...or "How I did not meet your mother"
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..."
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..."
6 comments:
Were the conversations made up, or (methinks more likely) based on reality?
Nothing is ever fictional. Everything has a basis in reality.
Herr Doctor Subbu, your anthropological investigations into the fascinating behavior of this peculiar tribe are excellent. I hope you continue to publish scholarly articles on the arcane behavior of this rare breed in the days to come.
@nangafakir: Your observations on a second kind of peculiar tribe are eagerly awaited
Is there a next episode?
http://technicallybored.blogspot.in/2011/05/or-how-i-derived-equation-for-shattered.html - that's the last one i wrote.
More in the pipeline
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