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.
Breaking the VSSUTians' Code: The Secrets of Cheating Revealed: Superb.. Must Read.
ReplyDeleteI hope no teacher finds this b4 eveyone of us leaves the college..!
90% of the final exam is based on the one lecture you missed and the one book you didn't read..
ReplyDeleteThese all are only the attempts to compensate them.!
VALIANT EFFORTS I MUST SAY!
A MASTERPIECE ...all the dimensions of cheating touched upon meticulously.
ReplyDeleteFantabulous as always!!!..hats off to the Juni's..true technocrats!!
ReplyDeleteTRUE N INSPIRING
ReplyDeletehey actually never thought about -The Business of- 'Cheating' before (seems like a herculean task)........won't consider it ever..Sorry to say but even after being so smart, ppl don't see the futility of this extremely insignificant stuff.Afterall it gaurantees nothing,not even a good sleep the night before the exams..
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed reading it..something to cheer during this terrible endsems.
Cheerio Anjan,nothing less expected.but tht OPEC metaphor seemed over the board.and the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang analogy is shaky.
ReplyDelete