My solitery trip to Jonha

It was a whim out of nowhere which propelled me to take a trip all by myself, to the capital of the relatively new state of Jharkhand. The idea was to get away from the din of the campus and have some fresh air. Not that there's any lack of it in Jamshedpur, but then who likes the same air everyday!
So i woke up early, around 7, (That's early, mind you!) and started off to my destination. A quick auto ride took me to Mango bus stand, where a half-loaded Ranchi bound bus was dutifully waiting near the gate. 70 bucks from my wallet gave me a place in the boxy vehicle (the seat wasn't very bad, considering I slept through most of the journey). It takes 3.5 hours to cover 2.5 hours in this part of the country, I realized today; It was nearly 12 when I finally disembarked at Ranchi bus depot.
The plan was to take a rick to Dassam or Hudru falls, whichever was closer (read cheaper). Here came my first shock. On my questioning, the autowala solemnly scratched his head, perhaps trying to stimulate the underworked brain cells and said - "Reserve jaana padega - Che so rupaye lagega!"
It was my turn to scratch. with a hung face and dampened spirit I walked off in search of cheaper conveyance. After much questioning and haggling one kind-hearted autowala suggested that I pay him 550 and take a trip to Jonha instead of Dassam or Hodru, as it is nearer and on my way back I can see another falls called Sita falls. I took the offer.
The roads of Ranchi are good at one thing. They make you remember. Coupled with the bad suspension and a broken seat of my hired auto, the effect of the numerous potholes was magnified like a pic through a fish-eye lense. Thankfully, it lasted only till the city limit was crossed.
Then began a jorney through the open expanses of the fated Indian countryside. It is winter, so greenery was hard to find. For miles I could see dull yellow fields of god-knows-what and dull grey dwarf mountains in the background. The road, lined with high canopy trees, undulated through this terrain, on which our auto struggled and screeched to keep pace with the racing hands of the clock. I took a pic as my pilot took a 'break'.

The scenary changed after about quarter of an hour. Dry and bushy jungles cropped up on both sides and the road became more like a series of tsunami waves frozen in time.
Then came high hills and deep abysses. the auto struggled on, and we kept moving closer to the falls.
After an hour and a half's herculean effort, our auto reached Jonha Falls and I stumbled out and stretched my screeching limbs and joints. It was a nice spot, at the foot of a hill, which we had to climb and go over, shady and serene. Some local people were playing the drums and singing. there were loads of tourists and picnickers though.
the descend into the gorge, guided by my dutiful autowala was a painful affair. I always though climbing stairs was tough, descending wasn't. How wrong I was. The view from top was blocked by trees, but still I managed a few snaps at the nearly-dry rockbed below.
After a knee bending (literally) journey down the steps, accompanied by the incessant chatter of my autowala, we reached the rock bed. It was dry mostly, as this is not the season for gushing foams and spray, but was a pretty sight after all. And the whole place was abuzz with activity. Small knots of picnickers, children and women, bathers, sunbathers, the place was a collage of multicolored dresses and faces.


We walked around the rock bed and went to the point where the water tumbled down volubly. I sat on a rock and wetted my feet on the cool, gushing water. It was soothing and gentle on the tired feet. We rested for sometime before starting the hardest part of the journey, the climb back to the top.
It drove all the air out of my lungs and made me feel like I'm trying to breath through a bunch of wrestlers sitting on my chest. My legs were visibly shaking by the end of the climb. It isn't that bad usually, but we were in a hurry, so we didn't have the luxury of taking rest in between.

On our way back, we took a distant look at the Sita falls. It was much higher and the gorge much deeper, but some locals advised us to not venture into it. It was deserted and wasn't safe even in daytime. Wild animals, and naxalites... I took a few pics and started on our way back.

the return journey was more or less the same... I found some nice sunset shots near a local village where my autowala took one of his pit stops. It is a nice countryside that we have in this country...

A quick snack at Ranchi bus stop and a snoozing journey back home. My solitary foray into nature was over!

A failed attempt ...

And yet again I failed in an endeavor at XL... This is the problem in being amongst the top brains of the country. sometime it gets really difficult to be at the top of something that is about to happen.
Take this years Public production for instance. With my reputation of an awesome mimic (or so people say ;) ) everyone was thinking my inclusion in the cast cast in stone. But it turned out to be much more difficult than that... the first set of lines they gave me din't go too well with me... everyone felt i didn't have the right lines... so they gave me a second set. I think I did justice to it, but apparently Sid was better, which might be totally true because I know I kinda suck at emotional scenes.... I lost it to Sid finally... and it was the lead role...
Anyway, bit of a disappointment, but life goes on! At least i get to sit in the audience an enjoy the play now!

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Using flock

The thing about a management institute is, you time isn't yours anymore. The convoluted sequence of late nights, sleepy eyes, long lectures and unhealthy meals ensure that whatever time used to be 'yours', however you might have been defining it earlier, now belongs to the perpetual existence around you called nature. Never before has nature's propensity to pull you down to your bed been felt so strongly as it is now, during my 2 years MBA course... More on it in subsequent posts. keep watching this space :)

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break from hibernation

Just a temporary post to break my hibernation from blogging... really... its been a long time ... yeah... I get that yeah...

Things were not so simple as they first appeared. When my friend and ex roomie bhende had first aired the idea of attending shaastra, the IIT chennai techfest, I had said, big deal! Lets go for it! And it had seemed simple enough. With loads of time at hand, at that time, it seemed just a matter of booking the tickets and starting off. Bhende was specially pumped up about the mine-detector problem. Without bothering about the techno details- the problem was to create a fully autonomous robo that will follow the white lines in a grid, detect mines (metal bobs) placed in the intersections and dig them out. Interestingly enough, Bhende made it sound like child's play. He rounded up chanchal and toni to his side as well.
despite all the hullabaloo raised at the time, nothing solid could be done for at least a month, thanks to mid seems and our wondrous preparations, which always started on the 11th hour.
once the midsems were behind us, we went back to the drawing boards for planning and execution, but as one can expect, only one week was left for the journey dates now. Tickets are never a hassle fro svnitans, we had them booked earlier.
now comes the tough part. One session with chanchal's senior gave us the glorious revelation that the microcontroller interfacing required for the mine detector is way beyond our reach... with buckets of cold water down bhendes fire of enthu, we sordidly decided to go for the time tested robo sumo event.
with only 5 days in hand, we started our endeavor to put all pieces together. To start with, we pleaded drishti for four 100rpm motors, a request that was sympathetically turned down, owing to our promptness ( pun intended) in placing the request. We had to settle for 150 rpm motors costing 250/- each... (that's the way the money goes... pop goes the weasel...) the work on the robo took off... at a slow and elephantine pace, we started building the body.
In the meantime, all the administrative crap started getting the better of us. I started going around the campus to get the hundreds of applications signed, stamped and submitted. One for leave, one for concession, one to get a hole drilled in aluminum from the workshop. just imagine, it took me over two hours to get the last one, while the actual job took only 5 minutes! That's SVNIT men!
by the time all the applis and certis were duly signed and in place, we found that we haven't progressed much with the actual thing. the 15x15 size limit for the robo was proving to b a real hurdle. All sorts of designs and shapes were proposed and rejected, we shuttled between a pyramid and a hexagon for a long time... someone was great enough to propose a 'dumbbell' shaped body!! and trust me, 36 24 36 is what he named it... engineers...
in the end we realized that shape of the body is a thing of future, first we'll have to get the thing rolling... not a child's play as we could see.
with only two days in hand, the circuit was becoming a Herculean problem. We tried to bulid our own transmitter-receiver, spent over two grands over the ICs and all, failed, and settled for a 250 bucks toy car circuit from shanivari.... same as what everyone else did. what frustration......

by the end of september, despite my involvement in kashish anchoring and all, we were able to give our robo the basic shape of a car.... err ... cart would be a better word perhaps.
with all the gizmos and gears packed, and the car(t) neatly stuffed inside a shoe box, we started off for our rendezvous with the 4th metro.
The 30 hours train journey was mostly eventless, apart from my lovely white sport shoes getting stolen and my only pair of clean socks gone with it... wearing slippers and two days worth of filth from the train, we landed gloriously into Channai!
None of us had had the foresight to get ourselves registered for hospitality in IIT and by the time we logged on to the site, it was closed down. So most of us were faced with the problem of accommodation. We did the obvious, shuttled upto Adyar, and checked into a cheap yet comfortable lodge, the Adyar Guest House.
By the time we got ourselves scrubbed and fed... the first day in Chennai was nearly over.

Next morning, i.e. 5th of october, we decided to splash around in marina beach... time was ample as the fest was to start in the evening. After managing to push everyone out of the beds somehow, we started off towards the second largest beach in Asia.
The bus journey had just started looking like a one way journey thru hell when suddenly we could smell the salt... and lo! there it lay before u... the gigantic golden expanse of maiden marina...
Half the day went away in twisting and turning in the velvety foams of the sea... the ripples of bay of Bengal gently caressing our minuscule bodies and souls...
By the evening, we all were back to the hotel, showered, had lunch and were ready to go off to ground zero... the IIT itself.
The first view of the IIT gate will give any SVNITan a feeling of euphoria as ur heart leaps up and says... "yeah! we have a bigger gate!" but the feeling runs away soon as u coldly realise that that's almost the only thing where we're bigger than IIT chennai.
The four km distance from the main gate to Gajendra circle, the iit analogue to pmc (and of course, a blown up version) is covered by the regular bus shuttles... some of which are electric... oh dear...
once reaching the help desk, we quickly retrieved the info brochures and itineraries for the coming days and events. A bit of roaming about in the campus, cold coffee at the nescafe joint... and soon we were too tired to walk an inch for a mile...

the first day was over....

The next two days were a blur. waking up at 8, bathing in pell Mel, stuffing some breakfast down the throat, catch a shuttle to IIT, reach GC, run for the guest lectures or workshops, come out of one with face buried in the event list, run for the next... that's the way the first two days were spent. Who got into which event is pointless to discuss as drishti's already doing a great job with it.
Then came saturday, the day for our robo to pound the battlefields to dust.
most of the teams from our college had managed to finish building the bot by 9th morning, we included. By the time we reached the IIT SAC, rest of our college was already there. The event started at 9:30 am, sharp 45 minutes late ( come on now... even iit has got only engineers). once the event got off, our college was everywhere! a whopping 21 teams, one coming every few minutes and a huge crowd to back up every other team. (And who cares if our bot's name 'torc' was misprinted in the list as 'porc' ??)
11 teams, plus one from SCET cleared the elimination rounds, ours included. Rest of the statistics is histrory, just that our state of elation diffused soon as our 'torc' was trampled brutally by the would be champions of AC Patil collage, the tarantula.

The tournament and half the day lost, we the broken war horses started our way back... the penultimate day had drawn to an end for us...

We'd planned to roam about the city a bit the next day. Being the last day of shaastra, there weren't many events scheduled, and none of our interest. we made a quick trip to the helpdesk to retrieve our certificates( apart from the finalists, everyone else were refused point blan!!) and went off the the great shopping mall - spencer plaaza.
The day went off in a frenzy of shopping and roaming... soon it was time to pack...
we boarded the homebound train next morning, endured another eventless yet tiring journey and were soon back in the kingdom of gujjus...
there is just one point in the stirrer that calls for the attention of the layman. We go to IITs for such events and often leave a mark there, as we definitely did this time. But when will the day come when the reverse will happen? Will ever the IIT people be coming to NITs for a fest or an event? Education ministry... are u listening???

me in my room... that's shot with my new cam! 

my whimsy-cam story!

There are quite a few problems of being a techno geek at a young age like mine, one of them being the continuous inflow of funds, which is, almost always, nowhere to be found.
As for me, the only source of money is my father, my hard working - never complaining father, and hence, my 'techno geek'ism has always been limited by gaping and drooling over latest products and price lists over online electronic stores or pages of a tech magazine like digit.
its only occasionally that i get so obsessed with an idea that i actually go all the way to persuade my dad, my hard working - never complaining dad, to shell out a few thousand grands to satisfy a fraction of my elephantine hunger for techno toys and eye catching gizmos.
This is exactly what happened a few months back, when my 18 years old, focus free, zoom free, primere film camera complained for the 5th time of an out of order flash. I got so frustrated by the idea of taking it once again to the local studio and getting the flash mended that i decided its time for a digital camera.
it took me another week to be convinced that my cam is actually out of order and to master the courage to confront dad (hard working and all that), with the petition for a digicam. And finally when i did, to my immense relief, he coolly agreed! pat on my back, level one cleared without any hiccoughs. Little did i know, my worries had not even begun.
after another week of pouring over photography websites and brainstorming sessions with experienced people, this is the config i settled for:
minimum 3x optical zoom,
minimum 3.1 mp res.
a price tag under 8000/-
it was the last specification that was going to be the cause of all my woes.
after setting the target, i started off with my market survey. a little study
of the popular websites told me, its going to be one hell of a job to find anything with 3x optical zoom for anything under 11 grands. tired of checking the manufacturers sites, i shifted to field work.
checking the stores in ahmedabad gave me a closer look at reality.
All the eye catching stuff i'd been gazing at over the websites, were either out of stock, or oftener, never heard of. The few shops i tried out in ahmedabad showed me variants of the Kodak model and a few models of canon. But still nothing that completely matched my specifications.
after long hours of measuring the dusty streets of a'bad, i finally located an olympus model in a small showroom, with all the muscle power i'd been looking for. Overcome with relief and blinded by content, i paid 200 bucks advance and promised, hell, swore to return next day with the full 6700, and get my cam.
on returning home though, my dream run shattered just as dad enquired about the bill and the warranty. I realised with a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach that i'd never touched on that subject while in the store. nervous as an ant, i picked up the phone and dialed with trembling fingers the number on the visiting card... it took me hardly three minutes to have my worst fears materialized and my dream cam melt before my eyes... no warranty - no bill - no cam... said dad...
I didn't quite see his point, as so many of my friends are ruling their worlds with 'without bill' gizmos of all sorts, but then i seldom argue with dad...
tired of this sick game of finding my specifications, i declared, more to myself than anyone else tht let's lax our criteria a bit and forget the optical zoom for the time being, specially since dad was always insisting on a low end device to start with. me and dad went to sales india next day, picked up the HP photosmart 435, without any opt zoom, 7200 bucks, and drove back home ( I drove mind u!)
call it the cream on the cake or salt on my wounds, next month itself, that is this month, digit published a full fledged review of digi cams, featuring an HP m307, with 3x optical zoom and a price tag of 7000 bucks, and that is when i decided to write this piece, only to warn techno geeks, if nothing else, so as to never hurry into any investment, as long as its not an emergency. only if i had not given up on my dream so easily...

the engineer kicks off...

its not everyday that a budding computer engineer like me finds time for a mundane job like logging on to the net and opening up, of all things, a blog site... or so goes the public opinion, but think again...
in practice, engineers are the creatures, who have all the time in the world to do things like that and mark my words... 'mundane' is the last adjective they'll assign to something like blogging.
lol:))
seriously guys... since the day my friend, the big fat Jayant showed me the ultimate billboard he's found for his literary spur, i'd been on the lookout for a chance to start off on my own, specially since jayant, despite my earnest endeavours to butter him sleek, has failed to place my unmatchable poems in the collage magazine ( he being a member of the editorial board, seems well poised to do this much, or so it seemed to me, until a few weeks ago... nothing personal jayant;)).
Now enough of this beating of the bush ( keypads, to be precise), lets get down to something serious. i've tried my hand at blogging b4, just once b4, when, thanx to my neighbours marriage party, i was unable to catch a wink of sleep and hit upon a blogging site while surfing the net. I dont remember what i put into that first blog i created and I more important, i dont remember the password, or even the username to that blog account, so my literary aspirations remained at bay after that nite, untill of course, the great fat jayant ignited the old fire once again...
now people, in case u're wondering who this great great Jayant actually is, i'll leave that upto u to discover. all the help that i can be of is, he's got a blog in blogspots itself though i dont remember a letter of his url...
so in short, i've started off a chain of posts which i guess will grow longer and bolder with every day that comes to pass, provided, i remember the login and password...