Hostel Days! !

This Blog is dedicated to all the budding techies and for that matter all those who have got a chance to enjoy a hostel life.

In the Institute, hostel plays a key role in shaping ones character and bring about a remarkable change in ones life as we generally enter hostel as an teenagers and pass out as adults......this period of 4 years change our life in many ways and make us aware of the various twist and turns one can face in life. And if you are very fortunate to get into NI Rourkela that too in Homi Bhabha Hall of Residence with your warden as Prof.(Dr.)D.K. Bishoyi, then I can assure you that you will not be able to face such kind of difficult situation even if you are placed in the most hostile places of the world be it Antartica or Sahara Desert. As he tries to give all kind of experience beforehand in order to make us hard, so that no hostile condition could ever be new to us. We can't claim that we don't have any experience of such kind of situation.

It is through the hostel that we make good friends, which everyone always aspire for! It is through the hostel that we come in contact with people of different culture, tradition, way of living, and make them share warmth with each other.

Here in NIT Rourkela, in the Scholar Avenue, there is a sign board, written on it is--" A hostel is a home away from home, only if it shelters a single family"---------this is true for a hostel as when we come to hostel away from home, leaving our families, it is such a weird feeling which everyone must have gone through in their process of getting enrolled for higher studies be it in engineering any other field, but hostel and its scenario remains same. When we join no one knows each other all are strangers... but in due course of time they become an indispensable part of your life and you start feeling bored when they are not around you... this transformation is what hostel brought in each ones life.......

In hostels we have a Different style of celebrating every thing which is by far common everywhere like:

1. masti starting after midnight(although this is not prelevant here as we have to attend our classes in the very morning next day)......

2. Having an IST(Institute Strechable Time) which every NITRians is bound to follow... and if one doesnot have this habit initially then also in due course of time he become habitual to this.

3. We celebrate friends B'day by kicking his ass to the limit and then wishing him a happy birthday that too in different languages like...... aaj k din is dharti pe ek bojh badha tha.........etc......etc.....

we in due course get accustomed to this kind of tradition and will definitely miss this once we graduate........

Hostel Life Rocks! ! !

Summer training.....I QUIT!!!!!!!

This summer I went for training in an underground coal mine of BCCL, near Dhanbad (it’s just to say near dhanbad, although it wasn’t) in the Jharia coalfields. I was posted in Area 1-- Barora area of BCCL. The place was around 40 Km away from Dhanbad on the Dhanbad- Phushro route. The exact place was named something as “Dumra More” and the mine which I was allotted was the Chanakya mine in Phularitand. It is an underground mine with cage facility upto 60m depth for carrying both man and materials to and from the mine.

The Mine is difficult to recognize that here could be an underground mine around 240m deep, but it looked like an old Government office (sarkari office) where the workers still call their seniors as “Sahab”.

On the very first day of my visit I was welcomed by a strike (hartaal), which later I found was a common thing in that mine, a handful of workers used to come with a banner of their party be it J.M.M or any other to have their demands fulfilled. Workers used to go for strike with the leader holding the flag of their party and shouting the Naara like “BCCL haai………haai”……“BCCL Murdabad”…..etc, etc. they used to surround the manager’s cabin and showing protest for some decision of BCCL like outsourcing, giving L.P.G cylinder to each family so that they don’t need to work on gas stove and feed coal in them , rather they can use cleaner fuel (L.P.G) In this I couldn’t find a reason why they were demanding to give them coal and not an L.P.G connection, probably one reason could be that they want to steal coal from the mine and sale them to local people making profit. The main motto is to hamper the production of the mine, as in my three days stay there, I was graced by this kind of scenario for two days, that workers didn’t did any work and production was totally hampered. The official there seamed to be helpless as no security, nothing is provided to officials working there, as any one can come and surround the manager’s cabin and can hamper the production. Had there been C.R.P.F. camp I don’t think such a situation would be so common? As coking coal has a limited reserve in our country and we need to import it from Australia and Indonesia to meet our demands. I think deputing a CRPF camp would be less costly affair then what we spend on importing coal, and that will definitely lead to an increase in production from the mine.

Moreover the officials working there don’t want to work in that place and I found that even the manager and assistant manager was trying their source to get a transfer from that place to some other place. On interacting with me first question that everyone asked be it the manager, assistant manager, or be it a worker was-- “who gave you the suggestion to choose Mining as your profession?” followed by a advice that don’t join mining industry in future as this industry is not for humans, as if they were not human or they were from other planet. In fact I even asked back the same question to the manager while we were walking underground one day to reach the face where work was going on. That sir “why did you choose this field if there is so much of difficulty and if it’s so inhuman”………………………………………..................

The reply was shocking, the manager replied that “when he was about to enter into the college for his undergraduate in BIT Sindri, Dhanbad, one of his friend was very upset of not be able to take Mining as his rank was high so he decided that when he is so keen to take mining as his profession just because in mining people are paid a bit more than other branch people in starting, so he took Mining as his profession.

That very moment I decided that I should not continue training at such a place where everyone is annoyed either of their seniors or on his own virtue, so I decided and quit the training. In this whole process I would like to thank one of our Alumni Mr. Sudarshan Singh who is working in BCCL in Barora area for his immense help in arranging my accommodation in BCCL’s Guest house which is even not available to senior official of BCCL. I was able to bear such situation just for three working days although the entire process took around 10 days, during this trip I made some good friends studying at BIT Sindri in same Branch as of mine.