THE REAL IIT

The Indian Institutes of Technology is another name for IIT, which is the acronym for Institute of Infinite Tension, Institute of Indian Technology, etc. These institutes of so-called national importance were set up by the Indian Parliament at seven campuses across India, decided purely on merits of political alliances of the ruling party. It was the mastermind of a certain eccentric named Jawaharlal Nehru to reduce the average intelligence of Indians that led to the establishments of these institutes. Just like Zion in Matrix, where 3% of the people who do not accept the Matrix are gathered together to prevent dissent as a whole, IITs were formed by the Government of India to gather at one place the 2% of the intellegensia of the country and dumb them down!!

The geeks and nerds of India start preparing for IIT-JEE just after 10th standard of schooling. A very effective test of whether a guy is fit for getting into the IITs is asking a very simple question: "Do you have a girlfriend"? A guy who says anything else other than "What's a girl?" would not get through the test. Girls are considered unfit to get into IITs, though some girls manage to get the application forms as they look like guys. To make sure no girl gets through the system by bribing to get the application forms, the applicants are required to specify their gender and affix a photograph in the application form. Those faces that resemble anything girly are not selected.

The entrance exam, IIT-JEE, is an extremely selective undergrad admission process (accepting less than 2% of their applicants). As they say, if the input is right, the output is automatically right. The six-hour Joint Entrance Exam held, as the name suggests, jointly by IITs, consists only of questions on Physics, Chemistry and Maths and not on other exotic details like Booze, Drugs, Crime, Pondy etc. which severely affect the quality of the incoming students. Since the Indians are well known for cramming up loads of information, questions in JEE are never repeated.

The IIT curricula is carefully decided so that there is no scope of learning anything. The students, then, take up alternate learning routes, most common being Pondy!! The IIT alumni on knowing the tremendous potential of internet, provided all hostel rooms with free and unlimited internet connection. The IIT administration tried to propound their agenda by putting lecture videos on the LAN, but this is yet to be confirmed as this has not been tried by any student. The IITians are also forced to eat mess food, that prepares them for the worst they can ever face in their life.

Some of the creative minds also make a quick buck by selling MMS clips online. Since there are assignments to be submitted every now and then, the guys also learn how to use Google adeptly. Photocopying centres are provided for every 100 metres of road so that time wasted in photocopying assignments is minimized. Lecture classes are held from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. IST (Indian Stretchable Time). The club meetings that follow later in the evenings, however follow PST (Pakistan Standard Time). It has been established by years of testing that the time can be stretched to as much as 30 minutes beyond provided it is backed by a cardinal excuse. The summary and results of many such experiments has been documented well in a book by an IITian titled "Five Point Someone: What not to do at an IIT". The book also deals with complex issue of dealing with a girl in IIT.

When entering the IIT, a guy has two options. The first is to take up the common learning route described above. Since IIT-JEE makes sure a lot of mavericks are selected, many of them also end up being "happy among themselves"!! The girls in IITs, usually refered to as Non-Males and measured as parts of girl per million parts of guy, have to struggle keeping their identity as girl secret throughout their stay in IITs. Sometimes they are forced to tell the truth, like when a gay IITian proposes mistaking them for a guy. The alumni of these institutes have been very sucessful across the world (more in USA than in India). Most of them either get frustrated and leave technical education to study management at IIMs, or start a company of their own totally unrelated to their major discipline. There are also a select few who develop a fetish for studies and end up in institutes like Massachusetts Institute Of Technology. An interesting aspect is that, alumni of these institutes form the second-largest graduate student group at MIT, the largest being MIT undergrads and one day hope to colonise the whole of MIT campus.

P.S. And now that you are convinced that an IITian himself has written it, it makes perfect sense for you to conclude that the writer is jacking off watching pondy as you have completed reading this miserable blog.

THE JEE AFTERMATH

You know what? The world is going crazy. The best rapper is a white guy. The best golfer is a black guy. The tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese. The Swiss hold the America's Cup. France is accusing the United States of arrogance. Germany doesn't want to go to war. The most celebrated singer in India sings through his nose. Finally, the three most powerful men in America are named 'Bush', 'Dick', and 'Colon'. On the bright side, when we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

You know, I always think I've hit the bottom, only to realize that when I look back a few months from now, they are fond memories compared to how low things have become. Were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults in the first. No matter how bad things get, you got to go on living, even if it kills you. The basic rule of human nature is that powerful people speak slowly and subservient people quickly -- because if they don't speak fast nobody will listen to them. So this is a jovial attempt on my part to keep it real on my part and share this whole drama I have been witnessing these past two months.

So, it was the morning of May 31st. Not having access to the internet at that time, and the IVRS system of IITB wedged bigtime, the anxiety of my JEE result was eating the daylights out of me. Well, I had wretchedly fucked issues on April 9th which had put me in such misery and desolation days before the results were out. Well, I won’t go into the exact minutiae of how I discovered my result, but I was kind of pleased. Not overly in raptures considering the feeling hadn’t sunk in as yet, I was more apprehensive at that moment in time to ascertain whether my other pals made the cut or not. Well, few did, but the majority of them didn’t. What began after that was downright pandemonium. Calls began flooding in at home with the same alacrity with which I insatiably consume paneer in restaurants. “Rahul (that’s my moniker at home), you’ve done it!!”
“Beta Rahul, when are you coming to my house?”
“Rajat, where’s the party, dude?”
Well, I was very appreciative of the accolades I was getting. It was extraordinarily pristine for me because I’ve never been appreciated for anything I have done in life. I have been such an asshole in the way I have spent mine because I considered life as something which is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique and not too much imagination. Existence is painful, nasty and short... in my case it had only been painful and nasty.

But then, as time moved on, it suddenly dawned upon me – Who the fuck is on the other side of the line?? I have far-flung relatives who I haven’t met for years, if not, forever; telling me what an eligible bachelor I have become after having pulled off the world’s toughest entrance exam for any university – the IITJEE and crossing the threshold of one of the most coveted engineering institutions God’s green earth has to offer. These friends who antagonized me with their presence all through my younger years now want to kiss my ass because I’ve become this model millionaire who is now a class apart from the rest because of this recently inherited title of ‘King of Science’. Oh and there’s a flipside to this whole debate as well. My really close friends, as in the bum chum types, now see me in this new light. They think considering I am going places, I will be disregarding my roots and just move on in life without them. Some don’t even take the trouble of calling due to phony inferiority complexes. Whenever I’m in conversation with the remnants, they’re like - “Fodu, kaisa chal raha hai?” Well, first things first, I wouldn’t mind the title of being called a Fodu. Well, having said that, this categorically pisses me off because I’ve been titled as something which I legitimately am not.
The other day I was at a friend’s birthday merrymaking. I introduced myself as a simple guy, reasonably with both feet on the ground. When I was asked where I studied, I riposted, with a smidgen of vacillation – Aerospace Engineering, IIT Bombay. Well, I didn’t really brace myself for the music that was to follow, even though the reflection of what they later alleged was somewhat tongue in cheek when one comes to think of it. A guy, Mayank declared that these fucking IITian guys are so despo, they letch at guys letting their imagination run riot to the tainted prospect that they are actually chicks; as there aren’t any at the IIT’s. No chip on his shoulder from me; because he’s one great guy. But I am rather a tad confused, more than gnashing my teeth on this stupid crap! Is the IITian species desperate, perverted or both!!

After IIT has happened, it seems to me that - All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed. Why doesn’t the Almighty or whoever is up there, give a flying fuck about preparing us humans to endure this fickle and capricious world. Lovers hate me, haters love me. My contacts eschew me and far-off associates who I don’t give a rat’s ass about approach me like I’m some overnight celebrity. I was this conventional guy minding his own business going about his droning life like anyone else. And now, the perspective of all and sundry has so dramatically transformed that I wonder, whether this one “faux pas” called IITJEE has washed away my very own identity into the depths of despair. May be I should realize, that life is not a static thing. The only people who do not change their minds are incompetents in asylums, and those in cemeteries. Or maybe that life is full of disappoinments, and that I am full of life already! Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.

Chalo, I’m signing off for now. Last night the creative juices were flowing but today I am merely a vast wasteland of random thoughts.