University Memories | Central Library

Parija Library, Utkal University (1994)

1996

“Bhai, treat! ”, Jagan quipped in excitement as the news of Kittu’s nomination being confirmed spread through the campus like fire in the woods. If you took out of the picture - elections, rallies, et al; stuff that formalize University politics, Kittu was the next President of the student council. It was a landslide, clearly.

An average class had 12 students. A department had 10 classes with 3 batches. The schools had 5 departments each, give and take. The University had 10 schools of excellence. And not to forget the Undergraduate junta. And all of these people would vote for Kittu. Why would they do that?

Because Kittu wasn't the guy who ran away when the police was busy beating up university students. Because he didn't succumb to the Vice-Chancellor’s vile threats, academic and non-academic. Because he never forgave enemies, and never forgot where he came from.

Because no one else in the university had the ping-pongs to stand up against a man who could make and break academic careers at the snap of his finger. But Kittu did stand up, selflessly when he and his friends sized up the chutiya librarian because he wasn't allowing freshers to borrow books. 

"Bastard, is this your father's library?", the VC thundered when he heard about it! 

And all of this did cost him his dissertation, a teaching assistant’s job at an American university apart from so many other things that are not important at the moment.

Despite all that, such was his popularity that even the Chaiwallah Mausa at the Central Canteen wanted to enroll his teenage son in the University, so that he could pay back a favor and vote for him.

“I’ll be the Chief Minister, one day. Oh, I will... ”, he would look into the mirror every time he was drunk and proclaim to himself.

The sycophants in the academic council hated him. The juniors respected him. His peers had his back and so did the alumni, who wrote him generous checks to fund his campaigns.

But there was this one woman who loved him. Truly, madly, deeply.

And he loved her back. Unconditionally. Such was Madhu.

But Madhu was the VC’s younger daughter.

Yet, they made it happen. They just had to.

2014

Back in the days, Kittu and friends use to chase cars and kites. Now his friends were chasing their dreams, their KPIs, their EMIs. 

But Kittu stopped chasing his dreams when he became Keshav Mishra.

Because, Keshav Mishra was the youngest home minister, Odisha has ever seen. The most dynamic as well.

And now he was back in the same place where it all began, to inaugurate the public library of the University. With him were two beautiful ladies; his better half Madhu and their daughter.

While Kittu in his speech was joking about active he was on social media compared to the other ministers, Madhu smiled, and  giggled. She smiled because it was Kittu. She giggled because the library was named after her father.

The Nerdy Odia

You know you have a nerdy Odia on your friend list if he posts pictures from his visit to the Indian Science Congress in an album named 'Winter Vacation Fun'.
Frankly speaking, I've had real bad experiences with nerds. My first tryst with a nerd dates back to the fifth grade when by the slip of the tongue, I uttered a swear word in Odia and she, the class topper had to complain about it to the class teacher.
Ironically enough, I was made to write in my School diary a 100 times, "I will not say Gandu ever again". Not that I enjoyed writing it, but since then, I developed a soft hate for that girl.
Well, it is another story altogether that I ended up having a crazy crush on her when she hit puberty in the 8th grade.

Cut to Plus two, I almost got bashed by a group of IIT/AIEEE aspirants at college for poking fun at their teacher Mr. XYZ Pulley ( Pillai saar! We goodfornothings back benchers still love you.) from some CP (ChutiyaPa) Coaching. Try saying the F-word and Rajinikant in the same breath to an Auto Anna at Madras City Station. You'll know the heat I faced.
To me, CP came across as more of a brothel and less of a premier training institute for IIT-JEE/ AIEEE/ EAMCET/ NTSE/ OJEE/ BITSAT/ TITSAT that they claimed to be. The front benchers of CP were the ones who licked the teacher's ass with outrageous doubts class in, class out. We back-benchers were the ones who were pimped in and tricked in to attending CP for the next two years of our life right after our tenth boards ended. In our free time, either we used to try smoke a meghna beedi or we were aunty-watching at the opposite CCD. That too, from across the road given that our pockets weren't very deep back then. The ones with better money on them used to go to an internet parlour and check their crush-lists on Orkut. I had a friend who wasted two years of his plus two trying to teach a Brazilian girl Odia in the hope that he would one day bring her home to his mom and say, Bou lo, Ye toh Bohu. Two times straight, he flunked.
Computer and internet access being a strict no-no for the back-benchers, they would skim through pages of a borrowed/stolen Madhur Kathayen and be all ooh-and-aah over it in their allegedly free time. No wonder, where those pimples came from.

Now, when I heard about a college senior of mine being kicked out of his high flying job because of the marijuana addiction he had picked up during his IIT days, something reminds me of something that someone said~

 "Its better to be a good poet than a bad engineer."

*No offence intended to any Engineer, any coaching class or any of the aunties, btw.

All In a Day!

Edit, Check. Sound sync, check. Color correction, check. Mastering, check. I'm happy, check.
Whoa, what a day today was! All that took to make me make a short film within 12 hours time was a mere deadline. From stratch, I shot today morning on Bhanu's Nikon (sans a tripod) as I was awake. Trust me guys, its real fun when your home happens to your shooting set/ location. You have a lot of props, extras, added lighting which means that you can even shoot sunrise scenes from inside a room in the dead of the night. (Hell yea, that is absolutely possible. Try standing with a couple of CFL lights on the other side of the window pane and point it towards the room where you want sunlight. :] )
You know what the best part is? All of this you get for free.
So where was I? Yes. After the morning, I had a nice small lunch and straight rushed off to the edit with the footage I had shot. The edit began with the usual conversions, aligments, cuts, et al. Finally, a music piece that me and Samit had mutually selected was introduced to the timeline and the real pain began here. Syncing music with picture can be a prick in the ass I tell you. It is all upon your intuition to determine the right beat for the right picture/scene. That apart, the syncing was managed and the color correction was also done in a nick of time.
Why I'm writing all this? because I still use a Pentium Four processor. Because, my CPU does not have an extra cooling fan. Because, both of these factors sum up to the fact that the final cut is rendering real slow and I'm waiting for it to finish so that I can see it. But hey, do I sound like I'm complaining?
Come on, it is not everyday that you get to make a movie in 12 hours flat.

Bedardi Raja

I still remember that day my Nanu (Grandfather) talked about biscuits and the king. The great Bengal famine was at large during the time. The whites used to drive around the choupal near the pond on their Jeep along with the little fat prince for company who would throw bits of Cambridge biscuits on the road and thus the chaos. Skinny yokels from nowhere would come up and have the fight of their lives, just for that bit of the cookie. But soon enough (like it happens in a Manoj Kumar film), things got better and people got to eat. The British left and Nanu was jobless (he was a Jamedar for the King of the land). His Highness, himself had to sell his most loved collection of Mercedes and Bentleys at some non-descript flea market in erstwhile Calcutta in order to get the queen and the fat prince two square meals a day and a roof to live. He was not a king anymore. He stayed in a Undertaker's house on the border of Pir baba's graveyard. The stench of burnt flesh and sound of cracking skulls now became a part of his existence. So much was the despair that he had to sell his Cigar circumciser to pay the fees of the lawyer who was fighting his case against the Hypocrisy. Country liqour and Beedis had replaced his daily fix of Exotic spirits.
Ok, Hyprocrisy is not in the literal sense here. For the record, it is not what it means in the Merriam Webster's. It could be a person, a bunch of them, or a letter with the tiger's emblem, anything, everything. It is a bloody element and it is omnipresent. For a lack of a better example, it is the bunch of people who took away his ancestral palace and his Kingdom when he was busy holidaying at a picturesque county in the land of the queen. They, the Hyprocrisy used to hang out at a big circular Building in the heart of Delhi at the tax-payer's expense. Last I heard, they still do that. Only the stuff they gossip on has become lamer, vague and baseless with each passing day.
Now back to the life of the King, his life was on a one-way to hell. Well technically speaking, hell was pretty close in a way.
One fine day, the little fat prince was bitten by a mad chimpanzee in the left nipple. The lung was punctured and the cute little kid breathed his last at a place where people from the city wearing white coats were royally raping the Hippocrates' oath and were least bothered to attend the ailing kid when he needed them the most. After this mishap happened, the Queen had started talking to herself. Womenfolk of the village claimed that they had allegedly seen her eating human faeces at the fields where they shat at the break of the dawn. The white coats, who were supposedly on the payroll of the Hypocrisy claimed that she had an exotic disease in her brain and called it Schizophrenia
(Wasn't Typhoid already tough enough for the village folks to pronounce?) .

Conversations

the_g@l_i_just_met:
hmmm pensive..
it wnt do justice if i search for it
u shld search for it
wld be better
wld feel personal then


balls_of_steel:
I din't ask you to search for it.
Just in case, you come across such a picture.
By any chance.


the_g@l_i_just_met:
hau hela re baba (alright mate)


balls_of_steel:
I'm sorry. I think i'm being kinda difficult.


the_g@l_i_just_met:
nopes
i m good wid difficult ppl


balls_of_steel:
Diplomatic answer.


the_g@l_i_just_met:
no
i really am good wid difficult ppl
especially guys
was wid one for sever yrs u see


balls_of_steel:
Shut up. Not something you'd just joke about.
To a stranger like me.
You see.
He was ur guy re.


the_g@l_i_just_met:
m nt joking
he was a difficult guy
i mean very difficult to understand
n i loved that
i like difficult guys


balls_of_steel:
I think its better we not talk about this.
Like i said, you can nver really trust me.


the_g@l_i_just_met:
wat wld u do?
i mean wid this topic/


balls_of_steel:
I don't know.
Maybe i'm simply freaking out.
But i'm really sorry, if you find me odd at the moment.


the_g@l_i_just_met:
freak out?
why?
i mean
i dnt get it
why wld u freak out?


balls_of_steel:
Something just happened.


the_g@l_i_just_met:
wat happened?


balls_of_steel:
Will talk sometime about it. When i am saner.


the_g@l_i_just_met:
saner?
i thought u wr sane a few mins ago


balls_of_steel:
Few minutes seems to be a hell lot of a time, when you conversing on the phone with a gurl you used to date and talking simultaneously to another good frend on Facebook.
*used to date once


the_g@l_i_just_met:
oh
u wr on the phone?
wid ur ex?


balls_of_steel:
Ex, note xactly.
But ex's are bitches. Bigtime.
A confession.


the_g@l_i_just_met:
nt true
nt always
cmon


balls_of_steel:
I can't think much now.
My mind is jammed.
Its a long bad story re.


the_g@l_i_just_met:
kya hua re?
what she talk about?


balls_of_steel:
nothing. All bullcrap.
maybe, some guy dumped her of late.
And what am i.?
Spare wheel.?


the_g@l_i_just_met:
cmon
maybe she was just depressed
wanted smone she can trust to talk to
so she called you


balls_of_steel:
Tell you what.? For the record, She is not a nice lady.


the_g@l_i_just_met:
ok maybe i shldt comment whn i dnt knw her


balls_of_steel:
Or maybe i just hate her, unconditionally.
But to be honest
~ before she happened to me, Ex-Gfs used to be so much fun.
But not anymore.


the_g@l_i_just_met:
lolz
wats that supposed to mean


balls_of_steel:
I said na, bahut lamba story.
I'll tell you over coffee kal, maybe.


the_g@l_i_just_met:
hau (alright)
muh sunibi (I'm all ears)
How's your mood now?


balls_of_steel:
Yes. Metallicca helps.


the_g@l_i_just_met:
hmmm
sun i gtg offline
muh moh frnd lappy ru online thli (Been online from a friend's notebook)
i ll try to cm online
so unless i cm online again,
nite nite
sd
n peace to you.


balls_of_steel:
yes. I like peace.
good nite


--the_g@l_i_just_met has logged out. When the fuck will you? And oh, you can send an off-liner given that you are such a prick and such a dummy like the_g@l_i_used_to_date had told you, in the face. Yes, that bitch. Or so you assume. Now just try suppressing the involuntary frustration you have in you and stop stalking good girls under my nose. Please get a life you ass, for your own good. Your's truly, Chat Engine--

Ab, Bus - Public Transport Gets a Whole New Face For Bhubaneswar

Gone are the days when one used to wait for like decades for an auto or have a tough time bargaining with the auto-wallah (read: cabbie) over the fare. If you are still not getting of what i'm talking about, then for your information organized public transport had its inception at the city of Bhubaneswar, India in form of a City-wide Bus service.
This is a small yet a audacious step for Bhubaneswar and means quite a lot for its denizens. :)
This is surely something we denizens could take pride of in a while. Agree?
So, here's a small but packed info on all about the Bus Service that was rolled out today on a Public-Private Partnership basis.
It is a organized city-wide transport service comprising of twenty buses that would ply on Two distinct routes. The first route would be from NandanKanan Zoological Park to Biju Patnaik Airport with the buses numbered 207 and the second route is supposed to stretch from VSS Nagar to Dumduma with the buses numbered 40.
The tariff for the tickets is as low as Rs.2 and depends and is proportionate upon the distance one travels.
Holy Smokes!, thats surely economical, eh?
Here is the route plan for both the routes.

Bus no.207:
Nandankanan-Raghunathpur-Nandan Vihar-KiiT Square-Patia-Damana Square-Chandrasekharpur-Kalinga Hospital-Fortune Towers-Jayadav Vihar Square-AG Colony-Kalinga Stadium-Shastri Nagar-Kalinga Enclave-Rabindra Mandap-Master Canteen-Rajmahal Square-Forest Park-Airport.

Bus no.405:
VSS Nagar-FCI Godown-Satsang Vihar-Vani Vihar-Ram Mandir-Master Canteen-Rajmahal Square-Forest Park-Palashpalli-Bhimtangi-Lingaraj Road PH-Pokhariput-Jagmohan Nagar-Jagamara-Khandagiri Square-Kolathia-Dumduma Colony 


Have a Nice ride! :)

PS- The author of this blog that is me is having a very bad writer's block. Feeling guilty about the fact that my blog has been dead for a while, this is all i could come up with.
To all my readers, i know you would want my ass kicked for not posting pieces and poems anymore, but please bear with me for a while's time and take a vacation. Cheers :)
I should be up with something very soon.



Disclaimer- The information issued in this post is solely for informational and educational purposes and is solely for the benefit of the general public of Bhubaneswar.
This is not an Official Statement or a Notification and this post is by no means published or sponsored by the concerned authorities. Hence, Agent Literateur shall be held responsible for any kind of loss connected to this post.


©Text and Photos- Agent Literateur, 2008-2010