The wonder that is an engineering student.

Whoever agrees with the phrase Ignorance is bliss shouldn't read this post. I wanted to write about someone I know, just share my experiences with her, with all of you. I want to say first that the person I am writing about is someone I really care for and mean absolutely no offence. The only reason I write so openly about this person is, not many people who know her would read this, and want people to know that people like these exist still, in our shining country... what lack of proper education would do to a person, who can never fit anywhere, except her own people, no matter how desperate she is to get out. I am also, in no way, violating her privacy, as everything I write here has been gladly shared by her with anyone who shows interest. Also, a lot of my frustration might come out in the form of rude and taunting words, please do ignore that! I will not write a name here, a lot of people already know her. Let me call her...umm.. Sims! So, Sims is someone I met less than a year ago. She is 24, and is married; hence, I'll call her, Mrs. Sims.

Mrs. Sims comes from a backward (am I allowed to use that word?) family, whose members aren't well educated, and live and abide by superstitions unique to their own village. She has studied all her life in a local school, without learning a word of English, and is currently about to finish her degree in engineering. She had completed her diploma (for those who don't know, diploma is done after the 10^th standard, for 3 years, and students are directly admitted to the 2^nd year of whatever course they join. It's really not a time-saver as most people say, as it is still 3 years), after school (12^th standard), because there were no good professional institutes near near her place. And after 3 years of diploma, her father forced her to join engineering. He still thinks that he helped his daughter finish her studies early, apparently, even though it can be understood by a five year old that Mrs. Sims's 2 years have gone down the drain.

Mrs. Sims is the typical character you see in hindi serials, who gawks at anything that shines and whispers when a man talks to a woman other than his wife. She is also a person who believes that Venus can't shine because it's a planet, and that thing I point out to her in the sky is definitely a star, maybe in our own solar system. She's going to have a Bachelor of engg. degree in computer science, and doesn't know what 'Recycle Bin' is, on her desktop, thinks that if I hold the mouse with my left hand, it won't function, doesn't understand the concept of storage space in a hard disk, and has never heard of the 'Mother board' before I mentioned it to her(yeah, she's in the final year of her grad. She actually thought I was pulling her leg because of the word 'mother'). I have had the dumbest arguments of my life with her, but never won, because I always give up. One unforgettable conversation went like this,

Mrs. Sims(out of the blue): We live in a college hostel, right? So why are civil (engg.)students also here?

Me: huh???

Mrs. Sims: I mean, why waste hostel facility on students who study in a branch as useless as civil engineering?

Me: useless? It's not useless.

Mrs. Sims: of course it is. These people shouldn't be called engineering students. They work on construction sites! There is no need for them. Or that stream.

Me: what do you mean? If there were no civil engineers, who would build roads or buildings or bridges?

Mrs. Sims: those things already exist. At least, civil engineers already exist. They'll do the job!

Me: then why do we need computer engineers? There are already people who do that job too.

Mrs. Sims: but computers are used everywhere! You need people to build them. Look around and tell me how many things you see that civil engineers have built.

(I imagine she pictured herself living in the jungle, without roads on which she drives her vehicle, and just a computer, connected to God knows where, and working on it, Satan knows how, as satellites are used only to take photos of the earth and not for communication.)

That was the first time I wanted to pull my brains out. My expressions of ridiculous shock slowly turned into curiosity, and then laughter to, pity, and now, blank. There were tons of conversations like these, I'll list a couple more later.

 

Anyway, one year before her graduation was due to complete, she was forcefully married off to her, get this, first cousin. She had never met this guy before(wonder how). Her father's sisters are all of the same type. Her own elder sister was married to another of their aunt's sons, and when she got pregnant a couple of years later, her mother in law yelled at her for being in such a hurry.( 'It was your son's idea!' 'Don't you dare say anything about my son, you witch!' and the hindi equivalent of 'burn in hell'). Poor Mrs. Sims's mil is no different. And the worst part is, her father knew his sister very well, but he still threatened to kill himself if his daughter didn't marry that loser of a man, and justified his actions, saying that, it's the son she's getting married to, not the mother. And he knew nothing, absolutely nothing about the son.

The son, in short, is an <beep>. He's very obviously cheating on her, was on the phone with another woman on his wedding night, has lurid text messages and sleazy photos in his cell phone, and is a mama's boy. His mama has officially given him permission in front of his wife, to have another girlfriend. Two more words that would describe him would be incestuous
paedophile. When Mrs. Sims tried to tell the family about his actions with the 5 year old kid in question, she was verbally thrashed for doubting her husband.

Mrs. Sims can never leave her husband because, in hindi movies, all the women say that it is morally right to be with only one man, and husband is like god. Agreed, either you live in the 12^th century, or those are values of our long lost tradition, but heck, do you not know the guy? And hello, you are going to live your life according to hindi movies?? The most cheesy, most ridiculous, over emoted dramas in the history of television? The answer, is apparently, yes. There were a couple of other living principles she borrowed from Karan Johar and the like. But one filmy conversation that stands out in the minds of 3 people present then was when we were watching an English movie, and at the end of the movie, a pair of lovers are reunited, and they kiss, and it is implied that they eventually go to bed. She thankfully understood that this time, but said:

These English people na, so dirty. Why do they have to do all this when they are not married? There is no reason!

X: it is instinct, Mrs. Sims. They don't plan it, it's something that is natural. They do it, it's their wish.

Mrs. Sims: there is nothing natural about it. And there is no need! People shouldn't get feelings like that before they are married. You should do that only when you want babies. (yeah, she's twenty four!)

Me: alright, this is a movie. Not real life.

Mrs. Sims: hindi movies don't show anything like that. so it's not real.

Ok, understood you don't know what fornication is, but hindi movies don't show sex? Excuse me??

Mrs. Sims, innocent and unknowing as she is, has faced a lot of ridicule from her husband. When she shared her unrealistic dreams with her husband, such as, wanting a laser eye surgery to get rid of glasses that make her look ugly, her husband told her that he would transplant a goat's eyes into hers(and she tried for ten mins to convince me that there are people in her family who do have goats' eyes to rid themselves of glasses, even though they can't see after that! In the same thread, she also thinks that, birds are asexual, as there are no male, and female gendered words for them, and that crows and mynahs mate, and lay 2 eggs: one becomes a crow, and the other one, a mynah.). she also dreams of leaving the country and her family as soon as college gets over, but doesn't realize the importance of obtaining a passport for herself. She and her husband haven't spoken a word to each other in the past 5 months, since her mil spread a rumour in the family that her father is having an affair.

Not only does she talk like a 6 year old(*nasal, like Janice* yay! I am going to sit on your bed today, wish me all the best!! Yay! I sat on your bed, congratulate me!! Uh-ha-uh-ha-uh-ha!!), she has the mental and emotional maturity of one too.
Out of the deepest regions of my heart, I feel bad for her. I wish I could help her, but I don't know what to do. The women of her family have a violent streak that I do not wish to experience. Her own ignorance is so ingrained in her that, try as we may, we can't get to admit that she is wrong. She is a very nice person, mind you. It's just that when I have conversations like the below, I realize how helpless she is, and how, now, there is absolutely nothing we can do about it, and how there are atleast one hundred thousand other people like her in the entire country!

Me: why don't you apply foundation to your neck too? Your face looks ten shades fairer than the rest of your body and it looks plain strange!

Mrs. Sims: let it be na, who's gonna look at me? I am fat and I wear glasses.

Me: then why are you putting on makeup in the first place?

Mrs. Sims: because I have to go to college and attend lectures. And i am not fair, like you! (in her whiny voice.)

Me: so?

Mrs.Sims: so? There will be people on the roads, sandy! (horrified expression, as though I don't comprehend such an obvious fact)

Me: so they'll look at you? Then why don't you apply make up properly?

Mrs. Sims: chodo na... who's gonna look at me anyway?

And it the loop went on twice, in the exact same way, before I quit.

Akhil-babu's letter to the Railway Department

A forward:

Akhil Chandra Sen wrote this letter to the Sahibganj divisional railway office in 1909. It is on display at the Railway Museum in New Delhi. It was also reproduced under the caption “Travelers' Tales" in the Far Eastern Economic Review.

"I am arrive by passenger train Ahmedpur station and my belly is too much swelling with jackfruit. I am therefore went to privy. Just I doing the nuisance that guard making whistle blow for train to go off and I am running with lotah in one hand and dhoti in the next when I am fall over and expose all my shocking to man and female women on platform. I am got leaved at Ahmedpur station.

This too much bad, if passenger go to make dung that dam guard not wait train five minutes for him. I am therefore pray your honor to make big fine on that guard for public sake. Otherwise I am making big report to papers."

Any guesses why this letter was of historic value? It apparently led to introduction of toilets in trains.

20-20: English words you didn’t know were of Indian origin:

Alright, everyone knows Bungalow, Pajamas/Pyjamas, Junta, Cheetah, Cummerbund, Guru, Jungle, Cashmere, Khaki (colour of dust, in Urdu), Gymkhana, Coolie(from the Tamil ‘Coolie’), Veranda, Loot, and of course, Yoga. I even read somewhere that ‘bifurcate’ is of Indian origin, but I couldn’t find out more about that.

Ok, I’ll start with some pretty obvious ones and go down to unusual and shocking.

1. First one on our list is Juggernaut. As it sounds, it has its origins in the name of Lord Vishnu, Jagannath. (Wikipedia says: During the British colonial era, Christian missionaries promulgated a falsehood that Hindu devotees of Krishna were lunatic fanatics who threw themselves under the wheels of huge chariots in order to attain salvation. In rare instances in the Jagannath yatra festival's past, people had been crushed accidentally as the massive 45-foot-tall, multi-ton chariot slipped out of control, with others suffering injury in the resulting stampedes. This sight led the Britons of the time to contrive the word "juggernaut" to refer to examples of unstoppable, crushing forces.)
   
2. Second one is on the list is the fruit drink Punch(made of fruit juices mixed with water or soda water, with or without alcohol). This word originates from ‘pancha’ (Sanskrit), meaning ‘five’, because of the five ingredients used: spirit/soda, sugar, lemon, water and tea/spices.
   
3. Cool number one: Bandana: from ‘bandhna’, to tie. (Hindi, Lucknow). We started a fashion trend!
   
4. Surprising entry number one: Chit(yeah, the piece of paper with writing on it) has originated from Chitthi, a letter(Hindi)!!!
   
5. Number two is: Mango. This is from ‘maangai’ in Tamil, for Mango.
   
6. An animal makes it to the list too. Mongoose is from the Marathi word for the same, Mangus.
   
7. A Malayalam word, Chakka, is what gave birth to Jack Fruit. More interestingly, Coir came from the Mallu word kayaru, which in turn was borrowed from Kayir, in Tamil.
   
8. On a slightly dull, yet bright note, Opal is from Sanskrit Upalah. Another stone, Marakata, travelled all the way to the Greek language, and then Latin under the guise of smaragdus, and became the English Emarald.
   
9. The scaly reptiles are here! Serpent is from the Sanskrit Sarpam.
   
10. The next reptile has a weird avatar here. Apparently fashionable Victorian purses were made of crocodile skin. The Hindi word for croc is Magar/ mugger. Street robbers were thus called Muggers.
    
11. Surprise number three: Sugar is from Middle Latin succarum, from Arabic sukkar and Persian shakar ultimately from Sanskrit sharkara.
    
12. Another word for ‘sugar’ in Sanskrit is Khanda. This one travelled to Persia, and then to France as Sucre Candi, and then to England in the form of Candy. (Cool number two)
    
13. An interesting one is Zen. Yes, it’s Japanese, for meditation. The Chinese called it ch’an. And we called it, Dhyaana(Sanskrit).
    
14. Rice is from where the most Rice is eaten (as far as popular jokes go, at least): in Tamil, it is arisi.(Cool! again....)
    
15. When our elders wanted a massage, they would ask their slaves to champu(Hindi, verb) their scalp. Today, it led to Shampoo.
    
16. In Tamil, people call money, kaasu. In English, we call it, Cash. (pretty shocking, isn’t it? and amazing!)
    
17. For the Chemistry geeks, Indians knew of a chemical and they called it Sulvari. In Latin, it became Sulfur. You know what it is now.
    
18. Going back to the roots of English(or Maths): The numbers Eight and One are from their Tamil equivalents: yettu and onru.(amazing!)
    
19. Going back to the roots of our own birth, two words that people all over the world use and are most sentimental about are Mother and Father. They have their own roots in Sanskrit, Matru and Pitru.(awesome!!)
    
20. I wanted to put the last one as the best, but this one is the most amazing of all! In Tamil Nadu, people were terrified of snakes(yet another reptile!) that could gobble up elephants! They called it, aanai kondan, literally meaning, elephant killer. The rest of the world was too lazy to invent a new word, so they pronounced it, Anaconda!!!
    

Kate Middleton

For those who don’t know her, she is the current girlfriend.. oops, Girlfriend of Prince William of Wales. Why am I writing all of a sudden about some girl who lives in another country and who’s done nothing worthy of writing about? Because, I live in India, and the news on British Royals is(almost) the only international news that makes it to the front page, other than day to day happenings in the US of A. (The latest one to catch my eye was an article on how Chelsy Davy informed Prince Harry that their relationship was over by changing the status of her Facebook profile. She, turns out, is much more sensible than Kate, but that’s for later.. maybe). The media frenzy surrounding the couple has reached to such alarming levels, that a few months ago, paparazzi chased the car in which the couple were travelling, reminiscent of the scene of Lady Diana’s death.

Kate Middleton was born to an ex airline stewardess and a pilot. She has a brother and a sister, and comes from a very middle class family (in its origins at least). Her parents started an online business selling party paraphernalia and they are now millionaires (www.partypieces.co.uk). She was apparently a brilliant student all her life. She attended the elite Marlborough College, where she stuck up a poster of Prince William in her dorm. She then attended St. Andrews University in Scotland, where she met William. They became friends, then fell in love and later shared housing. 

I admit it, I like her. The girl has the complete package. She’s undeniably beautiful, she’s got brains, she maintains her dignity, the media has followed her every footstep for the past seven years, yet she has never put a foot wrong (unlike her mother, sister and brother.. wonder where her dad is) her sauciest moment in life would have been when she strutted on the ramp in a charity fashion show in her university, in just her underwear, with William sitting in the front row. She has never once given an interview.. I am sure there are very few people who aren’t her friends and family who can claim they’ve heard her voice. 

She has an impeccable fashion sense

(She made it to the best dressed/style icon list in People’s magazine, Tatler, The Telegraph, Vanity Fair and more!) and has a wardrobe to die for. She has a real good looking, rich, famous Prince-of-hearts for a boyfriend. She showed the world her confidence when she re-emerged a couple of days after William shortly broke up with her, looking more attractive, being photographed all over London, and showing William-training-in-the-army exactly what he was missing. (Of course they got back together!)She has a lot of common sense(read stories about how she persuaded William not to quit university), and has been raised in a strong, 2-parent, close knit family, so unlike W, and she keeps him grounded.  Her exclusive photos sell for over 50,000 pounds! She even has a page on her in Wikipedia! And most of all, she provides the much needed glamour and sizzle in the Royally dull British empire. In short, she is perfect!

But wait, isn’t there an adage in Kate’s own ageless language? Nobody’s perfect. Of course nobody’s perfect. Then why is Kate always projected so? Only and only because there is a strong possibility, in the remote future that she could be, The Queen of England... someday. But I’ll tell you what’s wrong with her. She is 27 years old now. And she hasn’t had a real job till date. Her resume probably reads:

‘Kate Middleton, excellent performance throughout school, college, university. Worked for a couple of months as some-buyer for some-fashion-chain whose owners are close family friends, currently working for parents’ mail order company as ‘cyber chief’ ’ (“Kate Middleton has been promoted at Party Pieces:  After completing not one but two, short courses in computing Kate has now been promoted from compiling and editing catalogues to the dizzying heights of "website design editor and new business manager". It seems it didn't take much for Kate to impress her bosses who also happen to be her parents”.--- royaltruthforum.blogspot.com)

She lives with her parents, and she is only ever photographed shopping or weaving her way in and out of nightclubs!! (Considering the media frenzy surrounding her, you can virtually know when she sneezes, so this is all she apparently does). She doesn’t have a source of income.. I wonder where she gets all the money. Can any self respecting 27 year old girl (esp. one who is so much in the limelight) live off her parents or younger sister/brother? Or worse, her boyfriend?  She isn’t involved in any kind of charity work. The only thing she’s done that has come closest to being praiseworthy is join a Girls’ Chinese Dragon Race team and train for a charity match. She pulled out of it at the last moment on the advice of the Queen. (The team went on to set some world record, I don’t remember). She is so stark different from Chelsy, who runs away from paps. Kate is never knows to use the back exit of any place. She held her head high and conducted herself very well indeed when William broke up with her.. she knew exactly what the prince did after that(considering even I  know!), and yet, she’s back with him again. Prince William, for all his resemblance to his mother, is apparently a chip off his father’s old block.. Prince Charles, who famously remarked to Diana, ‘Do you want me to be the only Prince of Wales in history to not have a mistress?’ She has been nicknamed by the press as ‘Waity Katie’. She is doing nothing with her life, but simply waiting for her Prince to pop the question (if he does, I’m waiting for the wedding videos!).

And it’s not just Chelsy Davy or Kate Middleton(pictured together) who make it to the news. If you google either of these names, you will get results on the girls’ brothers’ antics, Kate’s sister, Pippa’s apparent ferociousness to climb the social ladder, their friends, their relatives, 3 or 4 girls whose names you would never want to hear again, a couple of guys, who names you can’t pronounce, in the news just because they saw these girls (at a nightclub, most likely).. people even remotely associated with these girls have their fifteen minutes..over and over again. Why, though?, I ask. The British royal family stands for everything that was. Today, it’s presence, although adds a little entertainment to the lives of common men like you and me, is totally unnecessary, downright to the point of being an extra burden on the taxpayer (Britain’s only, thankfully). Alright, I guess we can accept ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’ as answers for another half a century or more.

But, why Kate’s sister? What has she done? Except have a weird name, Pippa(short for Philippa). Why is the international media so obsessed with these really-nothing-girls? Kates and Pippas, Jade Goody(maybe I shouldn’t say anything about her now, considering she’s dying, but all she ever did was take part in a reality show, and pass a racist comment..which definitely isn’t a good thing to do), Paris Hilton(OMG, seen anyone dumber? At least, if she had been good looking... )

{Kate, and that’s Holly Branson behind her, btw. Sir Richard Branson’s daughter. She's seen in the same circuit, finished her medical studies and ended her medical career to join the Virgin empire..but she did save a man's life in an airplane once}

What have these people achieved that make them worthy of being common household names among the existing human civilization? They aren’t accomplished entrepreneurs, great thinkers or even talented actors! These girls simply provide the dream most people want to live-be rich and famous and attractive without having to do anything! You don’t need talent, you don’t need brains, in fact, you don’t even need to look good! What can be a better deal in life? These girls represent the materialized hopes and tears of millions of girls worldwide who have worked and not had their hard work pay off, dreamt and see their dreams shattered.. girls who have been teased for being fat or ugly, girls who couldn’t afford to buy a ridiculously expensive lipstick the size of their little finger, girls who would rather be skinny and attractive than be smart and respected. These celebrity girls stand for the hole in the soul of the common woman. If you think about it, doing away (away from the spotlight, I mean!) with these girls couldn’t really affect anybody. Normal girls might just stop spending so much time poring over pointless newspaper reports and glossy magazines and articles on the internet. The paparazzi will continue to have a field day with actors and wardrobe malfunctions and politicians and rock stars!

In the name of God: What better way to start my first blog than this? God. God that we believe in, God that we worship, God that we cherish. Who is God? Has anyone seen him? How do you know he looks human? If he is capable of anything, he obviously is superhuman, and has advanced capabilities that we don’t. Then why do we give him a human or near human form? (Incidentally, if God is capable of doing anything, can he build a mountain that he himself cannot lift?)But if he doesn’t exist, why do most people think of him, especially when they are stuck in a rut? And most important of all, why do people have such different opinions on God?

{Maybe I should insert a disclaimer here: The opinions expressed in this blog are purely my own. They are not meant as scientific evidence, psychological theories, hate messages or as a propaganda against religion/science.}

God, I can sum up in one word is Faith. The deeper we probe into science, the less reason there is for us to believe in God. Yet we do. Faith is what gives us Hope and Hope is what keeps us alive. Imagine living, knowing that every single day is going to be more miserable than the previous one. Knowing for sure that there is no point in staying alive as you are going to suffer more each day and nothing good will come out of it for you! I don’t think anyone can survive in such a situation.You need hope to carry on and God gives you that.

But does God exist? Or, considering that we have such well documented religion, did God exist? I think he did. Just that he wasn’t God. If anyone has read “Chariots of Gods” by Erich von Daniken, they will know where I am heading. This book helped me sort out a lot of things in my head. The book is admittedly biased and poor Daniken is very frustrated by the lack of funding provided by the govt. for his research, but the ideas put forth are brilliant! There were more intelligent beings who visited our Earth from time to time(read: different avatars with different types of Gods), and help shape the world the way it is today.

Our mythology consists of various scientific marvels. If you look in detail, you have advanced spacecrafts, nuclear weapons, missiles, genetically-enhanced creatures and so on. Examples from Hindu mythology(the one I am most familiar with) are: Gods making sudden appearances in ‘large shiny metallic birds with blue-flamed tails’ or Duryodhana obtaining a weapon from the Gods that was very powerful can be used only once(which he used to kill Bhima’s son, a giant). Even when Noah’s ark was reconstructed a few years ago, it had electrocuting properties(explaning why when someone, I don’t remember the name, touched the original ark when he wasn’t supposed to, died). Isn’t this all evidence carried down by generations that God was not just fantasy? But then again, he wasn’t God. Humans started calling Gods as Gods because they could not explain the physics behind their capabilities and actions. And Gods were marvellous.. they looked different, they could do amazing things.. surely they could save all of humanity if they were pleased? Little did they know that God would stop existing once he realized that humans could survive on their own. Maybe some of them still have their bloodline alive today.

I guess my views on God make me, not an atheist, maybe a little bit of an agnostic. But just like anyone else, knowing in the sanest of my minds that there is no proof that God is the one who is granting my wishes, I can’t stop believing in him. Religion has been so thoroughly instilled in me that even if I want to, I can’t get rid of it! I still pray every day, I even converse with God(with my own conscience and subconscious providing the God’s half of the conversation). God, according to me, is very important in one’s life. He provides the faith, hope and fear in everyone to keep them getting through one day to the next. He provides happiness that we can thank him for and sadness that we can conveniently blame him for(he did that to you because of your Karma!). God has a scientifically established existence, but he doesn’t exist! I mean, imagine, if he does exist, where is he? How can he see us individually and observe our most secret actions and know our deepest thoughts if he isn’t within us?

Religion can help us understand so many things about science better(eg: Stonehenge, and oh, how did Chinese astronomers observed the Crab Nebula's(6500 light years away ) supernova in 1054?? I mean, we just built a space telescope in the previous century!!). And Science has the capability to cover every loophole in religion. We just need one more player in the game- the magnificent healer and creator, Time.

One day, as Science still waits for the Grand Unified Theory, and recovers fossils that were older than ever, we will finally find out the Great Truth...and the merger of religion and science. Einstein’s once said, “all the things I have learnt through science do nothing but enhance my faith in god”.  He also said “God does not play dice”.  How true.

I sum up my views as, Religion is Science and Science is Religion, neither can live without the other, and neither can kill the other.