The Graduate Post

I am thinking of renaming the blog since the current one is not justified anymore. One, I am not ‘up at night’ owing to the obedient son persona I have been bullied into at home and secondly I am not in the Campus Goo-haute anymore. The farewell to Guwahati was quick and simple…. akin to tearing off a bandage, one day I ship my baggage, the next day I am off to the airport having said a quick goodbye to friends.

Goodbye can be an inordinately long drawn out affair. I dont think a very sobby emotionaly rich goodbye is a guy thing so we tend to avoid that. A hug , a thump on back and a promise to see everyone in Delhi seems to be the expected norm. It was anyways pretty hot so even the hugs were not of the ursine variety … more of a chest apart quickie with our heads having some sort of bobbing motion sideways, indicating we indeed had a very good time with the other guy.

Saying goodbye to the Institute is another thing though… you have a proper procedure to say ‘Bye Bye’ to everyone from the Workshop Uncle you met in first sem to the Supervisor who finally signs your BTP report. Every bureaucracy prides itself on these little ego trips … the more the number of signatures you have to attain to get rid of them, the more proud they are.

Staying at home is boring especially if you feel the need to download the latest episode of ‘Big Bang Theory’ every monday. I look forward to the day I join MDI and reclaim my lost routine again.

Prof. Pinko to IISc

Our beloved Prof. Pinko is finally moving on… to IISc. Apparently he’ll be opening a Ghumakkad Dept there too. Just like he did here. Just imagine, Pinko moving around in his shocking pink ride around IISc causing a flutter in the hearts of female scientists for miles around. Or hitting the night clubs after a hard days work of emailing and networking. His lazy eye scanning the bar for people who he can suck up to and flaunt the contacts thereafter.

How he managed the lucrative proposition is still unknown but then Pinko has contacts few can boast of. And we were wondering whether Pinko was aspiring for more administrative position here itself. The man had other ideas though. Interested would know how much he knows about ghoomna-ghumana… zilch zero.. some straight speaking dude from obama-land molested his Phd thesis in front of an audience an year back. Reports have it Pinko ran from the room like a hare leaving his guide to do all the defending. Then there are his claims that he can get people internships and jobs at his whim.. because you know “CONTACTS” .

Then there is the fascination with gaudy pink. First the ride, then the house.. the list goes on to where I dread to tread. Unconfirmed reports suggest he bought a pack of pink chaddis for the campaign but liked them so much, refused to part with them on the campaign day.

Even as mere mortals wonder and seethe in jealousy, Pinko’s juggernaut rolls on. IITG -> IISc -> …. US Univ (UCB anyone )

Update

I have finally spewed enough testosterone all over this site that these people have now been convinced of my rugged manliness that stems from the very core of the idea which has spawned this blog into whatever form it has taken at this very moment.

That is all one lives for really. Writing self indulgent obnoxiously long sentences and browbeating stupid sites into conceding.

Take a look again

Yeah they earlier called this site was written by a woman until I beat the shit out of them with my love-gun.

No Good Friday

I was kept awake all night by my screwed up biological clock and constant fiddling with internet in expectation of results. By 9:30 I was rejected by Kozhikode and at 10:30 I got the golden words on Indore’s site :

Sorry, your name does not figure in the list.

The first thought that struck my mind was how to make a wordplay on my sad situation to write on my g-talk status message. I know its sick but that’s how my mind works. So here I am fielding pings from people asking about results, telling them I didn’t make it and at the same time prowling the net for the Joker’s sad expression photo.

Have you ever pinged a guy asking for his results only to be told he didn’t make it. I haven’t but I can imagine how awkwardly stupid the situation becomes. Let me illustrate with a few eg.

Guy1 : hey results ka kya hua ??

Me: nahi hua yaar , no K no I not even waitlisted

sent at 10:35 am

Guy1 (wondering on his comp) : fuck!! what am i suppossed to write now ??

—————

Guy2 : oye result aya ?

me: aa gaya… nahi hua. if i had a call i would be gloating right now man

Guy2: k

Guy2(wondering on his comp): why did he use the smiley???!!!

me (wondering on my comp): why did i use the smiley???!!!

—–

That’s why you should always check the status message before pinging somebody. Guy3 went one step further, he called me up , I told him I didn’t get through and then he decided to go silent on the phone. After 15 seconds in silence I decided to break the tension and told him I would talk to him later. Of course all these incidents look more funny when you are not in a foul mood.

By this time I was too overcome by exhausation that failure brings with itself in plenty and I decided to do the unthinkable. I selected the busy option on my g-talk for the first time and fell asleep. When I woke up I saw this status message on someone : Nothing good about this Friday. Amen to that…

Update: Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse there came two first years to my room today asking tips for CAT. Talk about timing. Between contemplating to punch their stupid juvenile faces and kicking their underdeveloped balls I finally decided on a noble course of action. I motivated them for GRE.

Dormancy of Solitude and other “cool” ‘GREword’ titles

I know its a cool title but that’s about it. I have no idea what it means, what it symbolizes or what I am supposed to write in order to justify it. Here I was wondering what to write when ‘dormancy’ and ’solitude’ stumbled into my consciousness and I went … “those  are cool words, i wonder how i can use them…”. Of course I couldn’t think of any logical sense or post, but I went ahead and used it just like countless other people who use these words all the time but don’t really know the context in which they are supposed to be  used. So instead of reading a simple statement like “Beauty is only skin deep” you get something like “Pulchritude possesses solely cutaneous profundity” which seems far more cooler and intellectual than its normal counterpart.

You can easily identify these people. They will hang around the library during the day, mugging up wordlist after wordlist as they munch biscuits along with it and as the clock strikes 5 pm would return to their rooms all ready to juxtapose their new-found knowledge onto other people’s social networking profiles. You will receive on an average 2 comments on each of your photos with due usage of wordlist 37 crammed during the daytime. As you struggle to discover the context of these often illogical statements you will be confounded with more of the same kind of barrage. These are also the people who curiously use abnormal amount of smileys in their comments. These people use a or or to punctuate their statements instead of commas and full-stops like normal people. Its tough to understand why they feel the need to hang their tongue out or bare their canines at every possible moment but I believe talking to these people in person would be a real pain. I mean can you imagine talking to someone who does this ( ) after every sentence regardless of whether its funny or not.

Most people take this crap called GRE* and move on. But some people believe now that they know a few more words than an average joe their opinions suddenly matter. No they don’t, if you were ignored before it was not because of your vocab but because you are a dumbass. Only now, you are a dumbass with a mental thesaurus which impresses nobody by the way.

GRE – a curiously funny test that is culturally biased, mathematically retarded and linguistically unrealistic. I am pretty sure more than half the words in Barron’s are never used by working professionals again in their lives.

Director’s Cut

Perhaps the most exciting names in the industry right now, Christopher Nolan and Darren Aronofsky have sort of reinvented cinema with their innovative and creative styles coupling it with good box office returns. In Nolan’s case, ‘The Dark Knight’ in all probability will be the one to dethrone Titanic from the apex of highest grossing movies of all time.

You may recognize Aronofsky as the director of this year’s Academy Award nominee ‘The Wrestler’. Aronofsky first shot to fame as the director and writer of the low budget mathematical thriller ‘Pi’. Pi created the right kind of noises for this director to get producers interested in what he was planning next. Sure enough he followed it up with a gripping drug addiction drama ‘Requiem for a Dream’. It was Aronofsky’s genius that he could present something as overdone as drug addiction in an entirely new perspective with unconventional editing and camera angles. His trademark directorial style ‘hip hop montage’ earlier seen in Pi was perfected in this movie. Apart from that, fast forwarded scenes with matching background score were also appropriately used to heighten the tension.

Another director who started his career at roughly the same time as Aronofsky was Chris Nolan who gained fame as the director of indie movie ‘Memento’. This thriller made it to the top 250 movies in IMDb within a few screenings at the movie festivals. Nolan had come up with his own original style of story-telling with the usage of jumbled order of acts of the movie. Up until then, only authors used to switch the three acts namely the beginning, the middle and the end with each other so as to make the narration interesting. Nolan incorporated the same into his movies as a result of which Memento starts with its climax sequence and alternates between the opening act and the closing act. Nolan also employs ‘hard cuts’ to curtail the movie length and make it into a taut watch, thus often ends up cutting through a scene midway between a character’s line onto the next one.

A technique common to both the directors is the frequent usage of symbolism in their movies. If Aronofsky alluded to Jewish name of god in the movie ‘Pi’ where the actual value of Pi was supposed to be the true name of the Almighty and whoever knows it shall rule the earth refers to a popular Semitic belief ; Nolan also heavily utilizes a lot of historical and psychological references in his movies. His work ‘The Prestige’ exploits as a sub plot, the rivalry between Edison and Tesla related to arguments about DC and AC current and the supposed dangerous experiments conducted by Tesla. The most recent of Batman Franchise is full of references to popular philosophical thinkers and of allusions to Roman Empire. The opening sequence shows the Joker as putting his own spin on a famous quote by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche “Whatever doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger”. There are at least 3 references to the fall of the Roman Republic in the movie. The first is when Bruce meets Harvey at the restaurant and Harvey mentions how the Romans would offer unlimited power to a single citizen to guide them through a crisis referring to Caesar. The second reference is when the Joker mentions the location of Harvey and Rachel as Avenue X and Cicero. Cicero was the Rome’s most famous orator and statesman, and was a vocal opponent against Caesar and Tyranny. In ancient times Caesar represented chaos (as evidenced by Lucan’s Civil war – where Caesar invokes Fortune or Chance before he goes crosses the Rubicon and goes to War against Rome.) much like the Joker or Harvey later on in this movie. A third reference to the Roman Republic is the fact that Jim Gordon, Harvey Dent, and Batman form an agreement. In Roman times the agreement to control the senate by Caesar, Pompey the Great, and Crassus (the financier of the venture) was known as the first Triumvirate. Batman, Gordon, and Harvey are similarly trying to control Gotham.

Even with this similarity the two directors have very different styles of film-making which will determine the future course of the LA industry. With the likes of Scorcese, Soderbergh and Gus Van Sant already the veterans, these two very well might be the guiding force for Hollywood

The Big Screen at IIT G

The net had stopped working the night before without any explanations and I was left with only dc to amuse myself. Inspite of all this I was looking forward to the evening as ‘The Dark knight’ was being screened in Auditorium. They had screened Troy the day before…. and I am told all girls and fags of the campus queued up.  Guys  dancing around in skirts trying to poke each other with their spears pretending to lend some masculinity into this outrageously gay movie. Yeah I had better things to do

Anyways I reach the Audi at 7 sharp not wanting to miss the opening sequence and had to wait over half an hour only to be told PAF was being held first. Sneaky bastards these people, assembled an audience for themselves. So I suffer an hour of their incoherent and unsteady jumping around the stage …. with these dolled up jokers as proud as peacock all because they danced on Jai Ho … somebody ought to tell them – Tum Sab GAY HO

After this torture the movie started on the “big screen” which is just another name for the slide board. I went ahead and sat in front trying to make out the words as proud Kapili stood around waiting for somebody to clap because they had won PAF. I am told homo danced for joy and President Obama congratulated them later that evening. The movie secy. keeping in mind the sentiments of deaf people at IIT Guwahati also used subtitles, which was great fun… How else would I know that the – [Engine started] …. [Batman Grunts]  …. [Building Blows Up] …. and [Joker Laughs] Such thoughtfullness really.

Anyways the people sitting around me decide to chatter up every time a good scene is about to come …. “Oh this is awesome” .. “This one is mindblowing”   “Ha hahahah” to match with the Joker’s haha in case anyone didn’t know they had already watched it.

Two hours later despite all the sound faults the movie was still fun… brilliant acting and background score and worth missing your dinner for. As I walked back some people wondered what the fuss was all about this being the best movie on IMDb…. I suspect these are also the people who enjoyed ‘Jhoom Barabar Jhoom’ and other such classic fare from Yashraj. Idiots