India, to those who envy

Indians, keep you eyes open. Termites are eating up our north.

Our INDIA

CIA’s INDIA

It has to be nailed into their heads that, POK is not Pakistan.

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Behind an IITan’s back

One of the frontrunners among the finished products industry in India are the IITs, or Indian Institutes of Technology (not Indian Institute of Technologies, and the over dominant mothers of our over educated legions should take a serious note of it). Over the decades these institutes (I am only including the veteran 5s) have been highly successful in delivering diverse, high quality, polished and packaged, ready to use products worldwide, from the choicest raw materials of talent and intelligence.

Brand IIT, as it is better recognized these days is solely indebted to the UG masses for the grandeur it now enjoys. So the term IITian is largely synonymous with the undergraduates of these institutes (though in many occasions I have seen ‘others‘ trying to flaunt the same colors, only managing to be another weed under the mango tree). So in someway the rule of thumb goes thus, anyone who gets into the IIT by clearing the JEE (and registers himself for undergraduate studies) is an IITian.

The JEE is not another exam, as all those who have taken it know and so do those, who opted not to take a chance. It is supposed to scoop the cream “out” of the society and hence must be infallible in its job. Once you get into the IITs one of the first things that happens to you is an address by the respective director, congratulating you for clearing one of the “toughest exam in the world” – The Indian Institutes of Technology Joint Entrance Exam. Something you had sacrificed your teens (and for some adolescence too) for.

Back in October, I got a priceless opportunity to get a hint of what goes behind this JEE from a papersetter’s point of view. I should have narrated the exact events, but unfortunately can’t recall them all now. Anyway let me try…

It’s a secret, so please don’t tell anybody…

1. Its Autumn, a few IIT professors get a secret notice and they know “its time to be deported”.(This is a secret well kept and so I think no woman has ever been a part of this.)

2. They leave their family and friends behind, lying about “some educational tour”, to convince their close ones about their disappearance. They are then taken to a predetermined IIT and nobody is informed about their presence there. It is the responsibility of the respective director to ensure that things go in proper order.

3. There these professors brew the tonic in groups divided in a few rooms. After a rigorous process of studying and discussing, the questions are set. Utmost care is taken to ensure that the questions set had never seen the light of the day before.

4. Questions, in multiples of what a paper contains are set and they are then solved separately, so as to ensure that the solution is foolproof and the question is worthy.

5. Once questions are finalized they are distributed in several papers which are then sealed and are again taken for some undisclosed location in utter secrecy.

6. By a week’s time the job ends. The ending ceremony is marked by a gala celebration, wherein the professors get their share of chance to be kids again and they stamp the hard disks of the computer used, the printers , tear the papers in pieces and make merry( actually utter chaos) before burning them all and leaving no trace.

7. Thus their days of oblivion end, but the cat must continue to rest in the bag and be secured from the notorious hands of great masterminds sitting back in Bihar.

8. Not even the professors involved know that which of the several sets of paper is actually going to challenge the gray matter of thousands, the following year.

A paper to a papersetter is like a son to a father. In 97′ when the paper “leaked out”, it felt like the son died, the narrator lamented.

It is a very sorry incident that these days these “sculptors of JEE” get instruction (or may be threats) from political source to bring down the quality of JEE paper. You can’t bribe into an IIT, but destroying the true essence of JEE is much more heinous a crime. The only solace lies in the fact that however strong may be the attempt the top will be always crowded by the best.

Hats off to the spirit of IIT

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Being Vibrant, Part – 1

Last December I had to “undertake” a highly eventful trip to Baroda. Baroda, or “Baro Dada“, as the name suggests (in an otherwise neglected language prevalent in a symmetrically opposite part of India where I hail from) is the big brother among the highly ambitious cities of the Vibrant Gujarat. I could not deprive myself of the opportunity of being highly biased as I waited calmly in anticipation. It was early morning and our train tiptoed into the homeland of my homeland’s father, His Truthfulness Mr. Gandhi. This consciousness heavily affected the train driver who was busy sowing the seeds of non-violence in his heart, and in this process he let go every other “tracktripper” he could, be it another “Superfast” train, or a goods train or engine or repairing van for that matter and himself stayed static for hours.

Turning my attention from the murmurs of disgust that was gaining volume in the compartment, I slowly concentrated on the word “Vibrant” of “Vibrant Guja…“, and yonder, outside the train windows live synonyms started surfacing one after another. Be it farmers, speeding on designer bikes through swaying bajra crops or the shining red Maruti Wagon-R resting beside an otherwise inaccessible waste water canal. Between agricultural lands were pockets of modern housing units trailed by wide roads- “the farmer’s apartments“, they must be called.

One thing is clear, that preservation and restoration of history is a heavily neglected exercise here. While most other Indian states take utmost care to preserve her vast expanse in exactly the same state that Lord Mountbatten left them, Gujarat doesn’t. Keeping stride with the changing times is what Gujarat is all about and as your train runs, urbanization, in its ‘ high rises + malls + busy streets + “innumerable hoardings” ‘ avatar passes you more frequently than the mysterious “Chowdhary ka Chai” guys.

All round me were a big bunch of “Gujjubens“, all young and ‘jabbersome’ geared up to display a 10pm Ekta Kapoor soap episode. On the other side were, once poverty stricken families from Bengal who were allowed to reap dividends of Gujarat’s prosperity. One specialized in “manufacturing” and “packaging” prasads at some famous Gujarat temple, while the other was in building body parts of big containers. I wont be surprised if I got to know that back in Bengal, the chappals hung to the Modi effigy’s neck before burning were bought with the money earned somewhere in Gujarat.

All throughout the morning I stayed alarmed and terrified expecting another bunch of eunuchs every other second. The ordeal hardly spared me a moment of peace as their onslaught continued in surges and my fragile defenses crumbled down inevitably. Every time they passed by, my purse lost weight, and I was left wondering how well off these “dacoits” must be. I would take this opportunity to strongly urge the apex of the Government of India to put to an end their unfair protection of their own kind and allow the “Happy Journey” imprinted on the railway ticket to make some sense.

At last Baroda, oops sorry Vadodara, as they might like me to call her, arrived. As I stepped on the platform somebody hit a coconut shell hard against my mind and it broke into two pieces. Welcome to the land of business and prosperity, he said.

At this point I must mention that Baroda Station main building is a fine example of architectural beauty, designed by some genuine architect (not by the one who often confuses himself with an intellectual).

I, then spent 25 bucks on rickshaw to cover a 5 minute’s walk distance and my introduction to the economic big boss of the economic big boss of India was complete (or it was just starting…..).

End of Part 1

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