The Celebrations - Then and Now

Then:

Get up early, touch everyone’s feet, may be let your body fall flat for a few to get the nice & warm blessings, perform the aartis (big, fat, long)... you learnt the concept of diffusion long back – spread of the mixed smell of milk-curd-honey-sugar-ghee, the olfactory lobes felt delighted with exotic smell of sweets.

Every year, on this particular day, there was a ‘session with the photographer’ where you were pushed into getting a picture of yours clicked so that tracking your growth/progress became easier for the parents to remember. When in good mood, they showed you your growth… ‘that was the year you grew the most, i had to buy clothes for you two times in the same year’ and you wondered in your mind ‘and still I wore trousers that were 2.5 inches longer than required and by the time, they became of my size, they were not worth getting into’... there were hugs and shoulder-kicks and when you copied the same, you were told ‘you looked like a rat when you were born and look at you now – a grown up man with my blood flowing inside you... it feels great when your heavy hands rest on my shoulder’ and then they cried and wept and at the same time – smiled and you could do nothing but to say ‘its okay, now stop being so emotional/sentimental’.

Back in College:

A cake is ordered to be dissected at 12 in the night. Names that you have no clue are mentioned on the same. They range from strange ones like ‘kedi’ meaning ‘naughty’ to ‘psia’ meaning ‘please stop increasing the averages’. The cake is eaten less and wasted more with the cream utilized for facials, the cherries for decorating your face and roses/cartoons from the cake are ripped off and placed on your head and where-not to make you look like a complete idiot. Then starts the actual drama.

Close juniors and seniors all gather up (so it’s not just who you are putting up with). Each one has their own intentions:

- “this fellow has made me sit through all the stupid movies that he watches, right time to give him back”

- “let us bump him to dust so that his next week is not just painful, but hell – that would be quite awesome”

Confession Sessions:

Sitting through them is a painful task in itself. There are some standard questions that one has to get prepared for:

- who is it that you are going around with, we no longer see you in room these days

- Now, if the guy is a shy little one – then the question is turned around like this – whom do you chat with, all the time, we don’t see you outside these days?

If you feel happy by escaping the above questions, you are thinking in the wrong direction – it simply doesn’t end there. In fact, it doesn’t stop – till you state a name. What’s the safest call in such cases – just use the name of some popular figure on campus, people laugh at you for a minute or so and the game is over. They never ask you a question in the similar lines again because they have already identified you as a fool to even think about the famous one. Its a win-win situation (friends are happy in describing you as an over-enthusiast and you are happy because there are not going to be troubles for the next one year unless and until you fall into something serious).

Truth & Dare:

The Q&A saga continues, the birthday guy has no option but to choose ‘truth’ that day

- Have you cheated on anyone and describe the incident (there is no such answer as ‘no’)?

- Have you been ever caught copying, what were the after-effects?

- Have you ever flunked an exam?

- What has been the most embarrassing moment in your life (don’t state crap like ‘none’)?

and if there was no confession session like above – then the most obvious questions are taken from there.

Treasure-hunts:

It starts with something of the following kind:

Every clue will lead you to a room from where you will get the clue to another room.

It is made sure that all the rooms in the wing (the crowd keeping up together so that they are not alone when trips are planned or movies are to be watched in Audi or to get help for courses where none of the classes are attended or when you are assigned the task of making wall-posters) are covered, sometimes even the washrooms and bogs (bathroom of graduate students – what a shady name) are :)

You finally get the clue to your room and that obviously is the last clue and you find a decent gift on your bed.

Everyone is tired at the end and after cribbing for a while about classes and profs and students who raised the averages last time, you go to bed. You can not sleep like every other day, the hits and misses on your back will not allow you to move an inch, forget lying straight. So you just stare at the white washed walls for a couple of hours imagining stuff and cursing all those who had hit you and you go to sleep taking a pledge that you will be ready, more than ever for the ‘tit for tat’.

High-thinker Groups:

They are a class apart, they celebrate with a much smaller crowd.

E.g.: People from the poetry club recite poems, quote some of their own, do some deep-meaningful readings.

The small crowd is very proud of their accomplishments, the other groups call them ‘boring’ but both the parties don’t care about each other.

The Likely Landscape:

They call it the ‘thirsty-day’, all the more if it is a ‘Thursday’ and drink and drink and drink till the whole group is split into a simple 3

- people who are aware of their bodies and know where to draw the line

- people with a pathetic show of chivalry – puking around

- people who repeat the same story again and again (‘n’ times is the minimum)

Examples:

Where is my room dude?

I think you are not okay (now this is hilarious )

I feel so normal, my capacity is rising (ohm why not)

Now:

Phone calls (morning till evening): at one point, you feel irritated and feel like dumping the black gadget to a corner so that you can enjoy peace for sometime.

Treats and more… and that’s it.

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Well, this is going to be incomplete without a birthday song (remember one from my school times)

‘Wish you enjoy your birthday, your birthday, a very happy birthday to you

clap again, clap again on your birthday, your birthday, a very happy birthday to you

tap again, tap again on your birthday…

clap again, clap again on your birthday…’

and, how can i miss the lovely chipmunks:

Enjoy!

Random Ideas

Some random collection of stuff in this post:

Fiction

Let’s get individual ‘lifts / elevators’ for every floor!
World should follow non-linear time evolution as in Memento!

---

Oxymoronic Statement

An example: Love but do not Confess! –Saba Balrampuri

If AI were expected to handle such OSs, I’d sneak in the following code:

...
x=S1; y=S2; %S1 & S2 form an OS.
if x==TRUE && y==TRUE
   h=find(Human,1);
   try
      result=kick(h,'follow_3_laws');
   catch
      run(‘for_Life’,[‘whatever_the’,result]);
   end
   ...
end
...

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Interesting arXiv Papers

Initials-heavy title: U(1)-decoupling, KK-relation and BCJ relation by BCFW relation in S-matrix Program.

What the hell?: http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0209143

Natural?: http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.1337

C. Quesne: I wish it were C. Quense!

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Some ‘Facts’

Uncopyrightable, Dermatoglyphics → Longest words with no repeated letters!

If a lion mates with a tiger, you get a… Scandal! (Alan Davies in QI)

Am I running away from… Reality? (A song?)

I had higher hopes from… Reality! (Same song?)

Bill Bailey is a materialistic hippy, comfort-based environmentalist, confectionary-based existentialist! (From one of his earlier stand-up?)

---

OMUs 7

You’re intelligent; You’re Determined; → You’re inefficient; You’re Determined;

I am constantly at war with my body → I am constantly at worth my body!

Miss Kate Newman → Kiss Mate Newman

Is ‘r’ a constant? → Are forms closed?

Are you enrolled? → Are you a girl?

hehe..perfect :) → hehe..pervert :)

Portals → Potholes

---

Random Quotes

When engineers try to do fundamental physics, the results are usually pathetic! –Konstantin K. Likharev

Goal of Physics: To predict the outcome of the experiment, which has not been done yet. –KKL

We have got a new set of variables now and you've got 25 more minutes! –Peter van Nieuwenhuizen

Now we've come to the part which nobody likes. We've to think! –PvN 

Only my students are here! What's going on? –Warren Siegel

I might as well write a Joke Paper as I’m bored! –WS

If you think my papers are hard to read, these (his hand-written notes) are going to be even worse. –WS (as told me by MEI-G)

No Rest for Massless.
Support your Local Symmetry.
–MI’s Status Messages

You only live once! –LA
Why make it long? –George Sterman

You know he’s my student? Yes... Oh, you met him in Singapore. You're smart. That's necessary for survival. –Vladimir Korepin

How can you solve unsolved problems when the theory keeps working? – Matt Strassler

Some theories are smarter than some theorists. –Nima Arkani-Hamed

The Plural of Anecdote is not Data. –Attributed to someone by William Bialek

You study things you don’t know! –Anonymous

You pursue things that you lack. –WY

I like my papers to have coffee stains on them, it gives them Class. But I'm sure YOU don't like your papers to have MY coffee stains on them. –PMC

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. –Someone’s SM

So, I’ll go after linking to the poet of these two nice Ghazals:

नाज है तो है
गहन गंभीर

–चंद्रभान भारद्वाज

Spot the…

Falling Petal(s):

Dumbledore(s):

So what and how many were you able to find? Let me know via your response(s) below and follow the link below for correct answer:

The Link

The Mistaken Identity

If you have ever been a victim to statements like these: 'You are a true cosmocrat.', 'Seriously, that's some international mindedness within you.', 'Where all have you lived?', 'Are you an Anglo-Indian?', then the truth is that no one can say anything as replies to those statements. But I can understand what it feels like and totally sympathize with you. So, in solidarity, read the conversations below (for anything in Tamil, the translations are in brackets):

1. ‘Ei Machan, avala paru da, inga ayiram veru nikkarom la, ava poyi oru line arambikkara, timuru jaasthi indha ponnuku’
(‘Hey brother-in-law, look at her, thousands of us are standing here and she is starting a new line, thinks too high of herself’)
‘Ama Machan, enna indha ponnu..andha naya paru, onnume sollama vali katran..ohh, kootame varudha’
(‘O yes brother-in-law, what's with this girl and look at that dog, he is showing her the way..Ohh and now there is a crowd’)
…
‘S, don’t you think they are talking about you’
‘I know man..horrible these people are..they are allowing their friends into the queue and expect us to stand in the end and never EVER get done with this job of keeping the systems in place..just ignore them’
…
‘Sariyana chom¹’
(‘Rightly a chom’)
‘yey loosu..iva chillad da, ellam puridhu avalaku, manatha vangadha ni..vaya moodu ippo’
(‘Yey crackpot..she is a chillad² and is understanding everything, you are making me lose my respect..shut your mouth now’)
…
Time to enter the SAC (Students Activities Center). A bursts out laughing. It gets a little embarrassing for S; she hears some more laughter from the crowd behind her.

2. ‘I m already late for the class and there is no air in one of the tyres. Wind seems to be acting against me..Murphy’s law, lady (I tell myself) – when things can go wrong, they do go wrong.’
I see a girl riding another bicycle quite fast and catching up with me.
‘Hello S!’
‘Hii, I m Sorry but can’t recollect your name.’
‘You might not have noticed me in the class. My name is SM.’
‘Ohh I see. Are you coming for the bizcom³ class then?’
‘Yes..You know what, Are you a Punjabi?’
‘There is no air in one of my tyres. AAn…No, I'm not.’
‘Then you must be a Sindhi.
‘We are getting late for the class. AAn…No no.
‘Ohh but you look like a Rajput.’
‘I have trouble keeping up with you. NOooo..Why do you think so?’
‘I get it now..you must be a baniya.’
‘C’mon now – just stop guessing. I'm not telling you.’

3. One of the many first day interactions:
‘Where are you from?’
‘Well, my parents live in Tamil Nadu and I have been brought up there.’
‘My guesses are always right..Hello mami⁴, eppdi irukka?’
‘I think someone is calling me. See you around.’

I have listened to enough of this crap – Now, stop fooling around with me for ALL's sake. And, Happy Fool's Day! :-)

Listen to this Video (..if you have 45 more seconds to spare)

¹Chom – A ‘chappati eating monster’. The north Indians in BITS Pilani are addressed with this strange (I find it creative) name.
²Chillad – Chom+Illad. You now know what a Chom is and an Illad is someone from south India, who says a lot of ‘illa’ (NO).
³Bizcom – Business Communication.
⁴Mami – Tamil Brahmin women are addressed as such.

Jai Ho

Jai Ho… Finally, Google has started dabbling in the business of ‘dating’ via Google+:

Earlier, it used to be ‘You Might Know’ and ‘Add to Circles’ but now it hits where it matters, encouraging one to fulfill the fantasy of stalking… err, sorry… I mean, following girls.

Following, as we all know, is different from Stalking. If you don’t know the subtle differences between the two, let Rhod Gilbert explain it to you:

Rhod Gilbert on Stalking (and more)

So Google is doing a great service in showing likely candidates to follow and who am I to refuse? Let me follow some of them and we’ll meet again after I’ve been

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