The saga of wierdos continue and as usual, they rule. Well, unveiling the TIAians finally!!!


I am sure most of you would have learnt math in a classical way of practising problems esp when it came to proofs and other stuff!! However we, the TIAians were highly privileged to have a professor by name RRM whose superior quality of teaching put every other math teacher to shame. His teachings have left us with the rare talent of pin pointing the celestial objects and their positioning in the night sky with such a stunning accuracy you wouldn't believe. Well, it isn't rocket science after all but ya hard in the beginning.

His teachings and preachings and our learnings:

He taught us analytical geometry. The only guy alive on the planet who never used a chalk in his lifetime for teaching MATH!! As soon as he came, he used to lift his left hand high up in the air. (First time i thought he was a drill master and wondered if TIA offered this course free of cost!!) Then he used to keenly look at his finger tips cuddled together(as though imagining Aishwarya Rai dancing on them) and said that was a 3D point in space which he usually named as "P"(P for pretty Preity). Next in action was his right hand pointing to another corner of the room and he named it as "S"(S for super sushmi). Similarly there were many more actresses floating and dancing in air. Though he saw them individually, what he expected out of us is to watch them dance together. After 45 min of lecture, he used to ask us questions as simple as "who is dancing where"!! And if you answer "where" and you feel happy about getting your answer right, then you are mistaken. He promptly used to say - "Haven't your parents given you names just like how i have named these points"! The "who" was very crucial for the answers and if you by chance misplaced the names, then you are as good as dead. His reaction used to be (esp for guys) - "You like to be called a 'girl', don't you???" If all these were his teachings, there's more about his preachings - "It hurts when you -1>forget your dear dancer's names 2> interchanging the names(ego problems you see) and 3> interchanging the gender.(Well, can't say what problem!!) " And our learnings - "Practise watching stars in the sky at night. Know stars, know points; no stars, no points!!(oh ya, you only see point Os) "

There were rumours that he was a lawyer too who defended the case against him (college planned to terminate him since long but in vain) all by himself.

His criteria for allotting marks to students - "Give him your previous semester marks and he has a formula to calculate your current sem score. The formula involved variable components like, the 'day' when you submit your prev sem marks, how many correct guesses of who is where were made, the best dancer etc etc..." He finally managed to lose on the lawyer front and got suspended from the college. His famous catchline - "Can 1 sit over infinity?? (meaning, if 1/infinity is valid)" The first time we heard that dialogue, many people had comprehended it in several different ways. He then answered his own Q - "Noooooottttttttttttttttttttt!!!!". And we were like "why not???" and looked at each other so seriously as if we wanted to say "lets make it happen!!"

This is another guy called SR. He had a very scary appearance and he handled computer organisation. His tantra totem- "Screw someone as soon as you enter the class, send out one or two students which builds a strict environment and begin your lecture that goes off smooth without students troubling you with doubts".

His lecture on the first day - "What is a computer? Computer is a device used for computing is what i am going to be called it as "computer". Who is the father of the computer? Does anybody tell who your father was?? (We wondered why he wanted our father's name) He is none other than whom i am going to be name it as 'Charles Babbage' (Felt as though he was naming him for the first time with so much ease as one would name a cabbage!!!)"

Gradually people stopped listening and i too turned into an occassional listener. On one such "occassion" he was explaining data repository. Everyone were busy preparing for CAT, GATE etc and i was the lone listener. What he said was breathtaking - "What is Data repository? It is simple. It is a place for storing data. " I understood. He found my neighbour couldn't get what was being told and rephrased the sentence like this - "Data repository is a place for data where i am going to be stored!!!!" I was the only receptor of that and couldn't control my laughter. Had to give excuse of a puking sensation and had walked out of the class for ROTFLing.

More to come....

I was talking about the "rare bunch of weirdos" a week ago here :) In a week's gap, i recalled (thanks to my friends who helped me doing that ;) ) so many more in that category that i now wonder if i've erred calling them "the rare bunch". :P Anyways, let me continue from wher i had left.

Now turning to the MATH lecturers!!! I can't help at this but almost all the math lecturers both in PU n BE fall in this category. :)

No 1: This guy's sooo popular that i don't even want to mention his initials here... Well, the so-called MATH lecturer used to talk about robots, ultra sonics , spacecrafts etc for 45 min in his 50 min' lecture time. :( His lectures on them were highly inspirational for those who aspired becoming rocket scientists!! (He spoke like one and the students would have followed suite and developed split personalities of the rocket scientists within them by now, had the PU course been extended even a day longer to 2 years!!! :( ) Now the motive behind his 45 min initial lecture on them was to convey the importance of trigonometry though all that he did was to ask us byheart the formulae at the end of the day!!! :( And his closing note used to be - "Trigonometry is not rocket science!!". And it turned out that the closing note motivated the non aspirers and demotivated the aspirers!!!

No 2: This guy called HM handled geometry. A hyper cool headed guy and had enough patience for being patient. During the early days of 1st P.U, he targetted all those CBSE and ICSE students and asked them 2 Qs - "Have you learnt trigno in your school? Are you familiar with Analytical geometry??" These Qs were shot at 110+ students in every section individually for the 1st 2 months. I initially took a bet swearing he must either be deaf or someone with super natural powers to patiently ask Qs and listen to their answers or he must have had a short term memory loss that he had to revive about who knew what every day!!! (fortunately or unfortunalety Ghajini hadn't released yet then). The the weirdest thing was that after the Q/A round, he hummed songs of old hindi movies!!! I don know the inspiration behind it, but to be honest, he sang really good!!! :)

No 3: This lady was a true mathematician!!! (wish she still is..) Knew in and out of the subject too very well. Super simple in appearance that nobody even recognised her as a lecturer. The weird thing resides in her name!! Poor lady, she used to lose her temper even before she entered the class to avoid the redicule from the students reciting "ohm" as if in a temple!!! (Will tell her initials offline, if someone's interested to knw ;))Being in the savage mood always, her KTs most times failed and students never could get anything out of her. :(

No 4: Here was this sweet lecturer in UA( that was where i did my crash course for 2nd PU). His initials were B.A. The only lecturer i've known who worked for 4 different engg colleges and 2 PU colleges apart from workin in UA. An excellent lecturer he was !!! It was a very unfortunate day that i once asked him "a simple Q" (i was v popular in asking doubts ;)) on integration (simple for me as it literally looked simple, but which apparently didn't have a definite answer) that the Q was tagged to me until i came out of UA. And that simple Q was 'How do you integrate square root of tan x within the limits a and b?( though now i don remember what a and b were..)" which appeared in one of the earlier CET papers. He said it was not in the scope of syllabus and still gave managed to give an engg solution. And from then on he nick named me as "root of tan x" and used to giggle (he did giggle for everthing thats a different story but...) As it is i have a long list of nick names enough for a life time and he was the only one left to give me a nick name!! Aint it weird??? (Those of you who wanna pull my legs, make sure you say yes and better agree to it!!! And i know am committing a big mistake revealing my nick name.) :-( Now this is not the reason why i called him "sweet" but he really was very good at lecturing and never ever got angry at anything and truly the "cool yet weird" types!!! ;)

To be continued.................

We would have come across quite a lot of teachers/lecturers who were very good and kind, some torturers ("LEC-tor-TURERS" as some of my friends called them) , some very strict and some "damn cool". Apart from these categories, i've a special one called "the rare bunch of weirdos". ;)

In PU, there was this chem lecturer called S.Y (for simplicity purposes i shall only use their initials ;) ) who spoke the typical "urdu" accented English. And yeah, she was a part of all those jokes like "princy just 'passed away'... both of the two of you get out of the class... open the windows, let the atmosphere come in(when in chem lab)..." etc... Now coming to the weird thing about her... She was so much inclined to the college that i always felt, "the college" was her first home... The staff room was her sleeping room, the chem lab was her kitchen. Believe it or not, every afternoon she used to make egg omlets and tea using the "bunsen burner" in the lab!!!! I guess she even carried them back home to feed her husband and children... :P I still wonder if my princy, ever found out about this.

The next was our comp sci lecturer. It was the 1st time tht PCMCs was introduced in my college. We had atleast 4-5 lecturers for our 1st year who handled computer science. The 1st and the last were the weirdos in this case. The 1st guy was a "hi-tech" guy who always talked about internet, video conferencing, virtual classrooms etc etc. He made sure he always prefixed an "e" to almost every word he spoke. Like e-class, e-lab, e-exams etc.. So there was this "e-guy" who apparently thought we were all "born e-kids". The fact was that there were students who hardly had worked in a computer and let alone used or even heard about internet. (Well this e-thing has a connection with another chem lecturer about whom i will talk about shortly). He always insisted on e-classrooms every saturdays and we make the e-notes for which purpose he made us create e-mail ids and distributed floppies. Once all this setup was done, the lecturer absconded.. :-S

Now about the 4th lecturer. The guy was a youngster, supposedly smart and handsome to look at and lasted the longest of all other comp sci lecturers (arnd 5-6 months). Gals from other sections went gaga about this Dino Morea look-alike and used to literally gather outside our classrom just to have a glimpse of him. The corridors echoed his name. Ask any gal about the whereabouts of this guy, they were all eagerly ready to tell you. I wonder how they did that as the coll was very rigid in terms of attendance. Without bunking classes, gathering info about him was astonishing. I suspect if they were into some kind of espionage deal with someone... :P There was also a rumour those days that a gal in the neighbouring class ditch her BF for this guy. You might be wondering whats so weird about this. Well, its the fact that this guy always wore the same "grass green T-shirt" daily for 6 long months!!! (Like a self imposed rule of being in an uniform) And the gals................................................. ONLY GREW FONDER OF HIM!!! :(

This is a lady/woman lecturer in chem dept called MG, a north indian basically and the only lecturer who had a Dr. prefix to her name. The first time i saw her, i thought she was someone who did "black magic" as she had a tall bulky appearance with heavily made eyebrows and eyelashes and a maroon colored round bindi with diameter as long as 5cm and highly curled hair which she often let loose and a bright red glaring lipstick. Unlike all other lecturers she followed a technique for teaching. As soon as she entered the class, she made it a point to deliver an introductory note - "We are all friends. I am here to help you. Feel free to approach me anytime". Since she had a Ph.D to her name, she was the next contender for the "princy's post". She firmly believed that "north indian english is different from e-south indian english". Now, here comes the e-connection. ;) As i told you she followed a technique in her lectures. She first dictated notes, made one of us stand up and read it aloud and ask if the rest understood. If we said yes, that was the end of the story and if you said no, then she made the person who said "no" to re-read it till he/she said yes. Now coming to the dictation part of it and the e-connection. Her dictation would sound something like this - "The e-stationary e-states are the different e-states to which the atoms transit to when excited. The highest e-state is level 4 and the lowest e-state is level 0". The fundu here was the she always pronounced those words starting with an "s" with the sound of "e". And since we never bought text books in 1st PU and relied entirely on the lectures delivered, what we wrote down was something like this - "the estationary estates.... " some even wrote - "is-stationary is-states.." and what not... It took about a month to realize what it actually was when we had to prepare for our 1st class test. Then on, students started mimicking her, teasing her so badly that she changed her introductory note to - "I know each one of you. Looking at your faces i can tell about your fathers and mothers (notice the plural there), your pasts and presents and i will decide your futures. Don't act too e-smart with me." :) :)

To be continued......