Monday, July 03, 2006

My first kiss

My first kiss
Well, all those expecting a romantic little piece are advised to go away now. What follows is one of the grossest blogs ever posted.

All of us have such great expectations from our first kiss. We all remember how it went, how we felt hot in the mouth, how your tongues interlocked, how your head went all blank, how she/he touched you all over, etc. the same happened with me. but there's a minute detail i still haven't divulged. Refer to the third clause: how he/she touched you all over. In my case, it was actually a he/she .... yeah..MY FIRST KISS WAS FROM A EUNUCH. Here’s how it all happened:

Setting: The Guwahati-Cochin express. a cold, December morning. I am traveling back to college all alone.( thank god I was alone. had any of my friends witnessed it, he would have convinced me to jump off the train after the disgraceful smooch). The train starts from Guwahati at 5:30 a.m., so I fell asleep soon after boarding.

Ground zero: somewhere near the Assam Bengal border.

Now, usually, during a eunuch attack, I flee to the toilet. if I cant do that, I remove everything that can be snatched by a eunuch ( cap, specks, MONEY). But alas, I was asleep, that too on the lower berth, and that too with my glasses on. I was a sitting duck for an attacking eunuch. i was completely unprepared, and as my luck would have it, I was struck by one of the most elite eunuch teams in that route. They attack swiftly, quietly, and leave no prisoners. Yes, if eunuchs could be compared to a crack infantry unit, the team that attacked me would be Delta Force (or SAS for anti-Americans). All I felt was a slight nudge and as I opened my eyes, I saw my glasses being snatched away and holstered safely into his/her blouse. I tried to follow them, but they had an extraction plan ready. the eunuch with the package escaped while I had to deal with covering fire from backup-eunuchs. Finally I ran two compartments and caught up with them, begging them to gimme my glasses back. Now this compartment was full of some school kids going for some camp somewhere. It is in this compartment that I was subjected to all the trauma. Anyways, the eunuchs and I agreed on a ransom on 10 bucks for my glasses. I paid the money. But they didn't gimme my glasses back the decent way. One eunuch said, "mai pehnaaungi ", and lunged towards me. I fought with all my might, trying to wrestle the specks out of her hand, while he/she was trying his/her best to place it back on my eyes. I said what the hell, why break the specks for such a trivial thing, let him/her place the specks. Maybe he/she is just good at heart and wants to make it up to me by showing this kind gesture. So I stopped wrestling, and put my arms down. I guess the eunuch just couldn't resist the temptation- a handsome stud, completely unprotected, ready to be deflowered by him/her. The bitch, under the garb of placing the specks on my eyes, came too close, said "jawaan hai, sundar hai"..and then .... SMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCCCCCCCHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. Right on the lips.

Have you guys seen Saving Private Ryan? In the beginning, there's this scene ( Omaha beach-head) where everything goes blank for Tom Hanks... he goes all numb... and then slowly he regains his senses... this is what happened to me too. By the time I got all my marbles back, the eunuch team had extracted, nowhere to be seen. All I saw was a compartment full of stunned school kids, some of them about to throw up. Then I felt my mouth... why were my lips wet? Did the bitch kiss me? Holy shit! He/she kissed me! Now wait, why does my mouth taste of supaari and guthka, though I never had any of that? Did his/her tongue go in too? Holy shit! His/her tongue went in too! I was so bloody disgusted with myself, so ashamed of myself, that I couldn't even throw up. I just walked back to my own berth, like nothing had ever happened, and went back to sleep.

I woke up four hours later, brushed my teeth away with half the tube of the bada-waala pepsodent that mom had loaded me with, fagged 4 navy-cuts in a row, till I could finally feel normal. Then I chuckled to myself, and went back to sleep, thinking "wait till my girlfriend hears of this".....

Thursday, March 16, 2006

The difference between goal and aim

Sometimes i wonder why we learn what we learn. Allow me to illustrate my point. I'll start off with a small anecdote. This happened when i was in S-6, in the Principles of Management class.

time: 08:00 hrs.
the teacher started rambling about Decision Making. What i heard was " decision making is the process of ...while keeping into view the bo bo bo bo .... bo bo bo bo ...bo bo bo bo ...zo zo zo zo ... zz zz zz zz...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz". Out of the class and into dreamland in 7.35 minutes flat.

time : 08:15 hrs.

teacher : Last bench, black t-shirt.
my fellow back-benchers, driven into a similar state of stupour, but somehow still conscious enough to deduce with a moderate amount of difficulty that i was the only last bencher with the black t-shirt yanked me awake.
Me (wondering if Pakistan had attacked): huhhh??? ....
teacher: what is your name?
me:huhhh??.....
teacher: WHAT IS YOUR NAME?
me: errr.. Barun(i think)
teacher: Barun,what is the difference between a goal and an aim?
me: goal and aim???
teacher: yes, goal and aim.
me:errr....goal.. and aim???
teacher:either you answer this question, or you get out of the class.
me: ma'am, aim and goal sound like pretty much the same thing to me.
teacher: get out.go sleep in your room.and no attendance for you today.

There. I knew it was futile to protest. Futile to even beg. I already had 5 out of the maximun allowed 7 bunks in this subject.( what else do you expect? You keep a subject like this in the first hour and expect me to go?) .Cutting sideways from the plot, i now remember why we used to affectionately call the teacher 'Gabbar'( the heartless daakoo from Sholay, for the uninitiated). Anyways,one more attendance gone up in smoke. I started my journey towards the door. But the optimist in me never dies. I thought there was still a way to salvage some of the lost image.

me (on my way out): ma'am, could you atleast tell me the answer?
At that point, I swear I saw the teacher saying "what the fuck??" under her breath.But this is NITC baybeh. Anything the student asks must be answered by the teacher, even if its an enquiry into their favourite colour for pyjamas( the Director says it aids in the learning process of the students).
Gabbar: An aim is short-term, and a goal is long-term .( or vice-versa.. i don't remember properly now).

Believe it or not, i got kicked out of class because some self-obsessed idiot at some point of time had decreed that aim is short-term and goal is long-term( or vice versa). I lost an attendance for this. Could anyone explain to me how knowing the difference between aim and goal was going to make me a better engineer( or a manager, for argument's sake)? Here's another thing that's a point of active discussion in the field of management: is management a science or an art? This question has appeared 24 out of 25 times in the history of end-semester exams in NITC (and CREC earlier).Well, i remember the brief outline of the answer. There were about 10 points supporting the argument that management was a science, and 10 points that suggested it was an art. The funny thing is, that 5 of the points were common to both. And the teachers taught it with such a straight face that it almost seemed sensible.
I'm sure that these are not stray one-off cases. I'm sure that, had i paid more attention in class these four years, i would have been able to point out many more such instances of megacrap being taught in the name of engineering education.
Oh yes, go ahead and laugh at my misery. But don't miss the big picture here. Why do we learn drivel like this? Is it just the name of the degree B.Tech that has value? what about the things that are taught under its garb? I thought the aim of teaching Principles of Management was clearing the fundamentals of how to manage an industry, or atleast a small team of people. Instead we learn trivia that has absolutely nothing to do with making us a better manager. I now wonder what in the holy name of management is taught in the IIMs.the highest paid guy in IIMK this year grabbed a package of $84,000. I'm sure he must know that aim is short-term and goal is long-term( or vice versa).