My Literary Indulgences...

No one ever pegged me for one who'll get sentimental on leaving college after four years. They were right. I had this realization quite early on about myself - places don't matter to me, people do. So I'd not give a second thought to leaving paradise even, metaphorical or real(?), if there's promise of keeping in touch with my loved ones. So why this swan song you ask? Firstly, because it's good practice to take stock of what you've lost and gained. Secondly, because I'm tired of repeating "sage words" time and again to overly enthusiastic, highly inquisitive juniors. This isn't some guide to success (or recipe to failure I hope!). This is simply a tale of VIT's best gift to me - rejections. But not of the romantic kinds! Let's keep that for some other time. When you enter college from school, it's a change no amount of sibling's wisdom, parents' coaching or friends' support can prepare you for. It will overwhelm y

Before you pick the biggest baddest weapon from you r a rsenal to shoot me with, let me put forth my reasons to ask you that. Firstly, as an exercise in self realization as to the reaction it brings about, and secondly, to grab your attention to what I'm going to say in the next couple of minutes. This post is NOT about - 1. vilifying caste system; note that I wrote caste system, not casteism. (Yes, there's a difference!) 2. victimization of the oppressed; that includes the "lower" castes who've been oppressed for generations and the "upper" castes who feel oppressed by HRD. 3. a take on studies/essays/reports by historians, socio-economists, and other men/women of academia. 4. a bland retelling of statistics, with a hope that somehow the numbers would drive the point home (rookie mistake!). This post IS about - 1. how the educated, cosmopolitan youth reacts to this question. 2. the ignorance of the said group about this social s

If some entity decides the course of events in our lives, I'm sure it loves irony. For how else can you explain the fact that the day I see The Internet's Own Boy , a splendid documentary o n one of the biggest heroes of freedom of Internet, Aaron Swartz, is the day I find out that our beloved, "अच्छे दिन आ गए (good days are here)" touting, pro-development government orders ISPs to put a blanket ban over 60 websites including vimeo, dailymotion, github, pastebin, sourceforge, etc . In any general scenario I always find ironies amusing, maybe darkly amusing, but worth expending a smile nonetheless. But this time, I'm not amused. Not when they snatch away GitHub from me. India's repute of producing software developers and engineers is world renowned. Long gone are the days when we were portrayed just as a bunch of people with fake accents sitting at call centers taking pesky calls at odd working hours. Though the Indian education system keeps ensuring that a