3rd Fingers - Chapter 5/8

Disclaimer: 3^rd Fingers do not take a liberal or conservative, right or left or right-center or left-center or center-center, pro-abortion or anti-abortion, pro-Illu or anti-Illu stand on any issue. It may be debated if 3^rd Fingers even take a stand at all. Perhaps, Sometimes… 3^rd Fingers takes a stand-up and it’s a tragi-comic kind of stand. Comic for you and tragic for the characters.

In some parts of the world, facebook.com is the hottest website people know. For me, it is the Training and Placement notice board. Being a state-of-the-art modern engineering institution, we did not really have a notice board. We had a website and like other things in this college, the website was also green. It was nothing but a green background with white notice heading constantly updated on it. Nonetheless, this featureless and photoless webpage was important enough to make our in-campus geeks write innumerable codes and programs about it to make it easier to access for the less adroit people like me who found it hard to click on the name of a website on the nation’s fastest internet connection. As per routine, I was scrolling through the tons (read tens) of notices put up on it in the last 12 hours. Usually the website was very depressing. While numerous companies did come to our campus to select interns, most of them came looking for proficient  coders who could shit algorithms and could write 18 different languages like Java, Python, PHP, C, C++, C#, Objective C and sometimes even the more annoying “D”. For me, I’d learnt the alphabet only in kindergarten and had made the mistake of trying to survive the world just on that. I did know a bit of C but I only knew the abuses of the language. Not the literature. That wasn’t good enough for the companies. They took the Shakespeares of computer programming with them and promised them to pay in silicon. I waited for someone to come who considered English as a language and would be happy to take me. Today was one such chance. Now I am a student of the aeronautical department but in a country where the airplane industry is as canned as its owners, I did not see much hope. So all such ambitions fell upon the broad and suited shoulders of the latest attraction in engineering colleges – Banks! There were many multinational banks that were banking upon the idea of taking in engineering students in their army of overpaid clerks. They said that engineering colleges provide the best brains which can be easily trained to manage financial assets. After all, these are the same students who scored excellent marks in their schools 6 years ago. So what if they have gone through a period of thrashing, getting stoned, electrified, and in some cases even devoid of their dignity and virginity during their initial orientation days in college. They could still create magic in passbooks and could be the CEOs of multinationals tomorrow. I agreed. You always agree with the person who is willing to pay double your worth. After all, Banks, literally mean money don’t they? Now what could be more welcoming than banks? Oil. At my campus, black money (I mean oil companies and nothing else) literally poured in to the campus hunting for people who could abandon home and work tirelessly inspired by the prospect of screwing up the planet (quite literally) and making a lot of money. Why were they paying so much money? 3 reasons:

1. As Al Gore has spent his entire youth explaining to us, the oil reserves are depleting and the planet is going to die. You need a strong motivation to kill your own planet. And what better motivation is there to kill a green planet than green paper?
2. The work which seemed as simple as putting a spoon into the heart of the planet and skimming the lubricant out actually required you to stay away from home for 4 months and work 24*7 (and I mean 24*7). Then you’d get a break of 4 months and whatever would be left of you would be paid for lying at home or in the hospital bed.
3. Oil in our world is found on some of the most revolting places which America likes to bomb often. These are not the places Indian mothers prefer their children to go.

People generally lasted in such jobs for 2 years. After that they usually left with a bag of gold, no hair and nicotine addiction. Oil companies usually preferred hard workers with low grades, such as college sportsmen, athletes and even junior secretaries because God knows they do a lot of running around. Sadly, I qualified in none of these categories. I wondered if any company would take me at all or would I be sent to the silicon valley of India again in some obscure Aeronautical laboratory which would at first involve a long bureaucratic procedure just to prove my existence as a responsible citizen of the nation; and if I survived that then I’d be asked to make excel sheets on the data their engineers had ridiculously collected and not categorized over the years. I had already spent one summer wasting my time on such a project. I did not want to do this again. Last summer I had learnt what I did not want to be in life. That is a big achievement for a 20 year old in an engineering college. But here I was face-to-face with Mr. Reality again and I still did not know what I really wanted to do with my life. I’d thought cracking the most difficult exam in the nation would’ve been good enough to secure a good life for the future. Somehow, there was more to my life than one eight-hour long exam.

3rd Fingers - Chapter 4/8

Issued in Public Interest: People are dying because of heat waves, naxals, derailed trains, plane crashes, SRK’s movies and knowing the way Mother Nature is swinging these days, I’m sure there will be more causalities in the very near future and if not causalities then of course people will die… completing their life cycles. This piece of information is not news to you. Everybody knows it. So all I want to say is let’s not get scared of death. If you are not happy with something, someone, then go ahead and express your dislike. That’s what I do on this blog. And that’s what I will do till the end. After you have read this piece of useless advice if you start doing exactly what feel like and in the process if you get hurt or killed then I am not responsible. You would have died one way or the other.

The time had come for my favorite part of the day. Food. Even though the stuff served in hostel messes would not be classified as food in most countries, leaving out Uganda, Nigeria and Samoa; after 4 years of hostel life food does become a high point in the day. But as in all good stories, the moment you start enjoying something, it somehow goes away from you. We had a new rule in the mess by our Hall management. Now every month we had to log online and fill in a form stating our preferences and quantity in which we’d like to hog. This was done in a view to stop wastage of food, a noble thought. Sadly, the highly competent G. Sec had forgotten some key factors:

·         We had many seniors in the Hall who had outgrown the prospect of filling in large forms with 20 questions just to state what they would eat. These elders were above the concepts like administration, rules and forms. Of course, they were busy people who couldn’t waste time in filling stupid forms. As it is they were finding it hard to graduate on time from the college. They couldn’t waste precious fagging hours for filling food forms. Besides, they were seniors. Who could stop them from eating?

·       There would be a colossal line in the mess every day when every one of the 700 boarder’s food preferences would be checked, marked, conveyed to the mess workers, and finally people would be served colored stuff on their plates. I am no great mathematician but I didn’t find the idea of serving 700 students in 1 hour very feasible. Of course people smarter than me had drafted the rule, so it must’ve been correct.

·       People who did not fill the form and were not allowed to have the colored stuff of their plates were still being charged for the food; while they were emptying their pockets to the local canteen whose sales had had taken a jump now. This was double screwing, but the students of engineering colleges are well adapted to the concept of double screwing. It is one of the first concepts which are taught to us in our orientation days. So people did not really make a fuss about it.

Thankfully, I had nothing to make a fuss about as I had filled in the 7 page form, 1 for each day of the week. I guess I didn’t have much else to do. So I ignored the smell of the dingy green thing lying dead on my plate and dug in to what I’d later call “dinner”.

But food wasn’t the worst part of living in the Hall, I apologise for making it look like a big thing. Nor was it the fact that I was living in a 7’ by 11’ box with a broken regulator and the smallest fan I’d ever seen and windowpanes which were so large that the window never actually opened. There was just a small gap in them to allow insects to come in. I would have liked to close the gap but the windowpane was too large to be closed either. I think my college promoted a green environment. That’s why we were encouraged to pay homage to the small ecosystem in our rooms. After a while, you get used to it. The spider webs help catch the insects and protect from the bright light of the CFL (yes I use a CFL, going green you see). The lizards in the room also help in cleaning up insects. Sometimes even the cat comes into the room when I leave the door open, but it’s of no worry. The cat remains clean. It seems that my neighbor Nitin has adopted this cat. One morning we found out that Nitin had spent the night with the cat in his room. No one knows what happened during the night but in the morning the cat looked adequately hung over. That was not the surprise. From experience we knew that anyone spending the night with Nitin could not expect to lead a normal life thereon. The surprising fact of the situation was that after that night Nitin never let go of the cat. They had formed an inseparable bond and I must say they did complement each other really well. A week after that incident, the cat suddenly disappeared and we found a lot of small kittens in the Hall. I do not want to sound judgmental but the kittens did have an uncanny resemblance to Nitin. Maybe…

But coming back to my point. That was not the worst part of living in my college. These were the things which you learn to accept with time. The thing which actually irritated you was the one which eluded your grasp like intelligent decisions eluded the education ministers in our country. But let’s talk about it in the next chapter. Shall we?

3rd Fingers - Chapter 3/8

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

3rd Fingers - Chapter 2/8

Disclaimer: It is strongly advised that sane people should not read this blog. Vishal Gupta does not agree with any of the views or opinions expressed on 3^rd Fingers. The only reason Vishal Gupta is posting this series is because his cow has been abducted by us.

I stopped by the bathroom mirror to see how I looked. After all, there were pretty female juniors in my society. Like every engineering college, my junior batch had the most gorgeous (and approachable) girls. Somehow only my batch had missed out of the pretty ones. Anyways while I was doing my hair, I saw Joose rush into the bathroom to find a cubicle to puke. This wasn’t a surprise, considering the fact that his everyday dinner consisted of 3 pegs of vodka in the main course and a shot of tequila in the dessert. But it wasn’t his fault. The entire load of Illumination had fallen upon his small head and he hadn’t been sleeping… at all. I wondered about his sleeping timings. He couldn’t sleep in the classes because he didn’t go to any. He didn’t sleep at night because that was the time when he taught the new generation of engineers how to tie thick steel wires to bamboo sticks. And he couldn’t sleep during the day because at that time he was in the market to bring steel wires (and at times even bamboo sticks). He came out of the cubicle and looked at me with eyes which could be mistaken for coal. Burnt coal. He looked thinner than usual and if he didn’t shave soon I would plant a sunflower in the bushes he carried on his face. His half-dead face looked at me. I thought this wasn’t the best time to talk to him about my room’s broken window. I rather put my broken comb in my pocket and rushed out of my Hall.

My college was going haywire with constructions. Supposedly there was some big VIP coming for the annual function and it sent the management into frenzy. For the first time footpaths were being constructed. I had gotten used to the old street where a speeding cycle could go by hitting you and not stop to regret. The footpaths would change that. Rumors were that a helipad was being built and tried for that VIP’s entrance. Somehow, the roads looked cleaner than usual and all the main societies of my college were asked to prepare performances for his entertainment. Of course my society was not worthy enough of being asked for a performance. For one thing, no one expected us to do real work. For another, what would a bunch of book-freaks really do? Go on the stage and recite a poem? Somehow, the administration preferred Salman Khan’s Dhinka Chika to Harivansh Rai Bacchan’s Madhushala. And I can’t say that I did not understand their logic. Also, all the in-campus eateries were to remain closed on the day the VIP was about to come. This meant that either we’d have to eat the horrible food in the mess or we’d have to stay hungry for the day. We only later found out that the VIP came to the function for only an hour. He said his schedule didn’t permit him to stay longer. I think he was just scared from the protests against him in the campus. Most students believed that he should resign from the chair. These were the students who love to make people resign. But not all my college mates are such shallow beings. Most people didn’t give a crap about whether he resigned, or stayed, or became an astronaut. They were just pissed off because the eateries were closed. Where else do you go on a Sunday when even the brains of mess-workers are on leave and they dump the weeks’ worth of leftover stuff in our plates. To add to that, our mess system had become more bureaucratic. But more on that later.

Finally, I got to the meeting and found my team patiently waiting for me. As usual, half the crowd had not appeared. There were the people who always came and did no work. There were the people who hardly came and hardly did any work. And there were people who looked like they could work, but alas, there was no work for them to do. This was going to change. I and Ishenam had plans for this year. We had already conducted a whirlwind of selections and despite my involvement, we’d chosen up a fairly good team of idle to-be-engineers. It was good in a way. Bill Gates says that lazy people always find out the best way to do things. However, that rule did not apply to my team. Here, the lazy people never did any work. They didn’t even show up for the treats! That’s lazy I tell you. After having control of the team I had discovered that unlike other more “dramatic” teams, mine did not have a chance for face-to-face interaction. I preferred a 24 hour video chat involving everyone but Ishenam suggested a round table conference. I agreed. It did sound more feasible. Problem was that though all of us did have computers, we did not have such a big table. We settled for sitting on the ground in a circle. Close enough! After we wasted 15 minutes in settling people down, we began the meeting.