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Regular readers, don't get the wrong idea. This post is not about a Tuxedo. This is the journey of a different kind of Tux - Tux the penguin on my desktop. In a rare departure from non-technical topics, the software guy in me has woken up on a weekend and prompted me to type a slightly techie topic.
Ever since I started using computers, MS Windows based desktops have been around. The nerdy command line was fast losing favor among the fast increasing computer user base. Thus as I was familiarizing myself with computers I found myself at the beginning of a war of words between the command line nerds and the newbie mouse button mashers. A little over a decade later, GUI based OSes have taken over the world.
Over the years I have started to see MS Windows as an OS that is designed to suck out any ounce of available performance from your computer and make the snail proud of its speed. No matter how good the hardware is, every new version seems to require better hardware to deliver about the same apparent performance as its previous version. Of course my claim is debatable and MS loyalists will be quick to point out several arguments and baseline test results against my argument. This argument and then the additional costs of security with Windows have led me to look at other options for my home PC.
Thus over the years I always have had a dual boot on my home desktop with some or other flavor of Linux as the other OS. Unix and Linux are favorites among the aforementioned command line nerds. They will point out quotes like "Unix is simple. It just takes a genius to understand its simplicity". Its this kind of trash talk during college days that prompted the wannabe nerd in me to install my first Linux OS, even as I was still figuring out the difference between DEL and SHIFT+DEL on Windows.
The first install of Red Hat Linux (RHL) was full of problems. My video card wasn't really supported and my 17 inch monitor considered too large. After several reboots, and hours of browsing through hardware manuals and manually entering settings such has supported video modes, horizontal sync frequency etc... I finally got it working. To my disappointment after installing Linux and login I couldn't do much more than say playing Tetris or learning shell programming. Doing anything useful such as checking mail, browsing internet, editing documents took a lot of work. Most configuration was not obvious. Open source applications were there but they left a lot desired as compared to the Windows counterparts. Besides most popular PC games (with exception of Quake II) only worked on Windows. So with computer games as my prime hobby most of computer time was spent gaming on the Windows machine.
An interesting thing about Linux is that a lot of software is built to not just work via command line, but be even efficient about it. The most famous is perhaps the cryptic but quite efficient vi. Of course after all these years I still haven't figured out vi and still end up spending more time if I edit using vi then any other GUI based editor. The one command line tool, I liked though was a media player (sorry guys can't remember the name) that could be started via command line and run completely in the background with a nice playlist of file locations and shuffle mode (long before iPod shuffle popularized that way of playing music). In a time when the popular Windows media player or Winamp tended to hog the minuscule 32 Mb ram, a command line player that didn't slow down the computer was a pleasant surprise.
Over the next few years I tried a few other flavors of Linux as well. The noteworthy one was SUSE because of a much user friendly install than RHL. Of course RHL also improved a lot and became a lot more user friendly with every version and I had gotten comfortable with the apps packaged with RHL. So RHL continued to be the favored Linux. Win 98 the dominant OS then was full of crashes, the famous blue screen and very vulnerable to viruses and trojans. Linux on the other hand almost never crashed. There number of known viruses was almost ZERO. So basically I felt quite secure as I worked with the Tux.
College ended and I joined my first big job. I moved out of my home town and bid good bye to my dearest PC. For the next few years I didn't really have my own PC to screw with and thus came a long break in my journey with the Tux. A journey where I did learn to find my way around a Linux command shell. I had learned the value of patience when trouble shooting seemingly silliest of issues. I hadn't turned into a command line nerd, but had certainly gained some comfort with the keyboard. These linux /unix skills worked as a pretty neat side effect later in my job as a software engineer. Guess the journey with Tux had its benefits after all.
Showing posts with label RAIT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RAIT. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Sunday, December 04, 2011
The Attraction of Cacophony
I happened to watch the movie Rockstar last week. While the reviews for the movie have been in extremes, I was quite positive about this movie and it lived up to my expectations .... The sound track was quite apt and somewhere in the middle I found myself head banging to the tune of "Sadda Haq" ....The immediate next moment I was full of nostalgia .... Suddenly I felt like life had rewound more than a decade to college days....Having momentarily relived that moment, I think it is perhaps apt to pen down that memory.
The source of this memory is the RAIT (my college) festival called "Akarshan" (means Attraction in Hindi).
My first memory of this festival is during my "FE" days. It was the second semester - usually full of a lot of events and among them was the indoor festival Akarshan. A few hand made posters adorned the walls announcing the festival and inviting budding singers/ musicians or for that matter anybody even willing to try their skills (or lack of it) was welcome.
One fine evening I heard sound of music (mostly drums and guitar) emanating from the basement. I followed the sound into the SUC (student union council) room. The room was full of budding singers and a few musicians willing to play the available instruments (keyboard, drums, guitar and I think there was a tabla).
The beauty of this festival was it didn't matter whether you were trained to sing, had raw talent or a bathroom singer (yours truely). There were no real selections or restrictions for the performance. All you had to do was pick a song of your choice, sing it in and hope that you synchronize with the instruments.
In some time, I too got a chance to make an attempt. Till that bathroom melody (read cacophony) was my specialty and I'd even memorized a few songs entirely.
Thus I tried singing one of those songs. Couple of attempts and the musicians (who if I may mention, were already tired of putting up with other bad singers for hours) gave me a look indicative of "please synchronize" with the music. One helpful senior took me aside and attempted to give me a crash course into the concept of notes and pitch etc ... obviously falling on deaf ears. A realization soon dawned that evening when I taped myself and played it back. I was downright cacophonous to my own ears. Still I was happy that other FEs and my friends had gone ahead and tried their voice and were scheduled to sing on the big day.
A few days passed and the big day arrived. It was a Friday and by mid day, most lecturers were pretty lax. The stage was laid out. Right at the entrance of the college building was an open area from where one could look straight up to the roof. On four sides of this area were stair cases and walkways leading to the various labs and classrooms. The stage was laid out in such a way that anybody could view it from the stair cases or railings of the walkways. I looked at the stage and the area around it and wondered how the whole bunch of students ( I guess all 4 yrs of Engg accounted nearly a 1000) were going to fit in that stage.
Nevertheless the excitement was sinking in.
By 3pm, most lectures had either finished or called of lectures. Some of the older Professors were seen rushing out in hurry. A look at them and it felt like they were fleeing away from inevitable disaster. The seniors were seen scavenging for old notebooks, journals and any useless paper that they could lay their hands on. The paper was swiftly torn to shreds. I was wondering what was going on. An hour passed by and I realized how the whole bunch of students managed to watch the show. Every inch of the railing had some one leaning on it. Every stair had some one standing on it. Benches were pulled outside classrooms to make up seats. In short within a span of an hour, the whole college building was converted into a mini-stadium with stage at its center.
As the orchestra and host of the day were still checking the instruments, the crowd started shouting "Start the F***ing music". The sheer reverberations of so many abuses demanding music made the place seem like hell rather than a college. No wonder those older profs had run away. It would take a strong heart and some serious talent to silence this raging crowd. The next few hours were a generous mix of soulful music and heavy metal, melody and cacophony, Indian and western.
Every singer was greeted with a bunch of paper balls aimed at his mouth as soon as he opened it to sing. If the announcement said that the singer was an FE, then the wrath was even worse, as a bunch of abuses tried to silence him/her (mostly him - engg college has few girls and even fewer girls who dare to sing). Even the abuses were hurled in unison and there was a certain tune to Ma********* ... Bhe**********. The orchestra should be appreciated, as despite the frenzy around them, they supported even the most cacophonous singers who dared to sing.
Quite a few singers were pretty good and every good singer was soon enough met with a sing along from the crowd. The better singers were appreciated with "Once more".
Standing there among the crowd gave a feeling of being in a mini concert. I wasn't into Rock music at that point of time but this yearly concert served as my initiation into the world of rock. Soon enough I could rattle out a few names from my mouth. Likes of Eagles, Pink Floyd, Bryan Adams, Metallica, Nirvana, Def Leopard (to name a few) were among the favorites. I learned to let loose by head banging and swaying arms to soulful tunes. Any singers who sang some of those songs well were highly appreciated. Some even earned bows from the whole crowd and thus this little concert even had a fair share of local celebrities. I remember one fellow blogger (writes a blog by name Dirtscapes) was renowned for his rendition of the Eagles classic "Hotel California".
As I end this little blog post I would like to mention a particular memory. I was an SE (second year engineering), and during this festival one FE had sung A.R.Rehman's hit "Aye Ajnabee" so well that he not only became a local celebrity (earned bows and once mores) but was one rare FE to have been known by seniors by his real name (Vishal) instead of the collective name FE. That was a rare feat. But as bad luck would have it, he soon suffered a terminal illness. I don't when exactly but at one point of time this guy was in need of an operation and we learned that the family couldn't afford it. A fund was started by students and every one was putting their hard earned pocket money into a little box. All people knew was their beloved singer was in need of it. I don't think the money eventually helped and left the whole college mourning the loss of a rare singer. Incidentally I share my first name with this fellow and even though I did not know him personally, I would like to dedicate this post to him ... Simply for those 5 minutes when he managed to give the whole crowd a soulful experience with his singing abilities. May his soul rest in peace.
The source of this memory is the RAIT (my college) festival called "Akarshan" (means Attraction in Hindi).
My first memory of this festival is during my "FE" days. It was the second semester - usually full of a lot of events and among them was the indoor festival Akarshan. A few hand made posters adorned the walls announcing the festival and inviting budding singers/ musicians or for that matter anybody even willing to try their skills (or lack of it) was welcome.
One fine evening I heard sound of music (mostly drums and guitar) emanating from the basement. I followed the sound into the SUC (student union council) room. The room was full of budding singers and a few musicians willing to play the available instruments (keyboard, drums, guitar and I think there was a tabla).
The beauty of this festival was it didn't matter whether you were trained to sing, had raw talent or a bathroom singer (yours truely). There were no real selections or restrictions for the performance. All you had to do was pick a song of your choice, sing it in and hope that you synchronize with the instruments.
In some time, I too got a chance to make an attempt. Till that bathroom melody (read cacophony) was my specialty and I'd even memorized a few songs entirely.
Thus I tried singing one of those songs. Couple of attempts and the musicians (who if I may mention, were already tired of putting up with other bad singers for hours) gave me a look indicative of "please synchronize" with the music. One helpful senior took me aside and attempted to give me a crash course into the concept of notes and pitch etc ... obviously falling on deaf ears. A realization soon dawned that evening when I taped myself and played it back. I was downright cacophonous to my own ears. Still I was happy that other FEs and my friends had gone ahead and tried their voice and were scheduled to sing on the big day.
A few days passed and the big day arrived. It was a Friday and by mid day, most lecturers were pretty lax. The stage was laid out. Right at the entrance of the college building was an open area from where one could look straight up to the roof. On four sides of this area were stair cases and walkways leading to the various labs and classrooms. The stage was laid out in such a way that anybody could view it from the stair cases or railings of the walkways. I looked at the stage and the area around it and wondered how the whole bunch of students ( I guess all 4 yrs of Engg accounted nearly a 1000) were going to fit in that stage.
Nevertheless the excitement was sinking in.
By 3pm, most lectures had either finished or called of lectures. Some of the older Professors were seen rushing out in hurry. A look at them and it felt like they were fleeing away from inevitable disaster. The seniors were seen scavenging for old notebooks, journals and any useless paper that they could lay their hands on. The paper was swiftly torn to shreds. I was wondering what was going on. An hour passed by and I realized how the whole bunch of students managed to watch the show. Every inch of the railing had some one leaning on it. Every stair had some one standing on it. Benches were pulled outside classrooms to make up seats. In short within a span of an hour, the whole college building was converted into a mini-stadium with stage at its center.
As the orchestra and host of the day were still checking the instruments, the crowd started shouting "Start the F***ing music". The sheer reverberations of so many abuses demanding music made the place seem like hell rather than a college. No wonder those older profs had run away. It would take a strong heart and some serious talent to silence this raging crowd. The next few hours were a generous mix of soulful music and heavy metal, melody and cacophony, Indian and western.
Every singer was greeted with a bunch of paper balls aimed at his mouth as soon as he opened it to sing. If the announcement said that the singer was an FE, then the wrath was even worse, as a bunch of abuses tried to silence him/her (mostly him - engg college has few girls and even fewer girls who dare to sing). Even the abuses were hurled in unison and there was a certain tune to Ma********* ... Bhe**********. The orchestra should be appreciated, as despite the frenzy around them, they supported even the most cacophonous singers who dared to sing.
Quite a few singers were pretty good and every good singer was soon enough met with a sing along from the crowd. The better singers were appreciated with "Once more".
Standing there among the crowd gave a feeling of being in a mini concert. I wasn't into Rock music at that point of time but this yearly concert served as my initiation into the world of rock. Soon enough I could rattle out a few names from my mouth. Likes of Eagles, Pink Floyd, Bryan Adams, Metallica, Nirvana, Def Leopard (to name a few) were among the favorites. I learned to let loose by head banging and swaying arms to soulful tunes. Any singers who sang some of those songs well were highly appreciated. Some even earned bows from the whole crowd and thus this little concert even had a fair share of local celebrities. I remember one fellow blogger (writes a blog by name Dirtscapes) was renowned for his rendition of the Eagles classic "Hotel California".
As I end this little blog post I would like to mention a particular memory. I was an SE (second year engineering), and during this festival one FE had sung A.R.Rehman's hit "Aye Ajnabee" so well that he not only became a local celebrity (earned bows and once mores) but was one rare FE to have been known by seniors by his real name (Vishal) instead of the collective name FE. That was a rare feat. But as bad luck would have it, he soon suffered a terminal illness. I don't when exactly but at one point of time this guy was in need of an operation and we learned that the family couldn't afford it. A fund was started by students and every one was putting their hard earned pocket money into a little box. All people knew was their beloved singer was in need of it. I don't think the money eventually helped and left the whole college mourning the loss of a rare singer. Incidentally I share my first name with this fellow and even though I did not know him personally, I would like to dedicate this post to him ... Simply for those 5 minutes when he managed to give the whole crowd a soulful experience with his singing abilities. May his soul rest in peace.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Picking up the RAIT attitude
I watched the bollywood hit movie 3 Idiots (again) recently. The movie is about life in the Engineering campus. Being an engineer myself, I ended up relating a lot to the movie and some of its scenes. It inspired the writer in me to start typing a few memories from that life and in the process try and relive the nostalgia.
I passed H.S.C with flying colors (or so I thought) ... but soon enough I realized that my colors weren't flying high enough to land me into the top colleges of Bombay. So I took a tour of New Bombay (or Navi Mumbai as it is called now) the adjacent city to short list alternatives. A look at the vast RAIT campus (the D.Y.Patil campus) in Nerul and I was sold. Soon enough I'd secured admission into this college through the centralized admission system and here I was staring at the notice board in the college trying to figure out how my next four years were going to be. The college for First Year Engineering (F.E as we would be known for the rest of the year) hadn't started yet. I was there just to pay the fees.
Naive and idiotic as I was, I had traveled there all alone. After I was done with the formalities, I was looking for the canteen so that I could have a beverage to quench my thirst. RAIT then was notorious for "ragging" but I did not know that.
As I was wandering about clueless on the ground floor looking for canteen, I saw a friendly looking person with a book in hand. I figured it was good to ask for directions (rookie mistake no 1... never ask a senior for directions on day one). I think the book was really a decoy so that the spotter could trap gullible juniors like me.
This senior politely asked me if I was an FE. I did not understand the significance of this word yet. He even politely explained to me the meaning and then I said yes. Then instead of guiding me to the canteen (thankfully he did not - I learned later that canteen = hell for FEs) he took me to his classroom.
There I was in an FE's nightmare (if not hell). A classroom comprising of about 20 odd Second year (SE) boys spending their free lecture. I was the source of their entertainment. Now the whole infamy of the word ragging dawned upon me. The next one hour was spent with various connotations of the F*** word and S** words being hurled at me. If I thought something was a joke and opened my mouth to smile I was to flush my smile (can't describe the meaning .. but it sort of equates to flushing after shit in the potty). One of the early scenes of the movie 3 idiots shows a bunch of juniors being "ragged" by a bunch of seniors with a customary salute ("Jahapanah tussi great ... tofah kabool karo"). I was also taught a similar (less vulgar) salute (aka RAIT salute). Towards the end of the hour a few girls entered the classroom. I was thanking God for getting me out of this nightmare ... but I was wrong. The Nightmare just got worse for this shy guy (yours truely) cause I used to be a shy guy in front of girls. There was this bold female standing before me. One of the SEs behind me dared me to propose to her. As I was standing tongue tied in front of this female, she instantly pointed to huge Macho guy (for those who know me as a lean guy now, I was a bag of bones then weighing just about 50 Kgs). She mentioned that he was her boyfriend and if I dared say anything he would beat the crap out of me.
The next few moments seemed like an eternity and I was nearly sweating trying to figure out what to say. Finally the SEs decided to pity the nice guy in me. One senior walked with me out of the campus (lest some other SE catches me again).
The long 1.5 hr journey back home was a thought provoking one. I was feeling humiliated and questioning my decision to enter this college. Then I thought,what the hell .. all they did was challenge me to open my mouth and hurled a few abusive words for being silent and shy. The one hour was an eye opener to the challenges of the real world. I was no longer in my neighborhood - the protected kid of protective parents. For my life hereon I would always be on my own in the world. Yes, the parents and well wishers would be there if I needed their help. However I would have to shape my life hereon. There dawned the my first lesson of Engineering - "Be Shameless" (which also loosely translated to be bold, give up your inhibitions etc).
A few days later I returned for the beginning of the first semester. I saw whole army of rats (read as FE). We had strength in numbers. But at the first sight of a cat (reads as SEs and any other seniors), the rats would disperse and hide in their rat holes (FE classroom). There my "be shameless" attitude became my boon. Thanks to my previous brush with seniors I was no longer afraid to hangout outside the classroom. The rest of the FEs were always hiding inside the classroom till evening and then run home. The very seniors who had been a part of my nightmare were now quite chatty with me (to be precise they wanted to sell their FE text books to the new batch). Among my batch mates, I was seen as a bold (aah .. a new meaning of shameless) FE as I would talk to the seniors.
I was even responsible for introducing a few FEs to SEs willing to sell books without first ragging the junior. I even learned (albiet not at my own expense) why the canteen was treated like an FEs hell. I ventured into canteen at lunch time. The canteen was inside the basement, with dull lighting. It seemed like dark dungeon. The smoke and steam from kitchen made it look like the dungeon's furnace. The place was certainly a little more than warm. There was a whole bunch of seniors (like an army of cats) busy with their stuff ...smoking, writing journals, discussing sports, discussing college politics, discussing their subjects, banging benches and also having food. Any single FE caught there would then serve as a source of entertainment for seniors for rest of the day. If one group had to leave the canteen, the FE would simply be passed around to the next group and so on. In that sense, for an FE, the canteen was really hell. Thankfully my previous acquaintances (nightmare) with some of the seniors meant that they
were now quite friendly with me. So if any unknown senior would serve thoughts of messing with me, these friendly guys would come to my rescue.
Over the next month I had metamorphosed, from a shy guy who cared about a lot of things people said to or about him, to somebody who didn't give a damn about things people said about him. I learned to "be myself" and be proud about being that self. This next month was also the month where most FEs dreaded the seniors. All of us in FE did not have our names ... we just had one collective name "FE". If a senior shouted across the floor "Aye FE" it meant run for your life. Of course my early brush with seniors meant that I was unafraid of the seniors or ragging. Towards the end of the month, was the grand FE nite - party thrown by the seniors to all FEs. It was the informal welcome from all seniors to juniors and and end of the period of dreading the seniors. From now on no senior would attempt to trouble this batch of juniors. This was kicked off by some seniors doing the RAIT salute in front of juniors.
Of course the word ragging took a new meaning for us for the next four years. We learned (as Viru Sahasrabuddhe from 3 idiots would say) that "life is a race". Every one in the college would be there ragging us (so to speak). There were the boring lectures where some bad lecturers threatened us into attending lectures with "attendance norms". There were the lab assistants who would make faces at us as they handed out old and crappy lab equipment for the practicals as if they were handing out their life savings. Then there were the term work Submissions at end of each sem, where each of bold and dauntless students were reduced to mowing like cows in the hope that our Term work would be accepted and we would be cleared without the ignominy of KT (aka Allowed to Keep Terms - which I'll explain in my next RAIT blog). That one hour of ragging was nothing compared to the torture that the college staff would put us through over the next four years. To say the least, the very seniors whom we avoided for the first month, were to become our saviors over the next couple of years. They would provide us tips and tricks (besides books, journals and notes) to help tide through the term work submissions and exams.
Its has been more than a decade since my FE status.Almost a decade now since I left my college, I don't remember much of what was taught in my curriculum...The extra curricular stuff though (including that little one hour nightmare) did prepare me for my life thereafter and so far. Alongside the "be shameless" and "be myself", I learned several small lessons over the next fours years that I collectively call the "RAIT attitude" (pronounced Right attitude).
Attention around ragging by both college and law enforcement has increased and they are rather strict. In most colleges FE students need not hide like rats. But I ask, has the ragging really stopped.... I mean the students may have stopped ragging their fellow students. The real ragging by the system and enforcers continues in the name of exams, term work and syllabus. The emphasis is still on theory and mugging than on creativity, innovation and learning.
Signing off this one - hoping that future RAIT students learn a little more than just the RAIT attitude.
PS : For a more funnier account of Joys of being and FE click this link from another fellow RAITian who writes the blog named Dirtscapes
I also thank him for inspiring this blog and in general indirectly influencing my writing style.
I passed H.S.C with flying colors (or so I thought) ... but soon enough I realized that my colors weren't flying high enough to land me into the top colleges of Bombay. So I took a tour of New Bombay (or Navi Mumbai as it is called now) the adjacent city to short list alternatives. A look at the vast RAIT campus (the D.Y.Patil campus) in Nerul and I was sold. Soon enough I'd secured admission into this college through the centralized admission system and here I was staring at the notice board in the college trying to figure out how my next four years were going to be. The college for First Year Engineering (F.E as we would be known for the rest of the year) hadn't started yet. I was there just to pay the fees.
Naive and idiotic as I was, I had traveled there all alone. After I was done with the formalities, I was looking for the canteen so that I could have a beverage to quench my thirst. RAIT then was notorious for "ragging" but I did not know that.
As I was wandering about clueless on the ground floor looking for canteen, I saw a friendly looking person with a book in hand. I figured it was good to ask for directions (rookie mistake no 1... never ask a senior for directions on day one). I think the book was really a decoy so that the spotter could trap gullible juniors like me.
This senior politely asked me if I was an FE. I did not understand the significance of this word yet. He even politely explained to me the meaning and then I said yes. Then instead of guiding me to the canteen (thankfully he did not - I learned later that canteen = hell for FEs) he took me to his classroom.
There I was in an FE's nightmare (if not hell). A classroom comprising of about 20 odd Second year (SE) boys spending their free lecture. I was the source of their entertainment. Now the whole infamy of the word ragging dawned upon me. The next one hour was spent with various connotations of the F*** word and S** words being hurled at me. If I thought something was a joke and opened my mouth to smile I was to flush my smile (can't describe the meaning .. but it sort of equates to flushing after shit in the potty). One of the early scenes of the movie 3 idiots shows a bunch of juniors being "ragged" by a bunch of seniors with a customary salute ("Jahapanah tussi great ... tofah kabool karo"). I was also taught a similar (less vulgar) salute (aka RAIT salute). Towards the end of the hour a few girls entered the classroom. I was thanking God for getting me out of this nightmare ... but I was wrong. The Nightmare just got worse for this shy guy (yours truely) cause I used to be a shy guy in front of girls. There was this bold female standing before me. One of the SEs behind me dared me to propose to her. As I was standing tongue tied in front of this female, she instantly pointed to huge Macho guy (for those who know me as a lean guy now, I was a bag of bones then weighing just about 50 Kgs). She mentioned that he was her boyfriend and if I dared say anything he would beat the crap out of me.
The next few moments seemed like an eternity and I was nearly sweating trying to figure out what to say. Finally the SEs decided to pity the nice guy in me. One senior walked with me out of the campus (lest some other SE catches me again).
The long 1.5 hr journey back home was a thought provoking one. I was feeling humiliated and questioning my decision to enter this college. Then I thought,what the hell .. all they did was challenge me to open my mouth and hurled a few abusive words for being silent and shy. The one hour was an eye opener to the challenges of the real world. I was no longer in my neighborhood - the protected kid of protective parents. For my life hereon I would always be on my own in the world. Yes, the parents and well wishers would be there if I needed their help. However I would have to shape my life hereon. There dawned the my first lesson of Engineering - "Be Shameless" (which also loosely translated to be bold, give up your inhibitions etc).
A few days later I returned for the beginning of the first semester. I saw whole army of rats (read as FE). We had strength in numbers. But at the first sight of a cat (reads as SEs and any other seniors), the rats would disperse and hide in their rat holes (FE classroom). There my "be shameless" attitude became my boon. Thanks to my previous brush with seniors I was no longer afraid to hangout outside the classroom. The rest of the FEs were always hiding inside the classroom till evening and then run home. The very seniors who had been a part of my nightmare were now quite chatty with me (to be precise they wanted to sell their FE text books to the new batch). Among my batch mates, I was seen as a bold (aah .. a new meaning of shameless) FE as I would talk to the seniors.
I was even responsible for introducing a few FEs to SEs willing to sell books without first ragging the junior. I even learned (albiet not at my own expense) why the canteen was treated like an FEs hell. I ventured into canteen at lunch time. The canteen was inside the basement, with dull lighting. It seemed like dark dungeon. The smoke and steam from kitchen made it look like the dungeon's furnace. The place was certainly a little more than warm. There was a whole bunch of seniors (like an army of cats) busy with their stuff ...smoking, writing journals, discussing sports, discussing college politics, discussing their subjects, banging benches and also having food. Any single FE caught there would then serve as a source of entertainment for seniors for rest of the day. If one group had to leave the canteen, the FE would simply be passed around to the next group and so on. In that sense, for an FE, the canteen was really hell. Thankfully my previous acquaintances (nightmare) with some of the seniors meant that they
were now quite friendly with me. So if any unknown senior would serve thoughts of messing with me, these friendly guys would come to my rescue.
Over the next month I had metamorphosed, from a shy guy who cared about a lot of things people said to or about him, to somebody who didn't give a damn about things people said about him. I learned to "be myself" and be proud about being that self. This next month was also the month where most FEs dreaded the seniors. All of us in FE did not have our names ... we just had one collective name "FE". If a senior shouted across the floor "Aye FE" it meant run for your life. Of course my early brush with seniors meant that I was unafraid of the seniors or ragging. Towards the end of the month, was the grand FE nite - party thrown by the seniors to all FEs. It was the informal welcome from all seniors to juniors and and end of the period of dreading the seniors. From now on no senior would attempt to trouble this batch of juniors. This was kicked off by some seniors doing the RAIT salute in front of juniors.
Of course the word ragging took a new meaning for us for the next four years. We learned (as Viru Sahasrabuddhe from 3 idiots would say) that "life is a race". Every one in the college would be there ragging us (so to speak). There were the boring lectures where some bad lecturers threatened us into attending lectures with "attendance norms". There were the lab assistants who would make faces at us as they handed out old and crappy lab equipment for the practicals as if they were handing out their life savings. Then there were the term work Submissions at end of each sem, where each of bold and dauntless students were reduced to mowing like cows in the hope that our Term work would be accepted and we would be cleared without the ignominy of KT (aka Allowed to Keep Terms - which I'll explain in my next RAIT blog). That one hour of ragging was nothing compared to the torture that the college staff would put us through over the next four years. To say the least, the very seniors whom we avoided for the first month, were to become our saviors over the next couple of years. They would provide us tips and tricks (besides books, journals and notes) to help tide through the term work submissions and exams.
Its has been more than a decade since my FE status.Almost a decade now since I left my college, I don't remember much of what was taught in my curriculum...The extra curricular stuff though (including that little one hour nightmare) did prepare me for my life thereafter and so far. Alongside the "be shameless" and "be myself", I learned several small lessons over the next fours years that I collectively call the "RAIT attitude" (pronounced Right attitude).
Attention around ragging by both college and law enforcement has increased and they are rather strict. In most colleges FE students need not hide like rats. But I ask, has the ragging really stopped.... I mean the students may have stopped ragging their fellow students. The real ragging by the system and enforcers continues in the name of exams, term work and syllabus. The emphasis is still on theory and mugging than on creativity, innovation and learning.
Signing off this one - hoping that future RAIT students learn a little more than just the RAIT attitude.
PS : For a more funnier account of Joys of being and FE click this link from another fellow RAITian who writes the blog named Dirtscapes
I also thank him for inspiring this blog and in general indirectly influencing my writing style.
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