Being in four year financed vacations , in the pursuit of “engineering “gives me a lot of time to read, write , getting into scandals, quarrel , netagiri etc that its make life interesting and full of adventure that deserves to be scripted in golden calligraphy. Thanks also to my no GF status that permits me to waste my time more intellectually. I think “Charles Darwin’s” theory of survival of the fittest is word by word applicable to all college species and ratio of 1:6 makes a fierce competition among all such races and difficult for all “average” type of guys who resemble to Indian athletes among European and American athletes and who find always there positions above 100. So its better to keep your-self respect and self esteem alive and have a no girl friend attitude then to get dumped. I swear i have not been dumped though i have never approached. No issues, if i wud be in there position (gal’s) ,wow 6 option, i would never choose myself as my prince-charming who can’t get 70%(no matter how close),afford to ask a single question in class……Good luck gals you all deserve better then all of “average” species. But i expect my dearest mom who is still concerned a lot about my hygiene, my regularities in bath, my dumb hairs, or how i cross road, would find a special dream girl with inbuilt features of Aishwarya and Angelina (who knows destiny) for her “Raja Beta” who has the virtue of being Professor Dwivedi’s only son, very humble, benevolent, non alcoholic, non smokers……. I can’t be a narcissistic at this movement but can’t restrict myself to write at least something good.

BREAKING NEWS !!, I got just 3 marks out of 15 merely 20% in the paper that i mentioned earlier….this really motivates me to work harder to be into the league of “average” again. Only thing that i like about scoring low is that it motivates you to work hard and give you a chance of improvement and fill yourself with lot of optimism. So after this positive note let my numbers rest in solace……….”aaamin”. Lets start once again where we left . “A Confession.”

My confession is not going to add any more links in the delhi bomb blast, nothing to do with Lehman brothers nor with indo-us nuclear deal. It just deals with me and my whole life. So here i am “Saurabh Dwivedi”, quiet average in every dimension in which you can think of- looks, weight, height, studies, sports etc. It took almost two decades to reach up to this conclusion. One should have a lot of courage and heart to call himself an “average” among all those valedictorians. But what i have realized that being an average is not always curse sometimes it’s very blissful too, must say leads to very relaxed state of mind far away from leg pulling fierce competition. No one expects you to perform neither your profs nor your parents. You get the freedom to choose any marks between 0- maximum without getting naive looks from others, it gives you ample time to discuss worldly affairs at ramu da’s ranging from love to war, peace to destruction etc and no one’s going to ask of your wasted hours, gives a lot of flexibility in one’s time table with focus on 10- hour sound sleep (must for global peace). An average always find himself among the majority of class with same type of smiling faces and super chilled attitude, so there is not a single chance of conflict between other species for bunk purposes.

Oh almighty god, give me strength to carry this “Average ” title attached to me with confidence to an eternity without feeling down, and shameful and please make me a good gentleman with purity in his thoughts, ethics in his actions, and somehow contributing to both Indian and global economy.

Next period- principle of communication teacher unavailable, “we want bunk” roared among us, and we rolled out with it…………………!

Saurabh – 3 ET

(saurabh4u.hbti@gmail.com)

I had written a post(HOLI at 3rd Year Hostel (WCH-3, 2001 Batch) mp3 atb no silence ) about my third year holi at WCH-3 few months back. I hope it will remind you colorful madness of your times.

Happy Holi!!!

Engineering is not merely knowing & being knowledgeable, it is about practicing the art of the organized forcing of technological change”. Engineers operate at the INTERFACE between science & society.To bring above into effect, the Department of Chemical Engineering ,HBTI Kanpur is organizing its tech fest INTERFACE 2008 on 12-13th April for active participation of engineering & technology students from all across the country. Besides providing a platform for the students to show their technical & intellectual skills, the budding engineers from all across the country get a chance to come together & know their counterparts . The participants could reflect their ideas through PAPER , POSTER & MODEL presentation or show their awareness & reasoning ability through CHEMICAL & BUSINESS QUIZ.

You can register online for participation. Get more details about events and schedule from the website i.e. www.interfacehbti.com .

Best of Luck!

We have changed some of our pages to make the activation part more obvious.

I am listing here the whole registration process, so that any body in trouble can refer this or a new person can get some guidance.

1. Click on the ‘Register’ link , in ‘Member Login’ box, in the left side of the Main page.
2. You will be presented with a form for filling in your Accout information:(all the fields marked with * are mandatory)

• i. First Name
• ii. Last Name
• iii. Nick Name i.e. the popular name you get in HBTI,i guess there are few people like Ramu dada who know your nick name only
• iv. Email Address , this will also we used as the user ID for login and for any email conversation.
• v. Password and
• vi. Re-type Password.

Click Next.
3. The next step is to fill your personal and professional information

• i. Gender
• ii. Relationship status
• iii. Birth Date
• iv. City , in which you are currently residing
• v. Country, in which you are currently residing
• vi. Hometown, from where you belong, your native place.
• vii. Phone, optional
• viii. Industry, select the appropriate option
• vi. Sub industry, select the appropriate option
• vi Company Name, Provide your company name, if you are a student, specify company if your are already placed. If from 1st and 2nd year fill ‘N/A’.

Click Next.

4. Third and the final step, provide information related to HBTI

• i. Batch, year of passing, students can fill future years.
• ii. Branch, select your branch.
• iii. SR Number, specify if you remember(optional)
• iv. Accommodation details,specify if you remember(optional)

Click Submit.
5. System will enter the information provided by you in database and will send you a welcome email.

6. Check your email, the email address you specified in account information.
7. Click the activation link to activate your account with the website.
8. Try log-in to check whether you are activated correctly or not.
9. Contact us, if you face any difficulty in any step or email us on support@myhbtidays.com

There are some fields in registration form which do not fit completely for students, so do the following while registration, Fill your year of passing in future as your batch and fill N/A in company name field. You can update those fields in future accordingly.

We want every student to be part of this community and tell us about the latest events and news of HBTI. They can also interact with us on any topic or for any help.

Welcome to My HBTI days!

Video-1

Video -2

More events to come this year, I checked the main website and ODYSSEY-08 is next.

It is series of 5 videos you can easily get by searching RDB@HBTI at www.youtube.com

Here is the first one,

Nice job done guys!!

Casting: This is very small video which doesn’t show the cast actually but some titles like “DK Entertainment” :-). Do see this before next.

Now Dhoom,

He started a website www.dilsecartoons.com in September 2007. I got news about his popularity when some non-harcourtian friend forwarded me his cartoon :-). Now he has more than 50 cartoons on his website with facility to comment and suggest new ideas. Kudos to Nitin for his creative work!

You can visit his website for the complete collection. My Favorite:

chale chalo…chale chalo…
Actually, right from morning upto 5 PM in the evening, the schedules were same for most students, as being just the first year, all the courses are anyway common across all branches. The day used to start with the hustle and tussle for a slot in the bathrooms, half of which were non-functional. Then the mundane breakfast which was mostly based on variants of bread. Then a series of classes, practical sessions and workshops, and with a hurried lunch, in between, involving jostling for chapattis, a long walk to and from the hostel and institute-building. In-all, it was only after 5 pm in the evening that each one of us could come out of the groove and have a time of our own.


pata hai tumhe…..ek majedar baat batata hoon….
There were no evening snacks at the hostel - just plain tea served in dented steel glasses. The snacks brought from home used to supplement the tea - I and Pammi(Paramjeet Singh ET 2001) used to bring regular supplies which we all used to devour. Though it appears to be just another event in the daily routine but actually that tea-time was the most enjoyable part of the day, as guys used to hang freely after the day’s travail - attending verbose, soporific lectures, mainly just for attendance credit. Those tea-sessions also were a platform for gossip, rumor and trivia in general.

bakar-bakar-bakar…..
In the initial few months the talks were about ragging-encounters with seniors - how someone faced rough behavior of a rude senior, or rarely, about a senior who was stunned and taken aback at a juniors’ witty answers to ragging questions. Soon the topics at tea shifted to cracking jokes at the idiosyncrasies of various teachers and their nick-names, which it seems were passed down across years, and finally about pretty-pretty faces in the batch and the quest for whereabouts, their home cities etc.

ye shaam mastaani….
After the tea as the evening grew, different people spent time in many interestingly varied ways. There was that section of students who used to sleep for an hour or two to wake up just before dinner. The energy gained was used later in bakar sessions. Then there were the responsible lot who did some household stuff like washing clothes, setting the room etc.
The effervescent lot used to walk down to the adjacent Nawabganj market often just for expecting to catch a sight of HBTI girls who too might have come out of their hostel for phone etc. Those Many others among the them used to dress up like a dulha just to have 15 minute pointless meeting at GH with someone.Days of 1997, when mobile phone were not common, PCOs were often most visited places and often a point for chance meetings as well. Fairdeal corner and Ajay PCO were in fact more of meeting points rather than anything else.

ek aur din beet gaya…..
By 8 PM it used to be dinner time which was announced in peculiar fashion - a mess boy shouting at the top of his voice - “Khana shuru ho gaya hai”. The dinner invariably involved cursing the hostel food and the contractor. Again the supplements like ghee and pickles from home made the food tasty somehow. After this a stroll across the hostel would again highlight the spectrum - loud glaring Daler Mehendi music from one room, serene jagjit Singh melody in another closed room, few focussed guys discussing assignment with 4 books here, and another few guys playing cards, smoking and talking aloud there.

That was the only time for us to pursue hobbies as well. So while guys like Pal(Amit Pal FT 2001) sat alone with pen and paper to bring subtle thoughts to poetry or like Dondoo(Praveen Verma CH 2001) who exercised the minds with puzzles, many others like Mittal(Abhishek Mittal CS 2001) who immersed themselves into esoteric books.

Gamble…..after-all
But do all of us software engineers really are some special and elite souls or…….. it is just a matter of being at the right place at a right time. Well, without the slightest shadow of doubt, I believe in the latter thought. It is linked to the market gamble - of putting your time and money into such hire-education that will provide rich dividends.

Some win, some lose……….but picture abhi baaki hai…
When we entered college around 1997, that time also Computers Science popularity was not in its peak. Many students with good ranks and all options at their disposal, went to disciplines like Chemical and Mechanical, mostly due to the guidance of parents, who thought that these evergreen branches were a safer bet for the future, rather than the computers which they had not even seen in their life.

But things changed heavily in this country and like all gambles some people have to win and others have to lose. The result is that, today, even the toppers of old economy disciplines like Chemical and Mechanical Engineering fail to get lucrative jobs, if they confine themselves to their own domains - while even mediocre from computer science and applications department, with superficial knowledge in their heads, but just esoteric buzzwords at their tongues, get attractive, and often multiple campus offers.

Does the euphoria have a sound foundation……?
Looking at all this one wonders, if this whole scenario has strong foundation, or it is more of a paper card structure which looks good as long as it is stable. Probably the events of recent past have the answer. A little sign of economic depression in America shakes the job market here almost immediately - leading to lay-offs and pay cuts, or one change in laws for visa restriction brings shudder in the on site-based body-shoppers and Services Companies in India.

This is not strength and independence which we can boast with conviction. It is good as long as it sails smoothly but it will not be like that always. We already got a trailer of unpleasant things in economic slowdown of 2001. Future threats include the competition from Chinese who too can provide cheap software labor, like us. The restlessness across Europe and US on account of job-loss due to jobs being shifted to India is already forcing the leaders there to take actions, that will end our good times.
People need to remember these facts especially the ones who tend to proclaim India to be talent pool for software engineers even going to the extent of linking it with rejuvenation of the Great Indian Past which had for past two centuries been subdued.

Neo-Rich….and the others…..
Meteoric growth of software in a country things otherwise have a slow pace is also creating huge social imbalance. Today, young graduates including freshers demand illogical figures for salary setting the whole economic imbalance in society in general. Software salaries are at least 5 times that of any Government department for similar years of experience. It is more prominent in cities like Bangalore and Gurgaon where the cash rich twenty-somethings olds are willing to spend anything for comfort. A glaring instance is the price for accommodation - one of the the basic need. The result is sky-rocketing property prices - so much so that a typical govt employee, striving to survive in the same city can not purchase a house even with his life time of savings and investments while the average age of house owners of flats is just 33.

It was fine pleasant Sunday morning during final year second semester. We were breaking benches in the hostel mess and eating like elephants and discussing the latest rumors and campus gossip - actually we did not have much to do otherwise. The only busy guy in our gang was Pammi as he was fooling himself in IIT lab for some professors’ recognition for his MS, though he messed up there too - that’s a different story which I shall talk about some other time. Let’s come back to the fine Sunday morning again.

Some told about the “Bicycle Run Campaign” in the city to create the AIDS awareness. Our gang has generally sported a don’t care attitude all along and we have been mostly inert in responding to such events. To add to that, we have in our gang Prashant and Pammi who are most lazy for any major outing. I must admit that the AIDS campaign was just a passing thought and we forgot it also, but we kind-of got excited at the thought of roaming around on cycle in the city.

Chalo….. Chalo…. Chalo…..?

We three, Prash, Dinna and I decided to have a round trip of Kanpur just for fun or rather for creating “halla”, which we generally do with most things. The worthy cause of AIDS awareness was not in our mind though that was the news which gave us the idea of taking our group activity in a new domain. We arranged some cycles - I managed to get the racing cycle from Vishal soni aka kalchu and rest of the guys got it from the ward boys I guess. Since all of us were lucky to have scooters or bikes for general movement, this rare movement on cycle added a spark for a while.

Kanpur Darshan….

We started from west campus and cycled for almost 3-4 hrs and reached another end of the Kanpur on the Cantonment side. In between we took small halt at Parmat Ghat - the Shiva Temple on the bank on Ganges. Then there was a peeping halt at GreenPark, a small break to buy grapes and have water.

It was April - and as we cycled, the Sun also started rising and by the time we reached near Kanpur’s new bus stop, it was over our head and in full mood to burn us. But we didn’t loose heart and went to a juice corner to gulp a couple of glasses mausami juice.

Lets finish somehow….

The return journey was tiresome but we didn’t lose, we completed the race and when we came back to hostel after completing the marathon race of about 16 KM, we were sweating like condensation tube. People at hostel could expect such high energetic activity from Dinna and me but when they saw Shukla like that, they didn’t believe it. I guess for the first time in there four years of college, they saw Shukla participating in such any sporting kind of event.

New insights on same things….

That was good incident from college to remember and it takes time today to realize that it has been 6 years since then. Life has moved up quite a lot in this time. I thought about our cycle run incident very recently but in a very different mood. Last week I saw a programme on TV on how AIDS is proving itself to be a killer in poor and under-developed countries. It was a painfully poignant story by CNN and I was almost moved to tears to see the visuals where a HIV infected women was showing affection to her new-born child who too was infected with AIDS as well. For a few moments they seemed to forget the fact that there days are numbered. I know of AIDS since school but this time I felt a real need for people to be aware of it.

I do not know about the recent batches and the batches prior to ours, but in my time ‘Going to Girls hostel and meeting someone’ was treated differently by different groups of students. Actually students come to HBTI from diverse backgrounds. Some are from cities like Delhi and Lucknow which are updated with the latest trends of lifestyle and society - some even have NRI backing and funding and have done the schooling in finest schools of India. On the contrary, most students are from medium profile places like Rai-Bareilly, Banaras and Moradabad. There are still others from interior and rural areas like Auriya and Chamoli. With such a medley of people, differences in mindsets and inhibitions are bound to be present.

Among some students, who were particularly new to the city culture, it was a ’status symbol’ that you have female-friends. Then there were some who treated it as ‘not good’ and related it to indiscipline and distraction from studies. This is pretty much same as the perception which orthodox people of 60s and 70s had for choosing “a career in Cinema”. It was like getting more exposure than required. The latter never shared their thoughts openly but I sensed those things during long discussions.

In our time(1997-2001), while some people used to go to meet their female-friends for some work or just for chatting and then there were some who never crossed the brown gate of GH and while passing by, and always looked at the place with conjecture.

what is so special

First visit to GH is some thing special - special because for the first time you go near that brown gate, knock and go inside.You see the place around which you are not able to see usually while passing by. It was more probably due the aura of the place which looked more like a prison from outside. Unlike IIT-K, located few kilometers away, where there is open culture in terms of access to all hostels, HBTI-GH was a restricted access zone. Any way it was probably not so important for students who had girls in their branch and they had other occasions to interact with girls. But people like me, who are from mechanical background and who have otherwise no meetings with girls in class, felt special thinking of that moment of going to meet someone at GH.

Being from mechanical engineering, I had no contact with girls in first few days of 1st semester. I used to listen some names from my hostel mates that “she” is so and so, or that “she” said this and that but did not get chance to interact with any one. We in mecahnical class, usually tried to map certain names and description to some or other girl in institute but were never sure that we correctly spotted any body.

First time behind the GH gate

My first visit to GH was rather a drama. I don’t feel that mentioning name of girl is required but I went to ask ‘Assignment’ of some common subject from her though we did not know each other directly. In logic it seems fairly simple that if you want some favour from any body, introduce your self and ask for it - but in realty it looked very different, specially when you just passed out 12th and entered in engineering college. I some how made that. The girl was also nice enough to give me the assignment without many questions. In fact we even had a general conversation about our cities etc. In fact during the pointless talk there, we discovered some common acquaintances and that proceeded the conversation further.

After that initial meeting, I felt it was more like mental block and it looked stupid thinking why the big issue after all for such a normal thing - it was just a meeting with a friend or batch mate. With that revelation and boosted confidence, soon I had many more friends in GH.