Sudipta's Life

I was at the table. And he was there, too. And there was a gun, at the middle of the table. There were people all around us, around the table, standing on the top of other wooden tables, chairs and desks all around trying to catch a glimpse of the two of us. And we were here to play Russian Roulette. The rules of the game, I was told, were very simple. There is a revolver and two people, and the gun is loaded in only one chamber. You keep doing turns and pull the trigger at your forehead. The last man standing, literally wins. I don't know why or how I was there. It was like your dreams. When what is happening in the imemdiate vicinity matters and the how or why disappears. The man in front of me was slightly older: 40, maybe. The men around me were a mixed bunch. Their dusty yellow clothes seemed to be splattered with red spots. Some were older. Some even younger than I. And there was a man who was taking bets. His hands stuffed with notes and a small blunt greasy pencil and a pap

"If you have been to Scotland, and haven't gone up north to the highlands," I was told, "then you have not seen Scotland itself!". Now, that was a tall order. Or so I thought, until last month when we went 'up north' for a day-long tour of the Scottish highlands. Thankfully, the worst part was over first thing in the morning --- getting up! Come on, it always hurts to get out of the covers from a sponge bed to get ready for the full day, especially on a weekend. But soon the day started off well, with an early morning start and everybody fully packed and excited about the trip. As soon as we moved out of Edinburgh, we were presented with the scenic greens across the countryside. It was the middle of March, so the snow was just melting and roads were clear and sunny. We were in a bus -- or as they are called here popularly, a coach. The good part about it was the curtained but clear open fiber-glass panes that we had for our windows, but the bad part was

I have been posting on my blog since the last year or so, and learnt how to use email and browse the net in the first year at my engineering college. Until about 2-3 years ago, I was the most net-savvy person in my family of six. As you can understand, telling somebody that I'll drop off an email to let them know about my present hostel address was as good as telling that I'll tie the address to the leg of a pigeon and let it fly. But things have changed since then. For one, my siblings and I are all computer-savvy now and keep in touch through email most of the time. But getting my mom to come to the computer was another story. So, after much persuasion, she joined a course at NIIT, and she became computer-literate, so to say. So I had felt a tinge of ineffable joy when she sent the first email to me. Actually, any letter, phone call, anything from my mother is special. But that email now told me that I could be in touch all the time, anytime! But now something special has hap

This post is actually an article published in the college magazine this week, which I decided to post here, after all permissions from the editor :) So here is the gyaan: Every year, as you step into the final year of engineering, you gear up for that all-important placement. You go through loads of books on aptitude, puzzles, wordlists… and of course, your own course textbooks. After a long agonizing wait, you clear the written test, the group discussions, the interview, and finally your name appears on the list of the select few --- the chosen ones. And you think that finally all that (hard work?) paid off. You are wrong: the story just begins when you think it ends. Before I trail off into the gyaan that I so much love to dish out, let me introduce myself and what this article will be about. My name is Sudipta Chatterjee, and I am a passout from your college, Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology, Surat. I received official confirmation of my bachelorhood in Computer