Khel..!

'Khel' is a term common amongst 2006-10 batch of LBSians, as a direct consequence of the activities of our one time University Union Councillor (UUC), Sreejith Sreedharan aka 'Jetty Kumaran' or simply 'Kumaran' or 'Kum'.

Before we go into the etymology of this term, please remember, never mix vodka with brandy. Well, there are different stories related with the origin of this term. One of the stories is that term was originally created as a result of our UUC's exploits on the football pitch during his school days, or at least this is what he tell to girls. I guess there is little truth in this story. Perhaps, the more famous and more true story behind the origin of this term is that our Kum is fond of girls, especially junior girls, and he would do anything in his power to help them, ie he would use his 'hold' to get them what they want.  His ability to speak different languages was his most powerful weapon. His involvement in various campus issues made his task easier. There were occasions when this 'Khel' would land him in deep troubles. But he would exert his 'hold' to escape from any dreadful labyrinth. After his four years of 'Khel' in LBSCEK, he has moved into much greener pastures, to Bangalore and then to Chennai.

Will miss you and your 'Khel', buddy....!

Chaos

"Everything tells me that I am about to make a wrong decision, but making mistakes is just part of life. What does the world want of me? Does it want me to take no risks, to go back to where I came from because I didn't have the courage to say "yes" to life?"
- Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes.

 I am a kind of person who takes impulsive decisions. I don't like t think a lot before taking huge decisions. Most of the occasions they paid off. But there are times, that they didn't. After completing my graduation, most of my well wishers wanted me to go for post graduation. So I too thought that would a good idea. Before all those pg dreams started polluting my brain, I had gone for an interview at Wipro. Accidentally, I successfully cleared all the barriers and they offered me a job. Since I was sure that I would qualify the GATE examination and would get a pg seat somewhere I turned down the offer. I started waiting for the pg seat allotments. Allotments came and gone, yet i didn't get admission anywhere. Months had passed, my neighbors and all the people I started asking about my plans. This became a routine. Same question, everywhere I go. I had taken them lightly. But as the time began to run through my hands, I became desperate. Moreover I noticed people's expressions, when they inquire me about my plans. It was becoming sarcastic. I was developing a kind of fear to face people. A kind of despair was conquering me. I was losing myself. I sat inside my room, day and night, cursing my fate.

Out of the blue, I got an email asking me to join for pg at a college. Lord's Grace. I grabbed that opportunity and joined there. I don't know whether it was the right decision. The time will tell. But now I am happy that I have outlived the dark ages of my life. I guess, the essence being human is the chaos, in the risks.

Protector of the people!

According to the Corruption Perceptions Index published by Transparency International (TI), a non-governmental organization that monitors and publicizes corporate and political corruption in international development, in 2010, India was ranked 87^th out of the 178 countries. In the year 2010, we witnessed a massive exposure of the involvement of politicians, judicial officers and bureaucrats in the controversies such as 2-G spectrum scam, Commonwealth Games scam, Adarsh housing society scams, Cash for vote scam. But the investigations of these cases are increasing the workload of already overburdened investigative agencies. This culminated in a wide spread cry for a Lokpal bill.

The Lokpal Bill is a draft anti-corruption bill. If passed and made into law, the bill seeks to create an Ombudsman called Lokpal, an independent body like the Election Commission, which would have the power to prosecute politicians and bureaucrats without government permission. The bill was first introduced by Shanti Bhushan in 1968 and was passed in the 4th Lok Sabha in 1969. However, the bill didn't get through in the Rajya Sabha. Subsequent versions were re-introduced in the parliament in 1971, 1977, 1985, 1989, 1996, 1998, 2001, 2005 and in 2008, but they never passed and is still pending.

In 2011, Anna Hazare a Gandhian as well as a 1965 Indo-Pak war veteran started a Satyagraha, a fast unto death in New Delhi demanding the passing of the bill. The movement attracted a large-scale media attention, and thousands of supporters. Following his four day hunger strike, Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh promised that the Lokpal Bill would be introduced in the 2011 monsoon session of parliament. 

As the attempts to merge the civil society group's suggestions into the bill failed, the government and the civil society group proposed their own versions of Lokpal bill. The bill proposed by the civil society have been prepared by the members of the associated activists movement - mainly comprising of N. Santosh Hegde a former justice of the Supreme Court of India and Lokayukta of Karnataka, former chief election commissioner J. M. Lyngdoh, Shanti Bhushan, Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan a senior lawyer in the Supreme Court along with the members of the India Against Corruption movement. These civil society considers the government Lokpal bill to be weak and insufficient to stop corruption.

The major differences are
(please enlarge the image)

Courtesy - The Hindu (dated 23/06/11)
The civil society members have been protesting against the toothless Lokpal bill, which will be able to punish only the small fishes, not the big goons. They have explained the short-comings of the government version of the bill. As the protests heated, the government, instead of solving the loopholes in the bill, they began scathing attacks on the civil group members, even forgetting the position they hold. The allegations made by the union government against the protests for Jan Lokpal terming them undemocratic and anarchic is naive from its part. Why can't the government present both the versions or the bills in the parliament, instead of blaming the activists for wanting the civil society gain to the upper hand over Parliament in lawmaking?

We have seen a lot of protests by political parties including some by the present ruling party, resulting in violence and destruction of public property. But Anna Hazare's protest didn't result in any such actions. Still, the government says fasting is not the way to protest. The actions of the government are denying the fundamental right of expression by creating an Emergency like situation. Arresting the activists who are raising their voices against corruption and putting them behind the bars, along with the grave criminals rings the death bell of a democracy. As an Indian I don't want to see the police force in my country being used as fascist blackshirts of Benitto Mussolini. May be they are wary of the "Jasmine Revolution". All I want to see is an end to corruption and I don't think the government's version of Lokpal bill has the edge to grill the billionaire political babus'.

Batuta

Oh My God! That was the first thought that crossed my mind, when i heard the news that our dear Batuta had joined LBS College of Engineering Kasaragod as a Guest Lecturer in the Department of Electronics & Communication Engineering, the very same college from where we completed our graduation. I think it is necessary to describe him, one of my very close buddies. His real name is Rafeek TP, hailing from Malayamma near NITC campus. According to myths, his idol Vineesh Kumar sir of applied science department gave him the nicknamed after Ibn Batuta a great Moroccan traveler. Bathu, as we fondly call him, is a real miser (a modern day Ebenezer Scrooge) and an ardent cricket fan. We lucidly remember his reaction in one of the classes when he jumped in excitement after knowing that Sehwag had scored a ton. He was sitting in the 1st row then. He is typical, yet a dexterous fellow. A man of 5 feet 5 inches with a wonderful mathematical brain. A puzzlemaniac who shouts during midnight after solving puzzles! A man who set a record for sleeping continuously for 26 hours! An incarnation of bakasura, as he can eat twice his own weight!  Now he has to share the staff room with Mary Reena madam (the HOD), Sheeba madam and others. One man whom he would dearly miss in the staff room will be Mr. Pachalam Bhasi, the inventor of the second set of navarasas. I desperately wanna see him sitting in the staff room with those titans & students around him, asking to sign records. One thing is for sure he will thrill both the classroom and staffroom with his knowledge in cricket and puzzles.

All the best dear bathu!

Get out !!!!!

I was in my 6th semester when this happened. It was a basic mechanical engineering hour. I really don't know the reason why we electronics students had to learn a mechanical engineering paper in 6th semester. I had lost all the touch with the subject. It was in my 11th standard that I had learned something similar. So let's come to the point. Dinesh sir, asst professor of ME department was assigned in our class. We were much advanced in learning, as we used to research on how aeroplanes fly depending on their aerodynamics. It was like a free period for us. In his class, he made it mandatory that every student should bring a calculator but we made it mandatory that every five persons should have a calculator. He always wanted us to shout answers. But we knew it was wrong to shout in class, so we kept mum. On one fine day, when he was doing a problem and he provoked us to shout answers. We obliged. Every body was shouting their own answers. Sexy answered "28.86". Rajeev didn't agree. He said "28.87". They were playing some kinda cricket. Then preju, mammootty, aadu and all came up with their own answers and joined them. The class was going out of his control. I and Srihari, were sitting with them. We were enjoying all the procession. We couldn't control our laughter. We suddenly broke into it. Suddenly our teacher turned back and saw us laughing. We didn't even have the notebooks. He yelled at me, "GET OUT"!!! I was trying to explain him, what really happened. Then he saw Hari chuckling. He roared' "you too". We made our walk out of the class as if we had hit a double century in 20-20. Well, after the class we went to apologise to him. He advised us and then pardoned us. As started strolling away from him, he called us from behind and asked, "what are your roll numbers, i have to mark attendance for you people". We were stupefied that a teacher in LBS was so liberal.

Television Repair

"ENGINEERING has been chosen as the TOUGHEST course amongst all other courses including BCom, BCA, BSc, MBBS & on: by the Guinness Book of World Records, on 18 Aug 2010. There are 58 university examinations, 130 series examinations & 174 assignments within the span of 4 years i.e maximum of 750 working days."

This was a facebook status, updated by my friend and I stumbled upon it. I'm none to debate on the authenticity of this statement. All I want to do is to disclose a funny experience of mine. After waging a great war against Kannur university for a four and a half years, to be exact, yours truly became a Btech degree holder in Electronics & Communication although I didn't know what those two words really meant!

One fine day, I was at my home and something happened to my TV set. Well, my father called in a specialist repairman. And that happened to be the lab attender working in my mother's school. He found that the trouble was with 'LOT'. I was watching over these proceedings. Suddenly my father asked, "what is LOT"? I didn't know what to answer. Suddenly he explained, "it is a flyback transformer (FBT), also called a line output transformer (LOPT) which was primarily designed to generate high current sawtooth signals at a relatively high frequency. It was invented as a means to control the horizontal movement of the electron beam in a cathode ray tube (CRT). The voltage and frequency can each range over a wide scale depending on the device. For example, a large color TV CRT may require 20 to 50 kV with a horizontal scan rate of 15.734 kHz". Hearing this my father asked, "what did you learn in Btech"? I answered, "I'm still trying to figure out".

Tales of MH 1 - sasi p..

We all might have heard of wildlife sanctuaries to protect a particular species. India has over 551 animal sanctuaries, referred to as Wildlife Sanctuaries (IUCN Category IV Protected Area). One of my classmates Subin P (aka Sasi) planned to create a similar one in his room, 306 in MH-1 The species he tried to protect were Aedes aegypti and Anopheles mosquitoes  which causes chikungunya and malaria. They way he protected them was unique. He never used repellents in his rooms. In fact, he never permitted his room mates to do so. He would have his mosquito net filled with young mosquitoes, give them enough blood from his own body, protect them from the cruel human beings like us. All those who read this post may think that my dear friend is mentally deranged. But he can quell our doubts with his super human thinking. My friend, Subin was one of the immensely talented classical dancers in our college. He was also a gifted dance teacher. The company of mosquitoes would help him learn new moves during night. This knowledge, he'll impart to his students. I'm eagerly waiting for 'Natyashri' Sasi P's new book, "Nrithavum kothukukalum", in which he'll explain the obstacles he had to overcome to create a modern 'Natyasastra'....

Dedicated to my buddy Subin P.