Pehli Nite Out

Second year. The night before the Computer Architecture final project demo. Suhas's room in the NC wing.

Bansal, Suhas and I finally decide to make a last ditch effort to pass the course. With scores like 1.5, 2.5 out of 20 (or was it 40!) in the minors and no hope of any redemption in the majors, was it a case of too little too late? Naah ! 'Nite out maarte hain yaar... ho jaega'

None of us had any clue of what was to be done. The best shot that we had was to somehow convince our prof that we had at least tried and then hope for his benevolence. Circumstances had forced the three of us to enter into this alliance. Actually, only individuals or groups of two were allowed. But we realised that friendship is worth more than grades (even passing a course) and since for some reason we three were the only people left without partners, we decided 'Saath jienge, saath marenge'

We just did whatever we felt would make the prof feel that we had made a sincere effort. Completion was beyond our abilities so was never our agenda. We decided to slog out the entire night and come up with something presentable. Suhas and Bansal did most of the coding stuff (did I even need to tell you guys that!) and I concentrated on making some flowcharts (handmade), coming up with explanations for our super shady efforts and the trio factor and generally giving random fundes at times. I actually dont remember that night very vividly except for the fact that all of us knew that we had a non zero probability of flunking the course and that was quite a scary thought at that point of time. So we just did whatever our intelligence and instinct would dictate to us without taking into consideration its relevance. By the early hours of morning we had come up with something to show the prof. Some code, some algorithms, a flowchart and lots and lots of practice at pleading our case.

I finally dozed off at quarter to seven and slept for half an hour or so. But technically since the night was over, so it was officially my first night out. The other two didnt even sleep for a minute.

Intel Lab. The three of us are called by the prof. We take our positions in front of him, strategically placing Suhas closest to him.

"Why are you a group of three?"

"mmm.....sir....actually sir... we couldnt find partners... mmm... and since it would have been too difficult for an individual to do it (too difficult..... hah what a lie.. we would even have tried in that case!)... so . sir we decided to form a group of three...please sir...."
(what an excuse!!)

"But I have never seen any one of you ever in the class. No wonder you dont have a clue about the project..."

"Sir... sorry sir... please sir......sir but we have tried our best sir... please..."

"Ok show me what you have done"

We show him our stuff all along mumbling some rubbish and thinking.. "what the fuck .. this guy knows we havent done a thing.. its all shit that we are showing him.. then why is he still playing the game.. why doesnt he just pass us yaar ....he knows we know and we know he knows..."

"I cant understand one thing. One project, three guys. So which one of you did the work and who are the two who just sat back...and enjoyed.."

<ALERT... here comes the answer>
"Sir he thought of the algo, and then I did the coding and then he ran the tests and debugged the code"

The prof was almost in splits. He knew it all. I think even he was enjoying the farce. Anyway, that was the end of our demo.

We passed the course

The Great M!

Our course advisor, probably the most talked about, respected (this is debatable in certain circles though!), feared professor in IIT Delhi. Also definitely the one likely to get the maximum hate mails if ever such a campaign is undertaken with complete guarentee that the sender will remain anonymous no matter what.

Course registration and grade sheet collection used to be major events not just for the 9 of us condemned to 5 years of fear and anxiety but also for the entire department and this included fellow professors at times!

He was ambidextrous, with gray hair parted at the center, had the look of a genius in his eyes, walked with unsurpassed authority and had an air of invincibility about him. His offerings of sem flunks and his DISCO rulings during his tenure as the Dean were nothing short of legendary. And he was unreasonable and moody.

But all of it was masked by his famous one liners. Presenting a glimpse of 5 years of M's life changing quotes:
(9 months after passing out of IIT, still feel explicitly writing his name might have dire consequenses.... Hail the M)

'You first assignment is up. You are to design a Discrete Event Simulator in Java....'
- 2nd sem cs130

'In IIT Delhi, we dont teach programming languages, we teach computer science..'
or something to the same effect!

'Aapko kanche ginne bhi nahi aate...'
- to our very own Pappu who got a C in AM130, during one of the 'half-yearly-grade-sheet-taking' ceremony

'Tum gadhe ho aur gadhe hi rehna chahte ho'
- again to Pappu ( his favourite student!)

'JEE me rank kya fraud se maara tha'
-to yours truly after yet another glorious performance in the semester.

'GATE will open gates for you'
-to all his sons, asking them to value GATE

'What Category? Basic Science, BS. BullShit category...'

And now for a Pappu-M combo.
P: Sir I dont like hardware.
M: Hardware me kya hai...Multimeter laga ke dekh lo 0 hai ya 1!'
And people devoted their lives to computer hardware. Such fools!

'Aapne to participate hi nahi kia'
- to Pappu on knowing that he had managed a C in Participative Management.

'If you are not good enough to be here, I'll make sure that you do not stay here...'
-cs130 tutorial (or was it a lecture!)

'I'll flunk half the class. And it will be not because of attendance, it would be because you dont know the subject...'
-cs130 tutorial, Cycle 2

No way an exhaustive list. So let the comments flow.