What an afternoon!

It was a scorching Chennai afternoon when every living entity wishes it was not stuck in this place. I entered the power-centre of IITM, the administrative block, and took the elevator to go the fourth floor. The usual thing for any member of the student species at IITM to do at the ad-block, only that I was to turn right to Mr. S’s office rather than head left to the labyrinth of cubicles. It was not the first time that I was going to the Mr. S’s office in the two years that I’ve been here. (The first occasion was for an interview that was an exercise in formality.) Yet I had a gut feeling that something lay in store for me. Maybe it’s because of the fantabulous tales of Mr. S that my friends brought to me.
Innocently, I asked the bloke at the table outside the DAc*s room if I could meet the personage (Mr. S of course). I was told that he would be back in some half an hour and I could wait for him if I didn’t mind it. There were some inviting seats for waiting and I ensconced myself in one. Now here’s a confession I have to make. I often suffer from these bouts of utter madness when I don’t work at all when the time beckons me and on the most inappropriate of occasions I find this voice telling me that this bum (read myself) has hardly worked. Thus I took out ‘Probability and Stochastic Processes’ from my bag and started going through it like I never had in the last fifteen days.
Some five minutes through the book, I noticed a swarthy guy of around mid-thirties in age entering the room with a degree of chariness you would associate with a school-boy forced to meet a martinet of a headmaster. He took a seat next to me, after extending me the courtesy of asking me if I would mind it. I was engrossed in the world of random occurrences and only vaguely conscious of the undeniable fact that he was watching me with unrelenting curiosity in the manner imitated only by that of the schoolboy (again!) looking at a modern art painting in the headmaster’s room.
I was wondering what this guy found so captivating in me, when he mustered the courage to go through with what he wanted to find out about me. The conversation has been pruned to remove the irrelevant drivel. (That this whole post is mostly about drivel is beside the point.) His diction has been preserved to the extent possible.
The visitor: Are you a student here
Me: Uh…Yes, I’m.
The visitor: What are you reading there?
Me: Oh, it’s a book on ‘Probability and Random Processes’. Just though it was a nice thing to go through. (wasn’t it?)
The visitor: You people study a lot?
Me: Uh… Yes, maybe (second thoughts on that)
The visitor: (borrowing the book for some time) You’re trying to read some textbook here. You don’t want to waste time?
Me: (What the hell?) No I try to seize every moment. (Carpe diem!)
The visitor: That is really good.
I returned to my book and was immersed in it until he shook me as if a brainwave struck him.
The visitor: What’s the secret of making the best use of time?
(Turns out it’s a brainwave after all!)
Me: (Heavens help me! I’m dealing with a genius or a nincompoop!) Err… I dunno. (Would you be so kind as to condescend and tell me what goes to constitute it?)
The visitor: Try!
Me: (This was getting on my nerves but I managed to tell him calmly) I dunno!
The visitor: Ha… ‘Probability’ is the secret of making the best use of time.
(My face went blank…)
The visitor: You see when you toss a coin you don’t know the outcome. So the answer to the question, ‘how to make the best use of time’, is probability…

The grey matter in my head was being fried trying to decipher the jabberwocky that was thrown at it. I got up and decided to strike at the root of this annoyance- ask the office helper if Mr. S was going to come at all. Almost sadistically, or so I felt, he asked me to wait for another ten to fifteen minutes. (It goes without saying that time is often as elastic as bubble gum with lots of people of that stature if one is on the wrong side of the table.)
A few minutes later, Mr. S walked into his room messianically. A group of professors were waiting outside and the worst possible case would be a meeting with them preceding my opportunity to meet him. So I got up and presented the picture of a businessman eager to finish a deal. Hell no, I realize my casual clothes are a give-away of just another student who does not want to wait. After the formality of writing out my identity and purpose on a chit and passing it to Mr. S, I was allowed in. Mr. S surveyed me from head to toe. Nothing wrong was apparently found for he waited for me to open the conversation. Now for the raison detre for this post.
Me: Sir, there was this choice to be made on my preferences for an application. The topic, semiconductor materials and components, leaves some ambiguity as to whether it’s oriented towards the electrical side or the materials side. Since you’re the person in charge of handling the applications at IITM, I have come to you to have that clarified.
Mr. S: The words are crystal clear, semiconductor materials and components, what more do you want?
Me: Sir, I’m from the electrical department and I don’t want to end up with something to do with materials. ‘The words are crystal clear but I want to know whether it is a piezo-electric crystal (read electrical) or a lead-crystal (read materials).’
Mr. S: (his eyes widen at an opportunity while his body shrugs to indicate his disappointment with the general state of affairs.) That’s the problem with you guys. Why are you so rigid about what you want? (Meanwhile, he realizes that I would be better off sitting in front of him if he is really going to unleash a sermon.) Take a seat.
Me: Thank you. It’s not that way, Sir…
Mr. S: You see, it is not always possible to get what you want. (‘I see the point, Sir…’) You cannot be so choosy. It is anyway a general problem with IITians. It’s a ‘disease’.
(I gasp… what a word! None of its synonyms come close to the starkness associated with this word.)
Mr. S: This is the trouble with students coming from single-child affluent families as is the rule now. It’s only that class of the society that can afford the exorbitant costs of coaching institutes. You know… Ramiah, Kota and other places…
Me: (Smelling a chance to get out of this mess) But, Sir, I didn’t attend a coaching institute. (I prudently hide the absence of any siblings as if it were sacrilege. After all, I intend to convey to him that this talk is not meant for me.)
Mr. S: That doesn’t matter. It hold true for most IITians. You might be an exception. What I tell you now is with regard to the general student population.
(My hopes of liberation fall with the last of those words.)
Mr. S: Students scarcely hold any respect for the professors. (‘To be frank, Sir, the respect I had for you is in free fall right now.’) They realize only after they go out of the institute that their attitude doesn’t pay in the world outside.
(He, at this point of time, realizes that his subject looks thoroughly defeated and confused, which I was.)
Mr. S: Don’t worry too much. (‘Sir, I’m past it now’) It’s only that observing the ossified mindsets that students have, I have taken it upon myself to try and disseminate this message to as many students as possible. (Do I feel like a cruel joke was played on me? Yes I do. But I’m a really conscientious chap and will do my bit to propagate your message from my little nook of cyberspace.)
Mr. S: Anyway, I don’t think I can give you more information than what you already know. (Do I feel like time was warped onto itself in defiance of physical laws? Yes I do. But I’m a really conscientious chap and will maintain that I got something out of the whole episode)
Mr. S: There’s this e-mail id and you might try to get more information from. I must warn you though that the German professor may not understand English. (This is the straw that breaks the camel’s back)
He then proceeded to tell me how to write the letter, how to appear sufficiently respectful and such sort. I put on the pretence of taking all that in…
The ordeal is now lodged in some indelible corner of my memory and I look back on this afternoon of mine and don’t know what to make of it. More so, because the e-mail id, which was the only thing I could irrefutably say was something I got out of the whole charade, was with me even before I went to him. Probably, the idea of using ‘probability’ to make the best of one’s time makes some sense after all. In almost all ‘probability’, my visit there was going to blow in my face…maybe this…maybe that. I don’t have the heart to take the reader further on a tour of tripe anymore.

*The post tries to maintain some neutrality as far as identities go. If you insist let DAc stand for ‘Dogma of the Anti-cortical’