The Teacher Species : Revisited

Statutory warning : If you hold IIT Kharagpur in high esteem, please stop reading right here.

Data required : 1 Torr = 1 mm mercury pressure = (1/760) atmosphere pressure
I still remember the day when I first entered into the campus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. I had spent 3 whole years thinking day and night about IIT, and once I got admission, I was excited beyond limits - excited about the prospects of the great things that I'd get to do in the largest engineering institute of India. 2 Years have past since then, and I have really enjoyed a lot. But that's not due to the college- it's due to the people (read:weirdos) that you find in this hellhole.

Having met a lot of interesting guys (and some girls too), and many retarded professors; I have discovered that the people on campus can be broadly divided into some categories:-

Chauvinists : Most of the male population.
Desperate : Copy the last point.
Optimists : Electrical engineering students who think the coming sem will be peace.
Pessimists : Insti rank under top 10, 12 inter halls in sports, soc-n-cult and tech... but perenially screwed.
Messachusettists : Guys too interested in higher studies.
Schlumbergerists : Want nothing but a high paying job.
Sadists : Whoever conceptualized TDS.
Satanists : People who suggest TDS should stage another production in the year.
Scientists : Kartik Prabhu, Abhas Saroha, Vaibhhav Sinha....
They-shall-be-hit-by-my-fist : Don't even get me started.

But some profs are by far the most-impressive nut-cases that I've ever seen. The very first roll call in the class gave me an indication of what i was to see in the coming five years of my stay. Somehow, Tapas became Tapaush, Vinayak Pathak became Bina-Yolk Pathok (Albumin Pathok as I now call him) and (the worst one) Ankit Mantri became Onki Monkey!

I can't name all of them, but I distinctly remember our Electrical technology prof (Professor NKK) in our first year. He had remarkably large front teeth (quite like a beaver) which protruded way out of his mouth whenever he tried to smile. Sadly, this was the only expression his face allowed him. Whether he was angry or sad or disappointed or naughty or joking or talking, he used to open his mouth wide with his teeth threatening to jump out of his mouth and lodging themselves in your neck, quite dracula-like.

Then there was this guy who used to instruct us about shaping in the manufacturing process workshop. He spoke at the rate of exactly 20WPM in a sing-song tone, and it went something like this, "Deesh eesh a cheeshel (chisel). Dere aaaare two typesh of cheeshel- one eesh a flat cheeshel and I forgot dee name of dee other cheeshel. Now deesh eesh a hammor. Doo note pooot the hammor een your mouth ebon by meeshtake. Eespecially eef eet eesh a pin-headed hammor!" And you feel like saying, "Chi... Thanks for telling dude. I'd love to put hammers in my mouth... they are so yummy!!!"

Now moving to the third sem.

Prof DDK's class. He asked a student to explain the behavior of some chemical with incresing humidity. The student tried to elucidate through a chemical bonding approach, and went wrong somewhere. Professor DDK's statement went something like this, "Your answer is wrong. The fact is that you don't know anything and are just trying to make up information. This can be dangerous. Human beings have this tendency to fabricate information which they don't possess, and this precisely is the reason for divorces. Now I know that divorce is a very sad thing, but it becomes very probable if you tend to fabricate things or there is no dowry and the woman doesn't earn. This is why I am pro-dowry. And this is the reason why I would like to marry my daughter to a bihaari instead of a bong- bihaaris have fixed rate. And I shall marry her off real well so that the groom is obliged and can't say anything to my daughter. The only thing that stops me from doing so is that I don't have a daughter- I am not even married. But don't try to fabricate knowledge!!!"

Can you imagine what all can happen to the students when the profs are so confused? I got to witness an excellent example few days back. A debate was being conducted in the college and the topic was 'Indian economy- Prosperity for few or development of all'. A student came to the dias with an air of confidence and started speaking.

"Indian economic policies are not going to yield desirable results at all. It's because it is too theoretical and India is too diverse a place. A communist approach has to be applied, just like it has been done with so much success in many other countries, and in states like west bengal. This eminds me of the marxist states like the Soviet Union. Marx and Angels did a superb job... the Russian revolution was simply a marvel, as was the American revolution. America, which was once a slave nation, gained independence due to the American revolution and now is so rich that is finances projects in IITs where this debate is taking place. And.... (A long pause follows)............. Sorry, I think I have strayed away from the topic. Thank you."

Then there is another prof in the department, famous for her marvellous use of pronouns in place of all the nouns in many sentences and for her quotable quotes in general. Sample these:-

"Now we have these three relations that can be used. Which one of these would you like to favour to prefer?"

"We know that a real gas cannot behave like an ideal gas. But since we have to assume something, let us assume that the real gas behaves ideally."

"It is obviously obvious that the van laar constants are obviously not temperature dependent so it is obvious that there has to be a differential equation which obviously has temperature dependent constants."

"This is a new situation that we have never faced before. Neither of the two approaches that we've studied works independently in this case. So for this situation, we use a mixture of that approach and the other one, and this gives rise to a new method which is this one."

But some profs are really good, and even the others are not completely useless. Atleast they form core entertainment in our lives and blogging material for some jobless people like me. And maybe they are not such bad teachers after all. Maybe it's the pressure of training the brightest minds of the country that does this to them. To sum up the things, here is a simpe truth

SIMPLE TRUTH : "The pressure required to convert a mentor into a TORR-mentor is just the 760th part of atmospheric pressure."

P.S. : If you still didn't understand the not-so-simple simple truth, refer to the data given at the top.