Retrospection

The wrist watch pointed 8:25 in the morning. A number of students , all casually dressed, stood gossiping outside the door. A number in white over the dark brown door wrote F-236. Cacophonous babbling penetrated the wall to fill the corridor. The door revealed a dimly lit room filled with strangers. It was full to its maximum or perhaps more. I wasn't late but a awkward thought of not getting a place to sit occupied my mind. Soon a cleanly dressed man with papers and files in his hand entered the room and I followed him. That was how I stepped into my first ever lecture class in IIT KGP. The first lecture for Section 6 of 2003 entrants was Mathematics I by Prof. M.P Biswal. Later that day we had Electrical laboratory which imposed on us a number of rules and regulations. I was grouped with two students of the EC dept, namely Piya Pal and Argya Bhowmick. These two never stopped hassling on the experiments. That was my first day in IIT.
Fellow students made it difficult to catch hold of books in CL by misplacing and hiding the books. This made me a regular visitor to the CL to get the books from the Reserve Section. Foundry classes were really backbreaking. Though my partner Pavan did a lot more work than me , the ambiance was so arduous that it made me tired by mere standing. Life was moving in a fast pace. Bright faces of few of my school friends in the common lectures elated me.
Wednesday evening NSO classes provided me with a sound sleep in the afternoon after lunch. The only sleepy afternoon apart from the weekends.
Basic Electronics Lab were frustrating every Monday afternoon because of the instructor who was so querulous that we named him "FOX". Not a single day passed when he didn't find a single mistake in our lab notebook. My lab partners Meenakshi and Madhuri used to complete the Lab note book just an hour before the Lab class which made me rush to the hall having half my lunch every Monday. So did they.
Alternate weeks of experiment and tutorial class of Electrical engineering were frightful. Though huge electrical appliances and voltages and current made me nervous working with them but the constant chirruping of Piya and Argya made me enjoy the three hours.
Lab partner in Physics , Jayant kept himself miles away from experimenting. "Arre experiment kya karna, reading taap lo" is what he said every time with a notebook of readings from some or the other classmate for every experiment.
The lab class which I enjoyed the most was Engineering drawing. Scored some good marks in the paper work as well as CAD.
A harsh comment from Prof Anjali Roy before the mid-sem exam made me weep. That's the way I express my grief and contempt. This made me much focussed to score a good grade in English in the first year. I landed up with an A.
I am thankful to Rohit, Mtech dual degree of Aerospace, for helping me understand a topic in maths. "sigma-epsilon method" is what it was called as far as I remember. But alas !!! I made a silly mistake getting a zero which I could have scored full marks otherwise.....
I still remember, I found a boy of my class very annoying and irritating. He came up to every one with stories of the various insects found floating in various items of his Mess food. He is Joydeep Banerjee popularly known as JDB.
My appearance was austere. A typical "behen ji type" or may be fogyish. With loosely fitted salwar suits and oiled hair sticking to my scalp made me look something else apart from an IITian.
My image of being a bookworm followed me from school. Soon next year a new adjective came flying to me from all around. "Phodu" one who excels in some field, and for me it was academics since I never participated in any extra curricular activities. Staying at home I had little scope to join the midnight sessions of practice and rehearsals.

Strength of the class reduced drastically from 88 in the first year to 15 in the second year. Classes were now mostly in our Dept. New faces now occupied the seats in the classroom. My friend Mohona knew a couple of them. Day in and day out the same faces appeared in the class room. Lab classes gave us plenty of time to do our chatting and gossiping. I knew not when these strangers became my friends. And then.....

I'll stop my writing here for I need to keep something stored for my next post.

Aurora

This photo is of course not taken by me ,but couldn't stop myself from sharing it with my blog viewers....
This is AURORA. This is the most spectacular view of the night sky.

Fooled by innocence

It was a Saturday morning. The sky was overcast by gray clouds but wasn't raining. There was a knock at the door. As I peeped across the wooden door , a sliver of a girl stood there all set with a helpless look on her face. The door revealed two shabby and dirty looking girls. Their clothes reflected poverty. Disheveled and rough brown hair indicates that they are deprived of combs for a long time. Tattered and dirty over sized frocks were tipping off their shoulders with the frills hanging unstitched at a number of places. Cracked lips and unclean face with despair in their eyes was enough to draw anyones pity. "Didi, our father died a few days ago. Please help us" said the girl who was taller among them. There faces reflected innocence and helplessness with dirty hands already outstretched for the monetary help.I was experiencing the vicarious sorrow of these two poor girls standing at my door step. I closed the door after slipping in some money into their hand.

A few minutes later when stood in the balcony to have the cool and moist air, I saw these two girls singing and whistling merrily as they went by. I couldn't believe my eyes. A few moments earlier they were bereaved by their father's death and now they were enjoying. A sense of frustration and bemusement filled in me. I was fooled by them. I can never condone these two girls for lying about there father.

A couple of months later these girls were once again at my door with the same filthy appearance and helplessness in their eyes. I was determined to be rude with them this time. As I opened the door, one of them spoke up in a similar morose voice . "Didi, my father has got cancer. Help us" . I was taken aback by the confidence of this girl to tell a lie so convincingly. This time I let them down. Moments later I saw them throwing back coins at our neighbour who happened to be fooled this time and bothered to give them coins. They took currency notes not coins I came to know. Disrespecting money when they need it so badly made me more hostile towards them.

I can never forgive anyone lying about his/her parents or any other near and dear ones just to earn his/her livelihood. There are many other ways to earn money. One can work hard to earn and that is what many people do. I believe that there is one or the other work that one can do according to age and capability. If people become honest and hardworking , there's nothing that can stop a country to prosper. But using unfair shortcuts to earn money is what makes a country sluggish in the quest of prosperity.