Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
The Average TamBram - Episode Four - The Woman in Red
Episode 1 is here.
Episode 2 is here.
Episode 3 is here.
We last left the ATB in the sweltering heat of the coast, sweating in his room and staring at a stationary fan suspended from the ceiling coated with the dust and grime of a whole semester (maybe more) cursing the lack of electricity. The reader is bound to say, at this juncture, "Is this not an engineering college? Why haven't the engineers built alternate sources of electricity? Aren't they the ones who will go out into the real world three years hence to work on cutting edge technology?" We shall briefly examine these questions and put to rest doubts in the reader's mind - shortly.
A small detour is in order to explain the title of this chapter - 'The Woman in Red' - two important reasons. Firstly, this is yet another example of the references to popular culture that the ATB will constantly drop in conversations, blogs and other forms of media that he will generate. They are usually disguised as innocent phrases or words undetectable to most but, for the ones who do understand it provides a deep insight into the layers of thought that the ATB posseses. The current phrase, is for the uninitiated, a reference to a particular scene in the movie Matrix where Neo(aka Keanu Reeves) is being trained to spot agents and is momentarily distracted by a gorgeous woman dressed in red who could in fact be part of the Matrix. That in turn, is a reference to the fact that in most movies scenes that the ATB was not allowed to watch at home usually start with a woman dressed in red. Thus, in one simple phrase, the ATB displays the recall of fleeting moments in cinema, while at the same time bringing to surface his anguish and sadness of having missed out on that particular scene that three girls in his class discussed on Monday - he could not contribute to that conversation, depriving him of a chance of interacting with the opposite gender. The second reason is quite trivial - the authors have just purchased for themselves a nice large red suitcase for the purpose of travel and look to the readers for some positive encouragement on their knowledge of color having progressed beyond black (and the occassional blue).
Returning to the questions posed in the opening paragraph, the authors provide the following answers (in order of the questions):
1. Yes, this is an engineering college. Also, Mysore bondas are not always made in Mysore, nor contain a bit of Mysore in them - they are bondas and are, as such, meant to be accorded only so much thought. Just like how hamburgers neither contain ham nor are made in Hamburg - but then the ATB will rarely use such examples, since it involves beef.
2. They should have. But, quite honestly, they couldn't care less. And, their professors care lesser. There are much more important things to be done like watching all of Quentin Tarantino's & Daron Aronofsky's cinematic offerings and downloading the '500 Best Metal/Rock/Jazz Songs of All Time'. Though, all these activities require electricity, any engineer will tell you that one should focus on one's core competency and assume that the other things will be taken care of by other people - that's the way to build a great product. Did Bill Gates ever worry about the grammar of the message on the blue screen of death? No, he focussed on telling...no...fooling people into thinking how great Windows was. (It was later found out that it was an ATB who wrote all the text, which was again peppered with references to the Apocalypse, Metallica and ended with a directive to reboot and visit the nearest temple as instructed by his parents)
3. No. They will attempt to make lots of money, get a green-card, get married, buy a house and a fancy car. Some will successfully do all of them by getting themselves an MBA. The others, we hear, are still attempting - to get an MBA.
The ATB is programmed from childhood, thanks to his conservative upbringing, to treat women with respect and hold them in high regard. Readers might provide a rebuttal to this by citing the large number of chronicled and documented cases of domestic violence. The authors have, rest assured, examined this closely and have come to conclusion which is as follows - even though the woman is considered the weaker gender, one must bear in mind that in a traditional TamBram household the woman is the one who cooks all meals. This leads us to the theory that a slight slip of hand while adding chilli powder to the pickle or 'mistakenly' adding salt to the coffee instead of sugar are methods that are commonly employed to counter any misbehavior by the man. A more direct approach is the use of the rolling pin or the 'belan' (immortalized by countless Bollywood movies and television soaps). Thus, we strongly believe that a woman has the power to break free of the shackles and take control. Also, the authors assume that their future better-halves might be reading this and any attempt at unwarranted chauvinism would effectively make them remain the lousy half all their lives.
Girls are a rare species in engineering colleges and rarer still in government engineering colleges located on the shores of the Arabian sea (though it seems quite surprising given the strong association of women and beaches built by various television series such as Baywatch, Baywatch - Hawaii etc). The ATB, having done his homework determines that college would be the right time to attempt to find his life-partner. He reaches this conclusion by use of complicated probability theory, census data from the past, distribution data of candidates attempting competitve engineering entrance exams and the market trends during Valentine's day. While the others in his class stare at women during breaks between class, the ATB goes into stealth mode blending into the benches and the walls, but silently listening to information that might prove useful - favorite Bollywood actor, favorite fashion label, favorite rock band (MLTR, Greenday - argh! How can you call that trash rock?) and favorite color. Some might say that this is eavesdropping, and they are correct in saying so, but as it has been established without doubt all is fair in love, war and Quake. Slowly and steadily, the ATB builds a huge database of information on all girls in his college across branches and batches over the first year. He still does not make a move - which might look stupid because one must swoop in quickly or else the target is taken out by the opposing team. He bides his time, plotting his master stroke, that will at once be daring, yet elegant and subtle. That, and his absolute incapability of approaching any girl and saying a complete sentence like "Hello, I am so and so, which class are you in?"
The ATB takes heart in the fact that his fellow ATBs are just as good or bad as he is and will very frequently hold deep discussions about the subject of girls. Popular topics during the course of these conversations are (not exhaustive, but only indicative) the North Indian classmates who openly flirt with women, who is rumored to date who, breakups and PDFs that outline the art of seducing the fairer sex. But these conversations tend to invariably shift to quantum physics and neuro-lingustic programming techniques since the most common way that an ATB explains any phenomenon is by turning to science and mathematics and breaking the problem into a simple set of equations that can be solved. This is, probably, his biggest shortcoming and his complete ignorance of the most important axiom of the universe - women do not like equations; they like flowers and chocolates and candle-lit dinners and long drives. He will learn it the hard way and then post the learning experience will turn over new leaf.
A significant result that emerges from the research that the ATB has done points to the fact that playing basketball and/or being in the various clubs (excluding the literary/quiz clubs) provides a natural means to initiate contact with women. He understands that conversations to elicit important information about her views on nanotechnology, food and Shah Rukh may be disguised as questions that are necessary to organize an event for the several fests that these clubs hold. A sample conversation is presented below as an illustrative aid:
ATB: "Hi, so we have to do this DumbCharades for the fest. Any ideas for some new rounds?"
Girl: "Oh yeah! I was thinking of having something related to ex-couple of Bollywood."
ATB: "Nice idea, but what about technology? What are your views on nanotechnology?"
Girl: "Yeah sure...we can have a round about small Indian cars as well."
ATB: "Whatever...but for your round, did Shah Rukh date someone else before Gauri?"
Girl: "Shah Rukh is the best, he is better than Aamir and Salman put together. Have you seen Om Shanti Om?"
ATB: "No...not yet, I don't understand Hindi that well, will you translate for me? Do you like cappucino with chocolate ice-cream?"*
Girl: "Yeah, I had it last evening in that coffee place."
ATB: "The new one...? How's it? Who all came with you?"**
Girl: "Oh...a friend..."***
ATB: "Ok...see, you try to make some posters for the event - the colorful types. I'll go work on the other stuff"
Girl: "But, what do I write on it?"
ATB: "Something. Or else change the date on the poster from last time and re-use it. It'll save time." ****
*The subtle attempt at asking a girl out.
**Information extraction to determine single status.
***Confusion to answer, and yet not answer the question.
****"I don't care anymore. Whatever..."
The reader must be amazed by the ATBs talent at conversing with a girl to understand her better, but at the same time it is evident that the ATB gets frusrated quite easily by failed attempts. This has known to be a problem with the species and research is underway to determine a cure for this condition. Scientists have been trying to locate the exact protein pair in the human DNA that leads to frusration with flirting - the last update from the group, led by Dr.RST Parthasarthy, three years ago hinted at them switching to other research - namely crossbreeding coffee bean and chicory for the perfectly optimized filter coffee blend. At this point, the reader must be warned that, the ATB has not yet given up completely. He immediately uses his large network of contacts and find out who the friend is. If it is a female friend, then the ATB plans a course of action to gain the confidence of the female friend and then use that route to reach his object of desire. If it is a male friend, the ATB will write a very arcane satire about dates and coffees and coffee shops and post it on his blog. He then proceeds to log on the IMDB to make a list of movies that star Tom Hanks.
We have only just scratched the surface of the interactions of ATBs and women and this theme shall be a recurring one in episodes to come. We shall examine another interaction of the ATB with the girl in the following episode and attempt to understand why the ATB must improve and expand upon his vast knowledge of the useless (like physics, Linux, economics, graphic novels and the technology used in the Star Wars series) to useful things like mobile phones, bikes, Bollywood gossip/movies/songs and chick-lit (Twilight, Dan Brow and Chetan Bhagat). The reader is directed to obtain and study carefully copies of Stardust and the authors/series reffered to, and in the event of them not having committed suicide by the time they have finished ten pages, to take copious notes. These notes will prove extremely useful in breaking uncomfortable silences during coffee:
ATB: "So where do you think this is heading to?"
Girl: "Well...see it's like this...."
(silence)
ATB(30 seconds later): "So is it really true that Ash and Kareena had a dirty fight at the awards function rehersal?"
Girl: "Yes da...some dirty things and all they said about each other. Ash made some underhand references about Kareena giving laser tattoo removal do ctors lots of business..."
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Please click...
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
The Average Tam-Bram - Episode Three - The Crumbling Cookie and other assorted condiments
...or "How I learnt to ignore the water shortage"
Episode Two here.
Episode One here.
We continue our story from where we left the ATB grinning at the board on the side of the highway dreaming of decadent debauched trips to Goa. Thirty seconds later (this is the average day-dream duration of the ATB), the ATB comes back to reality and hefts all his luggage thanking his stars that his foot-putting-down on no table fan was worth the complete silence and cold looks he got the previous night. The ATB trudges to the hostel office to pick up keys for his room and do the paper work. The line at the hostel office on days like this is infinitely long for various reasons - prime one being that anyone paying fees in 500 or 1000 rupee notes is required to list down the numbers on the notes to prevent the hostel office being cheated (quite unlike the manner in which they cheat everyone else by procuring only rotting vegetables and sacks of grains that are home to maggots).
The paperwork to get enrolled and be marked existent in college records is a complicated process that require knowledge of advanced Fourier transforms, multi-dimensional non-linear mathematics and the ability to live through extreme boredom. Having learn the first two during his coaching the ATB manages this task pretty well by substituting cribbing with other ATBs in while waiting. Most often the ATB will crib about the lack of women - preferably the single and looking types, failing which he will simply crib. The crib must not be taken as an idication of misogynism, but just as an indication of lack of other things to worry about - like world-economy, the next album 'A Perfect Circle' promises to cut, the food/water situation in the hostels or lack of clean underwear. Either he knows the answers to this ('Obama','Soon','Terrible' and 'Flip' are the answers in that order, in case the reader is interested) or he just couldn't care less (any question that contains 'Britney Spears' without 'Madonna' or 'kissing' falls into this category).
The ATB's cloistered upbringing usually tends to make him wary of strangers and this is best reflected in his interactions with his room-mates and hostel mates. What the reader needs to understand is that the initial hostility is but a defence mechansim - much like the initial gagging over the first sip of Old Monk and cola. Very soon, one learns to appreciate the apparently vile cough-syrup tasting concoction and looks to it for solace. A reservation that an ATB maintains is that of eating etiquette - one does not touch other utensils with the hand that one uses for eating (typically the right), while the specimen from the north of the Vindhyas believes that the right is for the top end of the ailmentary canal while the left is for the other end. Both perspectives are, of course, reasonable and eventually using the spoon or understanding that soap cleanses resolves contention (at least, temporarily, but breaks when there is roti and dal to eat). The authors will not elaborate on this and this is left as an exercise to the reader to understand his perambulations into the psychology of the ATB and/or the North Indian.
These initial differences slowly begin to fade away, usually over a few months and generous helpings of potable ethanol which may be sourced from the nearest watering hole. The watering holes near colleges are most often exactly that - waterlogged and absolute shady holes - frequented by truck drivers and construction workers. A typical bar of this kind will have various animals chained outside to poles, including poultry and dogs. Upon being informed that the food menu consists of chicken 65, chicken kabab and chicken soup and mutton biriyan, mutton 65 and mutton kabab (and the sudden disappearance of the aforementioned chained animals), one must exercise caution and stick to peanuts which have lesser probability of being tampered with.
If the reader wonders why the authors venture into the realm of meat and alcohol, which by ancient rules, are taboo to the ATB, the reader must realize the fact that such rules come lower in the list of priorities compared to survival. One must then question 'Why? Doesn't the mess serve wholesome edible vegetarian food?". At this point, after two semesters of pain, the ATB will (with characteristic display of elegant wordplay) tell the reader that the question is incorrectly framed. One question mark and one capital D are redundant and the question should, in fact be, "Why doesn't the mess serve wholesome edible vegetarian food?" And to this question, by means of logical reasoning, the ATB has, as expected, an answer. "Fresh vegetables cost more than rotten vegetables and rotten vegetables are breeding ground for various vermin including cockroaches. Hence rotten vegetable cooked into food are non-vegetarian by this axiom and any place that is called 'mess' cannot be, by definition, a place to eat." It is most often this that leads an ATB to take up eating meat considering that number of people who relish cockroaches is vastly outnumbered by the number of people who relish eating chicken - thus, chicken must be safer. To be further sure, he will down some Old Monk since alchol is used as a disinfectant in Dr. Parthasarathy's clinic.
The authors shall not delve deep into the academic activities of the ATB since academics is a well-explored theme and to be honest, extremely mundane boring and pointless. Interested readers are directed to consult various textbooks on subjects of their choice, with the minimum requirements being that the textbook be at least 300 pages or thicker. Or, alternatively, the reader may proceed to bang his head violently against the nearest concrete wall. Both are known to produce the same effects.
The reader must have observed some radical changes in the behavior of the ATB compared to his behavior at home in more conservative and puritan surroundings. This is just the beginning and the reader shall gradually see much more marked changes - for the better or for the worse is left to the reader to fathom. Also, the reader must bear in mind that the ATB is chameleon and will change back to the old ATB while at home during vacations.
We bid a temporary goodbye to the ATB while his wallows in the humidity of the coast worsened by the lack of electricity. We shall, on returning explore a very important topic - girls. The reader must note that this shall be a recurrent theme and an area of concern for the ATB through all his life. We end Episode Three here with the ATB considering the relative advantages of taking a bath once every two days as opposed to the once (or twice) a day rule followed at home. The primary advantages that the ATB determines are more time to sleep and lesser expenditure on soap etc. (which translates to an extra OMR every weekend) - reason enough to skip the walk to the bathroom and continue dreaming about eating 'thayir saadam' with Trisha while reading aloud sections from The Hindu's book reviews (the three important T's of an ATB - thayir saadam, Trisha and The Hindu).
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
The Average Tam-Bram - Episode Two - The First Journey
In this episode we present, as promised, an insightful insight (is there any other reasonable way?) into the psyche of the ATB. And, to this end, we propose to address (no, there is no DMA or indirection involved) a small, but significant part of this by way of examining his thoughts over the journey to his second home for the next four years. Yet again, the authors' make the assumption based on their first-hand experience as well as deep examination of experiences of slightly different situations that their first-hand experience, without loss of information, motive or generality, provides a succinct treatment of the ATB's thoughts. The authors choose a bus trip to a engineering institute located on the shore of the Arabian Sea - touted to be the only other college in the world that boasts of a private beach (the other one being in California, which if the reader remembers is an adapted habitat of the ATB). Further, for reasons of simplifying the discussion, we assume that the bus ride begins from Bangalore (another stronghold of the ATB) and approximately lasts eight hours - 2300hrs to 0700hrs the following day.
At this point we must present to the reader a very important trait of the ATB - a trait that shall be evident in the ATB's behaviour throughout life and to a large extent determines the ATB's course. To sum up in a single line - 'Always do your homework'. This is programmed into the ATB since playschool, where homework consisted of scrawling a few lines through school and high-school and coaching classes where homework usually consisted of solving a JEE question paper in half the allotted time while eating dinner. Academics apart, the ATB always does a background check and gathers as much information as he can before embarking on any significant task - right from buying pirated music CDs from National Market or selecting a college for his engineering degree. Like how his parents grilled all and sundry about the educational avenues, the ATB, too, diligently asks questions about which shops are to be avoided and how many pairs of underwear are needed for a semester of study (for the curious reader, we have done a survey and determined that 4 pairs are sufficient for a week assuming the subject is not averse and understands the concept reversing - much like audio tapes). The ATB goes one step further - he uses the awesome power of the Internet to gather arcane and seemingly pertinent but usually irrelevant information. He trawls the deep regions of the Internet reading forums on EduRite, WhichCollege, SantaBanta and NextDoorCollegeGirls (for 'pertinent' visual representations of certain facts).
The bus ride to his future college is no less important than getting the best deal on all ten seasons of 'F.R.I.E.N.D.S' (DVD-rips...mind you) and the ATB collates all the information that he has gathered from seniors who are already at the same college or at similar colleges. At this juncture, we present the checklist (reproduced with permission) below and direct the reader to either mentally note down the same, or jot it down (one never know how useful it might be for oneself).
1. Always get a seat in the front of the bus.
2. Always book a seat in a bus that goes to the next college.
3. Turn up early at the departure point and look around.
4. Make friends with your co-passengers (wink, wink).
5. Do not wear that yellow T-Shirt from the 'Rajajinagar Bhajan Samaj' which says 'Volunteer' at the back.
The first thing the ATB does, after replying to the SMS ('I am fine. Will call when I reach.') is take stock of the co-passengers. All female co-passengers are marked mentally on the seat-map and then the ATB proceeds to compare notes with his other friends who are traveling on other buses. A typical conversation would read something like this:
ATB: Macha, six in mine. Yours?
Another ATB(AATB): Dude, sad life. Only two. One with mother.
ATB: Chance only da. Put fight and impress the mom.
AATB: Yeah right! Put message when you hit Kamath. Will catch up if we can.
ATB: Yo!
The reader must, at this point, be wondering about something being different about the conversation presented above. A closer examination, followed by a second reading will reveal that in fact, it is in proper English with complete words. This is another trait of the ATB - using T9 to generate full words is faster and at the same time more refined, besides inculcating in the ATB the habit of expressing ideas lucidly without excessive verbosity. Undeniably, this is quite necessary for scoring high percentiles in exams like the GRE/GMAT/TOEFL which the ATB will one day write.
At this point, most people on the bus are asleep and the ATB uses this opportunity to stretch his legs and takes a walk up and down the aisle. But, that alone is not the motive - he slows down ever so imperceptibly when he passes a seat occupied by a girl and quickly evaluates whether the person next to her is her best-friend/sister/cousin/mother (if female) or friend/boy-friend/boy-toy/father/brother (if male). Any conversation in which any of the aforementioned women are involved is eavesdropped upon but, with no malicious intent - most ATBs only think about thing long term. And at any rate, this particular exercise is undertaken to determine how many of the women are going to be batchmates/seniors/assistant-lecturers. The interaction with current and former students of the college gives the ATB a sketchy knowledge of the terms and lingo that is used and he looks for these keywords.
God forbid, if any of the women make eye-contact, for at this time the ATB has still not learnt the necessary skills to interact with women. Even a passing glance causes the ATB to conspicuously pretend to look at the floor in deep thought as if trying to solve a particularly hard programming problem - with vague hand gestures and head-scratching thrown in for effect. After the lights in the bus are switched off (the ATB usually hides under the cover of his blanket/shawl/jacket hood when the lights are on and shares intelligence with other ATBs on the other buses), the ATB slowly emerges from under the cover and surreptiously looks around at the women. Most of them are sleeping, and the ATB imprints their faces in his peta-byte capacity internal database for future reference. With this done the ATB mutters his nightly prayers and tries to sleep.
As soon as the night halt for coffee arrives, the ATB unlike others does not run to the door to be the first out. The ATB will wait, mostly for the women to get off and then will himself slip out of his seat and try to alight. This behaviour is for two reasons - one is quite obviously to avoid any form of contact - visual or otherwise - and the other is out of sheer chivalry. This is often misunderstood by the women as a negative trait of staring and almost the entire scientific community is bamboozled by this. There has been only one attempt to substantiate this behaviour by a group of questionable researchers who tried to prove using Freudian theories that this was infact a latent and hitherto unknown ATB fetish. The rest of the scientific community labeled this as an attempt to garner publicity by use of fraud assumptions - in fact there were several other papers published in response to this that proved beyond doubt that this rabble of so-called-researchers were infact mentally unstable uncivilized uncultured 'jungles'.
The first thing that the ATB does after alighting is to relieve himself in the restroom. This too, is a scientific response - having relieved himself once, he can afford to consume enough liquids and still have time to make another visit before the bus leaves. After locating his fellow tribe members (most often on the way in or out of the loo), the group proceeds to exchange notes. By this time, surprisingly enough, code-names have been assigned to the various women based on mannerisms or college. The method of determining these names is separately examined in another study. The other major agenda that the ATBs discuss is when the bus will reach and what rooms each one has been assigned in the hostels. Several crib about the heavy influx of North-Indians. This is primarily because of the physical attributes of North-Indians (tall, fair, good-looking) and other miscellaneous attributes such as knowledge of Bollywood, the ability to speak Hindi and having names (Raj, Rahul etc etc.) that fit into most application forms (a massive study on this topic has be done by Sidin Vadukut and may be found on his blog). This is, of course, just a defence mechanism against insecurity (another defence mechanism includes listening to unheard of metal bands, good old classic rock, reading off-beat but popular cult literature, gathering obscure trivia and in general being a nerd). Little does the ATB know that a few months in a hostel does wonders and the ATB will be eating sambar-rice with his North-Indian neighbour while watching "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai". We shall deal with this as we proceed further in our study.
After boarding the bus, the ATB sit and spends next few hours alternating between thoughts of his future and resisting the urge to throw up last night's dinner. Eventually, the ATB tires out, fantasizes about Trisha/Asin/JenniferKotwal and drifts off to sleep with one of them dancing to either Sheela/Munni in Tamil with English sub-titles. The next morning the ATB wakes up before everyone else, panics for a moment about his surrounding and then starts noting down which woman gets off at which point - not to stalk, but to just verify if his theory and his classification from last night was right. It is soon time for the ATB to get off himself and the bus vomits him and his 6 pieces of luggage including mattress on to the shoulder of National Highway-17 right beside a board that reads "Goa 351KM". That more than makes up for the lousy ride, the smell of rotting fish, the clammy salty air (all things he will soon learn to love) and a smile appears on his face - a sly trip to the land of sunshine, sand and bikini-clad women - reason enough to stay the four years here.
To be continued...
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
The Average Tam-Bram - Episode One - The Early Years
... or "How I got to college"
Disclaimer: This is not entirely imagination - it is partly inspired and shaped by real stories experienced or seen. Again, not always factually correct, this is intended to be taken with a pinch of salt, some paruppu podi and ghee followed by a large glass of buttermilk. It's meant to be funny and harbors no intention to cast anyone/anything in unfavorable light (except maybe the girl who avoided you and the mess food ).
The average Tam-Bram (henceforth, referred to as ATB) is a species that is found in large numbers in the following geographies - South India, Bangalore, Mumbai are the major strongholds in the Indian sub-continent. Scattered populations are also to be found in Delhi and Calcutta, but these populations exhibit subtle character differences such as being ambivalent towards North Indian khana and over time moving away from the A2Bs (Adayar Ananda Bhavan, for the uninitiated) and South-Indian joints. Dense thriving populations are also to be found on the West Coast of the United states - especially in the state California - in and around San Francisco, San Jose and Sunnyvale. This population of late has shown a small decline. Smaller but adapting populations are found in Chicago (these are the ones that are the subject of statements propounded by madisaar-wearing Mylapore maamis - "Aamam, yenga son-vandu Chickaago'l irrukan!"). It must be noted that most of the population in the North American continent has the unique ability to speak Tamil with an American accent - most evident in the pronunciation of 'thanni' (meaning 'water' or in slang any kind of alcohol) is pronounced as 'than-eee' with the last syllable being drawn out for about three seconds too long.
Having reasonably established the global distribution of this species, it is only normal to be curious about what causes such varied migration patterns and adaptations. And, this necessitates a not-so-small deviation in to the life-story of this species. Attempt shall be made to keep it brief and provide suitable analogies to help the reader identify and relate to the subject of discussion. Clarifications maybe gotten from your nearest Tam-Bram colleague (which if you are reading this might not at all be in short supply - stand up and yell "Macha, degree kaapi, anyone?" and the Tam-Bram will raise his hand up).
The birth of a male child in an average educated Tam-Bram family is reason for celebration. Apart from the usual religious functions, long discussions about his education are initiated in the family. Parents, grandparents, cousins, uncles, aunts, neighbours and maami from the yellow house two streets away best know for her prying-nature get involved. The end-goal is quite simple - engineer, doctor or investment-banker(a recent entrant but, of late a lost a little ground owing to the sub-prime crisis - this fact you did not know). Cousins (and possibly friends of cousins and friends of friends of cousins and their respective parents) are throughly grilled upon the subject of education, schools, coaching classes, colleges, entrance exams, brand of bag/pen/shoes and water-bottle color. All of this information is carefully arranged and filed in triplicate along with a master copy that is bound and kept in the safe-deposit locker beside the silver sandhyavandham utensils and jewelery.
After about a year of doting, as part of the toddler's first birth ceremony he embarks on his arduous and daunting journey through life. He is brought up on a carefully controlled diet of idli, dosai, pongal and the rare conrflakes for breakfast, sambar, rasam and curd-rice (the world-famous 'thayyir saadam') for lunch and a combination of the breakfast and lunch menu for dinner. Regular daily intake of Complan/Bournvita/Maltova/Horlicks coupled with morning prayers, evening prayers and general knowledge books ensure and build his physical, spiritual and intellectual growth. His mother's greatest worry for the son is whether his wife will be able to regulate and provide the strict regimen that the ATB needs for proper functioning and this is knowledge is imparted to every daughter in the family (apart from how to buy vegetable, bargain, cook, Carnatic music, Bharatanatyam and read star-charts to determine auspicious days for all activities including sneezing).
Once he starts his schooling he is constantly under the scanner of both father and mother for consistent top performance (at least 18 standard deviations above the class average and at all times better than his friends who will be constantly used as an example to encourage). Play times are strictly supervised and activities exclude all games that can potentially cause injuries - which leaves the poor boy with very limited choice. The drill gets more intense as he proceeds further along - post his poonal (aka Upanayanam aka scared-threading - not to be confused with the beauty parlor procedure for women) he is required to perform all his studies with renewed vigour with the added sandhyavandhanam (starts with thrice a day, peters down to twice and then stabilizes at once every morning before eventually being performed once a year when the thread is changed).
Three exams are extremely important in any ATB's career - 10th standard board (Kapil Sibal has caused furore among parents of many ATB's with his reforms leading to the formation of a 'Mothers against Sibal" group), 12th standard board and the entrance exam for Engineering/Medical seats. Given the authors' profession and life-directions we shall explore the Engineer ATB's progress - almost all of what is presented further maybe applied to a Doctor ATB without any loss of generality.
The build up to the exams is an elaborate process consisting of visits to temples, promises of sweets/coconuts/shaved-head to the various deities and umpteen cups of milk/filter-coffee. Relatives are banned from paying social visits and the rest of the family stops watching TV to prevent any form of distraction to the ATB. Girlfriends being a strict no-no at all phases of life, during this pre-exam and exam period even magazines that have pictures of members of the female species (including J.Jayalalitha are stuffed away out of sight in the attic). Eating outside is strictly forbidden to prevent illness and all sources of cold drafts in the house are sealed.
During the exam the pencil-box lid and the obverse side of the writing pad will carry the picture of Goddess Saraswati (for knowledge and wisdom) and Lord Ganesha (the remover of all obstacles) to combat peeping cheating examinees and nasty examiners. The admission ticket is preserved carefully in a transparent plastic pouch and placed in front of pictures of gods so that they may be able to memorize his roll number and bestow their benevolence in the form of marks. Prayers are mandated before leaving for the hall (with a generous smearing of holy-ash on the forehead) as well as before answering the examination.
The two years post class ten are red-letter years (so red, that even a color-blind, for that matter even a blind, bull gets excited). Two important life-changing life-deciding examinations are space in a matter of two or so months - 12th standard board and the IIT-JEE(and/or)AIEEE(and/or)CET(or its equivalent). Along with regular school, grueling coaching classes are attended. Popular choices are Brilliant's (Chennai) and BASE (Bangalore) in addition to correspondence courses from either Brilliant's or FIIT-JEE. Irodovs, Morrision Boyd and Loney are studied, re-studied, revised and re-revised till the pages being to tear. ATBs have been known to weak up in cold-sweat from a nightmare muttering complex integration formulae - but these are rare cases, because most ATBs never sleep for these two years.
Once the exams are over another round of temple-visiting and praying starts to make sure that the results are as expected. 95% plus in the boards and a top-100 rank in JEE/AIEEE which will get the ATB into Electronics/ComputerScience in IIT-Madras/IIT-Bombay/NIT-Surathkal/NIT-Trichy/NIT-Calicut/NIT-Warrangal - ATBs at that tender stage are extremely apprehensive of crossing the Vindhyas - even IIT-Bombay is a hard choice but the strong migrant population (which invariably consists of at least one relative, however distant) in Matunga/Sion/Chembur comforts the parents about their fledging progeny flying the coop. He will be bundled off with various podis - paruppu(lenti), kothamalli (curry leaves) and thengai(coconut) to be eaten with rice and pickle (lemon/mango) when the mess food is inedible. He is given strict instructions to stay away from bad company, parties in the night, trips with friends to Goa and most importantly girls. The last is drilled into him umpteen number of times for the simple reason that any girl that has not been found and verified by the maami-network is pure recipe for disaster ("Shiva...shiva...edo ponnu-pa!"). A week before the day of departure luggage is checked, packed, re-checked and re-packed. Odds and ends such as Co-optex towels, Medimix soap and vibhuti are purchased in quantities to last an army of ATBs a year. A trip to the family deity's shrine is made.
On the D-Day, the ATB is showered with love and hugs and favorite food. The entire family and extended family and neighbours and the nosy-mami come to see him off. He gets on the bus/train and till the train/bus is out of sight everyone is waving. Thirty seconds later he gets a call on his new mobile phone (only Rs1299 with color screen and polyphonic ringtones and lifetime incoming free) to make sure he is ok. And an SMS, about thirty seconds hence.
The reader must have noticed that we have only examined the factors - people and situations - external to the ATB, but have not delved into the psyche of the ATB himself - of what he is thinking and what runs in his head. This shall now play a central theme of the following episodes.