He bored..He drilled..I stared at him open-mouthed

One fine evening, in an ice-cream parlour..ordered a sundae...after an hour with my hand over the cheek, waiting patiently... "Come in", announced a voice, i mumbled and went in. I started with "Good Evening sir..", he cut me saying "lie down", pondering if i had actually spit anything wrong i tried lying over a fabulous hybrid version of a chair and a sofa all along staring at some curious looking instruments that were neatly arranged before me. The dentist now came to my eye level and asked me "what is the problem??"..i repeated in my mind "whats the problem?? everything is..My exams..Indian team..Gen. Musharaff..my fulminant tooth ache"...i blurted out "its my stupid tooth, its aching..", ordering me to open my mouth, so did i do, he put a spatula kind of thing into my mouth and examined everything, he said "you have a bad case of tooth infection, it is quite common these days.." and he broke-off and went to his desk and attended to some call, while he was busy talking i wore a contorted expression, all because of the fact that he left those digging instruments in my mouth. He came to me and continued the stuff from where he had paused, "you will be needing a Root-Canal-Treatment since the infection is quite severe and it cannot be mended by ordinary ways", now that it was evident that my tooth needs some serious amount of dentistry we were convinced that it shall be obliged to, next comes the most traumatizing part- the fees..he said it would just cost us four thousand bucks..(i mumbled JUST 4k-like drafting out a cheque-you gotta write the word 'only' in your amount even if it were a penny or a fortune!!).. i sighed..so this month's highlights shall be spending a wholesome amount in dentistry. My software upgrades will have to wait for yet another year since my hardware needs immediate attention :(. He then announced to me that this treatment needs three sittings since it involves three major phases and he put across some medical term (its quite common for medicos to scare engineers with un-pronounceable words), i left the clinic with mixed feelings.

On way home, my sister was piping in some curious questions "hey how did u feel like on the chair, i guess it would be fun over that, you could sit,sleep,move it automatically..." i didn't utter a word-i prayed god "please make her understand that it irritates a person if he is asked bout his medical torment", she continued "the colour of the apron that he put over could 've been pink, blue was dull, why didn't he give you one apron.." this time i said "you are stopping now, or else you shall be visiting an ortho". The prospect of getting a tooth alright with a dentist is like a cat on..no no it shall be a T-REX on the wall, it ought to balance the right way and go on.

Treatment..was it?? This time he wished me cheerfully (now that he has got someone on whom he can try his pranks on and still get a hefty sum for it!!), i too wished him and clambered over that strange chair or whatever it is called. Here comes the plot-the driller,i initially didn't realise that it was one, when he put it into my mouth and started his business, it gave a high frequency noise that was piercing my ears coupled with the drilling action on my tooth, while doing this he kept talking to me so as to make me realise that he wasn't going to kill me, he said "whenever you feel uncomfortable just raise your hands", wow!! i thought, he has given me some scope to communicate with the mortal world.
The worst of the worst was that he was working with a mirror!!! The reflection of my mouth and he was seeing it, what if he gets muddled and takes right for left and left for right, there is a high risk of messing up the entire business. It was only after his re-assuring wink did i let him do the punk business. He was busy tinkering my tooth when he jerked quite unexpectedly that made me scream, he then reassuringly patted me saying that his predictions were right, the infection is god damn deep (200 feet!!!), i mussitated "i know, i know, that's why i am here". His tools were quite interesting, one was a simple 'dehydrator' a tiny pipe like thingy that sucks out all the water/spittle from our mouth (i had fun with that trying out in all parts of my mouth when he left me all alone), i then remembered the brief stint Mr.Bean had with his dentist wherein he paralyzes the doc and then does the treatment all by himself, silently visualizing that i grinned. The nurse who had been observing all this gave me a 'you-are-not-normal?' look for which i simply stared aimlessly that made her think otherwise. How can i possibly explain all the antics Bean did to his doc with a coupla needles in my mouth, aah needles...this is the most EVIL part of my treatment-grooving needles.

A cute box with several packs of needles with brightly coloured needle heads, so this is where the crux of the treatment lies-he chanted. Getting fractious is quite an ordinary thing in a dentist's lair, i thought. I didnt give him even the faintest idea of response that i understood what he said and simply opened my mouth, tasting his success he put on some febrilish(portmanteau of febrile and sluggish- my invention ;) smelling medicine over it and like a child that was offered a huge array(sorry..couldn't resist the usage of word array which strongly reminds me of the wonderful programming classes) of brilliantly coloured chocolates he started selecting the needles (drillers- a technical term :P )and got to work, occasionally i jerked, irked, yelled till a point when my eyes were brimming with tears, tears of pain, tears of toothache, tears of Colgate (aye, i liked that paste- it tasted super, i blame it, the taste distracted me from brushing my tooth in the right way. Three days of torment, agony, harassment, crucifixion (OK OK all mean the same, i just wanted it to be implied or rather nailed strongly), came then the final part of fixing a ceramic protection to my tooth and after which it shall be Scot free, for a lifetime........

Now with my tooth fixed, the moral or whatever it can be called of this story zeroes to simple thing -

Pictures speak LOUDER than words

to \/ | \/ A or not to V I V A

My heart was beating at 256kbps...sweat trickling down my already-tensed face...

External :So, what is your experiment?

Me          : Load test on DC shunt motor sir.

External: Hm mm..So why do you do the experiment?

Me          : Sir, we gotta know how the characteristics of the motor vary under load conditions.

External :That's great, but tell me why are we doing this experiment?

Me          : Err..Sir the characteristics of the motor ought to be determined prior to its  usage..observation of its parameters with regards to load variation will give us an idea as of how to evoke an efficient process of the machine's working.

External :The equipment manufacturer always gives a data sheet, you know that? (yes..i replied)..it will contain all the necessary details regarding the motor, so why                                 should you do it?

Me           : Probably for the verification of the data sheet??

External :You can't expect your equipment manufacturer to give you wrong details!!

Me          :OK sir. Let me exemplify it with an example, sir we use these motors in trains, so its   constant speed ought to be maintained even if innumerable compartments are added keeping in mind 'bout its capacity, so we need to....

External :So u say trains use these motors?

Me          :Yes they do..

External :OK tell me why have you conducted the experiment?

Me          :(pondering.............) Sir, its recommended in the syllabus.

Thus ended my eventful viva session after which i asked him the answer for which he grumbled "how do i explain that??" (fondly rubbing his chin) !!!! Damn it, this is what i was struggling for right from the beginning.

 I always used to appreciate the idea of viva-voce wherein real knowledge could be tested and one cannot escape through rotten mugging. The purpose of viva-voce fails when the so-called external tends to stupefy the pupil with questions that are un-answerable (i mean the sensible way!). Yet another viva session that i despised was that of my data structures lab, god please stick some rotten carrots in some part of his body that you wish. He asked me the logic of my program and i boisterously explained every part of my program that even Dennis Ritchie would have asked me to stop to wonder whether C could do so much. All along i faced the monitor pointing to some lines that were brilliantly colored (red, yellow, green, etc) and after finishing i looked up at him. Poor thing, he was busy examining the strength of the ceiling, pondering if this building had the right approval from the corporation or whatsoever..craning his neck to every nook and corner of the room but...this poor soul. I was fuming like hot sulphuric acid. I think he was stuck by the sudden decrease in the decibel level near his area, that he suddenly shot at me one question which made me go dizzy, "Which city do you come from??", i bit my tongue (it ached, yea this is all real), i said "Chennai, sir". He noted something down in his paper (probably ticked my name in the list of "souls excruciated for the sake of laugh").

Education is always a paradox, it arrogates that it provides wisdom to those who acquire it, yet do not see the sapience in any of these people. Education cannot be blamed as such, it is up to those who do the business with it!!

Will all these happen in every other institutions which i always wanted to be a part of?? I didn't want things to happen the way they happen.

The way i want education to be :-

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence the University George education. - Bernard Shaw

Shaw might have quoted this on an occasion where there were no doltness amongst the teachers and this shall not hold true at this moment wherein the duty of a teacher winds up when he/she successfully run through the recommended syllabi interrupted by a couple of tests that are supposed to examine the skills that the pupils had acquired through the course of study. I always believed that the university provided a  unified collection of thoughtful ideas to transform education into what i called real learning. My belief was shattered, i didn't want education to be the way it is to me.Just as iron rusts from disuse, even so does inaction spoil the intellect. So act as if no one had ever attempted to solve the problem.

My take on this issue shall be this, I'm not like the rest raising my hands for the abolishment of the exams, but i shall surely pop-up if i do not see the point in writing tests that could be cleared off just by doing some last minute patchwork in the process of which engineering course need not be given such a long duration of four years. Engineering could be done in a matter of 80 days during the  study holidays. Sounds great!!! "Around the engineering in 80 days"!!!!! Guess you might not like that, how about a life like this- students in the college hither and tither, tension mounting, the team leaders sweating profusely, coordination at its best, aha it is what IT IS...a tech fest..robots cuddling the humanity, technology riding on the environment, innovation at its best....whoaa...eventful were those days, wouldn't it be nicer if we make our entire course of engineering eventful. Instead of carrying a bunch of observations+records (and God must only know, we might even be given "rough"observations, "fair"observation, record notebooks with checks, record notebooks with stripes, XL records,XXL records and what not!!!), we must take with us a notebook to note the principles of what we learn, how it could be put forth for the betterment of the society and the most important part is to ask questions.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. - Albert Einstein

Instead of giving written assignments that results in nothing productive but the decrement in the number of trees in the country..huh.. project work ought to be given that fosters the unity amongst groups encouraging team work and brings the creative best out of them. Vociferous appreciation ought ta be done to inch out an aura of happiness out of our hearts and shout to the world "I think, i lead". Good leaders are those who know whom to lead and where to lead. To make a good leader an open mind is needed, and education is the only means to open our minds to eternity.

When thoughts strides through the Alma mater, fond memories of teachers patting you, the fun and frolic of classrooms, boisterous friends, groundbreaking ideas should wade. The best way to acquire them would be to open our minds (as well as other's ;) ) and learn to learn.

I must certainly thank my eccentric viva session or else i would not have got a topic to blog!!

                                               "Ini oru ini oru vidhi seivom

                                           vidhiyinay matrum vidhi seivom"

What am i gonna write here?? :-? ;)

In bed after a sumptuous meal, did i suddenly remember my friend giving me his blogspot address for the sake of commenting, aarggh i forgot the URL!!! Huh...let me ask him later, quite unexpectedly from the back of my mind a little birdie chirped "hey, you don't own a blog!!,what for do you pay your internet bills", ouch!!(it hurt) i had never felt the need for a blog until then. I immediately woke up, straight to my lovely PC, I dashed for an account with blogspot...I have never been to studying with this momentum even if my exams were to come up the very next day..so with an account, i'm a proud owner of few bytes of memory in an ocean of bits..ok ok lets stay away from technical stuffs...I started thinking 'bout 'what am i gonna write here?'..its my habit to draw the so-called good luck "God's" symbol each time i write in my notebook...damn my keyboard i don't have such symbols here, if some chap related to microsoft is reading this make note of it..i need a "pillayar suzhi" symbol on my keyboard..hey i'm deviating..oops...sorry...so..what am i gonna write??..i first looked up for the meaning of blog and i got this "A shared on-line journal where people can post diary entries about their personal experiences and hobbies"..too vague did i feel about this definition, why would anyone like to share their interests and hobbies on an online journal when nothing productive can be got out of it!! Crazy...coming back to my problem, i wanted some topic..something on this vile earth to fill up the space that was chosen by me without any pre-planning..peeping into my personal interest of computers, chips, etc.. i pondered ''if i were to write 'bout them, the readers who primarily hook onto net and get to blogs wish to refrain themselves their day long strenuous activities..will not listen to my interests or bother why or what i like", so i cogitated the situation carefully and finally came to a conclusion.."why don't i write 'bout my struggle to find a topic for my newly created blog?"..ahaa here it is...right in front of you...i've succesfully explained my difficulty with ease!!!