Why I'm a seven pointer..

The new long awaited release three idiots has made many people tweet and write blog posts. The movie is designed to touch every heart. If there's someone who hasn't got a goosebump, while watching it, is either God, or a machine. Few people including me were very concerned about our educational system. I had thought about it since long, why our system is at fault, but I had no audience who would have just some patience to listen and analyze. I confined those thoughts to myself most of the time; except few things which I shared with close pals like my cousin Ashu. I knew it would never change. I recalled few moments from my life, which I still remember as the examples of "Murder of Creativity". I also had realized long back, that the problem isn't across the globe. Its confined only to India. So, at times of frustration I wished, "How nice it would have been, if I wasn't an Indian!" Very few people dare to be different for the fear of being a laughing stock. I have definitely tried and have been different, because there's one quote that worked for me: "People laugh at me, because I'm different. I laugh at them because they are all same!"

My dad isn't happy with me because I am a seven pointer, my CGPA hovering at 7.5. He has been this for 3 years now, because I didn't get into IIT. Its a common scene at my home, where my father narrates the story of some mugger who has got into some reputed college, or some friend's son who got a job in Dubai. I have been continuously been in contempt, for not being able to score 8. Today I am going to write the reason, why I am a seven pointer. I am not a mugger (or 'Poka' in our colloquial language), so I don't study 24 hours. I do everything that a normal human does. When exams come, I start to study like everyone. But I am stuck in the chapters which I am interested in. I spend hell lot of time in them, so can't finish off the course completely. In all exams, I have been forfeiting marks due to "uncovered" chapters. Taking the example of my last exam, Discrete Mathematics. I started studying it very early in the semester. I got stuck in the first chapter - Mathematical logic. I liked it so much that i read every bit of it, even attempted questions related to logic. Half of the semester passed by, but I studied just the chapter. I'm not lying. My cousin is a witness. I used to ask him logic questions in Gtalk. Talked about them very often. I woke up one month before exam, when my friend said Logic is less then 10% percent of the course. So, I started reading graphs and trees, which also interested me to the extent that I thought of applications of trees and graphs in real life, learned by heart, and lost the remaining one month. The two days before exam, I had to go through all other chapters at breakneck speed, because I had covered just 20% of the course. Same is the case and has been the case with all subjects I have appeared. So, I fell short from 8.0 by 0.5 of CGPA. Other guys, whom my father praises, mugged all chapters, all theorems, with planning so as to complete whole course before exam, got a O or E and became eight pointers. I lost 0.5 but gained the deep and by-heart learning of mathematical logic and Graphs and trees. You, decide what you prefer. I prefer by-heart learning and am ready to lose 0.5 of CGPA.
In yet another incident, two years back, in a Mechanical engineering lab, a teacher asked the topper of our class a simple question "What is the density of water?". She said its 1 gram/cubic cm or 1 kg/cubic metre, and got confused, was in a dilemma. We know its 1 gram/cubic cm, but one must realize, it doesn't need a very good memory to remember those values. A little practical knowledge helps a lot to memorize and avoid confusion. In this case, if she would have thought a little: 1 cubic metre, is a volume that is a cube of side one metre. If you take water of that big volume, will it ever weigh just 1 kg??? So definitely the answer is 1 gram/cubic cm. This is the problem with all muggers, in all colleges, in all places. But they are the brightest examples for fathers to talk to their seven pointer sons. There are numerous examples, of "Murder of Creativity". In 6th grade, when a teacher taught us the density of water, even he didn't tell us this thing. I want to confess and inform to all those who don't know me closely, the whole of my life, I never really cared for marks. That's the reason I'm a seven pointer. I was so interested in Computer networks, that once I and a friend entered to a lecture on Computer Networks in my first year summer vacations. To my surprise there were none from our batch. All were seniors. There the professor along with network topology, also gave a brief introduction of encryption of data. He said, that in an encryption process, the ASCII values of characters are changed and transmitted, where they are again decrypted on the other side of the network. He said its easy to design a C program to the do the simple task. I tried first but failed to find a good method. Eventually I forgot the program. This year, before our viva on algorithms, we were waiting, for our calls. I was with a blank face and looked at others who were mugging up the books in the lab. I hadn't studied even 5% of the course. So, I knew I wont do well. And I wasn't a machine who could study the whole course in a few hours. So, that was the day I came up with the idea of designing the program for a secure encryption. I made it then and there in the lab itself. And it worked! I was so happy that I forgot the pressure of going to appear in a viva. I went there, and two teachers bombarded questions on me like missiles. I told all wrong algorithms, but at the same time I was so happy for my encryption program that really worked. I got a B but no pain, no frustration. I ran back into the lab, copied the program in the pen drive. And started showing it to all muggers present there. No one paid interest to that, because it was a new thing. I tried a lot to pursue everyone to see it just once, but no one tried to leave there books and look at my program. That is when I got frustrated. I still remember those moments, when I was ready to explain the algorithm, and ran to each guy with a notebook and the pen drive, asking "Hey Siddharth, have a look at the algorithm I just invented." "No way, viva is ahead, later." "Smruti, can u give me just 5 minutes of your time? I have an interesting thing I just made." "Sorry yaar, I haven't read anything", was the reply. At last, I walked out and came home. Back home I mailed the code to my cousin Ashu, who analyzed, interpreted and gave comments. That day I learnt something, "These muggers can never enjoy life, the whole life they will be a vacuum pump, under high pressure and tension." And for people like me and Ashu, we enjoy every bit of it....
I will continue this post some other day..Its pretty long now...