Satna Claus and Gabbar, the Great!

Five years have gone by and few things have changed. Still in the cold chill of the winter, when children around the world wait for Santa Claus, during the merry Christmas day, to bring them presents, kids in the small indian town of Satna wait for the "SATNA CLAUS". Yes, that is true! Last night, one of our close friends from Satna unveiled the story of this white old man from Satna. Incidentally Gabbar was with us. He seemed so interested and connected to this story that we started to have doubts. Doubts that don't easily go away, doubts that have led to the revelation of some of the biggest mysteries of the world!

When you hear the word 'gabbar', what is the first thing that comes to your mind? An old fat filthy shabby guy with a big belly, a gun in his hand and one of his eyes covered with an dirty cloth band. To be honest, many of us are very obliged to have lived with a guy with this name and one who doesn't even fall an inch short of the description.

In our early years at KGP, this is what schedule looked like : Eat, run, play, run, play, eat a bit, create funny names for others, run, play, propose some of his friends' girlfriends, run, play and sleep. He is honoured to have named many of our friends including those infested by the power of the devil. Neither the gults nor the biharis were saved from Gabbar's petname-giving ceremony.

It was not long when Rohit (Gabbar's alter-ego) realised he was the only one without a petname. Mounting frustation and irritation made him give up. Finally, one fine day, Rohit died and 'Gabbar' was born. He rose from the ashes of Rohit like a dog finds a new life when he is adopted. Rest they say is history.....


P.S.: In the meantime, the power of the devil was growing behind the shadows. Soon, his strength would take the entire hall down.

Will return with the story of 'Priori-de-sardar' and the attempt to unravel 'The Puttar Code'. The first clue is 'Tunak Tunak Tun...'

When we were young….

Now that the time to leave KGP forever is nearing, a lot of memories of the times spent here are rushing in my mind. Seems like yesterday when sitting on the ground-floor stairs of HJB Hall of Residence and bhatting for long hours was a favorite pastime. Away from home and excited about being an IIT, the first year was the most interesting. Now, a hall in a special category, HJB was a hall for first years back then. Housed in a new building, this hall has the best design and architecture, very well suited for first years. Get out of your room and you can see the entire hall. With well furnished rooms and a good size balcony, you also have a nice wooden cupboard.

I am sure all of us remember our first class in college. Mine was in V1 in the new academic complex. Sitting in a modern air conditioned classroom presented a very wrong picture of IIT. But again, we were all ready to be shocked and awed by brand IIT and its never very difficult to fool first years.

Into a few weeks and the most adored culture of GPLs was growing in power. Soon it had engulfed one of our dear friends who, under the power of this dictatorial devil, was taking more and more inhabitants everyday. He would come to your room, knock your door and wait silently in the shadows. The inhabitant of the room, unaware of the danger loitering in the wing, would soon be in the hands of the devil. Several screams and his appetite was satisfied. Legend has it that the devil loved gults!

In a few days, the entire hall was gripped by its power. Another hall-mate of ours, who’s still my hall-mate, was the devil’s next target but this time, the story was different. A bio-nano creature was about to be doomed forever. Every evening, the danger of the shadows would fall upon him and all blood was sucked out of his ass in a matter of a few weeks. Once, the devil grew so strong in power that this bio-nano creature was attacked from the window and not the door.

A very good friend of mine and a neighbor, was never present in the hall with us. He was one of those guys who loved and are loved by, though not in the same amount, by certain people. He would tell us stories of the history of this place and feel proud about his knowledge. Being our only connection to the world of senior students, he also became our guide and mentor.

But then, he betrayed one of us. He dated a girl, a girl much liked by one of us. We got this news through a phone-call and this was a moment the devil was waiting for. The entire ground floor of HJB mourned for hours. We cried, we shouted and yelled in despair unless he arrived. As always, the power of the devil reigned.

Will return with more stories of the power of the devil….

The Revolutionary Road

A Week Later....

The campus is kind-of normal now but the fight is still on. The Soc-Cult GC events are scrapped whereas the Tech and Sports events are on just to keep normal life going. With a 200+ membership and an organized stream of operations, the black sunday google group members are fighting for Rohit and for each one of us who deserves a better standard of living. It is a watchdog which will scrutinize the actions of both the administration and the student representatives and will make sure they are on the right path. The visit of Mr. Murthuraman (Chairman, BOG, IITKGP) has kindled some hopes in the hearts of students but everyone wants to wait and watch if those assurances get converted to reality as promised. This morning, the residents of LLR Hall offered condolences to Rohit and I hope everyone did promise to himself that we will bring change.

I am amazed to see the overwhelming reponses from both the student and the alumni community on the scholsav site. The brainstorming that has been going for a few days now is certainly painting a clearer picture particularly for the alumni. Thank God we do have a college newspaper which is playing such a important role in this crisis situation.



On a different Note...

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;

She is back in Revolutionary Road. A crazy weird suburban married woman in the mid 50s in the US, Kate Winslet comes out so strong as a character in this movie that you are totally awed by her presence. Silence is as noisy in this movie as are the dialogues. Moving so frequently between pretentious happiness and recrimination, this masterpiece is a lucid depiction of the life of an unhappily married couple in their 30s who want to change their lives but somehow don't. Frank and April remind me of how sometimes we are so lazy, scared or helpless in following our dreams that life becomes an everyday chore - just something you want to do to keep breathing.

There are moments in the movie - few of them, when April subtly puts on a grab of apathetic joyfulness and promises Frank to give her best to everyday as it comes. She is so scared that she refuses to talk about her anguish with him. She begins to loathe him for reasons which don't seem to be a direct consequence of his actions. The desire to move to Paris and start all over again takes her so strongly that she doesn't seem to grow out of it. Forced to live by the standard norms of their contemporary society, Frank is bent on we-can-get-happiness-here-itself attitude which aggravates April's hatred and disgust.

The climactic moment arrives when an aquaintance's son John (a psycho guy under treatment for mental ailments) makes things worse by revealing his analysis on the Wheelers' decision to cancel their plan to move to Paris. As John shouts words after words describing the cowardly mental state of Frank, he incites Frank to become violent. An angry fight and April is back to her pretentious happy attitude in the morning again....Yes, they have kids, a bungalow! Frank has a good paying job though he hates it! She does some theater though she wants to work with great artists! Yet years pass-by and the desire gets lost under a pile of the crappy worldly actions called responsibilities.

Despite not being a nomination for the Best Picture, it is a must watch...

United we stand....

As I write this blog, I am confused, frustated and angry. What's making me write this is the overwhelming spirit KGPians demonstrated post Rohit's sad demise yesterday. This isn't the first time we have been stripped off our basic right. And over that, we hear stories about increasing student intakes by huge numbers. It's not just hilarious how decisions are made (without a well-defined strategy to tackle them) by old grumpy bureaucratic minds but also surprising how this has been happening since time immemorial in a premier institute. Undoubtedly, it's the unrelenting spirit of students that somehow keeps our mahinery runnning.

To talk about healthcare, everyone in KGP (at some point or the other) must have been through the ridiculous chain of "self-proclaimed" doctors, some of whom don't seem to have attended even a medical school. During the last semester, I got a weird skin problem in my left hand which was probably because an insect crawled at my hand the previous night. I was sent to a general doctor from the registration booth as there seemed be no skin specialist available at that point (probably he was ill because he could not cure his own problem). The doctor I visit doesn't seem to be able to diagnose my case and prescribes every possible medicine one can for a basic skin problem. I carry the heavy presciption and visit a paramedic who complains about the doctor prescribing the wrong wound-lotion which also seemed to be unavailable. Left dismayed, I agree to this seemingly nice staff member and get my hand treated and bandaged. This was 7.30 pm and the pharmacy at the hospital had closed. (I had arrived at the hospital at 6 pm and had waited for an hour for my turn to sit my dream doctor, which is very normal at BCR.) I had to visit the Tech market pharmacy and spend 200 bugs to buy the medicine. When I visited the doctor again after 3 days, he told me that the medicines he had prescribed were probably not needed and that the lotion would have been enough to cure my hand. As always, I felt like electrying his balls but left it for my imagination to play with.

My small case and several other innumerous incidents which go unreported every hour in the hallowed rooms of BCR have been the topic of discussion for quite a few years now but our busy nutty authorities probably never had time to look into them. Over that, they seem to be overtly concerned about our safety and have banned students from moving outside the campus gate after 11 pm for almost two semesters now.

Till yesterday, what did it feel like to be a director? What is the swearing-in pledge that a director takes when he starts office? Does he take one? "Ya, I am a reponsible person but that's not the fun part. I am ruling over an intellectual group of around 8000 students along with a group of faculty. I will rule according to the whims and fancies of my tiny cerebrum and make everyone's life hell, be it a student or a faculty member... When it comes to taking action against a serious crime committed, I shall sit in a corner of my mansion and protect myself from the "hooligan" students. "

The Open House, which I attented with around 8000 fellow KGPians yesterday, was an eye-opening historic event for every individual who raised his finger in the darkest corners of the Tagore Open Air Theatre. It not just showed each one of us how powerful we are when we stand together but also has hopefully marked the beginning of an awakened era in the buzzing campus of IIT Kharagpur. It was about time we make the authorities realize that they are accountable for every bit of how they affect our daily lives. It was necessary to generate that fear, that mind-boggling thought that if I don't live up to my responsibilities, every stakeholder in all my endeavors will demand justice, nothing but justice. It is also the time when we, as the General Secretary Maintenance, the Hall President, the Vice-President Gymkhana, .... and as a KGPian realize how to best play our roles in the dynamics of the system. It's not just the time to fight but also the time to promise to ourselves that we will not apathetic towards any injustice, that we will attend every Open Session in such numbers, that we will not stop unless we have cleansed the bureaucratic shithole this place has become. I just hope that KGP will never be the same again.....