My last blog was about my first week in TiFR. Now that I have almost half an year in TiFR, the impression was never derogatory. But it has changed a bit, which is pretty normal. I mean, you spent your day and night with someone you love, even then your initial thrill is going to subside. I know this is a bad simile, but that is how it is for me here. Now that I am seeing my juniors coming here to give interview for admittance, it reminds me of some good memories I acquired one year back.

A quick glance over the “somehow interesting things” that happened in my life over the span of these six months.

• I have finished a semester in TiFR, which is obvious! Had I not been able to finish it, they would have thrown me out already. And yes, I have learned something related to probability, randomized algorithm and approximation algorithm (Though I have a great doubt that I remember most of the things that i have learnt).
• I have talked to Prahladh about doing the project under him. He seems to be alright with that god-forsaken idea!
• I am now learning a bit about complexity theory. And it seems that Prahladh is having a high expectation from people like us, – those who haven’t seen any complexity book other than good ol’ Sipser in their undergrad days.
• My mom passed away a month back.

Anyway, I will be covering things that are going to happen from now on (hopefully). Signing off now.

May be after a couple of months, things will settle down and my aura of awe will be demystified as I will learn to accept things over here as normal, but this transition is worth mentioning. For the last four years I have been wasting my time in a 100′X100′ concrete structure where the definition of campus got subsidized down to the main building of the institute.  Apart from this so-called “materialistic” view of the college (as our director aptly mentioned  that looks can be deceptive, which is not true for his own institute I guess), finding a guide to publish a paper was a joke, save for the fact that everyone will give a big node when you approach them to do some “original”
work. The most appreciated paper was a conference paper, and the conference was held in somewhere in Maldah. We are talking about international journal here my friend, though I have a doubt whether that conference ever cross its regional boundary.

It would have been better if I can make a point-by-point comparison between two institutes, but even remotely thinking of doing that in black and white demeans the stature of TiFR. It is a wonderful institute and it feels amazing to be here. The courses haven’t started yet and we are killing some idle time, but still it never feels like that we are getting bored of the repetitive nature of any aspect of this institute. People over here are superb and there is no doubt in my mind that this institute can count as one of the greatest name in India in all streams.

I am feeling proud of my institute, and I am getting a chance to say it after four long years.

I guess this is an apt term by which you can define TiFR joining procedure. I have reached here three days back and so far, haven’t managed to do anything about the joining formalities.  There are loads of thing to do, which are the successors of a partially ordered element called “Medical check-up”. And it beats the shit out of you.

You have to do a pathological test including urine test, where for the first time I had to collect my own urine. I always thought urination is a relaxation,- you just let it go and it will be done in a couple of minutes, and that is it! Bt collection of that stuff is a whole different story. First you have to adapt yourself to urinate whenever and whatever amount you feel ike, because these guys can ask for your shit at any time during the procedure. Then comes the X-ray, where you have to travel 10 minutes back and forth just for doing the X-ray.  Having going through this procrastination period, you got to finish up the formalities which I am yet to do after three days of arriving.

But people here are good and courses are tough, as expected. Hopefully I will be having some audit courses in Mathematics if possible. The fellow colleagues are superb except for their hashed sense of humor, you get my drift, don’t you?

I will be back about more updates after a couple of days I guess. Till then….

And with this name cometh the hope of millions of people like us.

It is amazing to see the grueling procedure you have to go through to get a job in TCS. They say that you have to get above 60% in all exams before the placement and to do good in aptitude test (if it can be called so)  and interview to secure your position in TCS family. But the experience is quite different.

Perseverance is the key! In every step of the selection procedure, you have to test your limit to the extreme, and you have to hold on to it, till the end. It all starts from the say of campus placement. Suddenly you will realize on that day that you are missing from their list of students who can sit for the aptitude test. Reason? Are you kidding? Why on earth they want to give you a reason, you sneaky bastard? You are just another guy who has got his luck screwed up.

You convince them real badly! And got rejected. The moment you catch a bus to go back, you will get a call from you TPO that they kindly agreed to give you a second chance (without considering where the hell was the first one). You come back and sit for the aptitude test, just to find out that your online portal login ID is not working.

Still you hold on to your limit. You get a alternate ID after a few minutes, with your heart beating a miles. But you need to keep cool, and give the test. And then you wait. You wait till the sun sets, and wait some more, – just to get a call for the interview.

You gave an interview, shitty enough to ever term it as an interview. And you find nothing to keep your spirits high. Again a long wait, and around midnight, you find your name announced at about the end of the list.

And that is just the beginning.

After like a couple of months, you will see all of your friends got an e-mail from TCS telling them to fill up personal particulars except for the fact that you inbox remains empty. No e-mail, no trace of a proof that TCS has even remembered you. You get screwed up for the second time.

You somehow unwind the screw from your arse and email the ilp support for remailing you. They do that, – after 3 or 4 weeks. Such a short period to mend your screwed up arse, ain’t it?

And again you get back your lost spirit. After 2 weeks you get your online offer letter. You view it, accept the offer, but you cannot download it. Then you realize that you got to open the portal in Internet Explorer with some of the security features disabled. IE, the old pal! Who cares about Firefox and Chrome?

You press the download button ferociously, but still you cannot download it. After a couple of attempts, you will see that you have already downloaded the letter (according to them), save for the fact that you (and your machine) are unaware of it!

You get screwed for the third time!

Perseverance, ain’t it?

I am not a political guy, and I tend to keep a good distance from political discussion,- mostly for the reason that I have a doubt in my mind whether what goes in my state in the name of politics can be rightly termed as so. I am not into Marx and Engels, thought I found some of their writings logical and rational. I am just a common man, an inhabitant of a state where politics redefines itself each day!

Train “accident” is not a new affair, nor is large scale sabotage. But what happened two days back cannot be termed as any of these two. Believe me, I would have sighed a relief if I could justly categorize the incident between these two options, but it’s hard to feel good about a political murder. I see many social community sites are crying aloud, people are restless about it, and I am wondering, this is all we have got to say?

I knew a person who lost his life. A thirty-odd year old guy, who has got married two months back, was going to Bilaspur to start a family and a new life. New job, handsome pay at the end of the month, newly wed wife – everything seemed perfect, lest for the fact that he never knew he is going to face this unexpected turn of life (or death?). Now, the million dollar question is – “who is the responsible party?”. Maoist? I doubt though! I do not know the so-called political buzz but one thing for sure, nobody wants to wash their hand with blood for nothing. And you will go on for an endless rewind, but I doubt you can reach a logical inference for that question.

But there is this thing! You will see a pattern in the history of this re-winded story! And that is nothing but relentless mutual accusation between political parties. It is amazing to see how imaginative these people can be in forming their accusations! Things that would not have occurred in your mind in a hundred years are easily present in their part of the story, and everything boils down as a part of the party agenda before election. “Our oppositions has a colorful history of getting mauled by “Some”-ists and they couldn’t have saved these people lives, so vote for us! We, with our able hand, can rescue you from all your distress, discomfort and give you a new life!” What a joke! It seems like even the Almighty would have given a second thought before making such an assertion.

Today is no exception. More than hundred people have died, another two hundred are wounded, and what they came up with? Nothing but a claim for resignation letter from Rail Minister and some vicious cry for helping them out in next election. What about the opposition? Were they any good? I guess not. Each day we are feeling insecure in one way or the other in our daily life. People who can reach safely to their family at the end of the day are thanking God for giving them a chance to be alive for a day. Being alive is the only mistake we are doing, we the common mass. And this frigging dirty politics is eating us up from inside.

I feel bad for those people who are now accusing any of the parties for this incident. Guys, wake up! This is real, these people are no more, and they haven’t done anything to face this fate. What is the use in talking bullshit in community sites about who is responsible is who is not, who needs to resign and who is to take control! These are not going to change a thing, nobody is going to give a shit.

So just be mum. Let’s just shut the fuck up.

Well, this is like the last phase of my stay at Kolkata, so I was researching on some connectivity issues with my interaction circle (in short, I was thinking about a free STD plan). BSNL lightened up hope, as they are providing 49p/min STD tariff. Well, not free of course, but as much as you can get to it. Bad thing is that BSNL doesn’t provide their service in Mumbai. Hope shattered in a minute! So I am thinking about switching to Reliance, as they are providing free R-to-R connection (for a hefty amount of Rs. 599/month though).

I will be staying at Llyod Estate at Wadala East for minimum of 2 years before moving to some accommodation in TiFR campus. They have described the apartment as a 2BHK apartment allotted to four people. The apartment showcases a well-furnished kitchen (which, I doubt, will ever going to be used unless I get a quick culinary lesson from Mum), a refrigerator (will be used for storing Enormous amount of cold drinks, don’t forge to notice the capital E), a water purifier (the only thing that will going to be used in a way that is expected from rational people), a geyser (aha, hot water! saved my life, specially during Winter) and a washing machine (OMG! Do I have to do laundry of my own?).  Are we gonna get a super-speedy unlimited net connection? Still to get any answer from them regarding that.

TiFR is going to a marvelous place indeed, with my staying place around 20 kms away from it! I do not understand this, but I find no reason supporting their decision of pushing their research scholars so far away from the institute, – gives you a feeling of alienation. I am just kidding. But yeah, the journey will kill a lot of hours. Besides, i have get used to their local trains (which are horrible as I have heard) and the traffic jams.

Swagato and I am planning on doing a bit of early research once we reach over there. Right now, it is in idea-throwing-and-missing stage. We have jotted down some probable research areas, which includes GI (Graph Isomorphism), algebraic game theory and sorting-searching (the last one is thrown by me which is going to be a pain in the arse if we settle on this. Much, if not all, of the work have already been done!). I heard that there is group at IMSc currently working on GI, but first we need access to their advancements. Let’s see what TiFR can provide.

Signing off here.

Good news! For Computer Science I have got confirmation from two gentlemen already, they are definite about their decision about joining TiFR. And the best part is that one of them is my classmate. I have got confirmation from Pritam after a long phase of confusion he had indulged himself into. Personally, I do not think he has taken the best decision abondoning IISc to come here in TiFR, when he could have got his PhD from abroad (at least he could have the flexibility this way), but yes, it’s his own decision and I thoroughly respect that. Another gentleman from IIT Kanpur, Swagato Sanyal, is coming over here for PhD and hopefully is going to take lesser coursework than us, the Graduate guys! Sharad in not joining TiFR as far as I know, as he is moving to IISc with a focus on Machine Learning. So number of people in CS will be greater than or equal to 3, comparing to the count of the last year which was unity. What a relief!

As far as people already over here concerned, I got in touch with two. I knew one of them from GateForum, as I have mentioned in my earlier post, – Mohit Garg. Another gentleman is the element of unit set of TiFR CS absorption last year! Bodhayan Roy, a friend of Riddhipratim, was a student of CMI (B.Sc in Mathematics) and then joined TiFR last year. He became a friend already, and a good friend indeed! So I am seriously hoping not to have an alienated life in TiFR.

Courses! I am not sure about anything now, but from what I have learnt, this year they are going to offer one course on Mathematical Structure (probably taken by Jai Radhakrishnan), two courses on Algorithm (taken by Subir Ghosh and Kavitha Telikapalli). Subir Ghosh is going to follow the algorithm book by Dexter Kozen (i.e., the Cornell post grad algorithm course) and as far as my knowledge goes on Kavitha, she specializes in Graph Algorithms mainly. So we can expect a graph theoretical algorithm course from her. But as I have said, I am not sure about anything. And there will be a course on logic by N Raja.

To be honest, I was expecting a course by Prahladh Harsha and the Graduate Seminar by Manoj Gopalakishnan. I was going the course structure of this Graduate Seminar, seemed pretty interesting. Anyway, that is all for today. I f I can gather some more information, I will definitely come back to share it here.

There are exactly two experiences I would like to share, one undoubtedly being the interview experience. Another one will be boarding one of the most coveted trains of recent time – Duronto Express.

I was on Howrah-Mumbai Duronto express for one and a half day.  It was a beautiful journey, to be honest. AC 3 Tier coach was wonderful and the food was edible! What else can you expect from Indian Railway Service? Anyone looking for a good train-journey experience should have a try, you won’t regret it.

Well, this is all about Duronto Express, short and simple. Let me get to the main attraction of this blog, the interview. I believe this blog is going to be a helpful one for future TIFR aspirants, as I am trying to represent my interview in a very unadulterated version.

My interview lasted for like 45 minutes and I was the fourth interviewee on the first day of the interview. The interview panel had four members, – Dean Prof. Jaikumar Radhakrishnan (JR), Prof. Prahladh Harsha (PH), Prof. Onkaar Dabeer(OD) and Dr. Manoj Gopalakrishnan (MG). Their informations are available here.

JR: So you are a fourth year student in CS?

Me: Yes Sir.

JR: What is the subject you liked most in your course?

Me: Theory of Computation.

JR: What are the books you have followed in this subject?

Me: Book by Mike Sipser, Papadimitriou and John C Martin.

PH: Any other lecture notes you have come across?

Me: Yes sir, I consulted OCW of MIT. There was one course taught by Mike Sipser himself.

JR: So what portion of this subject you feel confident?

Me: Sir, I have solved all the problems of Sipser upto CFL, so I feel quite confident upto that part.

JR: What about Turing Machine?

Me: Yes Sir, I have some idea about Turing Machine as well.

JR: Have you heard of the Halting Problem? What can you say about it?

Me: told what I knew.

JR: Can you prove what you have stated?

Me: Did the proof, with a little help from PH.

MG: Do you know anything about number theory?

Me: A little bit, Yes. But I do not have thorough knowledge on it.

MG: Prime numbers? Can you state Fermat’s little theorem?

Me: Forgot it, so told them that I cannot.

MG: It’s alright, let’s move on to the next question. Do you know that the set of rational number is smaller than the set of real numbers?

Me: Yes Sir, do I have to prove it?

MG agreed, so I proved it with diagonalization method, and Cantor’s theorem.

MG: Alright, what is eigen value?

ME: told it.

MG: Say a matrix has a determinant value 0, what can you say about its eigen value?

Me: after some thinking, told that one eigen value should be zero. I was thinking if I can get some more inference but PH told me that is all I can get from the given information.

Then MG asked something from fundamental theorem of algebra, which I screwed up. So they moved to other topics.

PH: You have mentioned something about cryptography and prime number theory? How can you relate these two areas?

Me: Sir, large prime factorization, as in RSA.

PH: Why is it so secured?

Me: To break RSA, we need large prime factorization which haven’t been done by anyone so far in linear time.

Then they decided they have nothing more to ask, so i have left the conference room. There were some light moments during the interview, which I do not feel is important for my selection procedure.

Hope this helps, because somehow I have made it to TIFR. So this interview can be considered as a winning interview in TIFR selection procedure. An interview better than or equal to this has a great chance to make the interviewee a winner.

I am going to write about TIFR life sometimes later. Till then, chaaao!

I am not a good guitarist (which I have mentioned a countless number of times), worse with an electric guitar. In my entire life I have touched an electric guitar around four times, so that definitely doesn’t make me a guitar connoisseur! But yesterday I had a lovely afternoon in a jampad with a Les Paul strapped on my shoulder.

Things got moving when my friend Banerjee asked me to join them at one of his friend’s place which is showcase of around three electric guitars (two Ibanez’s and one Les Paul), a top-notch processor, one acoustic guitar, one keypad and a drum set. I thought why not? I mean, I haven’t had an experience with an electric one for long (the last one was a couple of months ago). It was half an hour journey from my college, so I find no reason to refuse that offer.

I went along, and within an hour found the Les Paul strapped on my shoulder. It feels heavy at first encounter, I mean, really heavy – the sheer weight of that instrument added with my expectation about that! But the first sound, when it hit my eardrums, someone inside me told that you have not a reason to worry.

We started up with Wish You Were Here. The performance was, to be honest, pretty messy – I mean, what can you expect from three persons (two of them haven’t known each other yet) without any knowledge of each others playing style! But I got a feeling that this a good company (musically) to go along. I started Shine On You as my next experiment and we went all the way to the Jazz version of it. Banerjee had his fingers flying over the reular chord progression and their non-so-regular improvisation and my job was to support him time to time with my Les Paul melody. Time flew by, and before I knew it, we spent a stretch of two hours just doing improvisation and experimentation.

It felt funny when I came home. I have no idea when I am going to have a such kind of experience again, but frankly I give a damn! This very evening with last in my memory, – my first jamming!

Unproductive: Economically adding nothing to the exchangeable value.

A couple of days back, I wrote a post named post-GATE trauma where I have described my immediate romanticism about my self-inflicted blunder. Now, as the time goes by, this trauma changes its color and converts itself into something more irritating – chronic dissatisfaction about my potential and excellence (if any!).

With all due respect to the reverent paper-setters, GATE was a test of presence of mind and alertness, – in noway it has tested one’s depth of knowledge on the subject. That disappointed me actually, as I suddenly realized that I am running low on these two virtues. It’s hard to face your short-comings, isn’t it? Had it been an examination which tests my technical skill with high rigour, I would have no word against them. Instead it showed me that I am still very much prone to slipping mistakes.

Anyway, it is of no use to brood over “unforeseen” past mistakes. Point is that I had (and still have) a long list of “to-do” things at the top of my heads. It includes TIFR preparation, ISI project completion and submission and many more interesting stuffs, which I longed to do when I haven’t had time during GATE preparatory phase. But I suddenly feel empty -  no ideas have been striking my mind these days, no interesting theories, all that is playing around in my head is some idle thoughts about my GATE score – which makes me feel terrible!

I tried to put forward a new technical blog in blogspot, but it has got stuck after four or five posts. I am just out and vacant, gaping to the enormous amounts thoughts that should have lost in oblivion. So I need your suggestion people, if you have any, about how to bypass this phase! I am dying to hear your views.