Valentine’s day, ironically, has nothing to do with St. Valentine. The poor guy was erecting a basilica and someone managed to give an amorous twist to the tale. It is the day that western society reminds geeks, especially Indian engineers studying away from the metros, that they are loners. Today, I remember Valentine’s day’s eve, three years ago.

It was my first year of engineering, and I stayed in Agate hostel, which is the gaol of our college. Our mess, bathrooms and dorms were hideous. We literally spent a year in a concentration camp. We had to return to the hostel by 9 in the night and the year long drag of ragging didn’t help things. To say it was depressing would be an understatement.

I was 18. In the last of my teenage years, I was having the last of my teenage crushes. I was sitting after dinner, alone, on the benches outside Agate, enjoying the cool breeze. Then, on the 13th of February, I remembered Valentine’s day’s eve, three years ago.

It was my 10th standard, and there was hardly a month left before my board exams began. I was tensed and nervous about my studies, but also sad. School days were over. I had a crush on one of the girls in my school, and 10th standard meant that we would soon be in different colleges, pursuing different streams.

In the past two years, I had never expressed my feelings about her to anyone except a few close friends. Anyone who’d seen me then (a geek in the making) would’ve agreed that I would’ve been lucky to have anyone. I had lots of opportunities to talk to her, but something held me back, which wasn’t fear or the lack of guts. Valentine’s day was one of the last chances for making things happen. I’d picked up the phone and was thinking of calling her. But I knew she had a thing for someone else, and I didn’t want to push this on her. So, I let it slide by.

Back in Agate, I was contemplating on what had happened. None of our crushes had materialized, and we’d both ended up loners in high school. She must’ve got many more chances though, while I slogged through junior college and ended up in Trichy.

In my first year, I knew that asking wouldn’t make a difference. Some girls in our college really have a dirty attitude. Just because I treat girls and boys equally, people call me a misogynist. I had been humiliated once over something really trivial, and I wasn’t prepared to face it once again. I had a little self-esteem left, and so I let it slide by.

Back to the present, I’m contemplating on what’s happened. The crush fizzled out and all that remains is loathing. I deserve better. I’m happy that nothing came out of it. I feel like ringing her and telling her that, but then, even I don’t talk to strangers.

There’s no uncertainty about this Valentine’s day. No crushes and no heartburns. It will just be another day of the year.

In the memory, you will find me,
Eyes burning up,
The darkness holding me tightly,
Until the sun rises up.

Around the northern hemisphere, February is a period of extreme cold, where lovers cuddle up beside the fireside. In Trichy, however, February is a little different. It’s the time when Mother Nature tells you to start sweating like a pig. It’s the time when we can start having hot water showers any time of the day without a heater. Due to the football games in our hostel, the supply usually runs dry by night, so we don’t get water in the morning. The icing (ironically) on the cake is the power cut at midday. No one dares wear a shirt.

It was in this weather that I went to the marketplace alone yesterday afternoon. I wanted to buy some books, bring back an adapter and buy something to wear which wouldn’t stick to my body like needles. I got into a bus after standing 15 minutes in the scorching sun. Miraculously, I got a place to sit. My luck would change once I’d reached the market.

The guy hadn’t repaired the adapter (it’s been over three months now, I’ve given up hope), the books I wanted weren’t in the market, and when I asked for a kurta, the shopkeeper showed me an embroidered silk sherwani that would’ve been too rich even for a wedding. Just to make the trip worthwhile, I purchased a pen drive.

I remained hungry till 9 in the night, planning to eat at the dhaba (Bamboo’s, not to be confused with Bamboo) outside our college. When I returned, however, there was a blackout in the campus and Bamboo’s was overflowing with people. I’d to make do with the cold hard rotis and the “stone” chanas of the mess.

I just hope that this is a purgatory to expiate my future sins.

Cricket fever’s back in the campus with a bang. The matches are taking place in three venues in the campus, and take place from afternoon to well into the night. This year’s Cup has 76 teams, pooled into 19 groups of four each. Out of these, two teams will qualify for the knockout round. Of these 38 teams, the top 30 in terms of points, wins and NRR will qualify automatically, while the rest will play a knockout for the remaining two spots.

The rules are simple: 12 overs per side, with a total of 6 points per match. If the side batting second gets the target within 6 overs, the points are split 6-0, withing 9 overs, 5-1, else 4-2. If they are bowled out before scoring half the target, 0-6, three-fourths of the target, 1-5, else 2-4. A tie, of course, splits the points at 3-3.

Our team’s name is the Underdogs (inspired by our performance), pretty much all the poker players listed previously. We won our first match chasing and won 5 points. Today’s match took place at 6:30AM (it’s a miracle, really, 11 engineers getting up at the crack of dawn) in the small ground behind the Jade hostel (my second year hostel). It was a thriller.

We started off bowling and the opposing team got off to a great start. The opening batsmen looked in top form as they hit Ghati and Sarkar to all parts of the ground. They hit a massive 62 runs in the first five overs. Then Dongli came to ball, and was greeted with a huge six over his head. The batsman nicked the next ball, but it went over Bamboo. The batsmen came over to the center, thinking it had crossed the fence, as the ball had hit a lamp post. We promptly ran him out. Unsporting, but not everyone’s Gilly in cricket.

From there, we had a turnaround. From 72-1 in 6 overs, we restricted them to 111-6 in 12 overs. Their other opener had done the bulk of the scoring, making a fine 51 runs. Seven dropped catches in the field had not helped our purpose in the least. We were thoroughly frustrated. Our first aim was to make 56 and 84, to garner some points from this match. Winning was nowhere in our minds, as we had failed to chase half the total in many occasions before.

Our openers were Bamboo and Sarkar. Bamboo was in a murderous mood, and hit a couple of huge blows to take the score to 25 in 2 overs. We got to 34 in 3 overs and just as things were starting to run smoothly, Sarkar got out.

We were a team of 11, per se, but practically, only half the team could bat. We had only four recognized batsmen. Ghati walked in on Sarkar’s dismissal. He and Bamboo made steady progress with fine running and some lusty blows. The opposition was getting frustrated and tried to run Bamboo out in an even cheaper manner than we had run out their opener. The umpires turned down the appeal.

Bamboo was caught in the deep with us requiring 41 runs in 5 overs, the match nicely poised. The tide turned with Ghati hammering a 6 making it 31 off 4. Another six, but then Ghati was out for 45, with us needing 23 in 22 balls, with a recognized batsman at only one end. The new batsman was Cyber, who hit a six, taking it to 15 off 18. Cyber was caught, but a couple of wides later, and we knew this improbable victory was ours for the taking. 4 runs off 2 overs, and Badri and Stud finished off the job.

For all those who were bored with this post, I’d warned you it’s cricket!

Saturday evening was spent with friends exploring the grand metropolis of Bangalore. We were five engineers with a fashion sense in deep contrast with the rest of the crowd in the streets. At night, we went to KFC. We were ravenously hungry. There were four of us, so we squabbled whether we should take the 12-piece bucket or the 8-piece bucket (We ended up taking both). There were three parallel lines to the counter and one was quite shorter than the rest. The reason: A foreigner stood at the end of that line, and people had guessed that she would take some time at the counter and so had preferred the other lines instead. I stood in a different line and got my order. At the same time the lady tried to explain her order to the guy behind the counter.

We took no time polishing off the first 12-piece bucket. The lady came and sat down at the table next to us. She had with her another woman, no doubt her friend, and three small girls, who in all probability were poor locals studying in one of the missionary schools. I don’t know why, but looking at them suddenly made me feel full.

By the look of it, it was the girls’ first outing at KFC, and they were very happy about it. They didn’t have much to eat, but just sipped at a Pepsi from time to time. Their English was impeccable and they were able to converse very comfortably with the foreigners. From fragments of conversations I overheard, the ladies were talking something about Jesus. I first felt very angry, but then I heard how the ladies were relating the girls’ situation to those in the Bible. They were telling them things like “Don’t lie”, “Don’t hide anything from your parents” and such other values in a very convincing way. I realized that that would have been the manner in which the ladies would have explained the same things to their own children.

Self-reflecting, I realized that I didn’t even have the right to be angry about it. As a Hindu, don’t touch meat, visit the temple regularly and help the needy and poor in your capacity were the fundamental rules of my own religion, which I hardly followed. I eat chicken thrice a week, and I can’t remember the last time I visited a temple or gave alms to a beggar. Greed, sloth, lust, gluttony, wrath, envy and pride. The Bible had certainly defined engineers as the Devil’s own. We are certified as good engineers, no doubt, but none of us has an inkling as to how much human is left in us.

There are millions of engineers in Bangalore, all earning respectable amounts of money. Why did it take a foreigner to take the little girls for an outing? Not one person in Bangalore took them out. Most of them must have seen those girls and wouldn’t have given a second thought about them. People are so busy and engrossed in their schedule that they have no time left for humanity. In one sense, I felt that I was better than the people in Bangalore. At least I still knew who I was, and what to avoid turning into. People have completely lost their sense of identity in trying to be “cool” and blend in with the crowd. There comes a point where you have to draw the line. I saw a girl in KFC who looked as if she’d forgotten to wear her pants. Another one was wearing so much makeup that I could not make out the features of her face.

Whenever you take a short trip, you take back an image of the trip burnt into your mind. If you go home, it is the pride and happiness reflecting in your parents’ and siblings’ faces. If you go meet your girlfriend, it is her simple smile and welcoming look, the facade that hides so many complex feelings and emotions behind it. When the students of our college go to Bangalore, it is usually that of a hot chick in a mall displaying her flimsy underwear (or the lack of it). For me, however, the image was that of three girls having the time of their lives, drinking Pepsi with a shine in their eyes.

The day started off late for me, and showed no promise of getting any better. I went to the bank with Hulk to pay my fees at 2 PM. The lady at the counter gave us the challan. When we filled it up and gave it back to her, she said smugly, “No payment of institute fees after 2 PM.” When asked for the notice, she replied, “I don’t need a notice. You may pay your fees through the ATM.”

Bureaucracy. @^$#.

I then went all the way to the administrative block to get my ATM number, and made a few people wait for quite some time at the ATM (Redirecting all their unpleasant comments to the lady at the bank counter).

I had to catch up on my final year project work. I spent the evening with Avikal and tried to understand the speech recognition software, HTK, that we were supposed to analyze. We tried out the sample commands that the manual had given. To our dismay, we found out that HTK doesn’t do phoneme segmentation. In layman’s terms, it was two hours of thoroughly unpleasant, painstaking and pointless work.

Just when I thought the day couldn’t have been worse, I remembered that I had to go to Bangalore the next day. I got a phone from Time, telling me that I would require photocopies of all the documents for the workshop, adding up to my chores for the next day.

And then I had to wash my clothes.

The worst thing about a place like Trichy is not the bad food, our living conditions or the harsh climate. It’s that when you’re down in a rut, there’s no place you can go to give yourself a lift. There’s no one to assure you that today’s just a day; tomorrow will give you a new chance at happiness. If you fall, you have to lift yourself up, the hard way. I guess that’s preparation for the big bad world outside that we’ve heard so much about.

The silver lining came at night, when we had a proper poker party. Cold drinks, starters and a great ambiance with friends. None of us was a big fan of the game, but we still played well into the night.

We can truly appreciate our friends only we we move away from them.

As an engineering student, I won’t be alone in saying that my day begins when my classes start. Today, however, like in the past few days, I woke up at the crack of dawn. The reason: Cricket. Our wing has formed a team and we’re participating in the annual inter-hostel cricket tournament in the Ruby Cup. That was said rather gallantly, we’re just playing for the heck of it. Today we played a practice match against one of the participating teams. We lost the game, but the day was off to a great start.

Classes began at 9:20: Satellite Communication. I haven’t heard a word of what the teacher has said in the subject. Today, I didn’t bother opening my notebook. I take a Jeffery Archer novel to class to kill time, but there’s usually no need for it. An ardent backbencher, today’s pastime was discussing and finalizing the details of our class trip. Seems like we’re going to Ooty or Munnar in mid-March. The monotony of the class was broken by sporadic choruses of “Bp”, “Sunku”, “Manuj” and “Buzz”. It was the teacher’s first Buzz, so she seemed a bit confused. No problem, she’ll get used to it.

After the class, there was an announcement never heard in our class before. Two consecutive lectures were cancelled, so I went back to my room. Lunch was the usual. The 2:20 class was unbearable. I’m usually at full attention for my favorite subject, but the lack of sleep was taking it’s toll. Time passed till dinner, which was dosa and chicken, which I’m sure very few people would have tried out. Then follows a session in the internet lab to keep track of the outside world, and after that, a game of poker.

All this must seem very irrelevant and mundane as the contents of a blog, but it’s necessary to know about none the less. Me and my batch mates will be completely different persons in six months, wherever we may be, and if you see us then as professionals, it would be difficult to imagine us following such a schedule.

While I was alone at the pitch at dawn, spinning a ball wet with dew, I realized that we’d invested four years of our life for the future. Engineers, especially in the final semester, always have plans for the future. Very few people cherish the day as they spend it. Hardly ten days of the year do I wake up to see the dawn, or hear the birds chirping in the morning. In premier institutes, we have so gotten into the habit of winning that we always crave for more without appreciating what we have. A flashback at how we spent the day, or wasted it, is so necessary to make us feel that we’ve lived out a part of our lives that we won’t get back. People in today’s world always live thinking about what’s to be done tomorrow. What’s the point of planning out your life if you’re not going to enjoy it?

As most of us in college have gotten bored of sitting in front of a comp, we decided to try something new. We got a pack of cards and tried a hand at poker. We didn’t have chips, so Badri and me pooled in the change we’d accumulated in college over the years by drinking coffee at night.

We pooled in more than Rs. 250. The poker was strictly for fun only. At the end of the night, the money would all return back to the “poker kit”. As most of the readers would know the game better than me, I’ll introduce the players.

Cyber: Abhishek Verma, as he is known to the outside world, is a Computer Science student and lives in #60. He is applying for a MS+PhD in US this year. An ideal student in the eyes of a teacher (First-bencher saala), he has a codebook of ethics he keeps changing according to his convenience and likes pulling other people’s legs.

SKP: Shishir Kumar Prasad is also a CompSci student and lives in #61. A hard working all-rounder, who’s good at everything from studies to litz to cricket. Except poker. By personal experiences, he’s sub-prime.

Ghati: Hemant Shirsat, is my classmate, #62. He’s got an annoying smile and a great stare. Up-to-date in current affairs. A really chubby character.

Hulk: Tushar Bihani, my roommate, #63. A “raw” guy, all natural, stock market and AOE fan. Likes the jungles and wildlife. Still doesn’t know why he came to ECE.

Isli: That’s me, #63. I have a bad habit of noticing people’s fallacies before their best qualities. On many occasions, I’ve been spineless and not stood up for myself. I don’t like being a nerd but I’ve ended up looking like one.

Badri: Saurabh Shirolkar, Instrumentation and Control (ICE), #65. Has transitioned from a bookworm in the first year to a party animal in the final year. Like me, has an occasional drink. It was his idea to add the bottle of Old Monk to the poker kit. Badri (on the) rocks \/.

Bamboo: Nikhil Thete, Production, #65. Been Badri’s roommate all along college. Scapegoat of the wing. Last ditch entertainment provider (at his expense). Taught us poker and didn’t win the first 20 games. Plays with a shawl around his head.

Mama: Himanshu Sardeshpande, Electrical & Electronics, #66. Has watched almost all hindi movies on the LAN before his placement. An immense pool of patience and wisdom, so has refrained from playing jua as of now.

Sarkar: Pankaj Sarkar, Electrical & Electronics, #66. Sab kaam sumdi mein karta hai (sorry, untranslatable). Never in the limelight. The poker novice.

Dallu: Vibhor Dalela, Mechanical, #67. Bachcha as in the “Ek rupay mein local call”. Bamboo’s nemesis. Chirpy, lively and naughty. Goes more to Pune than I do.

Dongli: Vaibhav Donglikar, #67. Like Mama, patience and wisdom. Hasn’t played yet, either.

First night at poker was fun. Bamboo wrote the rules on his laptop and kept it on the table with music playing. We started with Rs. 20 each. I came in late and won a couple of full houses. People were caught peeping into other’s cards and stealing from others’ stashes. Ghati tried to spice things up by raising the stakes for Hulk and Badri and packing in the next round. Others were mostly bad risk takers, so no one became bankrupt till midnight. We called it a night as we had a cricket match at dawn.

So, we had a new pastime. Holiday nights promise to be good. With table-lamps, snacks and cold drinks, we may have great Poker nights.

Well, I’ve avoided blogging for quite a while now, but now I’ve really exhausted most of the options a final semester engineering student has for killing time. As I belong to the net-addicted nerd group, I’d rather type in a blog than scribble in a diary (Imagine, that thing doesn’t have a backspace). This being my first post, let me introduce myself. My name is Nitin Isloorkar. I was born in Manipal, Karnataka. I spent my entire high school life till college in Pune. In school, I was never cool, so I oscillated from being a loser and a nerd. I was fascinated by electronics in my junior college, so I decided to go for a career in Electronics and Communication engineering. I started preparing for IIT-JEE very late in my 12th grade, so my chances for getting through were quite slim. I got through screening and to everyone’s surprise, the mains too, but my rank wasn’t good enough to get me an engineering seat. I got good marks in 12th and cracked the CET, so I could’ve got a seat in COEP E&TC. However, I gave the AIEEE and got a seat in NIT Trichy, ECE.

Personally, my teenage was totally drowned by academics. What were supposed to be the happiest years in my life were spent studying to get ahead of my competition. I got near the top, but was it worth it? I was addicted to winning in whatever I did, and nothing less would satisfy me. I must be the only person in Pune who doesn’t have a close female friend, who’s never asked anyone out for a date, and consequently, who’s never been on a date. I recently visited Vaishali for the first time (I’m serious about that). My new year’s resolution is always to fix a resolution for the next year by the year end. I guess most people in my college are in my boat in this matter.

First year flew by in giving ragging to our seniors, mainly a bunch of losers, second year was in my department, so academics took over, third year was monstrous: preparing for placements and studying under “strenuous circumstances” (My batchmates will know what I mean) and seventh semester was about placements, GRE and CAT. So, the final semester is the first time in engineering that I’ve had peace.

Well, here we don’t have much of college life in the eyes of an outsider. There’s no disco in a 300 km radius, no pizza joints or coffee houses to hang out. The nearest “civilization” is 20 km away. Sex ratio’s bad in college, the girls too few and most of them are too full of qjada to fall behind anyway. (They mostly don’t like our sense of fashion. Like we’re going to dress up for them.) For us, however, it’s masti. 24×7.

We have a LAN, all sorts of movies, sitcoms, games and “other stuff”. Once you’re bored of the comp, there’s cricket, football and table tennis. Our wing has 15 guys, mainly ghatis (maharashtrians). We went on a Goa trip last December. We had an awesome time, enjoying the beaches, scenery, driving bikes, local seafood and an occasional drink. Our current way of killing time is poker, but more of that in the next blog…