Jab We Met : Voldemort and Vader

Presenting, Darth Vader.  hssssssssh hsssssssssh

Bio : Originally Anakin Skywalker who fell prey to the wrong (read Dark) side of the Force. And later repented, but that is besides the point.

Weapons : Lightsaber. Custom form V specialist. make : Sith.

Finishing moves :  Force choke or Ripping off some body part with lightsaber, generally the head.

Strengths : highly trained Jedi knight, therefore gifted with extraordinary agility and intuition. Sith armour hand crafted by Sith workmen, is near impregnable. Unison with The Force.

Weakness : vulnerable to anything and everything once his respiratory mask his taken off. 

Presenting, Lord Voldemort.

Bio :  Originally Tom Marvolo Riddle. Greatest dark wizard of all time.

Weapons : Wand. 13½” (34.29cm) yew wood, with a phoenix feather core. Make : Ollivander’s

Finishing moves : Avada Kedavra, the killing curse.

Strengths : greatest dark wizard of all time. Well versed in all possible enchantments, spells. Mastery over non-verbal spells. Flight.

Weakness : no armour as such.

So now imagine. A ring. The sort they have in WWE. And in that. Darth Vader with his lightsaber. And Lord Voldemort with his wand.

TING TING TING

Lord Volemort’s snake like eyes stare intently at Lord Vader. He breathes back in return. All is well. Vader’s steady and deep breathing … the only sound in the silent arena.

And suddenly Voldemort lashes out. “AVADA KEDAVRA”

A jet of green light shoots out of the end of his wand … but Alas! All it takes is a well timed twirl of his lightsaber, and the green jet deflects harmlessly off Vader’s red blade.

Vader’s still breathing. Deep. Silent. Voldemort is … no not furious. Rather he’s perplexed. Was the Darth Vader mentioned in Sybill Trelawney’s prophecy too? It made no sense. Or was the Darth Vader Harry Potter himself. His slit-like nostrils flared in ambiguity. OK, he had to get stuff clarified.

“Look. Dude …”

“Silence. If you wish to address me, it shall be Lord Vader.”

“Screw you, Vader. Listen …”

Vader is taken aback. No one ever hasever dared to address him by anything except “Lord Vader” leave aside “Dude”. Voldemort wouldn’t be a Dopy-ite, or would he?

Voldemort goes on “Yeah so as I was saying. Are YOU the Chosen One too?”

Vader scratches his respirator. “Erm, Well. What IS a Chosen One? I was the one Obi Wan Kenobi chose to duel against, if that’s what you mean.”

“Ahh lite then.”

There, Voldemort was definitely BITSian. No doubt about it. But still better be sure.

“Are you BITSian?” he asks, uncertainly.

“Lol. No. Am not.” Voldemort gives his iconic maniacal and sinister laughter. “Just that, a lot of my fans are BITSians. The acad pressure is too much there I’ve heard, so they choose the Dark side.”

“You mean, they choose the Dark Side of the Force?” Vader is now excited. Had it not been for the mask, he would probably have been visibly excited too.

“Force?” Voldemort asks, “What Force?”

Vader is incredulous. Inside his mask, his mouth opens wide. “You mean, you don’t know what The Force is?”

“Oh, I get it. The thing in Star Wars comics kya? My fans like them too. 🙂 ” Volemort’s lips curl into a ghostly smile.

Vader breathes on. “Hmph”

A diversion here. Here a few pics depicting Darth Vader during his mood swings.

Darth Vader breathing.

Darth Vader taken aback.

Darth Vader visibly excited

Darth Vader mouth opened wide.

Coming back to the encounter.

Vader then asks. “Er … Voldy, temme something … erm …. do you have a nose?”

Voldemort is now visibly infuriated. Unlike Vader however, his facial changes are quite distinguishable. Here’s how he replied.

“Oh. Cool! A flat nose. (Sigh) I wish I remembered, what my nose looks like. Damn Obi Wan Kenobi!”

Voldemort gives his hollow laughter. “Vader, ” he asks. “You gotta agree … your costume rocks man! I find my robes all slushy and … old and all. Would die to get one like yours, man!”

Vader smiles. Yes Like this.

  

“Well, I don’t like it much. I know it’s strong and all … cool also. But also kinda clumsy. In the end you gotta agree .. Jedis weren’t trained to fight with this humongous piece of metal all over them. Yeah, you do get the supervillain attention, but still … and by the way” Vader continues, ” How did your nose become that flat. As in … it was normal when you were Tom Riddle right?”

“Ahh, dude”, Volemort sighs and answers, “that is a sad story, One of my Death Eaters. James Cameron. He made this movie called Titanic. A pretty sissy story involving love and a sinking ship …”

Vader interrupts, “A SINKING ship? Our ships don’t SINK. ROFL!!! Here take a look” and hands him a picture.

“Our ships,” he continues, “are kick ass \m/  and that,” he points at the picture, “is a Star Destroyer \m/ “

“You guys FLY in ships?”

“yeah, what else do you do in them? Waltz?” Vader snaps back.

“LMAO”, Voldemort shrieks, “we fly on brooms!!! They are so much more cooler, and convenient. Though of course, I can just will to fly.” he smirks and suddenly levitates himself.

“Wanna try?”, he guffaws, “Wingardium leviosa” he points his wand at Vader and shouts.

Vader is lifted, and he shrieks out loud. Well this is how he shrieks.

Voldemort releases him and says, “So you want to know how I got this nose, eh?”

“That retarded Cameron, decided to make a scene involving me. I was to stand with my arms outstretched on the very front of the hull of the ship. Like this.”

“The Aurors then decided to storm in … bad timing, the spineless morons. They can’t attack me up front huh? And one of them, decided to Stupefy me. And so I stood there for ages and ages. The winds lashed against my face and nose, and eroded it. Sucks man.”

Vader is bewildered. Yeah, like this :

“When did THAT happen?” he asks, uncertainly, and does this :

Suddenly there’s a flourish. And a ringing laughter. And a new figure appears in the ring. And  Voldemort’s and Vader’s faces pale. Needless to say. Voldemort’s face paled, more than what it generally is. And Vader’s, yes, you guessed it right. It paled like this :

It was Him. “The He Who Must Not Be Named … The Chosen One … all put into one …” Voldemort breathed.

Vader breathed harder … “The Jedi who ate the Force … that’s Him too.”

A few moments of silence. Then Voldemort shouts. “RUN!!!!” Vader follows without a second thought. 

But suddenly the new entrant points at them and talks. And this is what happens.

Yes you guessed it right.

inception : the best movie ever made?

How would you like, if the thriller novel you brought the other day, had the entire plot, written … summary, spoilers and all .. on the rear cover? And the rear cover pasted on the front? My guess is, well, you wouldn’t. But that does not deter me from answering the question addressed in the title.

Frankly speaking, from the very fathomable depths in my white and unspoilt, honest conscience … the movie isn’t the best movie ever made. Now before you start throwing those tomatoes and pumpkins at me … give me a chance to explain myself.

First the big picture. Which is … parallel existence. Look into my eyes and tell me, that it is something innovative. You cannot, because it’s … not. Well. When Neo enters the Matrix … then yes, you can say that. But after he’s entered the matrix, after Jake Sully’s been there done that in the humanoid infested lush green forests of Pandora in Avatar … sorry to say … parallelism is getting clichéd.

But the means of implementing parallelism? Well, in The Matrix it was the digital medium. In Avatar it was the … I dunno any single phrase to encompass that entire thing …. in Inception, it’s … no points for guessing .. dreams.

So what’s new? Well … meta-parallelism. Which is creating multiple parallel existences …. simultaneously. (Did I just coin that term? :O ) So while in The Matrix, Neo enters the Matrix and doesn’t dare venture into further sub-Matrices, and Jake Sully enters the other life … and stops at that level, Dom Cobb keeps dreaming … in dreams … in dreams and …. so on. Reminds one of nested loops doesn’t it? Watch this space 😉

So coming back to the typicalities of a typical film review.

Leonardo DiCaprio. I was never an avid fan of this gentleman. What with his boyish, midwesterner twang and delicately poised juvenescence I say. But if there was one film where he actually seemed to sink in to the character he was assigned, Inception is indeed the one. What Nolan has done is not pick stars to fill his cast. Rather, he’s taken people who he believes can act. And yes, he’s chosen well.

Ellen Page. Man! That was a good choice! She did her part well, and was kinda complimentary to DiCaprio. The others in the cast were good too, but yes. I would personally have liked Michael Caine .. in a more important role (like in The Prestige and The Dark Knight … sigh … ).

Cinematics. This is one thing I keep repeating in film reviews. A simple law. If it’s Hollywood and if film A is released after film B, then film A will have better cinematics than film B. OK. Make that generally. Simple. And the Inception is no exception. The zero-gravity thing, while the van in the first dream was falling off the bridge, and its repercussions in the second dream had me dazed. Seriously.  A fighting scene without gravity! And quite unlike the Matrix because there you could choose to defy gravity whereas in this case, you have no gravity to defy! I just wish that sometime in the distant future, there would actually be such a re-enactment in a space mission. 

The snow fortress episode in the third dream and the action clips associated were somewhat mushy and lacked visual diversity but yes, that doesn’t hinder the overall goodness because the genius in Nolan has actually overlapped the evasive car chase, the gravity-free fist fight and the snowy shootout within the same time frame simultaneously.

The … urgh … fourth dream where Cobb and  Ariadne meet Cobb’s wife … and then proceeds to the limbo is also a good turn, complexifying the already complex plot, but yes, artfully maintaining it within the frontiers of comprehension. The portion earlier up wherein Cobb explains to Ariadne … the concepts of extraction and inception are well shown too.

Now well, as a movie critic I feel the need to criticise. A simple question. When you are in a dream, do you remember your plans in the real world? Well you don’t. So Cobb asking in the second dream, how many more minutes does Yusuf have before the van crashes down the bridge (in the first dream) is … a gross error.

Also as a friend of mine pointed out, would YOU really risk so much for a commercial rivalry? If no, then the story ends there. Within the first thirty minutes. But if you do, there’s the rest of the story for you.

Reverting back to parallelism and meta-parallelism. Read this part carefully. The Matrix, as I said a few paragraphs back heralded this concept of parallelism. Avatar took it in a different perspective and Inception dealt the finishing move.

A geometric analogy. The Matrix involved choosing two two-dimensional planes to reside in. You can travel through the three dimensional space that separates the two planes by doing whatever computer wizardry you know or whatever Neo did. And then you had to turn back, travel back through the two dimensional space and come back to the first plane.

To visualise Inception you need to think of an infinite number of shells, each representing a level of dreaming. You can move from one shell to another but never know which is the last one, closest to reality. This important concept is hidden in the perpetually spinning top in the end. 

Wait a second. Lemme explain. You thought that the perpetual motion of the top signified that the real was a dream too. That is not so. It is not just a dream. It is a dream within a dream within a dream …. within infinite layers of dreams. Why? Because once you go up one dream level, time slows down. So to make a top that would otherwise stop spinning, spin for longer, you need to just get into a dream. But what if there was one top that would never stop spinning? Quite simply, a top within infinite layers of dreams. Food for thought? You bet so. 

So to sum it in layman’s terms, if the Matrix was the fresher’s course, Inception was post-graduation.

Here’s another analogy for the sake of it.

Say you are learning a language. I mean a programming language.

First you learn selection statements viz if else. That is the Matrix. Here’s a crude analogy,

if(youWannaEnter)

{

       enter();

}

void enter()

{

       if(youWannaExit)

       System.exit();

}

whereas Inception is like nested loops or possibly recursion or maybe even meta-recusrion.

//n is dream layer

keepDreaming(n)

{

      if(wannaDreamMore)

            keepDreaming(n+1);

     else if (!wannaDreamMore)

            keepDreaming(n-1);

}

There. You seriously expected a film review from me minus my fine touches 😛

But yes, certainly not the best movie ever made.

the birth of the hyper hybrid

What follows are some technical details of Porsche’s latest mindbender. The 918 Spyder. Considered to be the perfect amalgamation of supercar like awesomeness and … yes … environmental friendliness.

• The engine : a 3.4 liter V8 mated to seven-speed gearbox. 500 bhp to the rear wheels. That’s not it! Three more electric motors : two driving the front wheels mated to a fixed gear ratio and the third, through the seven-speed provides additional power to the rear axle. When all work together the car transforms into a 718 bhp fire breather. 
• The electric pots can not only be plugged-in and charged. They also get automatically charged when the car undergoes braking.
• Four driving modes : an E-drive mode wherein the car runs on battery power alone, using the rear motor only, with a range of 16 miles. Three hybrid modes : Hybdrid, Sport, and Race, where all four power pots work to different extents to provide the desired levels of performance and economy. In Race mode a push-to-pass button is available to deliver additional electric power, useful during overtaking.
• A carbon-fiber reinforced plastic monocoque chassis and a lot of aluminium and magnesium in the body means that it weighs less than 1500 kgs 
• A mind-blowing 0-100 km/hr run in less than 3.2 seconds and a staggering top-speed of 320 km/hr.
• Fuel economy at an all time high of 78 US miles/gallon.

Some pics follow.

Looks impressive too, what say people? Here’s raising a toast to its success, and
hoping that it reaches production lines soon!

The official Porsche video follows.

games people play

disclaimer : all information provided in this write up is grossly incorrect to the very best of my knowledge. Any suicide attempts, divorce cases that may take place after this is published, should NOT be traced back to this under any known or unknown circumstances. The author regrets to inform that he won’t be held responsible too.

disclaimer for previous disclaimer : this is another of my superbly disoriented and fuzzy wramblingz. A lame attempt to emulate the god like articles of uncyclopedia. Please bear with the amount of nonsense you shall behold before your eyes.

the third and … kinda serious … disclaimer : this is essentially a parody of all the games people go gaga over and play on something called Microsoft Windows.

1. Need for Creed. Often mistaken for Need for Speed, Need for Creed, developed by Alternative Entertainment and Sports (AE Sports), is a stunning game featuring Creed, an iconic death metal band of the early 14th century. The variants released since 1998 .. are as follows

• Need for Creed – the first version wherein your main objective is to save Joan of Arc from the burning stake, and liberate France, thus distorting human history. Then only instrument you can use however is the Fender Stratocaster, a certain 6 string instrument, which a certain Celtic outlaw called Mummy Hendrix had immortalized. Creed band members are always there to help you use it.
• Need for Creed 2 – the second version of the stunning game continued to fascinate people with dramatic changes in primary objectives. This time, you had to play the role of Gandalf, a wizened old wizard, who had to destroy a certain ear ring, which his ex-girlfriend had given him before breaking up. The important thing in this game is that Gandalf frequently suffers from heartaches from memories of his girlfriend, which is where the Creed part comes in. You need to choose the right Creed songs for his iPod Shuffle playlist, so as to cheer him up, and keep him free of any sort of illness while he goes on this perilous quest.  
• Need for Creed : Bourbon – also the latest version, was the most celebrated version of NFC ever, and it required the player to help the Dark Lord, Barrack Obama, buy a packet of bourbon biscuits from Wallmart. Here the Creed band members take up part-time jobs as his body guards and you have to help defend Him while he buys the stuff.

2. Age of Vampires. Made jointly by Dissemble Studios and Microshit, often confused with a third class board game called Age of Empire (Ensemble Studios, Microsoft) is easily the greatest game ever made. Soon after its launch in 1997 it went on to win 3 BAFTAs, 4 Grammys and 1 Golden Globe. There are three versions of this game as follows.

•  Age of Vampires : the Rise of Romance. The making of this game was a top secret affair, confined to the underworld realms of the Large Hadron Collider, in Nigeria. It is said that Edward Cullen was one of the core programmers and minds behind this game. Not surprisingly, the Twilight saga, a series of movies about gay rights, is believed to have sprouted from this game.
• Age of Vampires : the Age of Pings. This version was mainly directed at the Linux user who checks his internet connection by typing in the terminal ping google.com It received huge acclaim because for the first time in the history of gaming, the interests of a Linux user had been considered. The game however did not run on Linux, and resulted in immediate degradation in the version of the GRUB installed on the machine.
• Age of Vampires : the Werewolves’ Expansion. This fantasy version features a red Indian wife called Aishwarya Rai, trying to convert her husband, Abhishek Bachhan to a werewolf by biting him in his sleep. You win this game if you can convert all the beggars in Bombay city to werewolves and then launch a full fledged attack on the Bollywood Film industry and punish Ram Gopal Verma for a series of mishaps.

3. Counterlike – One of the most popular games of all time, it is based on the biggest online madness ever called Facebook. Not surprisingly it is an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game). It is a team game with no rules. You can do whatever you want. The idea however is to Like as many things as you can. Of course, if you feel your opponent is Liking stuff more than you, you can immediately shoot him dead and claim the crown. The popularity of the game is mainly owing to its minimal requirements ( an internet connection, Mark Zuckerberg’s phone number (you need to call him up to register), and a mouse (actually a mouse button will do too) because as a great mind called Subhayan Mukerjee once said ‘all it takes is a click to like’.

4. Call of Nature : Modern Shitfare 2. The most amazing game ever built, but often confused with one of Enrique Iglesias’ songs, Call of Duty : Modern Warfare 2. The objectives are simple and straight forward. Eat and shit. If you shit more than your opponent you win. The game grows in difficulty as you progress because you get things like constipation. In such cases you need to poison your opponent’s food , and put in stuff that hinders free bowel movement, so that he fails to shit too. You can find hidden items like laxatives and purgatives throughout the game. Therefore you need to keep an eye open, not to mention something else open too.

5. Pro Evolution Socker – This game is a heavy game and grows heavier the more you play, because you start with dry socks which tend to get wet, and increase the weight. The objective is to walk in the Calcutta Maidan without wearing shoes, but just socks. The person who walks the most in a given time interval is usually the winner. Exceptions arise when Mamata Banerjee and Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, two of the world’s greatest spy agents, call for a strike. In such cases your objectives change to burning as many private buses you can. All the while however, you can wear nothing else but socks.

the four color problem

Another post fueled by interest in all things geeky. Hell. It’s math this time. And it’s about something called the four color theorem. A seemingly simple theorem, with certain … er … beauties, that caught my eye, and thus led to me writing this post.

/*sheepish grin
the angle brackets are better off for expressing feelings but Blogger’s smart arse word processor very inconveniently considers any starting angle bracket to be the beginning of an html tag and all oddities arise. Hence the C/C++ style comments. Lol. */

The Four Color Theorem in its bare bones states that, (erm … quoting Wikipedia) given any separation of a plane into contiguous regions, producing a figure called a map, no more than four colors are required to color the regions of the map so that no two adjacent regions have the same color. Point to note : two regions meeting at points can have the same color


Well, I am myself not the absolute authority in the four color theorem, and any such assumptions gathered, or unintentionally implied should be … discarded immediately. Ahem.

The beauty I referred to in the opening paragraph is the method used to deal with these map coloring problems.

/*I know how suicidal the American spellings look, but unfortunately none of the browsers I use have spell check for any form English on this side of the Atlantic, so …*/

Yes, so coming back to the method. Here’s how it goes.

Consider the following map, showing a few countries of West Europe.

/* Pics taken from http://www.ctl.ua.edu/math103/mapcolor/mapcolor.htm, but as you can check, I’ve tried to explain in my own words */

The goal is too color the map such that no two countries sharing a common border have the same color. (Also, as a side information the minimum number of colors needed to colour a map is called the chromatic number of the map.) The completed map should look something like this.

So how to go about the predicament? Here’s how.

1. We replace each country with circles, maintaining a roughly correct relative orientation. 
2. Whenever two countries share a common border, we join the two corresponding circles with a straight line.
3. We ensure that multiple common borders are taken care of … France’s with Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Italy.
4. Now color the circles such that a) two circles at the end of each line segment have different colours and b) the least number of colors are used.

the steps in pictures :

Done 🙂 Well that’s about it. If it seems a bit too abrupt, my apologies. 🙂

Hey Dude … an Ode to Dopy

terrifyingly crude, arbit and downright stupid … but well, it doesn’t hurt does it 😛

Hey Dude,

don’t feel so sad,
take one snap shot, and you’ll feel better.
Remember to give your ID in,
then we will start to feel better.

Hey Dude,

don’t feel afraid
We were made to, go out and click her
The minute you step in to the frame
Then we begin to make it better.

And anytime you feel the doubt, hey dude, don’t pout
don’t carry the burden on your shoulders …
for those who know that it’s a rule, to click and drool
with all those bucks, that we keep gathering …

na na na na na nana na na …

Hey Dude,

don’t let me down.
We have found you, now let us click you
remember that it’s just one single click
that’s worth words, all of a thousand few

So let it out, and let it in
how to replace the memory stick>
And don’t you know that it’s just you, hey dude, you’ll do
Just the movement you need, is in the lens region.

na na na na na nana na na …

Hey Dude,

don’t feel so sad,
take one snap shot, and you’ll feel better.
Remember to give your ID in,
then we will start to feel

better better better better better better, oh

na na na na na nana na na … Hey Dude ….

life was beautiful

disclaimer : all mathematical facts are accurate to the best of my knowledge, and drawn upon from wolfram mathworld, the best math resource on the web. Also, all characters are fictitious and should they bear any correlation with any things actual, then rest assured that they aren’t intentional.

————————————–
Numbers. The one word had always meant so much for old Pandey. The one thing he had lived his entire life upon. He wasn’t the great Indian mind who had been honoured with degrees one after the other, neither had he been to any college all his life. Nor did he have a chance now to make amends. But numbers always fascinated him. He had that bare minimum knowledge of English to comprehend mathematical texts, and with the oil lamp that lit his ramshackle hovel, he revelled in the world of numbers, a world of his own.

He amazed many a stranger. Pointing at the number plate of a taxi cab that just passed him he would say “7433 …  it remains prime if any one digit is deleted.” Or maybe he would stare at the morning paper, and read the headlines : 67 people feared dead, and with a smile on his face, a faraway look in his eyes, murmur “the smallest number that is palindromic in bases 5 and 6”

Most people took him to be a lunatic, but he didn’t let that bother him one single bit. To him, numbers were one and all. Synonymous with life itself.

…………………………….

It began like any normal morning in the life of old Pandey. He had gotten out of bed, and was chewing the neem bark as he usually did. His frantic cranial activity however was evident … written all over his face. A strange look in his eyes, mind wandering somewhere … possibly a place even he knew not, where.

A rap on the door brought him to his senses. He blinked. His daughter would respond … with this comforting thought, the faraway look was back in his eyes, and the neem bark, back in his mouth.

The second rap was louder. He blinked again. It took a while for him to figure it out that he was alone in his house. To remember that his daughter had been married off a month or so back. He grimaced. Quickly washing his mouth he hobbled up to the wooden door. By then a firmer, and a more impatient third knock had already sounded. He unlatched the door, and it creaked open.

Two swarthy men stepped in. It didn’t take a great mind to guess however that the men weren’t happy. One was big, burly and bore a menacing look on his face. The other was skinny, and lanky but looked equally grumpy.

“Yes?” Pandey ventured to ask.

“What do ya mean, yes, ya old fool?” the burly one spat out. “It’s been nine months, and you haven’t paid up.”

“Pay?” Pandey blinked

“Yes” the skinny one made a face “Pay. For all the money we lent you. Where’s your daughter … married off on our money, eh? Bloody lucky you got, with that one … “

“Not for long though .. ” the burly one snickered.

“But .. but… it was a lottery … a thing that I won .. my luck”

“CUT THE CRAP, OLD MAN … and pay up”

Pandey fell silent. He had never been the sort who could argue, and certainly not with the sort of people who had barged into his house this very moment. He looked on blankly.

“WHAT YA LOOKIN’ LIKE THAT FOR?” the burly one roared. The thin one snickered.

A few more seconds of silence.

Another roar.

“YOU BLOODY FOOL”

Another snicker.

Maybe the day that had begun normally wouldn’t be normal anymore.

But Pandey wasn’t thinking about the money, or the payment, or the two men in front of him. One word the burly one had uttered, had set him off on one of his mathematical pursuits.

The word was nine.

Nine. It was a number. And that meant more to him, at that instant, than anything and everything.

Nine! The square of three! The square of the number of spatial dimensions he lived in!

His forehead wrinkled for a few seconds. And his eyes lit up.

Nine! One half of eighteen! One half of the only positive number that could be written as double the sum of its digits! He released a sigh of satisfaction.

Suddenly he frowned. And then, a sudden wildness filled his eyes, like that of a child beholding a magic trick.

 Nine! The maximum number of cubes required to sum any positive integer! He uttered a yelp of delight.

The two men standing in front, however, weren’t amused. The thin one stepped forward and gripped him by his shoulder. Pandey yelped again. This time however, out of pain. Old age, for him, had brought forth several things. One was rheumatism.

He looked at his assailant. Right into his menacing eyes, and … to the latter’s incredulity, he smiled.

This proved disconcerting for the man, and he released his grip. Pandey fell back, shaken, but as nonchalant as ever. The big burly one however was tougher. He pushed the skinny  one aside and faced Pandey.

“look here … you …”, he was breathing hard. “I don care how you manage it, but I want my money. All of it.”

Pandey looked on.

The man was growing all the more menacing with every passing second. And Pandey’s silence, added more fuel to his steadily increasing fury.

“You … you got it right. I want my money. I don care how. Beg. Borrow. Steal. I want my money.”

“ok”, Pandey’s sudden answer, and more so the brevity of it, caught the two of them by surprise.

The man relaxed. “Better. I’m giving you one last chance old man. It’s this month end that I want it by.”

Relaxed, yes. But venomous.

“yes” Pandey replied, but the air of nonchalance was all the more evident.

“So …” the big one whispered. “You have six days. Right?”

“I guess so” Pandey smiled. Six. The smallest perfect number.

“that is …”, after much trepidation, the big one continued “One hundred and forty four hours. You better have it by then. Or else … old man … you’ll wish …”

The threat remained incomplete, and the two of them, cast one last menacing glance each, turned and left. Crashing the wooden door after them.

Pandey was unmoved. He stood where they had left them. Several seconds passed. Several minutes followed. Then an hour. Pandey stood on, oblivious to all that had happened a few minutes back.

One. One. Two. Three. Five. Eight. Pandey’s mind was working faster than it ever had.  Fifty five. Eighty nine.

A few seconds later.

Two hundred and thirty three.

Three hundred and seventy seven.

Six hundred and ten.

A few more seconds.

One thousand, five hundred and ninety seven.

…

And suddenly it was all clear. He could see it to the very end. Right up to infinity.

It had to be it.

One hundred and forty four hours was what the man had said. One hundred and forty four was what it was.

One hundred and forty four was the largest perfect square in the Fibonacci series.

With a squeal of delight, he put the neem bark back in his mouth and chewed upon it.

Life was beautiful. Again.

———————————————
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the other side of the clock tower

A very very short episode of my life which I thought of sharing with this world. Insignificant too, but yes, it had made its mark on me, and hence wouldn’t get off, of my mind until I had written and given vent to all that had I had been thinking of about it.

This happened a week or so back, when I had gone to some State Bank of India branch to make the Demand Draft for my next semester fees. Had taken one of those blank forms which you need to apply for the draft, and had carefully filled it with a black ball pen. All well and good. The draft was made. The draft looked good, with BITS Pilani written in the blank that followed “To Pay “, the amount was written below that in figures and words, and everything else, wherever they ought to be.

The wizened old man, who handed over the draft was the typical State Bank employee, with the overflowing oodles of laziness so very evident, all over him, too lazy in fact to even trim the hair that obnoxiously jutted out of his ears. Before passing the draft over the counter, he shot a listless and casual glance at the draft. Perhaps it was the all-caps BITS that caught his attention, but he suddenly drew it back and peered at it intently. Then he grimaced and held it out, asking me “Erm … excuse me for asking but what is this BITS whom you are paying so much?” The conversation was in Bengali of course, but that was what it meant.

“Huh”, I thought to myself, the same question that many an ignorant bloke asked me, whenever the BITS topic was raised. But, I was in a good mood, and so opted to explain “Birla Institute of Technology and Science” to the poor fellow. He gave a grunt and continued with his work. Then however I was aware of a man, a middle aged man, who was staring at me with some sort of inexplicable shock written all over his face. Catching  my eye, he dared to ask, “Birla Institute of Technology and Science”. Now whether that was a question, or an assertion or a test of short-term-memory loss I shall never know, but I nodded, deciding that that was the best I could do. The man however continued to stare at me with the shocked expression “You mean, BITS?” . I was again perplexed, and wondered whether this too, was a question, an assertion or maybe a test for a slightly-longer-term memory loss. I nodded again. His incredulous expression was becoming all the more unnerving with the passage of time, and after a short while he gasped “BITS Pilani?”.

Now it was getting irritating. I wasn’t the President of the United States, but I really didn’t have the patience to answer “Yes or No” to each of his questions related to my college. Then however the man seemed to quieten down and asked in a more controlled tone, “Do you study there?” I nodded again, wondering whether he was a long lost senior and would ask me for my Intro. “But,” he gasped, “it’s a premier institute.” OK, he WASN’T a long lost senior and he WOULDN’T ask for my Intro. I nodded again. “But it’s difficult!” he continued. I was again perplexed now. More than the person, the alternating feelings his questions invoked were making me feel very weird and out of place. What exactly did he mean by “difficult”? The place? The weather? The desert?

He seemed to have gauged my incomprehension and decided to clarify. “I mean getting in. Isn’t it terribly difficult?” Now I seriously felt like LOLing. I was stumped again. Then I slowly answered. 

“Yes, well … it is through an exclusive exam … ” He interrupted me, and now he was all excited “Yes, the only online exam? Isn’t it so? Oh my god! You must be brilliant.” 

Now I was doubting myself. “If this is what being BITSian meant, was I up to the mark? I wasn’t really the Zeus he thought I was, and BITS, I had no idea had such Mount Olympus like stature to the a general Calcutta citizen, especially with a humongous monstrosity like Jadavpur University around.

After a small amount of trepidation however, I managed to assure the guy that yes “I AM that brilliant 😛 ” and yes, BITS WAS the next best thing to the International Space Station and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and would surely feature as one of the Wonders of the Ancient World a few millenia down the line.  

So, well. That’s that. BITSians, if you are reading this, you can raise your collars now. Non BITSians, can … well … option a) drool, option b) cry, option c) feel happy for me and d) well post a comment  below 😛