McDonaldisation!!

Ah! finally I got time to write! after ages.

India , one of the oldest civilizations, is slowly changing itself so much that cultural heritage will soon reduce to a word in history text books.
I had joined music classes some time back. Students who would learn music with me were of the age like 5 or 6 or sometimes perhaps 4 also! These kids learn Hindustani classical music in English. The teacher gives them notes as Sa Re Ga Ma. And this is true for students from any community, there were lots of Bengali and north Indian kids there. They all learn music in this way. People in so many states are fighting to get a 'classical status' for their language, but what is the use of that status if the language that gets that status is not considered 'cool' by the community that was expected to encourage its use. Already, so many languages of the world have become dead. But most of them became extinct because the people speaking that language became extinct. But in our country, number of people capable of speaking Indian languages is always on an ever increasing trend. Hence, it will be shameful if Indian languages become obsolete.

This also reminds me of another interesting trend in the 'upwardly mobile and progressive' society that is flourishing in satellite townships of Noida, Bangalore, Gurgaon etc..
Yesterday my mentor told that he bought an alphabet primer for his few months old kid. The book has alphabets as:
P for Pizza
C for computer
B for burger
and perhaps I for iPod!

I might be accused of acting like French (who, it is said, dislike anything American, like our very own Left) or some anti-progressive jerk, but what kind of nature loving and healthy kids we raise if they learn of Pizza before identifying a Parrot and they see Burger before getting excited to play with a Ball

bangalore - glass house?

It's been more than a month since I moved to Bangalore. A lot has been said ans written about this so called silicon valley of India. Here's my contribution, my first hand experience. My office is on the Airport Road, right across Leela Palace. I thought this must be the most happening place in the city. Soon my illusions were over when I saw the map and discovered that actually we are far from the hip hop spots of Bangalore. Most of the services have their centres far from here. Near to this area, I once saw a mini La Defense. The place around that golf course had all the brands of IT one could think of Microsoft, Yahoo, HP Google and what not? In erecting these high rise posh buildings, people behind all of it, forgot that India has a weather different from that of countries where these glass houses are a norm for business houses. In my own office,




in spite of state of art air conditioning and climate control system, I feel sultry in the noon if i am sitting next to a glass wall exposed to weather outside. So, those feeling awestruck (as I felt when I DLF building for the first time while going by Gurgaon road) by the sight of glass buildings, do have a heart for how it feels behind those glasses!

Final year.. i am sporty!

All Work No Play, Makes Jack a Dull boy.. In IIT(G.. it happens Guwahati at least!), this thought descends upon the minds of students in the last lap of their race called 'IIT life'. Yes, final year fills in the students, particularly B.techs, an unprecedented enthusiasm for sports. Not being a part of at least one sport becomes so ‘not cool’ suddenly. But the first three year find a significant section of people not busy with sports. And this trend has been observed invariably year after year. So an intriguing question is "Why now? Why not earlier?" Let’s explore…

Generally, one gets a standard reply to such question, that “we had other tasks earlier. ”, but considering an IITian style of living, it is quite reasonable to agree that the ‘other tasks’ were mainly different types of recreation, since students in IIT are not nerds. So one cannot buy any sort of argument that would imply that earlier students did not get time for sports. They did, but for other kinds of leisure activities which are different for different chaps. There is one breed of people who sleep and wake with computer games. They talk of it even during meals in the mess, if at all they remember to have food during mess hours! Similarly, we have the movie maniacs. Members of this tribe are crazy about watching movies and soaps.

But film studios haven’t stopped releasing movies. New seasons and episodes of various soaps are also available even now. There is no dearth of computer games or of excitement for new arenas of old computer games. So why the other wise really exciting passions of students fail to please them now? Why are those passions put on backburner now? People who never held a ball in their hands are now hitting courts regularly. A basket ball team consisting of final year students has not five but as many as seven (or even eight sometimes!) players. Even some good second year inter-IIT students are at times displaced from the fields and are told to play somewhere else to make room for their seniors. Oh yeah, they are seniors, at least, in terms of years spent in IIT if not in their experience in sports. Students can be seen trying their hands at everything under the sun as if tasting all the food stuff in their meal! Lawn tennis seems to be the easiest option to start with. No wonder tennis court is found so much congested these days. Some boys have gone as far as purchasing new tennis rackets. It’s true that it’s never late to learn anything in life, but why this learning thought strikes in eighth semester!! Is it because your next door neighbor is playing, so you should also go for it (so that you would not be appearing left out)? ….. If reader finds a suitable answer to these questions, author would be more than pleased to see it, as he could not find one.

Rajeev Gupta

(A final year student himself and a struggling player since first year!)

Work hard dude..

We have always despised government departments and offices for being inefficient and corrupt. We view them as a store house of lazy babus. Have we ever given a thought as to why year after year, babus keep on getting born in these offices? When one babu departs (retires.. because they are never fired!) to make room for a new candidate for his job, all that we get is another incompetent employee. Why?

We might get an answer if observe our technical and cultural fests. We organize Techniche and Alcheringa every year, which are indeed splendid festivals in terms of scale , organizational responsibilities, events and what not. We notice one thing in most of the events: they are delayed. They are not on time most of the times. In the inauguration of every edition of Techniche and Alcheriga, Dr. Gautam Barua , our director, urges us to start an event scheduled at 5 , at 5 and not at 5:30! But this doesn’t happen. I am not blaming anyone for this. I am myself a part of the same system for four years now. My event was also delayed. But is the inability to do things on time inherent in Indians? Is it impossible to respect punctuality? I am bewildered with these questions and observations because today when we go to , say, reservation counter of a railway station, we feel annoyed to see clerks sitting on counter taking ages to make the ticket or to find him not in his seat during office hours. But ultimately it is the people of a country that constitutes that nation. All of us will join the work force in a matter of few months. If we can’t organize things here in IIT with punctuality, how shall we do it in the offices we will join?

A similar and intriguing trait I observed during placements. I found many students more than willing to join NTPC or other PSU’s like IOCL and ONGC. They presented the simple logic that they would not need to work much in those companies. Well, these are the people who are called young IITians, graduates from elite institutions. If they are so much averse to work, what can one expect from the babu sitting in some municipality office or at a railway station for that matter?

India in the western veil

These days ,Indian companies make it a point that they have pics of non-Indians in their advertisements,billboards, posters etc.. One can only speculate their intentions behind this non sense. They may be doin this to attract people, thinking that Indians have always been attracted to fair skin or to foreigners (coz some of them are Africans or American blacks as well), so this will make their ads eye catching. But they often say that that they want to show off some kinda diversity in their employees and clients, that they are serving people from all over the globe , that a substantial percentage of people working in their company are non-Indians. But those guys forget that majority of them are Indians. The Times of India and the Economic Times always ensure that their articles somehow contain a pic of non Indian thing even if that thing has got almost zero relevance to that article. I am not chauvinism or xenophobic, but I am Indian. Globlalisation is indeed the order of the day , but forceful globalisation and blind aping and appeasement is not.