Reflections: The Campus Placement (2)

As promised, the second post did not come up on the 27th. Many reasons for that, but lets get down to finishing the story first.

"May I come in sir?".

One of the persons sitting on the wooden chair looked up and nodded.

"Nice shirt"

I smiled and nodded as a gesture of appreciation.

"Nice tie."

I smiled again. Now was this a trap to get me talking or were they just trying to ease up my nerves? Before I could decide, pat came the next statemet.

"A nice combination, infact!"

"Well, thank you sir, but this is my father's taste."

Looking back now, I'd like to believe that statement was taken as one in which I did not want to take credit for what was not mine. Good for starters.

As for the details of the interview, I'd rather not publish them else some people sitting in TCS might be upset. But I was not asked a single, "not a single" technical question. The remotest relation to anything tech was,"Why is network security important?". I'd like to think that the question was a joke because after three projects in the field, I expected something better. As I walked out after about 20 minutes or so, I was numb. Was it over? But they did not test me. I mean, they simply chatted with me. Good for me because I had not prepared for more than 4 hours in totality for my placements.

That night was fun listening to a lot of other 'interview' experiences. In the mess, on the roof, outside the hostel while walking to the canteen. Animated discussions taking place amongst a bunch of guys passing one, ever shortening ciggarette amongst each other. People were just not getting tired of talking. As it became clear, Shireesh had topped the written test amongst everyone in the country that year. Add to that, he was asked about music in his interview. Looking back, I wish interviews here would be something like them too. But those ones deserve a separate entry..

Next morning I had my HR interview. I was super confident about cracking it. Talking was never an athelete's foot for me and going by how my tech interview went, this one should have been a cakewalk. But as I noted somewhere on my blog, life has the uncanny habit of catching you offguard when you are least expecting it to.

So as I found out, this 'HR' guy asks me my favourite programming language.

"C".

"Fair enough. So whats the difference between a structure and a union".

This is where Mirinda gets it right. Zor ka jhatka dheere se lage. I was not prepared to answer any technical question, be it the easiest one on the planet. Besides, I had never prepared for my placements believing that I would wait for some "better" companies before I warm up. Anyways, now all that did not matter. As I took bouncer after bouncer on my chin, I realized it was time to hook some deliveries out of the ground. The interviewer game me a sample Java code, to which of course, I could not give the correct output. Just before he would say thank you to me and easily strike my name of the list of candidates, he asked a last one.

"You dont know C. Neither can you answer C++ or Java questions. Your grades are fine. What were you doing all this time?"

Now there are some innings when you might be the 11th man coming in to bat. You have not done particularly well in your career as a cricketer and the team needs a sixer off the last ball of the innings to win the World Cup finals. Life always gives you the opportunity to do something about which you talk a lifetime. I took a deep breath and spoke my mind.

"Sir, I had better things to do in the summer than to prepare for my campus interviews, and least for a company like TCS."

Sorry Mr. Pant. I said that. I just did. As I started to reach for my certificate folder to walk out, the half-mouth-opened person sitting infront me spoke with a raised voice, "Like what?"

And as they say, the rest is history. When you are facing the last ball and you know you are good on the leg side, move your legs before the bowler releases the ball. Chances are that me might follow you and then you stand your ground and heave the ball over mid wicket for a winning six. Thats what precisely happened. Though I would not compare winning the world cup to a job in Tea-See-ess, it was definitely a good feeling talking about something I could. I kept on blurting about my networking project, my project in IIT Delhi and DRDO. My guides being the Directors of the institutions themselves. yada..yada..yada..

And so, here I was waiting for the result to be declared at night. I was mostly in hostel 2 with Saurabh Roy and Rajeev Tripathi. Sometime with Birju too. Doesn't matter. Killing time before one gets to hear that you have been hired for almost $5000 as your starting annual salary.

As Mr. Pant walked into the big room opposite his office (I forget the name of it), there was a smile on his face. As he announced that out of the 167 odd people interviewed, 117 had been selected, there was a huge round of applause. Some made it. Some did not. Most of us hugged each other as we heard our names being called out. Rajeev Kunar did not make the mark. As I walked out, Chatto came running in. I congratulated him on getting the job. He ran in to check the name list. As it turned out, he was not hired. Till date, I feel I had heard it correctly, but Chatto took it seriously. He imagined that I deliberately made fun of him. Happens. Things get sorted out with time.

As the ritual of getting kicked began to lighten up the otherwise dead night, it was as if the hostel looby had suddenly became a torture house for punishing the hardened criminals. From kicks, bumps, hugs shifting and to a bleeding Oswal (courtesy Manu Kant), it was a scene to remember. I rarely have seen so many people being soa happy at the same time. Guess it was time to celebrate and harp the fruits of one's labour all those three years.

Amongst the couple of high and low points I recall from our batch were:
1. Gaurav Singh being rejected by TCS and making it to Oracle.
2. Anoop asking people to kick him more when he made it to Infy.
3. Jujhar having to leave the final round of Tata Motors to rush back home (for a medical emergency).
4. Some placement committe people quitting as soon as they got a job.
5. And many innumerable ones which is hard to mention in a single article.

As I walked back: half sore, almost limping back to room 15, it was almost day break. For 116 people from my batch, the job had been finished. I had to get back to my unfinished job...

ps: For many of us, Mr. Pant was a hero. He worked real hard, listened to people and took decent enough decisions to win the admiration of the students. Thank you sir for all that you have done to BIT Mesra. Anyone at your place could and can easily walk off by working a tenth as hard as you do. Good job.

Placements @ BIT, Now

Ok people...
First things first

Here is the scenario as on July 27, 2006
TCS - Written - 250 Shortlisted
Google - 5 Shortlisted
Microsoft - 3 job offers
Tata Motors - 24 Job Offers
Maruti Udyog Limited - 11 Job Offers

Secondly,
Ujjwal, welcome abroad. sorry i had to butt into your memoir series...

As for the rest of the companies, will keep periodically updating the details
If the junta wants the names of those placed, kindly say so
So long
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish

Reflections: The Campus Placement (1)

Being my first post on this blog, I am glad to welcome myself to the arena. On the onset, this is Ujjwal Moitra from the Computer Science 2001 batch of BIT Mesra and today, the 26th day of July 2006, I begin what should be an interesting rendezvous writing some memoirs and reflecting back on the four years spent in Mesra. My posts would be part of the Reflections series.

July 26, 2004 08:50: As I rubbed my eyes to see the time on the wall clock hanging on the eventful room 15 of Baba hostel ( hostel 3 to the unknown), I realized that the sun was beating down my window and it was time to get to the mess. Although hostel 3 was famous for serving food at insane hours, 9 am was pretty much the time when one should be heading towards the rusted chairs. Gulping down water from big plastic bottle which pretty much everyone carried, I lazed towards Prabir's room for a cigarrete. As luck would have it, it was locked. So was Ankit's, the adjoining room.Crap! Alright, lets get some chai. The chai that was served was no more than a sugar syrup boiled with the cheapest tea leaves available, over and over again. Nonetheless, that was the only option of getting me started for the day.

09:00: As I walked into the mess, it was uncharacteristically empty. I could see just one Baba sitting at one end of the mess, sipping the half cold chai and reading a local Hindi newspaper with such penchant as though New York had been hit again. To the uninitiated, Baba was a common term used to describe students who had failed year after year to obtain a degree. The mess helper looked at me in amazement, as though I was just landing from Mars. As I tried to get my thinking process started about the things to do that day, the helper asked me, " Ka lijiyega? Anda naahi hai aaj. Doodh bhi khatam. Ka layen?" (What shall I get for you? Eggs and milk is finished). Thank you for the good news, now that I have to prepare my taste buds to 'relish' plain bread. As I asked for butter and bread, I walked to sit with the Baba. Some company is better than none.
As the butter was being graciously applied to the bread surface, out came the question " I thought you were eligible to sit in the campus (shorthand for campus placements). Why did you not go for the company then?". What was he talking about? Company? Campus? In my preparation for GRE, I had totally forgotten that today was the day when Tata Consultancy Services, the messiah of the masses, was suppose to come for recruitment. But who cares? I was not interested in the placement process anyways. As I gathered my thoughts, I wondered if it was prudent to miss a pre placement talk (PPT). "What time is it?", I asked the Baba as though I was a war refugee who had to catch the last us to the camp. "Nau baje tha. Chaloo ho gaya hoga" ( It was supposed to begin at 9am). Crap! I gulped down my last couple of sips of the liquid that was served in the name of special chai.

09:50: Walking into the CAT (closed air theatre) was never easy with big events going on. And here I was, jostling with the crowd pouring beyond the main gate, to get in and listen to someone who would try and convince me to join a company which I never would. And as always, when in trouble in BIT, use the age old paua (jack/source). Most of the placement committe members were good friends and it wasn't long before the head of the placement committe, Mr. Pant, was staring down me with disbelief. I was sitting on the second row from the front;unshaven, in shorts and the T shirt I had slept in the previous night and a half torn bathroom slipper gracing my feet. The sea of humanity around me was all prepared: cropped hair, clean shaven, with pens and diaries to take notes (for what?), and mostly in atleast a decent shirt and pant. Without thinking too much about it, I wondered which section of the GRE preparation book I had to finish that day. As I fooled around with friends, the PPT began around 10:00.
Thats the first impression of the company I have, a PPT starting an hour off schedule. Had it been America (well, I speak from my experience with only Carnegie Mellon, but surely it is the same elsewhere in the States), they would have served Pizza and soda, given away some freebies and started a cool state of the art PPT bang on time. I would love to see that day in BIT when students walk out just because the person suppose to present the PPT is not on time.

11:00: As I walked out the totally uninspiring and boring PPT with Siddharth Mukherjee, the only point that had captured my imagination was some collaboration of TCS with Carnegie Mellon University for sending people to complete their masters degree. The rest of the colleges they mentioned were Jadavpur Univ, IISc Bangalore et al. But CMU. My dream college. Walking past the canteen, it was clear that both Siddharth and I decided to atleast give the first round. It was to be held the hi-tech building (having seen what tech really is, I would urge the BIT administration to strip off that name. Have some mercy!). Fine.

13:30: Having been through some easy computer based maths and general analytical tests, I was waiting for the results to be declared. In my quest to be the cool one, I spoke only of GRE and what it takes to get to America. TCS? Hah..
The saying goes by: Beware!! This is TCS. Trespassers will be hired.
Only two people were not selected for the interview round. That was insane. But that was bad news too. If one does not sit for the interviews after clearing them, there might be repurcursions. And in BIT, where decisions are based not on logic or merit but the whims and fancies of a few, it was prudent enough not to give the administration a reason to play with my future.

15:00: After getting off the phone with my dad and explaining to him that I 'have to' sit for the interview, I got down to getting myself presentable. Shaved. Shirt on. Pants looked good. Tie on the neck. Leather shoes. Heat. 400 people in line. Aah. Time to take a break.

16:00 - 19:00: In the time that I spent in the canteen discussing what kind of questions the interviewers might ask, I saw others were remarkably well prepared. Most of the people had parrot-ed (I take the liberty to create a new term here) staple answers to vomit out during the interview. I felt nauseatic. It was unbearable to sit with people trying to make an effort to get into a company like TCS. Just to clarify, I dont mean to demean people who work there or the company in any manner. But the fact that a company can select 100+ people in a day is proof enough that the selection procedure is flawed. I killed time till I felt it would be better to stand infront of the placement office, where the interviews were going on.
When I walked into the corridor, I saw a sea of humanity. Some glad that the ordeal was over and doling out free tips to others. Tips to chickens on how to escape the butcher in case he comes into the room. Tips which are never ever useful. Tips which you dont remember once inside. But people talked to calm down the nerves.

20:00: Just as my patience was wearing thin by not knowing exactly at what time my interview was, I saw the Bengali manager of the TCS team coming out. As I do at many occasions, and sometimes I regret doing it that way, I charged towards him,"Sir. Are you incharge of the team here?". Before he could reply, I went on " Dont you think it is advantageous to you as well of the people standing here, waiting endlessly, to know the sequence number of their interviews. Can we have some semblence of a sytem here?"
People around me froze. I am sure they were at the point to shout,"We dont know this guy". The manager stopped. Couple of placement committe members looked at me in disbelief. There are some points in life when you dont know whether your words were taken in the right spirit or not until the other person speaks.
"Thats a very good point" and he walked off. Within five minutes, the waiting candidates were given approximate timings as to when their interviews shall be held. Good. Mine was in 30 minutes. Finally, the five hour wait was suddenly coming to and end.
" Tu marwaega beta kisi din. Chup nahin reh sakta?" (Cant you shut up ever? You shall get us all into trouble), retorted Geetanjali. She was on the placement committe and hoping to get through TCS. Fair enough. I should shut up now. But my unusual action on that moment was discussed until my batch graduated.

2130: That was the time when my name was called out. As I walked in, I suddenly realized that with my show off confidence and rhetoric, being rejected was not an option. I had to give it my best shot irrespective of what I think about the company. I walked into Mr. Pant's office and stood outside the attached side room for somebody to signal to me.
"May I come in sir?".
As I stood at the threshold of my first ever job interview, I saw two visibly tired and disenchanted personalities sitting in a hot room with an antique fan rotating from the high ceiling.

What happens next? Well, the TCS placement procedure was spread over two days and hence it is historically correct to end the post tomorrow.

Back

am back....BIT looks so beautiful these days.......green and wet.....people running all over for registeration.......wifi signal sucks.........charge runnin out.........

When the clock strikes SIX

Here I am, stuck at home, and have no idea what is going on in BIT…...so here is some stale bread served in a new packet


We all know what happened to Cinderella when the clock struck twelve. At BIT a different version of this fairytale is played everyday………

At PMC…..

Guys are bidding their final farewell for the day. They generally have a very weepy look on their faces and are trying their best to linger for as long as possible. The girl in the meantime is thinking, “My warden is going to kill me, doesn’t this guy know that there IS a tomorrow”. Other people in groups of 4 or 5 are cracking sick jokes on these couples. The H1 PMC lobby is very active at this hour making full use of binoculars and camcorders!!! The guard’s quandary is a spectacle to behold. If he breaks up the couples he gets to face the guy’s scorn. If he does not Thapa might come and fire him. So he just stands there looking even weepier. Some ME girls can be seen running back (the ONLY people who probably do some serious studies).
But all share one sentiment. Curses for a certain individual (ahem….won’t name anybody….let’s just call him Wicked Step Father). But every time I see his constipated face in the insti I know the curses are well at work.

PS: I, for one, would like to see more action at PMC.......the place ought to live up to its name!!!

To know what happens in the girls’ hostel after six….keep reading
GROWL...
LIONESS 3:16

Slam! Bang! Ouch!

How many of you ppl have driven a car? And how many have dashed a two wheeler on the road? And how many fortunate souls found out that the guy in front is a tholu(police wallah)? And how many of you actually said,"Agar tez chalaaye hote, toh gaadi kya, ap bhi nahi bach paate." before finding out his true identity?

Welcome to the club.... Thursday evening ws as eventful as it could ever be...
Having gone to the reservation office for some tickets, I fell short of cash. Had to hurry home, and en-route, on the busiest mile-long stretch in Jampot, I see this stupid OR14D,8933 Hero Honda CD100SS riding smack in the middle of the road, without a care in the world, with a long stretch of empty road in front of him. I honk him thrice, the third one being as long as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (The actual duration might be conjectural, but remember relativity?) Some time later, the guy pulls to the left, and I move forward... There's a three wheeler, and as all notorious three wheelers, this one is as erratic in speeding up n slowing down as one could be... I ease into third gear, slow down, and the gap between the tempo's rear and my car increases just a bit...
Whoosh... into the gap squeezes this CD100SS fucker...
And God decides it is time to teach me a lesson (for what reason? I now wonder)... the tempo wallah applies brakes suddenly... The CD100SS goes smack into the rear of the tempo n stops...
I too apply the brakes, and CRUNCH!!! The CD100 makes a nice filling between the sandwitch of 3 and 4 wheelers...
The tempo wallah decides that... I dunno.. He speeds away. The angel of a guy that this fuckfaced biker is, gets down hi sbike, makes me pull over, and with a steady stream of God-forsaken language asks me,"Iska paisa kaun bharega?"
God only knows how these hot-blood surges work, and I wish I can control them.. but at that time I cannot. saying,"Paisa se matlab hai na? Toh hum denge. Pehle hisab lagate hain."
And off we march to the nearby Hero Honda Workshop. The damage is not much. The rear mudguard is slightly bnt, and the horn needs re-wiring... How the horn-wires got entangled into this crunch, I cannot figure out... But the figure that is most perplexing is 726INR... the cost for a new rear mud guard. I immediately call up my dad, and wait.
Meanwhile, this guy, the darling that he is, starts threatening me, right in front of the stud-in-one-ear 25 something owner of the workshop... "Bahut josh hai, nahi?"
"Abhi sab hawa nikal denge tumhari"
"Aankh sar pe chadhake rakhe ho"
"Kismat hai tumhari, gaadi ka daemaige (yeah, he pronounces it that way) kam hai"
"Gadi tez chalaane ka aadat pad gaya hai, nahi?"

My mind starts a retort,"Teri maa ki %@#$*..."
but audibly I only say,"Agar tez chalaaye hote, toh gaadi kya, aap bhi nahi bach paate."
At which his eyebrows rise. And his cheekbones. Danger signals.
And he looks every bit of the corrupt sipahi that he is. And I am scared. Shit scared.
Literally quaking all over. Then the stud-in-my-ear guy says softly,"Pay him off. Right here."

Over the next 3 hours, dad settles the problem. Gets his bike repaired by a local mechanic, who's an old friend of his. Costs some 400 bucks. And I get just one warning from my dad,"Next time, make sure it isn't a next time."
He is sort of relieved, I guess, that no loss of life/limb has occured. And the bill isn't in 5 figures. Like the one last year.
What had happened was.......
But that's another story...
worthy of it's own post.

Till then,
Safe driving

-ONE

Movie Mania SE

I'm back...
After watching another movie...

Taxi 9211
Yeh kahaani hai in do chapter ki...
So it begins, the not-as-bad-as-the-movie narration being provided by our very own Sanjay Dutt.. who's had too many interesting chapters in his own life...
The subjects are John Abraham, a rich brat who's Dad leaves everything to his best buddy, and leaves his son a pauper, or so it seems... and Nana Patekar, who is a taxi driver, but lies to his biwi that he's an LIC agent... and to keep up the lie, he parks his taxi 2km away from home every night... and doesn't take passengers to Andheri... afraid that his wife might see him...
The END.
That is where the story ends, and looking at my watch I realized not even 15 minutes had passed... The rest of the characters ar just for filling in the gaps.. though I must say.. John's girl does have some booty... (can I hear some wolf-whistles out there?) There is a will, a locker ki chaabi, some stupid lawyer, Nana Patekar's cute wife... If Bollywood could have churned out a bigger mess than this, it was PHP... the movie has a sort of a message for public, though... It is a rhetoric about how ppl always kosofy the world, their kismat and baaki saari duniya but the fault lies entirely within... blah n blah...
Verdict: Watch it only if you have got NOTHING else to do... and you have loads of cash for chips n popcorn...

Cube 2 (HyperCube)
This is an ok types movie... involves strange unimaginable laws of physics... nothing much to writ about...
There are n number of people trapped inside a cube like structure which leads to 6 other cubes, each of which lead to 6 other cubes.. and so on... the catch being that each cube belongs to a different fourth dimension... The movie's pretty ok... though certain elements seem to be a repeat of Cube, as in the characters seem to be stale... the analyst who undertands other's psyche... a crazy angry man, who's got demons of his own... All in all, a let down on Cube...


Ice Age 2::The Meltdown
Hilarious... If you can understand English, it is a must watch for you... age no bar...
Manny, Sid and Diego, alongwith that squirrel-with-his-nut are back to entertain you more in this sequel.. where Manny gets a girlfriend, Diego discovers he can swim, depite being a cat... and Sid becomes the 'fire king', albeit solely for a night... the movie's hilarious... Sid singing 'Food, Glorious food...' which is a vulture song... or Sid being pounded by kids in his summer camp... If you don't like the movie... you're probably somebody's grandsire cut in alabaster.

There's another movie that I saw.... Lion King 1½
But.. again.. it's time for my afternoon siesta...

adios

-ONE
..and I don't want the world to see me,
'cuz I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken,
I just want you to know who I am...

Movie Mania

GOD knows what was wrong with me...
Over the past two months, I kept making mistake upon terrible mistake ... of watching the baddest, shittest movies possible just in the hope that I'd stumble across a gem of a movie ala Shawshank Redemption...

So, for all those (lucky) ppl who've not seen the following movies, here's a review outlining why you should(n't) see them:

Fanaa
God! Kajol's amazing in the movie. The firt half builds up to a point where you start expecting Hollywood-like treatment. Alas, it's a yahraj stable product, so you'll have load of snow, melodrama and most of all... heart wrenching scenes... (Kajol's dad, played by Rishi Kapoor, floats under a frozen lake while she looks on...) By this point, you just start praying that when the rush to get out of the hall starts, you're the first to reach the exit... Imagine.. A terrorist who falls in love with a blind girl, screws her so badly she gets pregnant, then leaves her in the lurch just hours after the musical-lovemaking (no pun here, the entire sex is camouflaged by a song), and reappers Tom Cruise style at an airport only to be half-killed by the Indian army...
And then, in the wilderness of Kahmir, he stumbles across a door, Lo and behold! it's kajol, and she's got her eyes back, it seems...
the rest of the muck is anybody's guess... ohh.. the movie ends when Kajol shoots aamir Khan.
Yes. She shoots him, and he dies. :P to all those gals who want to watch the movie for Aamir...

Phir Hera Pheri
GOD!!! Not again...
Better take the movie Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels from me... save yourself from mental agony... pithy poor and downright shoddy, PHP is as crass and poor an attemp at a remake as any...
The movie opens with a item number, and that's where my interest ended. The item number was so damn laughable, yes you got it right, it was comic... and that's about all the comedy in the film...
with kucku-doo-koo-s all over the place, and baboons who scare better than gun toting goondas... the entire movie's a mess.... unless you call Baburao Ganpat Rao Apte's dhoti coming undone, a comic masterstroke...
You got money to waste.. give it to a beggar.. not to the cinema hall for this movie.

I've got a thing or two to say about Taxi 9211...
But that'll have to wait.. I gotta finish my forty winks first
adieu

-ONE

Orkut Chirkut

May God bless Orkut Büyükkökten ! This Turkish software engineer created Orkut, a social network service, for Google. It appers to be the next big thing on the web. And for jobless individual like me marooned at home, it is manna!

In my twelve years of schooling, I changed my school 12 times(no, I wasn’t that bad in studies, my dad got transferred a lot!). I made a lot of friends but lost touch as I shifted to another town. Now, thanks to Orkut, I get to meet them(albeit, virtually).

There are a plethora of communities and everyone is sure to find something they like. From your college community to one of your residential colony. In fact, once you start exploring it becomes very hard to stop. Soon you will enter into a competition with friends on who has the maximum friends, scraps and communities. Scrapping leads you to redifine your definition of privacy but nobody seems to mind that.

So what are you waiting for, become an Orkut Chirkut today!
(for interesting trivia visit Wikipedia)

Update.:for the sake of one...:.

Hello folks...
If you are wondering where I was all these days, I was busy enjoying...

After a Loooong time I've had some time to myself... (NO summer training, NO begging with Sasmal-the-monkeyhead for grades, NO prepare the reports on time,....)
which I spent sleeping, eating and marvelling in the oh-so-"private" world of Orkut...
and of course .. playing AOE.. stretching my abilities to the extremes, winning just ONE game (1v3 hardest RM) out of more than 15... Life is tough even in the Unreal, I must say...

Talking about computers, there'll be a series (actually just 2) ACM lectures on coding practices, and some miscellaneous stuff which would be (I hope) of interest to ppl interested in computers...

For ppl who are fed up of opening other ppl's Orkut profiles everytime they wanna scrap them, there's a cool free software for u.. check out: http://www.scrapboy.com
It's a 24MB download, so be patient.. or else, just wait for a few days and it'll be available on email for free....

Yawn...
These days.. I'm off to sleep b4 midnight.. weird.. strange things happen when you fall in love, i guess...
g'nite

-ONE

Get Moving.....

There are times in BIT when you get so sick of the place that you want to take a rocket and zoom off to space. However, for people with moderate budgets, here are some quick getaways…..

Disclaimer: these are strictly for nature lovers. If you are into pubs and swanky places….don’t even come close to BIT……you’ll fall into depression!!!


Jonah or Hundru falls-- Jump on a bike( for 2 or 3 people) or rent out a trekker( for bigger groups) and zip off to these falls. Leave by 9 or 10 in the morning. They are about 30km away. The drive is pretty pleasant except when crossing small bastis. Here people are always ready to exhort money on the pretense of some pooja. Once you reach there just jump in the water. It is advised not to hang around the crowded area but to find a secluded spot with your friends. We had taken some marinated chicken from H-4 and cooked it in an open coal fire. Yummy!!! Add on some booze and you’ve got a perfect party!! Start back by 4 in the evening and you will make it by 6. Winter season is a good time because you can lie around in the sun but if you’ve got guts go during the monsoons.

Rukka Dam—this one is close by. Must be around 10km. Same mode of transportation as above. Even auto waalas agree for Rs 300. Make the autowaala wait otherwise you will have a hard time finding transportation for the return journey. Take your swimming trunks because the water is verrrry tempting. Do take along your fishing rod (bamboo stick with a nylon thread and a hook in my case!!). Fishing during winters is a bad idea because then you will be the only person eating the earthworms!!


The Zoo—my favorite Sunday getaway. It opens at 9 in the morning. It is an eye-treat for those of you who have grown up seeing big city zoos with very few animals and only people. Here the case is reverse. A wide variety of animals in the green surroundings…enough to drive any nature lover mad! There is a cute pair of elephants that roam about with their keepers and if you are on the lighter side they will even let you ride. There is a cafeteria but the food there sucks. Worry not; Madhuban is only a stone’s throw away. A word of caution- it may seem very secluded and you may be tempted to do ‘things’ but be careful about the keepers….they pop out from the least expected places!!