The Sounding Rocket Volume 5 Issue 2

Accelerated Expansion

Diversification is the way to go. Google is no longer just a

search engine; Facebook is trying to provide internet to everyone and long ago, WIPRO decided to get into computers and software instead of concentrating on just oil and clarified butter. That’s what TSR is trying to do to. Over past 4 years or so, TSR has grown from a irreverent student rant com-munique that got the editors into trouble to an important voice in the affairs of the institute, a con-scientious objector and a dissemi-nator of relevant information. And so, we have expanded.

TSR released 2 online issues of ‘Speak MACAY’, reporting the happenings at the SPIC MACAY state convention held here. These included interviews of the mas-ters like TN Krishnan, Rajyashree Warrier and the man behind it all, Dr Kiran Seth. Following this, we conducted a medley of literature events under Litfest‘15. A review competition, a web comic panel discussion, a book discussion on Harry Potter books and an on-line Creative Writing competition were held in the last week of Feb-

ruary and the beginning of March. While the responses can’t be de-scribed as ‘unprecedented’, it was quite satisfying an experience and we are confident that a scaled up version involving students from IIST and all over the nation might just be feasible.

But of course, the newspaper is our raison d’être. And while the is-sues are rare occurrences, we try to make them count. All the other programs also serve as a promo-tion to the newspaper. So in order to increase the frequency of pub-lishing and maintain the quality at the same time, we have selected 3 highly talented students from the 2014 batch to join us. It is worth noting that all of them are females, bringing the ratio to 5:4. This would have been inconceivable in the past as there weren’t that many girls in IIST. The increase in the representation from the fairer sex in the editorial board of TSR can be said to reflect the current sce-nario of the institute, where we are seeing the women playing larger roles, taking newer responsibili-ties and raising their voices more often. And yes, the powers that be

Broadening horizons

05 A Nerkle, a Nerd and a Seersucker

too.Exploring the nerd subculture and why being nerd is cool now

06 Education in India

All that happened in education in 2014

more

07 The Year That Wasn't

A glimpse of 2014

16 Knowledge is Propellant

Tête-à-tête with Dr Kuruvilla Joseph

...Ps-Ai-Id-Js...

09 The InternshipStop worryin', Start

findin'

?

feature featureAn unfamiliar story of an ex editor which is also the story of social media makeover of mother superior

27th March 2015 . Volume 5 Issue 2 . 20 Pages

Students’ Newspaper, Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology

For internal circulation only

02 editorialhave sat up and listened, and they will hopefully have to sit up fre-quently. Oh, and at the end of the semester, the ratio shall come to 2:4. Talk about the turning of the tables.

One of the senior editors, Sourajit Debnath, and his partner in crime, Gulshan Gupta have finally gone

to the US for a month long pro-ject work in nanosatellites. They are currently in the Palo Alto area, about 15 minutes away (on a clear road that is) from the Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters. And yes, tech giants like Apple, Google, and Twitter are all stone's throw away (if

a stone can be thrown as far as 12 miles). We congratulate them and wish them all the best.

The Sounding Rocket is commit-ted to come up with more initiatives like Litfest‘15, so keep an eye on the Facebook page of your beloved newspaper.

Listen, I am Freedom of Speech

by

Prabodh Katti

The freedom of speech, of love, of choice, of way of living. To crack

a joke, to take an offence, to pray to your definition of the Almighty. The liberator of the oppressed and the sword hanging on the powers that be. The enforcer of the great re-sponsibilities that comes with great power.

There is no democracy without me. Without me, democracy is a form of government where the people periodically elect their oppressors. Without me, what you see, what you hear, whom you love, are decided by a bunch of men with extreme power and zero accountability. With me, we are a society where getting work done might be a pain, but it is made sure that everyone is heard. With me, we agree to disagree, and defend our rights to do so, as Voltaire point-ed out.

And it was in the land of Voltaire that I was attacked. Or that’s what the perpetrators thought they were doing. They attacked the offices of the leftist satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and killed 12 people, includ-ing the main editors and cartoonists of the newspaper. Well, that was a big blow. The paper now stands in a precarious position, uncertain about its future, despite making a promise to come back.

Two girls from Mumbai were ar-

rested after the death of a prominent, vitriolic right wing leader, when one of them posted wondering the need for a city bandh. The other one just thumbs upped it. The next thing we know that she is in custody and her uncle’s office is thrashed by jingoistic sycophants. Of course she was re-leased later, but the period for which they stayed there couldn’t have been a bed of roses for them we suppose.

A comedy group releases a roast on YouTube. Repeatedly warning peo-ple about the explicit content. They did not air it on TV, so the reach was obviously pretty limited (Note for the oblivious reader: India is not that well connected with Internet). And then someone takes offence and files an FIR. There were threats directed towards them. An establishment cancelled the show of a comedian on the roast fearing the blowback, caus-

ing significant financial loss.Every year on 14th of February, the

entire country loses it. The fringe groups suddenly get into a nation-saving mode and start enforcing the Bharatiya Sanskriti. They set greet-ing cards on fire, vandalise shops and marry off any boy and girl spot-ted together. One gets an idea of how much a seemingly harmless day which greeting card companies and teddy bear shops benefit from the most can pose a huge threat to the Indian culture, a culture that sur-vived more than a 1000 years of in-vasion by people who were actually trying to destroy it.

First they missed the point. Then they filed a complaint. Then they burned down the posters and threat-ened the people. Then your movie reached 100Cr. The fringe groups made their point and got the free air and print time. The producers got back their money. The loser are the people of the country, who were scared at the fact that an inalienable right can be threatened so easily by a group of trigger happy individuals taking public places hostage. And when your gun is the religion, there really is no bullet proof vest. The rest of us put up with this inconvenience and went on to watch Khan guard his modesty with a transistor.

You have the right to get offended,

The Editorial

03editorial

because offence too is an expres-sion. And that’s what you ought to do with it. Express it. Sue for libel. Run a peaceful protest. Take out an ad. Raise a debate. But remem-ber, your freedom to wave the stick ends where the other person’s nose begins. This, some of you, have to learn.

Whipped, lashed, jailed, maimed, battered, bruised, tortured… they have done it all to the people who ex-press. Because they fear me. Because I am the destroyer, the anarchist. I am the downfall of the mighty and the rise of the underdog. And they don’t like it, and want to conveni-ently dispose of me.

But I cannot be destroyed. I am the fungi that grows even on the dead,

and the Phoenix that rises from the ashes. I am the force that draws a million people on the streets of Paris, rallying for my cause. I am the force that mocks the extreme right wing through irreverence and hu-mour. I am the force that scandalises the high society that wallows in its fakeness and elitism. I am the force that gets people to tweet, torrent and tumblr in protest of all that is unjust and wrong.

I will not be killed. Through those posts, tweets, graffitis, books, web-pages, I will survive. You knock me down on one front I will emerge on the other.

But I can be under threat. And that will make your life threatened.

When I am threatened, the very

foundations of everything that you believe in is threatened. The democ-racy is in danger then. The past has shown us that any attempt to incar-cerate me usually ends in a disaster. Unshackle me, and you bestow upon your subjects their birthright. To ex-press. Keep me in jail for long, and sooner or later, the mob will break open the handcuffs and crush you under their sheer weight.

And while you have the freedom to choose not to, it is important that you must know this: I am the Free-dom of Expression and I am offend-ed.

So, listen.

TSR is in the fifth academic year of its publication. Originally started using funds collected from students in buckets that editors took from door to door in their hostels, the Institute generously agreed to take over the charge of printing after the reprographic facility had been set up from the fourth issue onwards. Each issue of TSR is approved after examination by the Publication Council's members from the faculty. We thank the Library and Reprographic teams for their invaluable support and all our readers and facebook fans for their kind gesture. Feel free to contact us for obtaining digital copies of our archive issues.

Editorial BoardThe Sounding Rocket

Abhishek PanchalAnkita ShandilyaAtma AnandPrabodh KattiPriya SarkarRitu AnilShreya MandalSourajit DebnathSudheendra Raghavendra

REACH USThe Sounding Rocket

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04 news

EchoesBhaag Milkha Bhaag

TrivandRUN, the charity run organ-ised by SARAS, an NGO on 10th of January saw a surprisingly good participation from IIST. As many as 7 students completed the 10km run, and Mustafa Shahid outran every-one else in the 2km fun one. The race started at Trivandrum Club, through Vazuthacaud, Museum, Kowdiar Jn, Sasthamangalam, and finished where it started. Although tiring, partici-pants have described it has an exhila-rating experience and have set their eyes on the next marathon.

Buuuurrrrnnn...!IIST witnessed a huge upsurge in bed bug bite reports last semester, par-ticularly from the lower floors of the various hostels. Hostel management wasted no time and took action by sending in its teams of pest control who sprayed pungent pesticides in the rooms reported. As a result, the rooms reminded one of gas cham-bers in the ghettos. Despite all this, the pests didn’t budge. All efforts to oust the bed bugs were in vain, and the complaints continued to pour in. Finally, the authorities decided to burn the bloodsucking parasites down- which they did during the winter break– by burning every sin-gle mattress in the hostels. Although the menace subsided, many students were shocked to discover their un-infected mattresses burnt unneces-sarily. Talk about air pollution and Environmental Chemistry anyone?

KonchordsJarring anchoring, shapely shayari, some good and some not so good performances, and an attempt at stand up comedy: Konchords seems to have fallen into a pattern. Held on 20th February in the BB Court, the crowd that was in the musical mood didn’t seem to mind much. Notable performances include mellifluous rendering of ‘Kenha Hi Kya...’ from Bombay by the namesake of the orig-inal singer, a haunting rendering of a hard hitting number from Gulal and Rajasthani folk song performed by a security guard.

503Seeing that the traditional Malayali food is being liked by a large percent-age of student body, cutting across the state barriers, IIST mess has now opened the auxiliary counter to B.Tech students too. The system now is online, and a few enterprising stu-dents have made a website for that. Difficulties in logging in and booking plagued the website, but the reports indicate that the website is now up and running. The meal coupons get fully booked within 1-5 minutes of opening the bookings. Talks are on with the systems group to get them a server from IIST.

Finally

Tired of the wait, the alumni request-ed the institute to just hand over the degree already. To which, a Decem-ber convocation was promised. That too, got delayed due to unavailability of the chief guest. Finally, the 2009 batch students had their convocation on 22nd of February.

Republic Day ParadeFour of our very own : Unicrey Ang-shuman Bharadwaj, Shivam Singh Mariya Ratlami and Mohit Singh Malik viewed the Republic Day pa-rade from the PM’s box. The invita-tions were based on a criteria that is not yet clear but they definitely did make us proud.

HoliThe hub of all institute-approved fun things at IIST, the BB court saw coco-nut leaves being burnt after a nearly 2-hour delay on the night of 5th Feb-ruary. Holi celebrations started with much enthusiasm the next morning, with the volleyball court alternat-ing between turning into a mosh pit and that swimming pool everybody keeps talking about. Colours were smeared, half-naked bodies were displayed, and a selection of terrible yet wildly popular music was played. While the beverages integral to the spirit of Holi were not served, the students were served a special Holi dinner at night.

Dual NatureIt is happening people. Physical Science has ‘evolved’ into a 5 year BTech+MTech/MS dual degree course. The 5-year Dual Degree pro-gramme leads to B.Tech degree in Engineering Physics and any of the following Post-Graduate degree spe-cialisations: (i) M.S. in Solid State Physics (ii) M.S. in Astronomy & As-trophysics (iii) M.S. in Earth System Science and (iv) M.Tech. in Optical Engineering. There are no exit op-tions after four years.

Republic DayRepublic day was celebrated this year in IIST in front of the D4 build-ing. The ceremony was started with the march-past by security guards of IIST, after which our director and chief guest of the day, Dr. K. S. Dasgupta arrived. The parade was inspected by his watchful eyes, fol-lowed by hoisting of the national flag. The director then delivered his cus-tomary Republic day speech, inform-ing the audience about recent news and developments involving IIST, its students and its alumni. The ceremo-ny was then concluded by a high tea.

05pop culture

“For nerds, it is the best of times and the worst of times because

we are valued and accepted, but our world has been infringed on,” says Troy Campbell, a random (possible) nerd on the internet who probably would not have been as eloquent in front of a real audience.

Behold, reader, the Realm of Nerds. Urban Dictionary defines a nerd as someone whose IQ exceeds his/her weight. Alternately, a nerd is also de-fined as the unobtrusive person who sits in the back of the room with qui-et, knowing eyes, watching the com-ings and goings of all the ignorant people that are unaware their petty lives will one day be controlled and governed by this container of all that is awesome. They will strike, with all of the rage and knowledge that their life of social abstinence and gaming gluttony has brought them, in one swift blow. Fear me, for I am The Nerd.

Now, let’s move back to twenty years prior, when the word nerd was synonymous with being a...so-cially unsuccessful person, to use the mildest of terms, with bottle-bottom glasses, permanent braces and no sense in couture whatsoever. Drunk spelled backwards formed knurd, those creatures who preferred to stay at home and drool on books rather than on bar-tops. They were the people who knew more about the motherboard than about their own mothers. You could see them stand-ing beside their mangled bicycles trashed by the college bully, or hud-

dling in front of comic book stores for that new issue of the spandex-wrapped, creatively-muscled, Green Lantern.

As the Homo sapiens sapiens evolved from being a carbon to a silicon based life form in the last two decades, the nerd evolved too. The Realm of Nerds experienced a population explosion unprecedented in the history of Nerdkind. Because a universe completely like and com-pletely unlike our own expanded rapidly: the cyberspace. And every-body and their uncle wanted in.

What exactly happened? Well, the fact that nerds constitute a large portion of netizens explains all the heartwarming welcome they receive online to a certain degree, but that’s not the point. Once these so-called nerds got over the barrier potential called social anxiety, by the clause of anonymity, their wit conquered all. Along came The Big Bang with their "Smart is the new <insert word of your choice>" Theory, while Marvel, Christopher Nolan and Sony did to superhero movies what Carl Sagan did to astronomy, and voila! Sud-denly making science jokes and ref-erences based on what was until then considered as “childish”, like comics, games, anime and cartoons, became the epitome of coolness. This pretty much broke the cliqué system (or maybe created another).

Put in a particularly small - but no less epic - nutshell (nerdshell, henh), nerds came, their breadboards, tran-sistors and resistors in tow, gave

birth to The Counter Culture and The Crazy Ones took their wee little baby steps towards world domina-tion. There were computers, Inter-net, followed by faster computers, Lightsabers, Google, iPhones, the Google Glass, the 3Doodler, snazzy hybrid cars, particle accelerators, weapons of mass destruction and awesome laser pointers; all of which you certainly did not expect the per-son-next-door to have brought into this world. Then there was Zuck-ernerd (one of the most unavoid-able entities) who said, ''Let there be Facebook.'' He willed it, and at once there was an exponential growth in number of dotcom billionaires.

Today the nerd is everywhere, breaking stereotypes and unleashing themselves on mankind. The nerd is in that Mary Poppins girl who can whip your rear in World of Warcraft and DOTA. The nerd is in that well muscled footballer who writes huge-ly popular Harry Potter slash fan-fiction and that socially awkward, creepy, loner of a kid with four thou-sand followers on Tumblr. The nerd gives the theme for your college cul-tural fest. The nerd finds like minds online and fills the cyberspace with a world whose secrets are known only to them. Today, one does not simply surf the net without encountering a Boromir meme. 900 million people witnessed the Rise of Voldemort in the London Olympics opening cer-emony. We can go on and on, but the reader has (hopefully) got the idea that nerds are as ubiquitous as the

A Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker too!

by

Ankita ShandilyaPriya Sarkar

Shreya MandalGeek, Nerd, Dork, Wimps; we have all been called that. There was a time when kids were bullied by calling them these, and geek was a taunt that has caused a lot of agony to numerous children. But times are a-changin, and indeed, nerds have inherited the earth. First Year editors pay tributes to the once oppressed and now top-of-the-food-chain nerds.

continued to next page

06 opinion

The authors can be contacted at [email protected],[email protected],and [email protected]

Over the past year, with the com-ing of a new government, there

have been a lot of changes in the ed-ucation sector of our country. I have followed this with interest as educa-tion system is very important to any nation, and would like to discuss some of the changes and opinions.

The IIT entrance test has been changed yet again, largely a rever-sion from the changes last year. Now 12th class school board exams only require a minimum of 75% score, otherwise they do not count. This is a good move because the non-uni-formity in marks across the various boards led to a lot of confusion and alleged favouritism. I would be hap-pier if it was reverted to having sub-jective questions like the one I gave (ten years ago), as objective ques-tions can be solved by ‘tricks’ and it sidesteps true learning.

The 10th class board exam has been reinstituted. While I can un-derstand the aims and ideals behind a comprehensive evaluation system instead of having a massive ‘test’ at the end, the truth is that our country is not prepared for such a step at this point. The 10th board exam is neces-sary as a practice for competitive ex-ams to be taken later on, and is also used by some schools to determine admission to the +2. I would be the first to welcome less mugging and exam oriented processes, but this must be backed by a real alternative and changes in teaching system and curriculum, not just a blanket ban on exams.

Sanskrit has replaced German be-ing taught in some schools and this has raised some controversy. I high-ly support this move because San-skrit has deep connections to most

Indian languages and enriches them greatly. Though there are problems in the methods it is taught now, we should all learn as much as we can, for it holds the key to our rich cultural heritage that we are cut off from. For example, Kalidasa’s Abhi-jnanashakuntalam is relegated to an obscure fact in some history book, while we perform ‘The Merchant of Venice’ in schools. Even in day to day conversations, we use far too many English words just because we have no Sanskrit background to discuss any complex thought. For instance I was disappointed to see at a recent Model UN a ‘Hindi speaker’ using phrases like ‘Third world war start ho jayega’ instead of ‘Teesra vishva yudh shuru ho jayega’. I am sure that most of us are aware of the problem.

Anyway, there is no justification whatsoever for teaching German.

word 'nerd' in this article. In a way, the world has become

simpler. Gone are the standards set by birth, looks, money, muscle, social life, and the intelligence of being and wit is appreciated again. Nerds flourish. And finally, as has been said by that bloke (who, ac-cording to one W. Shakespeare, got stabbed some twenty three times), Veni, vidi, vici.

The Nerd is the watcher on the wall. The Nerd is the Chosen One. The Nerd the is the owner of the one ring that rules them all. The Nerd is the League of Shadows. The Nerd volunteers at the reaping. The Nerd

is a billionaire, playboy, philanthro-pist. The Nerd is an orphan raised by carnies fighting with a stick and string invented in the Paleolithic era. The Nerd is not a psychopath, but a high functioning sociopath. If the need arises, they’ll strap on their 3DMG and go kill some Titans. And when winter comes, the Force will be with The Nerd, who will get in their TARDIS and continue their search for the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything clutching a towel and wearing a T-shirt that says ‘Don’t Panic’ in large, friendly letters. The Nerd has the conviction to still believe in heroes, and The

Nerd will inherit the earth. And as this highly exalting piece

of writing comes to an end, here’s to hoping that we The Nerd will keep vici-ing.

Again and again and again.N.B. (for the frustrated reader

who is still stuck on the title): The line features in Dr. Suess' book If I Ran a Zoo, where the first time the word 'nerd' was mentioned in its current form.

A PhD student has tracked down all that’s happened in education in 2014, since the new government took power. And despite all the bashings, there have been a few positive changes. Let’s have a look.

Education in India – changes and trends

by

Saurabh Chatterjee

continued from previous page

07opinionHaving worked in a German com-pany for a year, I can confidently say that most Germans speak good English. You do not need German to talk to customers or management and thus don’t need to learn it unless you wish to stay there for over three months. Even if that were not the case, it is mind bogglingly illogical to teach German to Indian students who, by and large, are not going to Germany.

A huge revamp in teaching educa-tion has been announced by the Na-tional Council for Teacher Education (NCTE). Changes in the B.Ed pro-gramme, alternate routes to becom-ing a teacher, and increase in intake are some of the reforms put in place in order to allow more flexibility and increase the quality of teachers. Un-derlying these changes is the bitter fact that these days teaching is seen to be a sort of ‘loser’ profession, a far cry from the ancient times when the gurus commanded deep respect. We need better teachers and espe-cially better primary school teach-ers, otherwise we often grow up with

a distorted view of the world know-ing only mugging and no real world skills.

Research Scholars’ salaries were increased by 50%. This is a good move, which will reduce brain drain. The government is also planning to introduce a ‘Think in India’ scheme, which aims to improve the quality of innovative research and develop-ment activities in our universities in order to encourage our best talent to stay here and work for the nation instead of producing ‘graduates’ who leave for greener pastures, never to return. The top universities such as IITs have also announced plans to become more of a research institu-tion than factories producing ‘job seekers’. This is being accomplished by setting up centres of excellence (some connected to DRDO have been announced) and encouraging entrepreneurship.

There are also plans to dismantle the UGC (University Grants Com-mission) the way Planning commis-sion was dismantled and replace it with a new body that will better fit

the educational needs of our coun-try. Some ideas include the redistri-bution of faculty to improve the less known colleges, allowing students to change universities while retain-ing their credits (transfers) and more autonomy to the colleges. It remains to be seen what form these reforms take.

Alternative education via private sector have been growing in India now, which aim to provide a broader scope for extracurricular and more hands on learning. While these at-tempts are laudable (I have been associated with some of them), I think they will not be enough by themselves unless the core of Ma-caulay education (which was set up to produce clerks) is reworked. This requires the support of the Govern-ment, and the new Government has taken many good steps in this re-gard. I am quite positive on the re-cent trends in education.


The year that wasn'tby

Abhishek PanchalPrabodh Katti

So, Earth completed another revo-lution around the Star Sol in the

Western Spiral Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, one of the billions of Galaxies that are thought to exist in this Universe. Some say even Uni-verse is not a UNIverse but one of the many such Multiverses.Just a few facts to underscore how wholly insignificant and unremark-able this blue Gola is in the grand scheme of things. And tucked away in the lush jungles of Valiyamala on this planet is an Institute at the end

of the universe, IIST.Anyway we will come to the point. Our Year of Lord 2014 was a very significant year for IIST and the Mother Superior ISRO. We will try to chronicle as many important events that appeared to have affected our lives. If we miss some, and if they are not in chronological order, well, do they matter in the grand scheme of things?The Reign of Five Deans:The year began with a surprising an-nouncement that our former Dean

of Student Affairs, Research and HoD Avionics and Humanities Dr Thomas Kurien had relinquished 3 of those positions. While Avionics fell into Dr Selvaganesan’s lap and Hu-manities into Dr George's, the rest of the Administration got divided up, and 5 new Dean positions were conjured viz. Research, Student Ac-tivities, Student Welfare, Academ-ics, Intellectual Property Rights and Continuing Education. There was no Dean Student Welfare before, so should we expect a better caretaking


08 opinion

of students? Female editor:Reflecting the changing gender dy-namics in the campus, due to the sheer increase in numbers, your be-loved TSR got a representation from the other sex too. The editorial gods who are now designing websites, learning management and flying satellites were pleased by the move. We hope you are too, and now that the representation of the other half is at all time high, it is highly recom-mended that you take advantage of that. Freezing Engine:The crying over Cryo engine came to an end when ISRO finally launched GSLV Mk II with an indigenously built cryogenic engine. Marred by delays and scandal, the project final-ly saw the light of the day and kick-started ISRO’s Achche Din.Main CON Hoon:Conscientia 2014 happened. ‘nuff said.Oh, almost forgot. Never got to unfurl that magnificent poster on top of the library. Sad and regretta-ble. Also, two Nonsentia issues. And the website. Oh, the sweet, scrolla-ble, SpaceTRON website.Perfect Timing:The Girl’s Hostel Timing issue got into the limelight in the last days of the semester. After a Herculean bat-tle, the sweet taste of victory for the girls came in the form of an exten-sion by one hour. The decision was permanently implemented in the next semester, though.Nano Main Sapna:Some major activities were under-taken to revive the ambitious Na-noSat project of the institute, which included a 1 day workshop by an in-ternational organisation called Ca-neus in April and another workshop by the same organisation in the sum-mer. It remains to be seen where the project is presently headed to.Kitty Hawk:Aero Club managed to get a great foothold and a huge following in the

campus. We are happy to inform you, in case you are still living under the Hindenburg sized rock, that we have IIST’s first official club with ful-ly formed formal rules and by-laws, a room (well Robotics Club has one too, but the club itself has caught rust), a budget and full fledged fac-ulty incharges. And it offered a few internships in the summer, which were apparently well received. They launched a magazine called Udaan, which despite being a proofreader’s worst nightmare is a major step Into the Unknown.Shattered American Dreams and French Connection:Two students were selected for an internship in Lockheed Martin in the US. The decision was taken af-ter a week of presentations by vari-ous students of the 2011batch. But in the last moment, the plans were cancelled and the students had to finish their internships in the insti-tute itself. Though of course they are pursuing a one month project at LM’s Advanced Technology Center at Palo Alto, CA. Meanwhile, Yogesh Parth of the same batch managed to bag an internship at Université Jo-seph Fourier, Grenoble, France and succeeded in convincing authorities this side of the Arabian Sea to let him go. No marks for guessing which one was tougher. He did his project par-tially in Singapore and is back. We will try to bring his story and his (mis)deeds to you soon.Newly Minted:Students of 2014 batch arrived at the campus, and the whole drama start-ed all over. Intros, Threats, Tears, More Threats, Suspensions, Memos. For some it was deja vu, and for oth-ers, it was a definitive proof that time is circular.A lot of girls came though. The graph continues to rise.#gotamemo# Cu l t u r a l f e s t i v a l t h a t a l m o s t-didnthappen #Socialmediamove-ment #funnyyettrue #didntgetam-

emo Cultural festival that almost didn’t happen:In a nutshell, there was a kerfuffle, then a judgement, then a Kejriesque morcha in the rain, then a meeting, in which Chetan Bhagat jokes were cracked and then an intervention, and finally the fest that was not go-ing to happen happened. I2STA2:Get it?! IIST got an alumni associa-tion. The benefits of this endeavour have been discussed in detail in the October issue of TSR. Offices, by-laws and annual meet-ups shall fol-low. Business Incubation and sweep-ing reforms, only time will tell.Rang De Basanti:Saffron party formed a majority gov-ernment at the centre. Heading the enterprise is the charismatic and controversial NaMo. Around 2 years ago, he was denied a visa to US. In September 2014, he addressed Mad-ison Square Garden with Wolverine. But we must warn our reader to limit their bhakti to their beloved deities and incorporate a healthy and scien-tific scepticism.Namo speeches: ‘May the Force be with you...’ No, you are not attending any Jedi cult party or a Comic Con. This was our Prime Minister addressing Non Relevant Indians on a foreign soil besides Wolverine. Western media found it amusing and cool, most of the actual Indians didn’t have any idea what it was and we are pretty sure some bhakt found yet another reason to compare some foreign entity with our Rich (South of Indus River) civi-lization. Well, this doesn’t stop here. Without getting in debate whether it existed or not, you cannot pos-sibly bring mythology and science together, especially when you are ad-dressing country’s best Doctors and Scientists. And that’s not because it is fiction [citation needed], it is be-cause you cannot possibly prove it. Well, it’s true that Modi’s speeches


09opinion

have substance and are meant for masses and he does a very good job in boosting their morale (as if we aren’t already high with that). But we are quite sure good times are ahead and his speeches will get matured too. Indira Gandhi Peace Prize:If you look beyond the oxymo-ron, you will see that this is one of the most prestigious awards in the world. Past winners include names like Ela Bhatt, Kofi Annan, Wangari Maathai and Mikhail Gorbachev. And the 2014 winner of this award is ISRO, for its contributions to Space Technology.Mangalam: 12 Rs per Km, yes that’s actually true in grand scheme of things. Because life is much simpler when we divide total distance by total cost to get an idea, Accounts 101. Because we In-

dians are experts in comparison. We compared MoM with every possi-ble moving thing. *insert a yo mama joke here*. After all why should we give credits to gravity. Anyway it is still a big thing and we didn’t have to wait for 10 more years to beat Chi-na in something on a global level by overpopulating. We hope new year will pave way to more such missions. Brand New:If you were really put off by the ISRO website, then you have a rea-son to cheer. The brand new website is slick, neat, hip and beautiful. And yes, a senior editor of TSR was one of the 2 people involved in this revamp. For the hipsters among us who miss the millennial era website with flashy stars and clunky interface, the Hindi version is yet to be redesigned. Take CARE: Rakesh Sharma has been the only

Indian to go in outer space (Chawla and Williams are Americans, and any Indian taking credit for their suc-cess is delusionally patriotic). That will change soon, and if you want to join Air Force, now is the time. They had come to IIST as a part of their Guardians of the Sky recruit-ment drive. Because ISRO plans to put a man or woman in space soon. Crew module Atmospherics Reentry Experiment was launched using the heaviest rocket at ISRO’s disposal, GSLV Mark III, which is also a key addition to the ISRO arsenal. The year did end on a positive note for the agency and the hope is that 2015 under the new director brings the same kind of success.

The authors can be contacted at [email protected] [email protected]

The Internship or how to learn to stop worrying and find the right guide.

by

Deepak Khatri

Apart from the fact that it is worth three credits, the compulsory internship can be a major event in one’s professional life. It is therefore important that you make a wise choice. A Final Year student has a few ideas regarding the choice of internships for those who don’t know what floats their boat yet, but are determined to discover what actually does (or doesn’t).

Internships are a good opportunity for students to apply the knowl-

edge they have accumulated over the course of their studies. B.Tech. students have a compulsory intern-ship after the sixth semester. Unlike other institutions of national im-portance (and some not so impor-tant ones), the choice for an average IISTian remains limited to ISRO centres, a few universities and IIST itself. And yet, these internships re-

main rather important experiences. Here’s why:• Internship is a base of a good pro-ject.• It’s a good opportunity for explore your interests.• An excellent research experience.

Also, it is an excellent opportunity to learn LaTeX and technical writ-ing. And to learn that a space comes after a comma.

Now comes the million dollar

question: How to select an intern-ship project? Students answer this question to themselves by asking an-other question, “What am I interest-ed in the most?” Sadly, few students are perfectly clear about what’s real-ly their cup of tea . Most of the other students find it difficult to answer this question, owing to the fact that they have taken only one semester of each course and were too busy com-pleting the assignments to get com-


10 opinion

fortable with the subject.Now, let’s consider an example

of a student who thought he knew what he wanted:

A student V was pretty impressed by a course P and teacher’s way of teaching. Based on that he decid-ed to do his internship under the teacher. When the internship start-ed, without asking for any literature review or background check, the guide himself gave him the exact problem statement. The guide never had time to listen to his problems and V was not able to get the results. V ended his internship with neither results nor learning anything new or useful.

It might be therefore argued that a student should look for an “ap-propriate” guide instead of selecting a field. Based on our observations, we found out factors which should be taken care before selecting an internship guide (please note that these observations apply mostly to the IIST internships, which the ma-jority are going to end up with):Knowledge/Experience: A student should enquire/talk about all the subjects offered from all the guide available. Of all the fields they are interested in, they should enquire about the knowledge and experi-ence of the guides in the same. They should check for guide’s previous work in that area. Seniors’ reports or Google Scholar page (if the guide has one; that can be an indicator) of the guide may help for this purpose.Supports your idea: The basic dif-ference between classroom learn-ing and internship is that in classes, learning is limited to syllabus of the course while in an internship a

student can be creative with a new idea. Therefore, a guide should help student build on the idea suggested instead of rejecting outrightly or ne-glecting it. Approachability: A guide should be approachable enough if a student has some doubts about the theory, the implementation, or the proce-dures pertaining to the projects. A friendly and approachable guide is more helpful because they can es-tablish a level of trust and mutual respect with the student. A student should make sure that the guide should be free enough to be able to give him an appropriate appoint-ment if the student wants to meet him.Publication Probability: Confer-ences and Journals publications are a way to contribute to the existing knowledge base in your field. Need-less to say, it looks good on your re-sumé. Publication of a work requires the idea to be novel and unique. A guide should know how to make the work publishable by mentoring the student accordingly. A student can enquire about the seniors who got their work published in reputed conferences or journals.Control: A guide should give enough freedom to the student to work at his/her own way and come up with the results. However, they should also keep themselves abreast of the students’ work and should warn them about the difficulties they may face. Progress meetings should be scheduled regularly. But on the other hand, be wary of Or-wellian guides who want to know what you do, what you eat, what you drink, what you play and what you

see. Ongoing project progress: Some-times, a guide may offer student to work on some ongoing project. Such projects are good to work on as all the preliminary works such as literature review, defining prob-lem statement and installation of software/hardware would already be done. However, a student should look for progress of the project in past years and decide whether his contribution to the project will be valuable. Usually, projects on the verge of completion and stalled pro-jects have little to offer, so it is rec-ommended that you choose wisely.

If it helps, a student can take a cue from the B-School grads with their decision tables and make one them-selves. One might argue that mak-ing tables is extremely ‘geeky’, and only people with no life do that. But as that fits almost all of us IISTians...

This chart given above is for rep-resentation purpose only. It is not intended to represent any member of the faculty and any resemblance is purely coincidental.

This of course does not apply if the student is clear about the area of their research, to those who have a notebook full of tables and have planned everything till 2020. If they are passionate about the subject to that degree, then this article serves little purpose for them. But for the rest of us who haven’t, internship might be the opportunity to find it. Keep your eyes, ears and minds open and bon voyage.

Guide Knowlegde/Experience

Supports Ideas

Approachable Publication Probability

Control Ongoing Project Progress

Dr M Very High Very much Very easily High Not much GoodDr N High Yes Yes Normal A little Not that goodDr O High Not much Not that easy Less High Not that good



11feature

The Fourth Wheel by

Ankesh Mishra

You have to make an impression. And you get only 140 characters. You may be a pioneer in the field, a world leader even. But if that X-factor that makes you cool is missing, then you don’t connect with the average smartphone user with a miniscule attention span. This X-Factor was missing in India’s premier Space Agency PR. This is the story of the IISTian and the former editor of TSR who was part of the effort that was responsible for this makeover.

It all started with QC. Well, I was lucky to be one of the three people

who founded QC, but that’s where it all started. During my disastrous Mr Fresher finals performance, I had mentioned that I had quizzed at national level in school. Vijith Mukundan, a super senior (2007 batch, two years senior to me) then caught hold of me after all the crazy dancing and white t-shirt defac-ing and asked me to take a look at Shastra’s online chain quiz. Shastra was IIT-M’s technical fest. I went to the computer lab and checked it out. I learnt that I had no clue about online chain quizzes. It would take me another six months to learn that reverse image search was a real thing. That’s what this story is about. Learning things.

I avoided Vijith for all of my first sem at IIST. One fine second sem morning, he called me and asked me if I would be interested in going to a couple of quizzes in the city. Any-thing to avoid afternoon classes. In my first inter-college quizzing expe-rience in Kerala, I learnt that IIST stood practically nowhere in general quizzing at the time. Science quiz saved the day but we did lose the first place to CET. IIST, an institute of national repute, losing to a lo-cal college was unacceptable to me. Losing to a lot of local colleges in the general quiz was almost shame-ful. But I still think that day was a good one because we discovered All Spice and spent our prize money there (All Spice was good once upon a time). Also, Vijith, Siddharth Sriv-

astava (my roommate and brother) and I realised that IIST needed a quiz club, on that shameful day.

My tryst with branding begins here. Siddharth and I brainstormed and arrived at a very very thought-ful name. QC – The Quiz Club of IIST. The real challenge however, was to make a non-nerdy logo for the Club. A solo logo wouldn’t sell. It would go unnoticed by quizzing enthusiasts who would come to the quizzes even if the logo was a cliché question mark. And the average un-interested IISTian would stay un-interested. With a combination of highly sophisticated graphic design tools - MS PowerPoint and MS Paint - I managed to create a logo that re-

volved around a stupid phrase that I found hilarious: ‘Have you been QCfied?’

Guess what? WordGod approved of it. Now, for those of you who have not had the fortune of knowing WordGod, he is called so because it was common knowledge that he could do anything with MS Word. Anything. I was told he had designed the Conscientia 2010 website on MS Word. He was the Rajnikanth of MS Word. For all you know, he could have tutored Clippit. WordGod was the A in RAT, a three member team that annihilated all opponents in all the quizzes we organised in the first semester of QC. That was Spring 2010. My second sem.

At the finals of TechWhiz 2011, a typical QC finals scene. L to R: WordGod (red), Ritwick Rane (stunned), the sole spectator (behind Ritwick), an event organiser who wanted the seminar hall (in the distance), Vijith Mukundan (QC founder, grey tee),

Golak Sahoo (QC Veteran, black tee) and me (quizmaster)


12That semester, I got my lowest

CGPA ever (6.86) and lied to my parents about it. That semester saw many firsts: for both IIST and me. First ISAT. QC got founded. Consci-entia went national. I volunteered for Conscientia, proposed and organ-ised “Screwed” with my best friends. Made good friends and worked with awesome seniors. Help Dex was dis-covered and made fun of. Dhanak was organised within two months of Conscientia. My short film won the first prize in the said Dhanak.

End of year one: I know what Tin-Eye is, WordGod approves of my graphic skills in MS PowerPoint, I make a movie with my phone cam-era, a blackboard, chalk and Win-dows Live Movie Maker and win five thousand bucks.

Year two (2010-2011) was a true test for all IISTians. It tested every-body who said they were passionate about something in life and at IIST. We walked through a kilometre of Valiamala mud to go to classes, QC sessions, movie club sessions and everything else. When people got tired of that, people like Ritwick Rane (the R of RAT), Ameya Prab-hu, Garima Garsa and yours truly brought the movie club to the hos-tels. Common rooms kept shifting but our priorities didn’t. Siddharth and I would use the same projector for QC, which had been brought to the hostels too.

QC had developed a culture of regular quizzing in the campus but it wasn’t converting many non-quizz-ers into quizzers. And that was okay because the idea always was to im-prove the quality and be competent on the local scene. So QC started or-ganising QC-Fixion. The first edition saw over 40 teams compete. The only other time you get to see 80 people in one room at IIST is when some-one agrees to teach how to use the calculator for error analysis a day be-fore the end sem.

WordGod’s batch was leaving at the end of the spring semester of

2011 and we had one last major con-tribution to IIST’s culture to squeeze out of him. TSR was founded and I was one of the six founding editors. I designed the logo too. Yet again, in MS PowerPoint. This time, Word-God did not approve. He wanted it to be a vector something and remade my concept in an Illustrator some-thing so he could easily scale it or something and use it in an InDesign something which he was using for laying the newspaper out. I was us-ing Publisher for layouts and Power-Point + Paint for drawing. WordGod did not approve at all!

In my quest to become MSGod, the successor to WordGod, I had be-come arrogant. Hell-bent on achiev-ing everything under the sun via MS Office, I overlooked the fact that even WordGod had left MSWord behind and moved on to Creative Suite. This arrogance taught me quite a few les-sons in the first quarter of my third year.

While making the layout for Drish-tikon and editing it almost unas-sisted, I discovered that MS Office wasn’t meant for professional pub-lication. The colors on the magazine weren’t what I had intended them to be. The pictures looked horrific and life was sad. Shasha was doing the layout and editing for TSR this year. So for me, it sufficed to learn just Il-lustrator.

Meanwhile, I made another movie. It was a pain to edit in Windows, so I switched mid-way to a more ad-vanced editor. It being the first run-ner up had nothing to do with the editor I used.

Conscientia 2012 was ours. 2009 batch’s. I was a coord in the two member creative team and the oth-er coord, Arpan, was more familiar with the Creative Suite than I was. So while he could rely on his god skills, I had to rely on my knack for brand-ing and planning publicity. Work-ing closely with Rakesh, Krishna and Navjot, the Publicity coords, I worked on various aspects of the

fest’s promotion. We distributed cal-endars instead of the usual leaflet because fest leaflets are more use-less than old newspapers. They serve Pazhampori on old newspapers. We successfully ran a 30 day event in partnership with Flipkart. The Crea-tive team that year started the trend of draping huge posters from D4. We also dubbed QC-Fixion a ‘run up’ event for Conscientia. And all the routine things that happen even in Dhanak.

All this happened but I still didn’t know how to use InDesign and made Shasha and Bakkom (2008 batch senior editors of TSR) pull their hair out during their B. Tech project. Which was awesome, by the way. The project. They just wanted me to learn InDesign. At the end of all the numerous TSR meetings, Shasha would tell me, “Seekh le saale, aage se tere ko hi karna hai.” I would go back, draw V for Venkata, edit it in Powerpoint and conveniently forget what Shasha said.

Third year ended in procrastina-tion but I did learn how to write better, draw better and make better graphics. I had discovered Debu The Dog the way Vijith had discovered me: while walking back to the hos-tel after a mad Fresher’s party. Debu and Katti went on to own the quiz-zing scene in Trivandrum for a cou-ple of years and were (are) awesome writers. Meanwhile, I kept doing ba-

Moosa bhaiyya giving chanda:Collections for the first 3 issues when

IIST refused to fund TSR

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13sic programming for various courses and tried becoming an advanced user instead of a mere user of a com-puter. Mad fiddling with the laptop and a lot of dangerous hill climbing saw me through my awesome intern-ship at Nainital. One of these things is very dangerous and shall be at-tempted only by experts. Because if you crash your laptop for good, you’ll have to scramble for one at insti to make your internship report.

My fourth year at IIST was almost as boring as this story has become now. I was actually enjoying aca-demics. I finally learnt InDesign and couldn’t tell what the fuss was all about. Shasha was right! It was easy if you knew Illustrator. I came home to Bangalore for my B.Tech project and did quite some programming. In my ninth sem (the 5 month IIST-ISRO gap), I learnt HTML, CSS and JavaScript for passing time. I had ideas that my friends were unable to implement because they were too busy implementing their own. Fair enough, if you think about it.Part 1 ends here.

I joined ISRO and the first two months were my only peaceful days in the organisation. After the launch of GSLV-D5 and interacting with some well-wishing space science and ISRO enthusiasts, Bakkom and I were quite unhappy with the brand-ing of ISRO. We felt that ‘Brand ISRO’ was underutilised and that there was a lot of untapped outreach potential.

We took the initiative of explor-ing what the brand could do, what could be done for the brand and how to do these things. The next two months were hectic. The hustle was real as we had no time to lose. Our ambitions wanted implementa-tion and they wanted it quick. MOM was an opportunity and we were not going to let go of the leverage that time was. So we returned from work and wrote, read, reviewed and edited pieces of a document that we wanted to become a handbook for

ISRO’s outreach efforts. We wrote a book that talked about what Brand ISRO meant to various demograph-ics, how it could be used to reach out to a wider audience and how it could be enhanced to help the organisa-tion attract public support and good HR. We discussed mini case studies and laid out a subjective roadmap for ISRO’s outreach strategies. The 40 page book was called ‘The Ability to Inspire: Outreach Strategies for ISRO in the 21st Century’. Thanks to the typesetting skills that TSR had given me, it was a beautiful book.

It had to be. How else would you convince the Chairman of one of the most successful space agencies in the world that you had the necessary skills and expertise to contribute meaningfully to the Organisation’s outreach effort? Yes, of the only 8 hard copies that exist, the first one went to Dr K Radhakrishnan. He was on a tour, so despite the ‘privileged and confidential’ label, I opened the envelope and left it with his office. I was told he was away for three days and that he would read it once he’s back.

Three days later, he called and ex-

pressed his happiness over the effort put into the document. He put me in touch with the Social Media Team at ISRO Headquarters and forwarded the document to them. The book did some rounds in the Headquar-ters and people were pleased. In the second week of May 2014, I got a call from Shamsudheen asking me if I had any experience with web design and if I could review a project he was working on: the new ISRO website.

At this point of time, I had no knowledge of web programming except for the primitive course I had taken earlier during the 9th se-mester. Shamsu was relentless. I was proud, and more importantly, scared of giving IIST a bad name. So when he asked me to design a new micro-site for Mars Orbiter Mission (MoM), I said yes despite my lim-ited skills. I spent a week sleepless between my work at ISTRAC and learning and producing something that would impress him right away. He was impressed, now I got the job of modifying my site to suit his back-end. I had no idea about backend website programming whatsoever. I had no experience with installing or

When Space Applications Centre (Ahmedabad) sent us this anaglyph, we made sure the public got its share of awe

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14operating a CMS (Content Manage-ment System) either. I wasn’t making any solid progress and Shamsu was assigning new work to me. Rather, I was saying yes to or proposing new work. After a lot of 30 second PHP timeouts, reading hundreds of error logs and reinstalling various tools, I was able to tweak my designs to run on Drupal, the CMS Shamsu had chosen. To those of you who fancy such stuff: Drupal was our choice be-cause it’s open source, highly flexible and powerful, easier to add to and has a strong community. A custom CMS was the alternative but it would have taken months to build one and would have cost a fortune.

Throughout June 2014, after re-turning home from my shifts, I was working on the site: making separate generic templates for all major mis-sion pages and launch vehicle pages. Towards the end of June, it was time to shift all the work to where the website was actually being devel-oped: ISRO Headquarters. We were on a deadline. We had to get the new site approved by a few senior officials at the HQ, put the site up for beta testing, get reviews from all over ISRO and get the site certified before it could be launched.

I was now going to HQ whenever I could. For various reasons beyond my control, I couldn’t be deputed to HQ for the work. Technically, I was working on the website in an unof-

ficial capacity. I was free during the day before and after night shifts, and the HQ works six days a week. I tried and replaced a lot of people in night shifts and tried to be free dur-ing the day in order to work on the website. As the shift pattern repeats in eight days, I had offs on weekdays too. Working in long shifts, espe-cially at IDSN which is a good 90

minutes away from Bangalore, was something I never thought I would be thankful for.

So July was spent implementing the design. The templates I had cre-ated were mine to execute. Sham-sudheen was adding more function-ality to the site. Shamsu was also a designer for the Social Media Com-mittee, thus, I also got the fun task of assisting him in creating new Face-book and Twitter content every day. By August 15th, we had to be ready for beta testing. We had set a rather demanding deadline and there were stretches of days when I was shut-tling between IDSN and HQ with only a couple of hours at home to change from the somewhat casual dress code of ISTRAC to the formals one had to wear in order to not feel out of place at HQ. Sometimes, my concerned mother would ask, “Kew-al attendance lagaane aata hai kya?” When I did not have a night shift, I would work on testing new designs that did not need the actual server and try to get some sleep. I also had to study for the new stuff I was en-countering at my actual workplace (PS guy in navigation and control theory, you can guess).

I was running on caffeine, sugar and Chinese food. And subs with mint mayonnaise, barbecue sauce, sweet onion sauce and red chilli sauce. Shamsu and I developed a rit-ual of eating out for lunch and hav-ing cheap double espressos. A happy part in a rather taxing day. Shamsu was doing ‘overtime’ at work. At some centres, staying in the office beyond 5 is actually called over-time. No such thing in Bangalore. It’s called office. I was doing overtime at an office that wasn’t even mine. Doubt and regret crept into my mind a lot of times. Often, while returning home in a hurry to change and rush off to a shift, I would ask myself what I was achieving with the effort. There was no answer. This was an unofficial project. How long could the need to tap the strengths of ISRO’s brand

and hatred for an outdated website fuel my will?

Motivation was rare but power-ful. Dr. Radhakrishnan announced the launch of the beta website on Intranet in his Independence Day speech. Shamsu and I presented the website to some of the most senior people in the Organisation at an ex-ecutive breakfast after the flag hoist-ing. After the demo, Shamsu tried to introduce me to Dr. Radhakrishnan. Tried, because this is what happened:

Shamsudheen: Sir, this is Ankesh Mishra…(interrupted)

Dr Radhakrishnan (offering his hand): From ISTRAC?

Me (shaking his hand): Yes sir.Dr Radhakrishnan (to Shamsu):

The rest I know.After this, probably the proud-

est moment of my life, we talked about the website and the upcoming campaigns for Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI) of MOM. I couldn’t believe he remembered me from the book. We then went to Dr. Radhakrishnan’s of-fice and discussed about a possible release deadline.

Unable to believe the surreal ex-perience, I called Bakkom, the man whose vision I was thankful to. Never had I been more proud of an IIST legacy. I told him all about it. Bakkom is good at perspectives and motivation. He congratulated me on having rested my hind on the same chairs where heads of states and top world technocrats probably once sat.

With the MOI approaching, the almost complete website took a back seat. We designed campaigns and I was now more actively involved in the social media scene. The social media trio and I started trying all an-gles we could to boost the campaign in the run up to MOI. It was good to see concepts and suggestions from the book Bakkom and I had written implemented. It was fulfilling to im-plement them.

It was September 2014 and by far, I had only spent half a month or so with proper sleep. The work was tak-

Achieving world peace

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15ing a toll both on my mind and body. Why was I doing what I was doing? How did it help me? I’ll answer these later. As I was getting more involved in the increasingly demanding MOI campaign, with the website being readied for certification, work was getting hectic too, with more satel-lites on the way. Shamsu and I figured out many creative ways to introduce the public to the more technical as-pects of MOM and MOI. We made infographics for each of the dozens of events and even the media directly shared or published our infograph-ics. Even print media used our stuff.

Twitter got in touch with us and we planned a first person account that they would promote once MOI was successful. Though I was as scared as any other scientist/engineer would be about a first Mars mission, Sham-sudheen was confident. In his previ-ous role at the PMO in ISAC, he was working directly under Arunan sir, who he had all the faith in the world in. Rightly so. The mission was me-ticulously planned and managed. Shamsu knew it inside out and was confident.

So when we sat down to write and draw the tweets and status up-dates for ISRO and MOM accounts, Shamsu and I only thought of the success scenario. We did not plan for a failure. We wrote down jokes. We planned whom all to follow and whom to interact with. We planned what tone to use and what kind of posts to reply to. I had the good for-tune of penning down the first tweet. We wrote the “I’ll be around” joke that combined with a brilliant and spontaneous “Howdy Curiosity”, made for probably the most interest-ing twitter conversation of 2014.

All this and improvements in the website which was getting feedback from all ISRO centres. I contacted various IISTian friends all across the Organisation and sure that they would invest time in actually going through the site, asked for feedback.

I got exactly what I wanted. The en-thu IISTian friends chipped in and pointed out various inconsistencies that I had overlooked.

When MOI happened, I was in my office. Not with the social me-dia team. It was sad. But as a dear friend pointed out, a lot of people had worked for the mission, not eve-ryone was in the limelight. The Twit-ter first person account @MarsOrb-iter was an instant hit. It was intense and we were delighted. People took a liking to it and we had to live up to their expectations. Which we did. Over the next month, MOM kept us in awe and we made sure we kept the world in awe of MOM. Today, the account has over 281k followers, and just 30 tweets. In these 30 tweets, it impressed the scientific community, shared one of the best full disc imag-es of Mars, talked to various probes and scientific bodies and above all, talked to India.

After almost 10 relentless months, it was time for me to rest. Work only for my official role, that is.

By mid December, the site had been certified. I spent another week moonlighting for the site before it went up, which was two days after the launch of LVM3. A fitting end to 2014, the year Indian space program proclaimed and proved it was ready for the future.

To date, the media thinks and talks of the ISRO Social Media Commit-tee as a trio. Even inside ISRO, not many know it was a four wheeler, and not an auto (ISRO reaching Mars is cheaper than an auto refer-ence). I had my doubts. All the time. Why was I doing what I was doing? How did it help me? It was emo-tionally taxing to see my work eve-rywhere and not being a part of the trio everyone was talking about. In tangible terms, to date, I don’t know what kept me going. Why do people organise Konchords or Dhanak or Conscientia or QC-Fixion or MUN or the weekly club sessions? Satis-

faction comes when you work for a cause you believe in. Probably that’s why. And it’s a great learning expe-rience. Initiatives at IIST primed me for this and this has probably primed me for life. Both professionally and personally. It was a good but emo-tional experience. And I have learnt a lot. From Bakkom’s congratula-tory remarks on the whereabouts of my hind to Shamsu calling me the Batman of ISRO’s social media and web scene, from becoming rank 65 on Bangalore Zomato to acquiring a nasty looking pot belly thanks to the unhealthy sleep deprived routine, from thanking IIST at every step of learning to respecting my sen-iors more and more for everything I learnt from them, it was an emo-tional experience.

It is safe to say none of this would have been possible without IIST. Not in the form it is today. I am es-pecially thankful to my association with QC and TSR. Other people from the TSR-QC pool are killing it too. WordGod is at IIM Ahmedabad. Ritwick Rane and Bakkom are at XLRI. One is at NITIE. One is heav-ily into freelance web programming. One would soon make it to LBSNAA (fingers crossed). QC-TSR probably did not place these people where they are. But had these people not been a part of the combo, I wouldn’t have learnt what I did and done what I did. One learns from great people and good, challenging work. If you can find these in the classroom and are satisfied, well and good. If not, every Friday at Chithra after snacks, “Bring a pen and a friend!”

What we aimed for


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A warm November afternoon. The end semester examinations had just ended for a majority of students. We set out for an interview of IIST’s Dean of Student Affairs, Dr. Kuruvilla Joseph. An accomplished researcher and professor, and the person who brings the chief guest for Dhanak, Dr. Joseph is known to be warm and friendly. Our eyes fall on the familiar caricature on his bulletin board, and we begin by asking the question we have all been waiting to ask:

"Knowledege is Propellant"

T(TSR):Good Afternoon,Sir. To begin with the interview, who drew the cari-cature?K(Dr Kuruvilla J.): I was a plenary speaker at an international conference. One of the fellows there drew it.

T: Where was this conference sir?K: It was in Kovalam.

T: How was the decision to make you Dean of Student Activities arrived upon? Why was the mantle taken away from former dean and handed over to you?K: Earlier there were only 3 deans, Dean of Student Activities, Dean, Re-search and Development and Dean, Academics. Then Management de-cided to have 2 more deans, Dean, Student Activities was split into Dean, Student Activities and Dean, Student Welfare and Dean, R & D divided into Dean, R & D and Dean, Intellec-tual Property Rights & Continuing Education. That is one good decision because now I, being Dean, Student Activities, am able to interact with the students more. We have reconstituted Student Activities Board and all the committees. I want to have a very vi-brant campus. Academics and curric-ular and co-curricular activities should go together.We need to encourage and bring out the talent and tap the energy of the young students.

T: What is difference between Dean, Student Activities and Dean, Student Welfare?K: Dean, Student Activities looks over all Dhanak, Sports, Cultural and all things are there. Dean, Student Wel-fare is mainly responsible for the hos-tels and the welfare thing, counselling.

T: Was there any procedure in making you Dean? Was there any selection or was it just assigned?K: I don’t know exactly because I was not involved in that.

T: What do you expect from the stu-dents with respect to cultural revival of IIST? K: Only a group of students that are re-ally involved in all activities of IIST. If you consider Dhanak and Conscientia, a group of students are involved in all cases and rest are not really interested, even in exercises or sports. It is very serious issue. What I understood is that after class the students have their snacks, they enter their rooms and get on the internet. So my suggestion is that you should be free from from 4 to 6, or at least 5 to 6, for one hour. Let the students come out and breath some fresh air. In the morning you are having breakfast, you are entering class and then practicals, and then again you are going back to the computer. You need to have some venue where you can have some interaction with your batch mates. You should work this out. Such things are not seen. Do a case study for a few days and check the rooms at these times. Most of the students will be there. Only a few will be out. Over-all development is not only academics. If I am sitting in some interview, I am not only looking for CGPA. CGPA is minimum average required for the qualification. I am mainly looking for the ability of the candidate, whether he/she is an all-rounder, capable of overcoming challenges, capable of un-dertaking project of his own, whether he has that courage to withstand some problems in panic situations, how he is going to solve the problem. I am not

saying academics is not important. Overall development should be there. So sports should be there. Cultural ac-tivities should be there. He/She should have good communication skills. Be-cause when you are applying for the in-stitutes, R&D organizations like ISRO, and if you are not going to get along with others then it is a serious prob-lem. You might be brilliant but if you are not cooperative, that will not get you anywhere. All these classes and reading books and things like that in our rocket lan-guage are like propellants in you. So try to acquire maximum propellants. If you have maximum propellant then you can fly high. With little peripheral propellant I can fly little bit, so this is the time when you can fill maximum propellant. Why did we go from ASLV to MK-III? MK-III has the capacity to take more payload. That’s why al-though MAVEN was launched 2 weeks later than Mangalyaan, it reached there 20 days before because propel-lant capacity of the engine was like that. ‘Knowledge is Propellant’, if I say knowledge, not only things from the book. Knowledge is all around. It’s not only theory, its capability, potential. So people should grow like that. Another thing I say to my students if you are go-ing for the interview you will be among 100s of students who are in the queue. If you excel in your field, if you are out-standing, people will call you to come and join their institute. So you should aim for that. That’s why we at institute organize seminars and call people to interact with them. When you attend a seminar and after that if you don’t ask questions that means you have not utilized it 100%. Earlier when I was student, the thinking was, any fool can

interview

17ask questions. But asking question was not simple thing. Asking ques-tion is most difficult because if I am attending a seminar , and if I want to ask question, a genuine question, I need to go through it, I should learn through it. Sometimes in learning process, I am asking question, ques-tion may be from my previous knowl-edge and present knowledge and that helps. These are the things we should enhance in student activities

TSR: SAC, we believe, is important to encourage student atmosphere. But it is in an obviously bad shape. We nev-er got a clear picture about the SAC. Everything so far has been unsub-stantiated rumors. So a) Will it ever be built? b) In case there is no perma-nent solution in near future, how do you plan to address the issue of space for cultural activities?K: No, SAC is almost 60% complete. Some technical issues are there. Man-agement is trying to sort out these is-sues. I believe that it will be over in near future. Once it is there, I believe we have many indoor courts. Many type of courts are there. Dining for 1000 people and gymnasium will be there. I believe that it will be com-plete in near future.

TSR: Sir, but it looks like it hasn’t been built, it’s not been building for past 2 years.K: I told you that there are technical issues. Hopefully it will start again.

T: In this semester the upper time limit for co-curricular activities has been reduced to 10 PM. Earlier, clubs like Astro and Movie were permit-ted to hold their activities until 10:45. Why has this decision been taken? Has the campus suddenly become unsafe?K: It is not a question of safe or un-safe. We can have these activities up to midnight, but what we have decid-ed that these activities can be there up to 10 pm. After 10 it’s either for sleep or academic activities.

T: But earlier it was till 10:45?K: I don’t know that. It is decided to be up to 10 pm. After that no such activities need to be there. I will tell you, you are sharing your room. If we go for 10:45 or 11 or 12, you may be involved in some activity and suppose your roommate’s time for sleeping is 10 PM, you are causing disturbance for them. This is only one example. There should be a time limit. Even for Dhanak we had restricted it up to 10 except for one day. It should be uniform to all activities unless there is an emergency thing or exceptional things. Suppose for Astronomy club you need to see something, then I can give permission. I have no problem.

T: Since you talked about uniform-ity, since the summer of 2014, issues regarding girls have been in news a lot. Timings. And the general morale among the girls of the institute is low. What is the plan of action regarding that?K: I got this representation from girls' side, just before the summer during exam time. Their argument: they have to go to have some food. So immedi-ately we discussed with the director and decided to change the timing to 10 pm until the end of the examina-tion. After reopening we got same re-quest and now the timing is up to 10. But only in the hostel areas.

T: There have been complaints from the Sports fraternity regarding the sport activities. Students feel that in-stitute does not provide them with enough support. For example there is no proper trainer for such activi-ties right now. And students wanting to represent IIST outside do not get enough encouragement. There have been instances of goof-ups. What do you want to do about it?K: I don’t think I agree with this state-ment. Until last semester we were having 2 trainers. Now we have Shy-am who was recruited last month. We are trying to find good trainers. About sending teams for sports activ-ity, yesterday some team was in Ban-

galore or Trichy for cricket tourna-ment and entire expense is paid by us. Problem is we are not getting enough applications. For cultural festival also people asked for permission. That’s why I am trying to develop a program where institute level competition is there. For sports we have annual sports meet. And we have 4 houses. There are people for quiz, elocution, dance, etc. Why don’t we have in-terhouse competitions, inter hostel competitions? These things will make our campus vibrant. And students need to take initiatives. The manage-ment want to support but the initia-tive from students is not coming. It is responsibility of students, you should motivate everyone to get involved in such activities. It will help you relieve your stress. Similarly if you take part in any of these activities, your con-centration level will increase, confi-dence will increase. You should act as a mentor. For those who sit in the room, you should have a mandate that 5 - 6 no one sits in the room. Even if they don’t take part, just go outside, walk outside, and you will come back with good feelings. Otherwise after all the classes and labs you go and sit with laptop and then take book, then you cannot concentrate. Your

interview interview


18subconscious will always think about Facebook, chatting and all. Correct me if I am wrong. 2nd thing is you all complain about bed bugs. Cleanli-ness in the hostel is very poor. When I was in boarding school we woke up at 5 AM and first thing we did was to keep the bedsheet properly, keep it pakka. Then only we could go for washing. Even today when I wake up, I’ll remember that. So there are good practices we can learn from the hos-tel.

T: Sir, we have a point. If there is a 3 - 4 day holiday and if someone wants to visit a technical or cultural festival and there is no loss of class then what is the problem?K: We have no problem. Two things: If institute is represented, if the Insti-tute delegates you, then there should be a benchmark. So you need permis-sion for that. If you are going with your own money then all we need is the permission from parents and that it should not be affecting academics.

T: What are you working on now? Your current work in research?K: As far as my research is concerned basically I am a composite man. I have done lot of research in green materi-als. Bio-composites, plastics, rub-bers, biosensors, we have developed 2 biosensors, we have applied for pat-ents and one of the articles published in a reputed journal was Nature In-dia’s Research Highlight of the Week. I have more than 130 publications in peer reviewed journals (at the time of interview) and my h-index is 32 (33 as of now). You can search Google scholar. (Showing us his h-index on his desktop) Then there is another question I ask students, when some-one Googles you how many hits are there?

T: It mostly directs us to our Face-book page.K: Student, only one or two or may be even zero. But your target must

be that by 2020, you must have hun-dreds, because of your contributions to science, society or country.

T: Would you accept students to work with you in some projects?K: I don’t have any problem. You can approach me.

T: What are your hobbies and inter-ests?K: I like driving and travelling. Driv-ing is my passion. Earlier I had prac-ticed karate, no longer now. In my house we have a garden. So I do some gardening too. Whenever I get time, I travel. It’s very difficult to sit in the house.

T: Where have you travelled sir?K: Many places. I used to drive 8 hours continuously with maybe some coffee break for 5-10 minutes. I have visited a lot of places, with some in-teresting places like Amazon in South America, North America, Lapland in Finland, Great Wall of China. Do you know Aurora? You have to cross Arc-tic Circle to see that. It is an amazing experience. (Showing us his photo-graphs from tour) Here we make bar-beque, full of snow and we did skiing.

T: When was this?K: I have visited many times. This is the forest where reindeers are there. In summer these people are very hap-py as they have very long period of darkness. So they will have festivals. This is Baltic Sea. One should go to these places. It is amazing experience. Amazon is another wonderful experi-ence. [Points to a photograph] This is Arc-tic Circle. See these are such wonder-ful things. How did I get there? For all these, I owe to research. Because if you are publishing more papers, peo-ple will be interested to know about your work. So that international net-work will be there. That’s beauty of science, beauty of research.

T: What is your opinion on TSR?K: TSR is good but you have to im-prove a lot, the quality of it should be more towards academic type of things. Every issue should have some article based on theme. So next TSR should be theme based. It’s newslet-ter, but theme should also be there. That would be beneficial. It should be qualitatively more sound. Now you report very small things. So the qual-ity of the same is less. All institutes should emulate TSR. TSR should be known in all institutes. Suppose you get articles from faculty, the level would improve. Cover page should be impressive.I am not happy with TSR. Whatever you are doing is good. But you have to improve. Next TSR, write about No-bel Prize winners or important inno-vations like Mangalyaan. I don’t think all students read now, not all watch the news. 40% students are igno-rant. All students read only academic books, their only aim is to get CGPA of 8 and above. TSR can also be use-ful for staff, our children. Something should be there on these lines. Mainly it should be academic, science and technology related.

T: In Dhanak, Conscientia, you man-age to get Chief Guests in last mo-ments, from various backgrounds like film personalities and all. How do you manage to do that?K: I am a scientist and a professor. You should have good network.

T: You have good network in science and technology, but film personali-ties?K: That’s why you should have overall development. If you are in front to or-ganize Dhanak and Conscientia, you are going to contact many, many peo-ple. If I have a contact, I keep in touch with them. Networking is important. How can you network? By participat-ing. In the campus, off the campus. That is lacking in the new generation. If you ask me what is more impor-

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19tant, my research, my assets, etc. I would say my relation-ships. In IIST, off IIST and everywhere. If I die today, who knows me, who remembers me, who misses me, how many of you will miss me, that’s im-portant. You should have both academic and social network.

T: This semester has seen an increase in tiff between the students and the administra-tion. The fact is that students have come to be wary of, and are to a large extent, scared of the admin. How do you hope to reassure the student body?K: That is misunderstanding. Problem is if you have any problem you should come to me. Most important problem is communication gap. My room is open all the time. I am try-ing to promote a lot of things. Sometimes I sign the permis-sion in the corridor when a student approaches me. Stu-dent and Teacher relationship must be friendly, cordial. But that doesn’t mean no respect.

You should give respect. That’s my motto.In my 25 years of experience, even my first batch students still remember me and I have very good relationships. I am not praising myself, but this is important. There was some misunderstanding and such things should be avoided. Be-cause if you discuss more and more, it will melt down.

T: Thank you very much sir for your time and the interview.K: Three things you must re-member. One is you should motivate students and en-courage them to take part in all the activities. That is very important. Campus should be more vibrant. More programs without affecting regular aca-demic activities. Third thing is improve quality of TSR. Don’t take it too seriously, I am just suggesting, that’s how it can be or it can be the way you like. But as a dean, I want everyone to know about TSR.

Food Reviewby

Prabodh Katti

Move over Ambrosia, we have the new Burger king in the

city. And I don’t mean the franchise.Located near The Capital Hotel

and close to the GPO in the city, 1976 is a small yet cosy haven for American food. The ambience tries its best to recreate the good ol’ 70’s. There’s a radio from 60s, a few books that are yellowed and soiled (though they include Amitav Ghosh and Nicholas Sparks, authors who wrote their books much after 1976) and a rotating dial telephone. The music takes you back to that era, and gets the retro vibe of the place going.

The restaurant is very small, with around 8 tables in total. So if you plan to go with an entourage of 20-30 friends, it’s best you avoid this place. But a group of 8-10 people can be easily accommodated.

Because there are only around 2-3 people manning the place, the ser-vice is a little slow. We had to can-cel a Virgin Piña Colada because we were getting late for the IIST bus (we couldn’t make it). If you are a big group, plan to be tucked away for 1.5-2 hours. Also the menu is very limited. There are around 7 burg-ers, with 3-4 of them containing

beef, and only one of them is for the vegetarians. There are a few sand-wiches, fries, milkshakes, refreshers and hot coffees. For a place that calls itself a café and whose posters say “Given enough coffee, I can rule the world”, absence of cold coffee from the menu was a disappointment.

Food arrived in baskets, not plates, which we must say was a nice touch. And this place arguably serves the most delicious fries in Trivandrum. There is plain french fries, and there’s mixed fries, which is a mix-ture of plain, masala and round smi-ley faced fries. They were fresh out

interview chetta poQuotable Quotes

Quotes that brought a smile :)

1. They couldn't see ATC . ATC couldn't see them.They couldn't see each other. And then everybody died.

-Overheard at an Aeroclub session about crashes. Reportedly, they have solved the MH370 mystery. 2. “Can anyone pass me a shampoo? I need to wash the water from my hair.”

-Heard one fine morning while waiting

3. Some guy in IIA: What’s up?Editor: The room ceilingThe Other guy from IIA: Zenith.


20 chetta poof the frier and hence very hot. The texture, the crisp and the taste were remarkable. For non-veg lovers, The 76 Burger is a must have, with its de-licious and unprocessed meat (Yours Truly is a herbivore; this is the opin-ion of the five of his meat eating com-rades) sandwiched with lettuce and cheese. The Original Quarter Pound-er is for the beef lover amongst you. Though the strong metric system ad-vocate in me would have been happier if it were called ‘Royale With Cheese’. Veggies have to contend with Spice Cottage, which as it turns out is quite appetizing. And the best part is that the prices are very economical, com-parable to what they sell at McD and cheaper than Ambrosia.

Mint Mojito may not be for every-one, but the Chocolate Milkshake is absolutely enticing. Overall, this res-

taurant more than makes up for its slow service, limited seats and small menu with delicious burgers, crisp fries and the overall mise en scène.

Location: Ambujavilasam Road, Near Capital Hotel, Trivandrum

Metrics:Ambience: 9/10Service: 8/10Food: 9/10Price: 9/10Overall: 9/10

Timings: Open after 1430 hoursMust try: The 76 Burger, Spicy Cot-

tage Burger, Fries, Chocolate Milk-shake, and Quarter Pounder (Con-tains beef )

Avoid: Mint Mojito may not be for everyone, though it is quite well pre-

pared. Also, huge crowds, or large group of friends and calorie conscious companions.

1976 in India was the time of forced sterilizations and autocracy. Nothing in the restaurant suggests that,

though.


#3 Freedom of Expression(Years later America wages war on North Korea for changing their government websites to Comic Sans)

Comic on Science, Sarcasm and Serenityby Abhishek Panchal


The Sounding Rocket Volume 5 Issue 2

Documents

Transcript of The Sounding Rocket Volume 5 Issue 2