A -ve Flashback

Its the final semester in college. Just  a little under 90 days to go for the course to get completed and the Bachelor of Engg tag to be bestowed upon half a thousand of qualified ( are they really?? ) engineers who have completed their courses. Its that time of the year hen everyone in the above mentioned category take a look at the things that have happened all through their 4 years or more in their college life and try to take back with them, the fond memories. Everyone getting filled with nostalgia.

But, hold on a second, was it that great? I think it as pretty great with all the friends and the amazing times we had after classes and in the hostels. The parties we had, the picnics we undertook, the events we organised, the events we participated.....all had its share of fun. Not to mention getting that one thing that evaded millions of Indians, Jobs. But that's were it all ends. I would like to take a look at all the bad things, if not all, atleast some of them that happened and are the bane of this institute, which quite incredibly, was voted 9th best tech institute in the country by a poll. So, here goes my -ve flashback.

It all started 3 n a half years back, July 12-13, 2004 when yours truly went for the counselling an took admission in this college, based on its reputation as one of India's finest technical educational institutions. How excited was I at the prospect of being among the best in the country. To be frank, I still wonder, how all these guys' brains work so efficiently. Let me get back to the point.  So, it was decided. BIT MESRA it shall be.  The train journey itself gave me nightmares and still gives me a few. I ve written a seperate post on the train. Finally, we landed in Ranchi. 
The city was nowhere close to the ones I d been to. This place sucked, 
so to speak.
I thought, that only the city sucked. The campus could still be awesome. That proved wrong. The registration got over. My parents left. Homesickness was at its peak on the first few days. Slowly, that moved away.

The first of those experiences were during the registration itself. Never knew that people coul be so insincere to their work. All the staff were taking an extended lunch break. One and a half hours to eat lunch? Did they include the time for afternoon nap too in that? Then the rudeness of the staff. They were barking at even the slightest mistakes, like a small swap in the arrangement of the documents. How could these people have been recruited? Well, this was a small does of things to come. Sample vedikkettu ( fireworks display ) as they say back in my place.

Then came the unenviable task of opening a bank account in UCO bank. I havent seen a worser staff in a bank. My dad always goes about criticising the way Canara Bank, where my mom works. But this stood way above the rest. Unpolite staff with an even more unnpolite manager! The account opening took a lot of time. Thankfully, they didnt say that they cannot
 handle more than 20 acocunt openings in a day as it would mean eating up into their leisure time (read working hours).
This was not the end of the story with the bank. I ve had to wait for 2 n a half hours before my transaction was completed. This, on  day when there was very little rush.
But, the way all good things come to an end, so do the bad things. I d managed to top Comp Sci in school and the award was Rs 500 and an account in SBI. So I got my ATM card and thus, it was the end of the story with the bank. Well, not exactly, coz my account still exists ( or does it ) with a minimum balance. I ll close it someday and just like my friend did, write a letter to the manager and throw it in his face.

The faculty was nothing to boast about as we, atleast I, were to soon find out. 
No prof ( even the junior lecturers add that tag to their name!),
could speak English properly, except for a few young gentlemen who had the fortune of having quality English medium education. As for their academic abilities. I wonder how any instituion could bestow these degrees upon some of them. There are of course exceptions. A few brilliant teachers strewn here and there. But the overall quality was pretty poor. Some of them have the brains to prove that the Dimensions of current = that of voltage, and that too, at a national seminar! Some of them defied the laws of physics with their derivations. Others, were too busy finishing the course that they didnt even care whether the students were understanding anything. There were teachers ho would just turn up to take attendance and leave. 
Well, I wont blame that lot. They are atleast indirectly
admitting that they dont know much. Atleast, they were not boring us. Then , there was this unique class of teachers. Ask them doubts and they ll leave you even more confused!

The administrators were the worst. Worse than those politicians. All corrupt and didnt give a heck about the student's welfare. The Dean student welfare was held by 3 different persons in these 3 n half years.  Different, only in appearance. All of them had only one agenda in their minds : "How to put the students through torture". They did that in every possible way. 
Imposing exorbitant fines for least of students faults.
Not providing us with adequate freedom, it is worse than a prison. During the cultural fest, a "Professor" abused a final year guy badly, 
abusing him by his mother. 
Even though, the students were in protest at midnight, nothing was done. That guy went unpunished. An apology was the least he should have done. Even that didnt happen. What are we? Some kind of inferior creatures?

Now, no writing about this institution can be complete without a mention of MESS FOOD. When the food gets slightly better, the standard of service deteriorates and when the standard of service finally does get better, the mess management changes. This continues till date. The new hostels which were constructed have 
private caterers taking care of the mess.
Our Juniors are a trifle luckier than we are/were. And finally, when all these issues were settled, the system of No extras came into effect.
Previously, we could opt for some of the extra dished served, and the amount would be added to the mess. Now, there was a system of general bill. THe mess menu was standardised and a guy, no matter he ate the "delicacy" for the day or not, he had to pay for it. Thus, for a guy, whose mess bill used to be around Rs800 now shelled out Rs1500-1700 per month on stuff he disliked. Also, for demand dinner days where meat or paneer would be served, coupons had to be taken for the same,
atleast by afternoon of that day. This meant that we have to foresee our future and predict whether we will be fit to eat those. These coupons could be used only on that particualr day. It could not be carried forward to another day. I have been a victim of this on a couple of occasions. I take the coupon in the afternoon, but the very food from the mess
puts me off for the night. That in my opinion was the worst that could happen. Helplessly watching 20-30 bucks disappearing into thin air, for no fault of yours. Actually, theres a fault that we did. 
Eat from the mess!

Enough has been written for now. There are a few more issues like Powa, or getting things done through contacts at the apex, the sad net connection, pathetic cultural fests and you name it, we got a problem there! If I Go on writing about all this, I can write a book on it and as my friend jokingly remarked, it can give Chetan Bhagat, a run for his money :P This is a BITian's true viewpoint of the institute. He may say that the institution rocks and all the stuff. 
This is REALITY and reality is always very very BITTER.

A Day to Remember

It was a Wednesday like all other Wednesdays so far this semester. Classes from 8 am till 12.10 pm and then the rest of the day, no classes. I decided to take my guitar, which was beginning to hurt my fingers while playing because of the strings going too high, for repair to town. For company, I called one of my friends. I met another friend of mine on the bus and we decided to go togetehr and complete our tasks and return. The bus took a little longer than usual to reach town, caused mainly by a rally or party meeting which was called by a locl political party. This being our college, the buses wouldn't have plied, if the issue was a little serious. So, the bus took us finally to town. I showed my guitar at one place, where they gave it back to me saying that there was absolutely no fault with it! I definitely knew that something was wrong, as it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to hold the strings when playing and here is this guy who gave it back to me telling that there was no fault!.
I gave it in an adjacent shop and its gonna take them a week probably to get it back in shape. The bridge ( the long portion of the guitar for the uninitiated ) was slightly bent and they would have to do a lot of stuff it seems. It remains to be seen how much work was needed for this.

We decided to have lunch and went to a chinese restaurant. We had food and then, this friend of mine wanted to get a new pair of shoes. We went to all the footwear showrooms in that part of the town and finally, he decided to get a pair.

We had some more time before the scheduled time for the bus and so, we decided to have a cuppa at Cafe Coffee Day. Finally, it was time to move on. The shopping didnt end there. We did a bit of window shopping before heading for the place from where we needed to catch the bus.

We waited n waited n waited for the 6 pm bus to come, which never did. A guy from our batch brought this great news that all the buses after 4 pm had been cancelled due to a traffic jam on the highway.

We then took an autorickshaw. That took us around the city through a lot of bylanes before they also started getting jammed.  Add to this the Rickshaw Driver's blabbering about his vehicle running out of fuel. The trip was totally irritating.

Finally, we decided to walk all the way till the road was cleared. But that was a herculean task. We needed to walk atleast 3 km before such a situation could happen, atleast in the best case. We started walking. We walked n walked n walked. The place where we had supposed that the road would  get a little clear came. We asked a few guys in a jeep whether they ca give us a lift till the main junction near our college. They agreed and we boarded it. That was to be shortlived as the jeep gtot stuck in another jam. We got down from the jeep and started walking again.

The Murphy's Law cannot have a better proof! As soon as we got down from the jeep and started walking, the jam got cleared and the vehicles strted moving smoothly. Then, it was another long walk till the junction.

There was one auto rickshaw parked out there. We hired that and reached the college gate at 9 55pm, 5 mins before the gate closes.

As soon as we reached, we went straight to a shop and got a packet of potato wafers and a soft drink. That was the dinner for the night.

Some bad news was in store however. 2 of my friends had fallen ill that day.

There couldnt have been a worser day. Of all days, the supposedly " Cool Wednesday "