to B.E. or not to B.E.

Today, when I look at my old study table, I see the partially rusted pen stand with a little less than a million pens in it. They come in handy for many useful purposes, except writing. And the table lamp, protected by a thick layer of smooth and glittering dust. The lamp has come as a legacy to my father from my grandfather and to him from my great grandfather and so on. The history of the lamp would probably date back to early 1600s, when, I guess, the Mughals used it first to deceive the Marathas projecting it as a nuclear weapon. Today it stands erect in all its pride, resembling the hardships that my ancestors went through and yet the perseverance that they demonstrated - in cleaning it time and again. The lamp does not work on electricity anymore. On electricity, it only sparkles to show that it is still alive and if you are interested in playing a little fun game with it, it can electrocute you, just for fun. I just wish I had used that table for studying. All of these things remind me of those good old days - when I was not doing my engineering. “Engineering was fun”. This statement is as clichéd as it is untrue. To all those who say that, I would like to ask - which part exactly are you referring to?

Part1: The admission:
Admission process for engineering is the grossest of experiences. You run around relentlessly for weeks using bus, train, motor-bike, non-motored bike, auto-rickshaw and all other public and private modes of transport, and stand at the tail of immobile queues for collecting the form, filling the form, attesting the form, submitting the form, following up the status of the submitted form and performing all other activities that can possibly be performed on forms, including using them for fanning when you bear the scorching heat while standing in the queue. At the end of all this, all you get rewarded with is the smallest possible piece of paper reading “Acknowledgement” at the top and a stamp/seal at the bottom, which is barely readable. You just see two concentric blue circles with something written between their circumferences. It could in all possibility be “Mugambo khush hua” and that too in Arabic and nobody would know. Even the tickets that are issued when you travel by a PMT bus are comparatively bigger and can be maintained at least until the journey is over. With this acknowledgement receipt, you should consider yourself lucky if you manage to retain it in your fist in one piece until you come out successfully, fighting the crowd on your way back from the window.

Part2 – the college faculty and the syllabus:
After studying your ass off in 12th grade, coping with the incessant pressure from teachers and intimidating parents, spending sleepless nights awaiting the results and the plethora of hardships described in Part1, you manage to secure admission into an engineering college. Now, you can get one and only one of - a good college or a good stream or a free seat. None of them co-exists with the other. The stream is your primary concern and your father does not trust that you will be able to do justice to two hundred grands. Consequently, you end up in the worst college of the university. A college where the faculty is as novice to the subject as you, as afraid of ragging as you (because the senior students wouldn’t realize whether the person is a first year student or a faculty and the faculty himself would be too terrified to remember that he is not supposed to be ragged), and as lost as a baby amongst strangers. You try to not care and consider him as a source of entertainment and a topic that you can discuss whenever you are hanging out with friends and are already done with discussing the antonyms of beauty in your college.

Being a computer engineering student seems to automatically obligate you to study how a Reinforced Cement Concrete wall is stronger and lasts longer than other types of walls. Or how the piston in a four stroke petrol engine makes four to and fro motions – two more than a two stroke petrol engine (it’s supposedly a difficult guess) - inside the cylinder of an automobile engine. Also, perhaps you will never be able to develop a software unless you understand how a silicon controlled rectifier is used in regulating a fan’s speed or you are able to visualize the orthographic projections of a given body i.e. its elevation (front view), plan (top view) and side view, and draw them (perfectly, to scale) on a large sheet, using instruments like the drafter, which you carry on your back like a warrior carries his weapon. Somehow, you fight everything and clear the first year, only to find yourself lost in the name game of subjects. Theory of Computer Science does not seem to have anything to do with computers (or ‘theory’ and ‘science’ for that matter). In Linear Circuits Analysis, the circuits are anything but linear. [to be continued...]