Theory of Murdering - Part3 - Concluding Part

I could not keep cursing my past for long. Thats another thing that an engineering college teaches you. Don't waste much time mourning on your past because without even you realising it, your present will turn into past soon as the back papers are fast approaching and you need to study for them besides the current semester.

I had started studying again for the theory of machines or in my context theory of murdering as it was virtually murdering me with its cruel stress/forces and torques. This time I wanted to keep no stone unturned and I understood that this was my last attempt or else I will have to loose six months. I started evaluating my last appearances to that same paper and noted down a few mistakes that I might be doing. Systematically coming up with points that made me falter three times did help a lot and this time I felt far more comfortable, confident and self-assured about myself as far as clearing the subject was concerned, that has been haunting for the past four semesters.

8th semester is usually a time when everybody concentrates on their own projects, however, I was compelled to concentrate on this trecherous subject. I studied day and night, I had the whole syllabus on the tip of my tongue and my mind continuously thought about the forces that I might encounter in the examination paper. My finger automatically revolved in conjunction with my thinking to analyse the forces acting on a car when it took a right turn and they went up and down like a pendulum to understand the stresses that might be faced by a cantilever. I had solved almost all the question papers of the past 10 years and Khurmi (The author of the book we referred) had a surrenderred look and pleaded me not to open him again for the 15004th time.

Finally, the day for the fight appeared. My most dreaded enemy was already in the examination hall, the question papers for the theory of machines paper. Like a skilled worksman, I entered the hall confidently, since I had answered quite a few back papers I could guide or rather console many of the first time answerers. The time when you sit on the desk until you get the question paper is the most scary time. You feel like a Father waiting outside the operation theatre while your wife is being delivered. You are tensed, anxious and happy, all at the same time. I was in a similar situation, not knowing what to expect in the question paper. Finally the questions were in my hand. I started writing the question paper, I had the paper easy and completed it well in advance of the stipulated time. I still did not have the courage to exit the examination hall prior to the time and I checked and rechecked the whole paper a couple of times before the final bell rang.

I had answered the exam well and again I seemed confident of clearing the subject easily. Though I looked happy, something in my mind said, "So you were also confident in all of the earlier attempts, but still you had failed, you had failed, you had failed!!!" and mind you this voice somehow also had the fading effect. I shrugged off the bad thoughts and got back to studies as I had to answer the 8th semester exam in a few days time.
I could relate the quote from "Prestige" movie in here:
"Every great Examination consists of three parts, The first part is called "The Pledge". The student has the books and reference and all ordinary things. He studies the books with utmost interest with the expectation that it will appear in the exam... it probably isn't appearing. The second act is called "The Turn". The student takes all the ordinary knowledge he learnt from the books to the examination hall and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the question that you have studied... you find it, answer it well, but you wont clap for yourself as of yet..... Because answering a examination paper isn't enough; you have to show the results. That's why every examination has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige".

Exactly, now it was the third part that I had to be successful in, "The Prestige". It was result time. We tend to get tensed when the results are out, Though we all are aware that getting tensed now, is just greying another hair in your head. I had done all things correct until now, now I just hoped that this thing turns out right. I was waiting outside the academic section along with many other students who were as well keen to know their own results. I am sure, however, that none of them would have been as anxious as me. When we all were waiting patiently for the academic section to open, one of the students got a newspaper which had the results declared. We all plunged on it like hungry lions. When I got my turn I carassed through the numbers impatiently. My number was 32. I could see a 31, 34 as well. However 32 was nowhere to be seen. I was dumped again. I could not believe my fate this time, my feet went numb, my eyes got red, my nervous system failed to respond. I felt like a junk, rusted metal of no use who was on earth only to waste parents money and fail in subjects like Theory of Machines. I still stood there patiently with no expressions on my face only to see whether I have done any improvement as compared to 31 marks I had achieved last time. Simultaneously, I also searched for another person from my batch who had failed so that we can share our sorrows with each other.

The academic section opened, all the students rushed in, I had an un-interested look on my face by now and waited patiently until the academic section got empty and I had loads of time to look at the marks. I checked the 32 number, as expected it showed "Failed", drilling down to the marks displayed nothing and said that I was absent for the exam. I was in double shock now, how could this happen, I had written the exam, rechecked the answers twice and now this results say I was absent for the exam. I said lets check again properly with a cool head from the start. The name that was displayed against the 32 number was "Pritam singh junewalia", for a moment I was shocked for the 3rd time as to how come university also printed my name wrong on the results sheet, before I realised that my seat number was 34 and not 32. I checked 34 and what a relief I had passed and with flambouyant marks of 53. I verified atleast a 10 times before I went out
dancing like a galileo, only difference was I wasn't naked. I called home and cried before declaring that I had saved 6 months of my career and finally the studies and trouble taken before the exams had paid off.

Finally, I had managed engineering in 4 years. All is well that ends well!!

Theory of Murdering - Part2

I was wrong! Totally wrong! Pathetically wrong! I had failed in the Theory of Machines subject again in the back papers and also had got one back in the 6th semesters. How can that happen. I could find drastic similarities in my feelings and feelings when any Bollywood heroine says "Mein tumhare bacche ki maa banne wali hoon...Tum Mere sath aisa kaise kar sakte ho..Nahhhhiiiiii!!!!".

However, the feeling disappears as soon as you go away from the academic section, the place where the results are put. This is another speciality of being in an Engineering college, after getting backs all these years you get accustomed to it to such an extent that, it does not affect you for more than 10 minutes. I assured myself, it is not the end of world here, I will try again next time and will clear it with good marks consequently increasing my aggregate percentage. It was an opportunity for me to increase my aggregate percentage. This is one of the methods I used all my engineering years to keep my self positive and optimistic among the hard fought competition around me.

In my opinion, the time in an engineering college is a mix of reality and innocence. On one hand, we are very much aware that there is a bad bad world outside waiting to try and crush us. We need to fight against it in order to survive. On the other hand, we have great friends with whom we hang out, laugh, have fun, though we know that these are all our fellow competitors with whom we have to play the rat race in order to come on top and taste success. Though we had shallow pockets we were the happiest humans on earth. We slept in rooms where nasty smells came in from the nearby stinky toilets; We believed that the single bed were meant for at least 3 persons; we were great fans of Maneka Gandhi and had dogs, cats and rats sleeping besides us in the same room. It was fun, just pure fun, it is here we understood that, money or any material things do not bring in such pure, pristine, uncorrupted happiness, we enjoyed during the engineering college days.

Here I was back again enjoying the college days. I had already forgot about the "Theory of Machines" subject which has been haunting me. However, as the saying rightly mentions - "The only thing constant in this world is change". I had to study "Theory of machines" for the third time now, besides the 6th semester back papers and the subjects from the 7th semester which added to the frustration I already had.
I went to the examination hall confidently. I was very much sure that now it is impossible for me to fail again. I knew about the subject to such an extent that I could have probably taught the professor himself with ease. He could have taken tuition's from me on how to teach that subject and references of the different difficult problems present on the subject. I had referred to most books available on the subject in the library and I was in a state of extreme confidence.

However, I could not believe my fate when I failed in the subject for the third time again though I had cleared the seventh semester with good marks. This time the theory of machines subject had gotten to my nerves, how can I fail in the same subject for three times when i had studied my heart out to clear this subject? I was unable to understand where I had gone wrong and this was a great concern. You can rectify your mistakes if you know what and where the mistake is. My state was like a drunkard who had the habit of falling into the same "nullah" everyday irrespective of whether he is drunk or not. Similarly I failed every time in the same subject no matter how more or less I studied.

So here I was in a desperate position when I had to clear theory of machines in the next attempt or I would have to loose 6 precious months of my career. Though I was not depressed, I was for sure concerned about my future.

Stay tuned for the last and most important part of the series.

Learning life from Business Management

In my opinion, managing a business and managing your personal life has striking similarities. Managing the business efficiently will provide you monetory benefits, while managing your personal life effectively will give you internal peace and respect.

When any business is new, it is unstable, fresh with innovative ideas, trying to learn from the environment, market. Explore as much as possible and finally creates a niche of its own. In this process, it has a particular aim to make it big. When it grows to such an extent that one person cannot handle it, we create a hierarchy structure and many stake holders are involved in order to sustain the growth of the organisation. Now to make this business a success, we need good managerial and organisational skills.

Now, if we apply a similar theory to our personal lives and metamorphose ourselves as an organisation, I find that we again need the same good managerial and organisational skills in order to sustain the personal growth. The growth could be quantitative in terms of the amount of relationships we add to our life and also on achievement basis, the new milestones we achieve on this path to make it big.

When we are born we are an organisation that is created and we try to explore, learn, innovate and keep ourselves always open to new things. Here we are a company of just four entities, ourselves, mother, father and siblings. We love each one present in the company at this moment because we know that each one here wants to make this organisation big and does everything possible to achieve and fulfill the wants of the company even if it means sacrificing some of the personal pleasures. Here the organisation tends to be selfish and they are worried only about their own self.
When our organisation grows a little, we hand over contracts to a few vendors like school, college and other institutions to fulfill our desire to gain more information and train us intellectually. It is in this phase that we have another entity in the organisation called friends. In the form of teachers, We have people who have been given the responsibility of nurturing the organisation in the correct direction and has correct processes or in the words the right moral values. The organisation learns that to be successful we have got to share, we cannot remain just selfish. This is also the place where we recruit friends. We recruit them very meticulously by focusing whether he/she will meet the requirements of the organisation. We check whether he/she understands the policies, processes and overall conduct to be maintained or in other words whether he/she understands you and whether he will be there in time of crisis. These recruits either stay or leave the organisation, we also layoff some of them. It is very important for the sake of wellness of the organisation that we take the correct uninfluenced, impartial decisions. We also experience many good and bad incidents which teach us life.

By the time we are done with the education, we realise that not all people that we have recruited are loyal to the organisation. We now understand that only the people loyal to the organisation remain in touch with you, others come and go, there is no point in forcing them to stay in the organisation by displaying your wealth.

When we take up a job, another entity called colleagues join our organisation. These are like shareholders of your organisation. They invest in you and are concerned about your well being. However, most of them are concerned only with the returns. What is that they can obtain from you, if they invest in you. What will be return on investment. Hence, it does not make a difference to most of them whether you remain in the right state or no, they are only concerned about their returns. Once they get their dividends on time, they are not bothered about the state of the organisation.

Having said all the things above, the most important thing in any organisation is that it has its top management happy and keeping them happy keeps the organisation in the best shape. Similarly, it is important to keep our parents happy, so that our organisation touches new heights and we remain happy throughout our life!

Theory of Murdering - Part 1

It can be really frustrating and sometimes make you feel useless, hopeless, good for nothing, pathetic and all the different negative adjectives that you can use for yourselves. I went through a similar situation when I was in my 5th semester of Engineering and the spread of this experience went upto the final semester. As Rashmi Bansal (the author of stay Hungry, stay foolish) says, this could be a dot in my life which was required to be connected in order to make a broader picture/image of your life.

I was in my 5th semester and surprisingly I did not have a single back and hence was very much enjoying my stay in the hostel as I had to answer only 6 papers and not 7 or 8 unlike previous 4 semesters. I was on top of the world and pretty much saying to myself, "If I can clear 7 or 8 papers at a time, this just 6 papers should be a walk on cake". However, thats when engineering challenged me unknowingly, "I will ensure that you have atleast one back paper to answer from now on". Unaware of this situation, I was having fun in the hostel and as such thought myself to be a good engineer.

Just one month to go for the 5th semester and as usual we had not even started to think about exams. This is another feature when you stay in GEC hostel, though you are aware that it is high time for you to start studying for the semester exams, you somehow start becoming a philosopher and suddenly turn into a saint saying "yeh toh sab maya jaal hain, padh ke kya hoga...akhir toh marna hi hain, chalo jara bahar hare bhare saundarya ka anand lootte hain, taki hum moksha pa sake". And when we realise that if we do not come into our own we will fail, it is already time when we have got to make calculations so as to study in order to give ourselves atleast 35 marks.

So here I was just 15 days to go for the semester and I was still busy writing and completing term works. The semester came and went and the result overall was pathetic, out of the total 42 students only 10 passed and obviously I could not ven think of passing. I had two backs, both rather very surprising ones. One of them "Theory of Machines" and " Machine Technology". Thats how it is, the unexpected always happens and when you are still cursing the professor who gave you less marks, the back paper exams are already ejecting their heads out.

I knew I would for sure clear out both the papers as I was very much prepared for both, besides we had excellent professors who taught us this subject. Especially the "Theory of Machines" subject is the one that I loved conceptually. It had the overturning couple that explained the theory that went behind designing the right weight/height ratio for a car. It also had a separate module explaining vibrations and forces that affect a particular machine. Hence I did not consider it that seriously and took the subjects from 6th semester seriously.

However as mentioned earlier, my life had challenged me which I was still not aware. Lot of tortures to come in my subsequent engineering days!!! I am sure you all readers are sadiest and will love reading the troubles that I had. Stay tuned.

7 friends in Bangalore - Part6 - Concluding Part

The best thing about being a student is that you dont have to worry about the consequences of not joining the college in time. And so were we at that time, not worried about anything, all that was on our mind was roaming about, enjoying ourselves, spending the amount given to us by our parents and enjoying the freedo we got away from home.

After a mind refreshing trip to the hill stations, we were now all set for a shopping session before leaving for Goa the subsequent day. We first of all caught a lodging very close from the bus stand. The loding had a lot of similarities to the "Decent" hotel from the movie "Jab We Met". It was not a great worry to us as we needed only a shelter to hide ourselves during the night. We freshened up a little in the hotel and thought of going close by to shop around. We bought ourselves the tickets to Goa and then it was all our time to shop around. I must say Bangalore did not dissappoint us. There were so many various places, roads where we could go shopping. The most i remember is MG road and I am sure none of us will forget it.

In every city there is one MG road and it is always the most happening road with college boys and girls using their precious time to be in the most convenient positions that they could ever be. I always wondered why such happening roads are named by the great Mahatma Gandhi. I would not have taken by surprise if that road was named "Nehru road" because nehru liked children and secondly the whole country knows about his adventures with Mrs Mountbatten.

Anyways, whatever it is we i.e. Me, Atul, Nilesh and Manesh were shopping and concentrating on what we could buy that will be like a tresure with us forever. Farooq, Ketan and Sandeep considered coming on to such a happening road and shopping was a waste of time and hence kept their eyes busy and healthy. We bought a few Tshirts with Atul topping the charts. Until this time we never knew that Atul loved shopping. But this was just that start and Atul was yet to display all the different colours and shopping qualities he has in him that even a girl would envy.

Next we went to a small road which had shops on either side. It is called the Tibet street. Atul was shoppping like hell. We would have called him a kleptomaniac with the speed that he was picking each thing from there. Yes of course, we did not call him that as he was paying the amount to them. However not before using his bargaining skills such that the shopkeeper would sell the item to him with him being at loss. We had a lot to learn from his bargaining skills.

Atul's theory of reasonable shopping was "If a shopkeeper does not argue, it means he is selling you at an unreasonable price". So the degree to which he got a item at reasonable price (or the buying satisfaction) is directly proportional to the amount of time spent in arguing with the shopkeeper irrespective of the quality of the buy. With this theory making his shopping foundations, we went in a shoe shop as Atul wanted shoes to wear in the interviews soon to start. The shopkeeper was quite a friendly man and I thought he would show us exactly the shoes we wanted and we could scamper out on to another shop. But I forgot that Atul also had another shopping theory of best buying. According to him "If you want the best, check the rest" and the most sad thing was that he applied this theory in the shoe shop. The shopkeeper was patiently showing him all his collection one by one and Atul would respectfully get them aside. I thought, Lalu might stop eating "Chara", a British might stop cursing the Indians, Karan Johar might become straight, however i had lost the hope that Atul would stop anytime soon.

I was already tired and thought of calling it a day for me and went to sleep. The subsequent morning I got to know that the shopping saga had ended as i coudl see all of them sleeping tight.

We had bus the same evening and decided to bid adieu to this beautiful city which gave us the experiences of our life and yes who could forget this fun for the coming years of our life!.

Truly life is like a rainbow, a combination of different colours, some bright while some light. But still the overall combination is what matters and in the end looks awesome.

7 friends in Bangalore - Part5

The "mogembo" that we initially thought had turned out to be a side hero (obviously we are the heroes in this story). We were actually enjoying the trip. I dont think we would have enjoyed it in case we had decided to go independently for a sight seeing. This was another incident of the many that I have had in my life that makes me believe on the phrase "Whatever happens is for the best". So it is always good to be happy as nothing bad can happen to you. Instead of being dejected and low spirited that we were for the first couple of days, we should have whole heartedly accepted whatever was happening since we had no control on the skim of things. That would have made our life easier and our trip more pleasing, delightful and all the more fun.

Now, finally, the trip had begun to be fun and we were praising mogembo to some extent. I also had uncontrolled emotions and thought he was like a father figure to us who had terrified us only for our good. I always thought fathers were allocated, by god, the work of terrifying their children. I kept the thoughts to myself with the fear of being killed by the persons whom I called friends.

Our next destination was Ooty, a famous hill station known for its picturesque beauty. Also known for its sever cold in winter which we had already started experiencing. We reached our hotel at around 9:00 PM. We were not surprised when we did not see a cieling fan. We were rather cursing the anatomical features of our respiratory system which blowed out air. The temperature was in minus and we with our nasty minds planned to experience the chill outside after freshning up a little. We went out that night with the aim of shopping a little besides also having some experience of ooty as a city. We were not dissappointed. Lot of shops, shopping complexes besides a small sweet garden as well. Also having boiling tea in the the chill is fun. We did some shopping Sandeep bought a jacket in the intention of saving himself from cold and also gifting it to his father when he is back home. This is called "Ek tir se do nishan".
The next day were the destinations Kodaikannal and Kunnur. Another awesome hillstations with beautiful views. If you remember the song from the movie Raja Hindustani, pardesi pardesi, that was shot here.

In all, these few hillstations are known for peaceful glamorous shootings, i meant movie shootings. Our trip was coming to an end and we had to head back to Bangalore so that we can take tickets to Goa. Mind you it is not going to be that simple with shopping being the hurdle and we would stay at Bangalore for a night.

Stay tuned and you will know the shopping adventures we had together. It was fun anyways!!!

7 friends in Bangalore - Part4

We were like dolls at the hands of the mogembo. Distressed, dejected, low-spirited and helpless. He had already taken the whole amount and we were fully in his trap and there was nothing we could do. We fully understood that only a Mangal Pandey could revolt against him and hence we relied upon our destiny to save us. We now only hoped that this villain does not extract our organs by killing us and sell them to some sheikh in Dubai. If he happens to think so, I was sure that he would have killed me first in the greed of getting 4 kidneys. Farooq would have been the last person to get killed or rather i would say he would not have been killed because he would have already made a lot of money by killing me and atul.


Enjoying the trip was the last thought that came to our mind. We were already shocked by the way our trip was progressing. The rational part at the topmost region of our body had gone dumb and we were behaving as robots in the mogembo's hand. Suddenly a new voice cropped up "Go and sit in the bus. The blue bus. Jaldi jakar baitho time nahi hain". I wondered if it was my conscience. Soon realised that it was Mogembo's assistant. We boarded the bus and were about to sit on the seat available on the first row. The assistant shouted "Nahi wahaan nahi. You have to sit behind on the last 7 seats". Again our Jacky chang Nilesh protested, "what do you mean?...we also have paid the same amount as others". The assistant was well trained by mogembo and hit back at us saying "If you demand or command you wont get. Go to the last seats. do not demand or command". We like programmed robots sat on the last seats as per the order given by our master. Anyways, we did not have the habit of sitting on the front rows. Only Carl Costa dared to sit exactly below Prof. Amonkar's nose.

The bus started and we were on our way to mysore our first sight seeing destination. We were slowly getting into the groove now and though we thought the villain to be mogembo, our perception about him was changing as the bus was in good condition besides the guide provided on the bus as well had good knowledge about the places in karnataka. We had started enjoying the trip and were having fun by playing some witty games. By this i mean doing "Foktepana", mind you doing foktepana requires quite a good amount of energy and brains. Manesh as usual was at his best doing it. We also played Antakshari in the bus. After around 3 hours of journey we were at the beautiful city of palaces.

Huge palaces and gardens all around the city. Mysore boasts itself of great history of maharaja's and their rich hobbies. The vrindavan garden was what we were looking upto as we had heard about it a lot for good things like light dance. Sandeep had already started imagining all naughty things when Manesh told him that Vrindavan garden has a light dance. However, soon after Manesh clarified that it is just water fountains and bright lights dancing together. I could understand Sandeep's grief at that point. We reached Vrindavan gardens at around 6:15 in the evening and we were told to return to the bus in half an hour as we had to travel a good distance before we reach our hotel. We all prayed and our god was Michael johnson, jesse owens and also PT Usha as we had to almost sprint to win the race against time. We also wanted to see the water dance and return back to the bus in half an hour.

Ready steady go. Off we go with a bang. we also compelled the sweet looking couples usually in their comfortable and convenient positions engrossed in their so called future plans, to give us an expression and they obliged. We were running like galileo in the garden except that we were not naked. We jumped, jaggled, banged with our aim just one, Vrindavan water fountain dance. It was suppose to start at 6:30 and we had just 15 minutes to cover the distance which was around 6 kms. Ketan's mathematical mind had already started to make the calculations. He declared we have to cover a kilometer in 2.5 minutes in order to get there in 15 minutes. Now how on earth are we going to measure time and distance was each ones headache. Persons like me not very good at calculating thought I should run as hard as possible. The flowers in the way were clapping, the leaves appreciating our determination, the concrete under our foot giving us the support to indeed cover that distance in record time. We were still 2 kms away and Manesh suddenly realised he also had a camera to capture these moments. Except for Atul nobody was in mood to click, however as if it was our respectful duty we all stood creatures in a hurry. Finally we could see the finish line and a incharge there told us that there are still a few minutes to start the water dance. Nilesh also had his hands raised to acnowledge his fan following in the stands before me reminding him that we were here to see the vrindavan garden and not 100 mtrs sprint.

Yes we had done it and we were about to witness the water fountain dance, the lights had started and music which consisted mostly of string instruments. It was an amazing sight, with all different colours and water fountain dancing on the tone of the music. We relaxed for the first time since our disastrous trip started. The music playing its part and lively colours as if asking us to forget the bad things that have happened because after a black colour there is a white colour and then a green colour and then a yellow. After a soothing stress free session at the gardens it was time for us to return back to the bus and we now had just 10 mins remaining to reach the bus. Ketan was attempting to make another calculation before he realised that we all had already started running. We were back by the same way, over the bridge and in the bus at the right time.

Such a trip to Vrindavan garden was one of its kind and this can be done only with friends together!!! Rocking experience Long live Lee Family.

Stay tuned for the Ooty experience in my next blog. The chilly december climate is awaiting us.