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.

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*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.