2 States

I am not a big reader of books, but still I dare say that there’s something about Chetan Bhagat’s books that keeps me reading until the end, without wanting to stop. I like real stories or stories which can be imagined to be real. Chetan’s books have a common trend, his style of writing, which is in first person. The best thing about this is, you start imagining yourself to be the character the author is playing. And the realistic story only helps!

2 States is about a love story which starts at IIM A, between two people from different and contrasting states, Punjab and Tamil Nadu. The author contrasts the two states in each and every walk of life, the customs followed and even very small things which shows how observant he is and the great care that he has taken to mention tiny details. It is about how it is not enough if a girl and a boy love each other in India, to get married.

The author mentions his motive behind writing the book, which is very novel. He asks the very basic question – why do people in India consider the state ahead of the country? His dream is to see an India where there is no discrimination and pre-conceived and wrong notions between people of different states.

The book is best described by this part of the synopsis:

“In India, there are a few more steps:

Boy loves Girl. Girl loves Boy.
Girl’s family has to love boy. Boy’s family has to love girl.
Girl’s Family has to love Boy’s Family. Boy’s family has to love girl’s family.
Girl and Boy still love each other. They get married.”

This is best described in the scene when Krish is with Ananya’s family in a restaurant in Chennai and he proposes to not only Ananya, but the whole family for which he gets not one, but 4 rings! And they pick a ring each one by one. This is also the most hilarious scene in my opinion.

For those who are wondering whether to read this book or not, after the author’s third book “The 3 Mistakes of My Life”, which I have not read by the way, my suggestion is: go ahead and read it.

DAE Interview, Kalpakkam

I had been called for the interview for the post of engineer SC by DAE in Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research (IGCAR) Kalpakkam. I had applied for DAE through my GATE score. I actually had no plans of applying and did not even know about the opportunity, but my friend, Manish,  in NIT Durgapur had initially thought of applying and had made a draft  and later decided against applying. So just casually said that he had to cancel the draft then. Then I got to know about the fact that if the GATE score is above 340, we would be called for the interview directly, without us having to write the entrance exam. So I decided to go ahead and apply.

Then  one fine day came an interview call letter when I was sitting at home, wondering what to do next. My interview at IISc was just 1 week away. When the letter came and I got to know that I would get the Travel Allowance for the interview, I decided that I will attend the interview. It was on 6th July. I had booked a ticket in SETC from Bangalore, directly to Kalpakam. I had not booked the return ticket as they had mentioned that we may have to stay back for an extra day if we are called for the medical test and I had to meet a few of my friends and seniors in Chennai. I left home at around 8pm on 5th, Sunday. I caught the bus from Shantinagar bus stand at 9.30 and reached Kalpakam at 5.30 AM in the morning.

I did not know the name of the stop and I asked the conductor to tell me which stop was nearest to the guest house, but he never told me anything as I could not speak Tamil, apparently. Then I got down at the last stop, and took an auto all the way back. While I was traveling in the auto, I could see the sea beach which is inside the campus itself. The place is really beautiful, the campus is green and really well maintained. I just liked the place for its cool breeze, its beach, calm and pollution-less environment. I even made up my mind that if I got through in the interview, I would definitely work for DAE, there’s nothing like working for such institutions and serve India in that way.

I reached the guest house, had to wait for a half an hour as nobody had arrived at the reception. I met one more candidate who was from Kurnool and he had arrived some 1 hour ago. After the receptionist came, we were given two adjacent rooms in the officers Hostel just next to the guest house and were told to be ready for the interview by 8.30 am. Then we took some time to get ready, had breakfast in the mess, and started studying a bit (final moment preparations always work for me).

Then we went for the interview at 8.30 and saw that people had already turned up. There were around 60 of them. We were given a few form to fill and then we were given an interview sheet which had our serial no in the panel where we were giving our interview. Mine was CSE panel and the serial no was 7. There were around 20 people each from ECE, Mech, and a few other branches. But only CS had just 8 candidates on that day. So I started thinking that the chances are quite good. As I was 7th, I was expecting my turn to come by lunch time.

Then started the wait. The CSE panel interviewed each candidate for upto 1 hour! I was thinking whether I had the content to speak for 1 hour. It was 12.30 and we were asked to go for lunch and collect the TA from a room in the guest house itself. I came back again at 1.30 and started waiting again. I had met the person who had serial no 6 in CS panel. He was called at 3, and I was ready for my turn next. I was called at 4 and was told to wait outside the room till the panel called me inside. I was expecting the call at any moment, but again I just kept on waiting and finally my turn came at 4.30. I was almost sure that he was through. And yes, he definitely was as the clerk went and gave him the medical slip to appear for the medical test and he was immediately taken the medical unit!

I had prepared for only two subjects: OS and Automata. We had got to know that the panel was asking the candidates for 5 subjects! I was asked to write down 5 of my favourite subjects. I put down the 2 subjects and asked them if its really necessary to write the names of 3 more subjects as I had not prepared for them at all. They were prompting the names of a few subjects, but I went on and wrote DBMS, C++ and Data structures.  I answered the OS and Automata questions confidently and the rest, I tried hard to recollect and blabbered something.

Finally, it was an hour long interview and I was waiting for their decision in the lobby. They took more time than they usually took. I thought that I had created a lot of confusion in their minds, and so they were having a long discussion to decide if was to be selected or not. Finally, the next candidate was called and I knew that I was not through. I went back to room, kept the file, changed to casuals and was off to the beach, alone! It was a great evening, the sea waves had started reaching their heights, I could see a few boys playing volleyball and was told that a considerable part of the beach went under water after the Tsunami. I made a few more friends in the beach who had given their interviews as well. We all roamed around in the campus for a while and went for dinner. One of them was from Dharwad and we made plans of going to Mahabalipuram and then to Chennai as he had his train from there and I had planned to go there to see my senior from college, who is working at Wipro, Chennai.

I woke up at 6 in the morning, got ready and woke up Harsha and Santosh. We had planned to leave by 7, but we left at 7.30, returned the keys to our rooms and paid the bill, which was Rs. 40 per day and went to the bus stop. We caught a bus to Mahabalipuram (which the locals call by the name

Mamallapuram), reached there by 9 and went to the Shore Temple first, with all our luggage. That was the worst part of the trip, we had to carry our luggage all around the place in Mahabalipuram as there was no cloak room and none of the shopkeepers were ready to keep our luggage for a while, which is understandable! The shore temple, which has been struck by cyclone and reconstructed is a small structure by the carvings on the pillars are great. And its proximity to the sea and the peaceful environment there really made it hard for us to leave, we were just sitting there enjoying the breeze and the serenity of the place. We then hired an auto rikshaw and went to the 5 Rathas, inspected the structures there and returned to the bus stop. We had breakfast there and wondering what to do next. As they both had to go to the railway station in Chennai and I had to go to my senior’s (Rajendra) place, we decided to split and I took the bus to Adyar, where my senior lives. I reached at around 1 and asked Rajendra for directions. I reached his house and a sleepy Manish (Rajendra’s roommate who was working in the night shift in IBM) welcomed me and showed the way to kitchen, where lunch was ready and went back to sleep. I had lunch, watched TV for some time, read the newspaper and slept.

After two hours of sleep, I woke up and saw that Manish was getting ready for a cup of chai, I accompanied him, we talked about IT companies, engineering colleges, working abroad and what not and came back. Rajendra arrived at 5.30 and I was happy to see him after 1 year. His other roommates arrived and we were talking for some time. Then, Rajendra had planned for dinner in a restaurant in some IT park (I don’t even remember its name). So, Rajendra, Manish and I left and caught a bus to that place. Manish then took another bus to office. We bought dinner from Mc D. The place is  similar to Transit (Forum), Bangalore. My bus was at 11.30 pm. We were done with dinner by 9. But the bus stand (CMBT) was too far from that place, so I had to leave early. Rajendra came to the bus stop to see me off. Then he took a bus back to his residence. I reached CMBT by 10.30 and still had 1 hour for my bus. CMBT is a big bus stand, I had never seen a bigger bus stand than that and its really well maintained considering the amount of traffic (of buses and people). The bus arrived at 11, I got in and dozed off. It was a Rajahamsa, and felt really comfortable (much more than the SETC bus that I took to go to Kalpakkam). When I opened my eyes, I was at K R Puram bridge and was feeling cold (it happens when you reach Bangalore).

The 3-day trip was great as I got the chance to meet a lot of people, see a lot of places and ofcourse, I gave an hour long interview, which has been the longest and the most technical natured interview that I have ever given!

unset http_proxy

I use ubuntu 9.04. When in college, due to the proxy server there, I had added the proxy to most of the applications that I needed to use behind proxy. I had also set the proxy settings for apt-get and synaptic package manager and they used to work when in the college network.

When I came home, as there is no proxy server here, I removed the proxy settings at all the places I could remember of: (1) In system->preferences->network proxy, (2) system->administration->synaptic package manager, (3) /etc/apt/apt.conf, (4) .bashrc, etc.

But apt-get and synaptic were not working. I searched a lot for the solution and all the results mentioned the above things only. Then I came across this wonderful blog: http://burakdd.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/removing-proxy-server-from-ubuntu-9-04/  and I learnt about this command:

unset http_proxy

which did the trick for me! Now, as I blog, the apt-get update is under progress

I thought that this has to be documented, so here I am!

GScribble

I am posting this message from GScribble, an opensource blogging application in python created by my junior at college, Roshan Singh of IT Dept of NIT Durgapur. He created this application in the summer, as an internship project at Srijan! You can download the source code as well as this application here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gscribble
Congrats on creating this great application dude, continue the good work. You have made GLUG and NIT DGP proud.

Day 5 – Guwahati

We decided the previous day that we were going to scale the peak which was visible from the cantonment. We were ready by 6.30 and an army truck took us to the base of that hill. We had thought that the hill is close by, but it was quite far away and we had to travel quite some distance. Then we started climbing, initially it was fun, we kept racing against each other and some of us even started running as it was not so steep there.

But after some time, we got really tired and our legs started aching. Actually, we had met some army officers the previous night and they told us that its not that difficult and that even they could easily scale the peak. But we never thought about their fitness, the army training that they have undergone, etc. We were not even half way uphill and it was seeming to be an impossible task. There was a small stream of cold running water. We drank some water and filled our bottles for the rest of our journey. We took some breaks and somehow managed to reach the peak! There was a small temple and telephone tower at the top. Paarth was the first to reach, I was second and Patil was third. Alok was not to be seen for a long time. After some 10-15 mins, he arrived quietly.

We could get a beautiful view of the Brahmaputra from there. We clicked some photos and started our journey back downhill. It was such an easy thing to do as compared to climbing the hill, the only thing required was a good grip in our shoes, due to the lack of which Jaideep had a great fall while he was trying to overtake a few of us. But the pain in our thighs was overwhelming, so we all descended slowly. We sat in the Army truck and went back to the cantt. We were very hungry, very sleepy and really very tired already.

On reaching the cantt, we got ready and went to have breakfast. People gulped up 5-6 batoras easily and fell asleep, only to wake up 2 hours later for lunch! We ate some lunch and as planned, left for Kamakhya temple! The journey this time was even more torturous and with the heat at that time of the day, it seemed like an eternity as we reached Kamakhya.

We had to walk for some distance before reaching the temple and as we had passes, we were led to a different entrance. Even there, we had to wait for 20-30 mins. As we were waiting, we saw a group of commandos in the temple premises who were getting ready to escort an Army big-shot. I think he was the head of the North-eastern region, he arrived and left in just a few minutes. The main temple is at a lower height than the temple and we have to go downstairs for reaching the Garbha Gudi. We get only a few seconds there and the temple priests start pushing you to leave. Once we came out of the main temple, we could finally breathe. There were a lot of animals there ready to be sacrificed. This is a tradition in Kamakhya, which is banned in many temples in India.

There was an ATM outside, we withdrew some money for the journey and left the place. Our train was at 10.30 pm (Kanchanjunga Express). We reached Cantt, had dinner and immeditely left for station in a local taxi. We were so lucky that the status of our ticket was RAC, from wait-list! We had atleast a berth each for two people. Four of us were in one coach, the rest were in different coaches. Luckily, Jaideep and I got confirmed seats and the others in RAC did not turn up. The train journey was boring and tiring. As we reached New Jalpaiguri, people without reservation started entering the reserved coaches and that made our journey even more troublesome.

As we reached Burdwan, we barely got out of the train and the train started moving as the doors were really crowded and a lot of people got down there. We went outside and walked all the way to the bus stand with our luggage. We saw a private bus leaving for Durgapur which was really crowded. Then we asked the conductor if we could sit on the top, to which he agreed! It was a nice experience to sit on the bus top (my first time). On the NH-2, with the bus at its top speed, it felt really cool. But we had to be careful not to get knocked off by tree branches when we entered some towns on the way to Durgapur.

We reached Durgapur by 8pm and ordered food from Hotel Tandoor. Food arrived as we took bath and got fresh. Then we started copying the pics to the computer and discussing our successful trip and narrating the incidents to the others in the hostel.