rochester to baltimore: a mini travelogue

I have been in US for two years now. And for some unknown reason havent had any proclivity whatsoever to venture on my own outside the confines of the quaint hamlet called Rochester. It wasnt my inability to do so that limited me but it was my lack of desire to leave the safe confines of Rochester and the fear of facing the unknown beyond it alone shackled me. Couple that with the becalming influence of 6-9 month long frosty winters and rainy season of Rochester and that for me had been a killer dosage to suppress any urges of venturing out.
So this summers when my brother go an internship at John Hopkins, something in me stirred and against all my instincts(or lack of thereof) i offered to drive him down to baltimore. If you look up Rochester and Baltimore on google maps, they are roughly 350 miles apart . The fact that i had never driven alone for more than 20 miles(beyond the confines of rochester) had me both excited and worried. Excited because under the guise of dropping off my brother, this was the perfect chance for me to break those invisible shackles that bound me and live life like it should be lived and worried for obvious reasons.
At the beginning of the journey i was pretty wired for obvious reasons. But the 70 mile stretch on I 390 outside state of new calmed my nerves and soon I began to savor the
pristine landscape of the state of Pennsylvania. What I saw on this journey can perhaps be called the most pristine landscape I have ever seen( the fact that I havent seen much shouldnt take away anything from the beauty of this landscape) . With small gas stations selling cheap gas nested in the lap of the hills to pristine rivers, I saw all in this journey to which I could feel in my bones, a sense of belonging. A feeling that i was close to my roots. The chimps on the trees, the birds on the wire and the men in their steel beasts all seemed together in perfect harmony as if they belong to each other, as if this is how it has been since the beginning of time and this is how it should be till a meteor strikes the earth again wiping out everything only for everything to be rebuilt as it was then. There is not much to describe about the journey as such. I took two stops. On at a subway for lunch and another at a starbucks for coffee. I had my underage brother with me so a trip to wineyards was out question although their charm was irresistible. So all in all driving at 60 miles an hour, i captured as much as i could with my eyes; the beauty, the serenity and the unison of everything.
Someday when i become a better photographer, i will start cataloging memories in digital format. But as far as my first road trip goes, the memories will remain fresh for a very long time.

The Swadesh Syndrome

We are a tribe, we graduate students in US. We are entirely different from our sister tribe in Europe, our cousins in Australia, Singapore and New Zealand and other smaller fragments scattered all across the globe. Without going into a detailed analysis of why we are different, I am going to go straight to the one focal difference. We are all here to elevate the pedestal we stand on or to occupy a higher pedestal as human beings. USA is a land of opportunities, both academic and entrepreneurial. Since we Indians are entrepreneurs by nature, more entrepreneurs (and slightly lesser academicians) throng this country every year to make more money, to build their own house, their own personal space.

Let’s face it, there are a multitude of reasons for each of us to be here be it to earn money, to rise above the billion strong crowds, to carve a niche, to buy an AUDI, to become an American citizen, to marry a gori and so forth. You can rationalize your reason for being here with whatever reasoning you wish or all of the above or some other personal reason you have conjured up to suit yourself. the reality however is that before coming here we are all allured by the promise this place holds for us. But at the core of it all we crave for our roots. According to a recent news input, India was the top receiver of migrant remittance with remittance from US being the single largest component of that. That is a good enough proof of existence of the Swadesh Syndrome. It was first aptly portrayed by Shah Rukh khan in the movie Swadesh. Gainfully employed at NASA and accepted as a US citizen, he played this dude who chose to go back to India to assuage himself of some nagging pangs he felt and ended up staying there forever.

This is the worst manifestation of this syndrome. And since this is a movie and far removed from reality, we will discuss some more real manifestations of this syndrome.

When some of us come here, we are barely out of our teens, having some weird notions of academic grandeur or of the colorful life here. Some of the latest rajshree production movies will have you believe that white chicks big time dig brown skin dudes. Other allures include strip clubs, all night bars, dollars, fast cars and other delusions of utopia. So two year paid slogging or five year on peanut salary slogging looks a small sacrifice in the large scheme of things. When we get here however we acquire a sense of reality. White chicks don’t exactly overtly dig brown dudes and since actuality you are a little below on the food chain, you have to work more hard on that front. Rest whatever money can buy you will end up buying if you can get your H1B which is getting exceeding difficult as the years pass by. Your friends on the other hand who stayed back in India are living the dreams you had envisioned. They might just have the hyundai santro or pink zen estillo but with a stable job they are right up on the food chain to score a chick for both long term/short term purposes. This is when you get the first manifestation of Swadesh Syndrome. You suddenly start noticing Indian girls on campus and they suddenly start looking more ‘attractive’. You start slipping one or two hours beyond the allotted 20 so that you can spend those extra $$$ trying to woo that new found ‘love’ of yours. The fact that she has some cool software consultant lined up for her right after her graduation becomes painfully clear to you at a very late stage and then you look ‘homeward’.

The second manifestation of this is seen in those who quit India as they did not want to do any software job and after doing their masters/PhD they want to do ‘real’ technical job with cool job profile and even cooler paycheck. Quantum mechanically there may be a parallel universe where everything is perfect and all pieces fit nicely in the puzzle of life. But this isn’t that universe. There isn’t a cure for this manifestation. The huge education loan you took means that you will have to do some job. Drinking bear on Sundays with friends on same boat and eventually getting married are the most recommended frustration assuaging practices.

The third manifestation is of the other kind. It is seen in people with very strong ties to their home who want to go do their higher studies in the US so that they can go back home and cure the system of all the ills that plague it. Decent folks these, ironically they are the ones who end of finding the love of their lives here and rationalize their staying back here by saying that home is where heart is. They do go back but that’s mostly post retirement/ after getting their children married

These are all the manifestations I am aware of based on a broad spectrum of people I have come across. I will be lying if I don’t admit to having any of the above described manifestations. After all we all do. There is no shame in it. We are humans and are eternally in the quest of greener pastures but the 'browner' ones cannot be forgotten altogether.

delhi college of disarray

Its been a while since i wrote something here, but this particular item on hindustan times newspaper was too good an opportunity to pass up on. The cat is finally out of the bag!! Six years after i joined that place, i can now say to a common man that dce sucks and not have those kind of looks from him which are usually given by a normal man to a mad man. The article was well and truly short and does not fully justify the state of affairs at dce. Let me just add on to the content and mention things hindustan times forgot to mention..

1. The syllybus hasnt been revised for 16 years and not ten as claimed by the newspaper. 10 was in my days. Its 16 now. Last syllabus revision came in the 1992. this of course excludes those deptts that were set up after this year

2. Results aside, the convocation is held two years after a particular year graduates. My 2006 batch had its convocation in 2008 and on the banners and degrees it was shamelessly splashed convocation 2007 held in 2008. In what convoluted universe does this make any sense?? Honourable chief minister of delhi was present on the occasion which makes the matters worse

3. water tank: The one water which does work is bee infested. There used to be a hornet nest behind it and till i graduated no effort was ever made to clear it up. There used to be a talk of putting up a RO(reverse Osmosis) tower inside dce at my time. IT is very required as water at dce is high in flourine content and drinking it for four years is inviting a dangerous condition called fluorosis. It never materialized.

4. computer center is defunct and grossly inadequate.

5. the 20 faculty members that professor bhattacharya is talking about have been coming since my first year. trust me, they havent come and they arent gonna come

6.Somebody should have fed the reporter the food at the mess. That warranted a sperate article altogether

7. However all said and done, i dont agree with the students if they say they havent been introduced autocad or any other advanced software. Since it is not syllabus which they can procure the copy of before they join, it is then left to them to this stuff on their own

8. DCE was barely able to handle 500 students in our time. You keep on swelling the number of seats and the situation is going to worsen.

All said and done, the rot runs deeper than the article says. So take stalk before you decide on dce as your career option. The thing with DCE is that it is no better than a private college.following are why DCE is still preferred by many:

1 The fact that there are almost no classes held in dce means ample opportunity for people to prepare for MBA/MS/PhD/IAS. People do a lot of internships outside college to learn what is not taught inside college. People join MBA coaching classes as early as second/ third year and spend all their time preparing for IIM which is good which in turn means that a lot of people at DCE end up getting into IIMs eventually. Also there exist some opportunity within campus to do some research projects and if not within campus, permanent faculty is generous enough to help you get an internship outside campus. That helps with your MS/ PhD aspirations

2 DCE still has some brand name because of it alma mater . At all functions/special occations all the principals past present and future have had and will mention shri vinod dham, i would like to ask them what happens to the other 23,999 (B.E. program only) people approximately that have graduated out of dce till date?? they dont care and they dont know for most part. Till recently administration was in zero contact with the alma mater of the college. Of late some attempt has been made to tap them which has resulted in improvement in the placement scenarios. If these attempts continue to be made atleast people wont be jobless post a degree from DCE.

3. Some things in life circumstances teach you. Something positive you can learn from dce is how to make maximum out of minimum at your disposal. four years in dce teach you that. That and team spirit friendship and other notions that are totallly unrelated to the college and its curriculum.

That about sums up what you can learn from DCE. I remember doing my Bipolar MOS lab on a c computer software as BiMOS ICs were very expensive we were told and students burn them. Research yielded that for most experiments we did it costs rs 175-800 per IC and they are pretty robust and unless you want to burn them, they dont. With this thought i believe i have berated my alma mater enough. This and the hindustan times article shown here http://justbeingmyselfmyway.blogspot.com/2008/05/delhi-college-of-disarray.html

about sum up my feelings........