The celebration of Shakti

Its once again that time of the year when we Bengalis celebrate the Durga Puja ... the festival that harps on the theme of good triumphing over evil. Of course to an innocent bystander this would be no less than torturing a cliche. However, you have to witness the festival in its full splendour to actually judge its true magnitude and the significance it holds for the common man of Bengal.

To the quintessential critic the whole significance of the festival will be lost. True, it involves unimaginable amounts of money being spent on what seems to be paltry, meagre things. However, the fact is that just like the Western world celebrates Christmas, a major portion of the Indian community revels in the "Navaratri" -- on a similar note the Bengalis celebrate Durga Puja. The poor, ordinary man waits for these four days of enjoyment with incredible, even inexplicable, enthusiasm that permeates the whole community. The wait is now almost over and the excitement is just too much for words to describe. One can perhaps find a very close parallel in the IIT Kharagpur Illumination festival. The fantastic structures that are held aloft by bamboos and illuminated by only oil diyas are sheer poetry. During those few hours the hard work of several days culminate in full grandeur and brings a smile to the faces and triumph into the hearts of the KGPian. Similarly, the Durga Pujas work towards uniting the whole community in an endeavour to enjoy and pray at the same time.

Well that's about it for now. Happy pujas...

see you soon

Random thoughts ...

Its been a while I know . But I am back ... finally ...

The rain keeps coming down ... with no intention of ever stopping it seems . The immediate effect it has on us is to lower our spirits ... the effect is undeniable, yet inexplicable . If there ever was a season that could be the exact opposite of spring then this would probably come the closest .

Talking of spring ... this year Spring Fest 2005-IIT Kharagpur will definitely be the place to be. I can assure you all that Kharagpur is going to rock like never before and in more ways than one ... So people, just fasten your seatbelts and hang on .... You can check out the new Spring Fest site at www.springfestiitkgp.com ...

Life is pretty hectic at the moment with all sorts of events that keep happening along with all the academic load . Yesterday , in fact, we had yet another lab test on Systems Programming ... the subject we are taught by the enigmatic Pawan Kumar . The problem looked ridiculously easy this time compared with his usual stuff . However, as it so often happens , it doesn't take much to push an assembly program over the edge ... ( yeah and you thought C programming was the toughest thing that could have been ;-) ) . The bug ,as it turned out ,was in one line ... can you beat that ... ONE F***ING LINE .... and it had me tied up in knots for over an hour .

Well who cares anyway ??? Its history and that's what matters.

The long standing debate has finally been resolved . Yeah you guessed right . Illumination is happening. However, the way the whole thing was handled by the powers-that-be has left a bitter taste in the mouth . The only truth that became all-too-evident from this episode was that however much everyone speaks about student rights , the fact remains that it is a prof-dominated society in Kharagpur and all the fuss about elections and student representatives is nothing but an eye-wash of gigantic proportions . The very fact that we are having Illumination just 6 days before the end-semester exams says a thing or two about how considerate our professors are of the students' problems. Beat this ... the professor who is in-charge of the Students' Affairs says ,when confronted by the students , " ... I am personally not in favour of having Illumination before the actual Diwali .... in case there is a lot of pressure from inside the campus I can at best keep quiet .... ". So you can judge for yourselves ...

Well thats a lot of stuff to digest all at the same time ...

so its goodbye for now ...