Manas Garg Speaks

Just as a great poet is known by the poems he writes, a great institue if known by the students that come out of it.

NIT Trichy is blessed to have some of the most enthusiastic and energetic young minds, who are not scared to do difficult things. RECTians and NITTians are to be found in every great company around the globe. Still, NIT Trichy does not have the brand recall that IITs have.

Why?

We have been unsuccessful to keep our alumni interested. We have not been able to keep them attached to NITT. RECAL, the official alumni association is a red tape association, sending out emails only when they require donations for yet another project. This is not the way you involve alumni. Alumni are a way to get more money for the institute agreed, but the real power of alumni is in the knowledge and experience they have gained outside of NIT Trichy. They would love to share this knowledge, experience, tips and tricks with the students still studying.

The best way to involve alumni would be to have to common platform where they and the current students can interact. NITTians.com is a big step towards this goal. As of now a blog aggregator, NITTians.com picks up blog posts written by fellow NITTians from around the globe and puts them together at a common place. What an amazing way to make one feel attached to NITT! I congratulate students who have taken this initiative, spent their own money, and put up this website.

The next step would be to involve alumni in mentoring programs, forums, sending out newsletters from the campus, arranging visits for alumni and for students to alumni’s organizations, and so on. I’m so excited. This is an opportunity to change the face of our institute as the world knows it.

Come, join NITTians.com and offer whatever support you can. Its all yours.

I’m going to share a few of my childhood memories. Some of them pleasant, some of them unpleasant. I’ve hardly shared some of them with anyone else - because I’ve been so embarrassed about them. But here I am making them public.

Here goes the first one - and I think the one which affected me the most.

—

 This happened (or started rather) when I was in III standard.  I was pretty bright and other kids and teachers held me in good regard. There was this guy in my class, named Musharib. A typical naughty and trouble making fellow. Fine with me. However, our class-teacher was quite concerned about him (Her name was Tanvi S Khan, if I remember correctly) and as you’d expect, changed his seat in class and made him sit next to me - hoping that he’d pick up a good quality or two from me. Fine with me.

This guy, happened to have a friend in class - her name was Diana, and both were good friends. Like kids in III standard are. Then I made that mistake.

One fine morning, I still vividly remember - it was the first period, Musharib had a chalk piece, and told me that he wanted to write ‘Musharib and Diana are friends’ on the desk. Of course, he said that to me in Hindi, as kids generally did not have great command over English. And that is why he wanted my help to write that in English.

Too mature for my age, my brain came up with a mischief - instead of writing ‘Diana and Musharib are friends’, I wrote ‘Diana weds Musharib’. I don’t know why.

Kids around asked me what it meant. So I told them. I just remember Musharib going ‘Hawwww’ and erasing what was written on the desk. And so began the most painful time of my childhood life.

Musharib was smart. Smarter then I could have imagined him to be. He did not go and complain to the teacher immediately, however, he asked me if he should go and complain. I could not believe it - he was blackmailing me!

He did tell the maths teacher and I was punished - made to stand in front of the class with my hands held straight up. However, I was scared that my parents would be very disappointed to know what a hideous crime their only child had committed.

Meanwhile, Musharib kept me in constant fear of telling my parents - I don’t remember him making me do or get anything for him, but he kept me in constant fear - that he would go ahead tell my parents.

Little did I know that the ‘crime’ I had committed was not really a crime - and that maybe my parents would just have laughed it off  - for me, it was the worst kind of crime that I had committed, and was too scared to even imagine what would my parents do if they found out.

Musharib scared me for a few months, and then the thing was old. But I had still not told my parents, and whenever Musharib asked me - “Manas, should I…”, my heart would skip a beat.

It ended when my dad got transferred and we moved to a new city. I was so relieved. I still havent told my parents.. It doesn’t matter now.

However, the thing to notice is, that a child’s mind is so innocent, that he can easily be scared, and even when my parents were the most understanding parents in the world, the fear of disappointing them made me hide something, which did not really mean anything.

I wish Musharib had gone ahead and told my parents on the first day itself - at least I would not have spent those months in constant fear.

I have hated him ever since - but now I realize - even if he was enjoying having the brightest kid in the class in constant fear, the real fault was mine - I wanted to hide my mistake. Since then, I make it a point to accept my faults out in the open - it makes you feel very light.

If you’re reading this, I’m sorry Musharib, for what I did. (Diana did not speak with him for a long long time after what I had said about the two).

Peace. 

The boyzone song Words starts like this:

“Smile, an everlasting smile,
a smile can bring you near to me…”

How do you break ice?

There are so many times in our adult lives when we are in a group where no one knows anyone, and you can feel discomfort standing in the air like mild fog. Few people are masters of this situation - they can find friends just anywhere. There always are a few universal topics - however clichéd, they seem to work - Weather, politics, Sachin’s performance in the recent one dayer,  the stock market boom, the USA - its a reasonably long list. A wedding dinner or a journey in the train is a great example where you can observe this happening.

Still more difficult is to break ice with people whom you don’t know at all, and in a formal setup. I found myself in this situation a few days back. I was at this formal buffet, with all places at the table already taken; except the one opposite to where I was sitting. A man, with a plate in hand, stood close by contemplating whether he should take it or not. I knew I was supposed to ask him to sit - by etiquette. I did not know how to address him - ‘Sir’ - nay, he wasn’t that old, ‘Hey’ - nay, he wasn’t that young, then what?

I did this - I just smiled. And he smiled back - instinctively. And without a word being uttered, the ice had already broken.

This is a poem by Emily Dickinson. It was in my course book in class XI / XII and left a mark on me: 

“Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory!

As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!”

Dickinson tells us that it is not the winner who knows what success is, but it is the one who has failed and has been defeated who really understands how sweet success is. It is only when we fail that we think about how great it would have been to get admission to that college or to get that job. When we succeed, it is hard to actually value your accomplishment.

 I’ve had my fair share of being on both sides of the line. And I’m happy about it. It would be much less fun to always be on one side of this game.  

For a change, let me write about my favourite book - The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

I have in general disliked books with stories of immigrants written by authors from the Indian subcontinent. They tend to portray India and the neighbouring countries as primitive lands, which people want to flee.

However, The Kite Runner changed my view. It is about friendship between two little boys, of different stature in the society, during happier times in Afghanistan. The author describes this beautiful land so vividly that you can actually form the pictures in your mind. Every incident is narrated in a manner such that it comes alive in front of you.

The pain that people of this nation have experienced had been portrayed in such a touching manner that for the first time in my life I actually sat down and tried putting myself in place of a person living in constant fear. The misery of the people of war-ridden countries is nothing more than tea-table gossip for most of us. It is easy to give out suggestions about what policy should USA adopt and that terrorism is haunting people who fed it before. I think only someone who has experienced pain that so many Afghans, Kashmiris and Iraqis have experienced can understand the depth of the whole problem. The author brings us as close as I’ve ever been to understand their struggle.

The latter part of the book is about how the main character of the story, Amir, tries to overcome his guilt for past mistakes. It presents before us the way immigrants from war ridden lands suffer and still find joy in small things in foreign lands. Such a touching account of human nature, will and courage.

“For you - a thousand times over” encapsulates the whole spirit of love, dedication and the joy we get from doing things for someone else - the spirit of this beautiful book. To understand this, you need to read the book.

If you decide to read just one book, let it be this one. I promise you - you will thank me for it.

Here is a screenshot from Word ‘97 :

Here is a screenshot from Open Office:

Interesting, right?