Yay! Thank God for small mercies
Hey!
First, I'd like to take this opportunity to actually end up wishing Gautam what is essentially a very belated happy birthday. Awfully sorry, but was swamped with work this past week and couldn't come online at all. So have a great year... and best of luck with all the debating stuff you're involved with.
As far as college is concerned.... the past two days have been absolutely ethereal! Ok, so I spent most of Friday riding on the high that I got from Thursday's events, but still. Better than any of the time I could possibly hope to spend in college this semester. Or the next one. Or ever. And yes, the rain does help.
So this Thursday we actually deigned to attend college (as opposed to, maybe, the last four Thursdays) and found out our Measurement lab teacher is a chain smoker (no, smart alecs, that's not what the ethereal part of my day was). Besides which, we were also informed that the other four experiments (apart from the four we've already done) have faulty apparatus things (apparati, maybe?). Bottom line was, we had the whole two hour period to ourselves. Doesn't take a genius to realize what the foremost thought in my head was.
About half an hour later, Saurav and I were slinking along the third-floor corridor that flanks the Programming lab, trying to act nonchalant and look for NK simultaneously. Turns out we suck at the whole being inconspicuous thing, because after about five minutes of us having reached the lab, NK came out and didn't look one bit surprised to see us. The dialogue that ensued then was simply mindblowing! (Since we were talking in both Hindi and English simultaneously - ok, so the English was mostly all me - I won't bother translating the Hindi parts...and as usual, don't trust my memory entirely, so could be paraphrasal.)
NK: Kaisa chal raha hai tum logon ka?
Saurav and me: (totally caught off-guard) Kat raha hai (I have no freakin' clue why I said this - it reminded me of some advertisement I'd seen ages ago)... Reng raha hai (ok, this was all Saurav)
NK: Kya kya ho gaya programming mein?
Saurav: Bisection, Gauss elimination and Gauss Siedel methods ho gaye.
NK: Haan, to teen kar liye na, utne hi aayenge exam mein.
Me: (I resist the temptation to go 'How many bleepin' times must we tell you this???') Sir, programming to ho jaayegi (or maybe I said 'programming ki koi fight nahin hai'), methods seekhne hain bas.
NK: Haan, yeh bhi theek hai... (peters off into some personal thought heaven) Maths mein kya kar rahe ho aajkal?
Us: Bessel function...
NK: Beta-Gamma function ho gaya?
And here we had the opening we needed to launch into a whole tirade against JKM...
Me: Kya sir, aaj shuru kiya hai, ek derivation ki hai aaj. Sir (JKM here) to ek prove div(x)=0 question karne ke liye 10 minute dete hain, phir poochhte hain, 'Ho gaya kya?'. Aur agar thode se logon ne kiya hota hai to khud board pe solve karte hain.
Saurav: (with a oh-my-God-wait-till-you-hear-this-sheesh! look on his face) Exp(xt+x/t) ke liye JKM sir pehle exp(xt) ka expression likhte hain, phir exp(x/t) ka expression likhte hain, phir likhte hain exp(xt+x/t) = exp(xt)*exp(x/t) aur phir solve karte hain.
NK: (paraphrasal.... well, mostly, I just can't remember what came in between except for him smirking at us) Abhi to complex bhi hoga, na?
Us: (replete with God-in-Heaven-help-us expressions) Haan, sir, but most probably class mein nahin kar payenge.
NK: Haan, khud kar lena. Mid-sem ka paper kaisa tha? Solved examples to aaye honge?
Us: Haan...
NK: Aisa hi end-sem ka bhi aayega, ek-do theorems ke proof to aate hi hain, woh orthogonality ka proof aa jayega, complex mein bhi kuch theorems hain, unke bhi kar lena.
Me: (with what was essentially a I-know-this-is-gonna-fail-but-it's-worth-a-shot-anyway try) Sir, aap padha do?
And he totally ignored that... like I expected he would.
I don't know, but NK's pretty chummy with JKM (and besides, I supposed that a Math teacher would much rather support a fellow teacher than two pestilential punks - incorrectly, maybe), so I assumed it wouldn't really do to put the entire blame on him.
Me: Actually, dekha jaaye to Maths mein hi sabse zyada course hua hain. I suppose humein problem sirf...(and here I didn't know how to put this without a personal reference to him) change ki vajeh se ho rahi hai.
NK: (Smiles, and here, begins the real conversation) First sem COE aur ECE waalon ka to kal course khatam ho jaayega.
I stared at him for what was a full second (since I know what a bloody race against time it was in the first sem - we had to do optics and inorganic chem on our own... not to mention casting and welding) before I realized the purport of his statement.
Me: (Sounding like a complete dumbass as realization dawned) Oh, Math ka course.
NK: (Looks at me like he thinks I'm a complete dumbass... with you so far, sir) Haan, 17 classes ho gayi.
Saurav: (Echoing my exact thoughts, which I didn't voice out loud simply because I didn't want to be the one to bait him) Yeh bhi late hai, sir...
NK: (Goes all defensive and sheepish... have to admit, this is one side of him I had never seen before) Haan, woh chhuttiyaan aa gayi thi na beech mein....
Us: (And here we are all sad and guilty for having made him feel guilty) No, of course.... (I think we just stopped short of patting him on the shoulder and going 'There, there, not your fault' or something)
NK: Kal ho jaayega.
Us: (paraphrasal... also don't remember who said what here) Hamara to kabhi poora nahin hoga. October to mass bunk ho jaayega. Ab to 500 ka fine bhi lag gaya hai (Editor's Note : Yeah, I came to know of it on Thursday. Apparently some !@%^&$# decided to go and impose a fine on us for mass-bunking. The things people do for money!)...
NK: Kyon? Fine lag gaya? Mass bunk ki vajeh se?
Saurav: (I shut up here, since I didn't have any clue about this whole affair and didn't want to go put my big foot in my mouth... again) Haan, sir, vaise to NSIT wale attendance ki problem nahin karte, par is baar to logon ko exam nahin dene diya (clarification : because of low attendance, not because they were idiots anyway and people couldn't be bothered to check their papers or anything).
NK: To agar koi teacher nahin aata to unhe bachchon ko 500 rupye dene chahiye na?
We are looking at him like he's heaven's minstrel come to earth or something. Also, here I was sorely tempted to go poke him and say, 'Sorry, just checking to see if you're real'.
NK: (Maybe he mistook pure surprise for plain old lack of comprehension) Nahin, agar bachche nahin aate to unhe fine dena padta hai, to teachers ko bhi fine dena chahiye na? (He said this with such relish at the prospect - obviously, either scenario doesn't affect him or his students)
Me: (This just escaped me, I didn't mean to say it. It probably was because of me having been reading 'A Game of Thrones' the previous day - and generally going all 'Awwww...' at Jon and Arya :-) - speaking of which, it's an awesome book!) It's not an ideal world, sir.
I suppose I also shrugged as I said this, and maybe I cut a ludicrous figure just then. Or maybe the court jester tag followed me into college from school. Or something. I don't know, but NK decided this was just the most funny thing he'd heard all morning and threw back his head and laughed. I wonder if this was the laughter of someone who oscillates between pessimism and idealism (Basically, someone like me. I know I'd laugh if I was caught in such a situation, having someone 10 years younger than me point out the unfairness of the world to me)... but hey, enough with the Freudian analysis already. I don't want to go around uncovering Oedipan complexes.
Here two people arrived and decided to bypass his authority and enter his lab. His tone as he reprimanded them took me by surprise. The change from his tone with us to his tone with them was simply amazing. He was actually talking to us like we were his long-lost childhood chess team buddies or something. And then some white noise occured which eludes me just now, so there.
NK: Lekin itne mass bunk kyon hote hain? (And seeing as we aren't going to furnish any answers to that open-ended question, he continues) Is baar meri classes to dopahar mein hi hoti hai, 3:30 , 4:30 aise, aur bachche aate hain...
Here I decide to continue the whole joker farce, and contributed yet another priceless one-liner.
Me: Sir, aap primary standard nahin ho! (Editor's note: This is the second time I have echoed this sentiment to him. The very first complete sentence I said to him was : 'Sir, aapko aisa kyon lagta hai ki baaki sabko wohi karna chaahiye jo aap karte ho?'. This was when he was arguing against the submission of practical files. Like I said, a closet idealist.) Subeh ki pehli class agar measurement ki hogi to woh bhi bunk ho jaayegi, lekin agar aapki class 4:30 ko bhi hogi to bhi log chale aayenge. (This was an observation Saurav and I had made just the previous day, so it wasn't too hard to summon up.)
NK: (Smiles at me like he's indulging an idiotic little child... which, of course, might have been partially - oh, come on, cut me that much slack at least - true) Haan, un ko pata hai ki ek class bhi chhootegi to poora miss ho jaayega (and seems absolutely racked with amusement at the prospect.)
I don't know how, but the talk shifted to the topic of attendance and how our teachers take aeons to take the attendance.
Me: Attendance lete-lete 10 minute to ho hi jaate hain.
NK: 10 minute mein to ek question kara doonga.... do question ho jaayenge!
And here our faces assumed the why-the-hell-couldn't-you-be-assigned-to-us look again.
NK: Tum logon ki lab nahin hoti kya? (or something to that effect, which brought us to the subject of our measurement lab)
Saurav: Nahin, sir, saare equipment kharab hain.
NK: Pata nahin saara paisa kahaan daalte hain NSIT wale... Abhi inhone ek pen drive li hai 43... (and here he trails off)
Me: (in a low voice) 100...4300 (also fervently yelling in my mind 'Please don't say 43000, don't, don't!)
NK: Um...Four thousand three hundred ki. (And he looks at us as if to say, 'Beat that for idiocy. I bet even you guys couldn't be as stupid as them')
Us: ..... (What do you say to that? 'Well, sir, we already knew how stupid they were, just didn't think of bringing it up in conversation with an employee of the...um...hallowed?...institution'?) 4300? (I suppose I might have followed it up with something like 'For real?' if I hadn't been so sure he wouldn't have understood)
NK: (Seems to enjoy having shocked us) Haan... ek pen drive.
Saurav: Nepal mein to USBs kilo ke hisaab se bikte hain...
NK: (Laughs at that) 4300 ka...
And then he goes back into the lab for something, and the conversation ends as suddenly as it had begun. Finally when he came back, we decided to come back to the real issue at hand.
Us: Sir, Newton-Raphson method padha do. (Editor's note: Yeah, bet you guys forgot all about that, didn't you?)
NK: Haan, agli baar. Maine to abhi inko sirf bisection, trapezoidal aur simpsons rule karaaya hai. Agle Thursday aa jaana, padha doonga.
Given the fact that practically everyone we asked either told us that they'd done both Regula Falsi and the Newton-Raphson methods or that they did nothing in the lab and just did what pleased them, we were simply left to wonder what parallel universes our classmates lived in. We left then. You can ignore pretty much everything, except for a direct dismissal. Besides, we weren't going to get any further with the conversation thing after that. Anyway, Saurav and I have decided that since it's only going to take him about 5 minutes to explain any method, we are going to take the rest of the time to chit-chat with him. Provided he decides to, of course. Given the fact that he was wearing what we call his 'Happy Shirt' this Thursday, I don't see that happening any time soon.
Aside: Something Siddharth (who, unfortunately, is in NK's batch and is going to be in deep trouble if he doesn't quit shoving that fact in our faces soon enough) said later comes to mind. Apparently the guy was late for the lab (I don't know, every single time we talk to him about the lab, he says he was a little late. I don't understand - he likes NK almost as much as we do, and yet he gives him opportunities to bait him) and he went and asked another student, 'Sir padha rahe hain kya?'. By Siddharth's own recounting, the guy came up from behind him, and went all 'Haan, haan, padha raha hoon, baith ja'. Abso-bloody-lutely priceless!
One thing that struck me during the course of this entire dialogue (ok, trialogue if you're picky) was the striking resemblence between our characters. The guy is more like me than I ever imagined him to be (of course, the being-infallibly-awesome-at-math-and-chess part excepted). The fact that someone can be more like you than yourself - it is amusing, in a freakishly scary kinda way. Of course, I'd got used to Saurav, but NK's a different ball game altogether.
Then, the day got even better. I got an alpha on my measurement assignment (I have to share the distinction of being the only other person in the class who got one with our class's mad-cat-lady - aka Archana's roomie, the bugging one) after about an hour of nervous agony (It did not help that I had Nickelback's 'Feelin' Way Too Damn Good' playing in my head. What do I say? My subconscious is an ironic masochist). The guy seems to think that none of us know that alpha and beta are equivalent to A and B respectively and that giving Greek letters instead of normal English grades will make him seem more enigmatic or something. Yeah, right. Especially since he doesn't seem to progress beyond beta minus minus. And we didn't have our Circuits and Systems class. I had just started to feel some semblance of respect for the guy when he decided to go all vindictive and pick on me and Saurav for no apparent reason. Now it's just vendetta, dude.
Friday was just the useless day it usually is with MD and the Power Apparatus lab late in the evening. I hadn't finished my MD sheet (but, then, no one had) or my Power App. file so I was pretty much on tenderhooks most of the morning. Also since Saurav decided to duck out right before MD and go attend some rather providential rendezvous in Chandigarh. Then, during MD, everyone decided to be overzealous and approach LN (who is like the secondary teacher person - instead of NA, though, thankfully) to check their sheets. He, apparently resulting from a foul temper, decided to go and ask everyone to redo things. I decided to sit back and enjoy the show. Then, when our real teacher came, I got my third sheet checked. This wasn't the one everyone had to redo - I hadn't even done the parts which everyone else had to redo ;-). This was a sheet with screws and things so stuff like pitch was involved. Now, I may act like a complete doofus at most times (Almost always when I'm around NK, and invariably always when I'm inside the hallowed portals of his room), but I'm smart enough to know that if the book specifies certain ratios, I have to draw the thing in that proportion. Apparently everyone else decided to take this one opportunity to be different from me and be even more idiotic than I generally am and ignore the ratios completely. Our teacher, I have no idea why, can't tell the correct ratio from the wrong one. So when he checked my sheet, he goes like 'Haan, dekho tumhaara bhi ratio galat hai'. I just grabbed a ruler from the person who was sitting on the front seat, handed it to him, and said, 'Sir, measure karke dekh lo'. He does so, and it's exact (obviously). His response, 'You're lucky.' I took complete umbrage at this, and gave him a piece of my mind. 'Sir, measure karke banaaya hai, to theek hi hoga. Lucky to nahin hai, dhang se banaaya hai.'(I also added 'Luck has effin nothing to do with this' in my mind) Then he looks at me, and says,'Subeh maine ek student ko 8.5 diye the, abhi tumhe 9 de raha hoon. Subeh se maine kisi ko 9 nahin diya.' and gives me a 9/10. This totally reminded me of the way those little kids selling agarbattis come up to one at traffic lights and go all, 'Subeh se ek bhi nahin bika, ek to le lo...'. It was all I could do to stop laughing and mumble what essentially came out as a very Elvis-like 'Thank you very much'.
Then came Power Apparatus. The guy, as I mentioned earlier, is high on something these days. When everyone had submitted their files, Sahil (who, for the record, is someone we accord the title of 'Primary Standard' as far as NSIT is concerned... he is more like the rest of the crowd around us than anyone else in our group) suddenly thought that he might have made those shorting lines on the transformer that all the write-ups have (but which are wrong... don't ask me, I didn't make the write-ups) in his diagram. Now, I always tend to make them because I'm always confused as to which is the right way. So he took his file. I looked for mine in the pile, then realized that the teacher had it and was about to check it. So I took it from him, saying that I had to correct something. Then, I realized I had displayed some excellent retention powers and actually remembered to leave the shorting lines out this time. So I gave it back to him. And he goes all, 'Kya hua? Kya galat tha?' and I was all sheepish and 'Kuchh nahin, sir. Theek tha'. Then he begins to check the file. And for the umpteenth time, mentions how good my handwriting is. I have seriously grown tired of this comment and I'm not going to thank people who think this is a compliment any more. I let it pass, by which time he'd gotten to the diagram which was the cause of all trouble. He gives me a 'good' (I was seriously wondering if I'd been caught a rift in the space-time continuum and been transported back in time to when I was in Class 6 or 7... or maybe to when I was making practical files for Rajalakshmi and she was showering us with 'Good's and 'Very Good's and other various childish remarks)! And then he goes all, 'Tumko pata hai, transformer mein secondary ki coil mein primary se half turns honge. Yeh good vaapas le loon?' (Ok, so the turns part is correct - it was a 220/110 transformer, I just got carried away with making all the loopy turns. But what does one say to 'Yeh good vaapas le loon'? I just looked at him like he was fresh out of the asylum or something) Then he gets to the page where I've made the ideal graph and he goes all, 'Yeh graph aisa hoga?'. By now I'm silently yelling, 'I don't know, your bloody write-ups are anything but reliable!'. Then he decides to show me what the effect of inertia will be like and things. Also explained the various types of DC motors and their working really well later on. Usually he isn't half as helpful. Just plain sarcastic.
And I got totally soaked to the bone on my way back home, it was raining so hard. It was fun, though. Fridays don't get any better than this.
So that's pretty much how it went. Also, two of our teachers have already picked on me and Saurav this week. One was the Circuits and Systems guy and the other was our Power Apparatus theory teacher. She decided it would be fun to mock us and go all, 'Ek minute tumhe gussa aata hai, doosre minute khud hi hasne lag jaate ho'. Which is true and everything, but hey, no need to point it out. I wonder if we should actually put up a board saying 'Genius at work - vagaries may be ignored' or something. Saurav seems to think it's a good idea. So let's see how the next week goes. Next entry, probably post-Innovision.
First, I'd like to take this opportunity to actually end up wishing Gautam what is essentially a very belated happy birthday. Awfully sorry, but was swamped with work this past week and couldn't come online at all. So have a great year... and best of luck with all the debating stuff you're involved with.
As far as college is concerned.... the past two days have been absolutely ethereal! Ok, so I spent most of Friday riding on the high that I got from Thursday's events, but still. Better than any of the time I could possibly hope to spend in college this semester. Or the next one. Or ever. And yes, the rain does help.
So this Thursday we actually deigned to attend college (as opposed to, maybe, the last four Thursdays) and found out our Measurement lab teacher is a chain smoker (no, smart alecs, that's not what the ethereal part of my day was). Besides which, we were also informed that the other four experiments (apart from the four we've already done) have faulty apparatus things (apparati, maybe?). Bottom line was, we had the whole two hour period to ourselves. Doesn't take a genius to realize what the foremost thought in my head was.
About half an hour later, Saurav and I were slinking along the third-floor corridor that flanks the Programming lab, trying to act nonchalant and look for NK simultaneously. Turns out we suck at the whole being inconspicuous thing, because after about five minutes of us having reached the lab, NK came out and didn't look one bit surprised to see us. The dialogue that ensued then was simply mindblowing! (Since we were talking in both Hindi and English simultaneously - ok, so the English was mostly all me - I won't bother translating the Hindi parts...and as usual, don't trust my memory entirely, so could be paraphrasal.)
NK: Kaisa chal raha hai tum logon ka?
Saurav and me: (totally caught off-guard) Kat raha hai (I have no freakin' clue why I said this - it reminded me of some advertisement I'd seen ages ago)... Reng raha hai (ok, this was all Saurav)
NK: Kya kya ho gaya programming mein?
Saurav: Bisection, Gauss elimination and Gauss Siedel methods ho gaye.
NK: Haan, to teen kar liye na, utne hi aayenge exam mein.
Me: (I resist the temptation to go 'How many bleepin' times must we tell you this???') Sir, programming to ho jaayegi (or maybe I said 'programming ki koi fight nahin hai'), methods seekhne hain bas.
NK: Haan, yeh bhi theek hai... (peters off into some personal thought heaven) Maths mein kya kar rahe ho aajkal?
Us: Bessel function...
NK: Beta-Gamma function ho gaya?
And here we had the opening we needed to launch into a whole tirade against JKM...
Me: Kya sir, aaj shuru kiya hai, ek derivation ki hai aaj. Sir (JKM here) to ek prove div(x)=0 question karne ke liye 10 minute dete hain, phir poochhte hain, 'Ho gaya kya?'. Aur agar thode se logon ne kiya hota hai to khud board pe solve karte hain.
Saurav: (with a oh-my-God-wait-till-you-hear-this-sheesh! look on his face) Exp(xt+x/t) ke liye JKM sir pehle exp(xt) ka expression likhte hain, phir exp(x/t) ka expression likhte hain, phir likhte hain exp(xt+x/t) = exp(xt)*exp(x/t) aur phir solve karte hain.
NK: (paraphrasal.... well, mostly, I just can't remember what came in between except for him smirking at us) Abhi to complex bhi hoga, na?
Us: (replete with God-in-Heaven-help-us expressions) Haan, sir, but most probably class mein nahin kar payenge.
NK: Haan, khud kar lena. Mid-sem ka paper kaisa tha? Solved examples to aaye honge?
Us: Haan...
NK: Aisa hi end-sem ka bhi aayega, ek-do theorems ke proof to aate hi hain, woh orthogonality ka proof aa jayega, complex mein bhi kuch theorems hain, unke bhi kar lena.
Me: (with what was essentially a I-know-this-is-gonna-fail-but-it's-worth-a-shot-anyway try) Sir, aap padha do?
And he totally ignored that... like I expected he would.
I don't know, but NK's pretty chummy with JKM (and besides, I supposed that a Math teacher would much rather support a fellow teacher than two pestilential punks - incorrectly, maybe), so I assumed it wouldn't really do to put the entire blame on him.
Me: Actually, dekha jaaye to Maths mein hi sabse zyada course hua hain. I suppose humein problem sirf...(and here I didn't know how to put this without a personal reference to him) change ki vajeh se ho rahi hai.
NK: (Smiles, and here, begins the real conversation) First sem COE aur ECE waalon ka to kal course khatam ho jaayega.
I stared at him for what was a full second (since I know what a bloody race against time it was in the first sem - we had to do optics and inorganic chem on our own... not to mention casting and welding) before I realized the purport of his statement.
Me: (Sounding like a complete dumbass as realization dawned) Oh, Math ka course.
NK: (Looks at me like he thinks I'm a complete dumbass... with you so far, sir) Haan, 17 classes ho gayi.
Saurav: (Echoing my exact thoughts, which I didn't voice out loud simply because I didn't want to be the one to bait him) Yeh bhi late hai, sir...
NK: (Goes all defensive and sheepish... have to admit, this is one side of him I had never seen before) Haan, woh chhuttiyaan aa gayi thi na beech mein....
Us: (And here we are all sad and guilty for having made him feel guilty) No, of course.... (I think we just stopped short of patting him on the shoulder and going 'There, there, not your fault' or something)
NK: Kal ho jaayega.
Us: (paraphrasal... also don't remember who said what here) Hamara to kabhi poora nahin hoga. October to mass bunk ho jaayega. Ab to 500 ka fine bhi lag gaya hai (Editor's Note : Yeah, I came to know of it on Thursday. Apparently some !@%^&$# decided to go and impose a fine on us for mass-bunking. The things people do for money!)...
NK: Kyon? Fine lag gaya? Mass bunk ki vajeh se?
Saurav: (I shut up here, since I didn't have any clue about this whole affair and didn't want to go put my big foot in my mouth... again) Haan, sir, vaise to NSIT wale attendance ki problem nahin karte, par is baar to logon ko exam nahin dene diya (clarification : because of low attendance, not because they were idiots anyway and people couldn't be bothered to check their papers or anything).
NK: To agar koi teacher nahin aata to unhe bachchon ko 500 rupye dene chahiye na?
We are looking at him like he's heaven's minstrel come to earth or something. Also, here I was sorely tempted to go poke him and say, 'Sorry, just checking to see if you're real'.
NK: (Maybe he mistook pure surprise for plain old lack of comprehension) Nahin, agar bachche nahin aate to unhe fine dena padta hai, to teachers ko bhi fine dena chahiye na? (He said this with such relish at the prospect - obviously, either scenario doesn't affect him or his students)
Me: (This just escaped me, I didn't mean to say it. It probably was because of me having been reading 'A Game of Thrones' the previous day - and generally going all 'Awwww...' at Jon and Arya :-) - speaking of which, it's an awesome book!) It's not an ideal world, sir.
I suppose I also shrugged as I said this, and maybe I cut a ludicrous figure just then. Or maybe the court jester tag followed me into college from school. Or something. I don't know, but NK decided this was just the most funny thing he'd heard all morning and threw back his head and laughed. I wonder if this was the laughter of someone who oscillates between pessimism and idealism (Basically, someone like me. I know I'd laugh if I was caught in such a situation, having someone 10 years younger than me point out the unfairness of the world to me)... but hey, enough with the Freudian analysis already. I don't want to go around uncovering Oedipan complexes.
Here two people arrived and decided to bypass his authority and enter his lab. His tone as he reprimanded them took me by surprise. The change from his tone with us to his tone with them was simply amazing. He was actually talking to us like we were his long-lost childhood chess team buddies or something. And then some white noise occured which eludes me just now, so there.
NK: Lekin itne mass bunk kyon hote hain? (And seeing as we aren't going to furnish any answers to that open-ended question, he continues) Is baar meri classes to dopahar mein hi hoti hai, 3:30 , 4:30 aise, aur bachche aate hain...
Here I decide to continue the whole joker farce, and contributed yet another priceless one-liner.
Me: Sir, aap primary standard nahin ho! (Editor's note: This is the second time I have echoed this sentiment to him. The very first complete sentence I said to him was : 'Sir, aapko aisa kyon lagta hai ki baaki sabko wohi karna chaahiye jo aap karte ho?'. This was when he was arguing against the submission of practical files. Like I said, a closet idealist.) Subeh ki pehli class agar measurement ki hogi to woh bhi bunk ho jaayegi, lekin agar aapki class 4:30 ko bhi hogi to bhi log chale aayenge. (This was an observation Saurav and I had made just the previous day, so it wasn't too hard to summon up.)
NK: (Smiles at me like he's indulging an idiotic little child... which, of course, might have been partially - oh, come on, cut me that much slack at least - true) Haan, un ko pata hai ki ek class bhi chhootegi to poora miss ho jaayega (and seems absolutely racked with amusement at the prospect.)
I don't know how, but the talk shifted to the topic of attendance and how our teachers take aeons to take the attendance.
Me: Attendance lete-lete 10 minute to ho hi jaate hain.
NK: 10 minute mein to ek question kara doonga.... do question ho jaayenge!
And here our faces assumed the why-the-hell-couldn't-you-be-assigned-to-us look again.
NK: Tum logon ki lab nahin hoti kya? (or something to that effect, which brought us to the subject of our measurement lab)
Saurav: Nahin, sir, saare equipment kharab hain.
NK: Pata nahin saara paisa kahaan daalte hain NSIT wale... Abhi inhone ek pen drive li hai 43... (and here he trails off)
Me: (in a low voice) 100...4300 (also fervently yelling in my mind 'Please don't say 43000, don't, don't!)
NK: Um...Four thousand three hundred ki. (And he looks at us as if to say, 'Beat that for idiocy. I bet even you guys couldn't be as stupid as them')
Us: ..... (What do you say to that? 'Well, sir, we already knew how stupid they were, just didn't think of bringing it up in conversation with an employee of the...um...hallowed?...institution'?) 4300? (I suppose I might have followed it up with something like 'For real?' if I hadn't been so sure he wouldn't have understood)
NK: (Seems to enjoy having shocked us) Haan... ek pen drive.
Saurav: Nepal mein to USBs kilo ke hisaab se bikte hain...
NK: (Laughs at that) 4300 ka...
And then he goes back into the lab for something, and the conversation ends as suddenly as it had begun. Finally when he came back, we decided to come back to the real issue at hand.
Us: Sir, Newton-Raphson method padha do. (Editor's note: Yeah, bet you guys forgot all about that, didn't you?)
NK: Haan, agli baar. Maine to abhi inko sirf bisection, trapezoidal aur simpsons rule karaaya hai. Agle Thursday aa jaana, padha doonga.
Given the fact that practically everyone we asked either told us that they'd done both Regula Falsi and the Newton-Raphson methods or that they did nothing in the lab and just did what pleased them, we were simply left to wonder what parallel universes our classmates lived in. We left then. You can ignore pretty much everything, except for a direct dismissal. Besides, we weren't going to get any further with the conversation thing after that. Anyway, Saurav and I have decided that since it's only going to take him about 5 minutes to explain any method, we are going to take the rest of the time to chit-chat with him. Provided he decides to, of course. Given the fact that he was wearing what we call his 'Happy Shirt' this Thursday, I don't see that happening any time soon.
Aside: Something Siddharth (who, unfortunately, is in NK's batch and is going to be in deep trouble if he doesn't quit shoving that fact in our faces soon enough) said later comes to mind. Apparently the guy was late for the lab (I don't know, every single time we talk to him about the lab, he says he was a little late. I don't understand - he likes NK almost as much as we do, and yet he gives him opportunities to bait him) and he went and asked another student, 'Sir padha rahe hain kya?'. By Siddharth's own recounting, the guy came up from behind him, and went all 'Haan, haan, padha raha hoon, baith ja'. Abso-bloody-lutely priceless!
One thing that struck me during the course of this entire dialogue (ok, trialogue if you're picky) was the striking resemblence between our characters. The guy is more like me than I ever imagined him to be (of course, the being-infallibly-awesome-at-math-and-chess part excepted). The fact that someone can be more like you than yourself - it is amusing, in a freakishly scary kinda way. Of course, I'd got used to Saurav, but NK's a different ball game altogether.
Then, the day got even better. I got an alpha on my measurement assignment (I have to share the distinction of being the only other person in the class who got one with our class's mad-cat-lady - aka Archana's roomie, the bugging one) after about an hour of nervous agony (It did not help that I had Nickelback's 'Feelin' Way Too Damn Good' playing in my head. What do I say? My subconscious is an ironic masochist). The guy seems to think that none of us know that alpha and beta are equivalent to A and B respectively and that giving Greek letters instead of normal English grades will make him seem more enigmatic or something. Yeah, right. Especially since he doesn't seem to progress beyond beta minus minus. And we didn't have our Circuits and Systems class. I had just started to feel some semblance of respect for the guy when he decided to go all vindictive and pick on me and Saurav for no apparent reason. Now it's just vendetta, dude.
Friday was just the useless day it usually is with MD and the Power Apparatus lab late in the evening. I hadn't finished my MD sheet (but, then, no one had) or my Power App. file so I was pretty much on tenderhooks most of the morning. Also since Saurav decided to duck out right before MD and go attend some rather providential rendezvous in Chandigarh. Then, during MD, everyone decided to be overzealous and approach LN (who is like the secondary teacher person - instead of NA, though, thankfully) to check their sheets. He, apparently resulting from a foul temper, decided to go and ask everyone to redo things. I decided to sit back and enjoy the show. Then, when our real teacher came, I got my third sheet checked. This wasn't the one everyone had to redo - I hadn't even done the parts which everyone else had to redo ;-). This was a sheet with screws and things so stuff like pitch was involved. Now, I may act like a complete doofus at most times (Almost always when I'm around NK, and invariably always when I'm inside the hallowed portals of his room), but I'm smart enough to know that if the book specifies certain ratios, I have to draw the thing in that proportion. Apparently everyone else decided to take this one opportunity to be different from me and be even more idiotic than I generally am and ignore the ratios completely. Our teacher, I have no idea why, can't tell the correct ratio from the wrong one. So when he checked my sheet, he goes like 'Haan, dekho tumhaara bhi ratio galat hai'. I just grabbed a ruler from the person who was sitting on the front seat, handed it to him, and said, 'Sir, measure karke dekh lo'. He does so, and it's exact (obviously). His response, 'You're lucky.' I took complete umbrage at this, and gave him a piece of my mind. 'Sir, measure karke banaaya hai, to theek hi hoga. Lucky to nahin hai, dhang se banaaya hai.'(I also added 'Luck has effin nothing to do with this' in my mind) Then he looks at me, and says,'Subeh maine ek student ko 8.5 diye the, abhi tumhe 9 de raha hoon. Subeh se maine kisi ko 9 nahin diya.' and gives me a 9/10. This totally reminded me of the way those little kids selling agarbattis come up to one at traffic lights and go all, 'Subeh se ek bhi nahin bika, ek to le lo...'. It was all I could do to stop laughing and mumble what essentially came out as a very Elvis-like 'Thank you very much'.
Then came Power Apparatus. The guy, as I mentioned earlier, is high on something these days. When everyone had submitted their files, Sahil (who, for the record, is someone we accord the title of 'Primary Standard' as far as NSIT is concerned... he is more like the rest of the crowd around us than anyone else in our group) suddenly thought that he might have made those shorting lines on the transformer that all the write-ups have (but which are wrong... don't ask me, I didn't make the write-ups) in his diagram. Now, I always tend to make them because I'm always confused as to which is the right way. So he took his file. I looked for mine in the pile, then realized that the teacher had it and was about to check it. So I took it from him, saying that I had to correct something. Then, I realized I had displayed some excellent retention powers and actually remembered to leave the shorting lines out this time. So I gave it back to him. And he goes all, 'Kya hua? Kya galat tha?' and I was all sheepish and 'Kuchh nahin, sir. Theek tha'. Then he begins to check the file. And for the umpteenth time, mentions how good my handwriting is. I have seriously grown tired of this comment and I'm not going to thank people who think this is a compliment any more. I let it pass, by which time he'd gotten to the diagram which was the cause of all trouble. He gives me a 'good' (I was seriously wondering if I'd been caught a rift in the space-time continuum and been transported back in time to when I was in Class 6 or 7... or maybe to when I was making practical files for Rajalakshmi and she was showering us with 'Good's and 'Very Good's and other various childish remarks)! And then he goes all, 'Tumko pata hai, transformer mein secondary ki coil mein primary se half turns honge. Yeh good vaapas le loon?' (Ok, so the turns part is correct - it was a 220/110 transformer, I just got carried away with making all the loopy turns. But what does one say to 'Yeh good vaapas le loon'? I just looked at him like he was fresh out of the asylum or something) Then he gets to the page where I've made the ideal graph and he goes all, 'Yeh graph aisa hoga?'. By now I'm silently yelling, 'I don't know, your bloody write-ups are anything but reliable!'. Then he decides to show me what the effect of inertia will be like and things. Also explained the various types of DC motors and their working really well later on. Usually he isn't half as helpful. Just plain sarcastic.
And I got totally soaked to the bone on my way back home, it was raining so hard. It was fun, though. Fridays don't get any better than this.
So that's pretty much how it went. Also, two of our teachers have already picked on me and Saurav this week. One was the Circuits and Systems guy and the other was our Power Apparatus theory teacher. She decided it would be fun to mock us and go all, 'Ek minute tumhe gussa aata hai, doosre minute khud hi hasne lag jaate ho'. Which is true and everything, but hey, no need to point it out. I wonder if we should actually put up a board saying 'Genius at work - vagaries may be ignored' or something. Saurav seems to think it's a good idea. So let's see how the next week goes. Next entry, probably post-Innovision.