And it is that time of the year in colleges where they force you into some Symposium or Technical Conference in the name of ‘Extra Curricular Activity’. They don’t just stop there. They want you to suffer the insufferable, make you attend that two day pathetic event compulsorily, you know, just to fill in the seats in the auditorium and to listen to some inspiring speakers who can put a droning engine to shame. We have a two day national conference on Signal Processing and VLSI. They are amazing topics, but made quite difficult to understand by our dedicated staff. And what happens when you attend that conference? You don’t even want to know. There’s a lot of amusing things that precede such events. People avoiding certain lecturer’s class by requesting OD statuses, people banging their heads off preparing notes for compering sessions or coming up with ridiculously bombastic/flawed/verbose speeches for themselves or prepared for a HOD who pronounces ‘Performance’ as ‘Ferformance’ or ‘Speed’ as ‘Sfeed’. You see, they want to sound sophisticated in front of that gathering. They don’t really admit that they sound pretentious and come off as jackasses.

Apart from boring guest lectures, I can name two things that always irk me. One, singing a Tamil Thai Vazhuthu (a short prayer praising Tamil?) and two, girls asked to look more ridiculous in traditional costumes to wait in the lobby to welcome the dignitaries in. I don’t know why they have to start a technical event with a prayer praising Tamil. It’s all right to be religious but shouldn’t they have a prayer that everyone can understand or one that is less suggestive of linguistic discrimination. Seriously, you’d have to see those non-Tamil students’ faces. Priceless. And is it really necessary for those girls to welcome them dignitaries in the lobby? They just have to stand there and look pretty, waiting impatiently, tugging and smoothing their sarees. And it is a heavily contested job too, I’m told. Isn’t this one of those gender discriminating acts those women groups should consider taking up?