Friday, May 12, 2006

Aao sikhayein tumhe cheat-plead ka funda

Another suicide at IIT-K. God knows why the importance of living a life looks so miniscule to them that they don't hesitate to slit their wrists, hang themselves from fans or jump from a building at just failing in a course. Com'on now if you are so desparate to pass a course then there are better ways to deal with it - Cheat and if that doesn't work - Plead.

The Cheat-Plead policy worked for me whenever I was in dire straits. I am reminded of a few incidents back at the campus where I actually learnt this art. I remember it was a PHY101 quiz and Prof. Joglekar, after his customary - "Can you please open the windows at the back" greeting distributed the question papers to all of us. It was a quiz on relativity.

For those who don't know what Relativity is, its a strange concept that Einstein professed after some bouts of craziness that spanned a long illustrious academic career. For the more informed ones, he never won a Nobel for that :(. I felt that it was exerting too much pressure on human brains like ours to learn a concept that took him years to formulate in a span of just a couple of weeks(that was the duration for which we studied Realtivity). I had the option of commiting suicide because of the pressure but then I thought of taking on an unchartered territory thus far - Cheat!

The stage was set but unfortunately I sat besides a Telu who was actually sitting next to the Maggu who knew it all.
(Telu - people who felt that people like Einstein should have been crucified much before they uttered anything that could put subsequent human civilisations under the threat of mental duress
Maggu - people who were capable of causing greater mental duress to subsequent civilisations if allowed to inhabit the Earth)

Anyways, the papers were distributed and I turned a deaf ear to all my inner voices and started copying each and every word that the Telu sitting besides me was copying from the Maggu sitting next to him, a sort of chain-cheating you know. 10 minutes into the quiz, I came to know that the problem had been solved because Maggu heaved a sigh of relief. We took utmost care to submit our answer sheets at intervals and not together. Two days later, Prof. Joglekar did not greet us with the "Can you please.." stuff. He looked a bit stern.

"It seems that a few of you are having trouble getting the concept right. You can ask me to help you out rather than copy it straight from your friend's answer sheet"

My heart skipped a beat. I was caught. He started distributing the papers, Maggu - 10/10, A - 8/10, B - 4/10, Anurag - 10/10(he didn't say anything to me!), C - 7/10, D - 3/10, Telu - 0/10.

"Aha! so here you are my friend. You copied the whole stuff from one of your friends without caring to look at the question paper set that you were having. You have solved the problem of Question paper set 1(a) but you were given the set 1(b)"

I quickly checked my paper because I too did not know what set I had got. But by virtue of that being my first attempt at cheating, I seemed to have been saved by some divine grace. What happened was that Maggu got 1(a) then Telu got a 1(b) and then going in that order, I got a 1(a) again. So even though both Telu and I copied and wrote the same stuff, I ended up solving the correct question but Telu was not so lucky!

Telu too had an option of committing suicide after the embarassment but he instead chose to laugh it off and worked on his shortcomings as a copy cat and graduated in time to land up a plum job!

The Plead policy came to play in the last semester of my stay at IIT-K. There was this new professor, pretty raw in terms of handling students and courses. The highest in his course was a meagre 55% and most of the junta languished in the range of 15-22%. He actually could have ruined 3 months of our professional life and we needed to take the next step. We had two options, commit mass suicide or go and plead. We resorted to pleading. Again conscience was shown the door that day. We went to him, listened to his sermon on discipline, application, life, commitment, respect, profession, career, sex..no he skipped the sex talk if I remember it correct! and it worked. No one was failed!

I know that according to my Moral Science school books the Cheat-Plead thing is certainly not the best practise but what the heck it has kept me hanging onto life for so long!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow i need to use d plead thingie..... coz ive tried 2 cheat n my prof has caught me.... :| and i hv finals on monday

Sarang said...

ha ha ha...ho ho ho...
man u're funny...

Anonymous said...

well anurag... I DID plead... lolz.. u wont believe i sent 3 of my proferssors mail... and 2 actually replied! =)) but now from next sem on, I'll keep talking to them from start wonly ;)

Anonymous said...

mast likha hai...keep on this good work..i hope u will give a bestseller someday

Unknown said...

really enjoyed the blog, reminded me of the good old iit days. Btw what was the name of the "telu", who ended in a plum job?

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