Control Law for humans:

The following events happened between 11 30 am and 12 afternoon

Wednesday 9^th Jan 2008

Yesterday night was a lovely one as I had just finished season 2 of 24 and was happy watching it till late night as the coming day (Wednesday , in case you got confused!!) had no lectures. I slept at 3 in the morning hoping to wake by 9 to have the leftovers in breakfast.

Woke up only at 10 when the noise of mu cpu fan became real loud to see what was going on ( turned out that ubuntu was downloading and installing updates). Wearily I took the newspaper in one hand and the mouse in the other hand to check my mails. The shock was waiting in the department mail as my seminar guide had simply ordered for a meeting at 11 am . I became scared but the real bomb exploded later when he said that all subsequent Wednesdays we will have a meeting at the same given slot.

For those ignorant of the fact what the meeting with the guide means:
We basically have to get screwed by the profs for our laziness.

Quickly I dropped the newspaper and opened the seminar folder only to find that I had 50 research papers from which I had to ask some doubts. I browsed through the names of the papers and made up a sinister plan to get away with some fake excuses. The I dressed up as formally I could and went to meet him. After a 15 minutes of tensed waiting I was granted an audience when he directly said “So Achyoot we meet after a long time” I was biting my lip to avoid any further exclamations by him. He asked me my doubts which I promptly showed him and luckily got away with it.

I was about to leave when the COMPLEX deal started (Complex has its own story which I will tell later).Like a triumphed soldier I was up and about to leave after saluting him when he started his general life fundaes. Here is the major portion which I can recall:

Guide : So what do you do in your hostels. ( My guide has done his Btech from IIT Bombay and was a topper and blah blah)

There was an uncomfortable silence with him staring at me with those growling eyes of a silvertooth waiting for a prompt reply.

Me : (Speaking in barely audible tone) Sir it goes just like in any other hostel.

(Without waiting further)

Guide: Haan I understand you have many things to do. How do you guys manage to do some kind of studies? (Now I knew that he was on a recon mission to know how the scenes in hostel have changed over the years)

ME: Sir we have hundreds of distractions so it is really hard. (Only God knows that I wanted to say millions but He told me to sound calm)

Guide: Ya I know that there are always people who say “Arey yaar abhi kya padh raha hai chal CCD se coffee pe kar aate hain and 2 hours are wasted and you cant study”

(I was dying to tell him that it was always opposite . We usually are out with some deadline of submission forcing us to come to hostels to complete it but again God whispered and this is what HE told me)

Me: Sir that is one of the distractions.

Guide: Ya I know it would be very difficult to say no to someone as it would sound very rude and if you say yes always then you are screwed.

(one of my history lessons reminded me of a term called middle path)

Me: That’s why we have to adopt a middle path.

He shot back “ See now you are getting to know controls. Humans are in unstable equilibrium “ (and other control theory jargon applied to humans ). I was seeing a window of exit here as I kept my mouth shut . But like a dirty bomb the main damage started coming now. He told me to submit a report of my work the next day which I promptly denied on the pretext of a 8 to 8 schedule. So he again spoke lucidly telling to submit it by Friday and meet on the coming wedneday with new developments and to carry this Wednesday and Friday report thing always. My jaws dropped and would have fallen on the ground but for the presence of some ligaments and tendons.And then he told me to meet him later ( Basically it means to tell that he has won the battle of screwing me and come next time to get screwed bad again)

I ran out wishing that the day was over but fate seemed to have other plans for me ( good ones I hoped)