Feelin' (Just A Little Bit...)

For it seems like the first time in my life, I am in possession of something I desired but did not earn.

Strange feeling.

Ain't No Hero

I went to get some new strings for my guitar after breaking my first one yesterday. A decidedly bourgeois activity. A frivolous expense for an frivolous hobby .

A found a music store on the third floor of a building in Darya Ganj, a small oasis in a sea of sweat and grime that asked me to take off my shoes before I entered it.

A teak floor, an air filtered, conditioned atmosphere, bright lights cast over arrays of beautiful painted instruments. I licked my lips as I cast aside my shitty old acoustic and let my fingers run wild over one of the shining, glistening pieces of woodwork.

After I was done in the store, I walked out with a confident strut, arms tucked into my jacket, a guitar slung over my back, feeling more like a jock than ever before in my life.
I walked past people setting cement into cracks, vendors peddling over-ripe bananas, girls and boys returning from school who looked up at me as I walked past.

I felt like an alien, an aberration in this place. So... fundamentally different.

On the footpath I saw a body... torso hidden under a magenta strip of cloth.
A child hidden in a blanket. There was no movement as I walked past. Flies buzzed past and landed on the child's exposed legs.

No one noticed the child lying in the middle of the crowded pathway.

A chilling thought ran through my mind. The boy could be dead, and they no would would know.
No one would care.

He could be dead right now. He isn't moving at all. Why is he lying in the middle of the footpath?

My mind rationalized. 'He's just sleeping, you'll just disturb him.'
But the simple truth was... that I didn't have the courage to pull off the shroud from his body.

I walked past numbly, still stung by the chill the thought had caused. I walked faster.

Two large and well fed stray dogs darted past me and to the body on the footpath. I followed their movement passively. The larger of the two, a massive tawny mongrel eyed the body hungrily. It thought for a moment before its face contorted in an expression of fury and became an array of fangs.

My heard pounded hard. I was too far. The too dogs were barely a few feet away from the child, and I was at about twenty. There was nothing I could do.

The mongrel lunged.

A third dog exploded from behind the body, howling as if possessed by a demon. This one was lean, red and fierce. Only two thirds the size of the other two dogs, it's ferocity made the two fat mongrels leap back to safe distance. The red dog issued a harsh bark. The first too growled back but didn't want to fight, they ran away- gone as fast as they'd come.

I looked at the red dog, the dog turned around and walked away. In the midst of the commotion, the kid in the magenta blanket had woken up. He looked around, scared, confused and still groggy from his sleep.

A woman rushed over to the boy, I assume she was his mother.

I wondered if he knew the animal that had protected him. If it hadn't been for the third dog... things could have gone immeasurably worse.

And all I'd been able to do was stand there and watch.

I swallowed the disgust I had for myself and walked away.

The Placement Tamasha

A large fraction of you must've heard about the flurry of articles about engineering placements, ranging from student from XYZ college gets 70LPA/60LPA/40LPA/whatever to 1900/2000 students placed in TCS, woohoo!

It's mostly the IITs that take centrestage in such discussions, and these discussions take place in the media.

I find this a worrying trend, because the media does not present an accurate picture of the placement scenario. For example. a signnificant fraction of students get jobs on their own/go abroad for further studies, these guys are never counted. Salary figures are heavily distorted by the media before publication as well.

Hell, recently a guy with a 90,000 dollar taxable income made headlines 'IITian gets 70 lakh offer'.

Lets ignore the issue of woeful (optimistic?) journalistic mathematics for now.

Why do we need to know this guy's package? Why do we have to covnert it from dollars/euros to rupees? Why do we have to discuss the salary?

There's a slew of posts about this headline on the net- some congratulations, some IIT jingoism and a lot of bitterness ("Congratulations on becoming another corporate slave" "Stop sending our talent abroad")

Lets take a step back here, since when has a good start to one's career become a national headline?
I have no answers and I shan't waste my time pointing out the obvious.

What I do know is the reason these misleading placement 'headlines' have become more frequent.

I blame NSIT.

They had 1 Schlumberger placement a few years ago and they harped on it like someone had won a nobel prize. The college quickly shot into no.1 position in placements and top 10 slots in a slew of rankings.

Here's the kicker though, Schlum had also picked up people from the IITs/BITS etc (since the company doesn't recruit just 1 guy in a year).
However these older colleges didn't count the Schlum placement abroad as part of their respective placement datasets.

So NSIT skyrocketed in value, parents sent their children there, and all sorts of tamasha ensued, all despite relatively unexceptional placements.

The other colleges are a little riled up now, because they realized that gaming the media goes a big way to determine annual rankings. So we have a grand cockfight with all colleges rushing to reach the lowest common denominator now,

BITS - 8 grads with 40 LPA! 12 in Facebook!!! IITKGP- 70LPA in FBook! IIT-D 30 LPA IN INDIA!!! IIIT-H 60 LPA IN FACEBOOK.

Chalo, what do I care. I'm not getting a job till I start studying.

Arindham Chaudhari

I didn't expect Arindham Chaudhary to write in defence of Radia Dutt et al,

(http://arindamchaudhuri.blogspot.com/)

but in retrospect its only logical. He does hold (several) important stakes in media (which he uses to legitimize himself), He is a fairly uncomplicated kind of attention whore.

It takes balls for this man to come out and comment on other people's ethical standards, he has no fear of glass houses whatsoever.

I don’t quite hate Arindham Chaudhary… I believe he is scum, of course, but also an entrepreneur par excellence, he makes a tidy profit out of flimsy credentials (a gold medal from the college his dad owned), mediocre intelligence and somewhat bland writing skills.

He makes millions out of a ‘university’ that isn’t recognized in India, that prospers by duping its students to pay several lakhs for a piece of paper- a "college" that lies through its teeth about itself in every forum imaginable, boasting of some of the least qualified graduates in the country, and whose staff has alienated recruiters everywhere, earning the hallowed title of 'worst brand name in Indian education' in HR circles.

And he's a multimillionaire 'expert'.

It's amazing.

No one can monetize mediocracy as well as this guy can.

I salute this man for his spirit, a man of conviction, he knows exactly what he wants and goes out to get it.

I can only stand in awe of his unstoppable desire to drag this nation through the mud, as long as he can get a buck out of it.

It's pains me greatly to be forced to undermine you in every little way I can, Sir.

Sorry sir, I just don't like your ponytail.