ARE THEY DIFFERENT?

Ysterday there was Buzz about a new school for children having IQ greater than 160 only. The school boasts of individualistic approach of teaching every student. The News item was Titled-
Refuge For Intelligent People.
The intelligent people are different than the rest, but the act of segregating them is injustice to both-The Student and The System.

The System will be affected by the loss of intelligentsia, thus the normal students will lose the healthy competition they had.

I would place a metaphor here : the brain does all the work in the body, so should the brain be removed from it? The answer is NO. Because the brain although highly developed than any other organ DERIVES ITS NUTRITION FROM THE BODY. Similarly the intelligent people are different but segregating them is not a tangible solution as they are also nothing but a part of society.

The Segregated students will be made to believe that they are great and the others are not up to their par in any aspect of life. Taking them out of the system is undermining the values of equality.

In the end the intelligent people have to co-exist with other people in the society. Thus they should be provided with the means to develop and utilise their talent to the fullest.

The Rajasthan Episode (Part 1 - Chittorgarh)

Lord Be Praised.

Rajasthan... One state which is usually associated with Desert and shifting sands. But, My notion about this state was to be shattered and I was to be enlightened.

All of us were getting bored after 5 weeks of staying back at home. We wanted to do something, go somewhere. Hence we took it upon ourselves to search for a suitable destination. Everyone suggested some place or the other, but we could not reach a consensus. Then I suggested about Rajasthan, as that was the starting of monsoon. So we thought that heading towards Rajasthan would give us reprieve from the pouring of Goa, and Humid Climate of Hill Stations.

So we started collecting information about the state. we visited the State's Tourism Development Website, and many other sources, including People who had visited the state.

We Came to Know that there are mainly two tourism routes

• The Marwad (Desert) Route: which passes through picturesque Jodhpur, Jaiselmer, Bikaner...
• The Mewad (Green) Route: which has cities like Udaipur, Ajmer, Pushkar, Jaipur.

We Chose the Green Route.

Thus we now started planning our trip, with the places to be visited in mind.

We decided that we will concentrate more on enjoying the beauty of the journey rather than just the destination, thus we went to three cities only. viz.

• Chittorgarh
• Udaipur
• Mt.Abu

Now the question was of conveyance, after much deliberation we decided to hire a Jeep, as we were seven people.

Dates were decided with everyones convenience in mind.

The Journey

The trip was to start at 7.00 AM on 11th July; We started rumaging for things to pack.. like CD's, Medicines, Camera's and other stuff... and finally at the end of the day, I was able to pack eveything.

On the dawn of 11th July, we started our Fun trip to Rajasthan, our route was simple and straight.

On Day 1: We headed straight to Chittorgarh.

We took a break around noon, to have some snacks.
and then went straight up to the fort...

A Birds Eye View Of the Fort
Victory Tower

The FORT must have been very magnificent during its prime.

It is very big, encompassing many smaller buildings such as temples, and other palaces... to mention a few, the Well know "Victory Tower", then the palace of queens, from where the queen of Chittorgarh along with other women of the fort performed the JOHAR....

It took us around 4 hours just to have a glance at each and every thing inside the fort... later we decided to go in detail.

We climed upto the top of the Victory Tower, the view from that point was just Magnificent. Then to the temple of lord Brahma, the only other temple in the world (the 1st being in Pushkar).

Around the sunset, we watched the beautiful fort in the twilight, and later continued our journey, towards Udaipur....

(To Be Continued....)

THE TECHFEST 2006

Myself with some of my friends went to IIT-B for participating in an event there for TECHFEST.. their Technical Festival. During 20-22nd Jan.
we were to participate in the Ultimate racing competition of the year, our own Indianised RC DRAGS Competition.

We boarded the Viramgam Passenger for MUMBAI on 19th night. The train infamous for being late and taking double time than other trains on the same route. The Tain came an hour late as was expected of it. anyways, we got onto it at surat, after that, once inside the train, we got the bedding etc out and sat discussing about our prospects of competing against the best of the best in Asia. and went to sleep around midnight. the train reached its destination at 6AM on 20th. and suddenly we were in the thick of a commotion to get out of the train.

We did anyhow, we deboarded the train, and went to the other platform to catch our next connecting Local.

When we reached the IIT-B Hostels, we were kindda exhausted with the effort.Anyways...

at around 9 we had our breakfast and then went to see the arena... we were queqed for 10.30 the other day. So we practiced a bit, fine tuned the machine, and then went for a stroll... we visited arena for many other competitions.

Next day we went to the arena an hour and half before our scheduled time. we checked and rechecked our every part of the machine, which was a car (built using a Engine(diesel)) and to our utter horror, we found that a particular bolt was damaged and needed to be replaced, the calm changed into turbulance...and suddenly we were all doing this and that, luckily we found a shop and bought the required part and replaced it, but our bad time was not over yet...

Now the clutch mechanism was giving us jitters... Somehow we managed to mend the things. and we went in the arena for the elimination round which was a one-on-one challange... we prayed, and started our engines, pushed the accelerator and waited for the countdown... and 3...2...1...GO... God be praised... the machine ran perfectly and we won that particular part... now we waited... for the results to be announced the following day...

God be praised again, we made it to the top, we were amongst the top 30 Teams selected out of a total of 300 Teams which participated...