All For An Extra-Curricular

Prologue:
This piece is about three friends, not to be confused with Alok, Ryan and Hari, the five pointers of Chetan Bhagat. For one reason that they were the heroes of that novel but the trio in here (though the protagonists) aren’t the heroes- they lack anything exceptional to be defined such. If still suspicious of an act of plagiarism, you need to know that our characters are bona fide students of electrical engineering (not mechanical) and the minimal interactions between the narrator and his HOD are limited to attestation of NTSE application forms, that also through the department office.

The Facts:
In the north-eastern state of Assam lies an institute of international repute that has been ranked even above ours by a weekly of national repute. The institute had organized an online algorithm designing competition, ‘Byte Disorder’ on the 29th of August, 2004. Eight hours were given to solve eight questions. Points were incremented for submission of correct algorithms while deducted for submission of incorrect ones. ‘ctrl-alt-del’ won first prize with 5 correct submissions, while ‘segmentation fault’ was adjusted second with three correct and two incorrect entries. ‘Azad-Ka-Jhatka’ was dubbed as the team with minimum score with eight incorrect entries.

The Fiction:
Human nature is too intricate for my nineteen year old brain to understand. He tries to be at the top and (alas!) can not co-exist with others; even at the summit of seventh largest mount of technical education in India. (Ref: India Today). Those who can cram are the nine pointers, and better than other mortals. Those who can act and speak become members of the elite Action-teams and publicity-teams, while those with stamina go on a tour to inter-IIT sports meet every first week of December (to lose mostly).
In their zeal to become the ‘better among equals’, they started a dozen redundant posts in all the halls of residence. Not satisfied with the A-team and P-team, they introduced a dozen more teams in Spring Fest. They later went on to introduce a dozen new posts for the Tech Fest.
Though long is the list of extra-curricular activities available for students, longer is the list of students enrolled in the institute. The truth is that some students are left out of the elite teams or posts and aren’t even nine pointers. Yes, that’s true. If you belong to this campus, you are either a ‘stud’ or a ‘muggu’. Of course, in lieu of a scale of relativity, you may be defined a muggu by one and stud by another.
I am neither a nine-pointer nor a stud. That places me in the middle ranks in our relative scale. Not that I didn’t try for the coveted title of ‘stud’. Right from day 1, I have been eyeing the place held by studs in campus and brills (the word muggu being offensive, I had to coin a new word) in acads. I had taken interest in every event that could be a prospective catapult to stardom and had eagerly participated in many extra-curricular. I tried my hands on the guitar and legs on football pitch, was thrown out of some choreo auditions and was found too coarse for dramatics.
I got my first breakthrough after an open-IIT eastern vocals event. Unable to deduce anything of a classical song, I thought it was just loud blabbering, the type I do in the bathroom. Enthusiastic about my new talent discovery, I prepared a self-composed song and presented it to a vocalist from my hall. Well, I won’t go into what he commented on my song. It is sufficient to know that I dropped the idea.
I turned a sophomore and entered my senior hall without a single hobby at hand. I did make up some two or three hobbies to complete my Orientation Period intro. My tryst for an extra-curricular wasn’t quenched even here. Unable to find myself participating in any inter-hall event, I decided to contest for Hall Committee Member (HCM). To ensure least resistance in my path, I contested for the lacklustre post of Canteen Secretary. Unfortunately, there were others with similar intentions (as they say, an IITian thinks faster than even an IITian). We were five contesting for the same post. I lost by three votes and all my efforts, collecting fundas all the way Cheddies to Harries went in vain.
After seeing Azad’s plight in water polo last year, I had seen a good opportunity for making my entry into the glorious world of studs. Even that fused this autumn when I saw three inter-IIT freshers in Azad’s water polo team- frightening last year’s medallists. At around this time, my yearning for a certificate of extra-curricular excellence denatured down to desperation. Training & Placement section, fascination of every fresher, became a reality with a notice calling for training in ITC that pays good bucks for spending the summer with them. The application form was full of queries about extra-curricular, fields that went blank in my case.
Future is as frightening to a non-stud KGPian as an individual of human species. I saw, with anxiety and fear, studs being placed in so and so company, pointers scoring high in GRE and the plight of the anonymous. Something had to be done sooner to gain a legitimate hobby. My eyes fell on the colourful posters of Techniche 2004, IIT Guwahati and a chance to gain a prize (money and certificate) in ByteDisorder, their online algo contest.
Though a jack of no specific trade, I believe I am a good analyst. And my analysis said, IIT Guwahati lacks the name and reputation to attract the best minds. I was right to a great extent, seeing only seven teams of KGP and two of Kanpur in the final list of participants.
As my partners, I had chosen two others of my type-anonymous KGPians. Sailendro belongs to a class of selected few who think time is rash and faster than an inter-IITian runner. He is spotted more often in Cheddies than in class due to his impotence in differentiating day from night. It took him quite a long to understand the benefits of preparing for the contest. Babu Rao (doesn’t want his real name to be revealed) was somewhat easier to persuade. I just had to convince him that neither counter-strike nor AOE is essential to exist in this world. Job is.
Our team name was- Azad-Ka-Jhatka- The Shock of Azad- a mark of our benevolence to the department and hall we shared. We made all required preparations- Cormen, Kanitkar’s C series, Schuam series and graph theory. We gulped all in a matter of days. The D-day arrived. Sunday, the 29th of August. Competition started at 14:00 IST and continued for eight hours.
It took us a complete one hour to understand the questions and decide on which question to attempt first. We tried out each problem individually for two hours, but without any result. Then, desperate to get an answer and improve our tally on the ranking page, we together crammed on a problem for an hour. Still no shadow of success.
“We need to try some alternate methods”, Babu Rao said, his eyes hollow with pangs of anxiety, “to get the 10,000 bucks first prize”
“What methods? I even went to the central library and searched every book on algorithms there”, I said.
“Look. Just four or five answers are sufficient to get the first prize. Let us pay some guys good at algorithm. A thousand bucks for each correct entry will do”, said Sailendro, the entrepreneur among us.
“That’s cool”, was Babu Rao’s excited reply as hopes of regaining a cherished dream- a certificate and money- were rekindled in him.
Babu Rao went off to RK to woo a friend and Sailendro to Nehru. My quest for a person to get help from ended with a senior called Reddy. He always boasts that he also belongs to an elite gang, not the stud group but the high IQ societies. His confidence in solving problems acted as an increment to my hope. I presented my deal to him with an initial offer of Rs.500 per algorithm executed. He finally settled at 800.
Two more of our precious hours. My head-banging with Reddy didn’t yield any result. Nor did his acclaimed IQ seem to help us in our goal. Babu Rao and Sailendro returned empty-handed. In spite of the fatigue, we were not feeling hungry. Somehow gulping down the mess dinner down to our intestines, we restarted our journey with full vigour. An hour and a half to go.
Try, try and try. Try till you succeed. The king and the spider story didn’t quite prove effective in our case. I finally quit the competition at 21:30, half an hour before the deadline. Minutes later, Babu Rao came in with disheveled hair and asked for a crocin tablet.
Sailendro didn’t give up till the end. He made eight submissions, one for each question expecting one of them would work. He joined us at ten. We were ranking last or ‘first from the other end’ as Babu put it.
“You are a shame in the name of Kharagpur. What was the need of making eight submissions when none of them is running?”, asked Babu Rao.
“I thought they may consider us for some step marks. After all, I have sustained four semesters on step marks”, was Sailendro’s innocent reply.
“You don’t have to be that silly. You see, we still have many more competitions coming up. We can score in Bitwise, Kharagpur’s algorithm competition”, I proposed.
“Not any more. Had I squeezed a fraction of grey cells I did today in the semester exams, I could have been a nine pointer now. You know what that means? GRE and no tension of campus”
“Hey come on guys. We wanted those ten thousand bucks”, Babu said pointing at the magical amount of 10,000 on the computer screen, “And we lost only ten. The three zeroes are still there for us. One for each of us”

Epilogue:
Babu Rao is back in the Age of Empires. Sailendro has come across a new fantasy- making flash documents. After frantic searches for an extra-curricular, the narrator has resorted to writing. A short story of his has been approved for publication in the children's monthly ‘Champak’ after days of hard work.
If gossip reports be relied, the protagonists are preparing for a software competition in IIT Bombay’s TechFest. It has also been speculated that their team name is- Azad-Ke-Batti- tube-lights of Azad- their mark of benevolence to the hostel and the department they share.