Flashback : Third Year in College

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Written on 4:03 PM by nitesh

Semester of Events

College was completely full this semester as now all the four batches were in campus. We were to choose two electives one technical and other not technical in this semester making us realize that now we have to specialize in area of our interest. I opted for security protocols and introduction to business management not for ct course as communication was not my forte.

Sem 5 was the semester of rf community. Some of my friends who had taken rf made a humurous rf community which was a good way of time paas.There were rf jokes rf stories many pj's related to RF and many taunting remarks towards DSP. Chachu, maddy, desi, amit all came up with RF-11 with professor in the middle (similar to lagaan ). But now all the stuff has been removed from the community by the owner chachu.

RFlagaan

We security guys used to suffer a lot as we couldn't bunk lectures because of surprise pop quizzes every week There was incident of chakku being rebuked by the prof. for asking a silly question referred by the sir as CS101 question , chakku later rephrased his question but to his sorrow this was referred to as CS102 question.

Non technical elective was cool infact cooler, many students left the course and entered the world of quantum technology, when prof. told that he would do absolute marking but there was no such thing done later. Maximum A’s were distributed in this course around 110. Every one started imitating the prof. by shouting ‘okaaaaayyyyy’ in his lectures. Irony happened when quantum guys were graded absolutely.

Popularity of HMC soared to new heights with lots of events organized in the sem, I was lucky to be part of the organizing team. First event was Janmashtami celebrations, it was not a matki phod competition but just one matki was tied and we tried three times to break that matki. First time sandy fell and second time chachu misbalanced and ravi couldn’t break . In between buckets of water was thrown on us at a fast pace to stop us from breaking the matki, finally I rose to the occasion and my height helped me to break the matki.

matki

Next big thing was organizing dusshera festival , burning the effigy of ravana. Making the effigy was the most difficult part, but thanks to chachu who was knowledgeable about the stuff and technique required in making the ravana. Ravi and chachu roamed in different villages near gandhinagar to collect bamboo and other stuff required to make the effigy. Finally we bunch of 18-20 guys gathered near d-wing open area and started making the ravana , there was lot of fun involved did mistakes but enjoying and dancing we worked 4-5 hours to make the skeleton of the Lankan king. This all was going on just 2-3 days before our mid sems. Early morning work was to dress him , insert bombs and decorate him, but morning our workforce increased to around 30 juniors came our batch mates came and some seniors also helped and work went smoothly and finally ravana was ready to be burned by 4.00 pm but there was a big hurdle to take it to the ground. Somehow with great burden and enjoyment the effigy was taken to the ground and planted at the defined place. We all involved in making decided to wear traditional Indian dress kurta to give ethnic look. All my friends and me had many photo sessions with that dress. Finally in presence of 800 above crowd the highest ever in history of da-iict first there was a small fireworks show and then with a big bamboo the effigy was burned.

I guess tug of war the battle between the wings took place before dusshera celebration. This was another crowd puller event; my wing of dillu dallu boys was washed in the first round mainly because I and chakku didn’t participate as we were organizer. B wind ground who boasted a lot before the event were routed in the 2nd round but b wing 2nd floor did play very well but were ousted by all conquering off-campus team which comprised of powerful persons. They took just seconds 6-7 or so to win the battle. But the main battle took place between b-wing 2nd floor or some team from f wing, it was semifinal and it ran for around 4-5 minutes, all the three rounds. Crowd pulling matches were of girls’ wing which were placed between boys wings matches as fillers.

mix

After few days rangoli competiton was announced, somehow I managed to wake up vinamra aka tidda to team up with me and chakku, he agreed and we started 1-2 hours late at around 2.30 pm, missed the first prize by a whisker as our tiger was not fully prepared. There were very nice designs made by students.

Synapse-Power Struggle

In between the semester there started a power struggle regarding who will organize the synapse-05, there were 2-3 groups willing to take the responsibility. All wanted to become the overall coordinators, many days discussions took place to reach a conclusion regarding the formation of synapse committee but no consensus was reached and matter remained dead for a month or so. Ravi, C-Guru, chakku and me later made a proper plan regarding the organizing the synapse-05, we slowly also tried to reach a consensus among all groups and finally tried to convince the director to give us rights (keys to synapse room and email stuff etc). Our efforts paid dividends and we synapse committee was formed, which started working.

Starting few days went normal finalizing events and proceeding towards first main hurdle of getting sponsorship, but somewhere again some crooks were building a different plan to kick ravi and C-guru and me to become overall coordinators. Outburst occurred in January when we all came back from our 10day or so break, questions were raised as who are these ravi and c-guru, only one should remain in the core comprising of 3 people only. Finally a meeting took place between anand agr, anand gautam, akshat, tholia, ravi, c-guru, ranjeet and me, to vote for the core 3. This was the night I learned deep tactics of politics, views and counterviews were put for long 4 hours to decide the core 3, main target was to eliminate one either C-guru or ravi from the core 3. I watched the hunger for ‘seat’, how one can do anything like buttering coaxing etc for power seat and when their purpose is solved they will not look at you. I was of the opinion that you can’t degrade or overthrow those persons who played a great role in getting things (getting permission to organize synapse officially) solved, so every time I voted for those two( ravi and c-guru) in the core team. I learned the real truth of the person who is known as the policy man of our batch, how he cam be easily befooled and made to do things which are not expected from him. It was 4.00 am in the morning and it was getting cold so meeting was shifted to c-guru’s room, all efforts of the hidden group were getting failed as I was not getting in their trap and finally core three were formed at around 5.00 am. This was also not official, official in the sense that all the warring groups were not present when it was decided, still hidden personalities were revealed on this day. I grasped basics and main fundas of politics this night. Later on everything solved as that faction slowly moved away from the synapse stuff. I was given the post of the event manager which basically dealt with handling all the events of the mega fest; ashish was also there to help me.

Motto was to try to involve each and every person of the da-iict in the fest and for that we planned workshops, prelims and a banging prelude with Richard Stallman , we were able to call him here as he was here in ahmedabad for two three days. Some how we managed to get a decent sponsorship of around nine and half lakhs mainly due to the five lakhs by reliance, still we were 1.25 lakh short of organizing strings show here in the campus, we tried a lot, thought of all the ways to get the crowd dancing to the songs of strings in da-iict but failed. I and tholia were ready to take the gamble/risk on the belief that we will get enough crowds to get money by selling tickets, but we were vetoed. Then there were plans of calling atif aslam and troop (not jal) , but due to visa problems that failed.


Special care was taken in deciding upon the event managers as we didn’t want to give the organizing of an important event to careless organizers who later on will not care for the event. We tried to minimize lectures as the attendance was rock bottom in last year’s event, but to our sorrow they were minimized to 2 only as siddhu backed away and manmohan shetty’s daughter due to some work didn’t turn up.

Finally after help of many batch mates and juniors event was organized successfully with smashing Ragna-Rock on the first day which was hit mainly because of efforts of chetan and tuss. Footloose and Rampage were other highlighting events, who would say a fashion show dead when niftians are there to walk on the ramp. Though cultural part was heavier in the event but technical also didn’t lag behind with good events like fortress, excogitate and many more. In the end we were able to involve many students in the fest, I can proudly now say after seeing synapse-06 that btech-2002 organized (others also) wonderful synapse in just two months.

synapse

to be continued........



Memorable Days

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Written on 11:30 PM by nitesh

Thanks prasoon for reminding me about the R-World movie festival, which continued for many nights and I will not forget the movie original sin. I had not seen the movie but heard rave reviews of the movie so was excited as all others were but the R-world wala did klpd to us by showing the cut version of the movie. After the movie we all came out crying, but sandy and sachin and others also were discussing about the amount of money they got back one was saying we got Rs2 out of 20 other 3…4…5 etc. It was worth watching their faces when they saw our batch girls walking just behind them.

I also forgot to mention the opening of movie club. If I am not wrong the first movie to be screened was Face-Off in LT-1, after that sarfarosh. Watching indo-pak cricket matches in LT’s and TV room with hooting, whistles and shouting Pakistan hai hai used to be very stimulating. Most memorable was India’s victory over Pakistan in 2003 and to mark the victory a rally was organized which started from TV room covering all the floors of the hostels, carrying India’s flag and shouting Hindustan jindabaad and Pakistan murdabaad. Efforts of tholia finally paid success when the movie club was made official and OAT became the venue for screening movies which started with classic jaane bhi do yaroon and phone booth

Result of 3rd sem send triggers into my body, we made a cricket team of four pointers. Many counting to around 70-80 got 3+ pointer, in this group three muggers, as all other groups denote them were prominent. This name was given because of their phattu (not all but many) nature in tuts, labs and lectures and all other stuff related to studies. I guess all other groups will happily agree to the phattu nature of grp-3. ( Don’t get angry on me group 3 guys)

Fourth Semester

Whole college was in festive mood in first two months with Blitz-04 in January and followed by Synapse-04 in Feb. Dramatist of btech-2002 carried the winning streak by getting the first prize in drama competition (earlier winners were KBD team) . The drama Kal Ho Na Ho Reloaded took daiictians to new world of Matrix + Kal Ho Na Ho + Koi Mil Gaya as the play was blend of all the three movies. Tholia surprised everyone by his role of Naina Catherine Kapoor (zinta's role in KHNH) he (she) looked gorgeous in his ponytail and his blushing ,everyone was floored . Everyone was floored by the costume and walking style of Bheem aka morpheous. The hero of the play was Mrinal aka jadu (KMG fame) , impressing everyone with his acting and dialogues. DK as usual made us roll with laughter by his nice mimicary in the talent round of Mr.Blitz-04, he later on won the Mr.Blitz-04 competiton, i still remember how excitedly he told me his feeling when he was walking with Miss Blitz-04 Shrdha.

bheem aka morpheus

Blitz-04 was followed by the first national level technical festival of our college Synapse-04. The festival was a grand success with many big companies coming up for sponsorships, though outside participation was less but inside was enough to make it successful. First rock show was organized during this fest with them clones coming all the way from Delhi to perform here. Disheartening part was minimal attendance in special lectures during the synapse. Events like fortress, excogitate, forage were a huge success.

SSD course in this semester was my nightmare; I had horrifying dreams of getting my first F in this course as my first two mid sem marks were only 4. I burned midnight oil to pass this course and I passed with D though I was expecting C. Many toppers got their first C in this course also.

Dbms was relatively cool with jotwani sir following the book and there was no such burden, exams were very easy but a single mistake costed 5 marks, so there was no chance of silly mistake. Surprise attendances were also being taken by professor.

Last day of February (28th-2004) brought loads of joy as our college was granted UGC approval after 3 months of the visit of UGC committee in our college in fact they also visited my room to enquire about college. End of semester became exciting as we were supposed to give options of our preferred internship place, I was lucky to get IVRS project while unlucky ones were those who opted for fidelity and were dumped to hazira refinery (based on java marks), my rommie was also in those.

Industrial Internship.

I got selected in ivrs project because of me knowing Punjabi; an orientation lecture was organized here by Dr. Sandeep Sibal our project mentor. Project was divided into three parts with one being related to voice recognition , other application part and last was merger of the above two parts. I opted for application part as it concerned my area of interest I was not interested in communication stuff. Ten applications were selected and team of 2 for each app, we were supposed to stay in campus for one month. I was with vaibhav (chamm) and my app was banking one. We gave the workflow of the project after repeated corrections from Mumbai via video conferencing our flow was finalized.


In the mean time rahul, karan jaine, harshit, C harshit, shastri and me planned a trip to mount abu for 2 days. It was my first trip with friends outside Gujarat. We alighted on train at around 2am for abu road and were in mount abu at 8am. Soothing breeze removed all the exhaustion if there was any. We all hired a jeep to visit the main places of attraction. From admiring the beauty of Dilwara temple to boating in the lake to getting photographed at the sunset point while eating the sun, to watching couples romancing (we crying) at the honeymoon point we enjoyed each and every spot. When we visited abu Rajasthan festival was going on so it added more to enjoyment. Sexiest part was admiring the beauty of all the abu from the temple at the top of the mountain (highest point)

bunch of 18

After spending one month we were supposed to land up in DAKC, got confirmed seats in train thanks to the starting of special train. Incident from college to train was very exciting in itself. Kapil and tuss took the responsibility of hiring 2 jeeps to station, but they never turned up, they both again went to pathik ashram and some how managed to hire 2 jeeps 40 minutes prior to departing of train. Thanks to very fast driving of the drivers we somehow were able to catch the train just 2 minutes before departure. Mumbai welcomed us with first rain of the season, first week was cool not much work it increased in coming weeks.

We eagerly waited for Sunday when we could get a chance to see the business capital of India. First Sunday was full of funny, tragic and irritating incidents; such incidents are bound to happen when 18 people plan to go together. Started with arguments with GET residents who were in the bus bound to bandra as they were not able to get seats as we had occupied many seats. 18 educated illiterates were caught while traveling on platform of panvel without platform ticket because we entered (by mistake) from the back side, got free after paying approx 400 bucks. Misery continued as all the hands of the clock stuck 12 and local railways of Mumbai halted for 4 hours. Gods took pity on us thereafter and let us enjoy the marine drive (sat there for at least 2 hours watching beauty (ies) of Mumbai), dirty juhu beach and beauteous India gate.

Online Gaming addiction rose to new heights in warehouse of dakc with bhavesh manglani the main culprit who downloaded CS, Quake and many others. As both the teams were normally in different rooms so There used to be lot of shouting in the warehouse while playing cs, my friends like zubin would come to our damn good warehouse (joking) to play quake and cs. Going back to GET late after 12 became a habbit for the gamers as night give them freedom to play any game, no fear of sibal sir coming.

I played lot of carrom in the Get hostel canteen and was gripped by football fever during the Euro-04. Bus journey to and fro from Get hostel to dakc and back used to be pleasurable. We use to leave the seats vacant for the couples of our batch though at that time there were few, i still remember a couple sitting and romancing in the front seat of the bus with headlight above
them. During moonsoons we enjoyed dancing in the rains while coming back to get hostel.

bus ride

I played lot of carrom in the Get hostel canteen and was gripped by football fever during the Euro-04. Bus journey to and fro from Get hostel to dakc and back used to be pleasurable. We use to leave the seats vacant for the couples of our batch though at that time there were few, i still remember a couple sitting and romancing in the front seat of the bus with headlight above them. During moonsoons we enjoyed dancing in the rains while coming back to get hostel.

Most of my friends started drinking in the internship , Happa incident became talk of the town when he was besotted and was difficult to handle , his gave some famous quotes like 'hum yahan ruk kyon gaye hai hum chal kyon nahi rahe hai'-- 'mujhe raod par hi sona hai' while we were taking him to his room. Many also started going sasural the famous bar of panvel.

After somewhat around 15 days in dakc daily board meetings of ivrs group started. Excitedly we use to go to J block catching glimpse of the recptionist there. We app group team used to get bored in the lengthy discussions of the voice recognition team about their results. How afraid IITians used to remain when they were scolded by our mentor as they were employees of reliance and above all were electronics engineers not aware of java, jsp stuff. Meetings normally took two hours with we (app team) getting turn last and 15min were enough for us.

khandala

One 3rd Sunday we planned a trip to khandala and lonavala , it was near from panvel . We were unlucky as we couldn't visit the main waterfall but still we enjoyed a lot at the waterfall we visited.Enjoyed eating famous chikki of lonavala as we remembered it from the song 'khandala...' Our internship ended with visit to NNOc and little treat from the mentor a slush from the java green.

ivrs group

to be continued......