Brain Freeze

Friday, June 23, 2006

Red Tape & All That Jazz

    Or How to Fool the College Authorities into Thinking You Are a Blameless Babe in the Woods


Four years in a college, and you'd think that the higher-ups would PAY to see us go. But NO! Our college authorities don't want to give us up without a struggle. So, they have devised the perfect torture plan to make sure that 1 out of 5 students do not leave the College of Engineering, Trivandrum.
This seemingly simple yet devious plan is called, innocuously enough, a No-Dues Certificate. At face value, the form asks very simple questions indeed.
1) Name, (easy enough unless you are the kind that writes EVERYTHING from your neighbour's paper).
2) Class and year in which admitted to CET. Now, unless you spent most of your adult life at CET, I am sure you remember the time you found yourself in the midst of the Acacia forest wondering "Mera number kab aayega?"
8) Reason for leaving: Uhm, they won't have me anymore?! I wish they would, but they need the space for the juniors....

Once the poor final year student (or to be alumnus) is done with the third degree, he/she is suddenly faced with a mass of cryptic designations like Head Librarian, Hostel Warden, Bus Secretary, Supdt. A4, Supdt. G2 etc. Like a lifeline you cling on to Head of Department and Dean as someone you might recognise if you meet them in the lobby....
You're told you need their signatures. Counting down, that's around nine signatures and a smile creases your face as you start calculating what can be done with the spare time. When, suddenly, the trap is sprung by the gleeful other in the conversation,
"By the way, you need to get signatures from every lab and place in the college where you set your foot in."
Frantically, some lovebirds begin to calculate if the long walks and the sojourns in the Acacia Park (also known as the Panjaara Kaadu) was costing them any.
And thus begins your long trek around the 145 acres of the College of Engineering, Trivandrum.
Any sane CETian begins with the Library, where it's easy to get the four signatures and bid adieu. Any ECEian worth their salt then demands a no dues from the Machines Lab, (heh! imagine breaking a DC motor or a AC transformer), and the Mechanical Workshop Lab, (no breakages unless asked to use a large hammer and a chisel). Getting signatures from the umpteen labs you never remembered having done in the four years in college, from the component store, from your staff advisor and the HOD complete the quota at the Dept.
Ideally, the CGPU, the CCF and the CETAA ought to come somewhere in the middle.
I couldn't bear to look as the sir at the Central Computer Facility punched a hole into my ID card, (which was falling apart with that final indignity anyway). Ideally, I did say. I forgot to get the no dues from the CET Alumni Association (CETAA), but got a signature from the HOD anyway.
That made for a funny conversation.
Friend: "I have to get a signature from the CETAA"
Me: "Now, I haven't been to any of those reunions yet. So, I didn't pay. I gave it off without paying THEM!"
Friend: "Hah. Now, you won't be an alumnus of CET."
Me: "Aren't we all supposed to meet, like, in 2056?"
After one day,
Me: "Sir, I got my no dues approved without signing three forms in triplicate about joining the CETAA as a member."
Sir: "Cluck like a chicken thrice and promise me you won't repeat this again!"

Then, of course, there is the case of non-college bus using, day scholars having to camp outside the Hostel Warden and the Bus Secretary's Office. Not to mention having to take a sign off the scatter brained lady that is the Dept. Librarian.

This process took three days. At the end of which, I cheerfully went to the UG Dean's Office and asked for my TC.
The lady looked mournfully up and asked me to wait for three months, at the end of which the Dean would inform me I'd have to take a signature again since he used Emerald Green Ink to sign instead of Jade Green.

I hate red tape. And, no, not the shoes.

PostScript
This is my last blogspot from this address. This is because of proxy issues this blog page faces at most institutes, including IIMB.
Those cats who are curious about my further adventures are free to read on at .....

Frankly, I am curious to know too ;)
http://bstung.wordpress.com

PostScript to a PS
On the honour of a Fachchi from IIMB, I'll try to keep the blog updated and as clear as the accounts kept by Anderson & Anderson for Enron.

See you guys, and trust me I enjoyed the Brain Freeze ride.

Copy-write Shrutz :: 10:16 AM :: 9 Sneaky Remarks:

What would you like to do?

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Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Tick tock...

1:30 am, 21st June, 2006.
In around 10 hours, I'll be giving the last engineering exam of my life. (If all goes to plan)
In 15 hours, I'll have gotten my no-dues and hopefully, my TC from the College of Engineering, Trivandrum, my home away from home for the past four years. (More on that soon enough.)
In around 84 hours, I'll be bidding adieu to my life in Trivandrum, a place I have been inhabiting for the past 17 years.
In 5 days, I'll be roaming the streets of Bangalore with my family, visiting relatives and smiling my way into the record books.
In less than 6 days, I'll be at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

If this is a dream, don't wake me up!

Copy-write Shrutz :: 1:02 PM :: 6 Sneaky Remarks:

What would you like to do?

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Friday, June 16, 2006

Closure

I am leaving CET in a week. This is something I wanted to post around 8 months ago...


This is a post that has been pending for sometime. Many a time I started typing the words that I hoped would in some measure put my feelings into words. But, everytime, I failed. This is an attempt, futile maybe, to bring closure.
Death is something that happens in everyone's life. Whether it is the end or beginning of something is debatable.
But, murder.... Murder is different. Murder is despicable... Murder is also something that shouldn't happen to someone you know.
On 13th October, 2005, my classmate went missing. It was around the holidays and nobody really knew about it. The next day, we had our seminars, and all of the seventh semester, Applied Electronics were busy in eking out just those extra five marks from their talks.
Maybe we were too engrossed in our own lives to notice the absence of someone we took for granted in our class, maybe we were guilty of paying too less attention. Maybe, we were just too human....
The next week, it casually dropped into conversation.
"Did you know Shyamal is missing?"
That's when I remembered he hadn't been coming for the labs. We were trying to figure out where he could have gone and when he'd gone missing. Conflicting stories came up. Some thought it was Friday and some were sure they'd seen him on Thursday. The girls were anxious, and the boys tried to reassure us.
"He'll be back, he always is."
The story found itself on Page 3 of Hindu everyday. The police had no idea. The police suspected extortion. The police were in Madras. The police were questioning students. Always the headline read, "Missing Engineering College student".
Everyday, unwillingly, I pulled myself to read the newspaper, praying hard and wishing that one day the headline would read "Missing Engineering College Student found."
This is when students come together.
We started discussing about what could be wrong. Where he could have gone. What could have happened. Hundreds of questions and hundreds of plausible answers and just an unspoken question in our minds, under the surface, "Are you as afraid as I am for him?"
Everyone was afraid and unable to voice what we actually felt.
Days passed in this fashion.
Everyday, I picked the newspaper. The media was sensationalising everything, and I hated myself for relying on what the papers were saying. I ought to have known him better. I ought to have taken the time...
So many maybes... so many what ifs....
When, suddenly, that was it.
I took the paper one day and turned automatically to the third page. There was a terse report of an unidentified body found near the By-Pass. I turned panicky. On reading, it said it was that of a 30 year old man. My mind quietened down and my prayers became more vehement.
That afternoon, I got a phone call.
"There's bad news. Shyamal's body has been found. He's been murdered."
I sat down. There was a knot in my stomach. I forced myself to read the report again, reading between the lines.
I remembered the shirt he was wearing that day, according to the report.
Unbidden thoughts flooded into my head.
All of us in workshop garb, doing carpentry, and sir asking if everyone understood Malayalam. Whereupon, everyone pointed to Shyamal, saying he was from the Andamans. The sir had to spend three weeks explaining everything in two languages.
Shyamal sitting down on the verandah, outside our Power Electronics lab, playing with his mobile phone.
All the boys bugging him to know what the hindi word for 'cockroach' was. The MHites asking him to fan them as they "so"ed (slept).
His quirky humour and his funny way of talking.
The way he (and all my other lab partners) filched my lab record and rough record to do their experiments.
Three years of opportunities when we could know him and couldn't. Three years ago, his parents had sent him to our college to get a B.Tech degree. Never again would they see him. Never again would there be a chance for us to know him properly.
My prayers turned. I hoped he hadn't suffered much in his passing and I prayed for the peace of his family.
I felt for those of my friends (and his) who had to go and identify one of our own.
I found I couldn't bear to be alone. I got online and I stayed online for 3 days, talking nonsense.
Many times, I took up blogger's home page to write an eulogy. But what could I say, other than:-
"He was my classmate, a gentle soul who never harmed a fly. This ought not have happened to him. We didn't really know him. We wish we did."
Then, we began hating the media. The truth of "news" and invasion of privacy had caught up with us.
Initially, it was in the turn of phrase, the slightly sarcastic way of saying "disappearance", quotes included. Then it escalated, the front pages were splashed with his picture and those of his grieving parents. "Leads" were being followed. And everywhere we went, murmurs followed..
"Oh, so you are in CET. That boy..."
"He was my classmate..."
"Oh...." A long pause invariably followed. "What kind of boy was he?"
We hated the question and the answer equally. "We didn't know him all that well."
I gave up reading the paper for the next week. When we went back to college for our sessional exams, his pictures were put up on every wall, and I couldn't bear to look at it without remembering him with the half smile on his face, which he invariably had.
He had been one of us. All of 21 years of age. His life was nipped in the bud. Murdered for no fault of his own. Senseless, violent murder for no reason at all.
In his life, an average engineering student, having fun in his own way. One of the faceless, nameless thousands who pass out of such colleges everyday. In death, he became a political statement and a media frenzy. And like all political statements, short-lived. For some days, there were placards around the Secretariat that said "Bring the perpetrators of the Shyamal murder to justice." Those eventually disappeared too.
The Shyamal murder... Shyamal was a person to us, he wasn't a statement. These two words are something none of us can reconcile with each other, try as we might.
This is my prayer, dear god, give his family the peace of mind they need and the strength to face the tempest ahead.

Copy-write Shrutz :: 11:24 AM :: 6 Sneaky Remarks:

What would you like to do?

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