A Man's Journey Through HelL - II

The Inanities Continue….

Prof: Bhaat ij a team?
Student1: A set of people pursuing a common objective
Prof: But ebhen iph a set of peepul aal pulsuing a caaman aabjective, are they a team? Bhaat iph a gloop of peepul are bhalking towalds the liblaly togethel to ishtudy? Are they a team?
S2: Sir, a group can be called a team if they are pursuing the same common objective.
Prof: What?
Class: Muhahahahahahahahaha
S2: (Giving an angry glare to the class) Sir, even if the group has a common objective, they may not have the SAME common objective…

Apart from the highlights mentioned in the last instalment, there were also plenty of other incidents that he knew he would remember for the rest of his life…oh well, at least a major portion of the rest of his life…depending of course, on how long he lived. THIS one was surely one of the everlasting memories he would hold…ooh, that accent and the sincerity in S2’s voice…

Then there was the chappie who started his presentation on Italy by saying, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do. So, what do the Romans do? How do the Romans do it?” Ummm… How do the Romans do what??? That series of presentations threw up some real stunners. There was a time limit of 25 minutes for each presentation. One particular group had the misfortune of seeing one of their speakers (8 in each group) take up over 15 minutes. That this was an unanticipated disaster was apparent from the sight of a female member of the group literally shouting and gesticulating at him to stop. The comic element went further though. In an attempt to stop him, the member handling the slides skipped a couple. The speaker calmly disregarded the slide on view and continued on his discourse of the slides that had been skipped.

There was also the sight of another group having a female member walking on to the dais to stop a chap who was going on and on (like the Energizer bunny ;-) ). She was then forced to suffer the ignominy of seeing the guy turn around towards her, raise his hand in the “Stop” gesture and motioning to her to return. He kept speaking and Madame was forced to retreat…

And of course, the questions asked in class. There were marks allocated for Class Participation (CP) and the participation on view took “globe” to a new level. Like Lanky (who shall be mentioned later in the context of Snow White), “But sir, aren’t cordless telephones a type of WLL?” or “Why do we use the same normal curve for all the questions?” But the cream came from another section. A legend was born. The incident deserves a paragraph!!!!

The Communications professor was walking through the things a person needed to do in order to prepare for an interview. Several points were suggested by the class, from doing some research on the company to being well-dressed, but apparently the prof wanted this one point that the class had not yet stumbled upon. Finally, the great mademoiselle popped up her hand from the back of the class. The prof, though he had more than just a mild bias for the gender of the majority (Yes! It’s true), was forced to turn to her. Upon this, the smart miss went, “Sir, he should remember to take the proper pills so that he doesn’t fall ill during the interview”. Wohohoooow!!! Where did that one spring out from???

There was also the awesome incident involving, who else but the Fin prof!!! The Fin mid-term paper had been insanely long. Simple, but damn near unfinishable unless you were a practising CA or something. Upon being told of this feeling in the class, the prof smiled and said, “Beta, in fact I had solved this paper before giving it to you. In fact, if I am not able to solve the paper in 45 minutes, in fact I don’t give it at all.” He was stunned. Was he really THAT bad at Fin????? This prof had solved in 45 minutes the paper that he was unable to complete in 2 hours???

The next line blew it though, “In fact in Excale it took me merely in fact, 45 minutes. In fact, if I now ask you, if you had known the answers previously in fact, don’t you think you would have been able to complete the paper?” Huh? Like, wasn’t it the entire point of an exam that you did NOT know the answers in advance and had to work them out yourself rather than on Excel??? Jeez!!!

As can be well imagined, with profs like these, sleeping in class was something of a necessity. After all, one wouldn’t want to yawn with a prof looking at you! This also led to several hilarious incidents. Like the one involving the undisputed Sleeping Beauty of the class (though this Sleeping beauty happened to be a dark-complexioned guy, rather than the one in the fairy tale. Yeah, reality sucks at times ;-) ).

Well, there were these 3 guys sleeping on three consecutive benches, when there emanated from there a loud snoring. Not wanting a problem with the prof, the chap in front turned around and awoke the first guy. The snoring however did not cease, so Guy1 then turned and awoke the second guy, upon which the snoring immediately ceased. Now came the good part. Upon being told that he’d been woken up because of the snoring, Sleeping Beauty was very upset. The reason? “What snoring? I can’t hear any snoring!!!” Yes mate! Coz YOU were snoring damnit!!! “Me? No way, I never snore. Bola na, I can’t hear any snoring. Buss!”

Another really unforgettable incident once again brought his reflections back to the country presentations in the Communications class. There was a guy in the other section who had a slight problem with pronunciations on a particular word. Well, he had problems in general, but this word was something else, really. So, he was carefully instructed to studiously avoid this word when he went up to speak his bit. Imagine then, - if you can - their dismay, when he says, “In Brazil, they love to play suckerrr. Suckerrr is their national game. Everyone in Brazil loves suckerrr.” He then paused, jutted out one hip, leered at the class and concluded, “Do you want to play suckerrr with me?” He was rechristened after this episode. Do I really need to spell the nick out?

What You Need to Know at an I-Bank…(???)

One thing he learnt very well in this semester. Management was quite seriously an art (why the Hell are we taught Maths in it???). Well, it just HAD to be an art, quite honestly. What else could it be, when the Eco prof said in class, “In the paper hmm (each hmm has a questioning tone)…I want to see how well you can write hmm…if you are writing well, you will score. You must use the concepts, but you should be creative hmm…you understand?”

Huh? Eco? Creative writing??? Come on…you just told us Eco was an “inexact science” a few lectures ago…operative word, “science”!!!!! Firstly, how on Earth can a science be inexact??? Or even if it can, can it really be equated to “creative writing??? Imagine this then for an answer, “The Minister of Finance thought for a moment about the darkening economic scenario and just then he saw a dove outside the window…and so he thought, ‘What’s in a curve? A curve by any other name would be as steep’, so I shall study indifference and call it a parabola”…Hmmm…I wonder how many marks this answer would have got…

There was also a walk through the by-lanes of Delhi included in the semester. Yes, no kidding, there was. “In fact if you would be going to Delhi, you would be seeing some small, narrow lanes in some places (Is there anything called a big, narrow lane?Or a small, wide lane for that matter?). You are getting nice stuffed parathas there in fact. You know, aloo paratha, gobi paratha, and in fact, you also get very good jalebis there. Today in fact, we would be walking through some similar lanes. But in fact, in these lanes you would not be getting any parathas and jalebis. In fact in these lanes we would be looking at the working of financial ratios.”

Aah well! And then there was the Finance end-term paper (Yep. This guy deserves a book written on him actually). The mid-term paper had featured 12 questions (with sub-parts) and the feeling of the class was that this was so because there were 12 slots on then front sheet for writing the marks scored in each of 12 questions. They had presumed that he had felt it necessary therefore, to have 12 questions in the paper….

There must have been something wrong with their reasoning because, well, there were no less than 17, yes SEVENTEEN questions (with subparts) in the end-term paper. He was sitting on the first bench when the examiner handed him a sheaf of papers. He calmly tried to take one and pass the rest behind when to his consternation he noticed the staple. It was one paper!!! Well, it’s probably understood how many people completed that!! What was annoying of course was seeing the prof walking around with a smile a mile wide!!!! Grrrah!!! And that walk…uuurrrggh!!! He’d probably got it with all the “debit-credit debit-credit” walking he did in his college days…and this was the man training them to be “commandoes” of Accounting…nice commandoes they’d make if they walked like birds on a 2-inch wide ledge!!!

Another feature he had discovered on campus was relativity. The concept of relativity had completely gone over his head in school and college. But now, he was seeing it in practise. What else could one expect in a batch with 48 girls out of a total of 280+ students. Add to this the fact that the seniors had 17 girls in a batch of 220, and you have a recipe for…well…a stampede. This led to several interesting phenomena which bring us very neatly onto Mike's Theory of Relativity as applied to Women on a Campus.

Hmmm….they’ll have to wait for another instalment quite frankly, as will the statement of “Mike’s Theory of Relativity as applied to Women on a Campus”…