Now Saarang is organized and run by a ‘core’ group of students. Blessed with the absolute power and authority for 4 days, it is difficult to believe that they exist in flesh and blood on this Earth. These are some activities that you must do, should you become one of the cores (based on observations over the past 5 years).

How a core with his badge looks like

‘Badge’r others: I think, comparing size is a very part of the human nature. Be it the size of our TV screens or ‘you-know-what’s. And cores are no different. To establish that you are the top dog, you have to wear the biggest and weirdest badge of all the organizing committee. And when one badge won’t do the trick, wear another! Nothing stands taller than the pride of hanging 2 hoardings around your neck.

Dance like everyone is watching: Ever had that fetish of dancing in front of a crowd of 10,000 people but were too afraid to do a jig even in bathroom? Well, year after another, Saarang has provided an opportunity for cores to showcase their talent. By occupying the stage with artist during a professional show, you can not only spoil the show for everyone else but also brag later life that ‘people paid to watch you dance’!

Cost of a burger: 50 Rs, Cost of a regular pizza: 120 Rs, Cost of Paniyaram: 20 Rs : Cartoon Courtesy: Bhanu

Cross barricades like a boss: Saarang also translates into painful traffic regulations in insti for innocent bystanders going about in their life. It often leads to travelling 3 km along a convoluted path to cross a distance as less as half a kilometer for mortals. But not if you are the core! All you need to do is flash your aforementioned badges to cut across all check posts, barricades and travel like a boss.

Get famous: They ‘It’s an occupational hazard of being a core to become famous’ and one can not escape it. In Soviet IIT, News don’t make people famous but  famous make the news. With the Saarang news-letter under strong censorship of you, use it the way you want to glorify yourself and forcing others to read it. It is not unusual to spot a matrimonial ad for cores every now and then in the news-letter! Actually, being a core is the 6th way to get a girl in IIT for many, with the possible exception of some (not all) female cores.

These are just a few guidelines. Suggestions and comments are welcome unless you are a core and are pissed off by now. :P

PS: This may seem hypocritical with me being a ‘core-reject’, but… What the hell…

PS2: The tone of this article was sarcastic. No monkeys were eaten while writing this article.

Here, Bike = Bicycle

I am sure you would have come across posters like these wanting us to believe that cycling/running etc. are indeed eco-friendlier  than using automobiles.  More specifically, using fossil fuel powered vehicles, henceforth referred as vehicles. (Poor IC engines seem to have been under criticism from the moment of their conception :P)

In a casual conversation after seeing the ‘Crude Impact’ documentary with Deepak, we touched upon the other aspect of it. Is human power more efficient and in turn cheaper alternative to vehicles?

Here is a comparative analysis (based on some basic data) of energy consumed and costs incurred while running, cycling vs using a vehicle. I have not included a pollution comparison and analysis of energy spent to obtain the food/fuel in respective cases. (Partly not to scare you away and partly because of a lack of enthu. :))

Energy Comparison:

For simplicity, lets compare energy consumption of running at 12 Km/h and cycling at 15 km/h to that of the vehicles. It is actually unfair to do so as the travelling speeds are different (vehicles @ 40km/h vs cycles @ 15km/h) and so are the masses involved but then, humans don’t go faster and cars don’t go slower usually. (We are NOT considering traffic jams. :P)

The figures we have  (for a 68 kg adult) are:

• 27 kcal/km for cycling
• 75 kcal/km for running
• 1050 kcal/km for cars (for 4 persons, assuming 10 kmpl)
• 175 kcal/km for motorbikes (for 2 persons, assuming 60 kmpl)

So just from the energy viewpoint, cycling emerges as a clear winner. What is interesting to note, however is that running and motorcycling take almost the same energy! (With motorcycles being faster :P)

Cost Comparison:

Only Energy consumption figures are useless so long as we don’t know how heavy it is for the wallet.  Taking average prices of mess food (:P) and considering petrol bike/diesel car, this is what we get.

• 0.9 Rs/km for cycling
  

  This may not be entirely true...

• 2.5 Rs/km for running
• 1 Rs/km/person for cars (asuming Diesel cost of 40 Rs/liter)
• 0.58 Rs/km/person for motorbikes (assuming Petrol cost of 70 Rs/liter)

Conclusion:

Please note that this analysis is done only using ballpark figures and should not be used as a standard. I have made many simplifying assumptions which can affect the results. Also, the values calculated for each of the case can vary a lot. Cycling e.g. can be much more tiring and costlier if done at 30 kmph and a Diesel car with 16 km/liter may be much cheaper to run.

That said, I think running is clearly the worst way of travelling if you want to save money. Its a pity that the poor walk more and rich travel more in a car. No wonder that the rich get richer! ;)

Jokes apart, this was a long pending analysis in my mind and the results were startling to a certain extent. (I never thought that running a vehicle would be comparable in prices to human power.) All facts and figures are open to interpretation and I would love to hear more on the same!

The Inconvenient Truth (fondly called as TIT)

To me, this came as a rude shock after the visions shown at the concentration camp of Bansal classes. Hoping that multitude of girls would hover around (me) in IIT, (which happened only once as I took a dump while the housekeeping women cleaned to common toilet) lack of any voluntary interactions by females for prolonged periods had much deep repercussions on me. Diagnosed with IITian Male Syndrome (PMS of IITians) where phrases like ‘What’s up?’ by a girl are capable of forming goose bumps I decided to take things in my own hands. Pun not intended, period.  Instead of wasting resources in filing a ‘Class Action Lawsuit’ against the coaching, I decided to find some ways to improve non-existent odds of guys in dating someone while at IIT.

Like everyone, I started with the Wikipedia, which did not have an article on it. So, with some help from above mention fatty Samadhi, I stalked the crap out of couples in the campus. Subtle observations were made over 5 years and published. Here’s an abridged set of tips from what is now a research paper titled “Chasing chicks before chasing CAT while at IIT”.

A portrait drawn in 1600s indicating women's obsession with guitar since historic times

After observing typical behavioral response from girls vs the activity of the sweat glands, we found a conclusive correlation. (see graph above) Not sweating implies on giving up on any physical activity (which made my friend very glad) in presence of girls or face severe repulsion. Of course, this unlike other tips is not sufficient but a necessary condition to get laid and any weight put on by the lack of moving your butt thereof works against you too.

Which one of the following lines do you agree with?

1. I don’t believe in religion.

2. I don’t know if God exists.

3. I don’t care if God exists.

4. I don’t believe in God.

You are an atheist only if your answer was 4.

If you don’t believe in religion, you are just not religious. If you don’t know or don’t care if God exists, then you are agnostic. There is a huge difference between saying, ‘I don’t care if God exists, I don’t believe in him’ and saying, ‘I don’t believe in God.’

In recent years , the number of people claiming to be atheists has risen. The reasons remain dubious though. How many of them are truly atheists? Your guess is as good as mine.

When youngsters claim to be atheists, their parents try to discourage them, send them on guilt trips, force them to attend religious events ( I know a friend who was forced to chant verses from the Gita in his missionary school when he told his parents he wasn’t a believer.) and if all this fails, then they dismiss it as a rebellious phase.

Being an atheist is not a walk in the park. For one, people don’t take you seriously if you are young. If God forbid ( pun intended), you are taken seriously, then you have to face disapproval from all sides. Parents, people and general society. They treat you with a condescending attitude and say ‘May God bless you’ to you whenever you meet. Not to mention feeling like an outcast during each and every religious festival.

I almost agree with this line I came across on Facebook : ” Being an atheist today, is like being homosexual in the 1980s”.

But this is just the others’ reaction. What about you yourself? Can you accept the fact that there is no superior being watching over you? Can you live with the fact that there will be no Judgement Day? No Big Brother to right all wrongs? No 72 virgins waiting for you? People  like the idea of faith. They need something or someone to believe in. To depend on. God is the most common object of dependence for people. Here is an excerpt from a Mitch Albom book which I read recently.

The rabbi is talking about his doctor, who was an atheist.

“I had a doctor once who was an atheist.”

“This doctor, he liked to jab me and my beliefs…(irrelevant stuff).”

“Anyhow, one day, I read in the paper that his brother had died. So I made a condolence call.”

“So I go to his house, and he sees me. I can tell he is upset. I tell him I am sorry for his loss. And he says , with an angry face, ‘I envy you’.

‘Why do you envy me?’, I asked.”

“‘Because when you lose someone you love, you can curse God. You can yell. You can blame him. You can demand to know why. But I don’t believe in God. I’m a doctor! and I couldn’t help my brother!’.”

“He was near tears. ‘ Who do I blame?’ he kept asking me. ‘There is no God. I can only blame myself.’ ”

This is worse than an unanswered prayer. It is far more comforting to think God listened and said no than to think that nobody’s out there.

Because of religious warfare, people have started renouncing God instead of renouncing religion. God might not be a creation of religion. Religion might have been created to define God. There again is the difference.

I think people cannot be trusted to do the right thing. That is why we don’t have anarchy. People don’t understand the concept of        live and LET LIVE. That is why we have religion. I think religion was invented with the aim of guiding the people to understand the difference between right and wrong through the medium of God who is portrayed as an omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent being. Earlier people feared Him and did what was said in the scriptures. Now the purpose of religion has changed. It’s interpretation has changed. It has become a factor of your identity. It has become a cause of war. To top it all, science came in to put God’s existence in doubt.

Food for thought? Courtesy: Very Demotivational Posters

But you know what this means? It means the people who introduced the concept of religion were the original atheists. Ironic eh?

P.S.: I just wished they’d had some foresight.

Green Car? Not unless its pained green...

Electricity is very deceptive. Any person driving an electric car would never see a trace of harmful gas escaping from the car, soothing his conscience and helping him condescend others around. It is for this very reason that Electric Vehicles are considered ‘green’. There are no end use/tailpipe emissions (the consolation that we are not complete retards comes as a relief. :P). However, electricity is not naturally available in mines or rigs but is generated. In India, it is generated by burning coal, oil, coal, coal, natural gas, coal and of course, coal; other sources accounting for one-third of production. And every gram of these fossil fuels burned release  CO₂ into the atmosphere along with other lecherous pollutants.

Following this line of thought would lead us to the inevitable conclusion that both Petrol/Diesel powered vehicles (PDPV) and Electric Vehicles (EV) emit gases we do not like. So, which one of them is really better? Engines powering PDPVs work at overall net efficiency of ~20%, but power plants producing electricity have 35-40% efficiency! At first glance, EVs seem to have a head start but consider the following facts:

• Petrol/Diesel are cleaner sources of energy than the assortment of fuels used to produce electricity in India.
• Only 40% of the electricity generated ever makes it to end users. Rest is lost in transmission, theft (illegal jacking of cables for marriages) and misc unaccounted losses (read politicians. :P).

Combining these two facts and some good calculation skills would suggest, that in India, PDPVs are cleaner than EVs! And perhaps it does not make sense to use more electricity in charging of EVs, when we have a shortage of power supply anyway. It would just mean more sleepless nights with power cuts and costlier electricity for what little time we get it. Of course, usage of EVs has its own ‘salient’ features. The source of pollution is shifted from the point of use (cities, towns) to the location of power plant (which are mostly located in scarcely populated remote areas). This, would mean lesser people would die, but quicker due to all possible health hazard the pollutants have to offer. :-/

To sum it up, EVs are not a revolution (many have existed even before PDPVs) but the generation of electricity can be. Implementing better ways to generate electricity (Solar Thermal, Nuclear Fusion..) and then utilizing it for transport can hit the sweet spot.

PS: All the assumptions, information and views expressed are the culmination of the relevant courses and internship done by me in past 2 years. All arguments are open to challenge and suggestions. :)

Life-cycle analysis of a consumer

If quantities of packed foods & beverages around us are an indication, then there is something seriously wrong with us. The cold drink bottles which were 200 ml in size, gradually gave way to 300 ml bottles which are now almost extinct among a crowd of 500 ml PET bottles. In India, they add a dash of sparkle to the deal by giving an extra 100 ml free. It is very hard to believe that average human thirst has tripled in 60 years without distorting the average bladder size! Along with the drinks of course are Xtra large fries and burgers. Haven’t we seen pizza for 4, often stuffed into a single mouth because it came at a discounted price?

The baffling part however is to find the culprit in this equation. Are the companies at fault for trying to sell more things in larger packages? Or are the consumers at a fault for eating more than they need? The companies at least have a motive to make profit by increasing their per capita sale, but what possible gain can we have by consuming more than we need? How retarded are we to gulp down beyond need and then sweating it out at a gym or on a treadmill?

One of the original sever sins, is now in fact a measure of goodness! Why, if you eat more, join a gym, get a liposuction done, get admitted in a hospital for heart attack or angioplasty; it will only increase the GDP of your country. Most of us may end up contributing to these statistics. Including me. :P

It has been more than sixty years and we have prospered. Since independence, our pockets are fuller, more of us can sign on a paper and speak English, more people can code on a computer. But has our society kept up? We have let go of some superstitions, we don’t burn the widows anymore, our local trains force us to touch everyone and winning the world cup perhaps sealed our contentment. Of course, there are issues like corruption, however they are not the ones that really threaten the fabric of our society. The problem with our capitalist, bribe loving, cricket crazy, annoyingly loud society is: The Caste System.

When you meet a person, when will you really like him? It is not enough that you both are from the same country, it does not suffice that you both are from same religion, it is ok if you are from the same caste, but you will truly be overjoyed if your sects match as well.

A typical future matrimonial in India

I do not know why we are still not able to break these shackles and bond with people based on our interests and thoughts. The only positive move I have seen from the media is to avoid a discount for CASTE NO BAR in a matrimonial ad. The government on the other hand has done a lot. Why, it has introduced reservations, has made it mandatory to write your caste on your birth certificate and made it impossible for you to delete that mark on your life. (But, since we are so much bribe loving, 500 Rs can help you change it, maybe). I think they have just chosen to continue with the golden ‘divide and rule’ policy left behind by the British. Fragmented by the lines or caste and creed, we are just too docile as a society and can be easily shepherded wherever the ruler pleases. You still wonder why there are so much scams? There lies the part of the answer. The only time people protest these days is when their sect does not get qualified for a special reservation.

It is not about whether reservations are right or wrong. It is not about whether they are needed or not. But, it can not be denied that they only help in strengthening our age old system of division. We may become open to homosexuality and same sex marriages, but not inter caste marriages. If we can borrow all the cool ideas from the west, why can’t we shed our caste? I think it is high time for us to forget about it and use something else to bond and unify with the people of our land. I don’t know how, but I throw this question open to you.

How can we do away with the Caste System? and what do you think of it?

Not the most productive way to fight corruption

But will these moves end corruption to the root? Unlikely. We first need to understand and accept that corruption is deep-rooted in human nature and it can never be completely eliminated. All the countries in the world, ALL, have corruption, just in varying amounts. The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is a score out of 10 (where 10 indicated No Perceived Corruption) and not a single country has managed a full score. United States with the score of 7.1 is ranked at 22 and India with 3.1 is ranked at 87 out of 178. We are bad; but if it’s any consolation, our rating has been improving since last decade.

Having established this, it is also true that we are as corrupt as our politicians. Find it hard to believe? Let us take an example of a common man, like you or me.  He would download pirated songs, videos and movies. He would vote for the party who gives him free TV/Booze/Clothes before elections. He would break a traffic signal when no one is watching, and if confronted by a traffic police, he avoids getting a ticket and pays a small bribe. If he does not have a train ticket, he tries to hide in the toilet, pretend that he is asleep or even tries to show a used ticket again. He would pay extra money to hasten the delivery of his bike/car and buy movie tickets in black. Is our common man not corrupt? He would do it, at all possible places he does not fear being caught. It is so much ingrained in us to maximise our benefit that only strictest of vigilance curbs it.

This sums up our basic nature.

A map showing CPI of different countries

So, how are our politicians any different? If we take advantage and turn the tide in our favour, why won’t they? We abuse what little power we have, they abuse the colossal power that we give them. If we can get away with most of the things we do, its not a surprise that they do too. And if only the fear of law would stop us, it should stop them too. Our politicians after all, are just like us. We are greedy, so are they. And we choose them! We do not like corruption only when we do not get our way with it.

I do not condone or encourage it, but it can’t be addressed in the same manner we have, so far. Corruption would stop only when you and I are not able to do it.

“It is not the severity of punishment, but the certainty of it, which will deter crime”. And this is where the Lokpal bill had struck the right cord, as swift and definite justice definitely reduces the instances of corruption. When everyone knows that no one is above the law, when the possible gains from malpractices will be outweighed by a certain punishment, then we can be sure that there will be no corruption. Even if we can’t make a completely pristine world, a pretty close solution can be reached doing this. It is also important that we are honest if we expect other people to be. And if you are worried that your actions alone won’t do anything, I would like to end it with this quote:

“Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it nonetheless”. – M K Gandhi.

Why? Why me?
The reason cited is what makes this law particularly ludicrous. Well apparently, the alcohol is abused a lot by youngsters (while drunken elder men continue making very appropriate use of it) and hence needs to be controlled. This just means that our government has given up on trying controlling the drunken driving (or whatever) and instead want an easy solution. I am one of those unfortunate people who were born such that our drinking rights got revoked. :-/

So, what’s wrong with it?
It just reeks of hypocrisy, in the city was bar dancers (read prostitution) was not ‘barred’ because “it violated sections of the Indian constitution guaranteeing fundamental rights of livelihood” why should there be a restriction on “fundamental freedom to choose”?
In a country where you can officially get laid at 16 and choose your government at 18, get married at 21; you have to wait almost half of your lifespan to consume drinks! What sense does it make? I think given the totalitarian scheme of things, they may also impose a minimum age restriction on death. Hell, we may need to compensate for the loss in productivity of the country to the government.

Image taken from Very Demotivational Posters

How will it work?
The ban will mean that there is a prohibition on serving alcohol at public ceremonies. Now, this is one part which actually makes sense. A large crowd of people getting drunk at marriages and firing gun shots in the air and around is not a desirable sight. But this is where the good part ends, there will be heavy fines if ‘caught purchasing alcohol before the age of 25’. (This essentially means that your booze just got costlier and you will have to bribe the police every time they raid your liquor shop to catch you). Also, there will be more dry days (apart from those in which our taps run dry) and no alcohol will be sold. Essentially you will have to stockpile large ammo of beers, whiskey or whatever your favourite alcohol may be.
Again, the law is just obsessed about sale of alcohol; at least I couldn’t explicitly find a citation stopping consumption. The law solely hinges on monitoring, which we know is “World Class” (just like the research in IITs) making the law difficult to implement. It will also make sure that the rich spoiled brats will find ways to procure alcohol while aam aadmi (mango people) will really have to do with ‘Mango juice’. :P

Conclusion:

“They have not raised the age limit for alcohol consumption; they have just raised the income cap for alcohol consumption”.

On a more serious note, unless they back this law up with very strong reasons, it seems very skew as of now and is not justified at all. More over, it is unlikely to change the status-quo. It should be done away with atleast to stop fuelling the anger of youth (which is increasing linearly after Quotas, various scams and fasts). And again, What purpose does it serve anyway?

PS: Feel free to correct me as I have taken a lot of liberty in writing this.

How to screw up, IPL 101

I >3 IPL. (If <3 is the symbol of love then >3 is what I do to IPL). It has been said that IPL is Lalit Modi’s “brain-child” (I was not then aware that brains were capable of reproduction :P), but that’s so not true! IPL is just a rip off of the English Domestic T20 cricket, just like pretty much everything else in India. (Our movies, TV shows to begin with..)  notwithstanding all this, there is no denying that when it started it was good, it was really good. People always talked of how IPL is promoting talent, how IPL in India is same as EPL in UK etc. I was a very strong supporter of IPL and I actually loved watching the games! The IPL reached its peak in its 3rd year when they had their own You Tube channel, you could see all their highlights on the internet when you wanted, their bugle tune got people to their feet always, Sachin Tendulkar was the Orange Cap winner and of course the fact that MI reached finals may have helped. :P But, the IPL 4 looked ominous right from the beginning.

There are several things the IPL4 could not have done worse. First, there was the controversy surrounding the introduction of the 2 new teams. Lalit Modi, the chairman came under fire for helping his family buy stake in the IPL teams. After revealing the cracks in the top brass, the IPL management did their biggest possible mistake: Scheduling it right after the ICC Cricket World Cup. The rationale behind this was quite understandable, after the abysmal performance in the 2007 world cup, no one expected India to qualify for the quarter finals, forget lifting the cup! But it backfired, maybe due to the odds against them, the bookies had to make India win the world cup, and just when people were saturated with cricket, IPL announced its opening ceremony to be a week after the world cup.

Aimed at catch players picking their nose...

Once the IPL started, they took all possible steps to screw up the spirit of the game. The hanging cameras. After introducing some bullshit like the fair play award, IPL committee thought that it would be pretty cool to take a 100X zoom in video of Tendulkar adjust the abdominal guard & thigh guard (and videos of some fielders picking their noses). What they failed to realize is that such hovering cameras which come dangerously close to players between overs, leaving little privacy for them to discuss the game. The invasion of private place does not stop here, they even give earphones to certain fielders and umpires on the field so that the commentators can distract them during the crucial moments of the game. (Seeing the play-offs I realized that even the TV umpire was not spared as they showed a live footage of him discussing a review with the on-field umpire.) You know what this makes the IPL? A fucking reality show! IPL now appears more like a market where each catch is “Karbonn Kamaal Catch” and where players are forced to take “Max Mobile Strategic Timeouts” when all they want is to proceed with the game in a flow. And the incidents related to the cheerleaders leave a bad taste in mouth.

Is this what the hovering cameras aim for?

With so much commercialization, I sometimes just wonder if its all just an orchestrated drama where all is pre decided. I don’t know what the TRPs of IPL4 are and I don’t know what the response is. But this is what I honestly feel about IPL and am just pouring it out because of Mumbai Indians’ elimination from the IPL today.







To sum it up, I feel the below picture should be made the logo of IPL and they should remove cricket from it all together. Do let me know what you feel about it and correct me if I am wrong!

This is what they should change IPL's logo to...

PS: How on Earth could they drop ‘Ganguly’ from Kolkata Knight Riders? No wonder the West Bengal crowd was pissed. (They lost viewer ship of the 4th most populous state right away.) Teams like Delhi Daredevils had only one player which was retained, rest all new! I think there should be more retention in the teams so that people can identify players with certain teams, otherwise, IPL will just descend to chaos. :-/