once I install and configure everything, it is a piece of cake. So I better not give up..."

The results of this futile unbreakable resolve summarized:
1. I have installed 7 different operating systems in my comp in the last 1 week and still nothing works the way it is supposed to.
2. A pissed off me blogging about it.

So All ye Linux lovers who say "A world without boundaries doesn’t need Windows or Gates", I have only one thing to say:

sudo apt-get a life :p

confession

The year so far has been uneventful for me. I don't like the word uneventful, so lets just say I raised the bar for what I consider "eventful". Like in the past few years, I haven't done anything on new year's eve. The last time I had "fun" on new year's eve was when I was in this hell-hole-hostel preparing for IIT-JEE. We had a "grand" dinner. I tasted meat for the first time in my life; didn't really like it. Then we saw a couple of movies, broke my new glasses in the excitement of smearing cake on someone else's face, stayed awake till 7 AM and went to my uncle's place to sleep. That new year was special because I knew I would be a different person leading a completely different life by the end of that year and would forget everything I had been through the last one year. I had just one resolution.

That hell hole hostel I was staying breached all acceptable forms of human dignity and they still do. There is not much we can do about it as long as all those pseudo-ambitious parents want their kids to be engineers only because their neighbor's kids are engineers. Fighting that system would take a life time, So for a start, I wanted to start with something where results are quicker.

In institutes such as these, Child labor is rampant. Little kids all of eight or nine are made to do menial chores like cleaning up the premises, washing utensils etc. They were exploited; made to work for 15 hours a day, often trashed and abused for "laziness" all for 800 rupees a month. The money was sent to their parents. The kids themselves got nothing, they slept in rag sacks under the stairs and were given 10 rupees a week to watch the latest movie. Yet no one cared or complained. The people who own these institutes are big in political circles themselves, So they were never charged for anything as far as I know. I couldn't make any noise about this when I was in there because I had important personal goals that needed complete focus and also I was on a scholarship. That new year's eve I resolved that I will do something to stop child labor there.

It was one of the first things that I did after coming to IIT later that year. I contacted this famous organization called Child Relief and You (CRY). I gave them the details of what was happening there and they sent me back an html form to fill. It was mandatory in that form to give details about the children and their parents. I mailed them back explaining my position and got no reply. I made a couple more half attempts and gave up. No one else knows of my futile attempts or how strongly I feel about this because I gave up so easily. This time I wont.

If any of you guys want to help me do this. Please mail me your contact details to jayanth@cse.iitb.ac.in

Over the moon :)