I have modified the account at Blogger and we can shift over there now. I'll just need email-IDs of all you guys who wish to be part of the team-blog facility there. I'll invite you, and after that you can start posting your own stuff once you accept. Ideally, it'd be great if all of you could give me your email-IDs, unless any one of you is one of those paranoid types who shudder at the thought of giving away their email-IDs in fear of spam/virus-infected mails. Don't worry, I am a decent chap....and (normally) don't misuse email-IDs.

Kindly mail your IDs to theiitians@rediffmail.com

And yeah, the new address is http://afewgoodmen.blogspot.com

I haven't been visiting all the blogs listed here regularly because of my exams (yeah, right!!), but I just discovered that three of our mates here were successful in their exams. Jaya got through to IIML, Vishal Grover got final calls from A, B, C and L (talk about Chhappar Phadh Ke)...he's going to IIMA, and Vivek got through the Civil Services, IFS (Rank 71) no less! Congrats guys! People, I am really sorry if I am missing out other names here, but aren't we happy for these guys!

I guess we'll be seeing a lot of mails like these as final year students make a move towards the next stage of their lives. After spending four/five (or more?) years in IIT it sure is a huge change....hopefully for the better. This one's from English August....hope life treats him better than his namesake from the book!

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Sunday, May 02, 2004
End of Days...?

Four years ago, by a curious twist of fate, I was thrown out of a large luxurious room at home and sent into a small room in a hostel. My first impression of my roommate was that "there possibly cannot be a bigger moron than him!". There were about 80 other 17-18 year olds who had joined the same hostel at that time. These were people from all over the country (and a few from abroad as well), with widely varying financial, social, cultural, and ethical backgrounds. The only common feature was that these guys had gotten into an IIT.

I now have about two more weeks to go in this place, and I have come to realize that

:- that 'biggest moron' roommate from first year is now one of my closest friends

:- after sharing toilets, rooms, bedsheets, mattresses, shoes, shaving creams, toothpastes, bathing soaps, sh*tsoaps, books, notes, porn mags/CDs etc etc etc (... the list goes on) with quite a few of these people for four years, I have come close to them in a way I could never have imagined four years ago.

:- most of us will follow different directions in life, but in the end we'll all be striving towards the common goal of becoming better human beings in our own eyes.

:- the definition of a 'better human being' will differ from person to person.

:- most of us will not remain as lazy, non-sensical and fraudy as we are now.

:- six months from now, most of us will have much better sleeping, bathing and sh*tting patterns than what we presently have.

:- fifteen years later, if any two of us bump into each other in an airport lounge, we'll probably greet each other with the same obscene joke as we use now for that purpose.

:- if i list out all my 'realizations' here, I'll end up in the Guiness Book of World Records for putting up the longest post in blog-history.

Clearly, a major chapter of my life is drawing to a close. Understandably, the feeling I have right now is a combination of sadness and euphoria (with euphoria > sadness). I enjoy changes in life, and am looking forward to the next phase. I wish all the best to all my friends. I want them to know that even though we may never meet again, they will always be special.

I didn't mean all the posts to be related to IIT-life only - this is just a coincidence. These are two posts that I chanced upon while browsing through Sai's archives. These are two of his initial posts on his blog.

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Tuesday, July 29, 2003
About Placements in IIT......
Hello reader. I am back again today to talk about something that happened yesterday. A friend of mine appeared for this test conducted by Oracle India, and he performed well through the two stages of the interview. The company was looking for people with a CGPA of 7.0 and above; my friend had 6.99. He could not get through. He feels that his CGPA is the only reason for this. Seeing the general rush among companies to hire people of high CGPAs, I also feel it to be true.

I don't understand why the companies come to IITs and look for high CGs and branch toppers. I have nothing against the toppers..in fact, all of them are really good.....but, what I don't understand is that the companies take these toppers, who go on to do MS and/or PhD at the best damn schools in the US ditching the jobs. The companies then crib saying that the number of people joining jobs from IITs are low and everyone is up in arms against the brain drain. Look at the situation of average to below average performers in IIT. They are definitely sure of not getting into the top universities, with aid, unless they have some papers published. So, effectively, the best options for such people are the jobs they get. They are definitely more likely to join a company after the BTech than the toppers are.

If you say that the companies are right in hiring the best among the students in any institute, not just IITs, I think that you are unfairly generalizing and that one cannot simply club IITians and ordinary engineering college students together. I am not saying that we IITians are damn better than anyone and everyone else. I am all for taking the toppers of ordinary engineering colleges and treating them on par with IITians. But you simply can't compare a 6.0 CGPA guy from IIT with a 60% student from other colleges. The IITians have definitely proved their abilities in JEE, which I feel is the toughest entrance test at the under-graduate level in India.

Let me quote the statistics from the year in which I wrote my JEE: 2000. Over 1,25,000 students all over India took the exam, and just around 2,700 got into IITs. That is like the top 2.5% of the test takers. The number of students appearing for JEE has increased very much since then, but the seats are now around 3,000, whcih is still around the 2.5 to 3% range. Now, isn't that enough display of we being better? I accede that there are deserving candidates who did not get through JEE: I have friends from school like that. But, they are usually in the top bracket of their own colleges now. That is why I said that it is not too wrong to treat these guys like IITians. But, comparing lower-scoring IITians to similar scoring non-IITians is simply too big an injustice on the IITians who have already shown that they are better.

Why should a software firm want the CGPA of a person in, say, civil engineering or metallurgical engineering to be above certein range when he/she did well in their own tests and interviews? Is it that they feel that the rating system in IITs suits the needs of their company better than the hiring systems that they themselves evolved? And how does my performance in any other branch show upon my skills as a programmer? I personally feel that the companies take a better look at their hiring procedures before going through all the expenses of holding campus interviews, etc. If the person does suit my needs, why should his CGPA matter? I know it might sound cliched, but, Bill Gates still has no college degree; isn't he good at what he is doing now? And it holds not just for the IITs.

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Thursday, August 28, 2003
An anecdote...
Heard this during a talk a Prof. was giving:

There's this teacher who gives her 4th-5th standard students an assignment to write a short story. This is in Englad and, understandably, the teacher says, 'A good short story MUST have royalty, romance, divinity and suspense.' As usual, most students turn in the stories that their parents wrote. A small girl comes up with a two line original work. The teacher is stunned and she asks the girl to read out her story. The girl goes: "The princess is pregnant. God only knows who did it!!"

Now, that is a great example of concise writing covering all the required details. Hope I can someday get to be as good!!

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I have created an account on Blogger. Shall do the rest later.

Now, that we are up ane running and all that, here's some interesting (and fitting) stuff that I found while browsing through several new links on the side here. Found this one at Vivek's site. Hope he doesn't mind this plagiarization....

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Aniket Sule posted some comments which he got from some people (in Germany) regarding IITians (only those who come through JEE).

1: They are academically brilliant but exibit worst kind of social behaviour.
2: They look at females just as objects to satisfy lust and not as a human.
3: We feel ashamed to take them to some party/trip along with us because due to their behaviour towards girls they become a liability.
4: Whenever they come to Europe for their BTP/DDP, they get uncontrolable in case of all the addictions be it booze or smoke or even worse visiting prostitutes.
5: They have unnessesary supiriority complex, hence behave very arrogantly with other Indian (male) students. They like to flock only with other IITians.
6: They are accoustomed to use atleast one swearing per sentence.

Amazing how people draw generalised conclusions based on sample sizes as small as 10-15.

Amazing how a handful of people can typecast an entire institute.

Still pondering...
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Sochta hun sirf BTP ke bare me,
BTP ke bare me Sirf sochta hun.

Kyon sochta bhi hai BTP ke baarein mein,
Dard bhar jaayega teri zindagi mein.

Kya karoon is BTP mein, samajh aata nahin,
Kyon karoon yeh BTP main, samajh aata nahin.

BTP mein samjhne ko rakha kya hai,
Daya hai... daya hai... daya hai.

Samaj mein aayega, to bhi tu kya paega,
Wahi 4 panno ki kitaab guide ko pakda aaega.

Sochta hoon sab kuch chhod ke bhaag jaaon,
Par uske pehle maddu jaa ke khaooon.

Maddu to jaana hi hai, lekin ek dua hai meri rab se,
Usey aashikon mein sabse, meri aashiqi pasand aaye.

Yeh dua hai dost, teri tamanna poori ho,
Hum submein bus, maddu mein mera pehla number ho.

Pehla number tumhara ho, hum-raza hain hum,
Lekin main maddu se hi likh raha hoon.

Main tum se bahut kuch seekh raha hoon,
Filhaal to apni zindagi pe cheekh raha hoon.

Zindagi choti see hai, jaan gayein hain hum,
Aage nikal gayein tum, peeche rah gayein hum.

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I was thinking of handing over the username and password for this blog to some people who are interested...any suggestions?

Hi, people! This blog is meant to keep track of all the IITians (present or ex-) dwelling in the blogworld. Hope everyone thinks it's a good idea. This is how it works...for the time-being at least, unless someone comes up with a better idea. You mail your posts to theiitians@rediffmail.com and I publish them here...or if during my roaming around I come across an interesting post at any of the blogs registered here I'll post them here. What say people. (or if not posts, just links to the respective blogs that I'll be updating regularly).
I would also request the non-IITian surfers who drop by to refer us to the IIT bloggers you know and who might be missing from this list

As for the title...I would have wanted to add women too....but for the abject lack of that particular species in our campuses!