Editorial Four

When the singer's gone,

Let the song go on.

But the ending always comes at last

Endings always come too fast.

It was a rather different night. Even as I walked into the auditorium alone, the very difference with the time I had done this at the very beginning of the semester struck me at every step. The energy that marks the Music Nights was just not there in the students that filled the seats till the very end of the Audi. Tired haggard faces greeted me, some with a smile, some just with an exhausted wave. We had had 3 tests in the last three days and had, by the looks of it, managed to zuc most of them. Strands of conversations all around me still centered around the week gone past, with greetings mostly murmurs on ghoting and irritated denials.

I was fashionably late by more than half an hour, which meant I reached just in time for the start of the night. Even as I settled to a rather lonely seat behind the Soundz booth, a stream of 1981 batch people streamed into the Audi. For a moment or so, the Audi seemed to come to life. They were everywhere, taking pictures, talking to the BITSAA volunteers, dancing, singing. A special request was sent out to play “Munni Badnaam” with 50 year olds dancing enthusiastically to it.

As for me, I settled down to enjoy the music that had started by now. I woke up one and a half hours later, with Shounak's brilliant growling in Sanatorium revebrating in a mostly empty Auditorium. There were still a few energetic Alumni nodding along with it. I walked to the front. The songs changed for a softer note, and I could see psenti-semites dancing along at the left side of the Audi. It seemed like they were stuck in a time warp, for even as the songs changed those few timeless steps never did.

I walked into Neeti after a rather unsuccessful tryst at dancing with a friend. “I am going to Hyderabad for an interview,” she said. “I will send in my article once I am there.” A quick hug and she was gone in the melee of camera flashes. And surprisingly it was all around me, those little attempts to keep the soon-to-be-forgotten memories in transient ties of Facebook albums and Gtalk requests.

What is it that makes us BITSians? Is it the fact that a part of us will remain forever in those long night time strolls to ANC, shivering in the dense fog? This is the part that we will leave behind, our legacy, scratched in the all-remembering sands of Rajasthan. And love it or hate it, one day I guess we will come back to it, if only to revel in the music of a generation 25 years younger, and feel young once again. I guess we never really do say goodbye.

Rithesh had just finished singing Say Goodbye when I made my way out of the Auditorium. People were on stage packing up, when one of the Music Clubbers started playing Sheila on the guitar. And for the first time in the evening, or in days perhaps, I felt like smiling.

Life goes on I guess.

Editorial Three

My third issue thankfully comes equipped with more information about the date. 8th October, I am informed by the bold tiny letters below the header. The hiatus since the last one can be explained by BOSM and Electrical and Electronics Engineering Compulsory Disciplinary Courses. The hiatus hence can be explained by OASIS and Electrical and Electronics Engineering Compulsory Disciplinary Courses. There has been one EPC issue brought out after this that was solely for creating hype about Oasis and thereby did not have an editorial. So here goes.


Third year has a weird way of putting things back into perspective. I had meant to write this editorial with a strong punch of CDC-induced cynicism and talk about the more important things in life. But then again, there are just so many scenarios in which a  bunch of smiling second year-ites (and a first year-ite) walk into your room at 3 AM in the morning, wake you up for your editorial and ask you about tooth fairies. And even  after a severely exhausting day goneby and a similar one yet to come- such random act cannot but bring a hint of a smile on your face.

Welcome to Pilani, the Neverland of half-baked technocrats and shikanji addicts. There are weird times when you feel like you are stuck between two non-happening panels of a boring comic book. I guess it is this Garfield like existence that often forces us to look at things with a bit of drama forced in them. So, yes, we have book fairs in the single floor of a book shop, we have 'dates' in the Oyster Labs, we have 'trips' to a mela at a ten minute walking distance from the campus and so on.

A good friend of mine gave a lecture this Sunday on Higher Studies and the way to get to Grad Schools and the like. And in between the very intense questions asked (" Aur Soumyadeep, weekend kaisa raha?") there were a lot of important points that were raised by the Speaker and the audience alike. During the course of the lecture, while explaining the priority order of the way Grad Schools evaluate applications, he was asked the importance of extra-curricular‟s in that order.  "Somewhere about the sixth in the list I think..." he said. I am guessing that's somewhere near the place where you mention your achievement points in FIFA or your striking likeness to Frankenstein.

It makes you think, statements like that. Here I am typing away at the sixth priority while the first and the second languish for attention at the back of my dusty shelf. And even as we walked out of the lecture at around 11, thoughts of the future were kind of a heavy shadow that all of us carried. There is solace in company they say, as a group of us low CG guys launched into a tirade on the CDCs and our sad lives in general. And even as I took our dejected little path back to my hostel, my ancient phone hummed with the arrival of a new message.

"Meeting about Oasis at 12."

Ah well, sixth aint so bad. After all, its also somewhere near the position where Laxman  comes out to bat.


If anyone is jobless enough to have a look at the issues, they can be downloaded from the 'Read Our Issues Online' section in http://epcbitspilani.wordpress.com/ .

P.S. - Special Word of thanks to Angad and my formatting team who took the pains of keeping me awake and even helping out with the last sentence when I finally did sleep off.

Editorial Two

This one was for the Election Issue. It was brought out the week after the previous one. The date was probably around 28-29th of August. This came out the day before the elections. 



"We are going to Basgaon at 1:30. Come to the ANC circle."  

It had been a rather exhausting day at office, with some 5 back-to-back classes. I received the message as I trudged back to my room. Even as I was about to reply, I ran into a certain candidate for the nth time. Ever armed with his manifesto and a toothy smile that would put the Joker to shame, he had already explained the minute details of his Cycle Plan to me thrice. Even as he made his way towards me, I knew the eventuality of a fourth painful explanation.

Basgaon. This village is no remote reality in the midst of some famine-struck Vidharbha district. Walk out from these walls through the small gate behind the Dairy Farm and keep on going, through the arid fields and the sparse vegetation. Walk for some 15 minutes and you reach this village. All those fables that you might have heard about rural India somehow seem to merge into the real world in Basgaon. There are various Mohollas for various castes. A road separates the well-to-do minority from the Below Poverty Line majority. The mud roads are dotted with decrepit houses. The sanitation system is non-existent with water-borne diseases running riot among the villagers. An empty closed dispensary will stare back at your hopes of medical facilities and an empty school building do the same. Most of the villagers are employed at NREGA (National Rural Employment Gurantee Act) sites that dot the desert like horizon. Their major work includes digging large pits, which once completed are deserted and the whole circle is repeated at some other location. Most of the money earned is spent on hooch and goes to the Theka owners (who happen to be some of the few affluent people in the village). The highest ambition in the village is to get a job in BITS.

I suddenly jerked back into reality by a rather sharp voice.

"So, did you think about my Cycle Plan?"

"Do you know about Basgaon?" I asked.

He looked back at me, uncomprehending.

"Buses? No that's not me..."

"Never mind."

Editorial One

Its nearly been a semester since I posted anything on this blog. Its been tumultuous times,or well whatever being stuck in a discipline you know nothing about can be. I haven't really written much other than my editorials for EPC in this period. So for what its worth, I am just uploading them and hoping they bring some life back to my near-dead blog. Hope they're enjoyable.

Don't remember the exact date, this one was in the middle of the third week of August. Somewhere near 22-23rd August I think.

There’s something happening here,
What it is, ain’t exactly clear… 

It’s a nice rainy day afternoon as I sit in the comfort of my room with a mild headache and a Microelectronics Book trying to get some work done. It has been another satisfyingly colorful couple of weeks. The lazy heat-struck summer days that we normally associate with this part of the Pilani calendar has given way to much more pleasant rainy day afternoons. Incessant rains herald in the new semester in a blah blah blah…
Ok I guess that’s enough of the weather. It’s BITS Pilani, and how it has all changed. Even as our cars rolled into the campus, the change was in the air. I mean very literally too, with the smell of fresh paint mixed with the rare odour of wet soil welcoming us to a whole new BITS.

Things have changed, not least of them ourselves, along with conspicuously absent friends, marking their departure in a declining trail of phone calls and text messages. The institute has changed, and the sparkling white walls shine in the lazy mellow sunlight waiting for the opinion of its students. You stand in the shade of the newly painted clock tower, cribbing about the new Technology building ruining the beauty of back IC. You nod your approval at revamped laboratories and boosted-up net speeds. You curse the missing redis in inopportune moments of extreme hunger. Yet in the midst of absent-minded opinionating about the world around you, you notice these confused new faces around you. Slow, shy, formal interactions soon turn into full blown lachcha sessions as you regale them with stories of legends of the campus- myths of a yellow clock tower, roadside redis with their delectable sam-chaat and dusty blue lime room-walls. You show them the few remaining strips of the old paint on the back side of the clock-tower as you introduce them to the mysteries of the four faces of BITS’ own Father Time. You talk of legendary BITSians and their exploits of the yesteryears, even as they or perhaps even you will never meet them. You talk and one day hope to join them in their hallowed portals yourselves.

And soon, with or without a affidavit, in the midst of the of the C’Not sessions and ANC treats; department interactions and club recruitments; one out of every four faces that you see everyday evolve into a new identity that they will carry with pride for the rest of their days, that of a BITSian. So here’s to stories and lachcha, lingo and lives, rains and redis, folklore and fairytales.

Here’s to the BITSian circle of life.

“It seems so weird now. For four years I have seen alumnus come back after 25 years and talk about how nothing has changed since their time. And I come back after 6 months and… Wow.”

-2006 Batch Pass-out