My · Experiments · with · The · ME

Since I can't find the time myself to post anything lately, because of the stupid "applications to US universities" process, I'll amuse you with a wonderful quote I read a couple of days back.

"If you cannot open the door of a bedroom, you cannot sleep in its bed."
- Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

I just caught an eye of this:
CBSE to not penalize for spelling errors

It is of utmost importance to have good writing skills, apart from being fluent in spoken English, to communicate effectively. It is thus absolutely bizarre that CBSE, the premier education board in India, should relieve students of worrying about getting their spellings right.

What this will only do is debase the already depleting level of English proficiency among students. I can’t understand the logic behind the move: instead of imparting the will to strive for perfection, this move veers completely – to make the students careless.

What’s next? It’s okay if the scientific or mathematical formulas are wrong as long as the answers are right?

While I was moving to a dorm this semester after three years of commuting, I had a minor tiff with my mum regarding the matter of whether or not to take a broom with me. Despite my agitated refusal before leaving home, I found the thing in my bag when I was unpacking. It took only a couple of days for me to realize that it is going to be indispensable for my stay, although for a use which my mum wouldn’t have predicted.

A broom is an elementary desideratum for anyone living in Vidyanagar to have; not that cleaning ladies are hard to find. In fact, it is essential for a completely different use: to drive the bally lizards out of one’s room. It would be interesting to compare the population of students boarding in a particular hostel, to that of lizards inhabiting it. I would be bamboozled if the ratio comes out to be less than unity.

Lizards infest quite a variety of spots in hostel rooms: on backs of tube-lights, wash basins, toilet seats, and the gap between the tiles in the walls in one’s bathroom (a result of shoddy construction, which is another peculiar characteristic of hostels here), to name a few. These reptiles are mostly harmless; most of the time they are just looking for a cool place to hang out or have a nice nap or maybe even mingle with the opposite sex of the species. But when they spring up while one is seated for the morning chores (if you know what I mean) reading a good book or musing over life in general, it gets a bit obnoxious.

Lizards come in an assortment of characteristics. There are fat lizards, thin lizards, long lizards, short lizards, lizards with huge eyes, lizards with huge tails, even sluggish lizards who take vicious pounding of the walls to make move. These types may be smart enough to understand that the person, whose room they have chosen as their haven, would be quite irked if they cause bother by roaming around as if it was their room. It is the doltish tiny lizards that have come to life only recently, those fail to understand where they are allowed, and where there’s no entry.

In fact, the speed with which these tiny lizards sprint from place to place is remarkably astonishing, deserving of an analogy with the cheetah. As if this random roving wasn’t enough, these things don’t even have a grasp of how to counter the force that pulls apples down off trees. It’s quite shameful, since they only have a small mass to carry around, compared to the huge ones, who quite easily manage to stay put vertically. It is because of this inability of theirs that I myself am quite nervous around them. You wouldn’t know when you would wake up and see one accompanying you in bed, or for that matter even trying to read Engineering books’ covers (as if they could understand what we have been trying to figure out for more than three years now).

I guess now you know why my views regarding keeping the broom have changed. Alternatively, one could keep the windows and doors of the room shut, but then why would you want to enclose yourself in a stiflingly hot environment, when you have the super broom to drive the blighters out.

(This article was written by me for my college magazine, GCET Voice. It, hopefully, will also get printed in The Campus Paper in the near future. I couldn't help but use "Mostly Harmless" as the title. Thanks to the late, great Douglas Adams for it.)

I didn’t like Five Point Someone (FPS), to be very honest. I thought it was one of the most humbug books I’ve ever read. It didn’t deserve the success it got, especially not for the plot and how it was handled, which ironically was the reason why youngsters liked it. It was a wonderful concept, which was made a mockery by some far-fetched storyline.

You’d have thought I wouldn’t have given Chetan Bhagat another chance. Well, his latest book one night @ the call center (on@tcc) was released last week, and I bought it the next day, and completed reading it in less than six hours. Why, you ask? Because despite all the flaws he has in conjuring up a story, or rather in concluding one, he has a knack for creating humour, dark humour, which I’m sort of a huge fan of.

In a way, on@tcc isn’t entirely different from FPS. The plot is miserable, or at least the last 1/3rd of it, which is supposed to be the main part. Six call center agents, all of them having a mess of a life, discover the true meaning of it. I’m an atheist, so the whole “God calling…” part (I won’t spoil you more, promise, except for a couple of other details maybe where I need to point out a fault) seemed obscure. I do know it was one of the three main issues Bhagat wanted to address through this book, but the plot he used was so ludicrous that even those who actually believe in God wouldn’t buy it.

There was another major hole too. The “scaring the Americans” part was as cheesy as it could get. Guy falling off a multi-storey building, but back to normal in three months? Sex with your professor’s daughter, in his own house? Well, I thought these FPS situations were quite daffy. So, the whole “using a computer virus threat as a terrorist attack indication” is something for which I’ll have to find more synonyms, severe in meaning, for daffy. Americans are dumb, yes, but not that dumb, right?

That actually is my only complaint with Bhagat. He’s an awesome writer, a very good story-teller. He knows where the joke lies, and has the potential to extract and bring it on the surface with the right amount of humour. He knows the absurdities of the modern life, and he manages to bring them to the reader with his dark humour, which is something not everyone can do. He only needs to learn to not go overboard. There’s a difference between writing something which would entice readers to think, and writing absolute tripe, which though may get you readers, does nothing in the end result. It’s the former that he needs to concentrate on using more, because he’s good at it and definitely not very good at the latter.

As for on@tcc, at Rs. 95, I’d recommend it purely for the humour. But it is not the best book ever written, which is what people think of FPS.

Going from home made food to the hostel mess can be a painful process. I managed to avoid it for three years of my college life, but when I shifted to a hostel this semester, I realized why my friends kept moaning constantly about mess food.

To be fair, the food at my hostel mess isn't that bad. It's just the monotony that is irksome. Potatoes are the order of the day for practically the entire week. It is understandable that they are cheaper, but even then a hostel (one owned by a charitable trust) that is making six-figure annual profits thanks to donations, should not be afraid to spend more than the bare minimum.

Wednesday evenings are slated for a "change" with the regular Gujarati food being shunned for something different. I have heard that Pau Bhaji, Idli Sambhar, etc. are offered on this day. However, for the seven Wednesdays I have been there, Chhole Puri has been all they have managed to serve. The logic being, once again, economy. I wouldn't actually mind Chhole Puri once a week, but when chick peas (Kabuli chana) of the cheapest quality are used, which incidentally don't go easy on one's digestive system and cause a few extra hassles in the morning, it gets annoying.

Despite all these shortcomings, this is still one of the best messes in the university town of Vallabh Vidyanagar. It is clean and the prices are affordable (Rs. 12 per meal, compared to a minimum of Rs. 15 elsewhere). The daal served every morning is quite famous and is so good that some students easily gulp 8-10 rotis (offered steaming hot during lunchtime) along with it. I had tried a few messes while commuting, so as to avoid carrying a tiffin, but none of them offered buttermilk every day. This one does.

All it needs is a bit of variety and the management to realize that they have enough money with them to make a few menu changes.

(This article, by me, was printed in the September 1-15 issue of The Campus Paper.)