Surging Bhubaneswar Remains a Step Behind

Ref: The TOI, dated March 27, 2011

Orissa’s Capital is emerging as a one of the fastest growing two tier cities from being a sleepy state capital housing government babus, but it still lacks the amenities and comforts of a modern day metropolitan. Here, we take a look at the hurdles that come in the way of the City of Temples from booming into a cosmopolitan city.

1.    Commuting Chaos: The public transport system is in total disarray. Travelling by public transport is outlandish and people here try to avoid it as far as possible if they can afford their own vehicle. Overcrowded shared autos plying on fixed routes and having fixed bargain-free fares are the crux of public transport in the city. In October 2010, 60 vibrant green City Buses started running under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission on the city roads. But, given the rush hour dominated by everyday commuters, especially students (from the infinite Engineering and other colleges in the city), the rate of buses running is too less. Compared to the bus fares the autorikshaws are being ignored thanks to their outrageous fares, forcing them to further hike the charge. And we students have to wait for hours on end for a fully overloaded bus to pass us before we complainingly tread towards the paan-chewing red toothed autowallahs to bargain. Ours being a comparatively inactive route, we are the ones who bear the brunt of anticipating that the oncoming bus would have a few seats empty. It often leads to misery.


Real Estate developers declare it may be less than a year before the city gets its first multiplex. We students just can’t wait for the good news.
A sizeable population of the workforce toils 9 to 5 on a daily basis but nightlife in the city leaves much to be desired for. Much so for the countless students on the constant lookout for rave parties, we often have to routinely tread dolefully to the handpicked less than 10 discotheques and pubs, most of them in plush hotels. There are even fewer dec ent restraints here offering agreeable dining. The city doesn’t even have good fast food courts. What a woe for us students, having to endure the tormenting hostel platter every day. Even the days when the food seems unfit for human consumption, we have to rely upon timeless roadside dhabas serving lip smacking dalda-rich masaledaar chicken paratha and rolls, which may lead to terrible indigestion later. Parents would never approve of this but who cares. Tummy khush to mummy bhi khush!!

2.    No Multiplexes in sight: Multiplexes are proliferating by the dozen not only in metros but also in comparatively quainter cities like Ranchi and Dhanbad. But a multiplex is a far off dream in Bhubaneswar as of now. Though shopping malls have come up in different parts of the city over the past few years, which are today throbbed by the young and old, none of them boast of multiple cinema screens vis a vis  big names like Inox or Fame. “It’s surprising that a city with a plethora of teenagers yet doesn’t boast of a good multiplex. No wonder Gen Next is attracted to cities like Gurgaon, Noida and Hyderabad which have more than one multiplex in the offering”, says the general student crowd.

3.    Where does one unwind? Except if you are an old school who rejunvates in cramped and outdated city parks at the end of an arduous and humid day, the city is a terrible bore for you.

4.    No Convention Centres: There are no hotels or standalone enterprise offering convention centres with superior facilities to hot national and international conferences. There are a few not so capacious halls, one in Pal Heights hotel and another in KIIT University, but these venues have their own boundaries and large gatherings cannot conglomerate there. However, this shortcoming is not going to be attended to in a hurry, as the BDA have “other priorities in our already busy calendar”.

5.    International Airport yet to take off: Imagine the plight of one of the fastest developing states; it doesn’t have an international airport. The closest international airport is the Dumdum International in Kolkata, 500 kilometers away. The Airports Authority of India (AAI) had declared it would modify the existing Biju Pattnaik National Airport into an integrated international airport complex in the city. An investment of Rs 250 crore was planned and the project was to be concluded by 2010. But the government is yet to finalize the land for upgrading the airport. Without an international airport, how can we attract the foreign lands to the Temple City?

Thus, if we were to prepare a Public Report Card for the city, there would be an array of Wishes and Realities. Hope the government or the BDA can hear our pleas and make the public feel better and proud of living in the city called Bhubaneswar. Personally, being from the high-end town of Jamshedpur, I have my own questionnaire set for the government and my own wish list for my home for the four years of my engineering life. It’s true that we fall miserably short of opportunities accessible to the metropolitan students, but making full use of the available comforts, Bhubaneswar isn’t too bad a city to live in. After all, it has given me a lot. More on that later. :)

A Week in the Life of a ‘Mecha’nical ‘Stud’ent

The year 2050 – the two broad races, Mechas and Orgas dominate the earth. Mechas, or the machines and Orgas, the organic beings. The two races work in tandem dedicatedly laboring together to survive in the last few years of the Earth’s existence….
Cut to 2009, a completely different scenario. Ishan is a mechanical engineering student at ITER, Bhubaneswar. Nicknamed ‘Mecha Studs’, students like him are forced to labor in the same way their successors will work decades hence, completely unknown to them.
Monday morning blues brings with itself a host of woeful mornings where the alarm snoozes for the nth time before Ishan finally gets up, gets ready in a huff fulfilling his morning chores and prepares to face the daunting week ahead of him. A mutilated pathway full of potholes and iron rods dug in the earth, probably gearing up for a building above it, along with a gaping hole in one corner (giving the appearance of a meteor crash) and an unfinished football field is to be crossed before he finally reaches F-block, the abode of first year classes.
English for communication class greets the sleepyheads. A good-for-nothing hour for many. Ishan however sits unperturbed, reclined beside his favorite window overlooking the vast stretches of rural Bhubaneswar. Malvika ma’am tries her best to fill the voids sitting pretty atop our necks with the 7 C’s of Communication, although ‘chatter’ is the only ‘C’ we seem to have understood. Then enters Sarita ma’am and along with her a fresh wave of drowsiness for backbenchers. Generations of computers come and go but Ishan is eyeing all the pretty faces in the corridor. Physics finally gets us up and about as Parida Sir’s booming overtone sends even the professionals into a tizzy as he picks on his favorite ‘targets’ and bombards them with questions.
After a bland and tasteless lunch in the mess, Ishan is back in the F-block, this time in the EDCG lab. Some evil eye has probably eyed Ishan’s seat and he is sure to be punished yet again today for some reason oblivious to him. An hour later he can be seen hitting some laps in the basketball court or smashing in the badminton arena. Thus his first day draws to a close.
Tuesday is greeted with the Basic Electrical Engineering Lab. Often found huddled in groups of eight, mechas perform experiments with bigger bulbs, tubes and larger than life ammeters and voltmeters. Most of the time is taken up in writing the lengthy records, only to end up with a ‘B’ or ‘C’. ‘Better’ and ‘Can be Better’, claims Ishan. ‘D’ is dumb and ‘E’ signifies eccentrics. The rest is left to the imagination of the reader.
Sahoo Sir, our flamboyant Maths lecturer is full of life as he teaches us different methods to manipulate a poor differential equation and attack it from different angles to solve and eventually end up with the same answer through all processes. Any homework from ‘Kreyszig Book’ is ignored for the evening, to be copied the next day from a dedicated student who sits in the front benches every day.
S Pati Sir’s ever smiling face unfortunately is unable to feed basic components of an electric circuit into our brain’s nerve cells. A three hour long sultry Computer Lab follows where the A/C remains switched off for unknown reasons. The computer remains defunct for a complete hour and when they do function, our hands on the keyboard don’t. Ishan completes his assignment programs in record time and then tries to connect to the internet, but in vain….
Thursday’s free first half is a welcome respite from the arduous three days of college. When Ishan finally greets the morning sun, it is already overhead. All pending homework and assignments are given a cursory glance before being dumped back into the bag. A thorough holiday mood is painfully interrupted by the reminder that there are classes still to do today.
Friday brings the most dreaded three hours of a mecha’s week – the EC Lab. Terrified guys and girls curse their luck in the comfortably air conditioned lab as their names are called out and they make their way to the centre stage followed by seventy odd pairs of eyes. Shaking legs and trembling hands supported by an equally numb throat as words fail that pitiful soul. However, few like Ishan do make full use of the stage and leave a good impression on the teacher. The session finally ends as cold feet and relieved faces rush out, the euphoria dying within seconds.
 Saturday’s Physics Lab is perhaps the only period where studs actually seem to be concentrating. The sonometres and compound pendulums and travelling microscopes which nobody can figure out to work on at least keep their lips firmly sealed. A readymade lab record saves time to be utilized in examining each part of the apparatuses. So exhausted are we at the end of the week that the next three classes pass of in a blur with most of the backbenches occupied by sleepyheads, satisfying their tired minds.
Thus we surrender ourselves to six days at ITER. Six days spent in room 308, exchanging Bluetooth videos, playing mobile games, finishing water bottles in one gulp (usually borrowed from our lady friends) and doing various activities oblivious to the eyes of the teacher. They leave something to be desired for the next week. Sundays are the most dormant days as all activity comes to a standstill and beds are occupied for a major part of the day. When the books are opened or pages turned remains a mystery, but that’s college life. At ITER, the four years will pass at their own pace and when they will, these memories will call us back to the corridors, wanting to be stepped upon and hear the exciting murmurs of the ‘mecha studs’….

Well done, thou faithful servant…

He stared helplessly, paranoid, at the pile of blood and human flesh that once was his master, Satyam. He’d unscrupulously butchered his master’s head and body with the broken, jagged end of the whisky bottle he’d been gifted. Drenched in sweat, he stood with the corpse, bewildered.

He’d been selected for the scholarship from among 150 other candidates from the tiny village school. Showing exceptional excellence in academics, the lanky boy who could’ve anytime been mistaken for a country bumpkin was a rare breed, remarked the principal. That night, his impoverished grandmother, his only family, cooked rice and chicken curry for her superstar grandson.

Avoiding everybody else’s eyes, he and his master in tow headed for the car. The silver briefcase was handcuffed to Satyam’s hands. Silently they left the apartment complex and without a word he raced to 120 kmph once they were on the highway. As per prior instructions, he was supposed to reach the airport. The detour had been taken keeping an iron heart. If only he hadn’t seen the diary. A split second decision led him to the new yet unused bridge. “A flat tyre”, he exclaimed, jumping out. As soon as Satyam bent down to investigate the cleverly put decoy,..

A deafening crash, followed by shards of glass everywhere..

“The time has come, Parvati, for you to repay the debt. We’re sorry for your daughter’s untimely death but business is very bad these days. We can’t compromise on the growing costs, can we? Try to understand, Parvati…” And so his lodging was shifted to Ramdas’ outhouse, oblivious to him, to serve his new master all his life. All for his mother’s marriage to a drunkard, who had murdered her before laying himself on a track seeing an oncoming train.

That evening he’d inconspicuously seen Satyam carrying the silver briefcase discreetly into his black Honda Accord. Earlier that afternoon Satyam was unmistakably looking too agitated for words. Pacing about his room, ears to the phone and an uninterrupted flow of tense words; anybody could presume things weren’t actually going well. He stole a glance at the silver briefcase when he entered with his lunch and gaped astonished at the neatly piled crisp currency notes.

The landlord Ramdas took him as his driver. His son Satyam had just returned from Tokyo and had established a booming iron ore business here. He would be wanted for transporting Satyam to his office and back. And within a few months both servant and master had developed a strong bond. Both shared their life’s tales, mostly the pathos he had faced in his troubled youth. Satyam understood him well. My grandma sold me off to this caring master, he thought with chagrin.

Satyam trusted him now. Having been his driver for six long years, he’d won Satyam’s trust due to his own merit. Faithfully taking him everywhere, being punctual, not misusing the freedom given to him in the luxurious car; no matter other drivers conspired jealously seeing him steer the Accord. He lived in the storeroom inside his master’s house, ate with him, did small errands and even pressed his master’s feet while he slept. Hence, being in Satyam’s bedroom wasn’t very embarrassing for him. Like he served his master lunch every afternoon, he’d entered unassumingly sensing his dear master’s troubled mood.

That’s when the silver matte had caught his eye.

He flipped through the pages of the silver diary in his room. He had stolen it from right under his master’s unaware eyes. Exquisitely fashioned covers hid one of the deepest darkest secrets that had been kept from him. His grandfather, Ramdas, had killed his daughter in law to amass her entire wealth. He had then kicked his wife out to live comfortably with his only son. It had been stated with pride. That was when the whole plan had been conspired.

He would destroy Ramdas. He would win the confidence of his son, his life, for whom he had faced all those traumatic years living alone. Then, slowly, like a dangerous poison, he would kill him. He would avenge his family’s end the in the same way. He would put an end to his tormentor.

He would remain his master’s faithful servant.

Life

"Why do you have to go and make things so complicated?

I see the way you're

Acting like you're somebody else gets me frustrated

Life's like this, you

And you fall and you crawl

And you break and you take

What you get and you turn it into

Honesty Promise me I'm never gonna find you fake it.."

- Avril Lavigne (Complicated)

Been there, heard those age old clichés. Life is short, live it to the max. Life is a complicated puzzle, face an obstacle at every altitude to continue climbing still. We love to drum our feet whenever Avril croons "life's like this, and you fall and you crawl..promise me I'm never gonna find you fake it". Nevertheless, there's a whole lot of fun and awesomeness (quoting my all time fav., Barney Stinson) out there.

A regular example to start with, being an engineering student I have never imagined Life as a guitar whose strings we can strum all day long and still not worry about time. Everyday we have scores of  glitches to deal with, kicking off the momment we kick off our blankets much aggravated by the dolorous alarm clock. Cries of the water supply's suspension adds to the woes of not finding a single cubicle empty. If you can contain over 300 students in a single hostel, any consultant will charge you a hefty amount for advising you to add a few more bathrooms.

SMSes have become an integral part of a student's life. More on this later, but a particular forward exclaims, "Galileo invented the telescope, Bell invented the telephone..but who the hell invented studies, search for him. We students have to settle a score!" I empathize. Studies are incarnate to engineering students. But it calls for feelings of shrinking away for many my kind. Hours and hours of theory classes make way for neuralgia, and labs rheumatism for all. Comical, how despicable studies have become for us; they are associated with bodily flaws. The wicked Vivas invite further disdain from us. Professors who seem to be so ridiculous

in class suddenly become so scholarly and knowledgeable during viva. Eventually its us who cannot tackle the googlys and doosras of complex, out of the syllabus questions and sit forlorn seeing the B or C against our names. My catalogue of stuffs to do away with in college contains vivas and a lot more.

Thank God for free SMSes! Genuinely, this is one feature that has kept me alive during the taxing hours of my student life. Highly disparaged by my parents as an addiction, I have always had this notion of it being so much more safer than may be alcohol. If there was a championship for the fastest texter, I would for sure enlist myself as a worthy competitor. Hours and hours of exercising my fingers on the keypad exchanging parallel thoughts on cheating in exams, where to hang out the evening, whose assignment to be copied, number of hours online the last night and so forth has brought about this talent in me.

Facebook, thank you Mr. Zuckerberg, has to be the prime attention grabber for the contemporary student. Our life orbits around it. A satirical joke I read on a page spoke of a lady asking her maid the reason of her absence the past few days. The maid retorts updating her status on her Facebook page about her leave, and that it had even been liked and commented by the master! With the plethora of applications being uploaded everyday, the incident above might become a stark reality. We have pages which display our top (Facebook) friends and this often leads to the undisplayed friends being seriously offended. A status reads a fact or statistic and following the string of comment threads, we end up knowing what a particular girl had for dinner and when another was reaching home! Another idiosyncrasy I observed was gender discrimination on statuses. A girl was missing home and this was liked by more than a ton, with an equal number of sympathizing comments, "we are with you!", "don't worry dear i feel the same!" and the most infuriating

of all, "awwww!". The very same status by a guy had 2 likes, and a single comment, "abey bakwas karna band kar aur jaake exams ke liye padh!". Still this fails to deter us from updating something on our walls each day, liking whatever that comes our way, exercising our right to speech by commenting on every status or photo, the list goes on.

Hence life rolls on for us. A million thoughts flash in my mind throughout the course of every arduous day, and when I finally decide to call it a day, I tend to recapitulate on the events which concerned me. However a small setback is all that it takes to deter us from moving ahead with full steam. Therein lies the Secret, the Law of Attraction. Lets just uncomplicate life and see what miracles it holds for us. Bare necessities are the essence of a gratifying day. I, for once, realized how easy it is when recently, my dad was with me on his birthday, and both of us were away from home. Still, a surprisingly delicious and attractive birthday cake from me followed by the best Chinese meal money can buy made for a great birthday party. Smiles were abundant when this was discussed back home, but the most rewarding smile came from dad himself. People all around me get bowed down by hurdles, and these two words are all I have for them: Let's Uncomplicate, and see for yourself how the hurdle fades away. So until next time, I give you the following words without which I don't start my day (actually, its on a poster in my room, so literally!)

Go ahead. Take chances. Tell the truth. Date someone totally wrong for you. Say NO. Spend all your cash. Get to know some one random. Be random. Say I love you. Sing out loud. Laugh at stupid jokes. Cry. Apologize. Tell someone how much they mean to you. Tell a jerk what you think. Laugh until your stomach hurts. Regret nothing. Live LIFE!