Monday, February 9, 2009

Staying Germane

Ich spreche Deutsch. That is German for well… 'I speak German', a language which I learnt overcoming my natural handicap of my Father not being named "Helmut" and my mother not being called "Heidi". I learnt German for different reasons than wanting to impress Claudia Schiffer's Vater und Mutter before asking their daughter's hand.

I learnt it primarily because:

a) Learning German exposes you to a new culture of mainstream Europe.

b) It was time to use that little thing dangling at the entrance to my throat to pronounce some words like "Buch".

But I realise that I would have never learnt this language had I tried to learn it at college, where it was taught by Mr Iyengar, whose closest brush with the German culture had come while secretly stealing glances at the poster of an economically clad Ursula Andress. Mr Iyengar taught with all the passion and fire of a wet matchstick.

With a voice that refused to get out of bed, he used to drone on somnambulently in class , "Ich bin, du bist, er sie es ist. Repeat after me". After 15 minutes of this , most countries would have tried him for attempted murder but Mr Iyengar went on , quietly ignoring the bodies that lay before him with their jaws frozen open in various stages of pronouncing "bin".

That was not the only problem. The books were designed for people who had some major problems with their visual and cognitive skills.

Hans: Is that a table ?
( " Ist das ein Tisch ?")

Peter: No, these are shoes.
("Nein, diese sind Schuhe")

Call me a skeptic but if the target audience for learning German is people, who have trouble distinguishing between shoes and Tables, then a operation by a German surgeon would be pretty interesting.
("Nurse, Is that the Tropic of Capricorn?"….

"No Doctor, that is his Medulla Oblongata").

I can think of only so many occasions involving Tables and Shoes and thankfully our Parliamentary sessions are one of them.
In my mind, the correct answer to Hans should have been, "Hans, you neuron starved imbecile, these are shoes which are soon going to end up in the far end of your alimentary canal if you continue asking stupid questions"

(No i won't try to translate that)

But Hans will continue mistaking trousers for curtains and Cars for Ships until the month of March, when the State education board quietly puts Hans and Peter and a very tired opthalmologist to sleep.

If the system seriously wants the students to learn language, it should focus on things which are more practical and rather than having chapters like , "An evening at the Zoo" which to an 18-year-old ranks just after Arthritis on the interest scale.

What would have been more practical are chapters like, "When Wolfgang finds he has run out of Beer", "Dietmar rents a soft porn video" or "Helga shops for lingerie".

But Hans and Peter, who have a lifetime employment contract with the State Education Board are unlikely to be retired soon and isn't that a tragedy ?
Even Mr Iyengar would say , "Sie ist".

Manipal, Abridged

There are a few moments in life, when you really sit back, put your feet up and just lookat the ceiling corners, reflecting upon the place where you spent the best days of your life ? This is indeed a rewarding experience and you should do it immediately unless if you happen to be driving in which case my advice is don't. For most of the guys who passed from MIC or Manipal , the answer to this question would be quite clearly - Manipal.

My personal initiation to Manipal goes back to 2002,a time when people didn't bore your kneecaps with hydraulic drills, when you mentioned things like "eyeball share" or "Enron is a great scrip".

The first few days at MIC was spent reflecting in the time how long were my average
sized brains going to withstand the intimidating presence of Media champions and creative geniuses. The next three years were going to make that happen.MIC was an experience. May be it was the faculty. It was a who's who of WHO league PhD's and captains of the “which” Industry. The "who's who" part being reinforced by one of my more cerebral batch mates, who at the end of our second year asked me,"Who's she ?", pointing his chin towards our Director, who incidentally had personally taught us courses and had so many PhD epaulettes that her centre of Gravity had shifted to her shoulders. May be it was the campus. The beauty of the MIC campus in Manipal was that it was an architectural marvel. The campus was designed in such a way that almost from no point it possibly looked like a college. The highlight of the campus was the Suresh Bhai hangout, the sheer magnificence of which played host to countless proposals, where guys went down on one knee and looked up and said , " Sir... pleeeease pleeeeese give me attendance" . Or may be it was the curriculum design. We could pick and choose BA or Bsc ultimately it so happened no one wanted any scientific knowledge so we settled for the arts.

If you ask me my personal opinion, then the true experience was the sheer confluence of 30 or maybe 40 of the best, worst and the brightest & dullest brought together for 3 years in a residential program. It created a bubbling intellectual broth, which did crystallize a different thought process into you. So instead of a vertical thinking, which is characteristic of any undergraduate studies , here we have discussion on alternate dimensions to the same problem. Just take an example of the 9th block Hostel room discussion (with the emotional states in brackets) that were a typical feature after any major event like a broken heart, a REM session or discussing clear and present danger at the end terms.
(NOTE : The names below are real and the conversations surreal)

Jersey (worried): "Boss, How do you think I can avoid attendance shortage?”

Prady (ingenious & Stoned) : "You could try hacking in the computers and set your
attendance . If you are found out, your hacking skills would still justify a chance at the exams."

Nagi (drunk) : "Try wearing a miniskirt to the end terms and hope the lecturer is Gay".

Jersey(worried, angry) : "You guys are nuts. I rather go to hell than ask you guys for advice".

Badam (shirtless) : "You rather go to Hell ? Boss, even to get there, you atleast need a undergraduation. Hell is difficult..... try for waking up on time instead"
Jersey (worried, angry and a slugger in hand) : "Aiyoh , Muruga...I am asking for help and you '&%$$s are $$%@% me. "

The debate used to go in to a increasing decibel spiral until the next room used to tell us what they thought of us , a favour which was reciprocated jointly by our entire room as a team(there were always more people than the allotted 2 in my room), in a sound level meriting an entry on the Richter scale. 9th Block made you a team player. So did the Gaulish Village of Astrix. In fact the Hostel was like the Gaulish village in the Astrix books, which opened with a free for all but always ended with merry making. Sure we had our fights, sleights and flights but at the end of it all, you still came back to the room, where a part of you belonged and a part of which belonged to you ........and also that was the only place where you could take a walk along the corridor with varying smells emanating from various showers with people using every possible variety of soaps and shower gels and your dhobi justified the delay in washing clothes claiming there was a flash flood in his house.

The image for the outer world was that Manipal played host to all sharp minds who had
money levels in pockets high enough to suffer from bird strikes and who did enjoy Life.Though this might well be true and the fact was that Life inside the campus was really a party but there was indeed a lot of hard work ...especially biting the chappatis in the mess, which were apparently made from the airplane seat belts but that did not mean that the campus did not bring out what was the best in a person. Of course not all were happy with what they got, but there is no egalitarianism in these matters. But everyone had a life.

In fact Life did not have us. We were larger than Life....well at least that's what we thought. We were at the top of the world and stayed there for three years till the world dropped us off. Life of course went on even after Manipal but everyone of us took a piece of Manipal with ourselves. Most of the guys who walked those chequered brickpaths walked them out wanting to become the masters of universes. Time.. that great judge ..duly announced the verdict anyway. Whatever the verdict, we knew we had the best lawyer. I still remember each and every minute spent on that campus. It is difficult not to.

Those wild days, the even wilder nights and the perfectly tame grade sheets. Sometimes I think, in life the only things worth treasuring are your memories because only they are permanent. Everything else is not.

4 years ago when I was still there, there used to be an anthem in campus,
"I dont like you,,
you dont like me ..
but lets get married
and have children
and kill them for insurance...".

Dont ask what relevance or meaning that has...its just what it is...

If ever in the future, I can get back all those 30-40 guys and girls to relive my memories, I will... I surely will.

Now then, I am surrounded by a tribe of people who are preparing for CAT. You could
immediately make them out in a crowd. For, thanks to the IMS word lists, they talk like,
"Did you behold the nudiustertian TV schtick ?"

"Nay, was it of a terpischorean nature ? I abhor any form of tarantism."

Their's is a tribe who prayed to Messrs Barrons, Websters and Collins, put on body paint,and danced in a circle around a fire with arms around each other chanting
"proceulusmatic" , "malversation" and such. That was my first familiarisation to the
CAT. I realised that if I had to get into an IIM then I had to get past the "Beware of CAT" sign hanging at the door..

CAT is the toughest part to crack is the advise proffered by me who has appeared for
CAT two times unsuccessfully and an was an authority on the subject told me each time, with a confidence of a Gulliver in Lilliput. ( " Rajesh, This time I have cracked the system", were the famous last words whispered to me always in a tone by that authority, that would have you believe that only he knew where the weapons of mass destruction really were). After I cleared the CAT(getting a paltry 93 percentile), he told me the same thing about the infamous stress interviews(at MICA). This I knew, .. coming from a guy who would break into a welter of hives trying to recall the answer to the question , "In which town is the leaning tower of Pisa located ?", could be ignored. Tough or not, eventually , I did not get to walk up the Stanford Ramp and the Harvard steps. Damn.