What's on your mind?

I’m swamped by thoughts. My mind is inundated with thoughts. This is “anti-writer’s block”. I don’t know where I’ll be after a 9-10 months. I don’t know what I’d really love to do when I graduate from college. I know when I was in class 11/12 the one thing I aspired was to become an “electronics and communication engineer” or “Aeronautical engineer”. The reasons for fascination with these two branches were quite fuzzy. I knew quite a few successful “electronics and communication engineer” and my love for fluid dynamics which still remains unrequited led me to consider Aeronautical engineering as a career option. Nevertheless, I had to take mining engineering as my undergraduate course at IIT Kharagpur. Man proposes God disposes!

“Ends are ape-chosen; only the means are man's.”

Just 6 years before, the one thing I desperately longed for was a seat in IIT, now I have it. After spending more than 3 years at IIT, I think I was eccentric. However, I did devote around 3 years to get into IIT. The silver lining is that I stand a better chance of being absorbed in a high-paying company than most of the students in India. Ultimately, an average middle-class youth’s dream is to get a good job after getting the very important degree, necessary evil. Ends justify the means, perhaps.



At present, I’m confused. I don’t know what I really want to do with my life. It’s like you have choices and choices and you don’t even have a slight preference for any of them. In such situation, it’s better to let others decide, not you. Exactly! When I was in class 10 it was all easy for me I was good at mathematics, science including biology. I knew I’d choose science stream but my parents chose engineering for me, as it’s easier to be an engineer (according to my parents, though!). Nobody’s complaining they knew more than me, at least then. My current problem I’ve N no. of choices and I know much more than my parents or any other close person in my life whom I can speak out my heart. So, it’s all me who has to decide.

1. Sit for CAT—Go to IIM.

2. Forget CAT—Sit for Campus Placements—Take a job which pays you the most.

3. Sit for CAT, Sit for Campus Placements— decide afterwards, what you want to do.

4. Higher studies—Figure out in which Field.

5. Go to Himalayas— forget the materialistic world; become a spiritual, motivational speaker.

6. Consider all the possible permutations and combinations of the above 5 options—Choose one.

My recent trip to Mumbai isn’t helping either. It has made me realize that I don’t know a lot of things which the “Kewl-people” talk about. I’m a bad conversation starter. I can’t talk about my favourite writers and poets, I haven’t read much. I can’t differentiate Rock, Pop, Jazz and whatever forms of music exist. In short, I’m a boring person, I cannot entertain you.

I have tried few things just for the heck of it, like swimming, tennis and jogging. I didn't like any of them. I don’t know what I love; I don’t know what I want to do with my life. I can stop thinking and follow the herd, but I don’t want to do it either. It is that phase of my life when I probably need to wait, have patience and leave it to the future. Perhaps!

However, I’d love to choose one thing and take a leap of faith.

Singrauli: Mining-IIT KGP Field Trip' 09

You know you are a student of mining engineering at IIT Kharagpur, when you go places like Singrauli and get warm reception from senior officials and stalwarts of mining and related fields. Apart from that the field trip had an overwhelming impact on our lives and we all will remember this trip for years to come.



Singrauli, the energy capital of India doesn’t have a metropolitan environment and is pretty sleepy but as far as the mining projects and power plants are concerned it would leave you awestruck. According to Singrauli’s website its total installed capacity of all power plants is around ten percent of total installed capacity of India and aptly it is known as “urjanchal”.



We stayed at Nigahi Project Township. The quality of food needs a special mention as it was a pleasant experience to have feast for 5 days and never did we have to make faces and unusual expressions because of it. In fact, we all ate well above our normal intake and calorie count was irrelevant.



One of the other things was that we realized that you cannot take KGP out of a KGPian after meeting the alumnus over there. They arranged everything for us and it was all very smooth and at times adventurous too. The Draglines, shovels, dumpers and the ubiquitous use of Hindi are the things which perfectly describe Singrauli. The Hindi phrases which were used everywhere must have been for educating people who come from places where Hindi is not the mother tongue. This reminds me of another brief meeting with two management-trainees from which I’m tempted to conclude that whenever you meet 2 engineers from pan-India 1 would be a Gult; for the uninitiated “Gult” are people from Andhra Pradesh and yes it includes Telengana too. I’m sorry for being racist.

In short, we had a helluva time there with the whole batch. We climbed on to shovels, draglines, posed for too many photographs, actually too many. The photographers [read as guys with camera] clicked photos of anything and everything under the sun and the sun too. This might support the exaggerations of Thomas L. Friedman that the surge of technology “has empowered individuals to become authors of their own content” in his book, “The World is Flat”. If you need proof, combining the photos of only two such guys it crosses 4 GB, and that is hell lot of information clicked.



The fun part was that the whole department for the first time got together and enjoyed like never before. We previously had made many plans for department picnics and treats which failed but this really brought us together, and for the first time we enjoyed college life at least I did. There was a time when I struggled to remember the names of all the 32 people. And very recently, one of our batch-mate didn’t know “who is who” but not anymore, am I right?

This field trip will go down our memory lanes and we all will remember this for a long time. This trip likely marked the end of the field trips for one of our grand old professors of mining. We are nostalgic sir!
It’s all words and words I can type maybe some photos here and there but I cannot do full justice to the amount of fun we had and what impact it had in all our lives.

Yo Singrauli!

Yo Mining!

“KGP ka tempo hiiiiiiiiiigh hai!!!”