Felis silvestris catus

A week back, the CAT results were announced.

For those of you fortunate enough to not have had a brush with this monstrosity, CAT stands for Common Aptitude Test,something that these Indian Institute of Management blokes hold once every year to have a good laugh with the complete expense borne by the participating jokers.This time round there were nearly quarter of a million of these jokers who usually come from all walks of life for their 2 (now 2 and a half) hours of tryst with destiny.
CAT is something like the Daddy-promise to get the He-Man toy on your birthday if you stay good for the next six months and do your homework everyday and help your mother out in the kitchen and.....and .....(Parents always have their camouflaged win-win conditions. don't they ?). Anyway quite similarly, this bunch of jokers slog for their He-Mans to come and make life simpler for them or so they believe.

These jokers,and I'd restrain the discussions to the ones originating from the engineering sector, hereby referred to as Jawans, usually start talking about CAT during their first years in college with the firm decision that they'd specialize only in finance and nothing else when in all probability,their extent of knowledge about the financial world is comparable to Mallika Sherawat's affinity for clothes.

Gradually once the ragging period is over though and no one anymore feeds them with information of the type that Balubhai who sells eggs in the First hostel is also an electrical engineering passout from the same college, the Jawans usually ease out and dedicate the next three years in search of pornography in the internet.

Then comes June of final year ...its 5 months to CAT and many rediscover their long subdued passion for feenance.This time round the Jawans come armed with loads of Business world magazines and months of Economic Times which all of course goes to Balubhai who uses it to demarcate his omlettes from the half-frys. Red paper-Omlette, White Paper-Half Fry.
Simple rule of finance.

The poor souls lead a non engineer's life during the next few months trying to figure out things like who was Ramu's father if his second cousin was married to Sheela who had three daughters, all females one of whom was a school teacher and neither of her cousins Jatin and Rani were doctors. The lawyers in the family were not vegetarians and Deepika was the only ShahRukh Khan fan. Their pet dog Jimmy was allergic to vodka without any lime cordial and Ramesh and Jiten were not brothers!!!
They compare and analyse the sugarcane production, wool generation and alluminium output of 12 South American countries with bar diagrams, histograms, Chi-Square tests, normality tests and remaining sanity.
The hapless souls burn many a candle to try and figure out what Carl Gustav Jung meant to say when he spoke of integrating spirituality and appreciation of the unconscious realm and then deciding whether the tone of the author in the paragraph was fuzzy,pedantic,obstreperous or regressionist.Four unknown words as choices are all that he had till last year! This year they added the choice Confucian and so now Jawan has 5 choices to direct his destiny.

Jawan takes simulated exams named after all available species of Cats and by the time he reaches the actual exam hall on a nice November Sunday morning, he can barely remember his name and it is for this purpose that such cases are provided an Admit card with a name, photograph and address so that people can help these poor souls find their way back home.

What happens during the next three odd hours will certainly need another post so I am skipping that portion here.

A month or so from that Sunday ,the results are announced in a website and if you wished to see your score on the same day that the results are released, then you might as well type the website's address, press enter and accompany your mother to her long awaited trip to Amarnath and on the way back maybe make the visit to Rishikesh and Haridwar and then if you've washed away some of your sins of this life and the one previous to it,then you may be blessed with the home page of the IIM on your return.

Now you may click the link which says CAT 2006 results and doesn't Dad always talk about the Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry and the serenity there? So why not make that visit with family and the Rameswaram temple is something to be seen to be believed !!

While some Jawans come back from their trips, type in their CAT registration number, ask their mothers their date of birth, type that in and wait for their results to appear.................................some just wink and go on with their lives.
There are dogs too you know !

Miles to go before you sleep.....seriously dude!!

I am completely exhausted.
Times of India,Garfield comics 1981 strips,the complete analysis of India-SA tour on howzzat.com and a few hundred harmless scraps in orkut. How much more work can an average software engineer be expected to do in a single day anyway? I am no software geek and get tired very soon.

There are moments,albeit rare,when I sit back and try to plan out a future for myself.Every bachelor has the ability to do so but few exercise it and mostly all end up marrying ,in the process losing all control over their cognitive abilities.
Well this depletion of intelligence quotient in the world is God's way of maintaining His Supremacy upon humans and so be it.

Recently during one of those days when I am saddled with work in office with tough deadlines to meet (Read as :www.jigzone.com) I thought of taking a break and searching something cool in wikipedia and lo behold I came up with Chaos Theory. Extremely sexy name for a theory ..what say ?
This is what it had to say in wikipedia and I quote :

(Note: Please read slowly as it took me close to 3 hours 18 minutes to untangle the knot my poor little diminished brain had got itself in after reading the below paragraph at normal reading speed)

"In mathematics and physics, chaos theory describes the behavior of certain nonlinear dynamical systems that under certain conditions exhibit a phenomenon known as chaos. Among the characteristics of chaotic systems, described below, is the sensitivity to initial conditions (popularly referred to as the butterfly effect). As a result of this sensitivity, the behavior of systems that exhibit chaos appears to be random, exhibiting an exponential error dispersion, even though the system is deterministic in the sense that it is well defined and contains no random parameters."

In simpler terms, we call it marriage !

Now you may re-read the definition above with the help of the following appendix :

Chaos - Ask any husband.
Nonlinear dynamical systems - Wives.
Butterfly effect - Their hysteria at the supposed nosie you make while eating with your mouth open.
Contains no random parameters -Do not have any external claws or visible fangs
Exponential error dispersion -Read on.

He : "Hi Darling I'm back"
She : "Did you get the laundry?"
He : "Well...ahem...you know ..lets see...I got this chorlmint for you"
She : "So you been smoking all day"
He : "Oh no no...so whats for dinner today dear.Shall we eat out today..something with a candlelight maybe"
She : "Your mother called"
He : "Oh what did she say?"
She : "She was worried that I am starving her son to death"
He : "Ha ha ..did she say that ?"
She : "No she said that your sister cooked Chicken Do Pyaza for Jijaji"
He : "Well..so"
She : "Sniff ...sniff..sob"
He : "What ??"
She : "Sniff..Sob Sobb..."
He : "Oh cmon now darling ..dont cry..lets go out for dinner "
She : "So you really can't eat the food I cook isn't it? You think its junk"
He : "Hey cmon I never said that"
She : "Sob sob....sniff sniff ..I wish my mother was here for me...Can we get her for a month or two?"
He :"Well..ahem..you know.... a month..aa...yah why not" (Below belt attack ...not defended)
She :"Excellent.I called her up today afternoon and she is reaching by tomorrow morning's flight at 6:30 am.Please go get her from the airport.Now lets go out for dinner.Cmon hurry up darling!"

Game, Set, Match .............

I dedicate this post to a friend of mine , a particularly lively fellow with a good sense of humour about life.
He is getting married next week.
May his lively spirit rest in peace thereafter.
Amen.