NITK Chronicles 2

As baldie wanted to know about the teachers he's missing, i'll come back to my buddies later.

1. "Two truck drivers were arrested in Bihar. Their well-wishers didn't know what to do, so they decided to ask Alex. Alex then called up his good friend Lalu Prasadji and requested him from the bottom of my heart. Lalu Prasadji heard Alex's plea and released the driveres."

2. "There was a snake pit, and some local villagers wanted to remove it but the snakes we were not leaving it. They did all pujas, yet they the snake did not come out. One of them suggested that they go and ask Alex for help. Alex initially refused, but they pleaded him to come, and finally Alex agreed to come. Alex just stood in front of the snake pit and using his psychic powers told the snake to leave the pit. And believe it or not, the snake left the pit."

Fact or fiction? But it surely is entertaining. Meet Alexander Francis Simon D'Souza, or simply Alex, the great man who makes the workshop course in fitting one to remember. He claims to have contacts ranging from Advaniji to Sonia Gandhiji, from Laluji to Murali Manohar Joshiji. He claims credit for the Bosch sponsorship for renovation in his workshop. He claims to have fore-told a girl that she would bee in MIT(turned out to be true apparently) because she asked him why does the drilling machine have threading in that particular shape. But he is one hell of a joy to work under. His quirky tales make the workshop course extremely enjoyable. I doff my cap in his honor, thank you sir for making fitting a truly memorable course.

During the course of the first semester we had to face the prospect of studying chemistry(shit!) for the last time ever(:D). According to Dr. Satish, xplanations in chemistry could be decreed by opinion polls within the class. The structure of BrF3 was determined by us through an opinion poll--not by those idiots in IUPAC.

The other teacher(Dr. R.C.Bhat) was a Hitler. If anyone came a second after him, he would be asked to get out of class by a simple hand gesture of Hitler. Even the always-on-time KD had to face the ignominy for he thought class was at 9 and landed at about 8.57(class began at 8.55). I argued with him over half-an-hour only to increase half a mark in my paper!(though later on I did improve: 5 minutes for 1 mark).

Prof. Nityananda Shetty took over after Satish left and his lectures were really good, but we usually fell asleep during the classes. He was hell-bent on taking class and even took when there were hardly a handful in class. Chem lab was okay, doing titrations everytime, trying to crack the correct sequence of concordant readings according to roll numbers in order to get 20(I think it was every 7th person who got the same). I'm so glad we have no more chemistry.

"Read Euler, read Euler--he is the master of us all!"

"Read books like Kreyzig, not some cheap local bazaar guides like DSC or KSC"

In the first semester, Dr.Shankar's class was one I looked forward to the most. His approach to math was completely different, and we enjoyed that. He just didnt write the formulae on the board and write some solved examples(as our 2nd sem teacher Pratibha did); he would tell us the story behind every curve that he taught or that of the great mathematician who derived a particular formula (simultaneously suggesting some great books on them), or talking to us about the 7 million dollar qustions in mathematics(out of which only 6 remain unanswered today, hoping that one of us would solve one of them): hoping that we would get inspired to do actually learn math(not mug up DSC!). We barely did any problems("Anyone can do problems. Before using a formula it is important to find out the inspiration behind it").

Unfortunately he didnt teach us in the next semester. Some female called Pratibha replaced him and she was horrible. Apart from the afore-mentioned facts, people would walk in half-an-hour late and walk away with attendance(the record I think is 40minutes, got to check up on that). No one could hear what she was trying to say(not even in the first bench) even when there was pin-drop silence. We used to mind our own business--sleep, play bingo/battleship, talk, write records and she never used to do anything. She caught Anees doing his record and this is what followed:

Pratibha: "Are u interested in math? if u are not u can walk out"
Anees(with the comp record open right in front of her):
"yes ma'am i m interested"
(still figuring out the next line in the record)!
Pratibha(no reply, wondering what to say...)

and she just walked away...

We attended class only to meet the minimum attendance requirement. If Shankar was the best math teacher I've ever had, Pratibha was comparable to the worst.

One person who managed to out-do Pratibha in hopelessness was our Electronics teacher Rifat Ara. If teachers ever had an attendance requirement as us students(75%), she would fall short big time. It was rumoured that she always ran off to her native Jammu and Kashmir everytime. Quite possible. She used to bark absolute nonsense in class:

If we ask her where us the circuit she replies "it is hair". She used to teach us something she calls "flip floss"and she tells the guys in our class that their "freakency is very low". She complains abt "people calling her at 1130 in the middle of the night on her personal mobile which is supposed to be used for personal use only". KJ once just asked her what frequency she was talking about and he got blasted. KJ didn't budge and belted her back. One entire period of great entertainment.

Professional communication was taught by one Mrs. Ambika Mallya and Mr.Subramanium(thatha). I DO NOT AGREE with having this course. It was supposed to be a fun class, but i found it to be really really boring. In this course we learnt about the theory of the "7 roadbocks to communication" and all that sorts of shit. She used to teach us by flicking PJs from some text book, claiming that she nicked it off the net. Even her "personal-life anecdotes" were flicked from there. And she expected the same bookish answers from all. If anyone wreote a word different, he stood to lose marks. And if she found out that the student is from Bangalore, she never gave any marks to him and had different barometers to correct papers("If someone else had writtent that answer, I would have given marks. But since you're well-versed in English, i can't give you marks"!)

In this class we began the I DO NOT AGREE CLUB. The members had to wear a kurta when decided by a certain member. The club has only 3 members(Anees, KJ and yours truly) plus Chaitanya. Anees set the ball rolling by refusing to agree to some explanation given by her(the fact that he was busy paying attention in class baffles me). I refused to agree to some method of correction in my paper and argued with her for the entire period(I think I was claiming the poetic interpretation of the english language). KJ picked up an argument about why we all wear good clothes and come to class or something(the final statement of the argument was delivered by KJ: "The reason we wear good clothes, is so that boys want to impress girls and girls want to impress boys. Whether you like it or not, this is a fact and you know it!"). And the common thing about all these incidents is that we were all wearing kurtas when we were arguing.