A Mist(r)y Presentation.

Do tell me, why is it that people spend a good part of their day in college, when they could be easily spending that time sitting on the grass, inhaling fresh air, without as much as a care in the world? People tell me that is because they learn something in college. As to what that could be, is a big mystery.

It is quite possible to go thru college without learning anything, but then you do not appear to be intelligent or hardworking. To keep one surrounded by an aura of brilliance and appearing to be clever and sincere is not as hard as one thinks. Why I have been doing that for the past 15 yrs. The key is not to let anyone actually see you working, otherwise your cloak of intelligence will melt away faster then an ice-cream in the middle of summer.

When somebody expects you to do some work, that is when you have to use all your resourcefulness, and your tact is bought to test. Let us take an example from my own life.

Imaging that college has just begun after a long summer vacation, most of which you have spent in wandering all over the countryside, doing nothing productive. Your bunking has already started and you finally show your face to your teachers only on the fourth day of the week. This happens to be Mistry's class and he is going to take Relativity this year. Nothing wrong in that, except for the fact, that Pattu in his missionary zeal to make a theorist out of each one of us, has already, with no regard to the syllabus, tried to cram down our throats, MSc. level relativity including G.R.

When Mistry heard of this, he declared that Pattu was a fool, and he would now take on the duty of teaching us proper relativity. In the break, he sent out word that I should meet him, he still being under the illusion that I was a sincere student. When I went and met him, he asked me, "So what did Prof. Patwardhan teach you in Relativity last year?" If you think that answering this question should not be a problem, you are forgetting two important points. Firstly the question presupposes that I paid attention in Class, which simply was not true. Secondly, even If I paid attention, deciphering Pattu's thought process, his language and his handwriting, making sense of all that gibberish and finally understanding what he exactly wanted to teach, would be Impossible. Infact Some Indian historians are recruiting Ex- Pattuites, to help with the decoding of the Indus Valley Script. They Believe that he who can make sense of the blackboard after a Pattu lecture, could easily understand the Indus Valley script while enjoying a cup of tea.

I threw all caution to the wind, and threw as many relativity related terms as I could recollect, at Mistry. Surprisingly Mistry found this Barrage of words to much to handle, and asked me to write them down on a piece of paper. This is when my Mind decided to abandon me, and I just about managed to write some basic words on that sheet of paper. Mistry on seeing this remarked that Pattu had not done much, and the he suddenly he asked me," Have you done the comparison of Newtonian Laws and Maxwell's Equations?" I had no idea what he was talking of, so I safely assumed that no one would mind even if he repeated it. "No sir."

"Take that Resnick, and present the topic in class on Monday."

So this is how I accepted to do a small presentation in class on Monday, this day being Friday. I happily put the book in my bag and forget about it till Saturday Evening. This hardly served as a wake-up-call only causing me to further delay opening Resnick.

Sunday morning was spent in sleeping, and then reading some newspapers till lunch. The Sunday lunch is a usually a special occasion, and that day was no different. The Sacred Indian Texts instruct a man to have a siesta after a sumptuous meal, and I followed these instructions both in letter and in spirit. The evening was spent is watching Alanso race around in some European circuit. Finally I accepted the inevitable, and once again delayed the preparation till the next morning, after resolving to get up early next morning.

As expected, I reached college by about 8:45, without touching the book. My plan was to read up the material in Veda's lecture and present it in Mistry's, which was to be the second lecture of the day at 9:40.

You can imagine my surprise as well as panic when I saw Mistry standing in Lr 14. He looked at me and asked, "So have you prepared?" This would have been an ideal situation to retreat and say, no I haven't. But in situations like this, my tongue grows a mind of its own, which is hell bent upon getting me into trouble. "Of course sir; I'll present whenever you want." I could hear my voice saying. "Ok. I'll introduce the topic and then you present." He said.

I sat at my place, mentally strangling myself. I opened up the index pages in Resnick franticly trying to find the proper page. I finally managed to find it. On opening that section, I saw that what I had to present, was hardly about one and a half pages. I quickly read through them, trying to cram as much as possible into my short term memory. I reached the last line not a moment early, because just as I closed the book, I saw Mistry just about finishing his introduction.

I got up from my place with as much enthusiasm as a goat ready to be slaughtered. I had heard about Mistry from a lot of ex- students, and I knew that it was not very difficult to impress him, as long as you followed certain rules. I began talking about Galilean transformations and I took care to draw V and the arrow at the proper place. Whenever I was talking about light, I managed to use the word 'Laser' repeatedly. I also took pains to talk very rapidly, because it is well known how fast he talks, and how much he detests silence.

This is when I saw some girl waving to me, from the corridor. Now I was totally surprised, because of two reasons. Firstly, because of cramming everything into my memory, I was concentrating with every neuron that I had, on not forgetting this relativity stuff. Secondly, it is not every day that some pretty girl waves out to me from the corridor.

By the time I managed to recognise her face and recollect her name, my memory was wiped clean. I managed to acknowledge her presence and I turned to face the class. I saw them all attentively looking at me, as if they had understood what I had said upto then. I don’t know what I said after that, but I remember talking for a few more minutes, and Manu nodding his head vigorously, as if I had explained something lucidly to him.

I remember looking at Mistry after I had nothing more to say. He said, "Good Presentation, but you haven't drawn the tree diagram."

Nothing Like Mother Daughter Competition

Mum and daughter compete for Miss Great Britain.

Have you people read about this mother daughter pair competing for the Miss Great Britain title.
Cressida Grant is the 17 yr old daughter and Philippais the 40 yr old mother pictured along side.
Now this is an intresting pair & I wonder Who'll come on top. Now this would be some contest that I would be intrested in keeping track of.

Any one want to bet who will have a higher score?

26, The bad luck day!

Any anybody noticed that bad things tend to happen on or around the 26th of the month?
Let me refresh ur memory:

1> Gujrath Earthquake 26th January 2001
2> Godhra Train Burning 26th Feb 2002
3>Vile Parle Bomb Blasts 27th Jan 2003
4>Mumbai Bomb Blasts 25th August 2003
5>Tsunami 26th Dec 2004
6> Deluge in Mumbai 26th July 2005


So Now Beware of August the 26th (Friday)!!!

Wierd Idea For the Day

Today while waiting for some people at a Suburban Multiplex, I was wondering as to how we guys always complain that the girls are always late. Some people have gone so far as to suggest that it is a peculiar condition arising due to two X-chromosomes being present in the genetic code of the said individual.
The thought that stuck me was, could it be that we guys are so keen to meet girls that we tend to turn up early and it’s the girls who turn up at the right time!

Recent Incidents in Pattuland.

Tuesday being his Honours day for the Sy's, Pattu was introducing some poor souls to the intricacies of Time travel while the rest of Mumbai was fighting against the rains, and trying to get home. It was about 7pm before the doors of Lr 14 were opened and the pure pattuites were reading to go home. It was then that they realised that going home was an impossibility and they quickly excused themselves from his presence, in case he decided to take an all night exposition on the laplacian equation. His FY as well as his Ty students decided to be extra careful and avoid him at all costs, becoz it would be really difficult for them to extract themselves from his grasp, since they could not even use the excuse that they had to go home before it got too late. He was later seen looking up at the Math department while standing outside his den. Some eyewitnesses swear that he was muttering some curses while simultaneously looking at the moon.
Oscar was not very lucky that Night. While going to relive himself at the peeing walls of Xaviers, he happened to bump into Pattu. He began to talk about the freaky whether and poor Oscii could not even attend Nature's call till he departed a few minutes later muttering something to himself.
Some people got so bored on spending a night in Xaivers, that the next morning, a girl actually went up to Pattu and asked him to take a lecture.Pattu readily agreed. Rahul had the misfortune to be present at that moment in front of him. He had to pay by undergoing a lecture on Cloud dynamics and how cloud seeding takes place. Since his favourite students were absconding, he had a short talk of only about 80 minutes.

P.S. The latest rumour I have heard is that a girl from F.y.B.A. has joined his honours!!!! I want to meet this brave and courageous soul.

The Rain Reign

The incident of the week for most people would be the deluge in Mumbai.

It was a rather enjoyable time for me, providing me with an occasion to have a 37 km walk, but I am being quite dismissive about the magnitude of the disaster.

Someone I correspond with, who is right now in Switzerland, wrote,
"I am astounded by the furry of nature. In one way I am
relieved by you all being safe and not being harmed by
this calamity. But on the other hand it is beyond my
imagination - the suffering of all the less
privileged people and sudden and surprising
near-death experience for many. May be this experience
would expose some harsh realities which otherwise get
buried underneath all the talk of development and
progress. I hope we all including those who govern our
civil life, would become more alert to develop
strategies to cope and avoid future calamities."

He has a point. It is futile to now assign blame for the mismanagement of the disaster and the fiasco that followed. We need to stop asking who screwed it up, and start asking what the concerned people learned from the disaster and what changes they are going to make in order to cope with any future problems.

First of all should stop dreaming of making Mumbai Shanghai, & start working at how to make it at least a decent & safe place to live, work and enjoy for everyone.

Secondly, we should be making long term plans for the metropolis so that it can better handle any kind of problems and still carry on. For Example if something like the New York Metro or the Boston 'Big Dig' Project had been in place in Mumbai, It would not have been affected by the rains and flooding as it would have certain mechanisms inbuilt to take care of the water.

Thirdly we need to strengthen the communication infrastructure. We need to find out why the mobile networks were out and we should strengthen them so that this can never happen in the future. It was noted that the real media of communication were the FM Channels, which could reach a larger part of the population as compared to the TV networks. So the government has to give more importance to the Radio, which functioned as the real link between People.

Fourthly, Like all mega cities, we should have an elected mayor, who is in charge of all things concerning the city from the Municipality, to the trains, from the police to other essentialities. This will enable one team to take all the decisions and be more accountable rather then a de-centralised spread out bureaucracy of several departments under various government levels.

P.S. Has anyone noticed that all the politicians have been relatively silent, be they from the Congress-Ncp, or the NDA. That’s coz the congress is at power in the state which happily ignored all the initial signs that could have diminished the extent of the disaster; The SS-BJP on the other hand is ruling the BMC which has a lot to answer for.