The indian postal system

Dear cuzin

Hope this letter of mine finds you in the pink of your health.It has been after a long period of time that i have taken up the task of writing a letter.Due to the presence of e-mails,which are much more convenient than the traditional letter system,we tend to use them more extensively. The art of writing letters using pen and paper should be preserved and hence this letter.

In our last corresponodence,you had mentioned about the pathetic state of our postal system and that it was of little use to us. I wanted to clarify on those thoughts of yours and hence this letter. The outlook that you carry about our postal system is only superficial.The wrong impressions you had was not your fault, it is due to lack of knowledge about our postal system. We as sutdents can make extensive use of the postal system.The obvious one would be speed post and express postal service. They are the most reliable communication providing safety and speed for the documents sent through them. These services are invaluable to us as most important documents like mark sheets and passports are delivered through them.

One of the lesser known but useful services is the Post office Bank. Every post office has fully functional bank in which we can have small savings or SB accounts at competitive interest rates. You will be surprised to know that there are more RD schemes in postal bank than in private sector or public sector banks.It was a pleasant surprise for me when i found out that out postal department has such wondarful schemes even for students. I think its time we understood the true potential of our postal department.

Apart from such regular services that they provide, the Philatelic bureau of India is one of the major activity of our postal deapartment. They encourage students like us to pursue philately not just as another hobby but as a passion.They provide various concessions to students and conduct various seminars which provides us with valuable information regarding philately. The postal department organises yearly philatelic exhibition and also provides a valuable support for numismatics too.

The people who are employees of the postal department are helpful and respond wonderfully to all our requests.For instance when we shifted to our new house,all i asked was to divert the letters. But the department made sure that those letters which were sent during the transition, also reached me without any further delay.


Finally my dear cuzin, i wish that you have sufficient intelligence, not to believe the lengthy preamble that i made above. But i really wish that they become true in the coming days !!!!

truly yours

cuzin

My New year Eve

I switched on my tv with great anticipation, the anitcipation arising due to two things.First to see the movie I,Robo that was to be screened in a channel; Second due to fact that it would help me stay awake till midnight, as it was a new year eve. The first can be fulfilled anytime later,but i aint sure of the second.Considering the history(my history), which shows that i ve failed in 6/6 attempts to stay awake at such special nights. It would give my readers a wrong impression that i am not at all capable of staying awake through the night, but i assure u that it only on such special occassions that i fail to stay awake. Guess thats what makes it special for me. Well, i switched on my tv, bouncing in anticipation. The movie was scheduled at 9 pm, and now the time was 8:30. Half hour and three hours separated me and my achievements. It was a pleasant shock that awaited me as soon as i switched on.

It was History channel and Mr.Hitler(one amongst my idols) was giving out an inspiring speech. I sat fixed with my eyes glued to the great man, the only problem that existed between me and Hitler was that he was good at German and i wasnt.Coming from Bhavan's, the stronghold of Max Muller society, i knew a bit of german, but was no where near my idol's.So there i was, watching him giving a beautiful speech. Around half hour must have elapsed, though my intuition said it was around ten minutes since i sat watching. My intuition was proved wrong for once, for my mother shouted at me for dinner stating that it was nine. Gosh ! nine, and i was supposedly waiting for I,RoBo.... i could have sat watching Hitler,but my second target implied that i switch over to something that would keep me awake closer to midnight. Mr. Hitler would not be certainly speaking that long!! So i tuned to Star Movies and there was an AD asking the viewers to sit watching how many times a stupid icon of a robo jumping up and down in a corner of the screen. Idiots, these ad makers are. How many do they think are stupid enough to sit watching a icon, rather than watch the movie.... These rational thoughts of mine were disturbed by a sudden blaring off the tv, and my robos vanished giving room to the title song of a mega serial.

It took me a full minute to understand what had happened. My grandma was the culprit. She had changed it to some stupid channel where she watched a mega-serial. It drifted me into another chain of thoughts, how do people watch these mega serials ?? It seemed to me that my grandma shared a distant cuzin relationship with the lady in that serial, the invisible thread of bonds that held her glued to the idiot box every week at the same time. But one day i was even more surprised when i realised that half the population shared the same relation with that lady in the serial. Lucky lady,was all that i could think of about her....... Well my thoughts broke due to another bout of noise from the tv. I realised that i had lost ten minutes of the movie.

I hastily grabbed the remote control and tuned it to IRoBo... The hero was chasing a Robo running on the street and, thinking it to be an urchin (robo-urchin). This was when i realised that the first few minutes form the most important component of any moive. I couldnt make heads or tails of the movie for the next ten minutes. It was only after it entered the main idea that, i could find out what was happening in the world at chicago in 2035. I gathered that the robo's had violated the laws of robotics. I am a CSE student who chose the elective Robotics as self study elective due to sheer interest in the subject , so it was easy for me to recollect the laws..... for those readers who are unaware they are listed below....


Law 1:

A robo should never harm a human being under any circumstances.

Law 2:

A robo should obey the commands of a human being implicitly provided it is not against the first law.

Law3:

A robo should strive to protect its existence,provide it doesnt conflict with the previous two laws.


The heroine and others felt that the robos cannot violate these rules as they are hardwired into the robos, but the hero says that evolution has made them diobey these rules... ultimately the hero wins the point and due to sheer courage than logic manages to subdue those mighty robos. And the robos and humans live happily ever after..... There ended the movie in the usual tamil movie fashion. Good movie i felt, solid timepass and makes u rooted to the idiot box for two hours, i thought. Two hours ,being an engineering student maths was something that i was good at and i calculated the time in a fraction of a second, that was what made me realise that it was just 11 o clock and there was a full hour that separated me and my goal.

I fiddled at the remote hoping that Mr. Hitler would be kind enough to show his presence yet again... but no such luck my dear readers,no such luck.... It seems that i have a boon of not being able to fulfil any such resolutions that i make. The channel showed some crazy pop singer and his history....Again i fiddled with the remote and find another channel that would interest me, but as i said no such luck. When i thought it cannot be any worse, the worst happened... the cable connection went ka-boom and i felt like crying at that moment. Whats worse, power chose to deceive me at that time augmenting my agony.

I sat sitting on my sofa for ten long minutes, hearing the ticks of my wall clock... i sat counting them, even my strongest resolution and interest in math could not make me count beyond 342. I groped for my mobile in the darkness and eventually managed to grab it from under my frame(i was sitting on it, a polite way to say it was under my arse). I then decided to spend some time sending new year sms, i wished everyone in my contacts. Though i boasted of a huge contact list , that couldnt stretch more than 11:45. Sullenly i sat counting time again... my mobile showed 11:59 and i felt a joyous shock running down me when i felt i have achieved my target after six attempts ....i felt like the spider which jumped a huge distance the seventh time (a story whose name i forgot )... Satisfied i made my way through the dark and fell on my bed with a thud, sleep grabbed me more due to contention than exhaustion.

My mother woke me the next morning,i walked to the living room, half sleep and sat on the sofa..The tv showed 7:59:45 in a huge font. The time countdown before the 8:00 am news was going on. i lazily took up my mobile and looked at it. I kept staring at it and at my fate, it showed 8:20 am ............................

The day i went cooking

What i am going to describe now is one my blackest day in short span of life...the day i went cooking....Of course i was and am still the hero of that story, so guys dont expect to get the unabridged version of the story...

The day was pretty much the same as any other normal day, or was till the moment devil occupied my brain and commanded me to cook. An idle mind is devil's workshop and that was just the case that day. And i realise now,today that the devil who came into me on that particular day was the best of his kind....It is said that the devil needs the help of the person himself to provide the point of vulnerability,where he can be attacked. And that my dear friends is very true to the core... Coming back to that day, it was around evening and i was back from school extremely tired(was palying cricket :-) ). I was sitting on my sofa happily watching Tom and Jerry cartoon...guys dont be surprised, that was my own way of wasting time.... well Tom was at his best,gaily chasing Jerry all around the globe... suddenly Jerry jumped into the soup........


SOUP,i thought and the devil jumped into me...the devil whom i so vividly potrayed just a bit before...Readers, please note that from here on i aint responsible for the actions that i perform.The devil in me is the culprit to be blamed(at this moment i actually thank the devil for clearing of my name).... well where was i ??? ah yes, Soup i thought... well i sat thinking about the last time i had soup...that was a pleasant memory coz i had it at a chinese restaurant.Chineese are very good in soup making. Well that thought was sponsored by the devil.And off i went to buy chineese soup from a nearby shop.The shopkeeper gleefully gave me a packet of the soup and smiled helpfully, a smile that made him look like will smith... i bounced bask homeward, smelling the packet as if the polythene packet would smell soup.


Once at home,the devil,his powers increased on the home ground, took total control of me... i placed the water for the soup on the stove and then cut open the packet of the soup pushing the contents of the pack into the water in a rush... Then suddenly i felt nauseating and was knocked out for a minute... I felt as if i was in a dream and the shopkeepers smile haunted me during that one minute which seemed to me a year .... when i came to, i found that the packet was way beyond expiry... The age old pressurized preservatives had done their job.....Now it dawned to me, the shopkeepers smile, man ! i must have been first soup cutomer in the last two years....

Raging with fury i was on my way to the shopkeepers, walking at an awkward pace, suddenly i remembered.... gosh the stove !!!! i braked hard, turned back and ran.... ran like i never did before...like i never imagined i would be capable of .... i reached home gasping for breath and thoroughly exhausted. I am a person with an athletic build, but i thought i lost around 5 kg in that run... i blitzed into the kitchen and stared at the stove expecting another faint due to mercaptons( the stuff which gives smell to Lpg)... To my dismay, i hadnt even turned the gas on !!!! what a wasted effort on running.... i sat down exhausted, the running had taken the juice outta me....


The devil must have had enough of me coz suddenly my mind became rational again and i switched on the tv.... there again was Tom blisfully chasing Jerry despite getting smashed right in the face... well that is life i thought, get up and get going ...... walk over the troubles....well it is when i talk philosophy that i am normal,and i was normal by the time i was immersed into Tom & Jerry... well, that was the day i went cooking, only that i quit even before i started.....................

The day since i saw...

"The day since i saw" or Kanda naal mudal as it is popularly called was my latest attempt to kill away some of my precious time... Had i known about astrology or had a bit of common sense i should have restrained myself from reaching the theatre...well what a day was that or rather what a night was that !!! It was at the most opportune moment that we, me myself and my friends decided to make it for the movie at night...

The pre requisites for a movie satisfied (a good meal without having had to pay for it), we made our way to the movie theatre... Silence has not been one of our virtues and so we made to the theatre chatting amongst ourselves over a wide range of subjects right from philosophy to girl friends (gosh !!! both are same). The outside of the theatre was bustling with activity, an event that was not common at night.. it was a saturday and christmas eve... so that explained it... The kadalai-vendors were among the first ones to realise the potential of such a night, man, they would make a very smart business executive...We were no exception to the kadalai magic that was lingering in the air... with such an aroma one wouldnt need saif to come up and say "raha na jayae...". Eating kadalai we went into the movie theatre...

That was when the surroundings changed, and so did our attitudes.... The movie started with a great turn off , the worst one can ever imagine, a documentary on agriculture...It went on for fifteen minutes, as if the movie hall was expected to be full of farmers on a saturday night !!! That was just an indication of what was in store for us.

The movie started quite unexpectedly transcending the lines of time. Two cute kids made to perform a task which they do with utmost ease in contrast to the experienced adults who find acting an uphill task... Thier fight which seemed much of a sport to me, was perceived by the entire audience at the marriage as a major war which even made the bride interrvene... Then the movie proceeded to make those kids grow up into teenagers in a flash with a song that helps them perform this transition... "Man", i thought, "this songs is good, good work yuvan"...

Perhaps, that was the last time i found the movie enjoyable(right now i'm five minutes into the movie)... Then was the display of continuous boy girl tussle going on between the hero and heroine. The movie gradually carved out its shape thanks to a very ordinary looking but smart fella.. One of my friend whispered with great reverence.."hey, the guy you are watching is an IIMA graduate...".. well after a miserably done CAT, i found myself eulogising his performance.. the only difference was that i saw him from then on as an IIM fella rather than an actor... hmmm... biased judgements are the worst kind of bad habits ....

Thankfully, the director seemed to have enough of this IIM fella and so despatched him to US (or some place other than chennai,i didnt bother to find out where..). Then it struck me how hopelessly lost i was ! I was briefed by my friend that the IIM fella had rightly rejected the heroine as he thought their chemistry didnt match... "oh", i said and then a flash went up in my head and struck me with such an intelligence that i felt like einstein at that moment... i asked, what the hell ???? where the hell did chemistry come from ??? what does chemistry have to do with love ??? CHEMISTRY...in love, man, That was a revelation...

I was yet to recover from the shock when thankfully the sign intermission turned up... It was during this period that i got the first reviews about this movie from my friends... They said a lot about a couple of songs, that had blissfully escaped my notice when was at IIMA... We had ice creams and soda which were costlier than the earth itself... We went inside the hall again and managed to catch a fuming hero blasting up a huge tower(typical hollywood movies)... Then was the part that everyone is accustomed to find boring... A couple of models with two inch thick make-up danced about in colourful sarees and with an amount of jewellery that would have seemed comical anywhere else but in a movie theatre... Another ad came up on a similar note and it was my friend who pointed out that this was a textile ad while the previous was a jewellery ad..

Then i saw a huge plane that zoomed into the screen, an indication of thefantastic stuff that was about to come up next.... we saw a simulation of a WTC (thanks to my GK, i could recognize that).. the plane went and crashed into it... then came up something that i couldnt believe was possible ever ... guess what, the building was intact with just the plastering torn off in places, just enough plaster to expose a steel rod within... A cartoon man in banian and a helmet came up and said "MURUKKU Kambigal".....and what's more, the title was NOV 11 attack... i sat transfixed in my seat, too perplexed to think anything ,let alone say anything... That, i felt, was something, i will never be able to swallow in an eternity.....

The movie began, drifting me away from the shock and i managed to gather that the two kids who fought in he beginning were the lead pair and their tussle ended up in love.... This, at least, was something that i was used to.... invariably 80% movies of the late shows tussle ending up in love and each movie is based on love on a 100 % basis... What a loving population that we have got.... The hero then tries his best to cry and show his emotions and the heroine had long given up the attempt to try showing emotions on the screen... perhaps it is her huge dimple that managed to keep the audience under control.... Then came the saga of uselfishness where the characters exceed themselves as regards their sacrifices.. the hero sacrifices for his friend, the heroine for her family, hero for heroine, mother for son, and the movie turns into a highly complex one, the solution of which is NP-hard ....

Then it was my cup-cake, the IIMA fella who turned up from US(i wasnt sure of the place again) ... The hero was making a huge mess at the airport shouting at the top of his voice ,yet was magically un-noticed by the huge population there...The heroine seemed pathetic at this juncture with her efforts to cry, seeming like a laugh( this is the place where dimples are bad) ... Then comes the IIM fella who suddenly shouts "This is CHEMISTRY".... i thought chemistry ??? but there ended the film abruptly putting end to all further thought...

We moved out of the hall, having lost our capacity to think, to believe to do anything,man !! the movie sure touched a few strings in us...all we could do, was to walk our way home silently... i dont know what went through others mind, but i was thinking of my chemistry master..... That was all that the movie could manage to do to me.... "the day i saw"....

BUNKING

This blog is primarily about the art of bunking classes. Bunking classes has been a tradition for the entire student community and i believe that almost everyone of us have bunked classes. Actually it is pretty scary for me to attempt writing about bunking as a friend of mine is an adept at the same. The art of bunking is not quite simple as it seems, a lot of technology goes into it...

To begin with let us try classifying the bunks . According to my experience, there are broadly two kinds of bunking possible
1. Good ones (which escapes punishment)
2. Bad ones (which gets caught)

The good ones require a lot of thought into the act, while the bad ones are quite intutional.The good ones are often seen to be exercised by the expert bunkers who make sure that they go unnoticed both by the teacher and the students... They are the ones who actually enjoy bunking and are past-masters at the trade. They are thorough professionals who achieve their end without attracting any attention. One can put them under the class of James Bond and the like. These belong to the minority in the bunking community...They have themselves hidden under the masks namely the titles " studious" or "sincere" conferred by the teachers and students....

The bad ones are those who attract quite an attention etiher due to their stupidity or due to their pompous nature... Most bunking comes under this category unfortunately and so are seen as plainly by the teachers as daylight. These kind of people are stupid enough to announce their bunks to everyone around them.. maybe they get attention and are regarded as heroes... yes, they do get a lot of attention.... and as a bonus they get the attention of teachers too...And they manage to get more stupid when caught !!! They try to invent lies on the spot, but lies arent those which comes good in a tight situation, all the more when it is to be delivered as an extempore. Neverthless they come out in the most conscpicuous format at the worst time possible.. and whats more they push you further in inextricably... Once caught bunking, the unfortunate fellow's ego and embarassment soars higher which incites him into further such announced attempts. The main reason being, him, wanting to prove that he is good at bunking which he isnt obviously....


So my dear bunkers of student community, Bunking is best done when it goes un-noticed totally... If you want to bunk, the first thing you have to do is to shut up . so "if u want to bunk, bunk, dont talk "...............