Super 30 - An interesting concept.

An IIT of it's own kind -

A lady tailor, a nursing home employee and a watchman they all had a dream of sending their kids to a school where 'other' people's kids study. They wanted to get their child the same kind of facilities that other guys get. They wanted them to become big people but were lacking in means. But this year, all three of them are happy like other 25 proud parents as 28 students from super 30 batch will join one of the IITs this year. They all have one thing common, they received timely help from a visionary institution called super 30.

Super 30 is a famous jargon in and around Patna and the concept is as inspiring as any other story of vision, mission and dedication. Dr. Abhyanand who is an IPS officer and Ad. Director General of Police and Dr. Anand Kumar who is a celebrity sort of mathematics teacher in Patna. He runs Ramanujan school of Mathematics which again churns IITians and IAS years after years. They were both into teaching profession for Abhyanand it was just a hobby but for Anand Kr. it was life and blood. They both in their teaching careers were watching countless number of students who had no means to continue their studies and the best thing they could have done is to join some state run college in Patna and get access to the celebrity professors there. But as most of these profs were charging a hefty sum for evening coaching again that become a distant dream for them.

These two gentlemen came together and founded this Super 30 batch. 30 students on merit and means basis were picked up and formed a group. These 30 people receives special attention which includes free food, accommodation, study materials etc. And the best part of the story is that their education is subsidized by those who are better off and still clear IIT entrance. Interesting model where a group of students who are better off in means subsidizes education of those who are better on merit.

This year 28 students got into IIT out of 30 and hopefully the other 2 will also get admit into some of the top institutes if not IITs. This institute is completing 4 years of its inception and in future years will send many more to top institutes. Super 30 is popularly known as IIT of its own kind in Patna and people discuss that what if there is no IITs in Bihar we still have a lot many IITians though. And the one inspiring thing about super 30 is that these are those students who wouldn't have seen the interiors of any higher educational institution ever in their life otherwise.

Abhyanand is an example of a super cop turning to a noble cause and Anand Kumar is dedication personified. Such entrepreneurship in a state like this is a matter of respect and of great awe. Hope some more people will follow them and they will be able to improve upon their model.

To those little kids who are out to prove to the world..

To the topper of the CBSE Class Xth - Manish

When the newspaper reported 99% aggregate for two girls from Chennai and Bangalore in CBSE class 1oth, it was too much for the guy's ego I guess. Every year all the news channel and news paper will be full of stories about how girls beat the guyz by a couple of points in pass percentage. Too much for the stats but well, nobody noticed the result of East Zone because it has states like UP, Bihar, Orissa, Bengal. Anyways, beating all the odds, One Manish Kumar is going to get a lot of eyeballs over his achievement as he improved the aggregate score by an individual by 2 marks and became the topper by scoring 99.4%. Well, incidently he is from my old school and I got the news from my niece.

Lucky that today newspaper also published it but yeah! with the typical heading of "Bihar boy tops CBSE". Good for the newspapers as they have got another item to sell over this weeekend but congratulations to that boy Manish, who have made all of us (the alumnus) of Gyan Niketan proud. Probably in our time we would have never imagined a score like 99.4% and was surprised to see Jhanvi and Aparna from Chennai and Bangalore respectively scoring a whooping 99%. Well, it's you who connected me back to my school from where I completed my class Xth as I read newspaper reports about your achievement. I learnt that my favorite economics teacher is now vice principal and that school still have all those brilliant teachers there. And yeah congratualtion to all other who missed the mark.

The whole World is thinking.. So act fast...

A few days back, I was discussing this business idea with a couple of friends that how a locality specific listing and display of specific information like promotional sale, a good local store etc can go a long way in helping people. And what else, you can build a revenue model out of this. Well, the world is bigger and more knowledgeable than what we think it is. Just today I got an invitation from some Orkut member about a same kind of website. Ilaaka.com has most of the things that I wanted an ideal local website to have but well, I don't know how far it can go because a business model like this can differentiate only on the speed of updation and relevance of content. The website in the first looks seems to be an over ambitious attempt of putting a bag full of goodies for the taking but as I said, its really overambitious now and only time will tell whether they can achieve what they wanted to. But yeah, all this is teaching me a lesson which I will quote for you all that "You are not the only one in this world, who can think this, there are many others like you or even better than you thinking the same." The world stretches beyond our imagination.

Website- http://ilaaka.com

Vote to choose your president..

News channels are going ga ga over the new involvement tool developed by them. They are talking about how people can choose their cricket captain 'public ka kaptan' and even can vote to choose their ideal presidential candidate. Oh yeah! all this can be done by simply clicking a few digits on your cellphone. Send your message to some 4 digit number and choose your president. (Don't worry about shelling out 2/3/6/10 Rs as SMS charge and about the fact that political party gives your opinion a shit or not.)

Well, now you can SMS to choose your favorite colour combiination for the national flag, you can even send us a design which we will put up for our next poll. You can choose literally anything. Well, the result for one such audience open poll reflects that 34% of the audience voted in favour of Rahul Dravid 33% in favour of Sachin and 33% in favour of Any other. The fact of the matter was that only 3 votes were caste (all that by the technician who was checking whether they were getting the messages properly or not). As, the analyst was a fan of Rahul Dravid, he puts him at the top by 1% point.

Choose your national Animal - Vote now
Similarly one channel started an audience poll for selecting the national animal. People were asked to list their choice through an email or they can call and say "Nationa Animal" followed by their choice to register their vote. The results were hillarious but couldn't be made public as it had many names from the political circus.

• Teddy bear - most of the kids voted in favour of teddy bear but they had varied opinion on the colour, stuffing and the size. Some suggested that as teddy bear is not a living animal, have Adnan Sami as the mascot. news channel reported that how one little girl was on the verge of crying and how she spoilt his daddy's shirt crying Adnan Sami, Adnan sami.
  
• Gorilla - Anti pakistan people voted for Gorilla as its aggressive and we can send out the message that don't mess with us but human right activists have come out protesting against choice of Gorilla as an animal because they feel that Gorillas are our closest cousins. They might be your dear, atleast not of ours. We have heard that Human Rights activists are approaching Arundhati Roy to lead a protest march from IBN office to PM's office in support of Gorillas. Some people feel that instead of Gorilla have Mr. Bush as the mascot.
  
• Leave the tigers like that - Many people still feel that tiger is the right choice so leave it like that. Well, then why the hell you wasted your cell phone money? Communist are already on their way to put forward this demand to change the national animal to Bengal tiger from the tiger.
  
• Lalu Yadav - Make him the national animal, he has all the qualities, he is animated, is capable of doing stunts and what else he has proved by converting a whole state into jungle. Good choice.
• Arjun Singh - The choice is of Jackal but then again put him as a mascot, people will understand what you want to say.
• Manmohan Singh - Ahhahahaha--- what to say? He has proved himself as a nice pet. He has the capabilities to fit into any role. He will fit into this role also. I am sure. But then, it do not depend on public rather if madam jee votes in his favour then he will happily become the national pride.
  

Well, guess who won the poll. Ahhahahaha.. don't ask please.. Is it that difficult to guess?

Police find clues in Mecca Masjid Blast case..

My take on the news --

News Channel are reporting that police found some new clues in the Mecca masjid blast case. Well, police has claimed that the assailants were trained in Jaish Camps in Pakistan and the explosives used were RDX and TNT. Another report says that the planning reflect maoist thinking and was aimed towards killing the home minister.

Well, police is saying that because they have to say something but the fact of the matter is that most of the time Indian police is clueless. That is why they take 10 years to solve a bomb blast case, 5 years to file chargesheet in a scam and mysteriously fail everytime to solve a case where big people are involved. Anyways, its 3 days now and police is on a statement spree. They can say anything.

And the most easy of the things are to suspect a foreign hand. Today they are saying that the terrorists who planted bomb in Mecca masjid were trained in Jaish camps, tomorrow they will say that the RDX which was used was similar to the one used in Mumbai blast (idiots RDX is RDX) and next day they might come up with a conspiracy theory that terrorist planned the whole attack in a bear bar (the bar owner may get a show cause notice), though all of them were drinking bear one terrorist asked for fruit juice which was not available and they thrashed one of the bartenders. Then they immediately fled the scene and took two autos to reach the masjid. They fought with the auto wala over the money and then they entered the Masjid. They planted the bomb in the night so that no one can spot them. And then they took different buses in the night to escape from the city leaving behind one person who would remote control the blast. As the remote was of cheap quality he could manage only one blast and then has to replace the batteries which were originally of chinese make. He went to buy the battery but due to the first blast all the shops were closed and he couldnot come back due to traffic jam. So before him police came and diffused the other bombs. Our sniffers have performed an excellent job in sniffing the bombs.

Well, we are interrogating the bar owner and the auto drivers but we think that the suspects have fled the country. Well, it seems that its the best defence for their ineffectiveness. "Foreign hand hai jee, pakistan ka haath hai, ISI ke log they hamein pata hai". These people can really say anything.
Salute to them.

Punjab Burning..

Unjust Demand on Dera Sachha Sauda..

IBN Reports that The meeting of five high sikh priest concluded with a demand of closing down all the Dera units before the month end. Well, putting up such an unjust demand during the situation like this, people forget this that they are sending a message to the violent crowd. Probably if they don't close down people will again resort to violence.
Whatever has happened in Punjab it shouldn't have happened in first place and I wonder that tomorrow if some drunkard poses like 10th Guru and claims that he is drinking Amrit, would they order closing down the numerous "thekas" in Punjab? Strange concepts. Anyways, they are high priests and have the right to say anything. I wonder about the people who are on streets armed with swords and rifles. They are not us then who are they?

The other side of the Statistics. India in Bangladesh

Statistics has many faces and I am giving you here one face of stats which exposes tall claims of Rahul Dravid (the Indian Cricket team Captain) and cricket board about the condition of Indian team.

1. The top 3 fast bowlers of country failed to take any wicket in their starting spell.
2. Of the 7 wickets that fell, 4 were taken by part time bowlers which could be considered as a fluke and you can not depend on part timers.
3. India is playing two wicket keepers in team and the better wicketkeeper is playing as a batsman whereas the better batsmen is playing as a wicketkeeper.
4. The top 3 batsmen fell to the opening bowlers of Bangladesh whereas Indian fast bowlers went wicketless.
5. Bangladesh started cautiously and then cut loosed after the initial innings building. Indian started in a hurry and then limped in the middle overs.
6. Dhoni pulled up his hamstring only after spending over an hour on crease (fitness?)
7. Rahul Dravid played 39 balls to score 22 runs and then gets out playing a foolish shot. Sehwag takes 21 to score 31 and played a foolish shot to get out. Well, if you have to play foolish then better play fast. Captain is becoming an useless batsmen and probably a very poor strategist.
8. Mongia loves to come down the track but then he forgets that its international cricket and not the domestic one where you are one of the senior players on the team and can get away with any thing.

Well, match is still in progress and Indian can still limp towards victory as both the wicketkeepers are on the wicket but then probably Indians hate a match without masala. First they let opposition score enough runs and then they make sure that their batsmen should do enough to add spice to it. Well, to get back to audience heart you need to win matches convincingly dear. Gone are the days when people appreciated your antics. Anyways, an ideal tour for India will be to Bermuda because that was the only team they beat in world cup. My take is that Indian team has still a long way to go. And the problem was not with the coach, its with these players only.

In the Shower I nearly Burnt Myself..

Strange it may sounds but its true. You all might be knowing that I am in Chennai. Add to this that I am living on the top floor of my hostel building and you can imagine (No Air condition of course). Well, last night I remember it was incredibly hot and I went off to sleep at around 3, I woke up completely drenched with sweat (6:30) and all I could do is to stand in the shower holding a tooth brush. The morning shower is such a luxurious feeling here that you will probably regret if you miss it. But then just one shower won't do as if you are staying in the hostel you are forced to pour water on your body after a regular interval. Water is the only relief from this heat. I remember my parents telling me this to drink a lot of water and coconut water in Chennai as one is good for health and the other is good protection from heat. But then, I find coconut water extremely costly here in comparison with that of Patna, Delhi or Patiala. For 7 Rs a piece in other states you have to shell out some 15 bucks in Chennai if you can't speak the local dialect.

Shower? Burnt? What the hell this means?
Well, it was about noon and my friend Shweta asked me for the lunch. I soon realized that I am again sweating profusely sitting in my room and I can't go to computer lab also as it is normally occupied by the ICICI trainees. So then, I decided to take a quick shower and entered into the shower. I turned on the shower and the touch of the water made me shout. The water was boiling hot as I forgot that its afternoon and its Chennai. The water was boiling in the tanks since last 4 hours and its so hot that it can cause good damage if you stay in the shower. My god! You can't sleep properly, you can't shower properly. What the heck is this?

Survival theory ->
But well, I know that long back one Mr. Darwin proposed survival and evolution theory, I guess if you can survive the heat in Chennai you are ready to work in even Sub Saharan Africa (people even give this theory to us hahaha, perhpas they ignore that we could have our relatives/friends working in Africa also and we can be close to reality). We are supposed to earn at least enough to buy the basic comforts of life. And if we can't then what is the rationale behind professional education?

Moral Responsibility ->
Anyways, my call is that it should be the morale responsibility of the institute administration to provide air-condition accomodation to the student living on the top floors or for that matter even for all the students. There might be cost concerns but there are numerous ways to cut costs in other areas. We might cite example from the past that very few of the institute in Chennai provide that kind of facilities but then I firmly believe that those few will surely survive and achieve a better growth rate then lot of others. A comfortable accommodation is largely becoming a hygiene factor and if it won't be there, it will cause dissatisfaction.

Loosing the human touch ->
Well, given the unbearable heat, it's inhumane to leave the students on their own fate and I guess that if the institutes across Chennai won't do something regarding this, the heat can go to the head also. Well a cooler solution is something like the government passing a mandatory legislation that any higher education institute running in and around Chennai has to provide Air Cooled/Air Conditioned accomodation for the 4 months from April -July on request. But why wait for Media, NGO's or Government to step in? Why can't we act on our consciousness? Well, perhaps we are loosing that human touch.

Lost in Google.. Try Soople.

Googling is no longer and art, its becoming a science as if you don't know how to efficiently search google then probably you will find yourself lost between data. "Water water everywhere not a drop to drink". Anyways, if you are tired and frustrated of googling, here is another tool for you SOOPLE which makes googling easy. It has the simple google search interface as well as separate links to search music, books and articles efficiently. It basically uses the google engine only so rest assured, you use soople, it will google for you in an efficient manner.