KVIPE 2/19 Part-II

Telling more about 2/19.
Our weekly movies:
Almost every week we saw some movie at theater as it is only 20/- for a ticket and halls are worth more than 20/-. So name any hindi movie from december 2004 to july 2005, i have seen it all. Forget the hits like Black, Sarkar, Dus, Kya Kool hai hum I didn't even miss Tango Charlie, Jo bole So nihal, Nazar etc. Mostly we all went for movies together but only once did we come out seperately. That was bewafa. It was beyond the tolerance limit for abhishek and krish. I could see it full for sush's sake tough. The intervals were obviously some cold drink and cream rolls.

Our Airtel connections:
Lots of stories with our airtel connection as well. Airtel launch in orissa almost collided with our coming to BBSR. They were new and so were we. We were handed wityh a corporate connection but somehow they didn't give me STD. So there was lots of calls and loads of visits and it was quite natural that we made a few friends. There were 3 good girls in the central Bapuji nagar office. each one of us went to a particular girl. And they knew it. There was this girl called sudipta on whom i had that temporary crush. She was that simple but modern girl with bright looks and killing smile. But the best part of her was her non-dedication to employer. Don't get any heart-attack but even i had the same feelings. Why love your company? Just because it pays you? She was that revolting kind and always we had a good laugh on any of the Airtel problems.

Our Hangouts:
This was one thing which was not utilized to it's full potential. But the bike trips to the far away reebok sales were great and the best was our nandan kanan zoo trip. Never thought that zoo's can be so much fun even at 22. We acted like we are the ones to be put in zoo. The best part was the poking of Haina by the tour guide and the fashion show that followed. Haina rhymes with Bhaina (for the slag like anna, dada, maga, daa,bhaisaab etc).

Our eatouts:
This was the most special thing. No restaurant left untried, the knack of K Deb fueled it more. Abhi's jaundice checked us out of bad hotels thankfully. the final chosen few are as follows:
1) Chinese : Shanghai express is the best but Shanghai chicken at golden dragon is too good.
2) Steaks n Sizzlers : At barabati, mind, it's not BARBADI
3) Good indian : Pal heights
4) Daily eats : Dhaba Neelachakra
5) Never go to : Asli dhaba, swosti hotel, swosti plaza

Fun @ home:
This was the best part surely. from the funny kuntal cooments to our weekend long movie watching spree. From lalit's dealings to krish's comments. Abhi's half an hour washroom sessions to the logistics of K Debs closing the doors while changing. It was all fun. Our photosesions were simply great with no action missed. I really miss those people.

Uff, this blog has become quite boring. Little will be understood by the people who don't know about it. So quitting it here.

KVIPE 2/19 -PART I

This is another article on bhubaneswar but on my roomies. We stayed in Kanchunjungha VIP Enclave, flat no. 2/19. Sadly my other roomies also had to leave the flat after about 2 months of my departure because ethe owner of the house came back and wanted to stay there. So 2/19 is now a history. But it was fun and it was good.
It was 15th of december (or 18th ???) 2004. 6 of us landed from mysore to bhubaneswar. 2 of them residents and remaining we 4, me, kuntal, abhishek and Krishnendu.
The other two were sulalit and sukirti. We 4 stayed in Hotel new marrion. Our house search began on the first day of office itself and this KVIPE 2/19 was found in the same day. Though we all waited for some better deal, somehow, that flat had clinged into all of us. So finally, after 4 days, on a sunday, we four shift there. Sulalit/lalit says he will also join us and thus 5 of us sign the lease.
It was a huge flat. 3 BHK/3BR, but the bedrooms are huge and the hall and dining made up tyo a cricket field. The 3 bathrooms helped us a lot and there were 3 balconies though we were on the ground floor. To assure you that it was really very good, my parents and my bro who came a few days later said that they would simply love a flat like that and had the feeling that i was having the best times of my life.
Anyway, why am i writing about the flat? It is the flatmates who are to be described. Somehow i was too apprehensive about again staying with a new set of people because i knew i was never going to stay for long there. So i was sort of aloof to everything. But tehse people changed it all.
Let me introduce them now.
Abhishek Singh: My roomie, i mean we shared one common room. A really no nonsense and high confidence guy whose potentials always fascinated me and it still does. He is crazy for clotehs and ends up buying one everyweekend. Obviously he has a good dressing sense though i quickly pointed out a trend in his clothes and thus changed it. A bit short tempered but never without reasons. Me and abhishek were the only 2 amongst all who did not wish to come here. Though I had my home closer to BBSR, Abhi didn't even have that advantage but still he adjusted to all the people and the place much quicker and much faster than any of us.

Krishnendu Banerjee: That typical bengali guy image which i used to hate. But krish made me change that mindset. He is a softspoken and nice guy with loads of things burning up inside him but somehow wouldn't let them come out. Other roomies tried to extract his real ambitions but in vain. But finally he has achieved what he wanted and that is a job @ home, kolkata. Krish was fav of all of us coz he was laways ready for everything. He had his own days of tensions where he lost his temper very easily but thankfully they are over.

Kuntal Deb: Size : Huge, Brains : Huge and originality : Humongous. Well, teh adjective is not the best or rather even the correct one, but what i meant to say is, he is very typical with the very typical bengali accent but that's him. He never even tries to change it. He was the only guy who didn't have any immediate plans in the next one year so was the coolest amongst all of us.
He is also the first guy I saw who had a long lasting constant love affair since 9th standard and that is a lot of time. A foodaholic and a movie buff, helped me a lot coz it was both of us who were alwyas interested in going out. His hindi made us and also friends of freinds laugh aloud, like "main apni mammi ka banaya hua fish hi khati hoon" and "dhaamana" for "damana" chowk but the best was certainly "Mujhe latrine mila hai" a word to word translation form bengali "aamaar paykhana peyeche". The day he said that, we leterally laughed for more than 1 hr.

Sulalit Das: Lalit was the late entrant but was the "dude" of the flat. His fundas which he called "dealings" always amused us and his " beauty treatments" i always envied. His being oriya helped us a lot with the guard, teh caretaker and the makaanmalik becoming our friends. Also saved much of our money by finding low cost restaurants and active bargaining. His "Dude" dressing style was really killing and no wondre a lot of girls fell for him.
Well, with that i finish part 1. Part 2 will have the days we spent together.

My most coveted talent - My singing

First things first. This post is for the sole reader of my blogs- ***.
I have read in a book that one who has "sur" in his name, has "sur" in his voice too. The breaking of my name will be "saa nii daa paa nii". That Daa is close to "dha" and "daa" is written for a high scale "dha". So u see i have "sur" in my voice.
Next evidence is that my mom is a good singer, dad not bad, and bro also pertty good. So i have to be one hell lot of good singer.
So with this confidence, i went to sing in a group song with mike just in front of me. My partner in crime in this whole thing was Anuradha. She sings equally well. What happened is this: It was teacher's day and we were in 12th. So our principal ma'am came and taught us a song. But nobody bothered to learn it except me and anu. So naturally the mike was placed in front of both of us. After the performance, nobody clapped. I thought everybody was dumbstruck. But later i realised when principal ma'am came to the class and appreciated us and said "it was so good but somehow the effect was not good." That was the first time i realised hwo good i sing.
Before that also many incidents happened but i didn't kow it was because of that. Everytime i used to sing in my home, mom used to shout from the other room: "are u telling me something?" and i used to reply " no mom, just singing."
My house was close to the school so many children used to pass by. One day after singing 1 full song i went out to the balcony and saw around 20 juniors staring at me and asked me to sing again. I got some hunch and noticed that they all were giggling silently.
But there are good sides to it also. I was never asked twice to sing during ragging. Once they asked and that was it. Never again.
But my last 2 places, BBSR and College Station, my roomies are more considerate. They say that my battery goes down when i sing. That is so decent of them . I think i should give them a singing tribute.

Memorable call to call center

Normally we all are really pissed off by the long and tiring process that takes place when we call some customer care or we get really irritated when somebody from a creditcard company calls up and starts her/his ramayan.
There are 2 calls , 1 of each type which i will never forget.
The first one happened in bhubaneswar and i will never forget it for teh fact that it was most peculiar call. I was in the office but doing timepass only. The call comes and when i pick up, it says, "hello, this is chumki calling from 'Shanghai Express'. aap hamare restaurant mein kyon nahi aate?". Now this shanghai express is an awesome chinese restaurant in BBSR but a bit costly. I have been there once before the call. But how can restaurants afford such things? And that too what a funny name, "Chumki". As if she is some long lost friend. Then as i was also in mood, i said" Aaya tha ekbaar, ab aapne bulaya tho fir aaoonga."
She said," Kab aa rahe hai fir?"
Me:"aaj tho friday hai aur main kalkatta jaa raha hoon. Is weekend nahi rahoonga. MAy be next weekend."
Chumki:" Oho, aap kalkatta ke hai. Theek hai, fir next weekend zaroor aayiega."
End.
Somehow i enjoyed the call to much. I mean i was not flirting but the whole concept was new to me. And i really went the next weekend.

The second was just 3 days ago. New york times suddenly started giving free subscription and said that if not cancelled by calling to 1800-NYTIMES , they will start billing after 2 weeks. Now this is really irritating. Who asked them to give it first of all. But anyway, i had to do it. I expected long dragging and asking reasons of why not continuing and all. I mentally prepared the answers also. But then i call and after pressing this and that key, finally reached the lady. I said," I want to unsubscribe." She said "Ok , Done, You won't be billed.Thank you." That's it. end call. I was most surprised and really liked it.
Hope all call centers are like that.

My favourite quotes

Here is a list of my fav quotes. Some are in bengali but will be translated. But due to either the poor language or my knowledge of this language, appropriate words won't be possible. As i myself is the creator of some quotes, they are tampered suitably to meet my needs. No copyright is violated.
1) "No comments"
This quote was suggested by my school friend aparajita biswas as a means to ward off the 100's of useless questions about how the exam paper went (in 12th and the competitive exams). As competitive exams are unpredictable and relative, to comment on how they went sounds foolish. This stands out as the most humblest way to answer the stupidest question.

2) "Hole bhalo, naa hole aaro bhalo"
This means " If accompolished, its good, if not even better." This was by my eldest cousin Sudipta Mitra. It was suitable during competetive exams results and admissions time after 12th when each failure demoralized to great extent. Helped me during campus interviews and even while apping after GRE.

3) "sneho nimnogami"
A bengali adage, stated by whom i don't know but told to me by my mom. This means love flows downwards. You can never love your parents as much as you will love your kids but you expect your kids to love you more. Thsi has so much practicality in it and it is really hard to believe or realize. But it is a truth. You better agree. A story to exemplify:' A son, very angry on his mom for some reason, cuts her head off with a sword and goes past. While going he tumbles because of her mom's cut head on the path and falls down. The cut head says," Son, are u hurt." '
somehow this story has touched me greatly.

4) "Hardwork can make you lucky or unlucky, but without hardwork, you will never be lucky. So work hard"
roots can finally boil down to Shri Krishna's "karmanyavadhikaraste ma faleshu kadachana" but suitably modifeied by me based on my experiences. Any takers?

5)"Oracle is not about ulta and seedha traingle of stars"
stated by the oracle instructor during infy training, this actually speaks of some stupid programs in C where it is very complicated to do these programs of drawing inverted and straight triangles whic are really useless. while the C pundits in the class in first year did it in minutes and thought they are great, i struggled for long. But i guess this was a useless thing to do. I like this quote not because i like DB programming but because i hate 'C'.

Infosys-The place i worked

Infosys Technologies Limited
There was a time when this name commanded respect and the people who got placed seemed to be the bests of the lot. But things did change. Somehow it is now seen as a company which pays less, everybody just sits on bench and the worst of the brains go there. Why did this happen to infy which is so brand conscious.
The reasons which comes to my mind are this:
1) Infy earns it's bucks from foreign companies and to them, it's the quality and delivery time and cost that matters. So for them, Infy is the best.
2) Infy gives the best facilities to it's employees except for salary though. I haven't seen much but i don't think that the claim that "infy mysore" is the best campus in world after microsoft is not wrong. So the people who are in infy for a long time just don't care what others say about them.
3) Software doesn't need the brightest of the people, it just needs hardworking people. So may be it is not worried about it's present image.
4) It can manage huge bench strengths because of the profit it makes. And this benching factor is actually more highlighted just because the company is so famous that everything in it comes to screening. For that matter none of my friends in other companies had consistent work, not even a busier schedule than an average infoscion has. It's just that they have no terms for that. companies put people into certain projects in which they sit idle. Infy instead of doing that, to manage it's databases so as to see who is sitting witthout much work gave them the project code of BCH, and that got famous.
Anyway, now coming to infy for me. For me it carries so much of meaning. first of all it gave me my first job. It gave me the best of facilities that a s/w engineer can get and thirdly , it gave me ample of time and net time to complete my apping.
I also learnt many important things in infy. Respecting personal space is one of them.
I also learnt that the key for success to a project is not writing great codes but a good project management thru with all coders do equal share of work and the work is completed within time with no special loads. Good coding is sometihng which a good company will make u do anyhow, but good project is someting different. It is that infy expertizes in.
Infy also gave me the opprtunity to see two grade2 cities which are small but wonderful. Mysore and bhubaneswar. Mysore is simple people, highly cultural and extremely beautiful city with the biggest advantage of being only 130 km from bangalore. So if u wanna save money and yet not miss the dazzle of big city, Mysore is THE place.
bhubaneswar. Well the city is new, so clean. Things won't be the same when it becomes old. everybody form a roadside bhikhari to teh physician chews pan/gutkha. And you can see red spots even in places like malls. Apart from that, the place is small and near to calcutta and puri. I like puri minus the pandas. I lived a kingly life in BBSR with the best of the places to stay in and good food. Alo i got to go home a lot of times.
Description of infy will be incomplete without mentioning a person. Throughout the description, i avoided any names. But this person I guess, rises and vanishes with my stay in infy. Anindita Das. My cubicle mate. A girl who is different, thinks different and more importantly does different. She dares to have multiple affairs and publically tell them. She dares to swim in the swimming pool along with boys which no girl had ever dared. She, who never comes late, gets late for attending to an unidentified dead body on the road. But this girl pours her herat out to me. I mean tells me all her feelings and experiences. She didn't wait to trust me.
She just kept on saying and i kept on listening.
And she is still the typical her. with the promise of daily mails, after 1.5 moths in the new place, i receive only one mail from her and don't expect many more also.

So this is infy for me. A company which knows what to do and with wonderful facilities and queer people;-)

I R Rao-II

Ya, back again with more of him.
Some more of his funny incidents:
It was fifth or sixth sem and suddenly he changed a lot. The way he graded became very lenient and attendence was not at all compulsary. But no latecomers. One fine day, Sharad Rao comes almost 5 minutes late in his class. He asks him to wait outside and asked him to come to the class in slow steps like moghul nawabs and sir played buegel ( made sounds like taraaaaaannnnnn, tran tran and all that) with his mouth. Poor Sharad had nothing to do but follow what he says. Poor guy, never came late after that. But that also was not enough. We all in the class were made to stand and sing the song
" We shall come in time,
we shall come in time,
we shall come in time...alwaaaaays,
oho deep in my heart ,
i do believe
that we shall come in time, alwaaaaaaaaaaaaayssssssss"....

Another one and this features me again. Somehow though everybody liked his microprocessors class, i didn't like it a bit because i still feel he messed up with theory and the practical aspects of it, though i am the only one who believes that. whatever, so it was a tuesday class which was at afternoon 1:30. As usual i dozed off after 30 minutes. Suddenly i hear, "SSSandipan..get up". I was as if in some trance. I started mumbling " I didn't sleep sir, it was just head down, looking at the notebook", but he didn't care. Then he started ," I have been in contact with bengalis. Infact my roomies were bengalies and i know quite a lot of them. Great poets like Nazrool Islam. Infact i know a few songs in bengali." He started singing " aami aachi epaare, tumi aacho opare" ( i am in this side of river and u on the other , a romantic song). and then" Are u in that mood sandipan???". I was blushing and was full red..But now the best part, even after all these, i still dozed off in his classes.
IR Rao (somehow though we all say sir with respect, i feel a sir with his name will diminish the effect) taught us more than just the subjects. Atleast to me he was a vast pool of knowledge which i failed to explore. Be it practical things of EE, or be it snakes, or surathkal, or mumbai, or books, beaches,politics, he knew it all.. His dress, always an offwhite shirt with hands folded and a dark pant and shirt was never tucked in.
His way of exams was peculiar. Zero correct, 50%, 50% correct, still 50...somehow i was always in the loosers side in this bargain.
In last meeting with him, he told us about how he told "kothari" of "nagraath and kothari" fame that the book is a crap..
Last heard, when subrat told him, that i am going to US, he said, MS in US has lost it's charm except biotech.
He still surprises me..................................

I R Rao-I

Suddenly I want to write about IR Rao, Don't know why, may be teacher's day just passed?? Whatever..
I would like to describe IR Rao a bit. our first meeting. It has become history by now i guess. That was my first ever class at KREC, i reach ATB (additional teaching block) at 7:56 am. Wham..the door is closed on our faces. After knocking by all of us for almost a minute, he opens the door again and says this "YOU ARE TOO EARLY FOR THE NEXT CLASS AND TOO LATE FOR THE FIRST CLASS." The dialouge has become very famous now and a popular saying in the college. That was IR Rao first time.
Another instance: After a dismal first sessional with 8/50 , me , arun pillai and vikram go to him. We were wondering, what to say.. he called us and said, " I know you all have been amongst the toppers of ur schools and here in the first test u r getting marks like 7,8 and 10 ( that were exactly what our marks were!!) . Don't get surprised, this happens, be prepared for the second one." How could he anticipate what we went to him for.
This is the last incident i would like to mention which happened in first year. As usual in all teh classes, stuffs were written on the desks. I don't know which one he found most loathsome, suddenly he said he won't teach us unless all the stuff is cleaned. It was just our first year and we were surprised. people went to dean who said if we scratch the desks, he will take action against us. And then we came up with a compromise. We scrached all the writings and then painted all the desks again and then called IR Rao.. The next day he comes with a big chocolate bag for all and didn't even see the desks.
Stories about him never end. His act of cleaning the board was famous. Here comes a story with that. Our very first day in second year, first year with branch people. He comes and says, Sandipan..Go and clean the board. I promptly went and cleaned the board but he was not happy.
He asked deepa shastry-" Deepa, what was wrong in the way he cleaned?" and deepa says, " HE didn't do thak thak". All of us wanted to burst into laughter but controlled ourselves as we all knew what he is like. The thing is after cleaning the borad he always strikes the duster on the wall so that all the chalk powder falls of but that action is so loud taht the whole corridoor hears it. Well, the correct answer was that i shouldn't have given backward strokes.
One more and that will be end of part 1.
Somehow one day in 3rd sem, he made shweta and deekshma stand up and asked them "have u seen an unicorn??" and she said "yes". He asks "where, animal planet/discovery channel?" . She was scared and just noddedAnd what he replied is this- "Listen, you can see unicorns only in one channel and that is cartoon network"...
MOre of him in part 2.....

Hmm

So finally in The United States of America.
This has not been an easy journey so far. Hope the future is better.
It was a very complicated procedure.
Qustions arise as to why i wanna go to US. Well this has many reasons but none of them the conventional ones. Let me list down the reasons.
1) I don't think i can do well in a conventional job. Rather i can do well in a job which is like looking after a garden, and that has no deadlines, and fixed 9-5 schedule. But then this kind of job is rare, not highly paid and worst not even looked upon nicely. Staying in teaching profession seems to be a solution and best part of it is that i can still get summer and autumn vacations..

2) Reason 1 leaves me with only 3 choices after my BE. Gate / GRE / Appearing for MSc and teaching in KV. well again perception of other people and society came and had to leave the 3rd choice. Tried my hand at first but no good. you have to be really good to get into even IIT, forget IISc and landing there might not be of much use. That left me with the obvious.

3) Were these two the only reason? Definitely not. There was another reason. again people's perception. Saw such terrible reaction on people's faces when i said am from infy. As if it is some dustbin company. even in infy, when i say from NITK, people say what are u doing here???? So i had to do something different. I chose this. And now people think oh wow, how good Sandipan is..... But frankly i enjoyed infy....


But then are these reasons good enough to put so much money at stake and come here, though i can now say that things are resolved to a certain extent. What else could have been the reasons which would have been typical good boy types?
1)"The first word out of my mouth after i was born was 'control systems' "??? People do say this.
But i can't.
2) " I was born for a free society". well i am not that kind.
3) " I wanna earn loads". I said i am happy as a gardener.

Then what drove me...??? A compromise between my interest and perception of people??? might be. But people only say don't care about what other's say...
am totally confused