I met Doctor Domnath (name changed to protect anonymity) 1 week into the course. As he was a real doctor (you know, the MBBS-MD kind, as opposed to the fake PhD kind), I had assumed that he’ll be those nose-in-the-book bookworm types who spends most of their time mugging books that are so thick that they can viably be used as attack weapons against terrorists. While this was largely true of Doctor Domnath, he also had a very unconventional trait that was very interesting: He was one of those “Super Networkers”.

What is a “Super-Networker”, you ask?

Simply defined, a super-networker is someone who wants to “network” with everybody. They feel like they have to get to know every single person that they come across. Most of them do this out of sheer curiosity, others in the hope that sometime in the uncertain future their “network” and “friend-of-a-friend” will help them out when they are in need of something. To a true super-networker, however, getting to know people is something that comes naturally, somewhat like snoring. They feel an irresistible urge to get to know anything that moves and many things that don’t, and they do it effortlessly, simply and delightedly.

Doctor Domnath was one of those true super-networkers. Let me explain with an illustration.

Doctor Domnath and I were walking towards our dining hall one evening, speculating about why it is socially unacceptable to send a life-sized carboard cut-out of yourself to a wedding that you don’t want to attend. At the dining hall, we are supposed to sign in, so that they can keep track of who’s eating what, and while we were doing that, I recieved a call on my cell. I answered the phone, and maybe spent 2-3 minutes explaining to the lady on the other end why they shouldn’t give me a credit card now that I was a student and had no income.

While I was chatting on the phone, Doctor Domnath had noticed that a lady was talking to the dining hall waiter in Bengali, which also happened to be his native language. That was enough to trigger the super-networking switch inside the doctor. He immediately swung into action.

He walked up to the two, and introduced himself. What followed in the next 2-3 minutes was sheer magic, the kind of thing that takes your breath away. Doctor Domnath managed to network with both the lady and the waiter simultaneously. He found out that the lady was the wife of a professor who taught on campus, and that the professor’s dad’s gardener had been his grandfather’s driver’s 2^nd cousin. He also established a connection with the waiter – His second wife’s uncle had been Doctor Domnath’s neighbor in his previous life.

Not only was Doctor Domnath’s ability to establish networks across languages, time, space, species and rebirths remarkable, he immediately managed to gain the trust of people as well. The Professor’s wife invited him to dinner the next day, and the waiter agreed to supply fresh fish to a restaurant Doctor Domnath was planning to set up 20 years from now.

I later complimented Doctor Domnath on how cool it is that he manages to remember all the people he meets and how well he maintains his networks. I asked him to teach me some of this skill, and he told me something very insightful. He said

“Teaching someone to network is like teaching a pig to sing. It wastes your time, annoys the pig, and in the end what you get is just a pig that wants to mud-wrestle other pigs.”

I didn’t really understand what that meant, but I guess that’s why I’m not a super-networker.

So, since the last time we checked in with Chitradeep Chetty, he’s been off to the jungles of Bandipur several times and has photographed several tigers. He’s also been showing off these pictures, especially after some of them got published.

A couple of months ago, he invited me, the wife, and a group of other friends to go to his sasuraal (bandipur). He said it would be great, he could get us inside the forest and we could see tigers and other wildlife. It sounded interesting and off we went.

So we’re in the forest on a safari. The forest itself was actually quite beautiful. There were lots and lots of trees and flowers and branches and leaves… but no tigers. There were 8 of us, and after a while, we started getting impatient, and started chatting about the good old days. This upset Chitradeep.

Chitradeep: “Sshhh… guys. Don’t talk loudly in the jungle.”
Me: <in a hushed voice>: “Why?”
Chitradeep: <getting more annoyed, dripping with sarcasm>: “Because the tigers are talking on their phones and you are disturbing them. Huh!”
Me: “That’s absurd…. How are the tigers getting signal here, deep in the jungle?”

There was an awkward silence that followed, where everyone wanted to laugh, but Chitradeep was staring us down, and we settled for a hushed giggle.

We continued to wander in the jungle, and we occasionally saw some birds. And then we saw a big buffalo type thing. It looked just like the buffaloes you can see on the streets of Bangalore, but apparently this one was special, so we all respectfully nodded our appreciation. After a while, we went and waited by a watering hole, hoping that some wildlife will turn up.

We waited, but apparently the animals were not coming. We began to speculate why.
Me: “Why aren’t the elephants coming to drink?”
AJ: “They will come to drink after an hour.”
Me: “How do you know?”
AJ: “Happy hour starts then.”

More hushed giggles and more staring by Chitradeep.

We waited for some more time, and the elephants finally came. It was pretty cool. They were so big and majestic. Several of them, including 3 cute little baby elephants. They came to the water, hung around there for a while and socialized. (With each other, not with us.)

And then, they started to do something crazy. They started picking up mud and throwing it on themselves. Disgusting. That too just after washing themselves. The baby elephants were also rolling in the mud, covering themselves up with dirt.

Me: “That’s disgusting. Why are they doing that?”
Chitradeep: “They do it to protect themselves. The mud acts like a sunscreen to their skin.”
PR: “It doesn’t seem to be working. Look how dark their skin still is.”

More giggles and more staring by Chiradeep.

We started moving along the jungle track when suddenly the driver jammed on the brakes. He shut off the engine. Chitradeep Chetty turned back and motioned us to keep quite. Silence. Just the sounds of the jungle. Everyone is frozen in their seats. We’re all frantically looking around to see what we have run up against. Chitradeep Chetty gets out of the jeep gingerly. He’s stepping very carefully away from the Jeep. He turns back and motions us to come out the jeep slowly and without making noise. We walk up to him. Silence. He points his hand to the ground just around a bush. We peek our heads. And there it is.

Tiger droppings.

I’m like: “What the hell?” and Chitrdeep is all excited that he has seen tiger shit today. It’s like once in a week occurrence here in Bandipur, apparently. After excitingly starting at it for a while, we return back to the lodge, all the while Chitradeep is in high spirits, and as soon as we reach, he goes off to discuss today’s catch with his jungle-lodge buddies.

So, to summarize our trip: We came, we saw, and we smelt.

Anyhow, the trip was quite fun. We saw a few more animals, several peacocks and still more elephants. But no tigers or leopards. Chitradeep Chetty has assured us that the next time we come, he will make sure to schedule a meeting in the tiger’s calendars.

Update: Check out Chitradeep’s wildlife photos here, and judge for yourself if this is a scam!

Instead, we decided to go to this “Rab Ne Bana Di Joodi” movie. Watching the promos, I thought the story would be something like this: SRK has a daughter who is not getting good marks in her college, so he puts her in a dance class, and she wins consolation prize. The End.

But NOOOOOO! The heroine, who is indeed young enough to play his daughter, is actually HIS WIFE, and the movie is the same story as a 1960′s flop-movie-love-story. The movie theatres should introduce a new feature, where at the security gate, you can leave your intelligence and innate sense of logic, because god forbid if you carry your common sense into the movie theatre, it will try to hang itself watching this movie. The central point of this movie is the assumption that the heroine cannot recognize SRK without his pink glasses. I mean, COME ON!

Instead, it seems, SRK keeps making these same old same old love stories that nobody really understands. His appeal has now dropped below Mithun Chakraborthy’s, as is evident from Rab Ne Bana Di Joodi. This movie is just a remix of his last movie “Om Shanti Om”, with all the remotely interesting parts removed. It features the same endless song featuring a bunch of bollywood celebrities, the same jokes that were used in DDLJ and the same my-monkey-is-constipated “emotional” scenes that have become trademark Shahrukh Khan fare. If you ask me, SRK’s stock is at an all time low, and he should now just liquidate his assets and go into retirement. If he instead keeps making these movies, the government will have to bailout us, since watching this movie will certainly send you into a personal emotional recession.

You have been warned!

I saw a spectacularly stupid example of film making recently when I went to watch “Wanted”. I mean, I’m not one to miss a movie with Angelina Jolie in it, but this absurdity of this pathetic excuse for a movie is is unparalleled, even in nearby parallel universes.

The premise of the movie is that there is this dude who has physics-defying shooting abilities. He can, for example, “curve” a bullet, much like Beckham curves a football. I feel like I should sit down with the director of this movie and explain to him aerodynamics, then drill into his tiny head the law of conservation of momentum, and make him work out the equations for the differential air resistance required on a rotating bullet to overcome the momentum of the bullet which, by the way, is about 64 Kgm/s and nearly impossible to do. Maybe then he’ll see the light.

But oh no, he goes on, gravity and momentum be damned, showing absurdity after absurdity, while half the audience gawks at the special effects and the other half gawks at Angelina Jolie, leaving only me with my constantly increasing blood pressure to wonder at how this director can have hung out common sense to dry out of the window like this. Sometimes I feel the government should tax such movies extra and use the money to start a “physics for dumbasses” course for movie directors.

Anyway, the director is obviously inspired by Rajnikanth movies. There is this scene where the bad guy shoots a bullet at the good guy, and our hero has to save the good guy. What does he do? Simple: He shoots at the bullet with HIS gun, and his bullet hits the bad guy’s bullet, knocking it out, and saving the day. Doing that requires a reaction time of 10^-2 seconds, which is not enough for his eyes to even capture the image (4×10^-2 seconds), let alone his brain to see, interpret, analyze and recognize the image, then decide, send the signal to his muscles, which have to co-ordinate and contract and relax, align perfectly, and finally press the trigger. Reminded me a scene from Ramanad Sagar’s Mahabharat where they did the same thing with arrows.

This kind of macho-super-human abilities work only for Rajnikanth (of who, for the record, I am a HUGE fan). I mean the 20-something kid in the movie is no match for our evergreen Rajnikanth, (they tell the story of this girl who starred as Rajnikanth’s daughter, later his girlfriend, and now as his mother, while Rajnikanth who has absolutely not aged) who executes these movies with his signature snazzy super style spectacularly. Rajnikanth is at least 2 orders of magnitude cooler than anything hollywood can produce, and their uninspired lift of a Rajnikanth movie leaves much to be desired.

And oh, there is no interesting scene with Angeliena Jolie either (if you know what I mean), so absolutely no point watching the movie.

Chitradeep before drinking:
“…and the brownfield project we implement is done using J2EE and WebServices backend talking to ruby on rails running on 8080…”

Chitradeep after 4 mugs of beer:
“…these bloody politicians I tell you… They should all *hic* lock up the *hic* ….err….. lock up the … hmmm …. *hic* … What was I talking about?”

Chitradeep after 8 mugs of beer:
“…and the cockroaches are going to invade our living rooms, so we should buy flat screen TVs to prevent the movie box office collection! HIP HIP HURRAY!!!”

And so, soon enough, Chitradeep had sufficient amounts of alcohol in his blood stream, and we were having this very interesting discussion where he was telling me why it is a good idea for NASA to run a space shuttle on AA batteries when something else caught his attention. I noticed he was distractedly looking over my shoulder. I turned around and saw the dance floor – and a beautiful girl dancing there who had obviously caught Chitradeep’s attention. Chitradeep was always the guy to take action, and the several beers he had consumed definitely helped lift his spirits. He excused himself, got up from our table, and started heading straight to the direction of the dance floor. I was wondering if it was a good idea to let Chitradeep talk to a girl in this state, but Chitradeep had an air of confidence about him. It seemed like he had learnt some new secret moves, and nothing in this world was going to stop him. A dude brimming with so much confidence should not be stopped. If nothing, it’d be great entertainment for the rest of us.

And so, we watched Chitradeep as he made way to the dance floor. He walked up straight to the cute girl, and much to our shock (and consternation), started dancing.

For those of you that don’t know Chitradeep, his dancing skills are approximately the same as that of a banyan tree. But when he started dancing today, it was something else altogether. His new dancing style can best be described as a hybrid between a traffic police and a scared chicken. He raised one arm, made a stop signal, jumped and turned 180-degrees, and then raised his other arm, bringing both arms above his head, and hopped two steps like a frog. In this short sequence he managed to get the attention of the DJ, who skipped a beat or two in the utter shock of seeing a maneuver like that on his dance floor. But Chitradeep wasn’t done yet. He then swung his right arm round and round (while holding his left hand still) like a fast bowler whose action had gotten stuck, and, moments later, started swinging his left arm in the same round-and-round motion as well. He did a variety of such inexplicable actions, that the rest of the crowd actually stopped and started watching his antics. It was clear to to the crowd that this dude was either a sheer genius or a sheer idiot, and either way, they had stopped in their tracks and were watching this spectacle with great interest.

And then the most shocking thing happened – the cute girl that Chitradeep was after found the whole dance routine incredibly amusing, and came over and started talking to Chitradeep! Man! I can’t believe his luck! How could the cute girl have liked his monkey-mating-dance routine? Anyway, Chitradeep talked briefly to the girl, and then returned to our table with a greatly satisfied look on his face.

Me: “Man! I have no idea how that worked!!!”
Chitradeep: “Naa… She’s not my type!”
Me: “Why? What happened?!?”
Chitradeep: “While I was on that dance floor, I had a great moment of inspiration – A moment of deep awakening! I have discovered the true purpose in my life!”
Me: “From that monkey dance?”
Chitradeep: “YES! I’m going to go and help the tigers! They were calling to me while I was dancing there.”
Me: “Dude, that was the crowd laughing at you!”

I’ve heard of stories of strange things happening on the dance floor, but this was the first time I heard someone having a enlightenment-type moment! I tried to tell him that it was the beer that was speaking, but nothing I said could change his opinion. In a moment of (apparent) awakening, Chitradeep had decided that the tigers of the world needed him more than cute girls did, and he was going to go and stay in the jungles to help save the tigers from extinction. Well! That was the end of that!

On an unrelated note, another friend of mine is taking a break from work to go and live in a reserve forest to see if he can help do anything for the tigers. Here’s wishing him (and the tigers) best of luck!

We spent that day very gloomy, with the prospect of a confrontation with the Principal looming large on our heads because we had lesser than the required 75% attendance in one subject. An encounter with the principal was not going to be a pleasant affair, and it would probably turn out like this:

Principal: “Welcome! Welcome! I hear you have not managed to get 75% attendance?”
Us: “Sir, sorry sir, but I had a brain surgery and Chitradeep had severe amnesia. We couldn’t come to college because of our medical condition sir. Here are our medical certificates!”
Principal: “Ha! A brain surgery and severe amnesia? That’s not a good enough reason to miss college. You are going to pay for it!”
Us: “Sir.. please sir… please…”
Principal: “You will write ‘I will not miss College 7 million times’ and promise your soul to eternally be my slave. Muhahahahahahaa! (evil mogambo laugh)”

Thinking of this sent shivers down our spines, and I started to panic. I wanted to get out of this desperately, but there seemed to be no hope left. Chitradeep, on the other hand, seemed strangely calm about the whole thing.

Me: “Dude! What are we going to do?”
Chitradeep: “Don’t worry man, I’m going to fix this.”
Me: “How?!?”
Chitradeep: “Look, the attendance doesn’t get sent to the University until the end of this week. If we can somehow steal the attendance register and modify some records, we should be fine.”
Me: “Are you out of your mind?!? How on earth are you going to get hold of the register? It’s impossible, it’ll never work.”
Chitradeep: “Trust me, this will work”

How could this plan work? There was a better chance of our Principal baking us a pineapple cake than there was of this plan working! But Chitradeep’s confidence surprised me, and I knew that he’d pulled stunts like these before so I went along with it. It turns out that there were a couple of other guys in our class with the exact same problem, and so we teamed up. That evening, we had our first strategy meeting, where this plan was hatched:

Step 1: Chitradeep and I were to sit in the first bench.
Step 2: The other 2 guys (who would be sitting in the last bench) would call the prof and ask some “doubts” to distract him.
Step 3: Chitradeep would steal the register.
Step 4: Success!

Fortunately for us humans, the presence of a “plan” is very reassuring, however impossible it might be to achieve. Satisfied that we had a “plan”, all of us slept soundly that night. The next morning came, and the first class was going to be Computer Science, where our master plan was going to be executed.

Chitradeep and I took up our positions in the front bench, right at the battlefront. Being so close to the firing line was definitely dangerous, but one has to be brave during missions like these.

Soon, the Prof walks into the class carrying our target – the attendance register. He absent mindedly puts it on the table, just a few feet away from us. Oh! I could reach over and grab it this instant. But the Prof is standing right next to the table, looking at the entire class. He’s looking to locate the usual trouble makers, no doubt, but we are just below his radar this time – Sitting in the first bench. The prof has an enormous belly that protrudes out that sometimes makes me wonder if his center of gravity is outside his body. But this is not the time to think about these things, the belly is right now making us invisible to him.

Suddenly, the Prof shouts out:

“What is the difference between a packet and a frame?”

Oh, no! This is going to be one of those “firing” classes, where the Prof asks random questions pointedly, and if someone can’t answer, he asks them to get out of the class. Usually everyone pretends to look busy and hide their heads into the textbook to avoid being called up to answer the question, but this time, it’s different. A hand goes up from the back bench, apparently a volunteer to answer the question. Who would do a stupid thing like that?

I look back, and see it is one of the guys in our plan. Oh, no! He’s going to create a distraction, and he’s going to sacrifice himself to give us an opportunity. Oh! What a noble thought! He’s as good as dead, but hopefully he can stall the Professor long enough for us to get a shot at the register. The Professor is surprised some one is willing to answer, but that only brings a big smile to his face – He’s going to massacre the poor lamb in front of the whole class, and he’s going to enjoy it!

Prof: “Yes… My dear, fellow. You think you can answer?”

The dude from the back bench gets up. The Professor is slowly moving towards the center of the class, away from us. But it’s still to risky for us to go in now, if the prof just looks this way, we’ll be caught red handed.

Dude: “The difference between a packet and a frame…”

He is purposefully answering slowly, trying to draw the professor in. The Prof has reached the middle of the classroom by now, and is standing at the central aisle.

Dude: “… are rather simple. Namely, they have some structural qualities that create some…”

Chitradeep leans forward to judge how far the register is for him. He can almost reach it. The Prof has moved up 2 paces, just beyond the first bench.

Dude: “…similar differences are remarkably similar. That is to say, there are similar differences between the two…”

The Professor is walking very very slowly. He’s just out of direct sight from us. This could be the chance. Chitradeep moves to the edge of the bench. The Prof has to move just one more step forward…

Dude: “…and they are, as namely, in the following order, starting with the first difference, which is…”

The Prof takes a step forward. Chitradeep, in a flash, gets up, extends his arm towards the attendance register. He is now fully stretched, and his hand just about reaches the register. He picks it up in one smooth motion and recoils his entire body along with his outstretched hand to come back to his original position, with the register firmly held in his hand. The entire class has seen this brilliant gymnastic maneuver by Chitradeep, and he would have received a standing ovation from the class had the Prof not been there. The dude, who’s been successfully stalling and drawing in the prof, heaves a silent sigh of relief.

Dude: “…that the packet is not a frame because the frame is not really a packet.”
Prof: “What? Are you telling a story from The Mahabharata? Get out!”

Chitradeep is so pleased that he has managed to steal the register, that he doesn’t notice that the Prof has cut up the poor dude and ordered him out of the class. It hits him when the Prof makes a 180-degree turn to return to the front of the class. Chitradeep looks at the register. There it is, he has successfully stolen it. But now what? What are we going to do with the stolen register?

The Prof has turned around and is heading back towards the center of the classroom. He has only a couple of steps before he comes to the front, and he’ll have to turn towards us afterwards. And Chitradeep is sitting there holding the attendance register.

Oh, this is definitely going to end in disaster.

Apparently, we got so excited about stealing the register that we forgot to think about what we’re going to do after we stole it. That’s the trouble with plans – There is always something that you didn’t think of.

The Prof has a big smile on his face, no doubt pleased about his latest kill. He takes one more step and is now almost at the front of the class. Chitradeep is still holding the register. That’s it. We’re as good as dead.

Just as the Prof reaches the front of the class and turns towards us, Chitradeep executes another super-swift maneuver that truely shocks the class. He already has the full attention of the class because of his previous maneuver. Chitradeep, in one fluid motion, lifts the register up, turns it 90-degrees with his left hand, and with one smooth jerk, flings it, horizontally, like a bullet, towards the window. He has thrown it with the precision of a Zen master throwing a sword, and the register, flying flat towards the window, passes neatly through the bars of the window, and disappears cleanly out of sight, out of the class, and out of the 3rd floor window.

The class lets out a collective gasp. The Prof notices the gasp.

Prof: “Yes… That should teach you students to think before answering questions. If you’d have studied Section 2, Chapter 12, Paragraph 13 on Page 123, you would have known the difference between a packet and a frame!”

Everyone is processing what just happened.
The Attendance register just flew out of the window.
That means that the prof doesn’t have the attendance register.
That means the prof is not going to be able to send the attendance records to the University.
But the prof has to send the records anyway, otherwise he’ll get fired.
That means that prof will have to create a new register.
That means that everyone will now get full attendance, because there is no old register.

And that is exactly what happened. The Prof and the rest of the staff were too uptight to admit that the attendance register was missing. How can it disappear? It must have been that careless Computer Science professor who must have left it in the parking lot or somewhere. In the absence of the attendance records, all the students got full attendance the in the subject.

All’s well that ends well. In this case, all was particularly well because all the college students got the pleasure of eating Bhel-Puri neatly wrapped in sheets from an attendance record that had mysteriously fallen from the sky, right next to the Bhel-Puri guy’s cart. I can tell you, that was some of the best bhel-puri I’ve ever had.

The next day, Drinivas is looking a little drowsy. It seems he’s been up all night trying to come up with a strategy that will work with the Russian exchange student. Yesterday, he made a big fuss about not listening to my advice and how he was going to come up with a killer strategy.

Now don’t get me wrong, Drinivas is a really smart guy. He may be able well versed with the unintelligible language of 3-dimensional vector mathematics, but when it comes to talking to hot russian exchange students, his mathematics is of no use. But his ego doesn’t allow him to admit it, and so he’s going to try to do it, in his own nerdy manner anyway.

We’re standing outside the class, waiting for it the Prof to show up. Drinivas walks up to me.

Drinivas: “I worked all night to create a master plan.”
Me: “To take over the world?”
Drinivas: “No, to talk to the Russian exchange student.”
Me: “Aaah! So, let’s hear it! Does it involve you doing a wheelie on big motorbike? You might need to learn how to ride a bicycle first.”
Drinivas: “No, no. Look, I’ve drawn a map of all the places she visits on campus and her approximate schedule. Here’s my window of opportunity: After class, at 13:05 hours, she exits block ‘A’ and proceeds along “walkway 34″ towards the Cafeteria, presumably, to consume her lunch.”
Me: “Presumably.”
Drinivas: “Right. She’s about 5’8″, so she’ll walk at the rate of 3.45 kmph, which means she’ll be in front of the cafeteria at 13:06:23. Now, calculating backwards, I need to leave my class at exactly 13:04 and walk in the north-westerly direction. If I walk exactly at 3 kmph, I’ll meet her right in front of the cafeteria.”
Me: “Very clever man! But dude… Do you think this is really going to work?”
Drinivas: “Of course. I’ve calculated it precisely. Here: See my step-by-step calculations. What could possibly go wrong?”
Me: “Wow. Well, best of luck to you.”
Drinivas: “Ha! I don’t need luck, I have this all figured out!”
Me: “Excellent! So, what are you going to say to her when you meet her in front of the cafeteria at 13:06:23?”

Drinivas looks a little perplexed. Then a little surprised. Then a little annoyed. It looks like he spent all night evaluating and calculating velocities, but didn’t think what he was going to say to her once he met her.

Drinivas: “I’ll see you later.”

Drinivas gets up and rushes away. I’ll bet he’s going to the library to study this problem even more.

As the first class finishes, Drinivas comes back into the class and sits down next to me. He’s just bunked a class for the first time ever. He’s taking this thing seriously.

Drinivas: “I just went and learnt some Russian”
Me: “WHAT?!?”
Drinivas: “Yes. Listen to this: r he ctyn, r ckamakennke”
Me: “Wow. What does it mean?”
Drinivas: “I am not a chair, I am a bench”
Me: “Eh?”
Drinivas: “It was the first sentence in the “Learn Russian in 5 days” book.
Me: “Well done! Use that on her. It will definitely work!”
Drinivas: “I know!”

And so, Drinivas anxiously waits for the appointed time when he is supposed to head out in a “north-westerly direction”. He looks nervous, but is trying very hard to not show it.

Finally, 13:04 comes, and Drinivas jumps out and heads out. A bunch of friends and I also follow him out, just to see how this scene pans out. Not going to miss this for anything.

We stand outside at a safe distance from the Cafeteria. We’re far enough to be not noticed, but close enough that we can overhear what’s happening. I must say Drinivas’s calculations are perfect, and, right on time, the Russian girl is walking towards the cafeteria. Drinivas is also heading in the same direction. The girl is walking casually, but Drinivas is walking awkwardly. Suddenly speeding up and suddenly slowing down. I think he’s trying to time it perfectly, but it’s starting to look a little weird. Unfortunately for Drinivas, he reaches the cafeteria’s entrance a few seconds early, despite trying to walk half-a-step at a time. Not he’s faced with a weird choice. Should he walk in, and miss the encounter with the girl, or just stay there waiting for her to come, and look real weird when she walks up to him?

Just when I thought that Drinivas’s plan had blown up, Drinivas makes a surprising move. He suddenly changes course, and is now heading straight for the girl, who’s walking straight towards him. Why Drinivas made this move, I don’t understand, but now they’re on a collision course. Oh, Man! Drinivas better have a good opening line.

Five seconds before impact: Time has slowed down for Drinivas. His mind is racing at light speed and preparing for an encounter. I hope he remembers his line properly.

Two seconds before impact: Drinivas suddenly slows down. The russian girl has noticed him, and walks slightly towards the left to avoid a collision.

One second before impact: Drinivas changes his course to intercept her again. He clears his throat and is preparing to say something. The Russian chic now looks up at Drinivas.

IMPACT!!!

Drinivas: “r he ctyn, r ckamakennke”
Russian girl looks perplexed. She takes a while to figure out he’s speaking Russian in a really bad accent.

Russian Girl: “You’ll get me a table and chair?”

Drinivas doesn’t know what’s happening. So many things have gone wrong simultaneously. Firstly, how is she speaking english?!? That’s not supposed to happen. Then, he doesn’t even know what he’s said to her, and even worse, she seems to have understood something he didn’t even mean to say”

Russian Girl: “I didn’t know we had service in the Cafeteria. Good. You can show us to our table.”

Drinivas is totally shocked and doesn’t know what to do. He just walks behind the Russian girl and her friends, because, well, what else can he do?

The russian girl and her friends sit down at a table. Drinivas is standing awkwardly in front of them, not knowing just what the hell is happening.

Russian girl: “I’ll have one Chineese Chopsuey please…”

And, this is how, unfortunately, our story ends. What happened next is rather inconsequential. Drinivas had to order Chineese Chopsuey and bring it to their table, but, on the bright side, he got his first tip! In the following days, Drinivas had to avoid the russian girl, least she ask him to bring coffee. To this day, Drinivas is going over his calculations over and over again, trying to figure out what mistake he made.

I sit down at an empty place. Drinivas is sitting next to me.

Me: “Has he taken the attendance yet?”
Drinivas: “No…”
Me: “Oh, thank god! Phew. That was close… I almost missed it.”
Drinivas: “…but you missed the explanation of the third-order-beta-function. If you don’t understand beta-functions, you’re not going to understand gamma-functions.”
Me: “I’m not going to understand gamma-functions no matter what!”

Drinivas looks at me weirdly. Why some people place attendance over learning and knowledge is something he hasn’t understood at all. I once tried to explain to him that Attendance is very important to some people just like attending church is important to some people – It is just a cultural difference. But somehow, Drinivas was never convinced of it. He’s naive that way. But he’ll learn the truth soon enough.

But there is something different about him today. He’s in a chatty mood.

Drinivas: “I saw a person near my house today.”
Me: “Yeah? And I saw a Buffallo on my way today. What are the odds?!?”

Drinivas is not in a mood for my PJs today. He ignores my comment.

Drinivas: “It’s an exchange student. From Russia.”
Me: “Oh really? And how can you tell he’s Russian? Running around with a T-shirt saying ‘Vodka: Antifreeze for the Soul‘, was he?”
Drinivas: “It’s a she.”

Oohh Hoo. This girl seems to have caught Drinivas’s attention. Now the picture’s become a little clearer.

Me: “Aaaaah… Nice…. So how’s she?”
Drinivas: “She’s has certain qualities that draw one’s interest. From a visual perspective, she presents an interesting profile, and one can safely say that she has several strong attention grabbing characteristics that are well represented.”
Me: “Is that nerd talk for “She’s Hot” ?”
Drinivas: “To put it bluntly, yes”
Me: “All right! Way to go, man. Did you talk to her?”
Drinivas: “I haven’t had the opportunity, but I’m optimistic one will present itself this evening.”

Drinivas spends the rest of the day seemingly pre-occupied with thoughts about how he was going to exploit this ‘opportunity’ of his. I’m just happy he doesn’t interrupt our impromptu tic-tac-toe tournament that has broken out among the neighboring benches. At the end of the day, Drinivas rushes off. Good luck to him!

But when I see him the next day, Drinivas is looking rather glum.

Me: “Hey, how did it go yesterday with the Russian exchange student?”
Drinivas: “Not too good. There was an unforeseen glitch…”
Me: “What happened?”
Drinivas: “Apparently, she doesn’t speak any English. And worse – She’s studying Media and Communication, and that means we have absolutely nothing in common!”
Me: “Is that it?”
Drinivas: “What are you implying?”
Me: “Come on man, what’s a language barrier? You’ve got to take this opportunity by the throat and strangle it, dude!”
Drinivas: “Strangle who?”
Me: “Seize the day! Grab the apples! Jump the cliff! A mere language difference didn’t stop Romeo and Juliet!”
Drinivas: “Romeo and Juliet spoke the same language.”
Me: “OK, but for the sake of the argument, let’s say they didn’t.”
Drinivas: “What? That’s impossible. Your a-priori assumptions are wrong, so your conclusions are invariably….”
Me: “Look, who’s telling the story? Let’s just say they didn’t, OK? Now. Where were we? Yeah. They couldn’t speak the same language. But that didn’t stop them from becoming history’s heroes!”
Drinivas: “You’re not making any sense!”
Me: “I’M NOT MAKING SENSE?!? Look who’s talking!”
Drinivas: “That does it. Enough advice from you. I’m going to approach this issue in my own strategic way.”
Me: “Oh, really? And what’s your plan?”
Drinivas: “You’ll see my friend, you’ll see!”

[Update Part 2 is here]

The expert at this, of course, was Chitradeep Chetty. He was so good at “reverse calculations” that as soon as we get the experiment, he’d start off with his math, working backwards from the expected answer to figure out exactly what the readings should be. And then, he’d change the reading a little, you know, to make sure the answer didn’t come out exactly right and get the teacher suspicious that he fudged the numbers.

So this one day, Chitradeep and I were lab partners in the physics lab. The experiment is to calculate the speed of sound in air using a tuning fork. We’d all gathered around the lab teacher, who was demonstrating the experiment to us.

Teacher: “…And so, you bang the tuning fork and hold it over this water tube, and a resonating sound will come.”

The teacher held up the tuning fork, but there is no sound. He tried again, but still no sound.

Teacher: “…Well, err…you have to adjust the length of the water column properly and the sound will come. Really, when you do it, it will come.”

Now, it was embarrassing enough for the teacher that his own experiment had flopped, but Chitradeep Chetty, not to loose any opportunity, raises his hand to ask a question.

Chitradeep: “But Sir, what does the sound sound like?”
The teacher looks at him suspiciously, presumably evaluating if this is a genuine question. he looks at Chitradeep’s small-puppy face, and decides that he is in earnest.
Teacher: “The sound will come like this: Woooooooooooooooooooooo“

The entire batch is suppressing it’s laughter.

Chitradeep: “Like how bad boys whistle at girls, sir? Like this: Whoooot Whoooooo Or is it like whistling at AutoRickshaws to make them stop? Like this: TWweeooooooooo?”

The teacher decides he’s had enough of this, and sends us all away to our places. As I’m setting up the experiment, Chitradeep has already started the “back-calculation”, and soon figures out that we need to get the water level to “15.5 cms” to get the proper result. And so, we pre-adjust the level of the water, and start banging the tuning fork, but absolutely no sound. We try and try with all kinds of adjustments, but the bloody resonating sound is just not coming.

After a while, we decide we’ve had enough, and anyway, we have the numbers, and that’s what matters in the end. So, we pretend the experiment is successful, make the relevant entries in the lab record, and tell the teacher we’ve finished.

Usually, that’s the end of the lab, but because of Chitradeep’s brilliant demonstration of his whistling skills earlier, the teacher has been watching us, and now says “Show Me your Experiment“, and walks over to our table.

Chitradeep and I look at each other. Now we’re in trouble. Our experiment is certainly not working, but our lab record claims a very good result. Chitradeep has always been the innovative kind, and he’s not the one to back down from a challenge like this. He invites the teacher to sit down, and stands behind him. He signals for me to just pretend to go along. I have no idea what he’s up to, but follow his lead.

Me: “So, here’s the water column at 15.4 cms, and now I’m going to take this tuning fork over the water column, and we will see the resonance.”

I bang the tuning fork on the pad and bring it up near the water tube. Chitradeep removes the cap from his pen and holds it inverted near his mouth.

Just as I bring the tuning fork on top of it, Chitradeep whistles into the cap, producing a shrill, shrieking “Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” sound. The teacher looks rather flambungeled, and looks around to see if we’re fudging something. Chitradeep has put away the cap, and again makes the “innocent small-puppy” face. The teacher doesn’t know what to say. He suspects Chitradeep is up to something, but doesn’t know what to accuse him of.

Me: “…And, taking that reading from the tube, we use the formula for the resonance…”

I shove the lab record into the teachers face, and he looks at all our calculations. He’s trying to find a mistake there so that he can pin us down. But he can’t find any, and so, reluctantly, he lets us go. As we walk out, the teacher gives us the “sooner-or-later-i’m-going-to-get-you” look, but we run away to our freedom!

Chitradeep’s “innocent small-puppy” face has rescued the day once again!

So last week, we’re playing a doubles Tennis match. Drinivas and I are playing together as a team against a couple of other friends.

We’re leading 4-3 in the first set. The other team serves, and I smash it right back into the net.

Drinivas (making weird actions with his racket): “Place it man! Place it!”
Me: “I’m going to place it on top of you if you don’t keep quite!”
Drinivas: “$#@^%$#@**”
Friend #1: “Good team work fellows. Good team work!”
Me: “Grrrrr….”

Next point. Friend #1 serves it straight at me, and I’m trying out my single-hand-back-hand-top-spin-drop-shot. It lands up in the next court were a couple of chics are playing.

Drinivas: “What the hell are you doing?!? We lost the point!”
Me: “Oh, keep quite! We wouldn’t have lost if you didn’t serve like a Girl last game!”
Drinivas: “Shut up, you barbarian!”
Me: “You shut up %$$**&#$@”
Drinivas: “^%**%$#@”
Friend #1: “Is it still sledging if you’re screaming at your own teammate? These 2 have the serious sledging skills.”
Me: “That’s it. I’m defecting to the other team!”
Drinivas: “What?”
Friend #1: “In the middle of the game?!”
Drinivas: “Fine! Go away. Good riddance!”
Me: “Yeah, and I’m also taking with me all the points I won. That’s 4 games I’ve won. The score is now 9-0. We already won. Hahahahah! Looser! Looser!”
Drinivas: “Please! Besides…4 plus 3 is 7, not 9″
Me: “Is that what they taught you at ‘Vijaya School for the Ultimately Stupid’?”
Drinivas: “You know what? I’m too mature for this silly name calling!”
Me: “Why? You Chicken? Hey guys! Why can’t Drinivas The Chicken play tennis?”

Drinivas tries to say something but I cut him off

Me: “…because the Drinivas The Chicken sits on the balls all day trying to hatch them. Muhahahaah! Quack! Quack! Quack!”

And I start running around in circles flapping my arms like a Chicken. Drinivas totally looses it at this point and throws his racket at me.

60 minutes-of-the-same-stuff later…

Me: “Good Game guys! Wanna play again tomorrow?”
Everyone (in chorus) : “Not if you’re coming!”
Me: “You guys are such bad losers….”

PS: I know many of you are wondering if I’ve actually gone against my religious principles and started exercising by playing Tennis. But don’t worry. I make it a point to drink enough Maza and Pepsi to offset any calories I might have burnt playing Tennis, so I’m OK!