being rohit kaveeshwar

IBM Diaries - The (Uncensored) Indore to Bangalore Migration Diaries - última parte

2014-04-24T10:58:00.000+05:30

“TWELVE MONTHS, YES FREAKING FULL YEAR, SERIOUSLY, ME, THE ROHIT KAVEESHWAR, IBM, IT MNC, BANGALORE, AM I KIDDING MYSELF”

Yeah I exaggerated a tad more than necessary (No, trust me it’s not girly,). Damn, I had to get it out of myself (again, not girly at all). Some would say, I have finally delivered what I started (Yeah, don’t start thinking, what you are about to think). But it is an achievement for me, something I will have never even thought of when I started my engineering.

But Jokes apart, a year in Bangalore, and now the feeling is ‘HOME’.

Looking back to April 2013, I had never dreamt of making it this far, when I came in here first, I thought it would be couple of months and then as usual, my inner self will start to hit me from inside, and I would have leave this city, maybe 6 months or so, 9 months tops.

But then I made it into a full year, trust me when I say that inner self is still hitting me as I jot this.

Amazing part is that I don’t have much to write about it (although I just re-repeated myself in the earlier paragraphs), and it’s true. I have met some very wonderful people, made some great friends and having a very awesome time down here.

Maybe I would stop now… (or I should have long back)

Maybe the migration has completed.

Merci...

Rohit Kaveeshwar

Engineer | Blogger | MBA

IBM Diaries – The (Uncensored) Indore to Bangalore Migration Diaries - Part 3

2013-10-12T01:27:00.000+05:30

BLOODY SIX MONTHS !!!!

I am still getting over the fact that I have been in this city for 6 months & that too “WORKING NON-STOP”. I don’t know how I have made it this far & kid you not it amuses me every now & then. It is nothing less than a “Super Achievement” if you ask my inner-self.

Of-course there have been times when I had this uncontrollable urge to pack up my bags & head home (truth is these feelings occur to me every now & then). But then it is not as easy as it seems. I have a responsibility towards something, and honestly I have to complete it. (my insane & weird friends back home, don’t be surprised by this, I am & will always remain the same kamina I have always been till eternity).

After 6 months, things are getting more familiar, I have started to deduce the kannad language, ofcourse not totally, but tit’s & bits. And don’t worry I am not turning into one, that’s for sure, come what may.

Some things for which I really appreciate Bangalore is the greenery & the weather. You must see the tree laden roads on an overcast day, specially Cubbon Road, it’s a view to die for. Bangaloreans have really preserved their greenery even on the busiest traffic points of the city, for which I absolutely admire them. The unpredictability of Bangalore weather is something even the greatest mathematicians cannot solve. You simply cannot tell when will it start to rain. But then it makes the whole city a treat to roam around. I have almost covered 40% of the city in these 6 months. And some roads with trees on both sides & sometimes even in the middle, makes them a true walk to remember.

Coming to the food & it’s variety, taste & everything over here, I certify that North Indians really beat the shit out of these South Indians hands down. There is simply no way these people can even try to match-up to the mouth watering delicacies of North (Extended to Central) India. For e.g., what is with the over the top use of onions in almost all of the dishes, that include spicy & for some insanely weird reasons, sweets, how the hell do you eat so much onions (sometimes people even ask for extra helpings), & then the Bangalore Chaat, I am sorry to say, but you people make the shittiest chaat dishes ever. Even the traditional south indian food over here lacks taste (I mean it is supposed to be your forte, isn’t it), even a simple North Indian can make a better Idli Sambhar than the South Indians.

And then your transport system, for which I will rate it 6.9 off 10. My roommate once said “These Bangaloreans spend more money on the maintenance of the doors of buses rather than on the maintenance of those buses”. And I have found it to be absolutely true. I agree Volvo buses are the best maintained buses (in some cases even that is false & by false I literally mean false), & your local transport is much worse than the Transport System of Afghanistan.

You people call yourself the pioneers of IT Industry in India. Brothers & their SIsters, let me tell you a plain simple truth “ Almost 90% of the IT Industry people living in Bangalore are not the natives of Bangalore( & for that matter Karnataka or even South India), and on top of that a major portion has come from North, so for the sake of your self-proclaimed-shitty-god Rajnikanth, stop calling yourself one.

Speaking of Rajnikanth, I have never ever understood what is so incredible about this 50-plus-and-crossed-the-expiry-date actor. I once watched his movie & all I could do was laugh at the dumbest work I have ever seen. I once saw a video of a south Indian actor wheelie a tractor, I mean, which human being in his right mind has even thought of attempting such a thing, literally the balls of these south indian film directors.

Coming to your actresses, I really mean every word when I say “ they are the most hottest girls in india I have ever seen”. But you team up these pretty white hot chicks with elderly-moustache-laden-men, & you make the world’s most poorest joke ever performed.

But the friends I have made here are some of the best ones, that included my roommates, colleagues at IBM & some other people who I meet almost on a daily basis. Thanks to you guys I somehow keep the ball rolling.

Enough said, I guess I should leave something for the future posts also.

All in all, crazy 6 months here in this southern city & I still don't know what is what & why is why.

Signing off…..

Rohit Kaveeshwar

Engineer | Blogger | MBA

P.S Macha means Bro, I kind of liked the word.

IBM Diaries – The (Uncensored) Indore to Bangalore Migration Diaries - Part 2

2013-06-24T22:36:00.000+05:30

It has been almost 3 months here in Bangalore. I have still to learn even the basics of their language. The problem is, I do not even have a kindergarden qualification in my own mother tongue, secondly, I for reasons not even known to me, do not know how to write in Hindi. Hence speaking, writing &, if you still care, reading Kannada is I think best left to the insanely weird people of this city. It gives me headaches whenever two people start talking in Kannada, tell you the truth it’s not as simple as a regular chat or talk, it’s much more than that, somehow these people derive some sadistic & orgasmic pleasure in it, & like that’s not all there are others eagerly waiting to join in.

You hear their chatter even for a minute & I am sure you would forget what the hell you were doing (happens with me a lot). Their talk simply blows up your senses, it fells like that suddenly blood has been drained out of your brain.

If you think you would get the context of their conversation by their facial expressions, I can promise you that you are horribly wrong. There is no way in this world, and I am sure even the most advanced facial recognition & neural network systems put together would fail miserably trying to decode their expressions. You simply do not have an idea as to what expression they would give, even the tone in their voice won’t give it away. You think there is some serious talk going on between the two people, & the next second they are foolishly guffawing away and you just stare at them sheepishly. And when you think they are having a laugh or someone is trying to crack a joke, suddenly the whole atmosphere would go tense & there would be dead seriousness all around, & you would wonder what the hell happened to these people.

And then there is the dialect. I am sure for once the Indo-Pak problem can be solved, but trying to decode even 0.01% of their dialect, I would rather trade it with the Gaza-Strip Problem.

All in all, it has been a good 3 months down here. I have made a lot of friends here. But then I miss the Indori. I guess whoever said “you only realize the value of things when it has been taken from you” was absolutely right. I miss my own dialect, & at some point of time I am pretty much sure I was turning into semi-Kannad person, speaking the way they speak, living the way they live, & many other things that are irrelevant or I am too embarrassed to talk about. Although there is still a part of me that hates Indori as well, but that is just when I am too much annoyed with the Indori way of working (Real Indorians will know what I am talking about).

I also miss my college & everything that came with it, the parking lot, the tree under which we have sat our whole way throughout MBA, CCD coffee’s with Surbhi & Vatsala, ICH, Canteen, those drenched classrooms, the Goddamn projector, my Access 125, Chai Bar, “LUKKHEPANTI” (it’s a term invented by us, & we hold the copyrights to it, so no messing around, pay us the royalties right away if you are using it without our consent), & most of all my f.r.i.e.n.d.s. How I so dearly wish we all can be back together. And I sure we will be one day. Or else these & the other MBA posts would keep us in the loop (sorry, being an MBA & working in an MNC is showing it’s effects).

Too early to write(read bitch) more as of now. But I will keep you posted, and please hope that I come as close to my home as I can possibly be.

Singing Off…

Rohit Kaveeshwar

Engineer | Blogger | MBA

IBM Diaries - The (Uncensored) Indore to Bangalore Migration Diaries

2013-05-23T20:47:00.000+05:30

Disclaimer: Okay although it does not need one, but I am writing it out of habit. Also I would like to state that I might write something that would disturb the peace out of South Indians. In my defense, I am a pseudo North Indian, & it is our birthright to despise everything about this region, although we can never have enough of Dosas, Idlis & Vada Sambhar’s for which we are grateful to them for inventing it in the first place. Back to Basics.

Back during my class 9^th trip to South India, I had come to Bangalore. We had to catch an evening train to Khandwa & then back to Indore. Little did I knew then, that this very place after almost 12 years would become “THE KARMABHOOMI” for me (I guess it’s the right spelling, since for me writing Hindi is much more difficult than coding a a+b program, & I hate the latter).

Almost more than a decade, I landed on this soil on 16^th April 2013, a full day flight from Indore via Bombay to Bangalore. At first sight of the Airport, I might have sensed it as a place where dreams do come to reality. I had secured a place in a PG near my Office (Oops, I forgot to tell you, I have joined IBM Bangalore as IT Support). It took me almost 3 hours from Bangalore International Airport to reach my “NEW HOME”. I must say these Kannadi’s however spendthrift they are have done a pretty good job with their Transport System but I don’t know why they have this big grudge about themselves as being the epitome of academic achievements. Okay, you have got an IIT Chennai & a IIM Bangalore, Big Deal. Bitch Please, Indore has the boasting rights of having both IIT & IIM, now try topping that, Buggers.

You see, any person from North India or for that matter Central India (that’s where I come from) is seen as an outcast here, a misfit in this already confused & ill fitting region. Although in Bangalore you would see a lot more migrants working in IT, Finance, Marketing & Management, but still these South Indians will always have the top echelon jobs & they will never allow anyone else to be in that place, however qualified he/she may be. Similarly when two South Indians sit with a Hindi speaking fellow, they will always converse in some Jalebi-Jalebi-Jalebi Language (my version of what they write & speak) with the sole intention to piss of the North Indian. It is one of the very little sadistic pleasure they derive, given that it’s their only source of pleasure. Although it does no harm, & we can take them by their guts even with 10 shots of Tequila.

Unlike North & Central India, here people eat, sleep & play “RULES”. Rules is the single most important thing that unites the people of this region which they quite fondly term it as their mini-Country. Anybody putting even one toe out of the line is treated as outcast for the rest of his life here.

But one department where they disastrously lack is “SARCASM”. Truth be told these people do not like sarcasm, let me put it in this way “SOUTH INDIANS DESPISE SARCASM AS SOME OLD COUPLES DESPISE NEWLY WED COUPLES IN PUBLIC DISPLAY OF AFFECTION”. And that is where we the Non-Southies hold them by their guts, Once a North Indian makes a crude sarcastic remark, there is simply no way possible on earth to come back from it. And, boy I have seen these South people literally breaking into sweat when a Northern guy is in his form. And I promise you it’s a treat to watch.

Coming back to my life, it has been some good 2 weeks here in Bangalore. Apart from a few hiccups & the sort-of discrimination a Northern guy has to face, I think I have managed pretty well. Of-course I hate the pro-rice laden food & miss the chapatis, it’s sometimes good to have some change from the normal routine, unless you don’t make the change a routine. (I am desperately trying not to)

Somehow Bangalore has survived & escaped the South India that we know of. It has broken itself free from the shackles of the coconut-oil cooked food, the traditional Southern Litter customs, the Vada’s, Idli’s & Dosa’s. It has become a global socio-religio-cultural combo of sorts, encompassing every other caste, creed & culture into it. I don’t know what the actual religious system of Karnataka is, but Bangalore has superseded it for sure. It is clean (if you ignore the garbage), organized, simple, the local people do understand and speak a customized english as well as hindi & do not make a face every-time they see a non-Bangalorian. I had once seen a Sardar talking in Kannad & I guarantee you that it is the world’s most poorly performed joke ever. (Peace, We dig people we care about)

As of now I am liking this IT Hub for many reasons but at the same time despising it for reasons untold & best kept to myself.

Hope I make a good use of my time here in Bangalore & do not get into any mess or so to say break the “RULES”.

Peace out, ombre

Rohit Kaveeshwar

Engineer | Blogger | MBA | Employed (atleast for now)

Life around Hues 2012

2012-10-08T21:15:00.002+05:30

Disclaimer: I do not wish to insult, abuse, harass both mentally or physically any person living, dead, associated, not associated with Hues 2012 in any which way possible. I also do not take any responsibility of any damages that incur to you vi z. Mental, psychological, physical, etc after reading this post. This post is an outcome of a promise and after-all “A Promise is a Promise” - Ratan Tata

“There are times in your life when you go, what the hell was I thinking. Then there are times when you go, what the hell was I thinking, bloody hell, this is really awesome”.

- Anonymous, Intelligent, Legendary.

Okay I made that up, but you have to give me credit for it no matter what.

21^st February 2012, the day we initiated Campaign Hues 2012.

For us in the Organizing Committee of Hues 2012, these two phrases were part of dialogues & conversations replaying every now & then. Truth was nobody in the entire Organizing Committee (henceforth OC, as it was the lingo, cuss-word then), Volunteers, and the so-defined extended boundaries of our college had even the slightest idea how are we going to get through with this Hues 2012.

On 24^th February 2012, Me, Rahul Dangi & Kinshuk Chhabra went on a cross-city search for a potential sponsor for our event. End result was the best time we ever had traversing the city and coming back to pavilion without a single hit and uncountable strike-out’s.

This and may other shenanigans made us one of the most-unwanted guys in the Sponsorship market, and to this day the unwanted chill creeps in whenever the question of Hues 2013 is belled.

Truth be told, finalizing the name for the function took 2-3 days. I don’t think anybody has ever gone this far as to pick up chits for the name from total strangers. Yes, the whole group was that weird and believe it or not this weirdness did hold us together for the next 1 month or so.

The biggest buzz word during the run-up was “Hues Adda 2012” situated at the topmost floor of our college building. Kid you not, it was the most happening spot ever to be built inside School of Commerce. During the buildup it was the-place-to-be. We had almost every kind of discussions, meetings, brain-storm’s, and all crazy beneath the sun chat, inside this room. I can’t forget the Charts, Posters, Banners, Schedules, etc that were made there, not to mention the stationary supplies that went into making all these things along with Rooftop cricket, food packets courtesy Kataria, and many more things that makes it special to this day. It really was a thing to boast and feel proud about for OC & Volunteers.

On 29^th February, 2012 we organized a rally against harassment on women folk, I must say it went amazingly well and we had surprisingly huge amount of participation form our college. For the back office it was a test event to judge the enthusiasm for the upcoming annual function.

Somewhere in early March came Holi, and although most of the college was empty, we at Hues were working our hearts and mostly minds out. The Holi we played at campus, probably remains the best ever the college had ever seen which went on till Rangpanchami.

As we neared the Apocalyptic dates (19,20,21 March 2012) everything around us seemed to loose it’s order & sanity. There was haphazard frenzy all over the college campus. Everybody was running around everywhere to meet the deadline which although seemed too close but somehow was far away. Maybe it was the eagerness to actually do something for the college or we had just turned insane with all the late night stays at the college campus, either which way it was enjoyment unlimited. I am not going to forget this as long as there is life on earth.

Just the day before the start of the showdown something extraordinarily weird happened. I cannot to my great conscience explain what went wrong or right, for one it might bum some people and second it is still a well guarded secret and I want it to remain that way, but the timeline of the events so happened shook the whole Hues 2012 from Ground Zero.

I would definitely term it as “Miracle” for the first day of Hues 2012 was nothing less than it, or so to say the Start. The day started with the inauguration by the Vice Chancellor and we were horribly late even by Indian Function Timing Standards. But we somehow managed to squeeze out time for the function. At the DAVV Auditorium, our venue for Hues 2012 things were not going any great either, volunteers & OC members were running everywhere to somehow get the Fashion Show started.

Although it seemed everything was calm at the front but when you are involved with something which is huge and is been done for the first time, things have a unique but simple way to get screwed up. Back office was getting weirder every second with every boy & girl participating in the show somehow putting all the final touches squeezing them inside the small time frame. Kinshuk & Abha had taken control over the proceedings & it was slowly & steadily getting into order. How we managed to somehow hold the show together is something nobody of us know till date, but then it was the Stealer of the day. Apart from the fashion Show there was Singing & Dancing competitions and many other events that although were done at a frantic pace but were some of the best things we ever did. Event the last minute filler, a stand-up dance gathered as much jeer as girls walking the ramp. This and many other small events made the whole Day 1 of Hues 2012 memorable.

Day 1 of Hues 2012 was something nobody of us could ever forget and it gave us confidence to sail through the other two days with ease. Frankly, it was hard to believe how we made it through.

After all that we endured on Day 1, Day 2 seemed a far easy task at hand. It was Open University and hence we had to put our best show ever. The day started with Skits from IIPS, a AIDS awareness campaign while IMS put up a mythological thriller. Both of them got huge applauses from the audience and we knew the day would be a piece of cake to ravish. Next came the Photography Event and out of almost 50+ entries Tanmay Agrawal of SoC bagged the winner with his breathtaking view of Rajwada.

The Documentaries & Short Films were close match to the potential in the university. We had almost some 20+ entries in the department and each & everyone was a treat to watch.

Indore University Rocks, this was justified by the two bands that played in the Acoustics Competition and it was awesomeness spread all over the auditorium. We had seen the best days of Hues 2012 and all we were hoping was the finale would be more than we can ever imagine in our minds, and we did not knew it then but at the final day we "Exceeded Expectations" like anything.

The final day started with a quiz competition and some of the high IQ minds of university battled it out with some tough shots from Praneet & Shabbir. In the end IIPS was the clear winner with we following a close second. The second attraction of the day was 5 legged hurdle race, which actually stole the whole event along with Chotu Cricket, a miniature version of the already small Gully Cricket and the War of paints where you could fire paint bullets at your enemy with the meanest of guts, I got hurt in the process and had a sore shoulder for nearly 3 days. But the whole day panned out great, it was mission accomplished for us. The whole month long planning & execution had finally come to end.

The cherry on the cake was the DJ party at the new campus, we had organized a full blown after hours jam packed session for the whole college as a Thank-you note for bearing with us through all the preparations and struggles we had gone through, and after all the hectic, sleepless and food-less days we endured, everybody certainly deserved this more than anything else. For Hues OC & Volunteers it was like getting high without alcohol, cannabis or marijuana. That night we danced like there would be no tomorrow. The tiredness of a long month was showing it’s effects and even though we could not go late night, but the time we spent was something nobody would ever try to forget it.

What started as just a crazy thought had finally taken shape. The whole college had come together as a family to be a part of the spectacle, for which we had nightmares of the cruelest nature, it was feat rarely achieved. The testimonials from other college poured in with lots of appraisals and appreciations, for this was the first ever coming from SoC and we had done a damn good job at that.

Truth be told, Hues 2012 was the one time it felt like we are doing something meaningful for our college and hoped the legacy would continue (although the odds suggest something else) but all the preparations for the event was where the action was.

The whole buildup to the event, Hues ADDA, the late night stays, meetings, sponsorships, lunch at ICH, technical discussions, arrangements, driving throughout the city for stationary items at cheap prices, naps, cricket, the holi, banners, seminars, the Rally we took out to protest against cruelty to women, and many other things that went into making it the best ever College Annual Function. It goes without saying that even trying to delete it from our memories would be hell impossible.

I salute everyone who was directly or indirectly involved in making this a success and just one word -

“RESPEKT” (yes, with a capital ‘K’).

And as far as Hues 2013 is concerned, it’s better not to say anything…

Over & Out

Rohit Kaveeshwar

P.S I finally got my certificate of OC Membership on 2^nd October, 2012.

MBA Odyssey - Epilogue

2012-08-30T19:31:00.000+05:30

I think there is no need of a disclaimer here and all that was to disclaim has already been done in the 4 earlier posts. However I would say this is going to be an emotional read. So gear up your tear buds (especially girls).

For me MBA has changed everything for the better. Not only I have had the privilege of attending 2 years in Indore University which, apart from the studies, is something everyone longs for in their Academic life. But then I have made friends, which I am sure would be there till Apocalypse.

These 2 years were possibly the greatest years of my Academic life. I have had the awesomest entertainment in every which way possible.

Maybe I am undermining my engineering days, but the equations still holds, my 4 years of Engineering can never compete with my 2 years of MBA although engineering was totally different from MBA and on a 10 point scale engineering scores 9.4 while MBA straight 9.8 (6 years of student life has taught me one thing, you don’t get full marks any which way).

When we started our MBA we used to adore our college for all the facilities it provided us, but as the time passed we literally & figuratively owned the college for what we had given it and what it offered us apart from the rain soaked classes and that measly projector which worked on it’s own free goddamn will. Coming to think of it I am more than certain Ganesh Utsav was something no UTD ever celebrated and we were the pioneers, not to mention Spardha, our annual sports week along with UTD Sports.

The one thing we have achieved, and I am certain everybody in School of Commerce will agree, is Hues 2012. I cannot even start to describe it. The whole event had become the talk of University’s Takshashila & Nalanda Campus. And I am proud to be associated with it as Organizing Council Member (though there is no written proof to certify it as I pen this). But it still remains as some of the best days of my life.

Coming back to our glory days. Life is all the more amazing when you have such bunch of friends around you. Whether you want it or not but time flies like a rocket fuel powered Formula 1 cars speeding on Singapore Road Circuit. For us the 2 years went away more quickly then they came and we had the best-of-the-world life at campus. All the time we spent together were nothing less than a Fiction, told & lived right out of a adventurous book.

For the most part Me, Surbhi, Vatsala, Rahul, Tanmay, Akshatt & Suyog have had the best times when it came to enjoying long hours of caffeine & chats at CCD which had become our home along with the parking lot where we spent more time than we did in classes, watching every other stupid movie even though we knew it was bucks down the drain, going down to ICH after almost every lecture, that is if we ever attended any, bunking early morning lectures as a ritual,, Tanmay, Me & Akshat trying to study late night’s at Rahul’s, Suyog, Me & Akshat’s Smack Down on Play Station, all the outings we did right from Khajrana till TIncha Falls, the preparations for Ganesh Utsav and the 10 day long pujas/aarti’s (and I am not talking about girl’s here although that would be much more awesome if you get the sneer), Internals which we screwed up big time, Final Exams, VIva’s and many other things which I practically lived and some which I don’t know how the hell they happened.

The two years down at the University was something none of us would ever forget or even start trying to. It was of-course not what we hoped for, but also it was more than we ever dreamt of.

Almost 3 months after our MBA, things have settled down quite easily, although every-time we meet up, the memories come back like torrents.

Getting on with our lives after MBA, Rahul has finally found relief from driving at break neck speeds at 2 PM after college to his office and is now well settled with it. Although the constant urge of studying something extra still get’s on him but I wish he gets out of it.

Surbhi got engaged in 3rd Sem and is eagerly looking forward to her marriage at the year end. I am pretty much sure she would make a damn good wife. Interestingly Surbhi & Rahul are taking their wedding vows almost on the same day and which has made everybody else crazy wondering how are we supposed to be at two weddings at almost the same time. Me, Vatsala, Suyog, Tanmay & Akshatt have half thoughts for literally smacking them for this treacherous act.

Vatsala has gone back to her home Kanpur and is dangling between jobs and further studies. She is still that nagging old child who never picks up her phone atleast for 7-8 rings, I still wonder how can she resist not picking a call along with that “high pitched ringtone” not to forget her famous alias “Bhaiyaji.”

Tanmay too had his father’s business to attend to and is doing well in it. Last time I checked he is going places with it. Finally “Seedha Bachha is not so Seedha anymore” and his handwriting is something not even a medical shop owner would under stand, but then who cares.

Akshatt had this whole idea of going into film making, he even made a short film which got showcased at our Annual Function, just for fun and to commemorate the 2 glorious years of MBA we made an short film on ourselves in which we acted, produced & did everything else, although the second part is where the action is. I think he would make it big someday.

Suyog, our priority Junior, ofcourse he never treated us with Sir or Madam is in his final year and though he hung out more with us than his classmates is missing us more than ever. I hope he finds a hot junior ( & dibs on that girl, shotgun till eternity).

As far as I am concerned, I’m still hunting, although I did a 2 month stint at a call center but things did not work out and had to leave. Nobody has still stopped ruffling me for not picking up calls on my birthday, Sorry guys I was working night shifts. I hope I find something more enjoyable and serious (however oxymoron it may be).

Hence it was it, the two beautiful years we all spent together climaxed and we would be thankful to every one of us for being crazy and supporting everybody’s weirdness.

These 2 years would have been damn boring if it was not for you guys.

It was Legend-wait-for-it-Darrrrrry.

Signing off from MBA

Rohit Kaveeshwar

Engineer | Blogger | MBA

P.S Just so you know, Han Shot First.

MBA Odyssey - Act 4

2012-06-09T23:21:00.000+05:30

SPOILER ALERT : Pardon me if I get a little emotional, although I am not, but then this is the last semester & you ought to give me some relaxation in rules. Secondly, yes this time there are no DISCLAIMERS, although they come as a party package.

There are never enough emotions & sentiments to describe the final semester. And when it being the final 6 months stretch of your entire college life, every word falls short best describing it.

MBA 4^th Semester was one such thing, the final one, the last, the ultimate one. It was the time to remember all those crazy incidences, the cry’s, the laughs, the tensions & everything else we all shared throughout the 2 years. It was time to remember those things that have defined us, things that have made us, & things that have left us for good.

Although the semester started with a cheerful note, we were not very much up-to it, reason the aforementioned 4^th Semester. I mean which boy/girl has ever been so much as serious in the final semester, I know there are exceptions, but then they belong to minority community. The sane ones bunk the final days of education, while the insane ones try to take as much education as they can grab, like it’s a endangered species.

Our sem started in 2^nd week of January, it was still chilly so the question of attending classes was literally out of question. I don’t think I even crossed the parking lot gate the whole month for once. Mind you that gate is always locked so you have to jump over it or walk around it to enter (it was a platter full of hardship, not to mention hazardous, if you get the satire). And the parking lot by then had become the hottest playground of our college with laughs, cry’s, angers, plays, duels, settings, planning, gossips, etc being the chartbusters. I bet no amount of in-class-studies can ever match the happenings outside the class ( & the college).

The fist week of February came with the Internal Exams 1, and there we had it all sucked up. Tanmay, Akshat, Rahul & Suyog had gone on *** Trip( censored for parental obligations) for 10-12 days just before the exams began. So it was up-to Me, Surbhi & Vatsala to somehow make it through. I don’t remember outstretching even a minute more than half hour in these good-for-nothing time-wasters with Surbhi & Vatsala following suit, all thanks to WhatsApp & Facebook. Being the senior-most-class & on top of it, the most-respected & revered guys in college had it’s privileges and we could always sneak in our phones & tablets, although we had been doing it since Sem 1, but I just thought to mention (read BRAG) it.

February & March hold a special meaning in my MBA, reason HUES 2012. I was part of a small yet talented & the most lunatic, weirdo gang who were responsible for all the planning, managing, organizing, coordinating, sponsorships, technicalities & other things that goes into making a Function a College Annual Function. It was one of the awesommest (yes, I made that word, courtesy Barney) and the most Legen-wait-for-it-Dary(again Kudos to Barnicle) 1 Month I have ever experienced. For this whole month, we went home just for catching up some sleep, otherwise right from morning till late night every waking second, was spent at College & the HUES ADDA 2012. I remember the trips around the city chasing sponsors with Nishit Sanghvi, Rahul Dangi, Kinshuk Chhabra, Yash Porwal, Ragini Maheshwari, Wincy Dhaliwal, Harsh Goyal, Saurabh Shastri, Shubhankit, Praneet, Mehul Dubey, Ankit Kataria, Abha Pathak, Kartik, Monish, Ravindra, and many others. The whole organization and the lead-up to it was something to die for. The OC Meetings, Rooftop Cricket, Lunch at ICH, Canteen & Khalsa Dhabha, not to mention food packets sponsored by Kataria, Stationary Items, Documentations, Poster & other art-craft materials made up at The Adda along with many other things are some moments I would cherish my whole life. The Function was to be held from 19-21 March 2012 at DAVV Auditorium & to say that the whole event was a big success & talk of the university would be an understatement if not bragging & showing off. Truth to be told, it really was.

Day 1 opened with a Fashion Show where our very own Vatsala Mishra was Crowned Miss Hues 2012 ( “Mis-use” courtesy Rahul Dangi). It was followed by many other events which gained huge amount of cheers from everybody. This enthusiasm was carried on till the Last day where it all concluded with A Late Night DJ Party at our Newly Built Campus.

Also here I must confess on 18^th March 2012, Sunday, and this goes out from all the people connected to HUES 2012, that we never had a single clue as to what had to be done the next day. And to elaborate this I promise to write all that happened in minute detail as possible once I am finished with this.

Coming back to the business end of MBA, the hangover of HUES 2012 was not over especially for me or for anybody in the whole college. It was by far the best the University had ever seen coming from School of Commerce, & I am AND will remain proud of this achievement forever in my life.

Early April again got me into trouble with Internal Exams 2. To be utmost true I had not even set foot inside the classroom since the build-up to HUES 2012 started let alone studying. I was more than tensed along with Surbhi & Vatsala since we never made good use of the 1^st Internal, for Akshat, Tanmay, Rahul & Suyog, it was there last chance and they had to make it count by hook or crook, same was the case with me & the two ladies. I on the other hand was not even in the mood, the whole after-burns of HUES 2012 was still not over, and I along with Kataria & everybody from OC had a hard time staying focused on the exam. At the end we somehow managed to score some decent marks with our last hope, and as is always the case, the Final Assignments & Presentations.

Late April saw us buzzing through our Presentations & Assignments at break-neck speed with almost no attention to what they really were. I forgot to mention the Major Research Project which we had to submit. It was assigned to our Statistics faculty from previous semester and it goes without saying that it gave us headaches & cardiac arrests whenever we had to deal with him. But then, I salute Vatsala & Surbhi, for the daring they showed in his office discussing the TITLE of the MRP. It was frenzy all over, but we came through & I must thanks Sonam Rajchandani, Ankita Nagar & Manisha Ojha for all the help & fun we all had together in this last months (they were with us since Day 1, and I should have mentioned them, but better late then never).

Towards the end of April & invariably our last few official days at college, we all, & that includes all of them, had some of the best moments in college. It was the time filled with emotions, sentiments, laughs, smiles, pranks, craziness, madness, weird goof-ups and many more things for which really there are no words I can ever write. It was the final time we all were together before exams & we wanted to live every part of it to the fullest. It was that time when everybody was treated as equals & all the past rivalries, that existed, washed off from our minds & hearts. You really can’t define them and they are best left so.

7^th May, 2012 marked the start of our Final Semester Exams. And if I were to really put those moments in a single line, “ The best time of your Academic Life”. Yes, this aptly describes it. All those Mittal Night Classes, Bhansali Noon Classes, Whatsapp, FB Chats, photocopies, notes, candle light studies, PS2, Chit-Chats, Calls, Texts, everything, were just moments to live & studies took back stage for the whole 1 month. The last paper was on 21^st May, 2012, and I assure nobody in this world would be more happy than us to finally come out on the other side of the tunnel. That day was custom made for us and I might as well get into the record books for not taking Extra Sheets for the whole of my 6 years of college life right from B.E. till MBA.

The college life ended with Comprehensive & MRP Viva’s on 23^rd, and after a day that included fatigue & all those moments of happiness we concluded it with Bakes & Shakes with all the delicious food imaginable and Death by Chocolate. Not to mentions the shutter-bugs freezing the moments of friendships for years to come.

Akshat had planned a short movie to be made on our crazy days titled “Exams Hangover”, my first venture, presented by Parking Lot Prod actions. The joy of re-living those moments while shooting for the film were the craziest days of my life and I give it up to Akshay, Tanmay, Suyog, Mittal, Surbhi, Vatsala & Garima for contributing towards it.

And hence the end was there. MBA (FT) had come to a closure. The days we lived & the days we missed will live in our memories till Death plays it’s part.

Signing Off from MBA

Rohit Kaveeshwar

Engineer | Blogger | MBA

P.S. There would be an Epilogue to this & as promised HUES 2012.

MBA Odyssey - Act 3

2012-05-28T23:40:00.003+05:30

Disclaimer : Nothing new here. Everything pretty much remains the same since the last post. The one thing I reiterate time & again that all this really happened and things mentioned here are not to hurt anyone’s sentiments. This is just a log of all that happened during my MBA Life.

End of the 2 month long break which was taken by our Summer Internship marked the start of the Final Year of MBA.

Of-course the whole Internship/Summer Training was a big joke but doing nothing for 2 months would have taken over your mind, so the internship was the only respite from boredom & summer slam.

3^rd semester started on 18^th July 2011, with Murphy’s Law playing Poker face with me.

Although we had no intensions of starting that early but thanks to Rahul & hell lot of persuasion from Surbhi on me, I was forced to attend the very first day of the semester.

The one thing that I like about July, apart from it being my birthday month is that it brings the most awesome season of the year. - RAINS. The whole university campus was lush green & there was that mild coolness all over with a blanket of fog surrounding the campus every morning. Skipping early morning lectures was not a big task. Although the first lectures of the day being Statistics & Financial Management were the other official reasons to do so.

Early in the semester came my 24^th Birthday and I had a great time with Surbhi & Vatsala at CCD with Irish Coffee, Brownies, Ice Tea, Frappe’s and not to mention the gifts specially brought for me all the way from Delhi. And then late in the evening there was a big showdown at Akshay’s Dharamshala with cakes, coffee, sandwiches, burgers & pizzas. In the end I must’ve had nearly 6-7 cups of coffee the whole day, and need I say more.

Come August and somehow our bunks turned to Road-trips in & around Indore, driving to places like Kajligarh & Tincha Falls and many other known & unknown locations during rains was truly an amazing experience. I still remember celebrating mine & Tanmay’s birthday over Cakes & Corns at Tincha Falls & driving through the heavy downpour on the way back.

Our very vast course included a very interesting subject, Insurance & Risk Management, taught by a super-dreaded-University-wide famous teacher. Although we never went on the wrong side of him but we were not sure we were on the right side of him too. Worth mentioning was Vatsala, who almost gave the guy a momentary lapse of reason. And I suppose that’s the only time I have seen her crying so intensely. Of-course, there is one more incident but that can rest in our memories (and after this I am getting a big phone call with all the cuss words).

On the other hand we had turned Seniors and acquired the-most-senior-class-in-college tag. Me, Akshat, Tanmay & Rahul used to eagerly scan the parking lot for any signs of hot chicks, but we didn’t find many & as a result it turned out to a rating-chicks-off-10 game to pass time during breaks, for which Vatsala & Surbhi never forgive us.

One of the juniors Suyog Jyotishi, a childhood friend of Tanmay instantly got the medal of “Junior with Preferential Benefits”. He used to hang out with us more often than his classmates, ultimately being one of our esteemed group member. Ganeshotsav, the very last one to be organized by us was more than just a 10 day affair, it had lots of emotions, devotions & sentiments attached to it. And the last day of Ganeshotsav, a rain filled Parking Lot & Music from Rahul’s Extra Loud Car-Speakers turned the whole thing in a Mini-Open-Air-Discotheque.

Early in September we celebrated Teachers Day & an Induction for our juniors. While we showed our best performance in front of our teachers who knew us from head to toe by then, the Induction got many eyes turning with the best ever in college, actually the only ever too.

Late September came the Freshers Party, all the organization & management for the same was entitled to us and I don’t think we left any stone unturned, for it being our last Freshers Party ever. And it turned out to be something extremely different with my friends & classmates getting to know my off-the-hook-side (I am not going in details, maybe the comments will). But then I don’t regret it much & thought it was for the better, silencing some of our anti-bodies .

The 5-Day getaway to Dubai with Rahul Mittal turned out to be an essential stress buster for me since I hand’t had a break for a long time (the story needs another blog, so I am not digging this one either). One thing that stood apart in our trip was the “SLAP” from Surbhi to Vatsala right in the middle of a road, when they were coming to see us off, since they missed the train and cursed me for it. I do not have a first hand account of it, maybe they both better explain & in any case I take Surbhi’s account true (@vats I have to give it to her, she has seen a lot of you).

October went off quickly as it came, and I don’t think we had much of chance to rest with the 2^nd Internal Exams, which to say in true gentleman’s words was just a wastage of time, and not attending a single class & giving a damn to studies as always, end result was we screwed it big time. The other attraction was our last SPARDHA - Sports Week. Spirits were as usual high for the event with all the planning, training sessions,etc in the build-up. My class did put up a good performance but we never went up to the mark.

As we entered the dreaded November, the final internals, assignments, presentations, project reports and all those crap started hovering above our heads. The whole month went packed with almost every subjectr having at-least a presentation or late-into-night assignment. One thing which I discovered, & which Surbhi would also acknowledge, was the umpteen use of Facebook & Whatsapp for regular updates on assignments. I still think we both have even shared one or two answers through them.

December was the finale of this long, hectic & fun-filled semester. The exams which started early went on deep into the month. Nobody was even half as interested in this exams for reasons unknown but still widely accepted. Me & Surbhi were still struck in our 2-Hour Schedule & the sunshine during the cold & chilly winter days was much more lucrative than sitting in an room scribbling nonsense on answer sheets.

The exams ended with a Final Comprehensive Viva which went late into evening & me, Surbhi & Vatsala spent some awesome time at our evergreen spot, CCD, Navlakha.

Two things worth mentioning at the end of semester, first Vatsala Mishra’s placement in E-Clerk(s) in the very first attempt which is a story worth writing about & I give her all the liberty to write it especially after I wrote The Chick-n-Pox Story. And second, the day she was to go back home, I sincerely swear to God I have not seen or experienced such a thing all my life, it still remains undefinable & utterly shocking to me (and in this blog). Seriously I cannot even start in defining those moments when she had to get into a sleeper coach. She literally created havoc in that S5 coach & all I could do was sheepishly stand there watching all her antics.

But Me & Surbhi after spending 1 ½ years with her have been accustomed to it, & jokes apart it does not give us any kind of attacks, however strong they may be now.

Hoping we have the Last & Final semester with the same vigor & zeal as the last three.

Signing off….

Rohit Kaveeshwar

Engineer | Blogger | MBA (yes, I am one now)

MBA Odyssey - Act 2

2012-03-24T23:15:00.001+05:30

Disclaimer : All Disclaimers stand as they are from MBA Odyssey - Act 1. Needless to say, this time, and especially this time I am damn serious about them. No messing around.

There are times in your life you wish you would not have lived (or imagined aliens burning you to ashes). This semester was going to be close to what it feels like eaten up by a vegetarian dinosaur.

~~Somewhere in late December, words were exchanged, swords were drawn, lines were defined & crossed over. And then it all started.~~

2^nd Semester started in early January, it was bitter cold & possibly the most inhuman state imaginable for lectures (even for schools & crèches, etc). Yet, we were required to be present for 4 days a week in teeth cluttering chills at 8:30 AM for 2 back to back lectures of Quantitative Techniques on Monday’s & Tuesday’s, and Financial Management on Wednesday’s & Thursday’s. The only respite being Friday’s & Saturday’s when we had late classes (still inhuman at 9:30 AM).

Coming back to business, sincerity levels were on opposite sides when it came to attending lectures & organizing bunks. I had always pledged myself in start of a semester that I would be as close to sincerity as possible. But then there are things which grab front seats before studies & other academia’s. Even though me & my friends were attending lectures, which included the 8:30 AM classes ( I nearly missing them more than half the times), things were not sort of clicking in.

January went more quickly than it came. As we entered February, the weather started to soothe down but still we never had a respite from the early morning cold & lectures. The only good thing that happened was UTD Sports Week 2011. It was the time when the whole college came together to play against other University Departments & Colleges. We were sort of under-performers when competing against seasoned players, but we still managed the campaign as good as possible. Somewhere in the middle came the first Internal Exams for the 2^nd Semester, & as following a tradition or so, me & my friends screwed them badly (I had broken records of “failures” in FM & QT).

Come March & the main attraction was ICC World Cup 2011 to be held in Indian Sub-continent. And even though we thought Indian team never had a chance, the whole dynamics changed in a months time. During the Group Stages we had our 2^nd Internals. And as the tradition stood, adding to it good performance by India, this one, like always dropped in flat inside our stomachs. I remember me & Vatsala were at Surbhi’s house preparing for QT and I was having a severe headache with all those Transportation Problems. Then it was the late night classes at Mittal’s house along with Tanmay & Akshat in which for the most part me, Akshat & Tanmay were just hanging out and Mittal was too deep into studies, a hard work for a measly Internals. In mid-March the aforementioned war entered into it’s second, and the worst ever, phase. I would not take names, but it happened right before my eyes, so I am writing about it. The other highlight of this month was the Panauti Day I shared with Akshat, Rahul Mittal, Surbhi Bhansali & Vatsala Mishra.

April saw our religious sport taken to much higher level then we ever imagined. We had a Quarterfinal with Australia, Semifinal with, the biggest opponent, Pakistan & the Final against our raindrop neighbors Sri Lanka. My whole group had painted our faces in tri-color to show support to Team India on the eve of the Final, and like that was not all we had even stayed the whole day like that, attending lectures & everything. The day ended with our QT Internal marks handed out to us ( I scored an egg) and then we hung out at CCD, where the final battle lines were drawn for the war which ultimately led to a truce & Ceasefire. Everything came to a standstill on the night of the final, India in the most stylish way possible had won the World Cup, add to it Sachin’s long desired dream & the event was held India, well I am most certain whoever was alive at that moment must have been feeling themselves as blessed.

After the Mad-Mad World Cup Fever, Mid-April saw our final Internals, the one where we had to complete assignments, projects, presentations, etc etc etc. I take the liberty saying that all these things really do not matter a lot, but then MBA is meant to be doing things that well, to put it in words, nothing to do with the practical aspects of life.

As we approached May, the weather had turned unbearably hot. The external exams were approaching & we had to get our butts in place for it. In the midst of the exam schedule, things turned from bad to worse for Vatsala (and then for me too), she had to go to Kanpur for her brother’s wedding, and somewhere in the middle she caught Chickenpox which not only freaked her out, but gave me a sleepless night just before the dreaded paper of QT. Hence, the story of Chick-n-Pox story was born.

The Viva-Voce at the end of the Exam Schedule was a breather and me, vatsala & surbhi ended the semester with nice cups of coffee at CCD (our favorite hangout place and would-be-de-facto-college).

After the exams we had our 2 Month long Internship break. Stories of which are more crazier than anyone can ever imagine.

Signing off….

Rohit Kaveeshwar

Engineer | Blogger | Soon-to-be-MBA

MBA Odyssey - Act 1

2012-02-07T20:25:00.000+05:30

Disclaimer: Now this one is serious to the core. Cutting the crap and getting to the basics, I would say, I am writing this just for fun’s sake, & I do not have any intensions of insulting, abusing, or anything thereof to an individual or a group or anybody living or non-living. This is just a plain, simple post(s). Nevertheless I am not entitled to any kind of litigation or liability for any damages, etc that may happen to anybody through this post(s). And I am making myself very clear on this point (I have many different Life Insurance Policies, even my MacBook is insured against damages).

It was 18^th July 2010, I was at Saurabh’s place for his in-house birthday bash. It was a great feeling, me & my friends from engineering had some very good fun that night. I was over with all the Entrance Tests, Counseling, Interviews, etc, and had vowed never to go anywhere near them at-least till eternity or till I had a tombstone saying “R.I.P Rohit Kaveeshwar, 21^st July, 1987 - (I would have put the date if I knew better)”. I had made a decision of going in for MBA(FT) in Indore University, declining ITM Bangalore offer outright (full story on “The Late Edition Playoff”). I had paid the fees some 5 days back and was relieved of my decision (I am kind of bad at them). But little did I knew then, that this MBA was going to be something more that just fun & play, and for some moments, a big warehouse of gossips, emotions, misconceptions and some really big wars. I vowed it right there and then that this, like my Engineering Days is going on my blog.

Tuesday, 20^th July, 2010

Just a day before my 23^rd Birthday, I started my second innings. It was something I had well, not dreamed of in this setting (thats for the college part), and for some part always dreamed of it in more than one ways.

It was 9 AM as I reached School of Commerce, DAVV Takshashila Campus, Indore to kick-start MBA(Foreign Trade). I was at the parking lot and I saw the girl from the counseling night (ref: “The Late Edition Playoff”). Thanks to my short term memory, I could not remember her name, actually, on second thought, I never got a chance to ask her (she was all blabbering non-stop for the 30 min we were together). Anyways the college started and first up on the list was Accounting for Managers(just for the sake Accounts, and in MBA it’s good if you use long crap names that absolutely mean nothing at all). The faculty, well I should not say this, but it crossed my mind that he must have a feminine side to him.

So we were on the introductions and when he heard my background he was taken aback, “Really, Engineer, Computer Science!!!!!!”(yes, complete with the 6 exclamatory marks). I on the other hand got speechless and could only produce a sheepish smile thinking about the day I had that wretched counseling (and could not get the girl’s name, I almost dozed in the intro’s). Instantly I knew, I would be getting this more often than anything. Later that day we had a class on Global Business Environment (MBA & it’s terminologies), the faculty was someone I found to be interesting, she had the frequency configuration of an engineer (& she gave a good smile when I introduced myself as a engineer). And in reply I made a wise-sarcasm-filled statement and looked at Vatsala Mishra, and she was laughing probably imagining the same counseling night ( I got her name after failing thrice on the introduction, I am a complete idiot, no wonder she would kill me when she reads this).

All in all, first day went great, I had made friends with Vatsala Mishra, a girl from Kanpur (Kanpuriya, this from my side, one more stab in my ribs), Apurva Purohit, a pharmacy grad, and some more names I could not remember for the first day.

Our MBA was divided into 4 semesters of 7 subjects each, there was 100 marks for a paper that included 40 from internals & 60 from externals or end-sem exams. We would have 3 internals, 2 theory & 1 presentation, it was best 2 off 3 for 40 marks. Moreover passing marks were 30 off 100 ( 5 less than engineering, 1 pt. to MBA). It was literally a piece of cakewalk (or it was what I thought of it).

A month into the semester I had made friends with a large no. of people, there was Vatsala, Rahul, Tanmay, Surbhi, Gurpreet, Amol, Rahul Singh, Anuj, Ankit, Khan, etc etc etc. We all were having a great time. Half a month into the semester, we had a chance to apply for inter department transfer, although I failed miserably after applying for MBA (e-Comm) at IMS, thanks to Surbhi for cheering up my mood whole way through the counseling. Due to a 3^rd round of internal counseling we had one more member in our already large group, Akshat, a school friend of Rahul & Tanmay.

Late in August, came the first internal, I was hoping to have a fresh start, since I had screwed up every other exam in engineering. It was a 1 hour paper with 2 questions of 10 marks each. I used to complete the paper in 30 minutes or so except for accounts. When the results came, I was jumping with joy, not only was I scoring in the range of 15-17’s, but I was more efficient than this guy who used to write 4-5 sheets, what I managed in 2 pages. For the first time I was taking pride in being an Engineer. Of-course I scored 3-4 in Accounts but in others like French, GBE, Economics, EXIM, WTO, Org. Behavior I was efficiently successful. It was a feat rarely achieved.

The semester went on without any hiccups from Sept. - Oct. In between I failed miserably in the 2^nd Internal, from15-17’s I hit 7-8’s in every other subject. And the culprit this time were the outings, bunks, parties & every-college-student-screw-up-exam-recipe. Although the friendship we all developed with each other was something I was going to cherish for a lifetime. Especially Me, Surbhi & Vatsala were the so called “Lukkhe’s” & used to go out on every other opportunity to CCD, Tito’s, Dominoes, etc. There were times when we had reached a food joint well before it’s opening hours & CCD Navlakha topped that list. Also we, and as is always the case with me, had developed a kind of revolt-led-relations with the faculties. We organized the first ever Ganeshotsav with widespread success and were praised from our HOD. I, being an atheist do not know what actually happened at the Puja’s & all the celebrations, but I can say it was a first, successful, & greatly managed by me & my friends.

Spardha 2010, the sport’s week of our college was to be organized late Oct. & everyone was too much enthusiastic about it. Owing to some petty differences, our class was divided into two cricket teams & we had to go for a playoff to decide which team would qualify for the main event. This playoff was the reason of some fierce, harsh & brutal words, politics & conspiracies that got the whole thing blown out of proportion. We even had top of the line practice matches which set the road for the grueling competition it was. I still remember, there were two sides, one led by my group & others some extra-smart book-worms who were just jealous of our popularity. The playoff match was nothing less than a El Classico (for non-footballers, Real Madrid vs Barcelona). I still remember it was a Sunday & we got a call from the organizers that we had to be at the Stadium by 5 PM or else the match would be abandoned, and so would be our team. We all had literally cruised through the unruly traffic of indore to reach on time. In the end we not only played well, but we won in style & pride. The other side never even got a chance to overpower us. I am still proud of being a part of it. We also went to the Cricket Final, but were defeated superbly there. Although we gave a good performance in Badminton, Chess, TT, etc. Winning in your first ever college competition is something everyone dreams of.

Come November, & it was time for Final Presentations. This is the time when you have to pay for your deeds & shenanigans however good or bad they are. Owing to the strange reputation we had built up for ourselves we were tackling grudges for most of the time. Most of my presentations went good, being an engineer showed its advantages, I was more than confident about my presentations and public speaking skills. The problem was, I did not knew elementary technicalities of subjects like economics, commerce, oligopolies, BoP, BoT, etc. I had to give a presentation on Isoquants(yes, it’s a word, however alien to non-commerce students). And fact of the matter is, although I made a very good presentation on it, but I still can’t remember what that word was actually trying to say (to this day).

In another case , Me & Surbhi were to give a presentation on Job Satisfaction for Org. Behavior. The faculty thought that we & especially me, were kind of planning some conspiracy against her (we almost did), and just before the day of the presentation when we went to her about something, she gave us a dubious look & said “Can I even trust you both to give a presentation tomorrow” loud & clear for whole class to hear. It was a shrewd comment I could not forget, Surbhi vowed to take a full on revenge and give it back to her. I still remember the next day we both literally had her by her guts & she could not point a single flaw on our presentation, ending it with a clap & a disgust look on her face (a satisfaction on ours).

Vatsala on the other hand might had gotten on a wrong footing with our GBE faculty (the one who had freq. setting of an engineer). Trouble started when she refused to give presentation with her partner due to some work of hers. Hence she called that guy & faculty about it. The guy, the same whom I had blown over in 1^st internal, gave a cold reply that we have to give it tomorrow & there would be no change to this. The faculty also had the same cold reply. It was probably 10 PM and I still wonder how much I talked to vatsala that night about the issue with just 10% or less battery remaining on my phone. Vatsala that night put up the best show of swear words, and god knows what all & I was at the listening end with absolutely no fault of mine. In the end she grew utterly homesick and Surbhi & I had a hard time taking her back to senses. Rahul, Tanmay & Akshat also had to bear the heat of presentations but were through with some minor hiccups.

December saw the Final, End Semester Exams( Premier League Match-days), and that’s where we pushed the panic button ON. Nobody in the class had, since the start of semester, even a single feeble clue as to what was happening in Accounts. Everyone except for Rahul Mittal, and we turned to him for being the Jesus in the need of the hour. So every Sunday, holidays & PL’s we used to go to his home and miserably try to figure out the Ledgers, Journals, Trial Balance, Balance Sheets, Cost Sheets, Budgeting, Profit & Loss Sheet, etc, etc and never ever living up-to his expectations, he was like Hermione Granger in the subject. I literally swear to god if there is one subject which can take on the whole of engineering single-handedly, it would be without doubt Accounts. I still do not understand what all goes into this subject. Even Tanmay & Akshat who were also from commerce backgrounds & went to same school with Rahul, even having almost same courses, could not get the hang of it.

Nevertheless the exam turned out great since we had already scored passing marks, hence we were attempting papers with ease. On a funny note, Me & Surbhi had this thing that whenever anyone of us completed the paper & leave, the other would do the same. Actually it was not a trend we followed, it just became one. And we had a great time following it. It actually became a alarm for others for the 2 Hrs. completion.

The semester ended with a Comprehensive Viva which was just piece of formality crap. The guy who came to took our viva was too lame & I had a great time imparting my engineering knowledge with him every now & then.

And with that Semester 1 of MBA (FT) came to an end. There were 3 more to go, with lots of hidden treasures & surprises in store.

Signing Off….

Rohit Kaveeshwar

Engineer | Blogger | Soon-to-be-MBA

The Chick-n-Pox Story

2011-10-10T12:11:00.003+05:30

Disclaimer: I like writing Disclaimers, maybe it’s an obsession (maybe liking it too). This is the second time I am writing a post which has nothing (read almost nothing) to do with me, or never happened with/to me. The incident happened to Vatsala Mishra (the same girl who was talking non-stop to me in “The Late Edition Playoff”). Needless to say all the events//accidents happened to her and I am just writing it to give a vent to her feelings. I take no responsibility whatsoever on the accurateness & correctness of the timelines (which I may or may not tweak a bit). Of-course she is too lazy to write anything weird so here I am for the job. Also no need to kill me for any misconception or defamations arising from it (I have a LIFE Insurance policy, so it won’t do you much better). OK it’s gone too long. Back to basics.

Vatsala : Rohit, you are going to be murdered for this.

Rohit : Try Harder.

Yes, that pretty much sums up the page long conversation I had with Vatsala on “The Chick-n-Pox Story”.

Over to Vatsala

Sometimes life amazes you with things you never expect. And sometimes it gives you shocks at the most unwanted times. It was the time of our semester exams and everybody was going haywire with preparations & photocopying the notes, completing assignments, projects, meeting deadlines, presentations, etc, etc, etc. And if you have never seen a case, where the most bizarre things happens to you in the worst possible circumstances, well than you have never met me, Vatsala Mishra.

I am a girl from Kanpur, UP (Kanpuriya according to rohit) doing MBA (Foreign Trade) in DAVV, Indore, 3^rd semester, and probably the only one who is left to defend UP in this pro-MP-and-purely-pro-INDORE place, where almost all of my UP-mates (UP-paiyye , this from Surbhi) have turned INDORI.

Coming back to the story, it was the end of 2^nd semester and the exams were round the corner. Along with the semester exams, there was one more concern for me, my elder sister’s marriage which was clashing in between the exams. Maybe it’s in my nature to get people do exactly what I want (blush blush), I was somehow able to convince our Course Co-ordinator(despite her peek-a-boo-nature-against-me) to give a 3 day unscheduled break in between the exams so I could go to Kanpur and attend the wedding (not to mention help from my friends, and also the Wedding season). And as I said there is nothing in my life without a bizarre, well the co-ordinator had fixed our Op Research/ Quant Tech. Paper just the next day of my return. Little did I know that one of the most weirdest thing was hanging just on the next sunrise. It was probably our paper of Computers, the paper had gone good, and I had reached my hostel (read HOME) all famished & nothing better to do than take a nap. Later in the evening I felt t a bit odd since I was scratching a lot. By the night the cat was out of the bag, I was diagnosed of Chickenpox. SHIT, I was hell petrified. What am I going to do about the next paper, hell how was I about to reach Kanpur to attend my sister’s wedding, SHIT SHIT SHIT. On the day of next paper I called up surbhi and broke the chickenpox news to her. Of course by evening many people had come to know about it, and I was getting calls at an average of 3 per minute (I did not pickup many, and it’s quite normal that I don’t pickup many). I somehow gave the paper that day sitting in staff room. The next day I had to fly to Kanpur via delhi, and It was giving me shivers since I was in bad state thanks to those little red bubbles all over my body. Kanpur felt like second home and I forgot about the red-bubbles in between the wedding. On the day of my return, things took a violent turn, I was hell tired and couldn’t travel even to delhi to catch the early morning flight to indore. And I don’t know why I did this (and it still amazes me), but I called Rohit at 4 in the morning (yes bloody 4 AM). I knew I was going to meet swear words, and I did as expected. I explained the whole situation to him and asked for the one thing I am always confused with “What to do now” (yes even at 4 AM I had the freaking guts to do that). I was pretty damn sure, he must’ve blown his head out. He assured me that nothing will happen and you must start now or would miss the 6:30 AM train to delhi. I told him, that I can’t even walk two steps, Delhi was out of question & Indore was nowhere in sight. The whole talk went on for almost an hour with the final result that I would not be able to come to Indore to give the paper. My main worry was whether I would be failed in the exam or would they give me an ATKT. I enquired this again by calling rohit (more swear words, more harsh). He as always consoled me saying he will enquire about it and if you can, please have mercy on me since I have an exam in the morning for which I have not even prepared till now. Yes, I had disturbed a guy from his peaceful slumber and this was going to be trouble for me on all fronts. And all thanks to me, he could not get a good sleep that day, but luckily his paper went good. The next day at Kanpur felt better, I could at-least walk myself off my room and somehow made up my mind to complete the unfinished business back in Indore. I flew to Indore on the same day via delhi and straight away went to my hostel & locked myself up in my room. Rohit & Surbhi probably called me a hundred times but I neither had the courage nor any strength to attend their call (That made surbhi furious off limits & rohit could not do much to bring her back to senses). Even my “hosties” (hostel-mates, in case you do not know the girl-talks) were confused what had happened to me & had started to get worried, least I did something crap. It was all getting weird every passing second. The last two papers I gave with not much of a conviction, of-course sitting without your friends in a cranky, uncomfortable staff room can almost ruin your exam spirits to all time low. Top it with no fun & cheating, and you are damned. Of-course Surbhi, Rohit & others tried convincing our Op Research faculty for awarding me some marks since I had 30 off 40 in internals & as a matter of fact I had already passed the paper but the external paper was a compulsory formality. Unfortunately, I had missed the paper and the guy said if she was present in the paper I would have given all the marks she wanted, but bad luck prevails (or I can say my bad decision prevailed).

After the exam it was the External Viva. It went smoothly with fortunately no hiccups. I had a train the very next day & probably I spent one of the most wonderful evening at CCD with Surbhi & Rohit (it has become our de-facto-alternative-college and the staff there does not mind us sitting for hours even when we do not even buy a chocolate from them).

Coming back home to Kanpur never felt so much good, as I could have all the rest in the world, although I missed being in Indore & all the fun there, but I guess I needed that break from college. Although the break was just a excuse to keep us busy whole summer. The real deal was we had to do our summer internships & I had a hard time finding one mostly for the chickenpox & since I did not have a single clue as to what kind of internship I was going to do. In the end I ended up doing two separate internships (training), stories of which I think surbhi & rohit would better explain.

As of now I am completely relived of the chickenpox, although I liked the name of the disease (or whatever you call it, I am not a doctor or a biology student). But it showed me some of the most horrible days of my life. I had a hard time refraining myself from scratching those itsy-bitsy bubbles and add to it all the food restrictions imposed on me (even though I am full foodie types). The most horrendous was the medicines & the regular checkups which included blood tests, I have a die-hard phobia for syringes, called “syringpophobia”, and the docs had a hard time taking out samples of blood from my already thin arms. Anyways it’s all cured now and I am living a quite happy life in indore with all the fun, frolic and of-course studies. As far as chickenpox, well better if we both meet in next birth.

Hope I write again (:D)

Vatsala Mishra

Over to Rohit

I would have killed that girl right there & then. How could she even wake me up from my slumber at freaking 4 AM. And like that was not all, I somehow woke up whole of my family who were very deep into there peaceful sleep. And like that was not all, for all the 1 hour we did was arguing & chit-chat ( she must have lost her marbles completely, and I must be a paranoid for even taking up that call). Honestly when she first called I could not even figure out who she was (yes I can be a idiot of that level).

In the end, there was not much harm done and everything sorted out itself, of-course vatsala would have to give the paper again in 4^th semester, and I am having a good time teasing her for that.

Signing Off...

Rohit Kaveeshwar

Harry Potter & The Murphy Law

2011-07-22T22:36:00.003+05:30

The Standard Definition of Murphy’s Law (according to Wikipedia)

Murphy's law is an adage or epigram that is typically stated as:"Anything that can go wrong will go wrong"
OR
"Anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment." (Extended Version)

Akshay Narnaware, Rohit Kaveeshwar, Shalaka Telang, we three can’t even start to describe (although I am taking the initiative, read blunder-task, Wait have I) as to how much close we had been to these two laws in all of mankind’s dynamic and largely volatile history.

Monday 18th July,2011 - Probably a typical normal day in our lives, until I texted Shalaka & Akshay about my incurable urge to watch a movie. Akshay as always confused about decision(s) and asked me to enquire with Shalaka. Maybe I should make myself very clear at this point, I had no choice of which movie to watch, actually I was so desperate that even a Bhojpuri film would have done the job, till it was screened at a multiplex. Shalaka’s replied (read ordered) me with Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows - Part 2 in 3D at INOX Central Mall. I texted back with a military style “Affirmative”. We decided the 11:35 AM show since it was convenient for all of us to reach on time.

Even though July is my birthday month and I should have a moral responsibility to not to bitch and rant about this very 31-day-Stretch, but it’s one of the most unpredictable month in the whole calendar year. That very day the sun was shining in all it’s glory like a hot summer morning. At around 10:45 I had gone to take a bath and get ready for the movie. Just as I came out from the bathroom, behold the rains, maybe the rain gods had just realized it was high time to start the taps unless they get jammed or something. I cursed under my breath for this and just then shalaka called me up enquiring where was I. I said I would have left early but the showers had just started and it will take time. It was earlier decided whoever will reach first will take the tickets. As the rains somewhat dipped low I started out for the theatre. As I reached Manik Bagh, the rains suddenly stopped ( I again cursed, this time way too loudly). Halfway to theatre, I got a call from Akshay that we may not make it in time, and I should reach PVR Cinemas instead, since they were screening the English version but in 2D. I said okay and that I will probably reach ahead of you so will take the tickets (Shalaka has a unmanageable & incurable mania of always reminding to split the cost without giving a thought, and she reminded me of the same & I could only say “Jeee”). PVR Cinemas was a 5 Minute drive from INOX Central Mall. As I was reaching PVR, the uncertain month showed it’s uncertainty again. I was probably near Celebrations when the showers started again. Drenched & all furious I somehow reached Treasure Island Mall.

The reason I hate TI (Treasure Island’s nickname in Indore, it is also awarded the Best Mall in India) is their parking, you have to go to 2 levels below the ground to park your two wheeler. As I reached “Minus 2” (as it’s popularly called), I saw almost uncountable number of two wheelers parked there. Although it’s normal in TI but not at this hour. I somehow parked my Suzuki Access 125cc and reached the Ground Level, where they had a Box Office for PVR. Till that time I didn’t knew how much “Harry Potter Freaks” (except probably me & shalaka) lived in Indore. The line maybe was not too big, but the guy on the other side was probably the lamest guy I could have ever seen, he was working in UltraSlowMO, putting the Discovery’s Time Warp to shame. Halfway in the line I again called akshay & shalaka to know where were they. They had almost reached TI, and were in the parking lot. I asked them to directly take the lift & reach top floor where PVR had it’s main Ticketing Office and try for tickets since it seemed next to impossible here. I was probably 2nd in Queue, when akshay called me to say they are next and will get the tickets. I got out of the line immediately, thanks for getting rid of the UltraSlowMO torture. And here, the above mentioned Mr. Murphy came into picture, as soon as shalaka’s turn came the display board showed “FULL HOUSE” complete with big, bold, italicized & underlined letters of 45 pt. Size. I was halfway on the first floor escalator when they both came down cursing everything they could see.

Next shot, we came to McDonald’s since partly we are eternally starved & partly because we did not had anything since morning. Me & shalaka had McChicken (our all-time favorite), and even though Akshay has tasted Chicken(his “Akshay's General Theory of Food” states “I can eat anything other than wood, plastic & Non-Veg”) although deliberately and he simply denies it hands down, felt obliged to order a McVeggie (Code Word : “Ghass-Phoos”, this from me & shalaka again). The only bright thing that came out, which has always been the case for me, i:e you get a free coke if your order gets delayed for more than one minute (to which I thank that guy who devised this scheme) apart from the one I ordered myself, however akshay was back to his lordly self when it comes to anything free plus whenever the free is an eatable complying his rule, and wasted no time in grabbing the can. After two more McVeggies by me & shalaka (which we hardly could gulp down, it’s official having a veggie after a non-veggie, sucks) we decided to try the 2 PM show again at INOX Central Mall. Before that we reached BSNL Office to pay Shalaka’s phone bills, where we met a surprise “non-existent-queues”.

As we we neared Central Mall, the showers had started again, maybe rain gods does play dice with earth, if not poker at all. Maybe the parking problem in Malls is a universal thing, if you are going to hate TI’s Parking Lot, I am pretty much sure you will despise Central Mall’s left, right & center. After a hideous task of parking our 2 wheelers, we somehow reached the Top Floor where the great INOX theatre was situated.

I will take the liberty to say that the cutie(read “hottie”) at the other side of the counter was more than drop-dead-gorgeous, not only did she answered us sweetly the ugly-bitter truth that Harry Potter’s show is “HOUSE-FULL” but also there are a few tickets left for ZMND (probably just 1). Moreover all other shows for that day were already “advanced” booked. I could have stayed more to talk to the eye-candy but shalaka dragged both me & akshay out with a foot stamping anger, sitting bright red on her face. Mr. Murphy had played it’s part 2nd time in a span of 4 Hours, statistically speaking 1 in 2 Hrs on an average (silly MBA me). While we were sitting at a food joint, we decided on our next available alternatives, and so much for our poor, miserable fate, even Mr. Google was not able to help us better( there is only so much you can do when Mr. Murphy takes over the proceedings of the world and controls even Google too). And I think I should publically disclose this truth that sometimes Google can’t answer some of life’s simplest questions like movies. Later we decided to call this a day & book online tickets for next day shows after rejecting a trip to SATYAM multiplex & Adlabs unless Murphy showed his colors third time that day (increasing the average).

Coming back to akshay’s house (read “Narnaware Dharamshala®”) at around 4 PM we booked tickets, even here Mr. Murphy had the controls in his hands since the great “$25 PC“ had somehow created a keyboard problem and was not allowing us to feed anything, but thanks to Microsoft’s Online Keyboard (so much for my pro-Apple stand) we somehow entered every damn detail and made the payment for the Hindi Version (Rs. 50/- per ticket + Rs. 30/- as “Convenience charges”, that’s for you shalaka, hope you would not kill me for this)

Maybe the day was not over for me (at-least for me, I don’t know about both of them). I was sitting at my home, quietly reflecting on the day’s misery, just then I got a series of texts from Rahul Mittal & Surbhi (my college-mates, refer to The Panauti Day) about the start of college from the very next day at 8:30 AM, and like this was not all the very first class was of Stats by one of my most hated teachers Mr. X ( there is absolutely no need to mention his name). I had refused to come but surbhi’s persistent-as-hell texts forced me to promise her to come to class & then go for the movie. I should probably start to respect Mr. Murphy after all this.

19th July, 2011. Come next day I somehow got up at 7:35 AM (we were having a 2 Month long break, so I don’t think I need to clarify further), drove in that chilly winds till college, attended the 15-minute-late lecture in full-sleep-mode and as soon as it was over, literally dashed out of the college to reach Narnaware Dharamshala®.

Probably the movie came out good, actually funny since it was Hindi Version and I have never seen a more wretched dubbing of an english movie, but since it was in 3D, it turned out good with all the animations & graphics

The day ended with another cracker that Shalaka’s CA Final result had come out. And she was getting highly restless of it and was in no mood to listen about anything even though akshay & me kept reassuring her that she will do well.

Rohit Kaveeshwar
Engineer, Blogger, Soon-to-be-MBA...

Note: Narnaware Dharamshala®. Copyright 2011. All Rights Reserved. Used with Permission from Narnaware Dharamshala Trust.

3rd March, 2011 - The Panauti Day

2011-05-11T19:32:00.000+05:30

Life is a complex system even by oddball standards. This you come to experience when something bizarre, uncanny, weird, freakish things or events happen to you. But it crosses the human limits of mature understanding when 6 people get hay-wired in this complex system at the same time with no fault of theirs.

It was the 3rd of March, 2011, a fine Thursday morning, the winters had just started to say their final farewells and summers were traveling in to make their presence known. We had an 8:30 AM Financial Management aka Accounts class. You do not need a popular vote to decide how everybody hates getting out of bed at 7 in the morning, getting ready & traveling to your college at break neck speed and still reaching late.

That day of all days was something different, since we had reached, in like once in a million ages, well ahead of time, that included me, Akshat Bhansali, Rahul Mittal, Abhishek Gupta, Surbhi Bhansali & Vatsala Mishra. We all were waiting for the feudal lord aka our Financial Management professor (henceforth referred to as Mr. FM) to arrive and impart us his mind-freak philosophy of finance & financial decisions. Little did we 6 simple,innocent, docile human’s knew that today was destined to be the most idiosyncratic day of our MBA journey.

Me, akshat, rahul & abhishek were jabbering on some random topic, while surbhi & vatsala were busy with their usual female tête-à-tête. Just then Prof. Financial Manager arrived. Usually he used to give us some 5 minutes break before the class and after that he would go on with his monotonic and tranquilizing lecture for 2 hours straight as maybe he has not heard the word Human Right Commission.

I think Rahul, Abhishek, Vatsala & Surbhi all went upto him and asked some questions which were troubling them since the last assignment he gave us, while me & akshat were engrossed in our chats and did not even had the courtesy to greet him. I don’t know when but they all got into the class and the class commenced, of-course me & akshat got buzzes on our cellphones signaling the class has started but we ignored it. Maybe it was doomed to be, our chat had gone into some very interesting topics and we had, in a while included some juniors and some boys from another college who had a free lecture in the morning, for which we were abusing School of Commerce for their out-of-nowhere-8:30AM-authoritarian-schedule. And by hell’s grace we overshot time by 15 minutes, a brutal homicide by Mr. FM’s standards.

We knew what we had done, and little did we expect him to include us in his knowledge sessions but still courage & fear-nothing attitude is something not everybody posses. Slowly and steadily we both ascended the college stairs & went to our classroom. Now the bell-the-cat question was who would open the door & face the GUY(!). After like 2 minutes we decided upon doing it together. When the door opened the guy was facing us right into our eyes. One look, and I was 1001% sure he was furious at us. What he said was not only simple taunting but an aesthetically-crafted-humor by a huge margin. First of all he reminded us we had been almost 20 min late to class. Secondly, he had seen us sitting and chatting with others and was making a snide comment as why did you leave that all-important talk, the world is in deep-deep trouble now. Actually we were discussing some world political issues and he had overheard us on that. Thirdly, if you care to understand the dark sarcasm in his voice, he enquired wether we were waiting for someone PARTICULAR to show up. At my back Akshat was standing as if someone replaced him with his Wax Saute from Madam Tussaud, and speaking of myself, I might have cracked a bone or something trying not to laugh on this sarcasm but the whole class had almost 20 seconds of guffawing-stint on this. Shamelessly we closed the door and went back to the parking lot to discuss what to do next since the class was not going to end till 2 hours at-most. Not to mention we had a full laughing session since closing the door till the parking lot.

We decided to go to the University IIPS Hostel where a poor fellow-friend of ours, Amol Pratap Singh Sengar was in his royal snooze with wounds, cracks, fractures & bruises from his recent action-packed-cracker-of-a-accident. It must have been almost half an hour when the room’s door opened and in came Rahul & Abhishek. It amazed us seeing Rahul out of accounts class because of his love for the subject & abhishek was looking as if he was still wondering what the hell happened. The story they foretold was that they were having some kind of discussion during the class & somehow they gave a huge laugh which was invariably noticed by Mr. FM. Next second they found themselves outside the class with almost half-a-minute lecture from Mr. FM, mostly to his only-brightest student Rahul Mittal, actually he is the only guy in the whole class who has at-least 1% clue as to what that guy is teaching, others go in the class like a herd of sheeps who have no idea as to what, where, which, when things are happening on the blackboard. So to say Rahul Mittal is the only golden sheep in the class when it comes to anything related to Accounts would be anything but true to the Nader.

Nevertheless the 2 hours passed with we 5 enjoying some music & boy-talks. But maybe the day was not over for Mr. FM. There was still good 10 minutes for the class to end and the guy had just taken the daily attendance and had gone out of the room for some work. I am still not sure as to what got into the minds of Surbhi & Vatsala, that they assumed the class was over and decided to leave the class. As they closed the door behind them, the FM guy emerged into the other side of the corridor, of-course these two girls could not see him from their backs, but he had seen them leaving the class and got furious (of which at-least 66% were the shenanigans from we 4). Honestly speaking it was just a misunderstanding. After the class was actually over a random class-mate called us to look for the two girls and inform them that they should meet Mr. FM at 5 PM at IIPS. When these two got to know this, they were in state of shock and panic, and since surbhi had left for home, she had grown much more worried.

The day was still not over for any of us still. Everybody had one or more incidents happening with them for no fault of ours at college & other places. I do not want to get into all that since it was our personal incidents, maybe I will post mine sometime later. Vatsala even went to meet the guy at 5PM and apologized saying they thought the class was over and hence they left. After some more persuasion he agreed and gave up the matter, but I still think if we had gone to say sorry for what we did, we would have met more red-shot anger than some calmness & soothing.

It’s true that every dog has it’s day, but when too many dogs have the same day it’s called “THE PANAUTI DAY”

Hoping I would go through such moments again and again to bore you on this insane blog.

Rohit Kaveeshwar

The Late Edition Playoff

2011-03-18T23:19:00.001+05:30

Disclaimer: Rather a warning, it’s a long post and I have included everything I have in my unformatted permanent memory, so anyone, anything, left out is not my fault. Needless to say, I am not hurting anyone’s sentiments, so you can’t claim any reimbursement from me and you better wish not to.

In a world full of Destiny, Fate, Karma, to be politically and at the same time rationally correct and up to the Tee, is something a few enlightened souls have ever achieved. Probably even being in full senses you’ll never know What, When, Where, Which, Why, will hit you, and you will just have to done a face of bewilderment without giving a damn to it.

In my case, after my graduation, the only thing I could ever see in my near future was getting the all-important MBA degree, bitter truth was it was so much easier said than done. Back in April I had played a qualifying playoff (for those of you, who do not know what I mean, refer to my earlier blog “those qualifying playoffs”) and It did not went the way I had expected it to. So with all the weird optimism left in me, I geared myself up for another Champions League fixture, only this time it was much nearer home, the accidentally famous DAVV-CET 2010.

Maybe it’s the story of my life, or maybe I am a lucky charm for many people, or maybe, pardon me if I am being too audacious to myself, whenever I have turned up to something new the thing has popularized hundredfold. This time the chants of DAVV CET had crossed Madhya Pradesh’s border and had breached into (especially) UP and many more unknown parts of Indian Peninsula. So was the popularity of CET that they had received some 6,000+ applications at-least from outside MP. Little did those generous, kind & innocent students knew that they only had a merge 20% stake on the overall seats at University PG Programs.

Nevertheless the Match-day 5 arrived and I, along with some 15,000+ last-ditch-survival-strategy students, was put up against DAVV CET 2010. My center, as far as my imagination goes, was Old Girls Degree College (10 minute drive from my home) on 9th June 2010 at around scorching summery 2 PM. The exam like all others I have gone through, was pretty normal affair, and I have for some untold reasons started to have a different outlook towards them. Anyways the exam ended at around 4 PM and I came home all tired, wishing this may be the last of all the fixtures I will need to play.

Maybe in this unorganized world you do have baggages from past that you need to clear off anywhere and anytime in the future, more importantly they bang their presence when you most certainly not expect them to. During my last GD-PI with Institute of Technology & Management (ITM), read qualifying playoff, that military style dean of ITM Bangalore, in the up-close and personal interview, had offered me ITM Warangal, which I had so much as denied without a second thought. Fast forward to morning of 19th June 2010, I was happily doing my mundane chores at home, when my telephone rang, the lady on the other end was the Admissions Co-ordinator at ITM Mumbai, she told me owing to my good performance in MAT & GD-PI, I was being offered a seat at ITM Bangalore, condition being I would have to say yes or no till the evening and send a DD of 25,000 within 3 days time.

Even though I am not to into any kind of professional business or not even doing MBA, I could somehow sense the urgency in her voice, the reality was there seats were not filling up, and they needed desperate measure to make the ends meet. For me it was somehow a strike of lightning in my otherwise dark, cold and uncertain academic career. Even though I should have said a yes then & there, I made a straight face and asked for 2 days time, owing to some family considerations. That day along with Nikhil, Vikas and my family members, had a brain storming session on what to do next, and by the time it ended there were more storms in my brain than Hurricane Katrina or any other Hurricane that visited dear Earth.

A purely social animal’s selfless expectations certainly has no limits, while I was still undecided on ITM, the CET results were out, and I had scored 903 AIR (my state rank was 768, again in top notch 1000 of MP’s brightest mind). Even though it did brought certain amount of joy on my face, reason being I was in the top 1000 of students DAVV had so graciously chosen to impart MBA knowledge to. At the downside, I was not so much sure about securing a seat in DAVV and only had an outside chance to it. Maybe for the 3rd time I played Gamble with my life. I decided to secure the ITM seat by paying the advance money and somehow prolong the admission process & at the same time I decided to go for the admission process of DAVV-CET Counseling which was to be held on 5th July 2010.

And here folks our story starts. As far as the buildup to the DAVV Qualification is concerned, I had almost lost interest in ITM, owing to the big fight I had with their Admission Co-ordinator, and my elder brother who was in bangalore doing a job, also was a little quacky on the Institute’s track record. Hence, my 2 year MBA-cum-Outing to Bangalore had almost finished.

On the D-DAY at around 4 PM I reached DAVV-IIPS, Takshashila Campus, Khandwa Road, Indore. Although the counseling time allotted to me was 6 PM, but I gave myself a 2 hours head-start, just to analyze the statistics & seat allocation and other things. Little did I know that, that day (or night) would be “The Longest Night of My Academic Life.”

There was a light drizzle in the early evening hours and as “Shab-E-Malwa” gained her charm and beauty into late night, it had turned into a heavy downpour, and my heart almost gave a skip as I recalled the tragedy that happened to me on this very soil almost a year before.

I had met some old school friends of mine and we all were having a great time sharing those unforgettable days and cursing DAVV for their lazy and dull attitude in the counseling process. There was this big screen on which the Seat status of every institute in DAVV was being displayed branch-wise. At around 6 PM I glanced towards the screen and there were still some seats left in my choice of branches, the bad news was my chance was almost 3-4 hours late than the stipulated time.

Shooting to around 9 PM, another of my curious glances went to the dreaded screen, and this time the heat had gained up much more than the last time I calculated it. The seats were depleting on a much faster rate, and people had started to grow anxious about everything. The guy who had designed the Counseling Website was maybe some cruel yet funny and creative guy, what he did was that whenever someone took up a seat, the website showed his/her name along with the branch and complete with confetti’s n balloons flying all over the screen, for which I have a hint the people were ready to homicide him for any cost since it had intensified the heat manifolds. But maybe the rain gods had anticipated this and had started their taps in full force. My dad, who had just came from office and my younger brother who came directly from coaching paid me a quick visit like I was some Prisoner of War (quite literally, if you think so) and cheered me up.

Coming to my turn, which came at around 1 AM, dead at night (of course I could sue DAVV, since they had inscribed 6 PM on the counseling letter, but there were some techno-political reasons for the delays, as the 4th July Counseling had been postponed to 5th July). After going through all the verification and validation hurdles of the Admission process, I was allowed entry into the main admission room. As I was waiting for my turn I had started chatting with someone called Vatsala Mishra, a girl from Kanpur(UP), who had the same rank as mine (!, another reason to sue DAVV) and was also fed up with the overall delays. We must have been chatting for some half & hour since the admission guy called her name at around 1:30 AM, including background checks of family, education & blah blah blah.

Her’s was a far more interesting story than mine, first of all she was outside MP, secondly she was a girl, thirdly the no. of seats for these (endangered) people was closing to the zero danger mark, and fourth, if you care to read, she was about to kill that guy on the other side of desk, because he had asked her choice of branch as if he had a whole stock of unclaimed seats lying somewhere back. First she asked for some branch, I think Finance, but was blankly rejected saying “not available”. With a dejected look on her face, she asked about MBA (Foreign Trade), since it was the only option left, and here too the seat-space was at premium, again the same “not-available” look, but this time she glared too much for that poor guy, who I don’t know because of telepathy or something started checking the seat status again, and this time he could put up a smile on his otherwise tired, weary and out-of-nowhere face. There was a seat available fitting her criteria “OUTSIDE-MP-GENERAL-FEMALE-SEAT”, which she instantly took up without a second thought. Her crux-version of the episode was “Hum sirf all-india ek seat ke liye lad rahe the” (I was fighting for only 1 all-india seat).

Next in line after her was me, and I made up an palely-energetic face and went to the guy on desk, who without asking for my choice and not even smiling (owing to the gender-difference and discrimination problem of india), offered me MBA (FT), and I took it up instantly, like I had come up and waited for 12 hours just for that one precious seat in this all-important branch. There was also this other guy, Rahul Mittal, who also took up MBA (FT), sharing the same rank as mine & vatsala’s, but I don’t know why we both could not see him, and this amazes me even today.

After that we both were escorted to the Director, School of Commerce under whose aegis this coveted course was running and were fished out details regarding the admission fees and other such stupid things. Later we made the initial payment of 10,000 by DD and completed the formalities for the admission. By this time the clock had struck 2:30 AM, and I can assure you anything that I own or not own, that if that day I was not given a seat, I was close to nothing but seriously burning this place down.

Driving back to home, I somehow made a happy yet tired face in front of my parents telling them about my successful admission. Of-course there was joy on their faces but that included a jibe on not going to Bangalore, which I know I have to endure for the rest of my MBA life and will always come as a party-pack with everything.

As the good-old saying goes, All’s well that ends well, I finally got admission into MBA (FT) at School of Commerce, Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalay(Indore University), Takshashila Campus, Khandwa Road, Indore and my current official nameplate reads:
Rohit Anil Kaveeshwar,
B.E. (Comp Sc.), MBA - FT (in progress)

Signing Off (for the time being)…

Rohit Kaveeshwar

The Days of Our Engineering Lives - Epilogue

2011-03-13T12:17:00.003+05:30

One year later, 10 men, adorned with their engineering degrees along with ambitions, aspirations, hopes, dreams, responsibilities and everything that matter, gathered into their arsenal, stepped into a ruthless world that people term reality.

It took us humongous amount of courage, spirit, passion, devotion to get through this 4 years. Years that made us what we are, years that somehow defined who we will be or will be not in the future, maybe for a short while like a bubble or as long as death plays it’s part.

You must’ve been wondering what happened to this guy, he was perfectly normal when he started all this, and then suddenly at the end he went to an asylum phase. I say, you guessed it all wrong. When we 10 boys entered into engineering we had almost not even a single serious ambition in life. But as these 10 MEN stepped out of the college gates (that is to say if the college did have any, apart from the boundary fences, which we used to leap over even in our sleep) probably they had changed bottom’s up. And it’s true 4 years of engineering changes you head to toe. It brings out the mature, sensible, sophisticated and simply speaking a new you. I have now come to realize why does this happen. Even though you are thought science in engineering, you are thought a practical approach to life, a approach where you do not evaluate a situation in a theoretically traditional and orthodox way, but try to cause a change which is more rational, reliable, sensible and for the important part practical. Of-course nobody sees the effort it takes for a student to get through engineering since most of them are more concerned about the end product. But as the say, maybe the journey is much better than the destination.

In our case the final destination was Bachelor of Engineering Degree in Computer Science, and if you could top it up with a well paid job, well it can’t get any better than the cherry on the icing of the cake. If you talk proportional wise, engineering students in India almost takes up half of the student community, the other half includes commerce, arts, humanities, science, etc etc. Mind you, I wrote science and engineering separate because they are, and their is a difference between a science graduate and an engineering graduate.

Coming back to the real life, we all had graduated from college. And so to say ready to step into reality. Truth to be told, there are only two options before you after your grads, one is to pursue higher education, getting into masters or PhD’s etc, the second which is the most lucrative of the two, and for that matter of all, at that time, is a job, but as it’s said, the grass is always greener on the other side. And so was it, which we all thought. Apurv, Ankit, Chandu & Vikas went ahead and took the second option, while apurv went on to Pune in search of job, ankit & chandu had gotten into on campus placed companies. Vikas on the other hand, with a lot of hard work & that included nearly venturing into the first option for higher studies outside India got into a software company. He just managed to score threshold scores in IELTS. And after much persuasion from me, nikhil, & saurabh finally decided to get a job first, but deep inside his heart he has the ambition of starting up his own business, which I am sure he will someday or the another.

Ashish went to join his father’s business and Saurabh, who I always admired as someone like a go-getter and who I believed had more brains than anyone of us put together went into in MBA terms, Entrepreneurship. He along with a friend of mine from school named Aaron Heumader and one more guy started what we call “Mangosteen Eco-Lifestyle” - Coffee | Technology | Exercise. Chandu who quit his old job joined him in the technology venture. Probably I should not say this publicly, but when saurabh first told me about his idea about his venture, I saw, for the first time, in his eyes a gleam of doing something meaningful, something creative, something out of passion. Of-course when you decline an 95+ Percentile CAT result after having the re-test, you must be crazy at mind and heart to do something like this. But then this was saurabh and I knew he will be something that nobody has ever thought off, and he proved everybody right. I remember when he cleared 10 out of 10 subject in engineering, a feat rarely achieved, he had distributed sweets to every other faculty in college. I could see the joy and emotion in his eyes, the same joy I saw when he started Mangosteen. And I wish him the very best of luck for it. Even before college was over Saurabh, Chandu, Ashish & our associate group member Vinu Jhon had already ventured into business, their Magus Developers had been bragging projects against top companies in Indore. Saurabh was the de-facto Marketing Head for it along with continuing his passion to RC Flying, Traveling to exotic places like Goa & Thailand (sponsored by Aaron, ofcourse).

Coming to Amol & Tiwari, well amol also followed vikas on his trip to IELTS and somehow did not make it through, instead he got into MBA and joined Sinhgad College in Pune. Rohit Tiwari, who was the shortest of all of us, height-wise, and hence termed Chotu did try his hand in MBA entrance, but could not get through, and is still dangling between job, family business & higher education.

As far as Me & Nikhil are concerned, Nikhil got into a high profile B-School - Balaji Institute of Management, Pune and is doing well in it, after much of his qualifying playoffs in various cities of India.

Last but not the least Me, having barely cleared CAT, somewhat good in MAT & SNAP and a disaster in XAT, finally took up admission in Indore University, School of Commerce for MBA in Foreign Trade, the story of which is more interesting than the reality (and it’s coming up in my mind as I write this).

2 years since, we all are still very great friends, and still hang out with each other whenever time permits. Of-course my college takes up much of my time and somehow I have been detached from others for quite sometime, but it’s never too late to catch up with old friends.

To be upmost honest, I loved & cherished every second of my engineering, and if it was not for these 9 guys, probably I would have never crossed the line. Somehow they make up much of my life in many ways, and I can bet every single Dollar I own on this.

Hope everyone finds the best in them...

Signing Off from Engineering

Rohit Kaveeshwar

The Days of our Engineering Lives – Uncensored Version – Part 8/8

2011-01-06T22:44:00.001+05:30

And then we made it, the very last one, semester 8 of the 4th year of Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.). Frankly in our 1st semester we used to picture this as something out of this world, but when we stepped into it, it felt nothing like entering an alien spaceship, on the contrary it felt much like home. Of-course 4 years in college felt much more important than anything else in the world then, no to mention how we used to despise it as the only college which deprived us of some basic facilities like canteen, and some other less and non-less important things, but by this time we had started to love it, sort of a home away from home, and not just anything away, almost 10 KMs from the nearest joint in Indore, even measured in a straight line, well this does not include the 3 KMs steep ride up the hill on which our college was situated.

Nonetheless all things left aside, the only thing that mattered was we had made it and with a bang and style. The semester started with a good note, the results of 7th sem had come a little early than we had expected, and came it was, everybody had cleared successfully, something all of us were very proud of, even tiwari had surpassed the 65% mark with a huge margin (it meant a party on the list).

Throughout the semester the freedom which we had earned during the 3 years was paying off well. We were the senior most batch of the college and we were having a great time with no restrictions from the faculty and the staff, which to tell the truth we were missing incredibly. But that did not stop us from bunking every other useless lecture on the time-table. It was a feel-good-atmosphere around the college. Even the relationships (*) that had been made in these years, had started to strengthen and we could almost hear a wedding or two after our graduation. Everything was going great, and the cherry on the cake was the upcoming Prayas 09, the annual function, which by this time had become our all-time-favorite. It was the last for us so everybody in our batch was taking part in some of the most ridiculous events. But that stupidness was all washed into the high spirits that set the mood almost 3-4 weeks before the annual function. The sports events were also something to cheer about & even though we did not win cricket, given the age old rivalry with electronics dept., but we were crowned champions in football and defeated MBA 1st Year Class.

The function was something no one would ever forget. For one it included a fashion show of which some of the hottest girls in campus were taking part and I can bet you 100 grands that every other boy had given this their 100% undivided attention more than they gave during lectures. Secondly the DJ party after the function went on so as to say into the night, around 7 PM, a first for our college, and the whole college danced like there will be no tomorrow with even the teachers shedding their pride and joining us in shaking a leg or two, but thanks to the management that they stopped this chaos of feet after 7:30 PM or some nasty things were about to begin (I leave it to the smarties to imagine).

Not to forget, the placement season was also going on and to the best of my knowledge we had surpassed the half mark, some 35/40 out of 60. The major news that sem was the closing of Ripples Infotech of which saurabh, ashish & apurv were a part. The company had gone into legal trouble and their were some lawsuits filed against them for taking money against Training Period, so much for saurabh’s 6 months fame to glory (@iisaurabh don kill me for this).

As we approached the end semester everyone had a hint of emotions on their faces, the last steps in college, the last bunks, the last visits to canteens, CCD, insti terrace, etc etc etc. Each day everyone used to receive a sort of emotionally-charged, fully-sentimental, sort-of-farewell message on our phones( of which I was hell tired). Everyone was feeling happy that they have reached the final step, but sad that this all fun and frolic will soon end and we would have to look ahead, some with jobs in hand while some others going for MBA’s & M. Tech’s or something like that. It was an atmosphere of mixed emotions flowing everywhere and I don’t know why but the small quarrels, ego’s and rivalries that existed seem to evaporate in it.

Then came the Premier League, the final exam, the ultimate one, El Classico. I cannot define how happy everyone was giving the exam and given the fact that it was the easiest paper set in the history of RGPV (read Farji-PV), each and everyone in the college, and that included the dumbest of the dumbest even, were coming out of the hall like heroes of war.

And alas, came the final day of our graduation life, the last paper, I don’t know why but the anxiety levels that day had reached breaking point as if some storm was about to come, and came it thou, as the final bell of 3 Hrs for our paper rang, everybody from the final semester literally ran out of the class, damn those papers what are invigilators for, there was such a huge roar in the whole campus that everyone feared lest the building might give away. And it ended with innumerable camera clicks, hugs, wishes, smiles, air punches, high fives, not to mention discussing the paper, which was best left to the studious ones, crazy them. The Platinum Batch of Truba College of Engineering & Technology had passed out. I remember we had a sort of passing-out ceremony where the prof’s, faculties and the special guests, the students itself, were invited to speak of the memoirs they had during their college life, after which we were handed out mementos, which was a way of reminding us that you belonged to a place called Truba, situated 10 KMs form Indore in the most isolated place that ever existed on earth.

Personally speaking, and, on behalf of everybody from my group, and invariably from everybody in our batch, I thank everybody from the helpers to the faculties to the staff and management for making us complete our engineering, something which could not have been possible if it was not for these guys.

Hence with this came the end of a journey called Days of our Engineering Lives.

Thank-you

Signing Off… (not for ever)

Rohit Kaveeshwar

The Days of our Engineering Lives – Uncensored Version – Part 7/8

2010-12-08T19:46:00.001+05:30

Good things in life tend to end faster than the bad ones. As we reached the final year we began to understand the true meaning of it. Statistically speaking we were just 2 Semesters or 10 Papers away from our Engineering Degree, not to neglect the 6 semesters behind us or 30 Papers that we cleared plus the amount of workload, assignments (that is if we did any), projects, SRS, synopsis, Reports, Practicals, Internals, Externals, Mid Semesters, etc etc, etc.

However, as we look back into the past, these things never mattered to us compared to the amount of enjoyment, happiness, craziness and the foolishness we made & endured. I don’t remember a single day in our engineering lives when we stood still or took a break for even a second.

Finally it was here Semester 7th of our Engineering, the very second last of the 8 grueling 6 months sessions. During our first year, we used to imagine how it would have be to live the last year, come this semester all of our inhibitions, doubts, instincts, intuitions were something far fetched than what we lived.

7th semester brought us the Free Trade Policy, and especially for us, reason one being we were the senior-most class in the college, second we were from Computer Science Branch, third the new HOD hardly cared as to where we are going, not to mention the Staff & Administration people, last but not the least the poise, panache, respect, confidence, and our image (which had gone from being the-only-notorious-ones to being-the-only-notorious-and-smart-ones) that we gained all these years.

This semester meant, especially for the non-placed and/or recruited ones to get into hyper-action mode and make this engineering worth because by this semester we were close to halfway mark (we had a batch of 60 & some 26 people were placed in our branch). Somewhere in the middle of the semester came a news so astonishing, breaking, surprising, remarkable, extraordinary that whoever heard it could not even believe their ears heard it right, or their brains processed it the correct way without compilation or interpretation errors, simply bad command or file name. The placement season as we know it was still going on. There was this Open Campus from a company called Ripples Infotech in Central College of Engineering, Indore and saurabh, ashish, apurv, vikas, ankit had gone to attend it, I backed out midway because there was a nice movie at Adlabs (it was near the college) and I was not going to ruin my day with these placements rather than watching a good flick. I never cared about the placement and straight away went to a party after the movie. I don’t know what was so special in that day, or maybe it’s true that every dog has his day ( that does not mean so many dogs have the same lucky day), the next day in college was nothing less than an Annual Function. The results of the Ripples Infotech placements were out and saurabh, ashish, apurv, and some other guys from IT dept were placed. As I already said nobody could believe their ears (that included even me, actually I never got a chance to talk to them after the placement). Back in our classroom, it was like India has acquired USA. We all were dancing and having tremendous fun in every possible way, but the guys who stole the entire show were Saurabh, because it was difficult to get him placed, and Apurv because he got placed even with a bad interview, in reality it was just his luck, actually a guy named nikki was before him on the list, and Ripples had finalized his name, but when the final list was prepared somehow, by innocent mistake, apurv’s name got ticked and he got his placement.

I can’t define that whole day in words, it was really a moment to live, everybody was congratulating us for the achievement, even the HoD and the College Director themselves came to our class to congratulate us. Somehow we had achieved our goal(although partly), a slap on the faces of people who thought we had no value and can’t be placed, or those who were against us right from the word go (the anti-us people).

Later during the semester vikas, chandu, vinu (an associate member, and a savior and messiah in disguise during exams and externals for me and Saurabh specially) got placed in various odd companies. Maybe this semester was the golden 6 month session for us.

The Final exam that sem was something we all looked forward to, and RGPV obliged us with setting the most easiest paper in their history ever.

With everything including the semester exams coming to an end, we started looking forward to next semester, and not just any, the final, the ultimate, the Champions League of sorts, 8th Semester of our Engineering Lives - The Final Act.

To be continued…

Rohit Kaveeshwar

The Days of our Engineering Lives – Uncensored Version – Part 6/8 - Addon

2010-10-22T17:38:00.004+05:30

Speaking of shenanigans, fiascoes & other things I don’t know how but I had left one of the most important member of this group & what the hell he did, maybe he will kill me for not writing it on the main blog post, but here it is @chandraprakash_deep_ajmera

Normally we live a quite, peaceful life especially when we are in the class i.e. when we are in the class. However, that day of all days had to be different in a way that nobody ever imagined.

As far as I can remember, it was the second lecture & the same guy who was-to-be-HOD, but could not due to the great old Indian tradition of politics, of which we are the experts. The guy was teaching us some stuff that we hardly cared about (mind you he never ever had a mood to teach us anything except picking us up for any odd thing we did). So picture this class is going on in good swing, the teacher’s teaching, the front row benches are engrossed in studying, we 10 are busy eating lunch courtesy Apurv, there are chilly winds blowing outside the windows, & last but not the least our great lad Chandu aka CP is chewing tobacco (he was also eating lunch, I don’t know how he did that, sounds gross). For the most of the lecture there was not a shot fired from either side. Anyway the lecture ended & the teacher was taking attendance( for which we gave 110% attention), I still don’t know how but that teacher as he reached chandu’s name in the register intentionally or unintentionally forgot to take his name. Damn the whole tension broke; Mr. Chandrapraksh Deep Ajmera got up from his seat, spat the tobacco on the walls & walked like a king towards that poor teacher. The teacher went into a total shock, but without wasting a moment CP told (or threatened) him that you did not take my name, the teacher as always refused & told him I had taken your name but you did not respond. Mr. Chandu then forcefully took the register form that guy’s hand & showed him that there was a blank in front of his name, the teacher refusing to that again. The next thing we knew chandu was holding his hands out ready to slap that guy, who by the time was sweating like anything.

Back at our place Me, Saurabh, Vikas, engrossed at eating our lunch, literally stopped midway. The last thing we wanted was chandu hitting him hard across his face. I swear that everybody in the class could actually hear me, saurabh & vikas praying that please don’t let him slap that guy, please, please, please.

This must have went on for five minutes or so for which we were literally in the freeze mode, not a single muscle inside us ever moved, even our mouths were open & hands stopped midway.

I really can’t tell what all emotions, feelings went within us for that five minutes, but I can assure you it was nothing less than a cardiac arrest, & if by any faint chance chandu would have slapped the teacher, bang I can bet anything in this world that we 3 would have been dead by now of heart attack or atleast not breathing.

After the whole drama ended, & the teacher went out with mixed emotions on his face, we literally sprinted out of our seats to stop chandu, if the matter went even worse. I really had an urge to hit chandu for what he had done & what he could have done.

Nevertheless, after the whole drama Chandu was escorted to the HOD of EC department where he was asked to apologies. Even there, he never stopped his ride & finally we all went to our CS HOD, who first laughed after hearing the whole episode but later asked chandu to apologies as it could have been a serious matter. I really don’t know whether he apologized or not but he never got the attendance marked for that lecture & so were the ones who followed him roll.

I want to apologies to chandu for not including this in the blog, but I would say this guy is in a league of his own, hence he needs a separate space all over, maybe some time later I would write a whole blog on Life’s & Lives of Chandrapraksh Ajmera (i.e. if he allows me to do that).

To be continued

Rohit Kaveeshwar

The Days of our Engineering Lives – Uncensored Version – Part 6/8

2010-09-27T09:59:00.001+05:30

Truba College of Engineering & Technology, Indore

Computer Science Branch – Sem 6 – Year 3

True that our engineering was almost in dumps (as a manner of speaking) but this semester was one no one would ever forget specially we 10, for the fact that we were to be involved in cases so intense & pressurizing that it really needed guts to come out of it.

As we entered into semester sixth, the placement season was going strong but was not raining anywhere near Truba College of Engineering & Technology. For the fact that we were situated at the remotest location ever to be found on earth & second, if you really care to read, almost nobody in whole of Indore knew that a college with such a strong bond to Tirupati Balaji exists.

Maybe this could be my imagination but there was a scent of romance, love & courtship flowing through the campus winds & there would be lot of couples seen here & there along the corridors, canteen, playground, & the newly constructed mini-garden, a prime location in itself, hand in hand & thinking about a non-existent future or something more unworthy & crappy useless things.

As anybody would have imagined, given our respect among girls to be good actually great & hotshot, we would be the ones having the best of the lot, but sometimes you seem to neglect these kind of things & we were no exception to it, although we were famous on the campus for all the rumors related to some strange cases but we never got involved in it, or put our heart to it.

But then an exception showed up, Vikas Tharyani, a boy who I term as chubby cheeks & dimple chin, although a simple definition would be FATSO(which we call him), but I have started to respect this guy after the fiasco he did in this Sem. The story may have started well before the actual courtship but the real thriller was to be seen this semester.

Two days before the third edition of Prayas, the annual function, this person went into a nervous breakdown & even though I have heard (not seen) boys crying, this was not what I call an ultimate viewing pleasure. Vikas had gone to drop off his so called one sided girlfriend (I will not take her name and will address her “the girl” henceforth, owing to many reasons even though this post is uncensored) to her house along with one of her friend & Saurabh(for rescue, if he ever needed one) in Saurabh’s car. The plan was that he would be laying out his proposal in front of her & will have the Aye or Nay by the evening, of course an Aye meant we had a big rocking party that night sponsored by Vikas, but a Nay meant we had a group party, something we did every semester. It was evening & we all were back from college wishing vikas luck & were expecting his call any moment.

Almost at 6:30 in the evening Nikhil & me got a call from Saurabh that he needed us urgently & something tragic has happened. That day with almost no petrol in our vehicles, we literally cruised to saurabh’s home at break neck speed, almost colliding with some five odd vehicles on the way.

As we reached saurabh’s home traversing through the whole city, he was standing outside the gates eagerly waiting for us. We all went inside and lo, we find out Vikas crying, I promise all my gold, MF & shares and even my bank balance that I have not seen a sight more disgusting than this. Vikas was lying on the floor totally flooded in his tears, his body had almost gone numb & like that was not all, saurabh had placed earplugs in his ears & was playing Comfortably Numb from Pink Floyd (a sort of breakup song) o his brand new iPod Touch. I could have killed this guy just right then & there. Saurabh later told us that the plan went on smoothly but out of the blues the girl was sitting at the back seat & vikas, who was to sit next to her (saurabh & the girl's hot friend in the front seat @iisaurabh great luck), was driving & when they reached their home she straight away said to him that “I am not interested”. Damn from that moment vikas has almost lost his mind, body, consciousness & everything in between & when we reached our home, he had shut himself up in my room & had started crying like babies. Luckily saurabh’s parents were not at home or this thing would have blown out of proportion & each one of us would have to go through a Court hearing.

That night saurabh, Nikhil & I had counseled, consoled & motivated vikas into normalcy, which was more than we had anything tried for. Ultimately I somehow dropped vikas at is home came back home at 1 AM.

Fast forward to the annual function, an unseen & untold tension was going on between the two of them & even though the function was one of the best ever in the college vikas was not in the mood at all. Little did we know the repercussions of that day(& night) were just a breath away.

It was a fine hot march morning when our 5th semester results were out, which I don’t know how added more tensions to vikas’s hollow childish mind, he had scored 2 in Theory of Computation(TOC) which was a cracker of sorts, but the real deal was from me scoring just 1, the lowest ever in whole of RGPV’s history, the only joy about it was that some of the talented first benchers had also failed in the subject & for the first time they would be giving a carried paper this semester although it did not cheered him in any way.

Two days later vikas was being unbearable to himself & us. Maybe it was the lunch break or we were on our routine bunk from our classes (not being any kind of novelty), Vikas had somehow got his hands on the canteen’s deadliest & biggest knife and was holding it on his hand threatening to cut himself if she did not accept her offer (he had again proposed the second time, the balls of him), total filmy if you ask me, & literally we were taking it as a joke fed up with his nuisance’s especially to saurabh, Nikhil & me. I don’t know who started the “DARE to VIKAS” game but it went into motion with a proper video been shooted, so picture this everybody telling vikas to cut his hand, jokingly of course (which we were thinking, but vikas had something else in mind), & the next second when everybody’s attention had drifted to some gagging vikas did the unthinkable, the sharp edge of the knife had done it’s job, & then the second, & in the third cutting Ankit’s hand who by the time had realized what vikas was doing & was forcing him to stop. Blood was oozing out of vikas & ankit’s hand like fountain in the middle of a forest. I must say everybody & that included us & others in the canteen went numb at this sight & for a minute or two, nobody knew what to do. Then as our senses restored we somehow carried vikas & ankit to the office to get them medical attention, for which I had taken responsibility, & I promised myself I am not doing it the next time, come what may. Meanwhile this breaking news had reached the girl’s ear and saurabh & Nikhil were persuading her to at least talk to vikas but she said it’s no use & she is shutting the topic there itself. I really do not want to write about the ultra deep wounds in his hands, which were very hideous downright. My hands were all covered in vikas's blood & the wound was not clotting at all. Interestingly the story we made up for this fiasco in front of teachers was more amazing than what actually happened. The excuse made was vikas & ankit fell of on some nails & had wounded themselves while playing, something our teachers & office personnel were not at all keen on digesting it. We even persuaded the canteen’s owner to not to tell anything to the principal & staff about it and better throw that knife away from sight.

Atlas the scores were settled with one more medal on our jackets. Since then whenever that day is remembered we burst into an uncontrollable laughter, something which we all would never forget the whole of our life. Alas the video recorded never showed the actual climax but it has been stored in our minds ever since.

Coming back to business, the semester apart from the above shenanigan went on total smooth with nothing to stop us from being mischievous. The placement season, as I said, was not at all exciting thanks to the approaching Recession, but as always, we kept our hopes high & spirits oiled too well.

Just during the end of the semester came one more fiasco, SATYAM, & everybody who had a gloss on their faces being called a SATYAM-ian, lost it more quickly than ever it went on. It was something totally out of nowhere & we had a great time teasing & insulting these would-be-SATYAM-ian, something that we had developed as a hobby of sorts or to aptly put in Time-Pass.

I do not remember the first time I had given a ATKT paper, but the look on the faces of the people who had failed in TOC & especially those who were chronic mugger first benchers, reminded me of the chicken ready to be butchered. Me along with Vikas, who had somehow dropped his numbness for the time being, was the one with the coolest minds that day. I smile every time I remember the faces of people who had given their first ATKT of their life, they could not even remember their roll number, paper’s name, etc, etc.

The semester ended on a good happy note & come winter, we were to be in the final year of our Engineering, something I had not expected to become real from a wild dream.

To be continued…

Rohit Kaveeshwar

insomnia

2010-09-10T14:51:00.000+05:30

Dictionary says that Insomnia is inability to sleep.

Or so to aptly put in humane terms when those damn filthy channels do not shut off your mind & make you go crazy all night not to mention not letting you sleep. For me this has been a occasionally regular affair and somehow I have started to cope up with it, just laying around all night doing nothing thinking some of the most weird stuff ever & everything else in between.

One such insomnia filled night when I had tried everything like listening to every other song on my phone including those psychedelics courtesy Pink Floyd that included 23:46 min long Echoes, Comfortably Numb, Us & Them and the classical Shine on You Crazy Diamond, I haven’t had a single wink of sleep in my eyes. At-last I gave up all hopes & let Insomnia take the control.

Just to kill time I retracted back to thinking crazy stuff & one such thought came to my mind like a brain-wave: -

Why can’t boy’s, specially committed, remember dates like birthday’s anniversaries, etc while girls always have a spare dedicated associative memory space considering the fact that their main memory is always occupied with shopping lists, materialistic possessions & shrewd, stupid power game strategies.

Even though I don’t give my mind enough to think about & he is too grateful to me for that, this was something I could not resist at all so I started thinking invading those areas of my mind which I never knew existed let alone using it.

It took me probably 2 hours or so when I came to some conclusion. The reason boy’s don’t remember dates is simply because they can’t, girl’s do have an advantage there, but as always boy’s are one step ahead, While girls remember each & every other stupid date ranging from anniversary of proposal, first date to first blah blah blah for which they plan ahead already which gifts to buy & all, boy’s do the right thing, whenever they come to know of some date & need to buy a gift they would always take it to the eleventh hour, this way they buy the best thing available, this is evolution, we boy’s are made that way. But girls have a different strategy they would first make a shopping list of what to buy (normally it lays forgotten somewhere underneath the bag), and then at the shop they will take ages to decide & sometimes (invariably most of the time) they buy stuff which are not even worth the use & for that they have given hundred’s of bucks. Not only that they will traverse the whole city just to find a simple stupid thing costing more than preparing a survival kit to South Pole or any other remote location, I admit that would be fun if both of them go alone there. But then this is what evolution is. Girls tend to think every other calendar date has a meaning & there are sentiments, emotions, feelings & all other dark crappy stuff related to it, while boys, we may call it the natural tendency, masochism or anything weird it sounds, but the advantage they have is that they can have one look at a thing & can in a matter of seconds decide whether it is right or wrong & even worth something or not.

I think that’s why we call Men are from Mars & Women are from Venus.

Rohit Kaveeshwar

The Days of our Engineering Lives – Uncensored Version – Part 5/8

2010-09-01T17:25:00.000+05:30

Truba College of Engineering & Technology, Indore
Computer Science Branch – Sem 5 – Year 3

From my insane experience I can surely say that making into the 3rd year of engineering is nothing less than a feat itself. It marks the second last step towards a world, which is nothing in comparison to the world you were forced or on your terms left behind in your schooling days. 3rd year in any engineering college across MP or for that matter anywhere in India marks the start of the all-important & eagerly awaited placement season, something every guy or gal looks forward to in anticipation as to what is to come next. The same was the case with us, though we did not expect any good company or for that matter any company to come anywhere near us, but human expectations since the start of civilization has no limits whatsoever.

I still remember my first day at 5th Sem, I had just came back from a holiday, everyone had started attending college, and it had rained the whole of Indore the earlier night. If there is one thing that our college has in abundance is the greenery during the rainy season, the chilly winds during winters, which make it an ideal picnic spots for those who are committed in love. I don’t know why doesn’t the management turn this “place-out–of-nowhere” into a picnic spot, it would give them more money than what they earning now & almost ruining hundreds of student making them engineers. The whole area around our college was lush green & there were waterfalls around the backside that gave a scenic view with hills at the backdrop. So lets figure this out, I was coming by the bus towards college, & was on the upward pass leading to our college, just then my friends came busting in my bus & literally took me out, the reason being we were all going for an outing, so much for my first day in 5th Sem. We had decided to go to Patalpani, a waterfall near Mhow that was the hotspot for bunkers picnickers, & couples (that are in dire need of isolation from the hassle & crowds of city). First we head headed for Mhow station & you would not believe we had taken a lift from a tractor & were sitting in its trolley. Anyways when we reached Mhow station the last train towards Patalpani had left, apurv suggested a crazy idea which was to walk along the railway track to reach Patalpani, he assured it’s not that far away hardly 5-6 Km. If you ask me I would have killed him for this insanity but then we had to do something & it’s a age old tradition among engineering students never to let a bunk fail off, so we all set out along the railway track towards Patalpani. There may be some 20 people along with us that included some juniors & some from other branches as well. At first the walk seem good given the windy & cool weather but afterwards it dawned on us that apurv must have made a wrong calculation because it was not that near & we had to walk some 20-25 Km (approximation, dunno what’s the actual distance, but we had surely walked this much). Well even though it was a long walking journey like those nomadic people who use to wander homelessly, but we enjoyed it the most & to the fullest. Maybe the whole walk was actually worth it, or to aptly put in totally worth that view we got at Patalpani with waterfall, swimming, cricket, etc. We enjoyed it to the fullest, there was an ‘A’ rated video made between ankit, vikas, apurv, chandu & ashish, but I would not get into it (better contact @iisaurabh for it). Nevertheless totally famished & satisfied with ankit, vikas, apurv, ashish, & chandu more than satisfied, we came back by the evening train which again we had almost missed, or it would been a long way home. Back at Indore we had a big feast that included lots of non-veg & veg delicacies & we headed back home. The funny thing was we had reached our homes just when we would have reached after college hours & that was an achievement of sorts & was the perfect ending for a bunk.

Bang in the middle of the semester came the 4th Sem results & since the fiasco at the annual function we had not expected it anything less than that, 8 out of 10 of us were failed in the electronics practical, with ashish, saurabh, ankit, apurv &, last but not the least in any kind of way, chandu were failed in 2 & me & vikas had 1. Interestingly amol & Rohit came out clean from the puddle of mud. That day we 10 on no purpose at all spent the whole day & the next 3 days going into every class just to say sorry for what happened last Sem. Surprisingly the apologizing came out good & the electronics department was criticized by each & everyone for their wrong doings & to the craziest of our imagination, the guy who started this all was literally thrown out along with some others. A special achievement that we celebrated over everything illegal.

Coming back to the placement season, we had a few or to be true no placements at all. Then somewhere in the middle of the Sem came Satyam that had an open campus & everyone one of us was jumping with joy. That day must have been the greatest day of Truba College because almost 10 people had got placed in Satyam from our college out of which 6 were from our branch. When the news broke out, the then short lived principal himself came into our class & congratulated the selected students, although nobody from our group got selected even though everyone tried hard apart from me & saurabh, we had actually gone to see a movie just because we hated that company, I told you we both paired together are the craziest pack ever to walk this earth. Nevertheless we had our first placements set on & that was really a good start to all of it. As is the case, the aftereffects of the placed students started coming from imagination to reality, they used to think they are the endangered species, the bestsellers in engineering & the most valuable asset ever to this college, little did they know what was lying ahead for them in the future & of course what we have in store for them, since then they had a hint of gloss on their faces literally and figuratively.

This Sem as you have seen didn’t turn out to be something worth writing for but then it was an important Sem in whole of our engineering life because one it was the third year & second the aforesaid placements and thirdly the politics & power.

I don’t know whether this is my imagination or something but this Sem set the foundation for the power, politics & diplomatic games that started in our class & would go on till a nasty end to it. By now everyone was settled in his or her groups & I don’t the reason why but even the girls had groups or to say lobby of their own, where the “POWER” games were played of the highest degree and in some ways it affected us boys too, for better or for worse I don’t know, but we were dragged into it.

The end of Sem saw us preparing for the carried practical’s & we knew we would be tortured to 4th degree & we were, the external that came intentionally asked us such stupid questions which no one knew, actually he was sent by the fired guy with his influence on the new HOD, but we held our guts & answered everything coolly & confidently, of course he could do us no harm because the management was on our side & we had already talked with them about it and they were ready to help us in any way they can.

At last the Sem ended with a high note with a good semester exam & in anticipation as to what is to come next, which to the wildest of our dreams never expected with love, suicide attempt, power games & more such crazy things.

To be continued…

Rohit Kaveeshwar

The Days of our Engineering Lives – Uncensored Version – Part 4/8

2010-08-01T14:35:00.001+05:30

Truba College of Engineering & Technology, Indore
Computer Science Branch – Year 2 – Semester 4

W-A-R, three letters that can best describe the 4th Semester of our Engineering lives. If 3rd SEM was where the groundwork for it had begun, this semester was where the cannons taken out, the bullets fired & first drops of blood were spilled.

As you can recall after the 3rd semester exam we, CS & EC, had gone into a mutual understandable cease-fire. But since as the great old tradition in war goes, one or the other who is always power hungry & desperate to win with all hooks & crooks, come what may, is always ready to fire at the faintest chance.

To start off, this semester never started with a bang, it had all the makings of a quite normal, trouble free one add to it the upcoming Annual Function Prayas, the 2nd edition, due to which there was a kind excitement on the campus & lest I forget, 4th semester marked the arrival of Juniors (Jr.), one of the many things which urged us to start off this semester without delays lest we deprive ourselves from the uncontrollable feeling of executing the Ragging Process.

Before the aforesaid war could ever happen, we had the biggest task of “Ragging” in our hands and like experts we were on it from the word GO. Of course without our seniors (we were the first damned batch of the college) supervising us we might not had been able to take it to the ultimate peak, but I can surely say we all had (& specially we) fun in all sorts of way.

According to Govt. Rules to curb ragging in colleges there has to be a Anti-Ragging Committee” in all colleges comprising the Principal, staff members, HOD’s, some senior & junior students from all branches. Of course we had this committee in our college, but since our reputation in the college being good people, I wonder how the staff members thought that & weird how principal approved this, but 5-6 out of our group were selected on the Committee. For the college it might be a good decision taking into account the control we had on all students, for us well we could not have asked for more. It was almost nothing short of license to kill & fly by without harm. Needless to say everyone in our group was onboard the committee from the very first day.

I still wonder how this incident happened, because Ashish, Ankit & Apurv were the core members of the Anti-Ragging Committee, but one fine day when they were busy with the juniors (read ragging them), someone else from the committee member informed the Principal about this, & bang that guy was there within minutes, it had happened so fast that nobody could do anything. Well it took an enormous effort on our part to calm everybody down but the three of them had to pray the price. They were suspended for 5 days & our HOD was too strict & furious about it.

Coming back to the WAR, if it was not for PRAYAS, we would have probably made it to the all-stars blacklist on Ragging probably would have more than a suspension or two. But then there were some juniors for which we had preferential treatment feeling. They had helped us in many ways they could apart from finishing our assignments & loads of other stuff not worth mentioning here.

This time PRAYAS was a 5 day event with the final function performing on the Building “LAWNS”. First up on the itinerary was football that took up two days with CS coming out as overall Winners. The trouble started or so to say the initial sparks went off when CS girls were in a planned way defeated by EC girls, of which the major role was played by the Umpires who were from EC dept.

The actual battle started in the last 2 overs of the Final Cricket Match between EC Seniors v/s CS Juniors. EC Sr. were chasing & had to make some 10 runs in the last over, earlier favoritism shown by EC teachers, who had been assigned as scorers, had sparked off Chandu invariably, but somehow everything calmed down.

In the last over when EC needed 10 runs a CS guy threw a wide ball, which costed 1 run, but then with great nepotism shown by EC teachers they wrote down two runs for it. After the first incident Chandu had been sitting with scorer to keep a check on him, when he noticed that EC guy (he was next-in-line to be HOD) has played foul, his fuse went off & bang the whole on-field nail biting tension shifted to off-field drama between Chandu & that poor guy, who was caught by his collar, & Chandu was shouting abusive word to the highest degree like anything. If I can say, this was the only (according to my living non-formatted memory) time when we could not control him (of course there have been times when he has gone off limits but our pacifying tactics have also been sharpened with it) with anything at all.

The fight broke out to such an extent that even the principal who had arrived there running (for the fact that he limps) & panting to control the situation could not do a damned thing about it. Interestingly since that day the principal post of our college has been jinxed & anyone who comes as a principal barely lasts a week and either leaves or becomes a director & goes into the far corner room of the office, I sill wonder how that small office room holds so many people & their accessories with them.

Next Chandu & all of us strode off to the main function area & started shouting words against the poor EC guy. We had called for a strike & threatened everybody that unless that guy apologizes publicly, we will not let this function happen. I still remember me, vikas, the girls & others were sitting on a strike in corridors of our wing while Chandu, Ashish, Amol, Apurv, Ankit, Saurabh & I don’t know who all were, all fighting with the staff. Even the CS HOD got a chance to lock horns with EC’s HOD & the rumor has it that he slapped him right across his face. Nikhil who had been conducting a competition went off the stage stopping the competition in the middle.

But then the scores were settled with many heated arguments. The next day which was the final day of the function, Amol, Chandu, Ashish, Apurv, Ankit & Rohit Tiwari were all locked up in principal’s office & were to be kept there till the function ended, but vikas, saurabh, me & Amol did everything so as to not to start the function until & unless they were released, so much for our unity that we cannot tolerate injustice especially towards us. Finally they were released but with a warning. The end of the function saw us apologizing the whole college for the deeds we had done, however right they were (of course we had some social & moral responsibility to make up with)

As far as the war was concerned, it went on & on, the first casualties of it, were to be discovered during the next SEM, but then we didn’t knew it at all.

Erstwhile the semester exams, internals & externals went on smoothly with we 10 getting a special treatment at the EC externals. But we took it sportingly, & came out too good off it.

To be continued…

Rohit Kaveeshwar

The Days of our Engineering Lives – Uncensored Version – Part 3/8

2010-07-08T18:41:00.000+05:30

Truba College if Engineering & Technology, Indore

Computer Science Brach – Year 2 – Semester 3

You must have been thinking what a boring engineering life this guy & his friends are living, after all engineering in MP is nothing less than chilling out & enjoying everyday with friends, giving a damn to studies until the semester exams loom around the corner. Well folks, I think you should all stop with that criticism because the “War” has just begun.

Yeah, you heard me right, we were in the 2nd Year of Engineering life, & right from Day 1 of Semester 3, the all-important, much awaited, ruthless, cunning, barbarian, merciless, cruel, no-holds-barred WAR between Computer Science (CS) & Electronics and Communication Dept.(EC) had begun with a bang. And there would be no marks for guessing, & surely no early bird prizes, that we 10 were on the front leading the side as strikers (we were part of defense too, but it does not matter anyhow). Actually the battlefield was drawn earlier in the 2nd semester between the departments, we were the soldiers who mattered in the whole scheme. What started as a cut-throat competition between the departments ended up including us, the innocent Baker Street Irregulars.

We had quite a lot of Electronic subject in the semester, hence every EC faculty was in any ways it could, trying to harass us. The ultimate weapon in their hands was catching us using mobiles in the class. Actually there is a blanket/umbrella ban on use of mobile phones in the college campus according to RGPV, but who the hell listens to them & gives a damn to their rules & regulations. It had turned so nasty that even if we would touch our phones outside our pockets they would catch us, took the phones in their custody, & until and unless we apologies to them a hundred times, they would not return it to us. The same was happening to EC students from CS faculty, since they too had computer science subject. Needless to say we, front liners, were the ones targeted the most. Even our HOD locked horns with his EC counterpart on a regular basis.

Though we were the regular targeted causalities on an everyday basis, there were others in the class who had put up a good fight. At least two nasty incidents happened involving me.

It was probably the post-lunch lecture when some EC faculty was teaching us a subject he hardly cared about. I had a terrible headache (even here they would not spare us & we had to get a written permission even to blink our eyes in their lecture) & was not in the mood of studying anything, so along with Nikhil, was sitting at the last bench. I think Nikhil was working on his phone transferring some files via Bluetooth. Almost 70 pc of the lecture had passed without a gunshot fired(a record of sorts that time). The faculty was taking a round of the class teaching us some unpronounceable topic, suddenly he spotted Nikhil with a mobile phone, actually he had kept the phones on the underside of the table, but as I said even a glimpse of a communication device was more than enough to fire the cannon. The teacher came up to us, & confisticated the phones and told us to go to the dept & bring a written permission to sit in the class. Nikhil was all arguing with him that the phones were just kept there & he was not using them, actually it was Nikhil who was using them, I was just sitting with him. But when you are at war everything is fair & justified, I with a headache & that lecturer shouting on top of my head got up gave that guy a stern glare, threw the notebook & dashed out of the class. Next thing Nikhil & I knew, we had to bring written application from the principal to sit in the class.

On the second instance, which was in many ways the funniest incident ever, involved saurabh, vikas & me, three of us sitting in 1 bench, yes with vikas too, we were playing with our phones & the lecturer caught us, took them in custody & asked us to meet in the dept after the college hours. I can surely say that day was the most boring day of our life, I don’t know how but the clocks had gone into a slow motion. After the hours we 3 went to EC dept to get vikas’s phone back(saurabh & me had smartly hidden ours before that guy came in, of course vikas couldn’t do it given his huge figure). After much talks & apologizing he agreed to give us back & told us to go outside & wait near the Library. It was such a lazy day that I was almost drifting to sleep & was resting on vikas’s shoulders (he was saurabh & mine favorite pillow). I never knew what hit me but as the EC guy (he was the next in line to be HOD) was coming I said “YEH ****** AADMI HAI KI PAJAMA”. Those words had just came out of my mouth & bang that guy was in front of me, I am sorry I cannot say what all happened at that instant, because it was a moment to live. At his back everybody was laughing, even the others who were in the corridor, I had said it too loud probably for the entire corridor to hear. The Lecturer eyes were just scanning me, sweat broke on my forehead, & I think I must have broken some ribs of mine trying not to laugh, while others were just laughing uncontrollably. Nevertheless the score was settled, with a final warning to me not to mention a strong stare from him. Since then I seemed to enjoy this war & whenever anybody of us saw that guy even in lecture, we could hardly suppress a grin. Courtesy me, that guy got a nickname ‘PAJAMA”. Everybody even the EC students accepted the name too.

The days passed by with incidents happening at almost a regular basis, even in the winter season the battle raised the temperature to keep us warm & charged up. I think there were some corridor fights which helped to keep the tension on appropriate levels

The bad thing about RGPV are their results, it has a tradition of coming on a Saturday night since I don’t know when. After the exams everybody’s heart starts to pump fast on a Saturday in anticipation of result. And come did they, & as always we were the ones who barely got through with the theory, interestingly or fortunately saurabh & me ( I always knew we both had a connection between us even if he is a year older to me) got the same papers to carry.

The internals & externals that semester apart from being a normal affair made us to have a break from the aforementioned war, but EC Dept/ especially to us, gave a hard time in the Viva & practical’s. I remember since I had not attended too many classes that semester had to do all the practical’s of electronics, but rohit tiwari who was regular just because of his girlfriend(read just a friend this being the girl’s version), ended up doing all of them, given that we shared the same name & I was scot free.

You must be thinking, ATKT papers are an added tension to engineering students. In our case you are terribly wrong, for saurabh & me, who have lived life without a tinge of tension, take them as if it’s just another waste of day. True we both had 5 regular & additional 4 Carry’s, totaling 9 papers with at least 2-2 on consecutive days. But we both had pledged to ourselves that come what may, we are clearing them by hook or crook, If I am not mistake (@iisaurabh) we had Engineering Mathematics 2, Engineering Drawing, Basic Electrical & Engineering Mathematics 1 for the carried part. I may be hallucinating but that semester RGPV had set some of the easiest papers in their history, add to it an all theory paper of Basic Electrical that traditionally is filled up with the dullest & cunning numericals ever. The most dreaded regular paper was Network Analysis, which thanks to the 4 Rahul’s sitting beside me went extraordinarily well by my standards.

The semester ended with a warning that 4th Semester would be something that would change the equations, anybody would ever expect.

To be Continued (of course with the war)...

Rohit Kaveeshwar

The Days of our Engineering Lives – Uncensored Version – Part 2/8

2010-06-23T17:14:00.000+05:30

Disclaimer: All Disclaimers for this post remain as it is from The Days of our Engineering Lives – Uncensored Version – Part 1/8.

Truba College if Engineering & Technology, Indore

Computer Science Branch – Year 1 – Semester 2

Welcome to Semester 2 of engineering, we 10 guys have still not left our craziness, though we think it’s high time we did it & the fact that it still is not that late to leave the weirdness we so respectfully posses. But then there has to be someone to balance things out. And then who wants to do it, its just second sem buddy!

To start off I would rather say we were happy to make it to 2nd semester of engineering, including the whole class & the college for sure, because that meant the Annual Function was due. Of course the one thing that really pissed us off was that it would happen in hot summer month of March, & then like that was not enough, to the craziest of our imaginations, it was going to be organized in the Workshop Area.

Prayas ‘05, yes that’s what we would be calling it, the first ever Annual Function of Truba College of Engineering & Technology, Kailod Kartal, Off Indore Dewas Bypass Road, Indore, built on a small cliff some 14 Kms from city, where if you allowed me to say even if the Narmada in it’s blues of the blues gets flooded & the whole of Indore gets submerged, I am pretty well, actually, damn sure our college is where the action would be, not to mention it would make a great makeshift camp for survivors & military’s evacuation procedures.

Coming back to the topic, well we were having our first ever-annual function in broad daylight (in night there would be things, so nasty happening that I don’t want to talk about it, but would love doing it as many other boys will agree with me, except the studious types). But then it was something we all were actually feeling proud of, not to mention the classes we bunked on it’s name, it gave us liberty to roam around freely all day long, no questions asked, & even if there were some, we would coolly reply to them as being members of Disciplinary Committee (!).

We also had two days of sports before the function including cricket & football for boys & badminton for girls, Table tennis for both the genders. I still remember the trials that we conducted for cricket & football at Dusshera Maidan near my house, the domination by us at the selection & the opposition, or rather the depressed opposition shown by the other side. Although we included some of the best players in our team & that included anti-us & the neutral ones (yes they existed) but we probably had the best team in college apart from EC’s, with whom Chandu was eager to have rough match.

Bang, probably on the second day of Sports just before the finals, there came the most awaited, feared & anticipated thing, THE RESULTS, almost the whole college was running to Computer Labs. It finally had come with a month long rumors & whisperings, not to mention the increased heartbeats it gave us, even the teachers had fun with us on that. We had the first set of grades in our engineering & almost everybody doing pretty much well, although I think me, saurabh, Ankit, rohit, Amol & vikas carried a paper or two. I still remember the faces of vikas with his whining & probably the last time anybody would see Saurabh CRYING over his grades (I hope I had a camera then, it would surely made one hell of an archive). Though the results helped to dampen our spirits for some time, but it was a matter of time till we immersed ourselves into the function again.

That semester Truba College saw one of the best cricket matches to be played on the ground (!). It was CS v/s EC for the final & it turned out to be a nail biting finish like India winning against Pakistan at World T20 final. Though we lost at the end but had put up the best performance ever.

I remember a play we had put up for the annual function, I think it was a mix of Salim - Anarkali story with Don, where almost 5 boys played Salim’s role & Saurabh donning the Don, Anarkali was done by the then best rated girl in our class *****(Confidentiality & Privacy reasons). It turned out to be so well that we received the best play by a popular vote amongst the crowd. I don’t think anybody in the group will ever forget the practice we had at Saurabh’s house & the voting & the vetoing on which girl to take for Anarkali’s role ( it was really a scene worth seeing then).

For the bad part, first up was the Workshop Practice we had & I kid you not it was the most intolerable thing I ever did in my life. Actually our college being on the outskirts of the city & situated in an open field out of nowhere, received immense amount of heat during summers, the workshop was a separate building outside the main campus, with a trussed Tin shed on top, which meant so much amount of heat that we could have almost run a steam engine, or at least melted Diamond, if nothing else. Apart form the summer heat wave, me saurabh, rohit & vikas had a great time since all our workshops jobs were patiently carried out to perfect completion by the workshop teaching staff. (I don’t know how did the other batches went, so better comment on it).

Secondly we had Engineering Drawing that sem, & I bet you 100 bucks that anyone who can’t draw a single straight line would probably hate this place as much as I do. I couldn’t get the hang of it ever & so did many others as the course advanced from simple lines to some of the most complex man-made drawings.

We really treat anyone who is on our side to the best respectful way, & this we showed when a bunch of IT guys harassed Vinu (our associate member) over a small issue of bus’s window, but that was enough for our ever-leading, 5 inch tall, spectacled & always ready for anything with his friends CHANDU alias Chandra Prakash Deep Ajmera to get into a fight. And boy if it was just a 2 min fight we would have never ever gave any consideration to it, or I would have never wrote it here, but this went on for almost 2 days with the Finale happening nowhere else than just in front of our Principal’s room, & on top of it just in the morning when he had came out instructing us to get back in the classes (or to say no bunking, boys), he had a habit of this & we were his regular customers at it. Well as every other fight goes it had to end in principal’s room with almost 3 Hrs of continuous non-stop, eyes watering & yawning lecture of ethics, morals, values & some other such stuff I dare not to remember.

I don’t know how but I think clouds answered our prayers, and because of that we had a good early monsoon that season probably in Late April – Early May. Well it cooled down things pretty much. Those rains brought out some of the most wonderful scenery, something worth a camera-click. We had the whole of Indore spread out ahead of us & it looked like we were on some hill station or so. I remember our Engineering Drawing Internal that sem, it rained like cat’s & dogs that day, everybody in my class was over with the vivas, excluding me & others who were to follow, I who could not resist rains ever along with my friends took a whole campus walk & we saw some of the best Kodak Moments ever. Of course we got a good lectures from the teachers who waited for us till we got in whole drenched in rains to give our vivas but it was kinda fun to do it.

The sem brought out one of the best kept secrets in RGPV, the internals & mid semester are probably the best joke played by them ever, & since then, in our living memory we have ever given two hoots to them till the last sem.

Externals turned out to be a pretty normal affair & went out like a breeze. But the most awaited thing, mainly by the peoples who had carried papers were the Semester Exams. Somehow it was an added tension for us, will we, or will we not was the million dollars question that time.

But then like just another obstacle in our way, this could not hold on for very long & we got through with it, eagerly awaiting the result that was to come next sem.

To be Continued...

Rohit Kaveeshwar

Days of our (Engineering) Lives - Uncensored Version- Part 1/8

2010-06-13T11:07:00.006+05:30

Disclaimer: This has become an obsession for me, but this time it’s the most important thing on the post, for one there would be instances which neither me or anyone in my group would ever in our wildest dreams would dare to bare. Secondly I am being forcibly pushed to write it, so guys this is just for that sake, I am really sorry if anyone get’s hurt. Last but not the least, if you want to sue somebody sue them, not me I am a mere writer nothing else. Thanks.

Well, thank you for hearing out the disclaimer; it’s something I love to write. Just hold on a sec, Before starting I wanna tell that I would be writing in a semester wise fashion so this is the first of the 8 long & tedious parts of the whole blog.

Truba College of Engineering & Technology, Indore

Bachelor of Engineering - Computer Science Branch - Year 1 – Semester 1

What do you expect from a student just out of school, into an engineering college for the first time, actually into a college for the very first time, that too being in the very first, so to say Platinum Batch. You expect him to be anything but notorious & the-talk-of-the-campus. Well in our case we were 10, a hell lot more than anything anyone, anywhere in the world would expect.

At the start allow me to introduce us, according to roll no. - Amol Nandode, Ankit Khandekar, Apurv Khariwal, Ashish Trivedi, Chandra Prakash Deep Ajmera, Nikhil Neema, Rohit Kaveeshwar (that’s me), Rohit Tiwari, Saurabh Shrivastava, & last but not the least (literally & figuratively) Vikas Tharyani.

I really think the college would not have expected this, at least from the Platinum’s. But here we were 10 of the most Unimaginable, Notorious, well known, famed, celebrated, renowned, eminent, prominent, illustrious, legendary, recognized, Talk-of-the-campus, teachers & girls of the college, It was just because of us that any outsider (that is if they ever came) would call this College – a CAMPUS. And like that was not all we were the most respected ones in the class too. Actually only we 10 made that damn-class THE CLASS & I think everyone should be grateful to us for that.

I don’t remember how we 10 got together; maybe it was our attitude, thought process, or simply our frequencies matched, without any resistance whatsoever. We were literally a gang of sorts; actually the only gang in the class & of course the whole college.

We were a batch of 60, with almost 35% comprising girls, but I don’t remember that anyone getting along so well like we did because barely a week into the first sem we had the coveted reward of being the strongest & united group in the college.

Semester 1 of B.E. is something nobody of us would ever forget. For one it marked the starting of our group, 2nd we had enemies to tackle right from the word GO & it comprised of people from the studious zone (padhne wale bachhe, we used to call them), the anti –us group, who were always thinking of means to break us down. Well they never succeeded, but every time they tried they failed disastrously.

Contrary to notorious-tag, we had a respect that nobody ever got (or would have never imagined getting one). We had a full row to ourselves near the windows & not a single lecture went without a wisecrack or any other such thing coming from our side of the classroom. I still remember that even though we had a full row to ourselves, with most of the benches remaining empty, but nobody outside our group even dared to sit with us, & interestingly no teacher, had ever dared to pan into our area, & even if they mistakably did, they never dared saying anything to us, of course, we enjoyed the QoS we received but at some point we regretted the non-attention we got. Of course we never stopped anybody coming near us, but then that VIP status always comes with a price.

I can’t forget Apurv Khariwal, his oratory skills that I would hold on a sec, but he was too good at grabbing lunchboxes. I don’t remember a single day throughout the entire college days when this man would have rested without a lunchbox, & like that’s not all no lunchbox ever remained full after 3rd lecture, of course it was tough to keep him away while we were eating during lectures (I dunno if it was his sixth sense or just his nose), but then we got away with it barely a few times, his main target included me, vikas, rohit, nikhil & amol, with vikas being the no. 1. But thanks to him & his stash of lunchboxes, we always got through with every damn-boring lecture for the 4 years.

It was one such day when we were all resting in the so-called-garden of college, it was the last lecture & we usually bunked it, as the college got over, people started getting out of their classes, we were in our usual habit of passing comments on any tom-dick-harry that passed by us, one such group of girls passed by us, & I think Chandu unintentionally said something which one of the girl thought it was pointed to her, she came dashing towards Chandu who literally was taken aback from her huge figure, she then called her brother, who was in her class (I think EC) & he came with his gang to even things out with us, but no on-the-spot action occurred since the principal came out to cool things up.

Next day those EC guys came again, over some heated discussions, Chandu who had lost his temper was thinking of some serious revenge. So that day everybody apart from me & vikas went along with chandu in his bus. Little did they know that those EC's were also on the same bus, on board they again had some serious discussion. As chandu's stop came he got down, those EC guys followed suit & surrounded him, little did they know that Ashish, Apurv, Ankit, amol, rohit & saurabh had taken them from behind. A fierce fight broke out between the two groups, saurabh had already informed his brother of this incident, as had chandu to his fleet of friends, totaling more than a dozen guys against a handful of EC chaps, well they had no chance to escape at all & we won in style. Chandu was so out of control that day that he immediately filed up an FIR against them. Such was the craziness within us, that we never left a stone unturned. And since then nobody ever dared to take a stance against us.

Well the first sem went on with all of us including we 10 completing each & every assignment’s, practical’s etc in a disciplinary manner, but we never missed out on our actions. I remember one such incident, everybody in the group decided to go on a Mass bunk (the first official mass bunk, although we had innumerable bunks before & after that), but this one was special, we had decided to watch Garam Masala at velocity that day, & I would rather Apurv & Chandu describe the whole in the comments because it was them who were the center of attraction the whole day & what did they talk on phone still remains a mystery. But we enjoyed the whole trip very much; of course we missed Garam Masala & had to watch Biwi No. 1 or some such film, but it was fun. Back at the Class things were pretty actually totally low, the teachers, students & especially the girls never liked us skipping class that day & it was a whole boring day for them (girls do enjoy seeing action, not that they show it off). Well the good thing was the studious type got to learn in silence (so much for them).

Among the entire teachers there was one Sachin Patel, who really blended with us, He used to teach us Civil & Engg. Mechanics. His on-the-field Civil Engg. Practical would be something saurabh, vikas & me would never forget (I don know about others), with the tea, coffee, snacks & everything he served us while others slogged away in hot afternoons doing stupid things on the grounds. His lab was the one perfect hiding place for us during our bunks & there too we received top-most hospitality.

RGPV has a strange rule of conducting a Exam in the middle of a happy semester, our college going a step further with conducting the exam at 1 O’clock , it really took the brains out of us (that is if we had any), the results as we had expected never came out good, but it was a shock for even the studious types & girls, they literally cried for the poor marks & going to the extent to requesting the principal for a retest. I don’t know why, but thanks to our teachers, there was a rumor that if you fail in mid-sem, there would be no semester exam for you. Of course we never paid any attention to these stupid things & we were all cool about it except for, I think Vikas & maybe Nikhil to some extent. I remember Amol getting 3/100 in a subject, accidentally that being his roll no.

Internals that sem was something we all looked forward to. I still have memories how we had helped each other (& in some cases people outside the group) with finishing their assignments, diagrams, sketches, observations etc, & I still cherish the memories those internals held for us, it was all fun everywhere (of course it would be the very last time we would ever be that serious for internals, later on it was just a little joke for us). Even the externals were something we looked upon too, the vivas, the tensions; gossips, files, shivani’s & vinu who helped saurabh & me get past all the hurdles now & later on, the mood of the external, all this added to the excitement & craziness of semester viva’s. I remember our Engineering Physics External, that day we had used the Bluetooth Technology to its actual & practical use, something for which it was made for. What we did was to capture all the observation tables, procedures, etc with our mobile’s cameras. Once inside the lab we all switched on our Bluetooth forming a piconet (a total of 7 +1 connected devices) & shared all the observations between us. The teacher & external could not even sense what we were doing all the time.

After the viva’s it was time for the big one, the semester exams. We knew we were not so well in our studies (thanks to our mutual understandings), but still we accepted the challenge, & come did they and we faced them bravely, after all it was the final exam of sorts & it took us just 5 papers to get through with it. It was the time when we really saw Vikas sweating profusely & of course loosing at least some Kilos if not much. For me, saurabh & the rest all thanks to Vinu John our associate member, who took us to our books & made us read them (even if they were Shivani’s Engineering Question Bank, called shivani mata). He was the biggest & probably the only help we (read saurabh & me) got (apart from girls) during Internals & Externals & that relationship was surely going to last a long way.

And then Bang the first sem had ended & we could not believe we had lived through it.

To Be Continued…

Rohit Kaveeshwar