Marcos

Ever Heard of them? Chances are that you have never even come across this term. But they are one of the most elite forces in the world, and are the best  - in talent, will, confidence, dedication and perfection. 

The reason why that is so is not too hard to fathom. Just hover over the video here! If you have time, you could as well see the entire video.

I salute their dedication. Jai Hind!

The Unique Batch that is...

28th November 2007  - The last day of classwork at BITS Pilani Goa Campus , and the last day we attended classes there as proud Kernelites. Exactly one year is up, and I was flooded with memories when I saw the "raw" videos that we shot, on this very day last year. Now, one year later, my friends are at different places  - most of them core professionals now ( some entrepreneurs too) , few still unchanged, and a fewer are students still. /* No.. We did not  fail. */

****T6***** - an ID that is now unique to just 45 ( +1+3) of us, a bond that all of us share - not to mention the perennial confusion as to what it really meant and whether it was engineering after all. The wonderful journey started in 2004, with us treading on a path no-one else had ever explored before. Well, i can confidently declare now that the journey through the college has been as colorful and as wonderful as the journey to it...

The first year went in a hurry - with sparse interaction between us. Maybe we were more worried about Thevenin and Norton.  I, for one, never got to figure that out completely. :( But that does not matter. Not now anyways. We had our first interaction with a question " How many of your names start with "B" ? " From the second day, I have been guilty of occupying 2 seats. And no !, I am not that fat! [ You can check in the photos below ] .The second year was enjoyable, despite the Mini-Tests. The third year was supposedly serious with CDCs hanging by our heads. The fourth year - I wont comment.

We were quite aloof, right from the very beginning, and united as a class- so much that for the first two years, it never even occured to us that we must have an association. I was really fortunate to be  in a class where the people really cared about each other, and the teachers were more like seniors. We did a host of projects - each one of them involving an intense argument [:P] finally culminating in a desperate Nightout. How can I ever forget the Fan regulator, a project that we had no clue about till the penultimate day. The doubts which we had would have put the inventor of the regulator to shame. Fortunately , my ingenious teammates were the saviours! 

 Who can forget the rigorous preparation for Quark-06, a feat that was repeated at the Apogee... There were wonderful leaders who emerged, and they were role models for the rest of us. For that matter, each member of the class displayed some unique and rare virtues - something I have been awed by.

There were certain remarkable moments too. Infosys Dinners. The blue dress drama. Samosas in the class. Commentary at the back. Mini-tests. Birthday Celebrations. Kabo-de-Rama Trip. Videos. World Cup Victory. Quark. Airport Plaza. The C-Chakra( which i guess only 2 other people know about), Electives' Worries, Pangs before placements... The list goes on...  Our class was certainly unique in more ways than one. Caring, united, always enthusiastic! 

Well, should I end with one question, one of the first we were ever put  across - "How many of our names start with 'B'? ... :) If you know the answer, ( as was given in the class) do comment :).

At College

9-year old Karthik was overjoyed! His summer holidays were on. His sister had her college reopening the next week. He simply enjoyed seeing  his sister prepare to go to college. He accompanied his mother to do some shopping, which usually translated to getting to see hundreds of cars speeding by, and millions of people moving about. 

He always wondered, what business did so many people have lazing around. Surely, not all of them could be working on the road! His joy was multiplied since he did not have school and his sister was preparing for college. He always had this tendency to show off his idleness, just to annoy her. He deliberately played Cricket 2007 for around 7 hours per day, with his own commentary following that of Mr. Boycott. Needless to say, his sister wasn't amused. But then, brothers dont get such golden chances everyday... 

The happiest thing for him was that he was going to visit her college too. He was thrilled. He often imagined college to be a cool place where the teachers no longer caned their students, most homeworks were given to be ignored and where people could go in color dress and without any schoolbag. ..

The joy was overwhelming when he arrived at her college. He wished her all the best, and made it a point to tell her what his plans for the rest of the holidays were....  For the first day, he decided to sneak into a class, to see what the people learnt. And since he was tiny, he couldn't be seen except by the guy behind him, who, to his surprise was quietly dozing ... 

The professor came, well he did look like a teacher,... he never understood the distinction. He wrote the topic on the board, some "Dynamic Programs." He wanted to cry out the misspelling of programme - his English Miss would have been aghast to have seen such a thing, but decided against it. Just at the time, he saw a boy, come in, with a big schoolbag. He wondered what he kept inside the bag, that noone else seemed to need. Maybe it was the books... or clothes.. or laundry... To break the reverie, that boy took out a notebook, and started writing. What was he writing? He had no idea. According to him, the professor had just written a wrong spelling on the board... Wierdos exist everywhere, he concluded. 

There were many peculiar things he observed in the class. There was a platform. The teacher did not shout "KEEP QUIET!!" even once during the period. People came in strange dresses. Noone sat in the front row. Everyone, well wierdos excluded, had just one notebook... and they were not collected at the end of the class for correction. For one thing, he doubted if anybody had written anything there. Overall, he felt amazed. 

Now he began to envy his sister for being in  a college. He fantasized that when he would go to college, he would have a flying motorbike ( surely they must be invented by then!! ), cooling glasses, a jeans pant and a t-shirt with lights!(well... maybe bcos then he could be a bright student!) ...

He came back and wondered. what did the people in the class do that he did not. He was very happy with himself. He had heard a number of times from elders that one's own happiness was what mattered in life. And he was happy enough with himself. True, he could be happier if his Mom had got him the GI-Joe and the new model of the Hot-wheels, but then there would always be another shopping session, he reassured himself. He wondered why he should grow up. Maybe to spell Programme wrong, maybe to speak to the computer more than to his own friends, maybe to complicate things that were really simple and then to derive pleasure in simplifying them, and maybe to live a happy life after all... 

The Poetry of Programming

http://www.dreamsongs.com/PoetryOfProgramming.html