Sudipta's Life

I have gone into a little introspective mode these days. So the few posts from hereon, that appear profoundly philosophical to me might actually show you how much drab and crap a bored soul can actually produce. Well, disclaimer done! So here I go: I must give you a little background behind this thought. The first time I had thought about this was when I was in Class 5 or 6 I think. It was someone's marriage or some occasion of a get-together... and like all other kids, I was generally running around with the others. After some time, seeing us unruly kids around, someone asked us to carry baskets of fruits, brass utensils, etc. --- in general things that were going to be needed for the puja , from the house to the place where the ceremony was being held ( mandap , if you know what I mean). When we reached there, we came across this aunty who was perennially angry with the world. The only way she could speak was by shouting, and always seemed flared up over the slightest excuse. Any...

I have been thinking... we consider ourselves the educated and thoughtful section of the population. Therefore, we tend regard votebank politics, shrewd selfish politicians and little personal gains as our pet terms whenever we enter the 'elite' discussions. And I wonder, how do these people get so demonised? How exactly do people like you and me, who talk all the politically correct things, do things as subtly evil as Mr. Arjun Singh is up to? The reason lies in things deeper than what meets the eye. Lets consider this: you are walking down the road and spot a wallet lying somewhere. Inside, there is a hundred rupee note and the name, address and telephone number of the person who (presumably) owns it. You don't know this guy, you've never met him. So, will you go and return the wallet or are those rupees just God-sent money for you? Close your eyes... no-one, really no-one knows about it. Will you return it? You will? Good! Lets increase the odds a bit. There is, inst...

"Bus kuchh kilo ka sawaal hai.. abhi to mai jawaan hoon" Those lyrics, probably, were written after the guy saw me somewhere. Just a few kilos.. thats all!! They make a difference between me reaching the end of a little dash full and active and me reaching the end of a little dash all huffing and puffing and wishing that the world would stop for a few seconds and let me catch my breath. I actually do not feel myself to be so, shall we say, "endowed", in my mind. It just comes back to me when I try to get in those trousers, when I tuck my belly in and hold my breath, or when I look at myself in the mirror. A friend just told me, "You look like someone familiar every time I meet you... you kind-of blow up every time". And it was a lady :(( Well, yes, things were ok till the time I was being told this by friends. I used to be cursed constantly when my roomies were forced to share a seat with me on the office bus... one guy almost always held on to whatever wa...

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 ...