The GODS of IIT Madras

Note1: Please refer to the note below for the meanings of words in italics.


Every one at IIT is a GOD. Atleast every one in MSc Physics 2002-2004 batch at IIT Madras is a GOD. Well there were GODESSESS too in the batch, but because I was singularly incapable of interacting with the girls of my batch without irking them, I never had the pleasure of knowing the details about their divinity. And they for their part, demanded to know what quirky facet of nature could have produced an absolute $@#!%&##$!% like me. They are still awaiting the answer.The GODS on the other hand were more tolerant of me, so much so that they allowed me to join their exalted brotherhood. So it with pleasure that I recall some of the big GODS of my batch.

Viveka is a socialist. He sees GOD everywhere and in everyone. And what more,he is also a true reformer in word, thought and action. Recognizing the ability to be a GOD hiding in us, he pledged to himself that he would make GODS out of each one of us. One thing going for the determined reformer who has set his heart in making divinity out of the lesser mortals is the fact that except for a few staunch athiests,everyone else loves to be proclaimed GOD. But modesty and fear of ridicule, prevents the common man from proclaiming himself GOD. Realising that fear and modesty were the hurdles in front of the noble men of his class, Viveka played what could only be described as a Bradmaneseque stroke. He started calling us GODS in public. The junta initially ridiculed him. But Viveka insisted on referring everyone as some GOD or the other. What is wrong in calling a dog a dog or vice-versa for that matter, he would ask.Impeccable logic we had to admit. Being truly rational creatures, we had no other course but to accept the nomenclature. So soon we had a Cash GOD, a Crib GOD ,a Footer GOD(that there was only one Footer GOD in our class tells a lot about our class), a Mokkai GOD, a PJ(poor joke) GOD, a Kadalai GOD, a Tremendous Mathematical Ability GOD, a Bulb GOD, a Fart GOD, a Cup GOD and so on. And as if to emphasise the ephemeral and transient nature of reality, most of these titles changed heads often. The Cup GOD of this sememster could become the Cash GOD of the next, while a Kadalai GOD who had a gala time during Saarang, might find himself demoted to the company of some PJ GOD during Shaastra in the process losing the claim to the tile of Kadalai GOD. But some guys had a knack of holding on to their title fast. Viveka for example. While the Eluguntala Vadu gave Viveka the ability to see GOD in all of us, he probably forgot to load him with his full quota of grey cells. So it happened that epithet of Bulb GOD was claimed by and granted to Viveka for eternity.

It is generally acknowledged that the Tamils are one of the best, if not the best, in the business of cracking a PJ. The best PJ'er in our class was Sana. Whether Sana was one of the pioneer PJ'ers responsible for spreading the disease or whether he was himself a unsuspecting victim, is something which his biographers would no doubt discuss in detail when they publish the story of his life. But for our purposes we will not venture into the reasons behind Sana being a consummate PJ'er. We will, just as the rest of IIT did, accept him as a PJ GOD. Originality rather than perfection is the hallmark of a genius. The genius that Sana is, he soon invented a new brand of PJ's, with its own specific name and mathematical representations. A complex number in maths is represented as x+i*y. That is, a complex number consists of a real part (x) and a imaginary part (y). The imaginary part being specified by the letter "i". So logic demands that P+i*J is a combination of a real Poor part and an imaginary Joke part. These jokes are so devoid of humour that the joke part is imaginary. What remains is just the poor part. It goes without saying that inventor of this extremely mathematical representation of a joke himself was a master P+iJ"er. The effect of his
incessant PJ'ing was that the girls of my class could not decide conclusively as to who was more repugnant,me or him. He then carried his good form into Infosys at Hyderabad. Believable news sources say that the person whom the Telugu actor
Balakrishna actually wanted to shoot was not his producer, but Sana who happened to be cracking PJ's outside Balayya's gate at Banjara Hills.A big pity that the producer got shot instead. Last heard Sana was busy at Mahindra City Chennai, trying to maintain a humorous atmosphere in the Infy campus. I sincerely hope that he has a body to maintain at the end of his endeavours. (I can hear Sana cracking, "Naan body'ellam use panrathu illai,only Baniyan thaan").

Laugh and the world will laugh with you, cry and you will cry alone and giggle and you will defintely have Vanni for company.Vanni is a lot to look at with an extremely photogenic face, a thick moustache and a large rotund belly. A good spirited man, I have just once seen him get angry. Usually it is the giggle that he wears. Extremely infectious, his giggle has a host of utilities, other than its basic funtion of expressing mirth. It is extremely useful in hiding the fact when he is not following what you are saying. He giggles when he has said something idiotic or shocking. He giggles when he has nothing to say. To cut it short he was the giggling geisha...no that's not the word I was looking for.....yes got it, the giggling ganesha of the class.

Murthy was one ultimate GOD of anything that was not connected with academics. So when the rest of the junta are busy mugging for the quizzes, Murthy would be attending public lectures on ways to solve water shortage in Ichalkaranji district of Maharashtra. And after returning he would discuss the seminar with a group which is bound to include me;often, only me. If you get the impression he was a dunce in studies, perish the thought straight away. He was pretty good in subjects which interested him. Only problem was that these subjects were generally not a part of the syllabus.

Then we had the Mokkai GOD in Sai who would insist on discussing with you the "stochastic properties of schwarschild metric applied to a three dimensional square well potential" perfectly unmindful of the fact that such things did not exist and even if they did he would not know what they were and you were more interested in knowing how the "Schwarschild Metric" female looked like. But such trifles never stopped Sai from conducting animated discussions many of which had only Sana and me as his audience or rather 'adience'( we got adi's if we tried to escape). We also had to ocassionaly put up with his extremely useless seminars on what he called Karate and what I felt was 'karatha-aatara-eh'. I sometimes wonder whether Sana is what he is because of increased exposure to Sai. But Sai was not all Mokkai. A guy with an inimitable sense of humour and an extraordinary ability to rhyme and pun effortlessly, he was one of the prime characters of our class. Last heard he was busy trying to prove that he had a lot of character to a couple of Czheckoslovakian females in USA. My sympathies as expected lie with the poor women.


Finally it was generally accepted that the post of CRIB GOD could have only one worthy occupier in your's truly. The general opinion during my stint at IIT was that if there was something in IIT and the world about which I didn't profess a dissatisfaction, such a thing would be a mere product of whimsical imagination, not worthy of being a physical reality. So to me, the Sambar at the Mega mess was a mere Rasam in disguise, the dinner at Godav mess was worse than what they served at Vellore and Palayankottai district prisons, the rules in IIT which were based on the assumption that student vehicles caused more pollution than faculty vehicles are just about as stupid as America's notion of freedom and peace, that Titanic and Devdas are stupid romance movies not to be seen by sensible guys, as a director Mani Ratnam is probably the most hyped in the country, that Navjot Sidhu's commentary is often more pathetic than the Indian batsmen's technique against the bouncing ball, that the professor feedback at the end of each semester was such a farce that one could expect better results giving a complaint about the state of the roads in one's area to the local Councillor and so on. With so much to crib about in life, it can come as no surprise that I finished my the first year with an "extremely" average performance in academics. I then firmly stuck on to the mantle of Cup GOD during the second year. Not satisfied with a Cup in an elective which the department graciously gave me when I asked for it, I single handedly lost a tight final at the intra hostel cricket tournament thereby putting to rest any doubts in the mind of doubting junta.The Cup GOD had undoubtedly arrived. Viveka, the baptist was in action again and I was christened "CG", the official Cup GOD and Crib GOD of my class. More than two years after finsihing my stint at IIT, I still retain the title of CG in our gang. I am these days the Cray GOD, or so I choose to believe, what with being the only one working on the Cray machines in my institute. Though I have had more than my share of godliness, there is that one prize which still eludes me without which one can't claim to be a complete CG, the post of Cassanova GOD. I have been prize failure on that front. Will I ever be a complete CG, or as Viveka will no doubt say, a CCG? Only time will answer that question.


Note2: The names in the essay have been changed since nobody bothered to ask me to change it.


Note3: Meanings of words in italics.
1.Kadalai---The process of flirting, generally harmless to both parties.
2.Mokkai--- As a noun means a big bore. Can also be used to refer to the process of boring someone to death.
3.Footer---Football
4.Eluguntala Vadu--The Lord of seven hills
5.Bulb----As a noun a person who generally flounders on most things simple or complex.It is also used as a verb, like in "Sridhar bulbed majorly when trying to explain the meaning of Bulb".
6.Cup--- The U grade one gets on failing in an exam resembles a CUP. Generally used for all forms of failure. A Chennaite proficient in Tamil might also use 'pootukichu','oothikichu','psssssssss', etc.
7.Cash GOD---The opposite of a Cup GOD. Can't explain more, for that territory is foreign to me.
8a.Shaastra---The technical festival at IIT Madras.
8b.Saarang----The cultural festival at IIT Madras.
Together they formed the only times in the life of an average IIT'ian when he/she has a fairly decent probablity of putting Kadalai.