Tuesday 15 September 2015

Maut Ka Khat (The Letter of Death)

The Fourth Wall, the dramatics society of IIT, Bhubaneswar, on the 13th of September 2015, performed a skit in the institute auditorium titled: MAUT KA KHAT or THE LETTER OF DEATH.

The story starts with a voice, somber, steady, announcing the weather of the day. A seemingly not so important news of salvage of a dead body by the police in the nearby forest under suspicious conditions follows. The news went on….

The fact that a letter has been found attached to the body was never revealed to the public, not a suicide note, but a letter of death. And the ominous piece of paper, blood smeared and tragic, explicitly heralded the death of two more women in the mansion situated in the near proximity of the spot of this horrific scene.
A Hindi professor, who conceals a dagger in the name of self-defense. A young, boisterous wildlife photographer who shoots wildlife in the dark of the night. A lonely mother with a psycho son. A government officer whose vehicle fails while going past the mansion. These are the guests at the mansion. Added to this is the fact that the owner of the mansion comes home in the dead of the night, the night of the murder, to be faced by a lovely, angry wife who goes to the verge of unconsciousness on noticing the blood stain on his pristine white dress. The killer has to be one of them. But who is it? What might be the motive? Why take the life of an innocent woman and then dump the corpse unceremoniously and quite inconspicuously, out in the forest? What purpose does the letter serve: is the killer a professional who thinks he can dodge the police? Or is it a she: even a woman could be the assassin. And in the midst of all this, the wife of the owner is shot dead, in the head, just after the police interviewed all the characters under suspicion.

Although mystery and horror dominated the play, comic elements were well placed. The ever silent sweeper, observing everything with an uninterested keenness and a bald head to accentuate his seriousness, would definitely have thrown you into fits of laughter.
As the story progressed, with each character playing their role quite efficiently, the intermittent seconds of light and dark being played on the stage and the background music heightening the intensity and intrigue, it morphed seamlessly into the silence that was registered on the faces of the spectators.

Every character presented was shrouded in a light mist of suspicion and one thing was guaranteed- right from the beginning, until the very end of the play, it kept every spectator on the edge of his seat.
Needless to say, it was a brilliant piece of work with some minor flaws in the flow which did nothing to bring down the excitement or the adrenaline. Many sequences were unnecessary while the one act at the very end where the sweeper attaches a letter of death to the dead body of a woman left the spectators with as much confusion as exasperation. But if you didn’t watch the play, you definitely missed a lot (don’t worry, the video shall be uploaded soon).

Nonetheless, the whole play was brilliantly directed and the characters were quite appealing. Special mention can be made of Shobhit Dutta and Ashwin Chaturvedi, both playing the role of a mentally arrested boy, in childhood and in teenage respectively. But the main attraction, as was realized at the end, was the role played by Anshul Mundra, the sweeper. He swept the whole evening in his name even without uttering a single word. He was literally silent throughout the play.

The only regret of the evening may be the vacant seats at the back of the auditorium. To this end , on everyone’s behalf, a sincere request to the concerned authorities to speed up the process of making necessary arrangements in the community hall at Argul campus to make it soundproof and suitable for conducting such plays.

Plantation Drive Report



After many if’s and but’s, IIT Bhubaneswar finally shifted to its permanent campus in the month of July this year. Though the location of the campus, Arugul, was green and scenic, it lacked in organization. Raw nature, as one would call it, dominated the overall scenery. Since beautiful campuses are a trademark of IITs across India (only those who have a permanent campus in the first place), IIT Bhubaneswar too embarked on its journey to fulfill this requirement by organizing theme-based plantation drives with the assistance of the Central Horticultural Experiment Station (CHES), Bhubaneswar of the Indian Institute of Horticultural Research (IIHR), which provided the saplings for the same.

Banking on the enthusiasm of students on moving to Arugul, the administration also decided to include them in this drive (although it ended up in fewer-than-expected plantations and more-than-expected photographs). The first in the list were the popular, ever-loved Mango trees. Around 500 mango trees of 75 varieties were planted by students in the presence of
Dr. H.S. Singh - Principal Scientist & Head of CHES, Bhubaneswar and the Hon. Director of the Institute Prof. R.V. Raja Kumar. This was followed by a speech by Dr. Singh on the activities of CHES and the ongoing research. He highlighted the importance of research to improve the standards of living in the country and how biologists are trying to reduce hunger by developing better variety of seeds.

Second phase of the initiative began with Souls for Solace, Social Welfare Society of IIT Bhubaneswar, taking up the center-stage. Around 30 students volunteered for the plantation which was themed at planting Teak trees along a portion of the boundary wall of the Institute campus. The plantation ‘was scheduled’ to start at 10 am but due to unforeseen circumstances (read highly punctual habits of students and professors) started with a minimal delay of half an hour. Quite an improvement, considering the fact that shifting to Arugul got delayed by 1.5 years. As it began, Dr. Manikandan, PIC Horticulture, guided the students and helped them understand proper ways to plant and water the saplings. Although the Director wasn’t present this time, the students didn’t show any drop in their fervor (more so because they were posing and praying simultaneously to make it to the homepage of the Institute website). Tractors laden with saplings along with a water-tanker made it easier for volunteers to work without involving physical labour.

As time passed, working under the heat of the Sun became even more exhausting. Students (who were present just for sake of it) left upon realizing that they had enough photos for a day. The work continued and teachers from different schools (Dr. Barathram Ramkumar, Dr. Hanumanta Rao, Dr. Debi Prasad Dogra) whole-heartedly took up the task along with the reduced number of students. Liquid refreshments and replenishing juices were provided during a 10-minute break after 1 hour of hard-work. The team called it a day after planting about 200+ trees in a span of only 1.5 hrs. Photos were taken with students and teachers drenched in their sweat, wearing the smiles stemming from the joy of their first ever contribution towards their very own permanent campus.

Saturday 12 September 2015

Alma Fiesta Theme Launch - A Card Well Played

Life is full of ‘Gajendra Verma’s concerts’ and ‘Aagman’s performances’ (read ups and downs), but what defines this life is how one gets through them and strives forward. Alma Fiesta, the socio-cultural fest of IIT BBS, started the new academic session with the same motivation for improvement.

‘Inadequacy in the number of associate team members (1st years)’ was one of the major drawbacks they had faced last year. Cometh the new freshers batch, cometh the strategies of fests to lure them into joining them. The rival fest, Wissenaire, had won this round of the competition last year, and it was payback time. The best move to win this part is to organize the ‘Theme Launch’ and 'Auditions' before the other fest does; however it didn’t seem to be working out for Alma. When Wissenaire announced its theme launch date of 16th of August, it became a general opinion that things aren’t going to change for better for Alma, as they were yet to announce theirs, leave alone organizing it before the other fest. But, with even less than a week before the Wissenaire theme launch, Alma played its last hand, a sure trump! Without any prior hints and as a surprise to even the most penetrated sources of grapevine in the college, on 10th August, Alma announced its Theme launch date- 12th August! Win!

The big day arrives. As the audience entered the dim lighted auditorium with the Alma Fiesta logo on the screen and a melody playing in the background, the first thing that would have crossed any 1st year student’s mind must have been - ‘for sure not an everyday event.’ While the newcomers were excited about the things that the evening had to offer, the more experienced were betting over how well the fest teams will pull off the customary introductions.
The event started with the introduction of the fest; name, history and everything. A video showing interviews of current 4th year students about their experiences while working for Alma, inculcated great enthusiasm among the freshers. The video was well made and edited, and was a great hit. With a risen tempo, it was now time for the different teams of Alma to introduce themselves to the freshers and invite them for auditions; an exciting time especially for the 2nd years to watch their friends pull off the crazy skits, speeches and events that they had been preparing for the past few weeks.

It began with the sponsorship team giving a strong speech about how being a part of the team has made them better than others. However, the invitation for auditions, which was supposed to instill a provocation among the freshers to prove themselves, by the use of the words-“Would you dare to audition for us?” was delivered in such a loud and crackling voice, that it sounded more like a threat, and was thus followed by an awkward silence rather than the expected roar of claps and cheers. 
The web design team’s presentation was all boasting about the fancy software's they have mastered and the website, mobile applications and other technical stuff they have created or done. Even though it was plain but was effective enough to attract the attention of computer geeks; motive’s achieved. All in all, the presentation was good and well executed.

Probably the biggest fail of the evening was the publicity team introduction. They had planned a skit which showed an interview scene of campus job placement, and was supposed to portray how the eloquent and confident publicity team members of Alma Fiesta were an easy pick over others. However, the biggest of the ironies occurred when the person, who was supposed to play the ‘fluent’ publicity team member, forgot his lines and ended up in dead air. And right when one would have started thinking that it was the worst that could have happen, the microphone caught the interviewer’s prompt to remind the interviewee of his lines. The auditorium split itself in laughter, and nobody remembers what followed. 
Every night is followed by a sunrise; and the latter in this case proved to be the Design and Decoration team which came up with the best presentation of the evening. They started with a couple of guys taking the stage center with their nose dug in a piece of paper, reciting a write up in a monotone; oh the horror! But to everyone’s relief, it turned out to be a part of the skit. Another two members came up the stage interrupting them with the cliche line “beta, tumse na ho paayega’ and the Telugu version of the same for the other half of the audience, and gave a very well presented introduction; a job well done. The Events team’s presentation was the same as last years, where they prove themselves experts of organizing events by conducting a well-rehearsed event in the name of ‘planning it on-spot’.

It was now the time for theme release video, the most awaited moment of the evening. The video seemed a mash up of game trailers and animation videos with occasional pop-ups of enthusiasm inducing words like “are you ready?” and “brace yourselves”. The video was fast paced with strong background music and thus, it very well served the purpose of exhilarating the audience. The video ended with announcing the theme- “Quest in the Wilderness”.

In spite of the flaws like ‘publicity disaster’, lack of innovation and an excess use of Hindi in speeches, the show was enthralling and indeed impressed the freshers. Even the theme makes much more sense than the last year’s, especially when the college has moved to the Arugul campus this year; coincidence? I think not.

Tuesday 8 September 2015

A Quest in the Wilderness

The sun is about to set and the night is approaching to replace the dusk. The institute bus is moving on its normal route via Argul village. Suddenly a drunken man approaches with a stone in his hand. Moments later, we have a cracked windshield, a bunch of youngsters worried about their safety and a looming threat of things to come. 

The above paragraph might be an exaggerated description of the events that transpired that evening but the way things stand right now, the students of IIT BBS need to be loud and dramatic for their voices to be heard. But, how did we reach to such a standstill? 

On 18th July 2015, Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar did something which no one from the whole student population thought will ever happen in during their stay here, we shifted to our permanent campus in Argul. As expected, there was lot of buzz and excitement around because finally we had a place that we could call our own. 

No more rules set arbitrarily by outsiders, no more restrictions on our every movement and finally a sense of belonging to our institute. 

Or, so we thought. 

In 1981, the director of IIT Kanpur in his convocation address had talked about how if someone would have visited the institute in its early days, circa 1965, all they would see was a conventional country side scene of rural India. As we stepped into our permanent campus nearly 50 years later, we saw the same scenes as above. Only thing is even with all of our technology, it still took us more time to reach this stage of development than IIT K, no thanks to the hostility of the local population around us.

Once here, the students were welcomed by poorly finished rooms, bathrooms without working lights and flushes and an acute shortage of drinking water. Certainly, no one will say that a first year asking a senior about the need of personal water filters in rooms is a sign of adequate facilities provided by the authorities.

Having shifted to a rather remote location, we are in-arguably “closer to nature” and thus occasional sightings of snakes, scorpions and insects that many of us have never even heard of is going to be pretty common. All of us expected this and took precautions accordingly, but what none of us expected was that our “great” mess food had scope for more “improvement”. Since, no caterer obviously wants to leave his business in the city to come search for enlightenment in the wilderness that we call our hostel, makeshift arrangements were made for providing food for us; because it’s not like food has any major effect on our health or general well-being. Some of the dishes prepared in the mess make students question whether they are cooking food for us humans or for those infinite cows that keep on roaming outside the campus.

Of course, we have alternatives to the mess food but then most of them are only a few hundred miles away. The one alternative that we have inside the hostel in form of the canteen has been trying its best to outperform the mess right since its inception. The girls are actually better placed without the canteen than with it.

It’s a lazy Sunday afternoon; everyone is lying in their rooms and contemplating the meaning of their lives or just watching a movie, whatever. The students are passed a message that there is sports practice in evening. All of them are confused about the location of the practice as there are no grounds here, only rocky areas and grasslands. As they reach outside, they are told that the rocky area which they dismissed as wasteland is their sports ground till an undisclosed amount of time. There is dejection all around, but all authorities talk about is the intent to play but not a single word is said about the facilities. 

Murphy’s Law is an adage which states that, “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”. This has probably been illustrated numerous times in the last few days to the students of the institute.

As if we already didn’t have a big problem in our hands with the never ending commuting time between the classes and the hostel, many of the rickety buses in which we spend those uneasy hours are best suitable for junkyards rather than roads.

Moving into this remote location, not many students expected lightning fast internet facilities or excellent network coverage. But, as the continuing trend shows, we ended up getting a LAN connection with the internet speed capped at a value which makes even downloading PDF’s a herculean task.

There is an air of dissatisfaction around; a meeting has been arranged between the authorities and the students. Some people raise their voice about the slow internet connection and how internet is really important in today’s world to get a complete education. In reply, it is made known to them that internet speed will be the same for next four years if they don’t stop bugging the authorities about the same issues again and again.

The above is a just illustration of what the students have been facing since moving to Argul and how the authorities have been reacting to the issues raised by the students.

In spite of all the numerous problems in the last few days, many of the students still believe, and probably rightly so, that shifting of the hostels is the much needed first step taken by the authorities on our way to become a fully functioning, respectable institute of learning.

All we can do now is hope that the lofty promises that were made to us on the very first day after moving here are kept by the authorities and only then we will able to feel a sense of belonging to our permanent campus.