Back to business....!!!

Well.. Oasis-2k7 is memory now. And I should admit, it wasn't as fun as my first one. Probably because of the pending assignments and presentations suspended over my head like the sword of Damocles. For the past two days, I have been doing nothing other than staring at my laptop screen, trying to figure out what to do about my Data Structures and Algorithms assignment, and how. The compiler, the "wonderful" thing it is, has been throwing errors, prompting this poor soul to cry out for God every time before giving compile and run commands. It seems God is rather bad at programming (....... :P). I am writing this post, exhausted after writing an eighteen page report to be submitted tomorrow, thanks to Data Mining course. My next post may be after I don't know how long. I am gonna have a helluva time with all those assignment submissions and tests. Wish every week we had Oasis.... :(

Oasis!!!

Thanks to OASIS, the annual cultural festival of BITS-Pilani, I have the so called luxury- time. Every year OASIS arrives bringing along with it, unlimited enthusiasm, and winter. Time for those blankets and sweaters to be taken out. Time to inject our minds with a whiff of fresh air. Time to pamper ourselves. Though well aware of the deluge of tuts, tests, and assignments that awaits me right after OASIS, I am enjoying the time I have got all for myself. Basic human tendency to ignore unpleasant things as long as we can. Isn't it?? Looking forward to a great OASIS.....

Pookkalam

This is a pic of the pookkalam that we made in front of our auditorium where we screened a Malayalam movie(Kaazhcha) for the second time in the history of Kairali@BITS-Pilani. Incidentally the first one (the classic Manichithrathazhu) was exactly ten years ago...........

Onam@Pilani

A visit to the temple at 7 in the morning, a tut at 8, a lunch consisting of butter rotis and cheese masala at 1 in the afternoon, and finally "Kaazhcha" followed by a payasam at 8 in the night.... This is what Thiruvonam had in store for me this year..... Should consider myself lucky for I am "kilometers and kilometers" away from home, in a nondescript place in Rajastan ...... I know now what nostalgia means...!

The Last Fifty Six Days.....

...so finally here I am bidding good bye to IMSc, Chennai. Fifty-six days ago, I was here, wondering how I will spend my time here. And add to it my first impression about the dormitory in which I was supposed to stay. But I made new friends in the dorm, and I am almost sure I will meet them never again in my life...I hope I will bump into them somewhere someday.... And I know this is how life moves on..When you are in college, you miss home. When you are at home, you miss your college. I must say I gained a lot in these fifty-six days that I stayed here. It is very rarely that you get a chance to work under the best professor in a particular field. And I was lucky enough to have it. I got an insight into the beautiful world of mathematics, though I admit I wasn't competent enough to grasp it completely. The stay here at IMSc has at least prompted me to take up research as a career. I don't know whether I will. But it has definitely made me think what I want to be in my life. Thanks to The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai.

Words and Thoughts..!!

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

William Shakespeare

Enjoy Your Coffee...!

Yesterday I was going through all the forwarded mails, my best friend had sent me, when I stumbled upon this article. I couldn't stop wondering at the simple yet important lesson that it carried for all of us who complain about how bad the world is and how unlucky we are. So I thought it would be wise of me to share this valuable lesson with you. Probably many of you might have already read this somewhere. But it is worth giving a few minutes to ponder upon. It goes like this : A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to hot coffee. When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: "If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups and were eyeing each other's cups. Now if life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, but the quality of Life doesn't change. Some times, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it." Don't let the cups drive you... Enjoy the coffee instead. Quite inspiring,right?

Doctors..!!

I had been reading the book Doctors by Erich Segal since my vacation started. It has been a completely different experience reading about the lives of students in med school, for I didn't have the slightest idea about medical profession. I confess that I haven't become any better after reading the book, but at least now I know what goes inside the mind of a doctor, and how much they suffer before they actually become doctors. This suffering is more of mental, though it involves physically exhausting themselves as well. The book narrates the story of Barney Livingston, and the beautiful Laura Castellano, who grow up together as best friends in Brooklyn. They go on to get admitted into the prestigious Harvard Medical School, each motivated by a different reason. The endless labs and memorising huge formulae of compounds, names of diseaes,etc lends them sleepless nights. And few of the students actually commit suicide unable to cope up with the pressure. Everything gets worse when they become doctors, Barney a psychatrist and Laura a paediatrician. Laura fails to keep up her relationship with her husband, and Barney with his girlfriend, both of them paying attention to the demands of their jobs(and of course, each other!!). But professionally both of them excels in their respective fields. Barney even goes on to write a book. Things hit rock bottom for Laura, when she gets divorced. Barney and Laura finally acknowledge the love they had for each other and marries. But the world falls apart for Barney and Laura when their child is diagonised with a disease about which both his doctor parents could be of little help. The book also traces the lives of few other doctors and involves a trial of one of them, for charges of mercy killing. A gripping account of the moral dilemmas faced by doctors, as well as the emotional stress on losing a patient,etc. are captured extremely well by the author. Well,I loved the book, but this isn't going to change my fear of going to a dentist..!!!

Save Nila!!

I remember as a child spending Sunday evenings on the beautiful banks of Bharathapuzha. The river then was majestic, with its calm waters in the hot summer, providing the much needed relief to all those tired souls and at the same time, during the rainy season creating a big hurdle for all those who want to cross it. But then I guess, irrespective of the season, people loved the river. My habit gradually died as I myself was caught in the cobwebs of growing up,and there was no time for my beautiful Nila. Years later when I saw the river again, I barely could identify it as the Nila which once flowed from bank to bank. Small streams of water here and there. I couldn't shudder to think what we have done to our Bharathapuzha. The river which once was the inspiration of many a poet, the ultimate location for a song sequence in many a Malayalam film, the life of an entire culture that grew and flourished on its banks, has been reduced to a river slowly on its way to oblivion. Shame on all of us who failed to protect our pious Nila, beautiful Nila.