THE WONDER THAT IS RTV

5 rupees is all that it takes to entitle you with a sore back. The ‘bliss’ of an air-conditioned Metro ride fades into oblivion as you confront the ‘blizzard’ called RTV. I irreverently hail it as the ‘Rickety no-Terrain Vehicle’. The conductor ‘bhaiya’ incessantly warbles the refrain – “dicee, gyarah, solah, satrah, bawwana, shahbad dairy waale” and untiringly solicits us to climb atop the most ‘robust’ means of transport ever to be invented! The already jam-packed enclosure is over-burdened with our volumes and the conductor dispassionately keeps shepherding us in, despising us as helpless ‘sponges’! They won’t urge the throttle to get the wheels moving until and unless they hear the engine groaning under the weight of the passengers! They flagrantly can’t resist the sight of a few distraught individuals hangin – on for dear life at the ‘paaydaan’ of the bus! (i.e. at the entrance door of the RTV!)
You don’t have any other feasible option as the auto-rickshaw ‘wallahs’ are exorbitant, citing defunct meters as a flimsy excuse. But they do charge all the college students uniformly, the existing rates being 30 rupees for ‘gate ke bahar’ and 40 rupees for ‘gate ke andar’. Besides, they are amicable beings and if you are getting late for your semester exam, there is no one else who can comprehend your panic better, for you are bound to be on time! But one exhilarating aspect of riding on the stairs of the RTV is the gusty breeze that blows sand into your charming face and gives a brownish hue to your glistening teeth! The wind wreaks havoc on the parting of your ‘shampooed’ tresses which you diligently carved out, trying to impress your seniors with the – “I am naïve and nincompoop” look! And besides, it sends a nauseating stench up your nostrils, which is a concoction of cow dung, sewage drains and God knows what not! But I guess it is better to withstand all these obnoxious legacies of nature rather than get nudged and shoved around inside the RTV! It’s not only the ‘dehati’ crowd to be tolerated, you have to shield your nose against the rotting – armpits of the people who don’t appear to be bathed for days on end! You have to stand the dreadful odour of their scalps, smeared with voluminous quantities of ‘chameli ka tel’, and try to forestall the catastrophe of getting grease on your wrinkle-free ironed shirt! And occasionally you can find yourself in front of a drunkard who breathes down your face and annuls the influence of your ‘Axe cologne’! And the odyssey had just begun! You still await the deftness with which the driver manoeuvres the RTV, meandering on the road and braking so vehemently, that you keep lunging forward and backward in tandem resulting in an invitation of curses from the ‘friendly’ crowd! But instead, if a beautiful girl breaks your fall, then the apologies more than compensate for the excruciating ride, doesn’t it?!! Bon Voyage! Prateek Gupta, IInd Year, ECE

GONE WITH THE WHISPERING WIND

A peaceful and placid day at the OAT (Open Air Theatre). A place flocked by chirpy students. A place where you can lie down and stare incessantly at the dimensionless – firmament resembling sky. Or on second thoughts, get lost in the elegance of eye-candies! Amidst all the daydreaming………. A thunderous ‘SPLASH’! You look around in bewilderment only to discover that the boisterous sound was a consequence of a brick making contact with the water. Yes, the water demarcating the surroundings of our indispensable computer center, which has ironically accentuated the beauty of the OAT in being an eyesore and producing a stink whose aroma is offensively refreshing! I can still recount that shivering night when we fuchhas were stringently disposed to climb atop the CC in an attempt to hoist the banner of our tech-fest. I solemnly urge all of you to experience the enigma of acquiring a bird’s eye view of our campus at least once. It’s the kind a place where you can party all night long unless you get caught red handed by our Faculty. So, as I was saying, we as 1st years strived to keep our dormancy at bay and began to brim with vigor and unity under the influence of rebukes of some 3rd year lieutenants. Eventually, we accomplished the tedious task of putting up the banner of our phenomenal fest and made a spirited retreat only to find that the next day was going to be no different! The strong strings were undone, the bulky bricks had fallen abruptly but absurdly and the imprints of the fest were drowned in the dirty pool of algae. But we weren’t going to rue the disappointment and we reiterated our resounding feat once more that very night. But once again, nature got the better of us by making the banner oblivious to our sights. So, I would conclude by saying that we, as budding engineers at DCE, who have made it big in various fields of innovation, vow to find an easier way of publicizing our tech fest in the future! Prateek Gupta, 2nd Yr ECE

Destiny versus freewill

Throughout history there have been two types of people, the winners and the whiners. The winners were only concerned with the goal, there was only the destination in sight and no motel or amusement park in middle, there never was any room for distraction. The whiners on the other hand were like tourists, never too sure of where they wanted to go next. But the whiners outnumbered the winners, and in their common grief at not getting what they wanted, they united and searched for a reason why they were the ones to be denied. They came up with one of the most brilliant solutions known to man, denial. It wasn’t their fault that they lost to the winner, it was an abstraction called ‘chance’ that came in the way.
But soon the losers realized that the winners just kept on winning, that no goal was unachievable for them, that for them impossible was nothing. Unable to justify everything to chance, they relegated the responsibility of that word to another, ‘destiny’. And so it has been since, the successful were so because it was their destiny, which was also why the not-so successful were the way they were, because of their destinies. There is something about destiny that draws most of us towards it. It is the mute partner that can never speak up and so we take advantage of it. Whenever we fail the blame is not on us, it is on our destiny. We pay visits to fortune tellers to learn about our present and future. The present is always full of difficulties and it is due to the alignment of Mars and Jupiter with Earth that we lose our jobs. It is never our own fault, how could it be? We didn’t know that the aura of Venus was bad for us else we would have completed the important works before it presented us with its ungodly face. But then the smart thing happened, astrologers came up with “Janam Kundlis”, which would tell our future from the moment we were born just by examining our hands and the time of our birth. And so if a child was born under the influence of Saturn and grew up to be an alcoholic, it wasn’t his fault. Saturn ruined his life. What all these talks about predefined destinies give us is the easy way out. They offer us a twisted map of the road to success, one where a particular stone eases out all the wrinkles. But no number of lucky stones or pendants can help one become what he/she aims to be. Free-will presents us with a world that is without boundaries. A world where a small girl from Karnal was able to reach the stars and become a household name cannot simply be attributed to destiny. And so the question arises, which one are you? The whiner, leashed by the positions of stars and someone’s so-called knowledge of the workings of the universe, or the winner, a free bird flying in the limitless realm of the bright blue sky. Arjun agarwala, IIIrd year IT

DEFINING THE DCE ENGINEER

How in the world do you interpret a DCE under-graduate? A gem of a “ghissu” who is day in and day out engrossed in repulsive books, a die hard junkie who smokes away his anxieties or a grotesque geek who is hell-bent on proving that he is the future of the nation? Here is a snippet describing an engineer….

E – lack of ‘E’ttiquette. ‘E’rratic in behaviour. ‘E’nraged with the administration! hostel ‘E’uphoria is not for the “faint-hearted”!
N –‘N’eglected by DU colleges. career in the middle of ‘N’owhere. where the witty and the ‘N’itwit confront each other. ‘N’SIT is a synonym for “wilderness” and “obsolete infrastructure”!
G –‘G’rappling with supplies. ‘G’audy in his misdeeds. a ‘G’(j)ilted lover! suffering from technical ‘G’litches. ‘G’amblers are galore. ‘G’reenhorn turned pro at ‘sutta’ and booze! ‘G’raduation degree sucks big-time. ‘G’oons love imposing themselves upon you. the ‘G’eeks are coming with their brain - storms to brain-wash you! can’t stop the ‘G’ods from engineering??
I – IIT isn’t worthy of our ‘I’ntelligence. ‘I’n your face brats. “jugaad” is an ‘I’nherent trait! ‘I’ntrospection is a battle long lost. At the helm of ‘I’nnovation. specialize in ‘I’ndecent jargon. possess ‘I’mmense potential. ‘I’nclined towards making money. ‘I’dols for our juniors!
N –‘N’erds don’t deserve parties and night - outs! the ‘N’ext big thing. indiscipline is the ‘N’orm. ‘N’otorious reputation in medical colleges. much ado about ‘N’othing?? ‘N’aïve beings will be duly harassed!
E –‘E’nglish nahi aati! abstinence from ‘E’ducation. ‘E’CE student is the “butt of all jokes”! we ‘E’xaggerate our failures rather than achievements.
E –‘E’loquent in slander. teachers are ‘E’erie looking beasts. where the blunt is always preferred to ‘E’uphemism. are we ‘E’motionless???
R – we ‘R’ever our “Maggie Baba”. bunking ‘R’ejuvenates us! penchant for ‘R’agging. we ‘R’ule the Roost. united in a ‘R’owdy Roster. an engineer is always ‘R’akish in appearance! no ‘R’espite from addiction!! Head banging ‘R’ock fanatics. Don’t worry; your future is in safe hands. It’s just a matter of time when you start accepting life the way it is!!