On the Leopard's Trail

I must allow “Ze King of the Jungle” to take precedence over other insects and animal forms in the IIT lush green campus which many of us don’t know is a part of a 107 square kilometre jungle fondly called as the Sanjay Gandhi National Park. The king being our very own leopard(s) from the jungle which often makes a visit to this technology park – probably to look into the newest and the bestest innovations taking life in this university. Hey hey .. some of you might have taken offence and must have pointed out that the King of the Jungle is the Lion and no one but the Lion – But pardon me monsieur, It is not Ze Lion which command respect inside the campus , but it is the blood thirsty, the original man-eater leopard.

There are many a stories about this magnificent beast that are part of every IITian’s story – But I shall move away from the stories and indulge in some loose talking about this creature. There are stories about the beast attacking people, but little do the outsiders know, there are stories about the beast intimidating only firings, to count em on the finger of my hands – There are exactly four who have faced the creature to tell the truth. Can’t debate on the truth of this particular tidbit but then am not the one complaining. I would rather take comfort in the fact that am not a part of the favourites. So far .. so good !!!

Nights are a busy time for the Special Security team out here as they check every nook and corner of the campus – each gutter and narrow alley for this creature. All equipped with torches and other tools, they are quite a treat to watch (if spotted). God forbid, if there may be a spotting of this spotted creature, then all alarms are up – The RTs (Recievers – Transmitters or better known as Walky-Talkys) go ON and each department / hostel is informed. Mails are shot – Each student receives a mail within 15 minutes of the discovery about the possible threat lurking outside in the shadows of the night. Just a couple of years back, there was a leopard spotting near the Mechanical Department in the wee hours of the night and all students from IDC were frozen in the department till the sun was up and shining, not wanting to trudge back to their hostel and be a possible ‘designer’ prey for this beast, who’d never on the Earth come to know that it is consuming a rare species off the face of the Earth – a person who is a designer and who is sincere and hardworking too.

I usually end up staying back in my design department till wee hours of the morning, at times just the time before it may be dawn and the night not having finished its reign yet. A refreshing walk at 3:30 – 4 AM is what I like back to the hostel before I may crash into my dingy room. A Friday night of hard work is what really gets an IITian geared for a nice long sleepy weekend. I have stuck true to my professional IT attitude and I DO NOT work over weekends. J - so all the work happens over the Friday night.

It was one cold rainy Friday night as usual. The clock strikes 4 and I decide it is time to bid the department Good-bye and move my tired feet and eyes towards the hostel. It was my first night-out in the department and the walk to the hostel was to be a solitary one. I picked up my bag and moved on. A walk down along the Mechanical Department (Yuss Sire, the same Mechnical Department where Mr. Spotty was spotted the last) through the lobby, the Central Library to my right and voila, am on the lonely road to Hostel number 01 (That’s the place where I currently exist over the weekdays). It is raining cats, dogs and leopards (lol) and I get onto the long walk back and I see it – All four feet, standing at a distance – at a distance of nearly 300 yards. At such long distance I cannot see its ferocious fangs, but only the lonely silhouette of the four legged beast. I freeze , more than ice could ever freeze. I pray that the creature may not have seen me – may it be myopic. Damn !!!, I though hard work always pays and not preys (Pardon the poor jokes in this excruciating moment). I am still pulled in that direction, I rub my eyes to get a clearer view and to my horrors, one more four legged creature joins the earlier one. I must have lost my senses and would have collapsed at the spot, making myself an easy, non-resistive prey for these creatures of the night. A cold chill down my spine, but I still move towards the silhouettes. A few metres more and there are more to join the couple. S*** , I must be having a really really bad nightmare .. I rub my eyes, I pinch myself hard more than a dozen times and I walk ahead – full of courage within me, prepared to take on the nightmare with both hands. I move ahead inch by inch and suddenly I see its grotesque face and it snarls with a loud “Mooooo” and I am more dead than alive.

Later I was told that all the #$%#$#@ cows and bulls from the IIT campus, for some strange and weird reason, make the parking lot just ahead of Hostel 1 main door as their abode for the night and it usually is a pain for the house keeping guys from Hostel 01 to keep the place dung free and odour free.

So much of an anti-climax for a night of terror, but am glad to be alive to tell this story. These days I try not to stay in the department for long and make my way back to the hostel by maximum by 2 AM and ofcourse, I take the longer, better lighted route via the Main Building to the Hostel and avoid the shorter path down the Mechanical Department altogether.

Ahhh .. !!! The fresh air of the beautiful dark night – is much better when you take the longer but definitely safer way back.

Encounters of the Un-wild kind

I prefer to call this particular piece of text as “Unwild Encounters” for the sole reason that we as humans perceive other living forms as wild and unwild whereas there is no race or breed as wild and dangerous than the homo sapiens themselves.

IIT is a wild place, there are wild creatures all around us over here. The day starts with a wild and loud creatures gargling and spitting and spooing around in the common washroom. Those voices alone could make you barf on your empty stomach. But then more detailed descriptions out here would be enough to make you sick enough not to read the rest of the text, so I draw a full stop out here.

There are many a monkeys around out over here. Small ones, tiny ones, huge ones, cute ones, ferocious ones, curious ones, happy ones, excited ones and all other kinds. There is a convention centre being built opposite IDC main entrance which would be completed in 2010. This place being a regular construction site for the mathadis over the week turns into a fun Jungle Jim kinds of playhouse for the apes over Sunday, wherein they run all around the place, hang out in search for food (with their red butts out) from the trashcans which adorn the IIT campus, scare the shit out of the dogs and at times play evil.

A recent incident on a sunny week day during a lunch break, there was silence in the corridors of the department as all IDCians ‘enjoyed’ their tasteless lunches in their respective hostels there came a text message in my inbox which read “Monkeys in d studio.Biggg mess ppl.No1 arnd 2 help.Tk my mouse,rly likin anikets toy.eggs blasted.Smellin like hell.All are welcome to xprnc animal interaction”. A quick run to our studio and we found the whole place in a smelly mess. Eye witnesses reported that six apes had ventured through into the Interaction Design studio through an open window and made the whole place into a kindergarten playground. Paper sheets and thermocol toys were broken. A fellowmate’s cordless mouse was smashed around (He managed to save his laptop though). Some weakassed ape had shat on a girl’s desk and ofcourse there were some eggs on the windowsill (which were fond artefacts of the Ragging session we were put through at the start of the course) were smashed around. Later news reported that there were more monkey attacks in other studios as well.

A pair of monkeys robbed a box of poster colors from the Senior studio. A girl who was enjoying her siesta in the Product Design studio was rudely awakened by the sounds of monkeys jumping on a centre table in the studio. But she managed to scream loud enough to scare them off their pants (if they ever wore any) and the studio was saved. Later a scare fight ensued between the IDCians and the monkeys as each of the party tried to scare the other ones by screeching, hooting and shouting. Some weaponery help from the IDC staff in the form of bamboos and sticks helped the former be successful in their fight.

This was an one-off encounter with monkeys. But each day, lives of every IITian are terrorised and traumatised by the presence of these humanlike creatures.

Next up – Creepy Crawly Insects and Our Favourite Leopards.

The Ten Commandments of Design

Life is short and the expanse of Design is vast, so big that you could live a nine lives and come back more to learn more about concepts / processes in Design – So at the start you should be specific about the field in which you want to dabble in more, to become a master (as expected, after all it is a Masters course) in it rather than be a Jack of all trades. Keeping this in mind, I have decided my route and by now have specialised in sleeping in all the possible lectures/presentations/design movies that are screened in the IDC (Industrial Design Centre) auditorium. There are followers.. ..but then I lead the pack. I further expanded my skills to sleep in the face of the professor for all possible interactive post-lunch session. So much to brag about my sleeping skills – I shall move onto other details.

You can take the technical writer out of technical writing but you cannot take technical writing out of a technical writer, says Murphy – saying which I shall summarize and bulletize(phrase in bullet points) some highlights which will make the content more easier to read and comprehend. Some of the things which can be loosely interpreted as 'The 10 Commandments of Design in IDC' are as follows:

• 1. Thou shall not know fonts, shapes or colours in Design – There are only typefaces, forms and values/hues/tints blahs blahs.
• 2. "What is Design?" could have 50 definitions, but then the one which thou know and answer to when asked the same is always the wrong one.
• 3. There is no right or wrong in Design.
• 4. Design in its simplest form can be defined as "Creative Problem Solving", but when there is no Design, there are no Problems whatsoever.
• 5. Thou shall master Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, Indesign, Corel Draw, SolidWorks, Auto CAD and other software in two days time.
• 6. Thou shall always prototype your design concept.
• 7. Thou shall assign each design to a metaphor. (There is no design without metaphors).
• 8. Thou shall imagine, visualize in 2D, 3D as well from different perspectives as well as envisage from social, cultural, physiological and cognitive point of views (whew...!!!)
• 9. Thou shall unlearn all your Engineering as soon as you can after you get into IDC.
• 10. Thou are NOT a Designer (until thou pass out from IDC at least).

We shall keep the commandments at 10 for now, there'd be more and more to be added to fill up the electronic pages in Times New Roman or Calibri or Courier .. but then that is at a later stage.

This is for now (to keep it short and crisp). I will follow it up with some more writing about Design, more about IDC, the subjects learnt in the first semester and of course – There is life outside IDC.