A DTP ANECDOTE

It was in the odd semester of our second year of engineering, when we confronted a course known as “Design: Theory and Practice” (DTP to make it, you know, a bit crisp). The course was taught  to us to implant the seeds of innovation in the young minds of the prospective engineers. The precise objective was, perhaps, to introduce the students with the know-how of Design, about its evolution, about its implementation and to accentuate the concern to consider Design as a domain having a strong confluence with that of Manufacturing.

The very first day the semester started, we were handed over the sheets explaining to us the marks distribution criteria to be followed for DTP course. Then, it looked very much even – 50% for a project that essentially required being a prototype of some unknown, non existing, innovative and original design of ours and the remaining 50% for the usual theoretical exams and quizzes. That very moment, I pondered, “Huh! At least passing this course won’t be that tough – I mean even if I don’t make my project innovative enough, any instructor would certainly be giving 20 on 50 for at least the efforts put into it. And then it is going to be a group project. Chalo, ek mein to saala apan pahle din hi paas ho gaye.” But the joy did n’t even last a minute. “Hey! Silence Please. I need your attention here”, announced our DTP instructor, “Please make note of the point mentioned in the curricular that you will be awarded zero in case you don’t complete the project. Your design, that needs to be very original, also needs to be embodied into a tangible and a functional product. Else no matter what alibis you utter on the evaluation day, you get zero.” He meant some real serious business there. Our joy and excitement gave way to the thoughts that were full of, what you may call as, flurry of certain inexplicable  fear and anxiety. Anyway, the projects groups were formed. In no time, the semester load made us damn busy – the assignments were just too much! Plagiarism – what you may infer as an engineer’s doosra to all the assignments was very much practiced in our college as well – but then when even copying became too much for us to cope up with, you can imagine the intensity of burden that had fallen on our young shoulders. WoWoWo..the boys lost punctuality in calling their girl friends and as far as the girls were concerned, am not very sure, as they were just the two of us in our batch, so you can understand, even if they would have lost the most trivial thing your wild imagination can ever think of, the loss their fraternity would have suffered would have been tremendously huge!! Let me refrain myself from discussing the girls here...if you really can't control then may I ask you to help yourself navigating here: http://mickeydynamic.blogspot.com/2009/11/girls-mystery-chapter-disclosed.html The rest, just continue reading this...


DTP started with somewhat taciturn ambience that was common among the other semester courses as well and the distinct boredom could soon be felt in the theory lectures. The theories of the evolution of Design – for example, how the modern cozy chair evolved - just somehow would not intrigue me enough. I took DTP for granted, bunked a few lectures and paid more attention to the project stuff and that too on an unprecedented stuff our group had chosen: MWM - Mechanistic Washing Machine – “Born for Innovation in Engineering.” As a matter of fact, I always made it sure to keep some cool name for everything that I made – be it Intelligent Bicycle Transmission (IBT) or Intelligent Video Monitoring System (IVMS) or that very lengthy name we, I mean my project group, kept for a video game we made as a part of Computer Graphics course - Blood Rain from The Mystique Skies (BRfTMS). For some unknown reasons, we chose this stupid name for the game. BRfTMS??? Doesn't it seem to be a name of some bizarre and sophisticated medical degree rather than an out of the box name kept by some freak for some stupid game of his! :) And then I don't care even if I was that freak!

Back to the gist - In no time, DTP opened to us to the vista that led us to myriad of complex and often nauseating lengthy equations involving matrices, trigonometric identities, and state diagrams. The toughest aspect of them all was – Visualization – of the objects and models around those three axes, one of which was dreaded the most – the invisible “zee” axis. “But then, 3D is no 3D if you can understand it!” - Our professor, I thought, taught us with this rigid notion of his. I can vividly remember everything was going smooth till 2-D translation, rotation and camera calibration but soon we entered 3D world. Lectures after lectures – all devoted to polynomials, equations and matrices involving translation, rotation, camera calibration and modeling in 3D world. DTP, to me, started seeming to be a full fledged CAD/CAM software development course, and I felt it was sort of mechanical domain biased, where we were being taught in exhaustive length the mathematical tools required for developing CAD-CAM softwares. As expected, most of us fared badly in the first Quiz. Mid sem exam was not even close to be called as an under performance – it was a total drought of positive integers on our evaluated exam sheets. Even positive real numbers less than 1, which, as a matter of fact, any mathematics novice would say - "Hey, they are infinite in quantity!" -were difficult to be seen on any of our evaluated answer sheets. Zero or  0 or zero or zerooo; this way, just the style of awarding us that naught score changed from one script to the other. I think the instructor might have been fed up writing "zero" or "0", for almost all of us, and  for a change, or may be to console himself a bit, that his students can't be that idiot, started practising the various forms and styles he can award us that zero. I guess, you will agree, writing zero 75 times is boring indeed. Soonafter, worse happened. Most of us even screwed the second quiz managing the very familiar zero yet again – just the two 'designers' managed to open their DTP accounts somehow. Rest were tottering on naughts. Most of us belonged to the pool that needed some real good marks from the project and the end sem that were to follow. Frenzied ratta-fication (and I really don't care if that's not any word) of the equations involving  dreaded Beizer curves, Bernstein polynomials and Envelopes was also not helping. Visualizing the models made up of  complex curves meant just too much to our Medulla Oblangata  - we were just so much screwed up! Hey - you see - Yaw rate angle calculation matrices were outnumbered by the yawns it caused among the people. In making a general statement here, with so much assertiveness, I may be wrong about others, but then I can’t be more correct! 

Anyway, in the later-mid of the same semester, the college team planned a trip to Antaragni – IIT K cultural fest: I too happened to be  a part of it. I thought a break was the need of the time to refresh my acumen. At least for some days, we can enjoy! And then we can also see some fair proportion of the other fraternity of us, that in our batch, were like two pins in a lorry full of hay stack.


But then, I was either oblivious of certain verified facts or discarded them as mere assumptions.

Friends, the earthquake ends but is often followed by strong after effect tremors.

The demon dies but not the sins.
- -

So, the overdose did it, Man!!

Scene: IIT Kanpur, Market Complex

Occasion: Antaragni


One of my batch mates, 'R', (I hide here, the full name, but still I am sure am not fattu, ok, just hiding the name 'coz R is too reactive..he might just sue me you know, so just endure R) got febrile and all of a sudden caught cold and cough. Accompanied by me, he decided to go to IIT K Market complex to buy some cough syrup to cure the untimely nemesis of his. We started off in a hurry ‘coz we had to reach back to the rest of the college team in time for the events.


R – “We need to reach back, quickly!”

Me – “Chill Dude! We will be there in time. Just feed yourself with a spoonful of cough syrup. Also, we have a debate event speech to deliver tomorrow – remember?”

R – “Yeah, I do”

Thereafter, it was about 5 minutes hurried walk from the temporary Hall of Residence that was allocated to our team to IIT K Market complex. It was a breezy morning, time being the late of the month of October. It was no surprise seeing R catching cold due to the seasonal change. Anyway, we reached our destination soon.

R, pointing to the medical store – “Oh ! there it is. And Thanks, its open too. Let’s go!”

I decided to follow but somehow and don't know exactly when my mind lost control over the kinetic action of my legs owing to all its attention being given to feeding my thirsty eyes with glimpse of several gorgeous chicks who were there gathered around a general store. But then, seeing a group of guys next to them, I did n’t waste much of my time in realizing the “REGRET” status which would have been on offer, had I tried my chances (of winning a date) with anyone of them. However, I surely had enough wastage of time to cause DTP over dose to play it’s part in IIT K – about 520 kilometers from the place where we practiced what was preached to us in the dreaded DTP course – in case, if we ever did. :) By the time, R had ordered the cure: the cough syrup: the antidote to his untimely nemesis. I could make this out from the roving eyes of the shopkeeper who was busy searching for the medic.

Me – “ Hmm. So you asked him?”

R – “ Yes. I have. I will take a spoonful and then…”

In midst of our conversation, we were interrupted.

Shopkeeper – “Sorry…bhaia..aapne jo maangi – woo syrup too nahin mil rahi. Kis cheez ki hai?”

I agree to the fact that I was not in one of the best hospitals of the country but in one of the best engineering institutes of it! Who cares? Benadryl should have been there. It's very common cough syrup. In fact, one of the oldest and trusted medic we resort to as soon as cough and cold influenza attack our body. Benadryl needs to be there in every medical store lest it's out of stock due to the over sale or the shopkeeper's mis management of the inventory.


Me, astonished, almost shouted – “Benadryl…nahin hai? Benadryl cough syrup hai bhai!”

R, almost coming out of a DTP coma - “Oh shit! Benadryl...sorry, Bhaia, maine Bernstein polynomial..maang liya!! huh..”

Hahaaaaaaa.That was it! R demanded the syrup named Bernstein Polynomial. That was the after effect of DTP earthquake – Imagine, the intensity - the tremors could be felt 520 kilometers away!! Those were the DTP sins chasing us all along!! The poor shopkeeper had his worst few minutes of his life searching for a syrup that never existed! Not in IIT K - not in Kanpur - not in UP - not in India - not in this Universe. I felt pity for him. He was a druggist but R assigned him the task of inventing something that never ever existed. Sorry, but R selected the poor druggist for the work of Issac Newton, expected an unexpected Archimedes' discovery out of him!! I could n’t resist. The comedy that had happened made me burst into laughter. R joined me. The shopkeeper still had no clue what had happened. How could he? I was sure he never suffered in his life from a DTP overdose.  

Since then, every time I have to take BENADRYL during occasional cough and cold syndromes, this BERNSTIEIN POLYNOMIAL anecdote flashes in front of me, so vividly.. :)