EXPRESSIONS

What do you do when your faith in yourself is questioned? What do you do when at one moment you are flying and the next you feel as if you are spiralling out of control? What do you do when you are faced with two extremely difficult choices and making one choice would forever change the face of things to come?? How does it feel when your inner turmoil has led you to the brink of despondency?? whom do you trust ?? whom do you suspect? How does it feel to have your sleep assailed with doubts that threaten to pull into a never ending limbo of confusion??

It is never easy to stare forward into the abyss and yet look back at the deep sea...making a choice that would throw your life into a whirlwind. How do you feel when someone else's mistake is condoned as yours.How do you feel when you ruminate over what has happened and wring your hands in despair?

The pain is excruciating.How do you feel when something silly gets into something serious?? who do you turn to ?? what do you turn into?? Do you question your own convictions?? Do you rant and rave and make anger as a catharsis to your pain?? Do you retreat into a cocoon of your own?? Do you live in a self created mode of self denial and behave as if everything is alright??how do you feel when your own mind is the scene of the crime???

How do you feel when your head is full of these questions all clamoring for an answer??

People may see your happy and cheerful facade and think you are the picture of equanimity...but seldom they realise that you are facing hell.Your cheerfullness may be mistaken for nonchalance ...for aloofness...for being self centred....for being unattached and unemotional...

It feels so lonely when people think that you are untouched by suffering and do not warrant a second glance..Your facade may be ice cool but the embers are simmering underneath and it needs very little to be stoked into a fire. And you cant open up just for the fear of unknowingly offending somebody. Jokes made at you may be rib tickling for the audience and you may dish out a wry smile but actually it was gut wrenching for you. A combination of ice and nice people say when they talk about you...they know you will forgive them for the mistakes they committed on you...they stick that label and blatantly go ahead without a thought.

They know that being your friend has absolved them of all their crimes on you. What do you do then??

And I beleive there is only one thing that can be done..once you have your head and heart in your right place and faith in your own decision...you dont worry about trifles. If you believe in something..if you are committed to a cause...if you have taken a decision you know is right then stick to your conviction...life will always deal out a bad card...life will always be a sinusoid...All you have to do is take a firm step..One that does not endanger your relations with people around you and also is in tandem with your belief.

It is this semblance that is required when you are treading on eggshells.....never be afraid to confront..you will be afraid for a few minutes..but choose not to run away ..you will be afraid your whole life...

Of course it will take some time...your past mistakes may take time to heal the festering wounds...you may be distanced from those you deem close ...but that would be momentary.Never hurt the person whom you believe will walk with you through hell and back. That person deserves that much support from you atleast.Change your self a wee bit, let go of that obstinacy, be a little more considerate and you find things simply falling into place.You may have been accused of mistakes that you never caused, but by doing whats right you will get that chance to redeem yourself.

When Alexander was asked about his conquests he simply replied ..."I don't make right decisions,I take a decision and make it right"...this guy ruled the world. If you can follow in his footsteps I am sure you would too...

HAPPY HOLIDAYS FOLKS

"CHIT"TY "CHEAT"Y BANG BANG

Truly a classic of Ian Fleming...The Chitty Chitty bang bang flying car was that held childhood

fantasies world wide..the concept of the flying car apppealed to the young formative minds....it came as an exhilarating mental googly that a ground based automobile could suddenly take to the sky.....IAN FLEMING taught our budding minds to question conventional wisdom and question the very system that propagates conformity....of course he had some thing else in mind....

And today, a brief glance into the hostel life of mine would reveal just how the idea has germinated and given rise to a whole new genre of cheating....a cheating system that relies heavily on mordern technology....a sight that would have made HG Wells cry in delight, A sight that would put the Interactive classrrom company EDUCOMP out of business , a sight that would spawn a whole new area of data communication and network sharing...of course in todays corporate world there had to be an euphemism for the so called debased act of cheating(hey this word is not mine , its the lamentations of all those snooty front bench nerdy kids)...i choose to call it TECHNICAL COLLABARATION....a sharing of ideas...a confluence of minds....a discussion of facts...ok i am going over the top now..:)

A cursory glance at any random room would be enough to satisfy the average nagging parent that studies are in progress and the midnight oil being burnt up in gallons....(God save OPEC)...but look a little closer and you see whats actually going on...one of my branch mates who does not wish to be named ...lets call him roll no. 168 uses his scrawny handwriting to the best possible use....the night before the exams, he first religiously writes out the chits and then proceeds to practise from them before the exams..well of course he first studies around three modules and then writes out chits of the last module....a great strategy(according to him)...and it has never failed him yet...the astonishing fact about the chits are that voluminous amounts of data....and when i say voluminous .....i am not joking....roll number 168 can squeeze in around 50 marks worth of answers and diagrams on a single palm size chit. a smart guy with a smart idea...exactly my type.

Roll over roll no. 168, for your room mate steals your thunder....this roly poly guy ...lets call him Mr. Coal land Das really is an adroit TECHNICAL COLLABARATOR when it comes to cheating.Mr Coal land Das has an innocent-as-a-newborn appearance coupled with a deadly eyesight(beleive me when i say deadly .. i mean deadly...he can glance at an answer sheet three desks away and still scribble on his own sheet without taking his eyes off the other guys answer sheet)..

He uses a double combination of chits(well endowed chits...50 marks on each) all hidden in god knows where parts of his body(a huge elephantine physique sometimes has its advantages you know) and in almost unreachable parts of his wardrobe(no never inside his underwear... :)) and Mobile camera pictures of the portions of our course of study.

And once i heard Mr Coal land Das had to eat his chit when a teacher came too close to comfort of discovering his shenanigans....how did it taste ?? I asked him later...and he replied that ...the taste was good but left a bitter after taste of ink....Ha! the hungry rascal......:)

And in case of circumstantial contingencies I am there to bail him out with my messages...Hey recharge my message pack this week Mr. Coal land Das..that sms pack is for sending sweet nothings to someone special...not to idiots like you...:)

And these are all the exploits of our batch....but when it comes to our successive generation, they really define the use of technology in cheating....lets call our second year group from WEST HOSTEL ...Len,Ash,Sas,King,Dev,Bhaku etc etc....they spend sleepless nights before the exams typing out the long answers on Microsoft Notepad and transferring it to the mobile phones for exam reference. and there is a thin guy called...ok let me call him Dip...name changed ...he uses a 5 mega pixel camera to first snap the answers and then compresses them and sends them to his mobile. Hats off to this cheeky rascal for yet another new innovation in the realm of cheating.

The whole night I am assailed with the cacophonous chime of message tones implying the transfer of long answers from one mobile to another.

And these are just some of the uses of technology in our everyday exam lives...but mostly my friend Mr. Coal land Das, roll 168 and another guy ...lets call him Dr. Death have a tried and tested method that marked a new era in cheating...this method changed the rules of cheating forever....MICRO XEROX....it is a scientific marvel that a book the size of my pillow could be squeezed into a chit the size of my wallet(empty wallet of course)...and we engineering people were the first to use this novel system of Xeroxing to the best possible use.

But at the end of the day when it comes to cheating....you dont have to be tech savvy and all...all you should have is the visage of a veteran chess player...the nonchalance should be deceiving....it should baffle even the best of a invigilator.Your heart may be thudding like the pistons of a bike..but it should not show on your face.and when you are copying from your chit your brain should be razor sharp of any external threats....believe me copying from a chit in the exam is the best possible mental and cardiac exercise.....

But the most shocking fact is that this kind of use of technology in exams has solely been a male bastion...Girls so far have never exploited the use of different techniques in the exams...truly a dampener for all those girls who will be engineers in future.....i know after reading this article my female fan following would be wringing their hands in despair...shocked at the lack of moral integrity and self esteem(really heavy words that have so far eluded my understanding) of us guys...but they would be silently envious of our ways...sorry girls...these kind of activities are only for veterans....there is no space for newbies

And as our semester exam draws to a close and my juniors and batch mates are busy tearing up their chits and getting ready for the next holidays....I am sitting here regaling to the outside world our exploits...a tale that would be handed down for generations to come...they will have evolved newer and more daredevil ways of getting round the system ..but they would be marvelling at the sang froid shown by their ancestors....

SPECIAL THANKS TO ROLL 168 and MR COAL LAND DAS FOR LENDING ME THEIR CHITS FOR DISPLAYING IT ON MY BLOG.....

Well at the end come to think of it ...after all surprisingly CHEATING is an anagram of the word TEACHING........happy holidays folks.