A Walk down the memory lane

It was a cool October morning in Delhi. The students of group 3 assembled in the top floor corridor of Bharati. We were supposed to meet at 9am . It was 9:10 am but still no sign of Prof. Bakwaas (henceforth refered to as simply bakwaas). At a little past 9:15 am, in walked the penguin like figure of bakwaas, holding close to his bosom a folder containing heaven knows what. What would a prof coming to colloquium need ? Perhaps comics to help him keep awake ? hmm ..

Anyway, we followed him to room no. 501. We all knew what was going on there, but bakwaas didn’t : Moshu was teaching a class there ! Bakwaas knocked and peeked in, and in a trembling tone, said “Excuse me Prof. Maheshwari, but I had booked this room for this morning”. We all huddled behind bakwaas to see what was going to happen. Moshu walked up to the door. We all scampered leaving bakwaas to handle Moshu on his own. Moshu came out of the class, put a hand around Bakwaas‘ shoulder and in a calm voice said “Dear Prof. Biswas, I am taking a make-up lecture for the Analysis and Design of Algorithms course. I came here first, so why don’t you go find another room”. That was Moshu‘s logic. Bakwaas was stumped, his face turing crimson with anger. We, too scared to face Moshu, were hiding behind the stairs and rolling on the floor with laughter. Its not too often that a prof gets to bear the Moshu effect. Bakwaas, one of the senior faculty members, was highly respected and revered by everyone. He was also liked by everyone because of his amiable mannerisms.  On the other hand, Moshu’s claim to infamy was his acts of terrorising his students.  My batchmates, know too well what Moshu can do. Ask a certain Mr. Umang Mittal, or ask a certain Mr. Pankaj Kumar Lohmor, or ask a certain Mr. Prashant Meena. They’ll have tails to tell about the devil hidden behind the wizened old face that resembles that Dumbledore.

To continue with the story, bakwaas chickened out. He let us all down. He wasn’t up for the fight. He had retreated. We followed. We set up base in the Intel Lab. Bakwaas was looking into his folder for … something. First to go was Anshum : he came, he spoke, he left. Before bakwaas could even look up from whatever he was looking down into, anshum was done. The next speaker Kshitij put us all to sleep (bakwaas included): in the few minutes that I was awake, I vaguely remember him talking about some denial of service attacks, or something that sounded like that.  This wasn’t going right. This session didn’t even start right. I was to go next. I spoke on approximation algorithms for graph partitioning, something related to the work I had done during my summer internship at IBM India Research Lab. I showed them a linear programming relaxation of the problem, and showed them how to round the LP solutions to obtain an integral solution with poly-logarithmic approximation guarantee. I also showed them some cases when the LP relaxation was exact. Interesting, huh ? I am sure everyone loved it.

After half a dozen people had talked we had a break. The second session was set under way by Rahul Gupta. The allotted time limit was 15 mins per speaker. Rahul spoke for 40 mins !! The recommended no. of slides was 20 per speaker. Rahul had 68 !! And, could you believe it, in the middle of the talk, Rahul’s phone started ringing ! Poor guy, mumbled a few apologies, and continued with his talk. I somehow instinctively turned right, and sure enough a guy (lets call him X) who was grinning. I understood what had happened. I smiled at him. He smiled back at me. Then X  took out his phone and punched in a few numbers. And sure enough, Rahul’s phone started ringing again !! This time both X and I were grinning from ear to ear. Rahul again squirmed uncomfortably in front of the audience. Looking sheepishly at us, he tried to shut his phone down. For a moment I thought he was going to start crying, or pee in his pants or have a nervous breakdown. But nothing of that sort happened. For some reason he glared at me. Angrily. Why me ???

We were about 20 mins into Rahul’s talk, and I was getting pissed by his baritone which was sowing seeds of sleep in us. We were desperately trying to stay awake. On of the guys started a game of FIFA on wLAN which we all joined into. But when Rahul is speaking, time seems to travel slower than usual. I was hysterically waving out to Rahul trying to indicate to him that he was 10 mins over time. I wondered why Bakwaas wasn’t saying anything. Lo and behold ! bakwaas was sleeping ! His chin rested on his palm, with his elbows on the arm rest of his char. His eyes closed and his glasses near the edge of his nose. It was a sight to behold ! I had had enough of Rahul’s lecture. We were done with FIFA, it was time for Counter Strike on wLAN. The game was started. The game was played. The game was over. But Rahul went on and on and on …

I decided I had to do something to bring this to a stop. I took upon myself the responsibility of saving this class from the falling asleep.I took out my phone and punched in Rahul’s number. And yet again Rahul’s phone rang. After almost 40 mins, Rahul had paused for a moment ! The phone ring also managed to wake bakwaas up. I wonder why Rahul didnt switch off his phone after the first time his phone rang. Probably he was looking forward to those breaks ? Or probably he liked his ringtone (some song by Britney Spears Shreya Goshal I guess). But anyway, it had served the purpose, bakwaas had woken up, he glanced at his watch and asked rahul to stop with immediate effect! Rahul tried to bargain for a few minutes more but bakwaas would have none of it. There was a collective sigh of relief from all the audience. I had managed to save the day yet again

Epilogue
After this, bakwaas called it a day. He packed up his folder, tucked it between his forearm and his bosom, and walked out. I guess he too couldn’t stand the Rahul effect.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Rahul for digging this incident out of my subconscious memory and into my RAM. Without him this post would not have been possible.