Identity

Individuality is no less than a definitive feature of Independence, ensuing growth and prosperity; and identity is the basis of individuality. Without an identity, there can be no Individuality, noIndependence and no progress.

The identity of our beloved campus has been seeded, nurtured and cocooned by our mother campus BITS Pilani, to whom we shall be forever indebted hence grateful. We have been bosomed with bountiful love and patronizing care. The dutiful, condescending restriction, in the name of brand preservation has inevitably taken its toll on our freedom of expression.

More than one of us feels stifled under this throttling protection called the “BITS Pilani brand name.” We feel the need to establish ourselves as an individual, self sufficient and robust institute, a sovereign vital entity, not an ailing, dwarfed sidekick of an antecedently established University.

Bottom-line: We need to be proud of our campus, for what it is. Stunted, slipshod, maligned or vulnerable Goa Campus is still ours. It is our responsible, almost patriotic sense of faithfulness that will always wish the best for our campus, no matter how dissatisfied or disillusioned we may become. We have lived with and through BITS Goa’s problems, its problems are our problems, its glory is our own.

During sleepless nights and boring lectures, over Cold Coffee at Ice ’n’ Spice or abominable mess food, whilst watching football matches together in the common room and cramming formulae in the library, we have discussed and dissected every discernible aspect of our college. From the Quality of the mess food to the quality of Manchester United’s defense, to the quality of girls on campus, we have debated on them all. Our opinions are collectively shaped, our perspectives widened and our knowledge and awareness heightened. For the length of the semester on campus, and inescapably otherwise, our personalities are molded and modeled by our dear campus. Our campus provides us our knowledge, skill-set and values, our own identity, our position in the worldly scheme of things. We, in turn shape the image of our campus, contribute to its reputation and strive to build its prestige. We sell our campus not only to our festival sponsors and Alumni, but also to our friends, family and ourselves. We incessantly strive to make real Ashish Garg’s words, “BITS Goa is just as good, if not better and BITS Pilani”

Why then, must the identity of our campus itself be mistaken as that of its mother campus, which has had little or no bearing on our present persona? Why must we borrow our identity from another campus when we possess one of our own, a vivid, robust one at that? Do we still need to be in the shadows of our parent campus when we can rise and shine of our own accord? Rise and shine is, incidentally, what we have done and are continuing to do, axiomatically, almost subconsciously.

What we must realize is that we are, by no means, an adopted stepchild of our mother campus. In fact, we are just as rich and diverse, whether in terms of sheer student talent, clubs, department, associations as well as national level Cultural, Technical and Sports festivals. In a direct, blatant comparison, Goa Campus is much better planned, more scenic and better connected by road, rail and air. The experience of the chilled-out Goan culture, the numerous beaches, forts and scenic hang-out spots place any Goan college apart from just about anywhere else in India, let alone a state-of-the-art institute of Technological excellence; not to forget the exotic seafood and most importantly, essential indulgences at outrageously cheap prices.

We have adopted a sound and coherent departmental and coordination committee structure atGoa that works synchronously and seamlessly, and is constantly setting benchmarks for other colleges, certainly even our mother campus to emulate. Make no mistake about it, Quark and Waves are fast growing bigger than Apogee and Oasis ever were. They may have the experience and consequent establishment through convention, but we have the exuberance of youth, and the momentum of an unflagging pursuit for improvement, tending to excellence.

We may not (yet) be at par in terms of sheer numbers in faculty, e-journal subscriptions, electives as well as placements and Practice School, but what the hell – you cannot have it all! We must remember our campus is but five years old, things can only, only get better from here.

Finally yet importantly, we have tremendous unity and trust among students, not only intra-hostel but also spanning over all hostels, batches and branches. This fact has evidently been manifested more than once, most notably, in what is deemed the BITS-Goa Independence Day, lovingly christened The Maggi Revolution (having symbolic as well as literal implications). Our associations have strengthened through mutual interests (or lack of it) – the hours spent expelling potent, profane interjections on DC mainchat, through evenings spent playing games at SAC or hanging out at Nescafe, through the nights spent (placebo-lically studying) fervently discussing and analyzing football, girls/guys, the campus and ironies of life in general. We have formed mutually inseparable bonds whilst playing, studying, eating and (sometimes) even sleeping together (no pun intended).

How then, can we even think of condemning our campus, our self-constructed realm, our haven by right? Is it not just brilliantly, precisely the way we have wanted and made it to be? Why then would we want to consider any other institute, let alone a Pilani, as superior to our own? It is time we put our thought and belief into action and live by our motto, which rightfully is “Proud to be a BITSGian.” It is time people know our campus as BITS-Goa, in independent identity, take notice of us for what we are, not our parent institute lying in a desert land some thousand miles away.

Galaxalization

We might not have come such a long way after all. From the Stone Age to the nano age, from spears to nuclear warheads, from jagged paintings on brown cave walls to catalogued digital imaging, from tracking partly eroded footprints to inventing global position systems, from the barter system to globalization.

Eventually, we would meet a multitude of creatures from other solar systems and galaxies, living in different planets. It has significant probability to happen given the relentless levels of options and possibilities - folks of our planet endure during life. The levels of technology themselves, while changing and giving a direction to the quality of life, shall let us come in virtual contact with other, for lack of a better word, aliens. The aliens would meet, sizing each other up, like an endless ritual of wolves. Soon, deals would be made, boundaries drawn, constitutions written, alliances pledged and invasions waged. The world would no longer be our only world. Hypocrites might, however, continue to exist, the battle of individualists and collectivists could continue.

Trans-galactic corporations might come into existence. Or at least we would come to know that a lot of trans-galactic corporations already exist. Every sphere of knowledge, ranging from science to art, philosophy to literature, mathematics to astral physics would undergo a gargantuan change - monolithic in its existence that entire civilizations of species across the universe would get wiped out, eerily extinct making other species flourish, thereby creating a new circle of survival. Some details would be chronicled in the golden annuls of history. Most of them would be forgotten. 38 new species of monster-like-fish have been discovered in Greenland in 2010. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/photogalleries/100421-new-fish-species-strange-greenland-pictures/

The definition and scope of tourism would change radically. A variety of things, places and people would be discovered, invented and pulverised with ample freedom and gore. Multi-galactic cultures would then lead to various new species, which, in turn would coalesce, inadvertently into mere races. Corporations and firms would span galaxies. Rules would be relaxed, constitutions re-written, laws modified. A zillion genres of music would emerge into colors we haven’t seen till date. Terabytes would be a trifle.

Dreams would be different.



Computers and robots would be capable of interpreting and processing yottabytes of data. Students from Cygnus would be drinking Absinthe with students from Milky Way. A guy from Andromeda hitting on an Indian girl living in the Black Eye galaxy, Sculptors from Reinmuth travelling to Perseus to carve a gold stone into a creature with brown eyes. A drug peddler in Maffei galaxy smoking up a jaded bong might get caught by the unruly cops from Keenan’s.
As a matter of a jagged edge of unruly fact, with the laws of evolution in place (with all its negatives), the clumsy end of a confused world is not nearly seen. However, a 1.2 kilogram cerebrum inside a head sees more. Things we haven’t thought of till date, things we did not know existed.

I do not know what I would be doing. I wouldn't mind owning a private galaxy, moving around on a Billion CC motorcycle in space, living in a well-ventilated, strategically located solar system. Living in a stone house overlooking a purple waterfall in a strange, wild country of a colourful planet, modelling warp speed models and listening to thoguza music with under green skies, blue earth, purple water and soft soil.

It is a world of possibilities.

It is left to us what we decide for ourselves. If you wake up at a different place as a different person, would you still be the same person?

I welcome galaxalization. Any aliens out there deciphering this post... let us not have any unpleasant surprises.

You tubed!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAvugZbbK4k

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL

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A trip down the memory lane...

It pays to have a sweet school junior. He handed over his cycle keys to me and I
cruised around on the roads all along the campus. My closeness to profs was
always a double edged sword. I knew every single road and where it led, yet I
could not take the shortcuts to MB through them as next day I would be grilled
mercilessly. :-) I have seen very few sunrises in my life and the one at Gliding
Club remains amongst my favourites. But to be there without a Tam chemicalite, a
bong from shillong and a Mallu mimer would be unfair. The Reunion would be there
for that.

In a series of six brilliant personal posts, Madhurjya (Banjo) takes us on a walk down the memory lane. Oh, how I miss those things... A must read for all!

A Trip Down Memory Lane - I,
II – The Places, III – The People, IV – The BITSians, V – The Food, VI – The Epilogue

On the same note, here's about a small trip I made to Pilani last week: A Quick Trip to Pilani

The goan wave

Well it has been a long time since somebody blogged here . So i thought why not refresh the blog with some fresh new ideas and what could have been better than a post about the new campus of bits at goa .

started in 2004 this was the second campus of the prestigious BITS-Pilani university Rajasthan . A bustling batch of 600 had joined Bits in the sand of another kind . Soon Oasis became Waves and Apogee became Quark.today the campus has 1800 students and its first batch going for placements soon this year.

A normal bitsian from goa has to adapt to one thing . Those curious glances from family friends and relatives . A normal conversation between a Bitsian from goa and Distant relative (DR) goes on like this

Distant Relative : So where do you study ?
Bitsian ( proudly ) : Bits
DR : huh what you doing in goa , there is a Bits in goa , how strange ... blah blah blah

and soon you join his list not so worthy youngsters . But Probably every person here had made the choice of this life . All the people here left some NIT or an IIT or some foriegn university . All of them came here just on the name of BITS and all of them wanted to be a part of evolution of this body of BITS ...... BITS- pilani, goa.


well once the first hurdle is crossed , campus is actually very good . All the classrooms are a/c and students have single seated rooms right from first year . In place of c'not there is nescafe and monginis here and ofcourse our very own insti and sc cafe .

there is no ANC because actually you have to be back in your hostels by 11 PM . so all the hopes of that goan night life are thrashed . the students have there own student council , the annual cultural fest Waves in which pilani came this year . The annual technical festival Quark , the annual sports festival spree and finally the annual inter hostel cultural competition zephyr .

All the cultural clubs are working in the campus apart from the campus has its own Centre for software development (CSD) and CEl .

the academic system is same as pilani with all its flexibilities .Bits - pilani , goa is probably the only place in india apart from pilani itself where you will hear so much usage of the word pilani . About the campus lingo it is developing slowly because of main chat on the direct connect client where you will find the whole campus discussing on some topic . right now its OB that half of the people in my batch would be thinking about the experience at ps1 which might range from bestest to thuest .


The campus has its own share of technical achievements . whether coming 5 in techfest at IIT Bombay or winning 2nd prize at Microsoft Imagine Cup . it has kept the flag of BITS flying high.


btw if you wanna tour our campus do visit www.bits360.com
signing off now
more about the campus later

BITS ranked sixth in Top 100 engineering colleges -Outlook Version.

The link to the actual article is here:

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20060717&fname=Cover+Story&sid=5