Khoj 'pakara' ki

Okay I know the title makes little sense, but by the end of this post you'll know that its not so senseless. To skip directly to the 'khoj' stuff, click here.

It all started with the Student Guide* workshop organised in the ACMS (Advanced Center for Material Sciences). The feeling of being a SG started to sink in, and so was the pressure of responsibilty. The workshop consisted of a boring session with the Head, Counselling Service Dr. Onkar Dikshit followed by very interesting sessions with Dr. Alok Bajpai (Psychiatrist), Dr. Lilawati Krishnan and Mrs. Sharmishtha Chakroborty. In between there was a quiz also, which was kind of very well organized and was supposed to be very informative (instead, non-boring), but the purpose wasn't really met (although I won a chocolate :D). Anyway, it was then that we all SGs started becoming friends.

And then arrived the D-Day for which we had the workshop, the day when the newcomers were supposed to join. And mind you, they were all pouring in. Our job was to help them in the allocation of rooms, Library Registration, Computer Center (CC) registration, Academic Registration, DOSA registration, I-Card making, Bank Account Opening... Whew!

So basically, for most part of it, I was marked as one of the major persons responsible for anything and everything that needs to be done at CC, since I am from CSE department. It involved a lot of clerical work and little CompSci stuff. But I did not complain, since being in the CC means being in A/C cooled rooms all day :)

So on 25th July, when half of the new PG students had been called for CC registration, I rushed to the CC almost an hour earlier to make sure that all required machines are working well and to set them up for the registration of freshers. Along with me were Lakshminath, Monika, Palak and Sudeepa. They were almost as responsible for it as was I, Monika being the Asst. Coordinator was primarily responsible. So what we were supposed to do was login onto all the machines, start the browser and open a local URL (which, by the way, was very weird).

Now we four and some more SGs who joined in later on logged on to all machines and started helping the newcomers who had started coming in by now. While most of us helped them fill the form on the URL, some of us managed the management stuff by directing freshers to free SGs. So, basically, freshers were coming in and leaving at a good pace.

All was going well, when suddenly Monika comes into the lab from I-Dont-Know-Where and declares she has lost her pair of keys!!! And that she is sure that she has left them in this lab only. She also added that she'll treat the SG who finds the key-bunch for her as the key-bunch contained some very important keys. I looked around on the table near me and did not find the keys so went back to my job i.e. helping in form filling.
But suddenly I realised something... That I had given a bunch of keys to one of the freshers when he was about to leave the lab, thinking that it belonged to him. Little did I know that it could have belonged to Monika.


Now the khoj begins!
Sometimes, anger or being non-patient helps. This was one of those times. It had so happened that the person who had taken the keys from me, I had lost patience with him as he had made a few mistakes while filling the form and I had said to myself "Why don't people follow the instructions while doing things?". That's because this guy chose his IITK Id as 'pakara' when I had already told him that he should ask for my approval before selecting his login, but he did not and chose such an awful id.

Upon thinking a little more about it, I was able to dig out his name from my mind with the help of the login id pakara. I recalled that the guy's name was Ravi Kant Pandey, but I could not recall his branch. What helped most was the fact that we had called people branchwise, so we knew that we could search him by name by only looking at the list of students in those departments.

So Monika and myself, we went to the Counselling Service office and got hold of the list of students in IME, CE and LTP. The idea worked and from one of the lists we found out that he is from IME department and also noted down his roll number. We checked records and found out that new students of IME department had been allocated rooms in Hall-4 (incidentally, my own hostel). The next thing we did was, we contacted the Asstt. Coordinator of Hall-4 (Sumanta) and got the list of new occupants of Hall-4, sorted on Roll Number. This is all we needed to reach him.
Very soon, we found out his room number and were about to leave for his room when Monika came up with a brilliant idea that we should also make a note of the room numbers of other people from his college, who also have joined in.

So her and me, we walked from the counselling office right towards Hall-4 hoping to find out this guy who hopefully had the keys. To our disappointment, his room was locked and so was the room of one of his friends. Now are last hope was his other friend (second out of two). If we are unable to find Ravi there, then we are in big trouble.

God helps those, who help themselves!
Thanks to the holy spirit and Monika's mind, we got hold of him at his other friend's room. I asked for the keys and he gave me the bunch without any resistance. Burning with anger, I asked him why he hadn't told me in the first place that the keys did not belong to him, instead of taking them from me and carring them over to his room...
He replied, in a very soft voice, "Sir, maine dekha hi nahin ki yeh meri chabi nahin hai... (Sir, I did not notice that it does not belong to me)"

So anyway, we got the keys back after a long search. It was such a relief!
During all this khoj operation, Monika and myself got to know each other well and have been really good freinds since then.
A few days later, I came across Ravi and said "Thanks! :-)" to him. Know why? Had he returned me the keys that day, I might not have found such a wonderful friend.

All's well, that ends well.

--
*For information sake, I am a PG Student Guide (SG) in the Counselling Service (CS). CS is supposed to make sure that the new entrants feel comfortable and do not face too many problems during their stay on the campus.

My birthday cards

Though it has been a long time, since I celebrated my b'day, the memories are still as fresh as if it happened just moments back. It was a special birthday in some sense and I'll remember it all my life (atleast for a few years to come).

Anyway, I have finally overcome all hurdles to put up the cards I recieved this year. It doesn't include the card my dear sister Vibha gave because they are lying in my wardrobe at home and I haven't been able to scan them..

Click on the images to see full-size image. I have tried to blur some part of text, but if you can still read it, then... I suck at Image Processing!















These were given by a very close friend... You can read the name of the sender, can't you?
Oh they are so beautiful and full of feelings!









Sudeepa sent me the card right above and though I have shared it with you earlier, it makes me happy to put it up here again!
Now that is what I call a perfect card from a lovely sister to a caring brother!

And these cards make me so happy whenever I look at them. They remind me of the person who gave this card, which gives me so much joy that I can't express.
Thanks to both of you! And to all of you!

An update: As things stand now, it appears that my prayers weren't answered but it has not been confirmed.

Praying...

Na, not the cards yet...!
I am feeling a bit lazy these days so not writing the b'day card blog and to worsen things, I did not find uploading images easy (After being in Computer Science stream for so many years, if I have to face such a situation, then either I have been doing fraud all these years or blogger sucks with image uploading! And I think the latter one is true).

Anyway, what makes me blog today is that I have a wish in my heart and if that comes true, it will make me more happy than any other thing/event in recent past. Most likely, tomorrow I'll know whether that wish has come true or not and therefore I am very anxious, restless and excited. Have done some silly things, which my intutuion told me to do if I wanted to see it coming true.

Just praying right now!

Good deed

Yesterday I was not in the best of moods, but today it's totally different. I am happy, rather very-very happy because I did a good deed today. I donated a unit of blood today to someone who really needed it, but could not afford to buy one. I do not know who he is, don't even know his name but what I do know is that I made him feel better. Didn't I? And that is what gives me immense pleasure.

Once I had done that, I along with a few friends went out for a movie (Sarkar) but that did not happen because by the time we reached the counter for buying the tickets they had sold all i.e. it was already a HOUSE-FULL. Anyway, had a gala time as we hanged out at the shopping malls (looking at beautiful girls) and then spent some great time at Cafe Coffee Day after which we went to Treat. We sat in Cafe Cofee Day for more than 2 hours, the longest time I've spent in a food joint at the cost of less than Rs. 60 per person. Sitting there, we discussed some of the funniest and most embarassing moments in our recent past. It was fun but then we realised that we had spent far too much time than we were expected to so we got up and left in the best interest of all of us!

All in all, it was a great evening preceeded by a happy late-afternoon. Looking forward to many more evenings like today.

By the way, before donating blood I made sure that the needle used was a new one both times. Yes, I was pricked twice. First time it was done to test my blood against various diseases and haemoglobin count and the next time, obviously, for collecting the unit of blood I had gone to donate.
No risks when it come to needles! You know why, don't you?

Another thing. I recently recieved another set of birthday cards which are indeed beautiful and full of emotions. I wanted to share some pics of them here, but the file server on which I have kept them is down at the moment. Let's see if I can do that next time. Really beautiful cards!

Missing you!

I never wanted to post this but had to because I am missing someone very dear but do not have enough balance left on my cellphone to call that person and talk... Hence this post...!
:-(
Have lots of things to jot down but don't feel like doing that right now. Will share today's incidents sometime later when I am feeling better.

I have this bad feeling that I am going to lose a really good friend soon. Why am I so upset? Why am I getting these negative thoughts? I don't know... Do you?

Near death experience

Ok it wasn't so close, but I did panic when I realized I was going down!
Have been going for swimming for more than a month now, but day-before-yesterday I went in to the deep portion of the swimming pool. It was a nice, rather interesting, experience and I was really excited to reach the other end and then come back to the shallow part of the pool.
So to repeat my feat, I went into the pool yesterday again. Had no idea of what was going to happen. Reached the last point quite comfortably and was happy to have done it again. Then an idea came to my mind. Why don't I try to stay afloat without any support? And so I tried it.
First few seconds, it was okay as I managed to stay on top easily but very soon things started to get worse. Now I knew I was going down. And by this time, I had gone a little too far away from the pool walls so couldn't even cling onto any of them. So to save myself from drowning (in 20ft waters), I started to move my hands very-very fast in the hope that the force will bring me upwards but this caused a lot of splash and was noticed by some life-guards standing next to the pool. One of them ran towards me with a wooden stick in hand to help me. However, by the time he reached close to me I had managed to save myself. He growled at me, passed a few stares and left. I was happy and sad. Sad because I could have been drowned... happy that I managed to avoid it.
Anyway, by now all life-guards (4-5 of them) knew about me and were looking at me. Since I was at the deep end of the pool, I decided to go back to the shallow end to have some rest there. I practice breast-stroke style of swimming and in that you need a very good rythm of air intake and exhale. I generally do it very comfortably and smoothly without any hiccups, but nothing helps if it's not your day.
While coming back, I somehow lost the rythm in between and a few drops of water entered my mouth and went straight into my wind pipe... SHIT... As soon as it went into the wind pipe, I got restless, lost my balance and was again in deep waters, struggling for my life. Once again, I found myself far away from the walls. This time I really paniced and thought I was on my way to join my deceased neighbor but thank god I realised that it was no time to panic and that I should be helping myself... again. So with all my power, I pushed the water downwards and tried to come out once, so that

1. I can take one long breath which will hopefully make things much easier for me.
2. Judge whether I should go forward and reach for the shallow pool or should I try to go the pool wall.

As soon as I came out with the help of that one push, I inhaled as much air as I could. Once that happened, I knew that now I can handle the situation and so resumed my swimming movements. In a few seconds, I was back to normal, reaching for the wall. All this happened with a life-guard standing next to the swimming pool boundary right above me. He saw me go down, struggle and finally recover.
The moment I reached the pool wall and clinched it, the life-guard started shoutung at me telling me to go back into the shallow pool immediately and not to come back into the deep waters for the next three days.
I knew what happened should not have happened and therefore did not reply to any of his comments. I realized he was right in what he said, but was I really at fault? Later, that guard came to me and politely told me what happened should never have happened and what could have happened if...
I was very angry with myself, so to vent it out, I started swimming without taking any rest between the swims. After I had crossed the pool width three times to-and-fro, my hands started paining so much that I had to take some rest. During this time, I recalled all the events that had happened and decided that I wasn't going to do any silly things in the deep before I master the art of swimming.

Today when I went back into the pool, I stayed away from the rope dividing the shallow part from the deep part. Just enjoyed swimming in shallow and attended some under-water lectures by Guru Kaushik Ramajayam Ji. Also bunked a few of his lectures ;-)