THE MIDNIGHT SAGA

To begin with, for all my non bitsian friends, “NIGHT OUT” in the bitsian lingo is a cruel misnomer referring to the all night slogging usually done before a test to prevent the inevitable. Well, for many of my friends out here, it is a way of life but for me the night of 12/13 November, 2009 was the “NIGHT”. The term is a misnomer because everybody usually remains locked up inside their rooms, performing activities that are just the total opposite of what one is actually supposed to do on a ‘night out’. Yeah, the only thing common is that both of these leave you with a ’hangover’. It’s in this hangover and a little jiffy that I am writing this post.

After meticulous planning and tedious procrastination for about a fortnight, I was able to bring together the task of the submission of Petroleum Refining and Petrochemicals (PRPC) assignment and that of submission of the Optimization assignment on the same day..err.. the night. Of course, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude towards my dear friend Kalia (alias Rishabh), also my assignment partner in PRPC, who left no stone unturned in making this possible and providing me with the much needed inspiration and guiding light for a ‘Night Out’.

The PRPC assignment was to be submitted at 2pm while the OT assignment was to be submitted by 8.00 am in the morning. I had had a tough time earlier that day with my Heat Transfer Operations test going in the drain.

To ensure a complete ‘Night Out’ I tactically took refuge in the so called ‘good’ movie ‘Ajab Prem KiGazab Kahani' which turned out to be depressing .Actually in the current stage of my life sans ‘someone special’, I find all such romantic movies very depressing. The ‘Night out’ began with the PRPC assignment which actually turned out to be quite an interesting task.I found the Offshore Drilling Technology particularly awesome and beyond my imagination. Meanwhile I could feel the outside temperature dropping as the cool breeze kept seeping in through the closed window. After completion of ‘stage 1’of the assignment at about 1:30 am, I and Kalia set out for Food King to recharge ourselves.
As we stepped out of our beloved BUDH BHAWAN, it was a different world altogether. The morning (next) fog was just setting in, with a little drizzle going on. My thought reflexively (refluxively for my Chemical Engineering friends), went to the smell of warm ‘Pakoras’ and obviously the would be and yet unknown ‘Pakora banane waali’. With the cool breeze blowing all over, it seemed so surreal. The dosa was awesome, But it was the ‘coffee on the cold night thing’ that made this experience so cherish able that I could not stop myself from writing this post.

After returning it was the same old Optimization assignment once again which had ruined the sleep of the entire 3rd year batch on four previous occasions. Grumbling, I somehow finished the assignment but a load of the PRPC assignment still remained .As the clocked ticked close to 6am, I decided to doze off.
The next thing I remember was this:
OHK!! I have calculated the thermal properties of air at 7.20 am , hmmm…, what if I calculate them at 7.30 am …should still work…but that’s too close to the threshold limit of 8.00 am!!!..Uhhmm… AND Then the THUD on my door, that woke me up.

Well, the deadly combo of assignments proved voluminous enough that I had to forego my lunch for the first time in BITS. Thanks to the morning glass full of coffee that I was live and confused though.

Perhaps for the first time in my Bitsian life, I saw how does 5.00 am look like in the alarm clock. And, did you know, the morning aarti in the Saraswati Mandir is held at 5 am ?? I realized the power of caffeine as a stimulant. Three mugs of coffee are more than enough to keep you awake for the next night and half the other day.
While all of my friends woke up to find the fog in the morning, I slept with it!!!
Although, it resulted in our submission of a 45/300 mark report WITHOUT an INDEX (!!!), this was an experience worth reminiscing, I dare say more than may be a real Night Out (May be because I have not experienced a real one as yet :p).

TRULY 'FLIPSIDING' :OASIS 2K9

FLIPSIDE – when I learnt that this was Oasis this time, I smiled in my usual cynical way. The Posters said “discover your flipside”, ”the way in is the way out” and blah blah blah… Yup, so they are gonna show me my flipside now which I was not able to discover for myself in the last two decades.

The gruesome BITSian test schedule makes fests, especially oasis, a much awaited event in every bitsian’s life. My first oasis (in my 2^nd year) was more of a cultural shock to me. As if the crowd was not from Delhi but Miami. This oasis was a much more needed and hence awaited one.

In my school days, I remember, music was synonymous to the fat harmonium and some undecipherable chants to me. Needless to say, I was miserable at it. The definition of music changed a little during my stay at Kota .There, it was the old melodies being hummed on The “Vividh Bharti “ channel of the AIR, chiefly to drive away the sense of loneliness. Never ever in the wildest of my dreams , had I comprehended that music could be so soul liberating as it was in the shanker -Ehsaan -Loy concert. Dancing to the lovely beats with friends hugging and falling all over is one moment of my bitsian life that I shall cherish forever. As the songs went by, so did my unaccounted anxieties. It was so very therapeutic. It has become so very difficult to find such moments when you can just lose your identity and drift away in a totally different world altogether. I had heard all of these songs ‘n ‘number of time before and never imagined these could produce such a hallucinogenic effect.

This oasis started off for me quite a few days before the inaug(ration).I tried to weave a story out of absurd facts for the event “stokes”. Even after striving for about half a week, I was clueless…and therefore decided to quit. But thereafter participating in “POEM A PIC”, qualifying for the finals of
“COUNTERSTRIKE” and WINNING “KAUN BANEGA PATRAKAR “ gave me a much needed boost of confidence with regards to my writing skill which had been languishing for so long. It was such an exhilarating moment to climb the steps leading to AUDI(torium)’s stage after a gap of about 2 years. After that APOGEE prize in my first year, I had always secretly feared that I might never get the chance to go on the stage again.

This oasis was made special by the persistent demands of my friend Rungata(alias Saurabh) to dance .To which I eventually had to succumb . Initially all the moves that I could think of were basically our warm up aerobic exercises in Hockey. For a shy guy like me, dancing in front of the blackberry lounge was nothing short of rediscovering oneself or rather discovering the flipside of myself.

The fact that Shankar Mahadevan had himself come earlier as a participant leaves very little to be sung in praise of the fest.

This Oasis 2K9 has now become a source of endless nostalgic memories .Kudos to everyone involved in making this oasis such a” flipsiding “ experience!!!