Nostalgia

Here is the post reminiscing the Fouryear transform... presented as random samples of the various trains of thought that take flight with the words NITK Surathkal

First year....coming in tempo traveler with Vinayak (my cuz) along with our cycles.... hey where is that cycle.... wait! I never kept it in the cloak room after 3rd yr, so it was auctioned off. Damn! Back to first year... rooming in room 63 with Ritz (Ritesh) and Gear (Guruprasad)... long discussions with Ritz while gear was AWOL most of the time.... my frst nite-out with Ajay-god writing mech (EME) assignment.... discovering the meaning of competition for the first time ( most of the competition for JEE was faceless )... the disappointments of mess food and the first sgpa... "interactions" with seniors in 2nd sem... the furious incident of the cog at holi-time... addressing 180 odd fellow firsties on the beach... the high of karnataka party... founding (or restarting) IEEE at NITK... first glimpse of the "terror" nicknamed "mom"... generous help of the then final-yr Yashwanth Hemaraj in getting IEEE started... getting the first comp of the batch - my trusted Toshiba... the bonding sessions with Digu and Chindu with the comp... first look at Matlab (both matlabs... for those familiar with my comp) .... meeting the intimidating Abhi the don in g-wing of 5th blk... generally hanging out with batta (utham), vinnu (vinayak), chindu and hiran in batta's room... freshers at Poonja... end of a year... WAIT... academics... PSB - what a great teacher... a first look at the dept and the formidable branch of ECE...the silliness of pjs in chemistry classes... diddling the benches with "art" out of boredom... terror of the endsems revisited with a vengeance...back home to lick my sore "..." and recharge.

Hmm.... second year... hey we're seniors now! where are those pesky juniors... hey slow down hotshot - lets wait till then settle down and get them in the even sem... oh ok...room 10 in 3rd blk.... IEEE - yeah! we started it... lets get it flying.... Be-Tech '07... our best techfest to-date... the many meetings in batta's room (#13)... the idea and execution of EQ in CCC where we had adaptive testing.... getting to know Vijeth the amazing coder during the process... getting prizes like headphones and webcam for be-tech from KT street, Mysore.... the huge success of be-tech... flirting with danger in the form of AEC & EMW classes... waking up with great difficulty to get to class by 8 - only to fall back to sleep due to the soporific droning of GUmesh.... the fun DEC classes by Venki & co... the daunting challenge of signals and systems handled by "mom"... staying back after exams for the SS project with mull-champ (Aneesh)... an inside view of the politics of NITK... Shyam Patwari & Harsha Shastry standing against locos... getting the who's who of final yr politics to 3rd blk TV room and forcing a political debate among them... seeing 7/10 CR victories.... Dha becoming CR... con (Anup) discovering his passion (SMSs) by being the class news broadcaster... the nerds' forced nite out due to missing the last bus back to nitk from mlore after a ridiculously expensive dinner at Poonja... waiting in mlore bus stand all night for a bus back... hopping onto a TN bus and trying to explain to the conductor about our situation and finally managing it with ganja's (Sanjay) assistance.... the amazing buttermilk of Mysore Mess I... getting to know the "cool" Sharath Kaggundi and his deceptive nature - fooled into imagining AEC lab viva being postponed before being sprung upon by PSB... end of partnering with Dha and Ajay with the advent of 2 member lab teams... "greeting" the juniors once we were back for 4th sem... "getting to know them better" whenever power went out after 11pm... discovering that Digu and I have a similar passion for music ; getting to play his guitar.... IEEE being given the responsibility of organising Blueprint - the paper presentation contest - during Engineer 2006... planning the logistics of the review system and getting it done with a whole lot of IEEE members... quaking with other quakers of the wing... the rather trying experience of uP classes... the pro-linux, amd lessons of COA... the amazing squeaking "polymer"... the kewl ARM processors... the well-organised DSA classes of PGM... an easy LIC course under RSB... the depressing disappointment of uP endsem exams... the disaster of DSA endsems... WTF I dropped to 7.5

Relaxing back home with a couple of enjoyable drives in our new Innova to Coimbatore... prepping for 10 days and getting done with GRE with a score of 1480/5.0...

Onto 3rd year.... rooom 248... its effing HOT.... 2nd (top) floor... separated from the HOT sun only by about 6-9 inches of concrete... counting the number of baths with a new unit - baths/week with averages of 2-3... the acute shortage of water..even during monsoon!!! Its raining like hell outside and we dont have water in our taps!... the disappointment of PSB not handling Control Theory... the mockery of a course on Antenna theory... the "innovative" evaluation by Kaggundi... the as-always daunting DSD course by "mom".... NEWS FLASH: NITK GETS INTERNET - ALL HOSTEL BLOCKS INTERCONNECTED BY A GIGABIT LAN... it had to happen 1 week before the midsems - Murphy must have really loved us... the Mlore communal riots a week later and uncertainity of exams adding to the lack of motivation to study... checking the news via daijiworld.com...the the wild theories that "jondy" cant come from Udupi, ergo we dont have midsem... wait! I had forgotten jondy aka JD... the information theory course where the mutual information between any two successive classes was 0 [ it cant be lesser as I(X;Y)>=0]. The reference book, sorry bible by R. Gallager on the subject was brilliant and inspiring... with just a tiny shortcoming...it was meant for PG students - we could not gain anything out of it. Of course one cant not mention the interesting modulus function based seating arrangements for tests and the concept of half attendence. The one truly smart concept in the course was having choices with half weightages in the end sem paper.... discovering the time consuming magic of TV series.... HOUSE ROCKS!!!.... watching Grey's Anatomy and Numb3rs episodes alternately starting from 8pm to 3.30 am continuously... shit! endsems are here... slog in vain trying to "gut" ("mug") 2 line long equations and two page long derivations in antennas and ITC... resist the urge to burn Ballanis (reference book for antennas).... the Control Theory endsem debacle.... you see your future and dreams burning in flames when the grades are out...7.44 - after 2 ABs! Missed AA in economics by 1 mark; lost 1.5 marks in attendance - seems like someone up there does not like me... back to coll with the dawn of 2007 with hopes of turning a new leaf... the skimming of VLSI by Kini... the DSP course with zero expectation after "mom" stabbed our batch.... the great teaching by Sripati in Digital Communitaion...the relaxing Management classes... watch entire House again... watching more movies than ever before... having fun in the Engi Office committee.... endsems fast approaching - I think I can watch House again... endsems are over in a breeze.... whoa! I got 8.83! And AA in DC to boot (my first in a core subj). If only I had BB in DSP (instead of BC) I would have hit my first 9... well, you cant have it all...

Leave NITK in abt 2hrs after the last endsem... Off to Blore in 36 hrs to catch an Air France flight to Manchester, UK... gawk at the beautiful Charles de Gaulle airport... get to Cardiff University... inspired by a very encouraging prof, decide to pursue a PhD after having given up on it as a dream you are not capable of achieving... After a very relaxing, fruitful and life-changing 80 days come back to India... get a flight to Mlore from Blore and get back to NITK directly from the airport...

Yay! Its final year... I am a final yr dude!!! Life just cant get better... decide to ditch placements... eagerly wait for your friends to get placed so that you get job-treats... go back the first weekend after registering for the bare min. no. of courses... come back with your luggage in Omni... go to a couple of treats ferrying 10+ people in your Omni... go back home with admit shenoy (Ashish) Ajay and chapps (Sagar) in the Omni... have fun changing tyres when there is a puncture... come back with a 300GB external HDD... go to more treats... have so many treats in a fortnight that you decide not to have any treats for at least the next 15 days... write a deceptively simple TOEFL exam... decide to take up on your UK Prof's offer for a PhD under his guidance and not apply anywhere else... watch movies, series and documentaries to your heart's content... when bored, work on the final yr prject with Teja and mul-champ (Aneesh)....go on a trip to Jog falls in a rented Qualis...7th sem is over in a breeze... VLSI Systems & Architecture by "mom" is one of the best courses... you get your highest ever grade - 9.37 and are 3rd in class!!!! your Prof says his offer is still valid and will help you out with funds! CLOUD NINE!!! The final sem starts with an abyssmal choice of courses... more competent people give up Engi Tronix convenor position in leiu of GATE and you end up with it.... it is an interesting experience... you are amazed by the dedication, enthu and down-to-earth nature of Sripati during your interaction with him when working for Foxhunt and Symphony... the new fountain is brilliant; although the same cant be said about the guy who sold it... we manage to get though with out any major glitches...my thanks to all who help in the process... come mid-march Ajay n I decide to get our cars here... we drive together from Mysore - Ajay n Takaal (Rakesh) in his Alto and admit shenoy (Ashish) n me in my Swift... we go for a couple of dinners and treats to Mlore and Udupi in our cars; but that is the extent of our much vaulted "trips"... its time to summarize whatever we have done and not done in our final project reports... ganja and admit come to Mysore with me for a couple of days and we see the beauty of Rangantittu bird sanctuary, among other things...with the class and club photoshoots, innumerable farewells and thanksgivings and the ring cermony the entire batch gets "senti"...I'M ALMOST AN ENGINEER...TIME FLIES, DOESN'T IT?.... manage to squeeze in a trip with Ajay, ganja, con, dha and Poonam to Sringeri, Kudremukh & Hornaadu in your trusted Swift...

Whenever you see casual acquaitances of your batch you wonder whether either of you will ever remember the other... you hope that you do not drift apart from your close friends and your buddies... you wish to imagine that you'll all stay in touch a decade later and be well acquainted with each other's families... you dream of starting your own ventures with these brilliant minds and smart technocrats... but the engineer in you (your pragmatic side) tells you that statistically it has a probability of zero... but your heart yells that it is an engineer's zero (a devout student of PSB)... it is a finite non-zero probability close to zero.... there is a small choice of outcomes where these notions may be real...and that is enough to reassure you that you can follow your heart's desires.

Goodbye, adios, sayonara, tata, see ya, farewell, so long, God be with ye, au revoir, auf wiedersehen, alvida.

“Until this moment, I never understood how hard it was to lose something you never had.”

[p.s: I find so many more things popping up in my mind each time I read the above post that it feels like the post just does not do justice to the memories... and I realise that it means that these memories are to be treasured, not put into words. The best way to value these memories would be to get together with friends and recollect these enchanting times many a day in the far future]