Janmashtami

Janmashtami

For the first time, I saw Janmashtami being celebrated the "Marathi" way. It was awesome fun watching :-) My friend Sree Shankar, one of the guys in the photo above(click to view more), has described the entire experience really well in his blog. Here is an extract (reproduced here with permission)

It was decided that 8 people will form the base, 4 on top of them and then a 3rd guy on top of us to break the matki. As all of were discussing of how to go about it, suddenly a bucket of water fell on us...."abee saale bhen**** teri maa ki..." shouts came out from the group...For me this water business was unexpected and I was totally drenched...

I was at the base (fat people are not allowed to climb others shoulders and break others hands :D). There were 8 of us. The water kept falling on us from the 2nd and 3rd floor....and the swearings kept coming out...The 2nd layer started forming. Everyone was shouting "Alareeeeee govindaaaaaaa"...The moment a guy got on to my shoulders I was like "O man this guy weighs a ton"...but the spirit of alare govinda kept all of us going....in between the guys on the top floor started pouring hot water...the swearing too got hotter....the water was soo hot that the cry of "alare govinda" was replaced by "aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh $#&#@#%$"...we could even see smoke rising from the ground once the water touched the floor...

But we still kept on going...The 2nd layer was formed. (the guy above me seemed to have a special ability to increase his weight every second)...The last guy started climbing...by this time the "pyramid" already started shaking :D...suddenly..."dim dim dim...." before I knew what happened my shoulder suddenly felt light...then only I saw it...the 2nd layer and 3rd layers were now on the "ground floor"...one on top of the other...one guys head was inside the pile on the ground and his 2 legs jutting out...everyone started laughing out soo much...the ground had turned so much muddy with water that we were all covered in mud...

This went on like this for some 4-5 times,climbing and falling, before we successfully broke the pot. Cries of joy exploded out and it was all round celebrations. People were kicking mud on each other..photos taken...as for me it was such a good time...never in the recent past could I remember myself to be covered in so much mud and still enjoying...This was followed by tug of war. All in all it was such a gr8 day..one of my most memorable.

Life at IIT Bombay

Yes guys, it's been a long time since I blogged. I mainly attribute it to the deluge of assignments that I've been given.

Lots of you have been asking me - "How's life at IITB?", hence this post.

Before I came to IITB, I had imagined that it'd have green-carpet lawns, neatly pruned hedges and aesthetic looking trees etc. It's not so. IITB is wild. It has huge trees, with climbers covering the trunks, going all the way up to the branches, and then hanging down like ropes. It has money plants with leaves as big as banana leaves (I'm not exaggerating), parrots, mynas, pigeons, cranes, sea gulls and many other kinds of birds that I don't recognize.

IITB is flanked on the left by a green hill, and on the right by a lake. Near the hill is a national park (from which a panther had wandered into the campus a few years ago).

Moving from the wildlife to the hostels, most of the hostels look as if they may crumble any moment. But looks can be deceiving ;) The hostels are built to stand the Mumbai rains. Even during heavy rains that we saw in the last month, none of the rooms got even a drop of water inside, and no water logging anywhere. Every hostel consists of about six 3-storeyed buildings, and one can go from any building to any other building without getting wet. The rooms are good and comfy, bathrooms are beautiful too ;) We get hot water even at midnight! There are washing machines to do the laundry, a billiards table, TT table, carroms and a gym (all this within the hostel). We also get a dozen different newspapers everyday. Food is great most of the time(yeah, honest!)

I'll talk about the lessons some other day. That's it for now :)