My College Days

A few weeks ago my college friend Anurag pointed out a very significant fact to me. He was going through my blog archives and he suddenly asked me why I had not written anything about my college days. I had never noticed this by myself, but it is true that I never wrote anything about my college other than this. So I am writing this post about my college days, about very important four years of my life.

IIIT-C or Indian Institute of Information Technology Calcutta (as opposed to the International Institute of Information Technology Kolkata, a private college under Bishwabharati University) was formed in 2000, just before the assembly elections in West Bengal. Buddhadeb Bhattacharya was the new Chief Minister, and he wanted to build a center of excellence in the state. IIIT-C was the CM’s brainchild, and it was started with joint effort from the State Government and private partners. The first batch was selected through an India-wide admission test and they started their studies in a rented campus. Then 2001 came and all hell broke loose.

When Osama had planned the 9/11 attacks on USA, he surely had no idea how it was going to change the college life of two hundred students in a city on the other side of the globe. Due to the attacks, the IT jobs vanished, the sponsors backed off, and the development of IIIT-C stopped. This was just after we had started our first semester. Government of India wasn’t particularly helpful in helping us out. On the contrary, they denied AICTE approval to the college. Ultimately we were bailed out by the CM himself who merged us into the West Bengal University of Technology (WBUT) and thus assured that we would be getting a valid Bachelors’ degree. But since then, it was a downhill journey for IIIT-C in a lot of ways.

But all that is technical stuff that I don’t want to go into. I want to describe our “college life” here.

IIIT-C had two distinct images in the minds of the people, and both were wrong. The people from other states thought that the college was a centre of excellence, at par with the other IIITs and maybe even comparable to the IITs. The reason behind this idea was the fact that the IIITs at Allahabad, Hyderabad and Gwalior were doing extremely well, and were actually huge institutes with campuses built on acres of land, sophisticated labs, enviable libraries, beautiful student hostels and industry backing at every stage. But little did they know that IIIT-C was an ensemble of a couple of rented rooms here, a couple of rented rooms there, some rented rooms for labs, a tiny library and some rented and some private hostels. There were times when we had to travel between buildings by public transport to attend consecutive classes.

The other image of IIIT-C was in the minds of the people of West Bengal, who had seen the students take to the streets for a legal degree and proper infrastructure. They had formed an opinion that this was just another of those private engineering colleges, and it was even worse as the State Government was handling the issue, and they would not have their children studying in IIIT-C under any circumstances. Indeed, many of my relatives actually looked down upon me with a sense of pity when they heard that I was a student of IIIT-C.

Both these images were as right as they were wrong. While from the infrastructure point of view the people of the state were closer to the truth, with respect to our syllabus, quality of students, quality of faculty and most importantly, in our spirit, we could take on any of the other IIITs any day. The story of our college life is basically the story of these students striving to live up to the former image of the institute, while desperately trying to disprove the latter image. We had to fight for our campus, for our professors, for our syllabus, for the admission procedure of the newer batches and for our placements. We fought for the hostel facilities (not me technically, as I was a day scholar), against the bureaucracy and the red-tapism of the WBUT, and against the amateurish and laid back attitude of the administrators. At the same time, our students were beating the IITs in their own technical fests, getting admission into foreign universities, and landing up with plush jobs. It was not easy. I still remember the day when one of the IT giants of India came to our campus with offers for BPO jobs. Our whole senior batch walked out after their presentation and the officers left the college furious. Next year, they were back with Software Engineering job offers, and were fighting with other companies for the first slot.

The road was far from smooth. WBUT tried its best to change our syllabus, which was one of its kind in the state, and make it the same as the other colleges (they did succeed in doing it three batches later). They also tried their best to make it an all-Bengali college, which we resisted up to our next batch. The faculty that IIIT-C had started off with would be the envy of any college. People such as the HODs of Jadavpur University and renowned professors from Calcutta University taught us. Some of the professors were directly from the industry and they actually knew what the scenario in the outside world was. WBUT stopped paying them salary and they left one by one. We needed software for our Lab sessions, and WBUT stopped giving us money to buy them. They even restricted our lab timings, making sure we never had the time to do anything worthwhile. We were desperate, like sailors on a floundering ship, yet we were trying to keep our mast high.

And that is the reason I never wrote about my college days. My college life can hardly be called a joyful experience. All college-related incidents that I can think of are negative ones. Yet we learnt a lot during this time. It was this four year long struggle that prepared many of us for our future lives. The people who emerged winners by solving their own problems were ready to face any challenges of the corporate world. And I’m sure the kind of satisfaction that we got after getting a job, after doing a good project or after any achievement for that matter, was much more than an IITian feels after a similar achievement. For them it is routine, it is expected, it is a system that was always there. For us it was not only a system that we built brick by brick, but one for building which we had to demolish another older non-productive system.

IIIT-C was never the centre of excellence that the State Government promised us, and it is never going to be one anymore. It is now called SIT (School of Information Technology) that teaches a routine syllabus of IT to a batch of students selected through the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination. But for us, the first few batches, it will always be an institute that we were proud to be part of. Maybe we didn’t leave with positive experiences worth writing about, but we definitely came out with a more positive attitude and greater faith in our abilities.

Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall...

Does speaking on a cell phone make us so stupid for the time being that we lose all sense of where we are and what we are doing? Or does it have something to do with the fact that any hint of a reflective surface evokes uncontrollable desire of self scrutiny from the human beings around?

A few minutes ago we were sitting inside the office cafeteria just next to the glass walls. Suddenly, this girl comes from nowhere, lost in conversation over a cell phone, and stands just outside the glass pane. As we looked up from our food to find out what she was up to, she started making faces at us. It took us a few moments to realize that the glass wall had a two way pane. While we saw her clearly, she saw only her own reflection outside.

She kept walking up and down with the phone, and whenever she came close to the glass, she stopped and looked at her face closely. She patted her hair, scratched her chin, blinked her eyes, and even glanced sideways to catch a glimpse of her profile. After a while she went away. By that time we were choking with laughter inside.

What I found surprising is the fact that the girl is also an employee here, and she knows very well that the glass around the cafeteria is a two way mirror. Yet, she forgot that for the time being. Was it the urge to preen herself in the mirror, or was it due to the cell phone call that she was attending? Or did both the factors add up to extract this ridiculous behaviour from her?

It is scary to think that I may also be making a public spectacle of myself in a similar manner several times a day and I’m not even aware of it.

How business grows...!

Around a year ago, I took the photograph given below in HITEC City, Hyderabad and later I also posted it in my blog as I thought the sign, though creative, was funny because of its spelling mistakes.

A few days before leaving Hyderabad, I went to the same place again, this time at night, and I found the “mekhanic” working at the same place. The way his business has grown is amazing! Now he has a mobile phone and provides service round the clock. A look at this photo below will make things clear.

It just shows that hard work can do wonders for your business, even if you are illiterate and poor.

A local train journey

If on a weekday morning you look down on to the platforms of a busy suburban railway station from the top of an over bridge, you will see that alternate platforms are crowded. These are the platforms where the trains going towards Kolkata will be stopping. You will also notice that the crowd is not uniform but standing in clusters. These clusters are the places where the doors will be when the train stops at the platform. Within the half minute of stopping time, your programme of getting into a jam-packed compartment suffers a severe setback if you do not stand in front of a door. The daily commuters know every inch of the trains, and you should never underestimate their intelligence. So if you are standing on a comparatively empty patch of the platform and chuckling to yourself, you are sure to end up in front of the vendors’ compartment, or the ladies compartment, or worse still, the gap between two compartments.

If you thought your eyesight was as good as anybody else’s, think twice, for you are no match for the daily commuters. As you stand on the platform, some of the people will crane out their necks, gaze towards the spot where the railway tracks meet, and announce, “Gaadi dhukechhe” (The train has entered). If you try to look for the approaching train, you’ll find nothing, for the train will take another minute or a half to become visible to the lesser mortals.

At last it arrives. It is customary to let the people alight first, and then board the train. Half of the doors will be blocked by huge baskets full of vegetables (probably they could not be accommodated in the vendors’ compartment) and the owners will be sitting right behind them, valiantly defending their right to block the door. If you are extremely lucky, or extremely skilful, or both, you will be able to squeeze into the train through the gaps in these baskets after a portion of the crowd gets down. And yes, I forgot to say, keep one hand on your wallet, one on your cell phone and use the others to hold your luggage (which should not be more than a small bag) high and to hang onto the rods. If you miss any of the first three, you are likely to lose it, and the fourth one is essential to maintain a perpendicular position.

Assuming you are new to this form of travel, you’ll not get a seat. If you are fortunate enough, you may get some shelf space to keep your bag on. Then you may relax, standing between two seats and waiting for your chance to sit, which may never come. As you desperately cling to the overhead handles, or the luggage rack, swinging like a drunk, you will be surprised at how the daily commuters enjoy their journey.

Firstly, many of them usually sit at the same seats on the same compartments everyday. Secondly, after sitting at their usual seats, they start playing cards. Two people on one seat and two on the facing one, that’s how they sit. One will take out a rectangular piece of cloth and they will tuck in its four corners into their waists. This will serve as the table. Then the cards come out: usually two decks which are used for alternate hands of bridge. These people will be quite oblivious of anything else for the rest of the journey.

Then there are the people who read newspapers. Some of them buy their own newspapers, and some borrow it from them one page at a time. Both kinds read the paper corner to corner, inside out. Of course, this is accompanied by heated debates on various issues of importance, such as the performance of the Indian cricket team, or the latest bandh called in the state, or maybe NASA’s latest discovery in space.

As the train arrives at the next station, one of the men near the window looks out expectantly. A tea seller runs towards the window with a tray full of small disposable teacups. The men near the window quickly pick up the cups one by one and pass them inside among their group. Then they pay the tea seller with the money that they had collected and kept ready beforehand. The whole process takes hardly a few seconds.

In some of the stations, just before the train enters the platform, the track runs parallel to the road. You will often see people running on that road towards the station. They are commuters too, and they are trying to outrun the train and reach the platform just in time to catch this train. Most daily passengers reach the station just in time, and they often board a train after it has started moving. Here, many of the people running alongside the train will be able to reach the station and catch the train before it leaves. The rest will have to wait for the next train.

In case the train is very crowded (which is usually the case), some childish fights are sure to break out. Someone fell over someone else while trying to change position. The latter person is sure to pass judgment over the former’s visual acumen or ability to stand straight. The former, not to be left behind, will try to pass the buck to someone else who supposedly pushed him. Soon they will be shouting at the top of their voices, while some people will take sides and some will tell them to shut up. Most people seem to enjoy watching these fights, but beware: don’t get too involved, or you may suddenly find yourself sans your wallet and other belongings of your pockets.

A local train journey can’t be complete without the hawkers. The local train hawkers deserve a complete blog post to themselves. They sell anything and everything, from safety pins and nail cutters, to combs and toothbrushes, to toys and books, to perfumes and incense sticks, to… I can’t even remember what all they sell. Ah yes, edibles, herbal medicines, wallets, cheap jewelry, handkerchiefs, umbrellas, kitchen accessories and pens are a few that I can remember. They are very skilled salesmen, and there is a separate strategy for selling each article. For example, you may hear, “Four oranges for a Rupee! Four oranges for a Rupee!” When you look, you will find the man is selling orange flavoured toffees. The seller of recipes recites an impressive list of dishes first, and then says that his thin book contains 250 such recipes. The seller of combs will start by saying that a comb costs twenty rupees, but he’s giving one for ten, and there are a couple of them for free, and then there’s a special offer and when he ends his recital you’ll find he’s selling ten combs for ten rupees. The seller of herbal digestive medicines starts by stating common ailments, then offering a free sample of his tasty concoction to all passengers. Apart from them you’ll find beggars, and some able bodied men who sing into a portable karaoke device and ask for money.

But you better not get too engrossed in all this. You must start moving towards the door a couple of stations before your destination, or you will not be allowed to leave. The bag must be held high over the shoulder to prevent it from getting entangled among other passengers. You must start asking the people between you and the door whether they will get down before or with you. As Einstein once said, there’s no limit to human stupidity, and here you’ll often find that the people standing nearest to the door have the farthest distance to travel. They have to be coaxed or scolded and brought inside so that you can move ahead. Some of them are too stubborn to leave the door, and they will be pushed out on to the platform by the crowd at every station.

Finally, the train will reach your destination and with a little luck you’ll find yourself on the platform. If you have been careful enough, all your clothes will be intact and the contents of your pockets safe. You have to now move on and board a bus unless you are going somewhere very close to the station, or you are willing to spend a lot more on a taxi. A journey in a crowded Kolkata bus can also be pretty eventful, but that’s another story that I may tell another day.

The Kolkata Spirit

Don’t blame me for this delay in posting: blame it on Kolkata.

When I set foot in this city after spending a year and a half in Chennai and Hyderabad, the first thing that struck me as odd was that there were too few cars on the road and they were moving way too slowly. I later realized that the latter part of that observation sums up life in Kolkata almost perfectly.

Here everything moves too slowly. Nobody seems to be in hurry, and what’s worse, nobody is expected to be in a hurry either. On top of that, everybody talks, behaves, acts in a very very amateurish way.

Take the example of house brokers. I was desperately trying to find a rented house in Kolkata, preferably in Salt Lake, and it took me almost a month to find one. The reason? Nobody I contacted was able to show me a house. The person who was supposed to show me several houses in Kolkata was unable to obtain the keys from any of the house owners. “You can’t do these things in a hurry sir, you need to give more time,” he said to me after he had kept me waiting for three days and made me go there twice. Obviously this was surprising to me, as in Hyderabad and Chennai it never took me more than a day to find a house. But I don’t blame this person as he is not a professional broker. I blame the professional brokers in Salt Lake who were unable to get the keys for the houses either, even when they knew they would be getting money if I was satisfied with a house. The few houses I did see were either totally unfit for living, or were only just cheaper than a suite in the Taj Bengal.

Which brings us to the amateurish attitudes of the house owners themselves. Since a lot of people from Bangalore and Hyderabad have come here lately and they are living in Salt Lake, most house owners seem to have got the idea that they can get a rent comparable to that in Bangalore and Hyderabad, and sadly, they are right. However, all the houses I saw have poor facilities as compared to my Chennai/Hyderabad flats and should have a much lower rent. On top of that the house owners themselves delay things to no end. This is actually very surprising as they lose business because of that. I chose a very nice flat in Salt Lake and had almost decided on moving in when I had to let go because the owner was delaying the deal without any real serious reason.

For shifting my luggage I needed a vehicle, and I asked a rickshaw van to come and pick up my luggage. He promised to come the next day, and naturally didn’t turn up until four days had passed. He was visibly hurt when my aunt told him that I had already shifted as he had come too early for his assignment.

There’s really no point in explaining each and every experience that I had here. But every person here, be it the Airtel executives who came to fit my broadband, the Hutch executives who told me to go to Hyderabad to disconnect my Hyderabad cell phone connection and pay the last bill, the men who manage the cash transactions in our office cafeteria, the auto drivers, shopkeepers, bus drivers, or policemen, all seem to be somewhat more amateurish than their counterparts in the South.

One thing that immediately becomes apparent is that here businessmen don’t really care for business. The reason for this has been discussed beautifully by Greatbong in his blog here. Bangalore may be costly, but there you can get your work done by paying that extra amount. Kolkata claims to be cheaper, but what use is being cheaper if you don’t get the service at the end of the day? Moreover, everybody has an opinion and they don’t mind voicing it in so many words, even if that means losing a customer. I was away to Hooghly for a couple of days to attend a wedding while there was a strike by the fuel tankers’ union and petrol and diesel were scarce in the state. The day I returned to Kolkata, the auto driver in the station asked for just double the amount. When I asked why, he turned to his friend and said mocking me, “Why? He asks why! Tell him why, for he neither watches the TV, nor reads the papers. Tell him!” The result of course was that I promptly turned back and took another auto (which also charged double the fare) while the previous driver seemed to be very happy to have been able to give me a quick reply. The fact that he lost a passenger early in the morning did not bother him at all. It’s the same story with shopkeepers. They would rather not sell to a customer who buys a five-rupee bread at the end of the day and pays with a ten rupee note. This reminds me, everyday our breakfast in Chennai cost somewhere around Rs.10 and we invariably paid with a Rs.100 note and sometimes even a Rs.500 note early in the morning. I never saw them grumbling to give us change.

Does that mean I don’t like Kolkata? Not at all! True, Kolkata is very different from the other Indian metros, but not all of this difference is bad. It is city with a heart. That very amateur attitude that I have written against above often becomes a boon and prevents people from becoming robots hurrying around to earn money (as Dipta puts it nicely here). When I see the IT professionals in my office bring jhalmuri from outside the gate in the evenings and indulge in a nice adda with tea inside the cubicles, I realize that it wouldn’t have been possible elsewhere. Similarly, the big manager who spends half the year abroad hates to work on weekends here. The reason? He must cycle to the old playground in his small suburban town and spend the evening chatting and playing with his childhood friends. As I wrote in my previous post, there are people who try to earn a living by selling the books they write, and even though it is clearly a loss making business, they do not forfeit their love of writing. Work still comes to a standstill (or at least takes a backseat) during cricket or football matches. Speaking of football, almost the whole of Kolkata can be split into two teams: Mohunbagan and East Bengal. It is different during the FIFA World Cup though, then the city is divided between Brazil and Argentina supporters. I couldn’t imagine a person sitting free and watching a match on the TV in our Chennai or Hyderabad office cafeteria, but here it is a common sight.

And arguments! Let it be the question of Sourav becoming the captain again, or the land acquisition at Singur, everyone is ready to argue about it in such a way as if their life depended on it. Outsiders soon become part of this spirit. The other day I saw two Bihari gentlemen debating animatedly on the road about whether Bhagalpur is a larger station than Hajipur or not.

But there’s a personal touch to many things which I could not imagine in Chennai or Hyderabad. For example, I can’t think of walking into a small restaurant in Hyderabad and ordering a meal where I get to choose the individual components of the meal from a number of options. In Kolkata I can do that. Food is really cheap here, and although it may sound unbelievable, a few days ago I had better South Indian food here than I ever had in Hyderabad. Similarly, Kolkata has some of the best Chinese restaurants in the country.

So what is my final verdict? Do I like it here?

Although the inconveniences and non-professional attitude of the people sometimes get on my nerves, yet, the truth is that I’m liking my stay in Kolkata very much. However much I may criticize the people here, however much I may praise Hyderabad, the fact remains that deep inside my heart I’m also one of those lazy, argumentative, passionate Bengalis who do not decide every action of their life by the financial benefits associated or by cold, hard logic. Although I come from a suburban town, I’m as much a part of this city as the millions of others who have come here from outside in search of a livelihood and have merged with the multicoloured fabric of humanity that is Kolkata.

That is why I say don’t hold me responsible for this long gap in posting. It is due to the Kolkata spirit that has got into me.