Buckle up your shoes-it’s a Great Laker’s b’day.

Everybody is studying for the test or busy with the assignment or doing pre reads in the evening. Suddenly the laptop flashes a mail with the subject “Birthday Boy”(BB) asking us to congregate in the hostel lobby or the auditorium to celebrate one of our batchmate’s birthday. We, being the time management gurus set the alarms in our clocks and cellphones to wake us up at 12 am(no way can one afford to sleep as early as 12 am but why take a chance). The mail has changed our priorities now. Preparations are on, No not for the assignments or pre reads or tests but for the bumps.

I was in a fix as to how to make a memorable impact (you know where, right??) in the ‘bumps’ ceremony. An idea flashed and I called up Sippi productions to enquire whether they still retained thakur’s shoes( Ref: sholey movie. Customized shoes with nails. ). Obviously they were not willing to part with them. After all, film industry people too have birthdays. Anyways an urgent brainstorming session was called and everybody pitched in with their ideas about delivering the best (kicks). Everybody reminisces the last day when he kicked his friend so hard that he flew up to his room on the first floor. Mind you, this is serious stuff and nobody laughs. Rather other guys come up with their own ‘Real’ stories. Guess, all news channels overheard us someday and resorted to showing ‘Breaking news’. In a nutshell, each story says, ”I am Hercules. Nobody can stand my kicks, Period”.
Ok, 15 minutes remaining to 12 o’clock and everybody departs to come back with sports shoes on in just 5 minutes. I wish this could be the parameter for marks on punctuality. One small observation,” The Product life cycle of a shoe = duration of birthday bumps”. This rule applies to all ‘birthday bumps enthusiasts’ irrespective of political, social, economic and technological factors ( Ref: PEST. Go to www.wikipedia.com). It’s a blot on your self esteem and integrity if your shoe doesn’t wear off after giving bumps. We knock the birthday boy’s room and no response. No problem, happens all the time. We trace our friend down huddled in the wash room’s corner. May be, that’s why they say,”Men are dogs”. However a subtle difference here- we didn’t even have to smell any of the BB’s belongings to track him down. No wonder, FBI and CBI are coming for the campus placements this year.

Amidst this hue (colors of our excitement) and cry (of our BB) we take him to the green auditorium. BB, a dynamic manager otherwise suddenly transforms into a meek mouse begging for mercy. Huh, how the hell did this mouse forget the last time he played a ‘forward’ from the ‘birthday bumps’ team. Some innovative statements like, “I have a slip disc”,”Doctor has recommended bed rest” or rather “An ant died under my car so I am depressed”. Who knows an insect lover goes soft on our BB with this strategy. Moreover girls are around to watch the show so our BB has to request for mercy in a hushed tone as well as try to cover his nervousness with a fake smile to look his manly best. This is how one learns crisis management.

The cake is brought and the BB is forced to nose dive into it. Every nook and corner of his face is religiously smeared with cake. Photographs are taken though in most pics BB is the least visible. What else can be expected when 261 people vie for their pics at the same time? Anyways we preserve our BB from getting lynched for the most awaited activity, “Birthday bumps”. Four guys lift our friend at a respectable height. However we have the facility of customizing the ground clearance as per individual demands. The harder you kick the more sense of achievement dawns into you. Just one loud cry of the BB and the frustration of grueling lectures, long assignments, lengthy chapters goes off into oblivion. Nothing else can be more satisfying than the punching bag itself complementing your kicks with different versions of cries. A good business idea for ‘Artificial Intelligence’ guys. I want my percentage in the profit.

Sometimes it so happens that any other guy who tries to be more vocal and act smart while kicking lands himself in a soup and gets bumps without any reason. So try to be low profile while doing such kicking activities. Do your duty and quietly make an exit. Moreover be ready to run anytime as the crowd may celebrate your unofficial birthday. I do not have the photographs of the bumps session as the photographer himself was busy giving bumps. Some questions remain unanswered till now -Did anyone wish “Happy birthday” to our BB? Where is he? If he’s in his room then who took our swollen friend back to his room? Not sure about the answers. Anyways it’s alright to forget silly things while much more important tasks are being executed. In the next day class our BB is the most noticeable guy, marketing different brands of pain relievers. All in all this 45 minutes celebration is one of the best stress busters and we all eagerly wait for someone else’s (not ours) birthday to come everyday.

P.S. These bumps are given by thorough Great Lakes professionals. So, I would reiterate Guru John Cena’s words ,”PLEASE DON’T TRY THIS”.

Cheers,
Ayush Aswal.

Some of the birthday pics:

pic 1: Scary Vighnesh(Kindly avoid seeing if suffering from Heart problems)

Pic 2: Farid nose diving.

Pic 3: Sumit (blue tshit) with his wife and two fellow goons infront of the canteen.

Dr. Rocky’s phenomenal session

Lots of pre reads, assignments, presentations, quizzes had already drained me and again a 3 hours lecture of Dr.Rakesh Singh aka Rocky Sir(as he is fondly called) seemed to be the icing on the cake. All the four sections of our Patriots batch had to sit together and our class looked like a big colosseum. Even I, a literal book worm – who can eat a book but never read it- had gone through the pre read, an article on “India on rise since independence’. I hope this says more than enough about the gladiator who was about to enter the colosseum and leave us vanquished with his armour of questions and assignments. While the class was sitting with bated breath and trying to memorize the inflation rate, CRR, SLR, growth rate and other economic concepts, the gladiator entered. The gladiator, our Rocky Sir fitted the collar mike and greeted through the bose speakers. I, trying to look confident and enlightened (Reference Empirical Study: 99.7 percent cases have shown that if you appear confident and see eye to eye with Rocky Sir, you won’t be asked questions), greeted back in chorus with the class.

Our professor started with the introduction to India’s growth rise since independence. India had already tasted the ill effects of foreign interference by East India Company so it went for complete self reliance policy and avoided any foreign help. Imports were discouraged and small scale industries were given full co-operation.’ License Raj’ as it was called, the Indian policies mandated a large scale industry to acquire such a huge number of licenses that it was almost impossible to think of setting up a large scale industry in India. To keep the facts straight 80% of the Indian budget was allocated to small scale industries and 20% for the Large scale ones. Government gave subsidies to bankrupt industries and thus itself was running out of cash. Agriculture was not given it’s due attention. This all led to the 1991 economic crisis.

The lecture touched upon diverse areas related to our economy like the failure of Mysore Sandal soap, Mr. Manmohan Singh’s performance as the finance minister, SIDBI, ENRON, etc. Before I realized 2 hours were over and our Prof was still going great guns with sheer passion, telling each and every detail of our Indian economy. So much knowledge and that too delivered from the horse’s mouth, I couldn’t ask for more.
I was elated to have such an informative session and relieved too because by this time I had realized that there would be no questions asked today. This lecture helped me overcome my two phobias – getting caught by my friends taking notes in the class and fear of falling asleep in a long lecture. Taking notes is not considered as an ‘in thing’ and if a boy is found doing that by his ‘all boys’ group an irreparable damage to public image is assured. Endowed with an entrepreneurial streak, I TOOK THE RISK but I would say it was worth it. Nobody can afford not to jot down so much information which otherwise would take at least 1 month if one tries to find on internet. Moreover never ever in my life I have been awake and so much attentive in a lecture but this spell bounding session just sailed through and the whole class was left asking for more even after 3 hours.

Every sentence uttered in the lecture was packed with data and awakening information. Comparison of Chinese policies with India’s, National Rural Employment Guarantee program of India, Labour laws, 1995 Maraccus agreement, Ganganagar project in Rajasthan and much more was covered in just less than 3 hours. Such was the impact of the lecture that I, a passionate ‘Page 3′ and bollywood news reader switched to economic times right from that day and am still sticking to the same newspaper. Just like one feels like hitting a gym after watching an Arnold Schwarzeneger’s movie I felt like delving deep into economics after this lecture. I am indebted to Rocky Sir for bringing this transformation in me.
A real Prof is the one who can change the attitude of a student for the best and I would say that our reverent Dr. Rakesh Singh possesses that rare quality. The seed of questioning, reasoning, finding answers myself and most importantly where exactly to search for solutions, has now sprouted in me and I will keep watering it with my earnest desire to learn more and more.

One free tip for future Great Lakers: Never ask Rocky Sir to postpone the deadline of an assignment. Chances are that it may get preponed but never extended. So be contended with whatever you have in hand.

Cheers,
Ayush Aswal.