Yaadein: Semester 2 (JU)

For me, the second semester was possibly the least eventful semester in JU. Regarding the classes, there were two teachers most of the students immensely disliked- the electronics teacher Tapati Ganguly (TG) and the Programming teacher Abhijit Kar (AK). The first one was disliked because of her horrible teaching and strict attitude like a school teacher -like she used to ask questions everyday, while the second one was disliked because of his supercilious and arrogant attitude. While I had no issues with AK, I disliked TG thoroughly.

One real ordeal was the mass-bunking of TG's classes. Most teachers did not mind a mass-bunk once in a while, but TG not only reported every bunk to the CSA office, but actually went around the building to capture the fugitives. These fugitives mostly hung around the architecture lab and the corridors, and TG would walk up to these places looking for them. If she caught anyone, she would first reprimand him and then assign him the task of finding the others and asking them to surrender :-D. Another comic situation arose when she had caught Aveek writing a love-poem in class, and had even read it out to the class!!!!

Though the semester by itself had been rather short and eventless, there was a huge and long-lasting event at the end of it. This was the "Boycott of the Semester Examinations" by the student's council in protest against the suspension of 4 students who were found guilty of unruly behaviour during some protest held some 2 years in the past. Most of us, including myself, opposed participation in this Boycott, since we had no idea where the students were guilty or not- the incident had happened long before our admission to JU. Besides, we thought that boycotting the semester exam is hardly a sane and logical way of protesting. Nevertheless, we had to participate in the boycott as no one wanted animosity with the seniors/union leaders. It was really boring- we had to study and come prepared on all 6 exam days only to find huge crowds of students crowding in front of the department. We would stand there and chat for an hour or two before dispersing. 

None of the exams were held at the scheduled time, and were postponed to june. But just before they could start, the 4 suspended students went on hunger-strike. As a result, again the exams were boycotted. But this time, 4 days into the hunger strike, on the night of 10 june, a huge police force in battle fatigues swooped on the strikers and rounded them up after a massive "lathicharge". Many were injured. Though this ended the hunger-strike, the university authorities came under severe criticism from all quarters for the use of force. They finally decided to set up a review commitee to review the roles of the suspended students, and set up new examination dates, which were finally followed.

A lot of articles were published in the newspapers regarding the boycott. Many people heaped lavish praise on the participating students for throwing themselves behind the 4 students even "putting their own careers in jeopardy". The ultra-left union of JU hailed the "historic protest". Cynics suggested that the students of the current generation rise in protest only when their own interest are affected, and are otherwise aloof about the society unlike the students of the 70s. I had never really supported the movement, and found all these comments weird. I do not know the truth, but I feel that the Union called for the boycott because they were sure that the authorities would not take any action on the boycotters and arrange for an alternate date. And it was hardly spontaneous, most people participated just by following the mass. Most students had no reason to boycott as they had no idea whether the accused students were guilty or not; indeed if they were not guilty, why and how would the probing commitee single them out?  And semester boycott is an extermely illogical way to protest. With due respect to all, I still feel that the boycott was largely a gimmick.

Yaadein: semester 1 (JU)

The first semster of Jadavpur University started in July 2004. The first experience of college life. 8 students were joining the Computer Science department from my school. Of them Sayan and Arpan had my good friends for the past two years, and i also had speaking terms with Aveek,Dripto,Dhrubo and Debarshi. Apart from them, there was Haimasree, whom I was not acquainted to in school. In the initial days, during the ragging and settling-in period, the first seven people from the school stuck together though Haimasree, somewhat to the surprise of us, would hang around with a different group. Our temporary group had marked diversity- Arpan mostly talked with us and the seniors about career plans, GRE and CAT, Sayan talked about combinatorics problems and plans to go to US for phd, Debarshi talked about football (Euro Cup had just ended) and English movies, Dripto and Aveek talked mostly about the girls in the senior batch and Dhrubo....well forget it :-P.

One of the earliest memories in this semester were the games of cards. Debarshi, Dhrubo and Dripto were into cards before joining college. In the first few weeks, classes were few and far between, so to kill time, I also joined them. Arpan was furious at the irregularity of classes, but even he joined sometimes. We played "Call Bray" and "Hearts" in the classroom sitting on the desks, or in the A-C canteen, over coffee and egg chops.

The classroom ragging by seniors had happenned for the first 4 days, and I was the biggest victim in the class. However this ragging was only verbal, and nothing objectionable had happened. However I had heard horror stories of ragging in CET canteen from Aveek and on the central playground from Chiradeep. They used to narrate the stories with great enthusiasm, as though they wanted to face such experiences. But I felt scared. For the first 2-3 months, I never walked in front of CET canteen. We had a class in the Mechanical Engineering department beyond the playground, and I felt scared to go there. On thursdays we had Drawing class and had to carry the "T" on the shoulder. This "weapon" would give me some sense of security :-D.

Dripto's fascination for the girls in the senior batch, and his open flirtation with them had become a hot gossip in the class. Everyone from Karati to Arpan was talking about it. That was fine, but Dripto often kept on asking how I felt about different girls. I felt quite awkward when asked such questions, but Dripto insisted. Taking a walk in the campus with Dripto in those days was a real ordeal for me. Whenever a girl walked past he would ask me how I felt about her :-D.

The Freshers' Welcome was to be held in september. The freshers were supposed to perform- drama, music, dance, instrument or whatever. Dhrubo had prepared a drama which he thought, would please the raunchy-minded seniors. Most of us thought it would only provoke more ragging. The theme and dialogue of the drama were enough to scare away the innocent guys Souri and Swagato. I was offered the lead role in the drama. I was reluctant, and considered staying away from college on the day of the Freshers' Welcome, but Dripto convinced me that it would result in a much worse ragging on the following day. So thus I was persuaded into acting. We rehearsed for several days. I always had a thing for acting, and transcending my initial hesitation, got into the role. My acting drew arousing appreciation from the other dramatists and viewers. But on the D-day, the seniors were not impressed with the drama. They did not appreciate the over-raunchy theme, and stopped the play midway, much to the disappointment of Dhrubo and ... well, even myself :-P.

Apart from the theoretical classes held in the classroom, we had practical classes, called "Sessional" in the terminology of JU. In this semester, there were 4 sessionals: physics lab, drawing, workshop and technical arts. Almost everyone complained that these were completely irrelevant to Computer Science and engineering. But for me, the worst part was that the class was divided into two groups- A1 and A2. Most of my friends and acquaintances were in the A2 group, while I, by virtue of my advanced rank in the entrance exam, was in A1. I found myself clubbed with Satyajit, Sourav, Arijit Khan, Rajdeep, Biswanath- most of whom came from suburban areas, and initially I had a bit of problem synchronising with them, having studied in a posh urban school for 15 years. These sessional classes of the first semester were quite boring for me- not only because the work was boring, but also because I could not connect with the company that well.

Personally, the first semester of JU was memorable because of the great change associated with it. For the past two years there was endless pressure to study, and now all the pressue had disappeared so suddenly that I was quite confused what to do...how to adopt myself to the changed situation. I thought I would forget about the change and study by myself, but what to study?? I tried studying physics- the Feynman Lectures of Physics, but soon discovered that I was not really being able to commit myself into it, and was just wasting time- neither studying nor enjoying.

On looking back casually towards this semester, the first things that come to mind are the peculiar odour of machine lubricants in the technical arts lab, the games of cards in the AC canteen, the songs "saanso ko saanso me dhalne do zara" (Hum Tum) and "dhoom macha le" (Dhoom) which played all the time over the new FM channels, the hubbub of the freshers' welcome, the times spent with Sayan, Arpan and Dripto, and the confusion- to study or to enjoy...and if to study, then what????

"Yaadein" series

Ever since leaving school in 2004, I have spent 12 semesters of college life in 2004-2010. First 8 were in Jadavpur University, Kolkata, and the next 4 in Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Each semester is associated with many memories... some good, some bad and some neutral. In my present life, somewhat uneventful and lonely, i often delve back into the past, and re-visit those memories....and try to re-live those days. A peculiar psychology of the human mind is that, while reminiscing, even the bad times seem to be nice. In the next 11 posts, I will try to paint this collage of memories. There will be one post for each semester, with the exception of the 8th semester of JU, for which there will be no post.

Do we really need politicians and political parties for democracy in India?

A lot is said about the gross corruption of politicians in india. It will be agreed by most people that most politicians in india today come to politics just for power and/or money, rather than any particular ideology. A large section of common people are angry with politicians, and even look upon them as enemies of the country. Others argue that it is unfair to blame the politicians alone for the rampant corruption in the country, the common people also have played a role in it.

Recently, there were elections in four states of india-tamilnadu,kerala,west bengal and assam. While the congress held on to power in assam and narrowly won in kerala, in West Bengal the TMC-Congress combine routed the 34-yr Left Front regime, and in TN AIADMK took the incumbant DMK to the cleaners. While I am not in a position to comment about the first two results, it is the other two which seem somewhat thought-provoking to me. When the people of WB and TN voted, did they vote for TMC/AIADMK or against CPM/DMK respectively? In WB, I understand that people were fed up with the arrogant and undemocratic rule of the CPM-led front for 34 long years, and wanted a change. I doubt they consider Mamata to be a good administrator, but they voted her because she was the main anti-Left campaigner for many many years. But in TN, Jaya and Karuna come to power in alternate terms. Both of them have had lots of corruption charges against them. This time, top DMK leaders like Kanimozhi and A. Raja were accused of corruption in the 2G spectrum case. Because of this, there was an anti-DMK wave and Jaya came to power. But she herself is no better, and had lost earlier for the same reason-corruption!! Then did the people really vote her because she was a better alternative? Or is it because she was the only alternative??

This actually raises a fundamental question- are there enough alternative political forces in India? A large section of the people are disillusioned with the current political system. While there can be no doubt that a multi-party/multi-view parliamentary democracy is the best form of government seen so far, is it really working meaningfully in india? If a disillusioned voter is to be  brought back to a polling booth, (s)he should have enough options to choose from. In practice, in every election there are two main camps, and parties/leaders switch frequently from one camp to another. In WB, TMC once goes with BJP, once with congress. In TN, AIADMK and DMK keep switching between NDA and UPA. In elections, the chief ministerial/prime ministerial candidates remain mostly the same year after year. Jaya had earlier been defeated for her corruption, but she again contests. Why should people at all be motivated to vote?

The parliamentarians/MLAs are supposed to be representatives of people. But in the current system, once they are elected, they work independant of the people for the rest of the term. There is no system of an elected member getting feedback/suggestions from the electorate, or being replaced for failure to deliver. Then, are they true representatives of people? And actually, is there at all any need for representatives of people? Is there at all a need for the concept of political parties and politicians in india? Cannot a parliamentary system function without them?

The main function of the parliament is to discuss policies of governance, and once decided, order the concerned departments to implement these policies. The discussion is suppossed to happen among the parliamentarians- the so-called representatives of the people. However, instead of having representatives, is it not possible to directly take the opinions of the countrymen on issues? With the rapid development of the Internet and social networks, it should not be impossible to obtain the viewpoints of a substantial number of people. Indeed good discussions on various matters of national interest happen on online communities in orkut or facebook. Of course, involving too many people will tend to cause confusion. So we will need a dedicated group of people to moderate the discussion, and identify the majority view. This group of people should be professionals.....just like there are IFS,IAS,IPS,IRS etc, we can have an Indian Parliamentary Service-whose job will be to conduct such discussions among the people. Any common person, irrespective of his/her social status should be able to raise a discussion thread or participate in a discussion. The service should have its own boards for management, promotions etc. And the different people will have their own views-some can be liberal, some conservative etc. Thus we will have a multi-view parliamentary democracy without a political class. Isn't it possible??

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

Last week, I had made a blogpost about my dissatisfaction regarding the current situation in Computer Science research around me. Based on that, I also started a discussion thread on Facebook: "Should IISc and the IITs attach with each lab a dedicated group for India-specific research?" I also discussed this with friends in person, on phone and over gmail chat. The thread of FB continued for two-and-half days before it had to be withdrawn due to an unfortunate incident of spamming and personal attack on me. Nevertheless, I understand on hindsight that I had failed to highlight my main intention, which is why some people grossly misinterpreted it. The main misinterpretations were as follows:

1) I am making a patriotic appeal to indians to serve india rather than fleeing to US

2) I am suggesting that iisc should narrow down its research by putting the interest of india before that of the world.

3) I am suggesting that phd students should do the job of social workers and the government

4) I am confusing between social responsibility and good research.

I first of all make it clear that I intend none of these things. To describe what I actually intend, let us proceed step-by-step.

What is the aim of research? In my understanding, it is twofold: a better understanding of the world and nature (Science) and of mankind (Arts) (basic research); and applying the understanding thus gained for betterment of country/society/world (engineering and medicine) (applied research). Since most of us are students of Computer Science and Engineering, let us focus on that. About a third of CSE is basic research, and the rest applied research. The areas which are basic research are mostly related to discrete maths (graph theory/algebra/geometry), probability theory, complexity theory, learning theory etc. The nature of research in these areas is exploratory; discovering properties of graphs, automaton, markov chains, algorithms etc. Applied research in CSE involves design for efficient performance (algorithms, compilers, architecture, database, network protocols, programming languages etc) and modeling of real-world situations for efficient solution (machine learning, data mining, computer vision, NLP, game thoery, network management etc).

Although I have not made any literature survey on most of these fields, I understand that, in the initial stages, say the first 30-40 years, a lot of research has been done towards the most fundamental challenges- sometimes unsuccessfully. For example, the P=NP problem still remains unsolved. Modern researchers in complexity theory seem to have accepted that the problem is possibly too difficult, however to keep their careers alive, have found ways around it. Lots of new complexity classes have been proposed. However, many people remain sceptic that these are actually not of much theoretical significance, and have been mostly proposed for the sake of publishing papers. An eminent Computer Scientist, Richard Karp, recently expressed this view in an interaction with students in IISc. Another trend that has developed in many disciplnes under theoretical CS is to explore some special cases in case the general case is too difficult. That's perfectly reasonable, but again the question arises: are the special cases being investigated actually of any use to anyone? Of course, as researchers in basic science they need not look for problems which are of real use, but since they are anyway making a compromise with the main problem, should they better not look for something which are of use to someone else?

The situation is much worse in the modeling-based areas. These are aimed at modeling real-world situations. On many questions, the first round of reserach is complete, sometimes unsuccessfully. The general tendency of research in the current times are to address situations where existing methods will fail, and build solutions for them. It also happens that researchers have a method in mind, and look for suitable applications for it. But the problem is that, in most cases, the researchers are hardly aware of the ground situation in the real-world applications they are targeting. For their greed of publishing papers thick and fast, they "invent" problems to push their solutions- problems which may not exist at all, or may exist in a different form altogether. Or it can happen that the assumptions they make in their proposed solutions, are often useless. This type of research is, in my opinion, dishonest; it is almost like insulting the real-world problem.

Whatever the case, this is how research goes on; people in academia publish papers thick and fast. I am not saying that all of the papers are corrupted by the above problems, but most people around me agree that it is the case more often than not. Of course the conferences have review processes but they are far from foolproof, and paper-hungry researchers know how to beat them...often they innovate strategies for it.

How do researchers justify it? Mostly they say that they are interested in the theoretical aspect only, or that they hope some day there will be situations where the assumptions made by them, or the special cases explored by them, will be of interest. Without contradicting this point, I have a question: have we really explored the present before jumping into the future? And regarding the first point (interested in theoretical aspect only), I would say that in the pretext of doing research one should not forget the point that the most of CSE is applied research only, and the final aim of appiled research is a practical one: namely the betterment of people.

So here  is the proposal. Research is based on explorations and solving problems. Researchers are "inventing" cases to explore and problems to solve, but the problems of the world are far from over. Especially so in the developing countries. My institute, IISc, is in India, which is a developing country, and has lots of problems. Has there been any honest survey aimed to check if any of its problems can be solved by the current state of research? Do any of these problems open up new research problems? Do they give the explorative researchers new and meaningful special cases to explore? Do they give modeling-based researchers new constraints and challenges to model? If not, then maybe we can move on and continue whatever we were doing. But i think, to improve the quality of research, it is necessary to replenish the supply of problems. Necessity, of course, is the mother of invention. And examples are not far-fetched when real-world problems turn into problems for fundamental research. Remember the Seven Bridges of Konigsberg?

Why do people come to research at all? I guess there are 3 main reasons:

1) Better career opportunities/ material benifits

2) Desire to do some service to country/society (applied) or civilization (basic)

3) Desire to do whatever they want, without bothering whether it is useful or not.

I guess the third category is very small in size, and i cannot comment on them. The current tendency of research of course makes sense to the first category, while the second category is likely to be annoyed by it. My proposal is put from the perspective of the second category, without hurting the interests of the first category.

Most people in the world will accept that they have some responsibility towards the society/country they live in. That should be particularly true in countries like India. In highly developed countries, like USA, people can really afford to do anything that they want. But in India, I don't like the fact that researchers should waste their time and the governemnt's money doing useless things. Of course, the aim of iisc is to do good research, and hardcore researchers argue that research and social responsibility should not be mixed. Make no mistake, by useless I don't mean research that is not of direct use to society, I mean research that has the flaws mentioned above. I am perfectly in favour of continuing abstract research provided it is done honestly. But I guess, from the arguments above, the proposal is not just about social responsibility, it is about improving the quality of research also. Moreover, there is no narrow nationalist interest in this; if a solution is found for a problem in India, it can also be made known to the rest of the world. And the proposal never says that implementing the solutions (if found) in India should be done by the researchers in IISc. No, that is for the government and social workers. The proposal only talks about finding the solutions if possible through research. 

Finally it may be asked, "what is the need for problems when there are so many problems in the papers?" True, but if there is a problem in a paper there is also a solution to it, why look for another solution?  If it happens that one particular case has been analyzed in the paper and i want to generalize it, then it's fine. But in real-world modeling-based areas of CS such generalizations are not possible, simply because one cannot generalize all possible variations in the real world. One can say that he wants to look for a better solution. If he finds, good, but otherwise he has to propose some variation of the same problem, or some special case of it, and most likely he will again end up "inventing a problem". The general strategy of researchers who choose problems from papers is to choose "relatively new" problems so that there are not too many competitors, but then why not try a new problem altogether? That should be more ethical as well as more practical.

Academic Research as it appears to me today

(Disclaimer: The views expressed here are somewhat negative. They are a reflection of my thoughts and feelings at this time. I hope these will be proved wrong sometime in the future.)

PhD. The acronym still evokes a feeling of awe among many people. At a time, in the 1800s and 1900s, only a handful of people could get it. And they often went on to make ground-breaking work in their respective fields, mostly physics, chemistry, mathematics or literature, history, philosophy in those days. The world has thoroughly changed now. Doing a PhD is nothing uncommon now, in fact it is quite common. In every main city, in every single locality you may find a PhD-holder. Apart from the traditional subjects mentioned above, PhDs are now common in engineering (especially Computer Science - which is to the current world what physics was to it in the 1800s and 1900s),  management, finance, economics and what not.

Most people treat PhD as an important step in building their careers- and rightly so. That is how it is in the current world. And yet, there are some people who still romanticize the idea of PhD. They feel that to do a PhD is noble. Some of them think that academic research is the fullest attainment of  intellectual satisfaction. Other people think that PhD is a way to become a great scientist who will change the face of the world/country. That was the impression forced on me when i was in high school, and maybe even college. As a research student in Computer Science, i feel (at least now) that these people, unfortunately, are living in fool's paradise. Whether it should be so or not, is a different question, but definitely it is not like that. In fact, one prof in my dept has recently gone on record saying that he views research as "Business"- sell ideas to conferences/industry and get papers/patents in return. And that is where i feel frustrated.

In PhD, in most parts of the world, the first step is to "find a problem". Alyosha Efros, professor of Computer Vision from Carnegie Mellon University, said in a conference, "In PhD, spend 3 years looking for a problem. Then spend 1 year solving it".  This, to me, looks a very baffling idea. In a highly developed country like USA, people probably can afford to do this, but what about India? A student is typically 24 years of age when (s)he joins PhD- in other words (s)he is at the prime time of his/her life. Its the best time in life to go ahead and do something concrete, something significant and impactful. Is it then really worthwhile to spend 3 years searching for a problem? There are many many problems in India- poverty, social injustice, unemployment, corruption, population explosion, pollution, insurgency.... the list goes on. If a youngster approaching a prof for a problem and the prof does not have a problem at hand to give, the youngster should better go and attack these problems, which are visible and quite shocking. By the time a student would finish PhD, (s)he will be 28-29, and it would be time for him/her to marry and raise a family, and settle down into a life. One can still do social work after that, but family responsibilities (which cannot be and should not be avoided) will take up a significant amount of his/her time.

And in any case, even if a problem is found in the academic realm itself, is it always impactful to the world/country? I strongly doubt so. Because of the enormously large number of people turning to research, the current state of research is very esoteric, something that cannot be explained properly beyond a cliquey society of profs, students and maybe industry people  who are familiar with the area. I am working in Machine Learning/Computer Vision, but when my uncle, who also has a PhD (but in Bengali Literature) asks about my research, i found it difficult to explain to him what the work is about. Same thing happened when some delegates from Hitachi Labs visited our lab, or when UG students of Computer Science itself visited our department on the IISc Open Day. And it is not that I can't express well...the same problem was faced by most of my labmates. How can some work, which is not even understood by people beyond a clique, be of any significant impact?

The most common way in which Computer Science-related research (particularly Game Theory, Machine Learning and Algorithms) do create an impact now is that they are used by the internet giants like Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft and IBM. They use the research to improve their web services, and provide the user with better facilities. I am not saying anything against that, indeed i am writing this blog because of the facility offered to me by these companies. But my doubt remains- for an average Indian, is it at all an issue? The mother of all problems in India is assymetric progress of people, and as far as India is concerned, this sort of research will only help that small part of its population which has already been pampered excessively, especially since the economy opened up in 1991.

And even then, does the academic research actually help in solving such problems also? Sometimes they do, the most impactful ideas in Internet Research-the Page Rank Algorithm, Latent Variable Model, Topic Models,  etc came up from  academia only. But more often than not, problems in academic research remain only of academic interest. This is especially true in India where there are bright people in the academia but not enough collaboration with the industry.

Remember this article is not written by a cynic who knows nothing about PhD but by a PhD student himself. So if u r a patriotic-minded Indian (which I am), and u r thinking about PhD, do think again!!

My First Love

I was in class IX then. Our school had several sections in every standard. In class IX, the sections were reorganized on the basis of additional subjects. So the section had many faces new to me. Among them was a girl, about my height, very fair in complexion and a stunningly beautiful face. Her seat was not far from mine, but we had not talked in the first few months. While I thought she was beautiful, i had felt no particular attraction towards her.

31st july 2000. There was a Bangla Bandh, and just 8 of the 62 students in the class turned up. Among them she was there. The class hour had not yet begun. The 8 students were scattered around the classroom. I was standing, somewhat absent-minded near the door. Suddenly i heard from behind me, "Had the class teacher given some homework for today?" I turned and saw that it was she. Somewhat taken aback that she suddenly spoke to me, I replied that she had not. But then the class teacher entered the class, and

we stopped. No class was held that day because of the scant attendance, the students just spent the day chatting. She sat in the bench in front of me, and was taking history notes from another boy's notebook. While the other 6 students huddled around the rear part of the classroom and played Dumb Charades, she spoke to me while writing. We chatted for a long time. At length the slow and workless day came to an end. As I walked home, I was replaying in my mind the moments spent with her. I felt nothing special, but thoroughly enjoyed it. Over the next few days I did not get a chance to speak with her, but kept looking forward to talking to her again. The chance came after 10 days. She was showing me what a careless mistake she had done in the Maths test. But after that the Half-Yearly exams started, and everyone got busy with the huge syllabus. The test was tough, specially mechanics. During the exam days i saw her once in the corridor, but she did not see me and walked past me. But on september 8, when the classes resumed, i raninto her again. She smiled gleefully at me, and we had a long banterful chat. By now the feeling had crept within me. I knew for sure i was longing to talk to her all the time, and knew that she enjoyed my company. However i wanted to be cautious not to overdo things. We spoke several times in september, but then the exam results came out. I had performed well, in fact topped the class. But unfortunately her performance was very bad. I felt a bit embarassed to talk to her by myself, and waited till she talked to me. The school would remain closed for a month (for Puja) in October. Before the vacation started, as per traditions, a party was to be arranged in the class. It included food and a couple of dramas by students. I loved acting, and chose to participate in a bengali drama by Sukumar Ray. The day before the party, she waved to me, and asked me about  the drama and my role. I was happy, and even more happier the next day after the drama when she congratulated me for my performance! Then came the Pujas. Every year I visited lots of pandals in South Kolkata. It was, for me, an opportunity to walk the roads and discover the geography of the city, which was (and still is) one of my passions. On the closing day of Puja, I decided to go to a famous pandal. It was located in an area whose geography seemed particularly attractive to me. But another reason was that I had known that she lived somewhere in that area. Of course I had no idea where exactly she lived, and the odds of seeing her in the crowds of Puja was ridiculously low. Nevertheless I went around building castles in the air of me running into her during the Puja.

6th October, 2000. Kolkata was at its festive best. The drums were beating at every pandal. In the evening, i set out for the pandal with my dad. We walked through several pandals, and moved close to the main pandal i wanted. We saw a puja and walked towards it. A crowd had gathered in front of the pandal. In the pandal some musical program was going on. As we moved towards the pandal, i somehow turned left towards some people sitting on chairs, and guess what!!!!!! She was sitting there, right in front of my eyes!!!! My heart beat so fast that i literally felt unwell. I hopped-and-ran towards her, and greeted her. We spoke for a couple of minutes, but since my father was there, i had to leave with him. But i was completely dazed and stupefied. I was finding it hard to talk. It had been nothing short of a miracle. And i thought, if such a miracle can happen, then surely we are made for each other. Even on returning home i was still dazed, and i was somewhat afraid that parents would notice my abnormal behavior. I dreamt of the incident in my sleep. The next day i went to my uncle's place, where my cousins were also there. And there was a match- India vs Australia in Champion's Trophy 2000. Even sitting with my cousins before the TV, watching Yuvraj's classy innings and Zaheer yorking out Steve Waugh, i was mentally replaying the incident all through. The puja vacation passed, and classes  resumed. Through November and December i spoke to her regularly. We were now good friends. I was determined to make the approach. I had never felt like this for any girls. Though talk of affairs was common in class, there were not many affairs going on in the class. So it would be quite a novel thing. I decided not to rush things but take steps steadily. The first major step would be to gift her a card on New Year's Day.

2nd Jan 2001. I came to class with the card. I had cards for a few more friends as well, and i gave those away to the intended recipients. And then, during the lunch break, i finally got a chance to talk to her. After speaking a couple of minutes, i took the card and gave it to her. She was completely stunned for a second, as if finding hard to believe what was going on. Then she almost screamed out in joy or whatever emotion as she took the card. But i was embarrassed beyond hell. I knew immediately from her reaction that she has got the message already, which was not what i wanted. i wasn't prepared for this; i had not meant the card to be a proposal. i understood that i had blushed completely, and i could stand there no longer in embarrasment, i rushed out of the class.

What happenned after that? the news spread like wild fire, and was known to almost the entire school. i was unable to digest the fact that such a gossip was being created about me. i was embarrassed and even ashamed that i had done such a thing. I fought with myself for two months, trying to free myself of her infatuation. I never proposed or made any other move to her later, but we remained good friends for the rest of the school life. We lost contact after school, and despite searching for her on social networks i never found her. There were a couple of reunions of the schoolmates, but she did not turn up. It was only as late as 2010 that i finally found her on facebook, and then on orkut. But by then she was engaged, and soon she was married and moved abroad with her husband. I am still here, hopelessly single.