Saturday, September 26, 2009

Industrial visit to NLC




I never thought that Neyveli would be anything less than a disaster. I mean, here are the facts: Almost ten hours of travel, scorching hot weather and no information which could be related to my field at all (not something which was necessary for my enjoyment but only as a sop to my frustration that the day would not have been a complete waste of time if I could have only learnt something new).

Imagine my surprise when I actually enjoyed myself.
The bus journey was not half bad, really. I spent most of the time listening to Hindi songs on Sab’s mp3. I already have a couple of favourites now - Jaane kyun and Masakali. She was very bemused when I played these two over and over again.
The weather was mild early in the morning and we went past rustic little villages, paddy fields, haystacks…the whole deal. My classmates were all high but managed not to go completely berserk which was something else I was glad about. I’m all for fun, but incessant screaming and getting squashed into a human sandwich is not my idea of fun. Thankfully, it wasn’t theirs either for a change and everyone enjoyed themselves without getting too rowdy.

When we finally reached Neyveli, there was some tension because we had heard that electronic devices weren’t allowed and all of us had our cameras, cell phones and mp3 players with us. It was also a bother that we had to get down at each check post and wait out in the open under the hot sun and humid weather till the bus was given a green signal to continue after it was checked.

Despite all that, we really enjoyed seeing the site where lignite was mined from. A couple of men who worked in NLC also took the trouble to accompany us and explain how everything was done. That place was huge! I think he said that the site we saw was roughly 35 square kilometers in area and we had an aerial view of the whole site. Really awesome place.

I would have enjoyed it more if I (not very surprisingly) hadn’t stepped in the first puddle of mud we came across and spent ten minutes trying to get all that muck off my shoes. We piled into the bus again after taking a few snaps and they took us to see this monster of a machine which is used to mine the lignite.

My first view of the monstrosity which costs around 62 crores, was a gigantic metal disc with grooves like spikes which can dig up to a depth of 5 meters into the ground. I was very impressed. Then to our delight, they let us climb it. It was so cool! It would have easily been at least three to four stories high and we had nothing between our feet and the distant ground but a mesh which seemed too fragile to bear our combined weight despite assurances from the operators that it could easily bear more. The adrenaline rush made us forget the heat, all the grease and every other conceivable inconvenience. The weak hearted (and for once, I was not among them) waited on solid ground for the rest of us to come down.

Then we had lunch at the afforestation project area which was very picturesque and quite a bit cooler. The lunch was nothing to get excited about. I hadn’t really expected anything more than the lime rice and chips they gave us but we managed with the food some of the girls had brought from home in anticipation of just such an event. After lunch, girls being girls, just had to take a billion pictures and find the perfect pose for each and very one of them. Mad, but characteristic.


The journey back was more subdued for me but for some, the party was just getting started. A little childish but they seemed to enjoy it which is what an IV is all about, after all. I managed to get a little sleep in between and found the sky overcast when I woke up. All my hopes for a shower were fulfilled in a very enjoyable spell of rain. There’s nothing like watching rain in the countryside while listening to Linkin Park. The weather cooled down quite a bit after that.

To crown it all off, I managed to get back home at the very reasonable hour of eight in the evening by myself. At home, I watched Hancock. My advice to you is, don’t watch it. Even if it has Will Smith and Charlize Theron, do NOT watch it. If you already have, you have my condolences.

Today, my limbs are stiff and I’m feeling lazier than usual. It was worth it. Sometimes, things work out perfectly precisely because you don’t expect them to.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

To be or not to be. God, do I have to decide???

It is a fact universally acknowledged that I can’t make up my mind. At all. What others perceive as a fault, I’d like to think of as a quirk. At least a quirk sounds better than indecisive and confused.
At this point in my very confusing life, unlike Robert Frost, I have not two but too many roads lying before me and if I took aforementioned person’s advice about setting off on the one less travelled, one of the following scenarios will ensue.

1. My mom will go mad.

2. I find that the road is not at all what I imagined it to be.

3. I’ll have a brilliant time till the coffers run dry.

4. I’ll be the first person to be kicked out of Greenpeace.

5. I’d love every moment of it.

6. Or I’d hate every moment of it.

7. I will decide to chuck it all and wait to be posthumously recognized for my collected written works which, at the moment, are merely regarded to be the ramblings of an indecisive, no...quirky teenager.

8. My mom will go mad.

All in all, not too bad you know.
At the least, you can never say my life is boring.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Love!!! Part -1

Romance…Probably the world’s biggest franchise. And no one makes better use of it than the movie industry. Here are a few situations which can only, I repeat, only work in Tamil movies:

The culture clash: Hero is a successful entrepreneur/city boy. Heroine is the village belle. Heroine humiliates hero but then later does something so endearing that the poor guy can’t help but fall in love. Then a lot of unnecessary unpleasantness follows because of the girl’s scary grandmother/high BP dad and the guy’s snobby mom/homicidal mortal enemy, finally culminating in the inevitable wedding scene.

The family feud: Dads were once best friends and turned into bitter enemies over some stupid misunderstanding. Under these circs, their respective kids have no option other than to fall deeply in love with each other. All the hapless viewers will then have to endure some harebrained plan to mend the breach and gain acceptance to the impending nuptials from their fond but irrational parents.

The love-hate relationship: Very simple really. Guy hates girl. Girl hates guy. They bicker incessantly. Their true characters are one day revealed when they do some shining act of mercy and suddenly the realization hits that they can’t live without fighting with each other for the rest of their lives.
Now the real problem arises for the guy. How the bloody hell is he supposed to propose to someone who hates his guts..? This is promptly solved when girl cries over the guy’s apparently lifeless form in the climax and confesses her love.

The action flick: Guy has way too much moral fibre and insists on picking fights with every high profile goon in the place. Girl is highly impressed and pursues guy who generally acts all stuck up and rejects girl on account of his life being too violent. Girl cries. Villain kidnaps girl. Guy rescues girl. Kiss. Credits.

The bad guy/good girl equation: Homely girl. Guy with an attitude and loaded with cash. Initially, the guy takes up a bet to win girl’s heart. Girl shows her purity and homeliness by categorically refusing to play along and also exhibits just the right amount of disgust at being pursued by the spoilt hero.
Hero really falls in love and spends rest of the movie trying to show the girl he’s reformed and will give up all worldly wealth to live with her. Happily, this is not necessary and girl vows to be a good wife and keep the guy in check (chains?) for the rest of his life. The end.

Chick flick: Girl meets perfect guy. Girl also suffers from low self-esteem and therefore goes through the whole facade of being friends. Guy is too block headed to see the girl is nutty about him and gets infatuated with a hot bombshell. Girl retreats but seethes with ill-concealed jealousy. Ten minutes before the movie ends, guy realizes his mistake and runs after his best friend to make her believe that he was in love with her all along. This is generally done on crowded streets/in train stations/airport/girl’s native village,etc.

The tragedy: Guy meets perfect girl. Girl and guy fall in love. You have to note that the guy is either a very sincere and efficient policeman or anyone actually, who has a lot of very dangerous enemies. Girl dies in the end. Guy is heart-broken but continues with his service to society.


This entry will be continued as and when I come across more corny Tamil movie love stories. Till then, keep watching those delightfully lame and cliched movies. It's a culture, people.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

That bane of education : lousy professors.


Professors.
If you could hear me right now you’d be very impressed with the amount of venom I can inject effortlessly into that single utterance. I’ve had maybe two good professors since I started college. It’s not like they don’t have M.E degrees and PhDs, because they do. It’s amazing how they still know so little. You would think a person who’s doing his PhD would at least not read out from the prescribed text book and make it sound like last month’s obituaries.

One of my professors is supposed to be brilliant. She overloads us in the lab, refers a gazillion books and gives us notes. What more would anyone want right?
If only I could manage to stay awake in her class. I’m not saying normalization and functional dependencies are a lot of fun, but they definitely can’t be as bad as she gives me the impression that they are.

Are my parents paying my college fees so I can enjoy all the benefits of a boredom-induced coma in class??!

Okay, that didn’t pack as much of a punch as it did when a friend of mine in med school exclaimed, ‘I can’t believe my dad’s paying lakhs so I can go examine shit in college!’
Anyway, metaphorically this pretty much stinks as well so it’s not entirely inappropriate to draw parallels between the physical and the spiritual in this case.
I end this entry on another vitriolic note: Professors!