The Art of Bullshittin'







Disclaimer: The following piece is purely a work of fiction. All the characters and gods mentioned are purely imaginary.
This piece is dedicated to the stalwarts of the faculty at our very own dattu.


For years we toiled, sweat and blood and grime, over our textbooks and vmc-packages, with single-minded devotion. We had a dream, a dream to walk through the golden gates of an IIT with our heads held high and full of **. But, oddly enough, the same dream was shared by around 5 lakh other students and the gods played dice, defying Einstein and our dreams met the same fate as SRK's Ra.One. It crashed and boomed.

Ah, nevermind, said my parents, while you're still in delhi, dattu is the best option! Some say it is even better than IIT. So, as all the aunties and uncles 'oooohed' and 'aaaahed', I packed my bags and landed in Bawanaland.


I'm not trying to brag here, but the campus is *boom* beautiful! My parents were ecstatic!

But, but, but- college ain't done strolling in the greens. It's the *education*. So, I walked in the classroom wanting to be thrilled by Dattu and all its hullabaloo.

Scene 1:

In walks a teacher, all suited-and-booted, looking all business.
(But did he mean business?)

He sweeps the room with a well-practiced eye and asks, with a well-practiced air,' what subject am I supposed to teach?'
'eh,sir,engineering blabla...'

'oh, and what's that about?'

Okay, so, we're screwed.

If nobody knows anything about the subject and what it entails, how're we supposed to take the exam?
No problem, sermoned the seniors, write any bull-crap, hell, write a song or the day's news, and he'll mark you well.

So we did that. And passed.

Scene 2:

'..so you see nobody is perfect, nobody has perfect knowledge of any subject. It might be that you know better than me..'

On and on rambled the teacher.
Clueless about the subject, shamelessly admitting it and still expecting us to listen to him.

'..so the problem with iron is that it rusts, but gold does not rust. So, would you make your shit-pots with gold? You, there, would you?'

'Eh, no, sir..'


'Why?'
'Uhhmm, because it costs a fortune, sir..'

'Excellent! See this is the spirit I want! This spirit of inquisitiveness is.... blablablablabla zzzzzzzzzzz...'

Scene 3:

I'm hiding behind a pillar. The teacher spotted me! But thank god for the pillar. *whew*

He is walking towards the class! Now I can safely go and sit at Nescafe. I gingerly give up my hiding place and walk out. But just as I step out, he turns around, right outside the classroom door and stares squarely at me. Scuttle back to the pillar, peek at him from the other side and lo, he's peeking back at me! After two minutes of hide and seek, he's still standing there, looking out for me. I slump resignedly and walk to class.

Now don't judge me here!I am a *sincere* student but the teacher in question was unsufferable!He had gift, a gift of speech, of meticulously choosing the most serious sounding words, churning them around in his high pitched voice and converting them into complete garbage. Also, he could bore you to death after having inflicted upon you the seriousness if all the moral sins you had committed by not appearing within the first ten minutes of his all-important lecture.

I learnt the existence of a frictionless passage for sound waves between my ears through him.

Scene 4:
The class is filled to the hilt (not a problem, considering the number of benches and the actual strength). A small-ish old-ish man is jumping excitedly in the front, performing a kind of break dance with his limbs. I cannot comprehend the point he is trying to make, so I look around to see what my fellow classmates are up to. The first bencher has his head between his hands and is...sleeping! Right under the teacher's nose! The ones behind him are completing their files. I scan the whole room and find that not even a single ear is taking in a word of what the little man is saying. What's more, the little man isn't even bothered about it! It wouldn't have made a difference if the class was empty! I strain my ears to get what exactly he's saying. He's briefing about the topics in the book. Oh he's skipping the numericals and the derivations. Those mustn't be imporant.

Hmph. What a sorry looking poor creature this teacher is, I say to myself.

A month later, after the end semester exams, I'm ready to cut his head off ( Game of Thrones style). The sly devil, our very own sadistic Bob Biswas.
I could go on and on about the atrocities committed by our wonderful 'all-knowing' professors, but I have to save some of the bullshitting from the upcoming exams. It might have become blatantly obvious fot my readers that I'm suffering from the trauma of disillusionment caused by the bursting of the bubble titled 'Engineering Studies'.

Ah, but I guess we'll be encountering such responsibility-shirkers in all realms of life. So, thank you, Dattu for helping me prepare for the rest of the muck out there.












6 comments:

  1. Humorous you are; thank you for this! :D
    Loved everything about this from "oddly enough, the same dream was shared by around 5 lakh other students and the gods played dice" to the SO REAL ("REAL" in bold and italics and in a coloured font and enlarged font size) "all suited-and-booted" and the whole of Scene 2, and then the "small-ish old-ish man is jumping excitedly in the front". You made me laugh all through.

    Marvellous! :D

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  2. The story of almost(being modest enough) every engineering college.. And this continues........ :P

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  3. Thanks Tanay :D Glad it helped in relieving some of the stress :)

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  4. PromitA : Guess that's true!

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  5. A real pity what our educators have come to.Nice post.

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  6. There are good and bad people in every profession.

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