Indian Institute of Students

"I must publicly laud the flair some people have got to create issues out of nothing. If evaluated analytically, PK preaches us to bust the business of those who exploit the afraid. The previous line is self-explanatory." I have a habit of browsing news channels whenever I get time. Some call it good; others tag me a "nerd". Yesterday, while browsing through the channels, I switched on to Times Now at prime time noon and rather found a shocking display: Right-wing activists vandalising multiplexes that screened 'PK' , a recent Aamir-starrer film. While this unfortunate incident occurred a few cities (Bhopal, Agra, etc.), it is common sense that such acts spread like wildfire. I am not paid by the ' PK' team, nor am I a hardcore purist. Therefore, I have scripted, what I feel is from a neutral perspective. In recent times, the RSS has stepped up re-conversion or ' Ghar Wapsi' programmes. These acts are not only uncalled for, but are also de...

"To me, education is something that actually makes a person wiser, and something that teaches one to be a better person.. Let me pose you a striking question. How would you have reacted if anyone threatened to close down your school, or college, or whatsoever it is?" Recently enough, I purchased the book titled, " Malala Yousafzai "- authored by the world's youngest Noble Peace Prize recipient. I am not a person who appraises books much, and you can call me a hard critic. As the pages went by, I understood a point: the value of education we receive. What is education to us?  If we ask anyone from a developed nation, I suspect they'd actually laugh at our benchmark for being literate. We are taught from rudimentary levels that a literate is a one who can sign a document. The standard defines it all. India's literacy rate, as of the latest UNESCO survey, stands at 74%. Would you help to increase it?  India has a lot of schools set up in urban tow...

“ Asche bochor abar hobe ”. These mere words make us feel disconsolate deep down. We all know the emotions that run through our veins on the day of Dashami. We want Maa Durga to stay with us forever, treading our path and always guiding us in life. Durga Puja as we know it is just not like the other pujas. Typical Bengalis will understand. I will understand and you’ll understand. There is a lot of hype and excitement in the minds of people of all age- whether be it 2-year old kids dancing in joy, or the 80-year old “ dadu ”. Everyone is united during this brief period of four days. We meet with old acquaintances we have long forgotten- meet up with old friends we have lost track of- and who not. And of course we can’t miss out the delicious part. The Lunch and Dinner menus. Ah! The very thought of having Mutton Biryani at dinner and other exotics accompanying it brings drops down every tongue. Simply because you’re allowed to eat- however much be your restrictions list- and becau...

Teachers Day, as we know, is celebrated on 5th of September every year. This auspicious day was a day when one legendary educationist was born- Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan. He dreamt big; and people who dream to achieve, experience the taste of success. Dr. Radhakrishnan went on to become the second President of India. He once remarked that teachers are people who "are the brightest mind in the country". Who is a teacher? Is the term allotted to someone who has the ideology 'Education for Money'? Or is it someone, who is committed to the welfare of a student's life and career prospects? The latter wins the case, hands down. Teachers provide us education. Education transforms into knowledge. Knowledge wields itself as wisdom. And wisdom is what human beings crave for. The entire spark is ignited by the teachers. The fifth day of September is specially designated for celebrating these invaluable preceptors who have influenced us. When we stepped into the fi...

The Ebola Outbreak, the largest in the history, has taken the world by storm. It has taken a severe toll on human life- more than a thousand people have died during recent months. The Ebola virus existed before as well; it claimed lives then. After researching, I found a link of the World Health Organisation statement that shows the record for the first known case of Ebola- an unidentified man from Yambaku, Africa in the year of 1976. Fast forward to today and the case is out of control. The Ebola Virus Cycle What is the prime reason for this situation reaching such heights? Why was it not controlled properly? The answer is very simple. The affected nations, namely Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone are economically weak. They cannot afford world-class healthcare personnel; nor do they have the required medical expertise.  That is why it went undetected for so long. We know that anonymous cases of Ebola had been reported till March 2014- but when it spread beyond the...

It is a common sight nowadays for opposition parties to slam the ruling party on every other issue. Recently, it came into bold headlines and front pages that the newly elected BJP government has increased the fare by a staggering 14.2%. At first sight we feel it's unnecessary, really. It is our natural instinct, so if you think same, you're no wrong. But was this change really required? A big yes. In the financial year 2012-13, Railways reported a loss of Rs. 24,600 crores. Railways are the lifeline of the country. If there existed no Railways, imagine the chaos and situation that the same "common man" had to face. Over the last decades, Indian Railways suffered huge losses one after the another- and that too, in thousands of crores. In the financial year 2012-13, Railways reported a total loss of almost Rs. 24,600 crores. Losses upon losses. All because of the ignorance of previous ministers, and their intentions to appease the public. I asked a few officer...

The topic "Nature v/s Nurture: What Shapes our Personality?" has been a controversial and a debatable topic since four hundred years ago when Shakespeare, in “The Tempest” mentioned about these two aspects of our lives. Between the tussle amongst Nurture and Nature, nurture plays the more important role in shaping our personalities. I will be sharing my view for the nurture side, as I am a firm believer of this fact myself. Shakespeare first introduced to us the Nature v/s Nurture debate four hundred years ago, in his literary play known as "The Tempest".  What actually is nurture? Nurture in the sense of this debate is the ideology that the environment in which a child grows up determines his personality, and not by inherited genes or characteristics, i.e. nature. According to a popular theory backed by psychologists, every one of us is born with a blank slate or “Tabula Rasa”. It means that who we are is determined by what we learn and observe. A very go...

Meet Siddharth Slathia. Aged just 22 years, and hailing from Jammu, India, he is one of the best in the pool of talented young Indians who just love music. Music is his world. You can, if you want, view his covers of Bollywood songs in his YouTube channel-  SiddharthSlathia . He has done a large number of playbacks including recent hits " Banjara " and " Galliyan ".   I got an opportunity to conduct an interview with him. Here's what he had to say.  1. Do you have ambitions of full-time singing as a profession?   A: Of course! I have already recorded 11 songs with the Saregama record label and aspiring to do bollywood playback and my own pop albums as soon as I get good opportunities from the industry. I also compose and have at least 50 original compositions ready. 2. What are you doing now, at present, apart from your singing?  A: I am pursuing Bachelor of Music from Jammu University and I was also working as the Chief...

I was asked recently to speak on this topic. In a hurry, I scripted this, and to my surprise, my audience applauded. I think you'll like this as well, so I decided to share it with you all. Read on..  Many people have a phobia of snakes. But people, like the snake charmers, love to play with these mystical creatures. We see a snake charmer toying with a snake, by attempting to make it sway sidewise, just by playing his instrument. Factually speaking, snake charmers carry out a profession that is deemed illegal, and is prohibited by laws of the land. In today’s world, it is next to impossible to spot them in urban cities. These snake charmers earn most of their money by performing shows in rural areas. This is because law enforcement and police bodies are less stringent than that in big towns and cities. These people play their musical instrument, to make the ophidian reptile “dance” to their tune. In reality, snakes are visually blind. What more, they cannot even ...

L ittle do we recognize the value of our subconscious mind. This mind of ours has great potential, and almost everything that we do or react to eventually arises from our subconscious mind. Just that, it has to be played a trifle with. I will be sharing a hint from our daily lives, a fresh incident that is bound to amaze you. Read on, and you'll understand what I am really trying to say.     Representational photo.  Ramesh Ramaiah /Wikimedia Organisation It was three days back when I travelled to the town of Bandel to meet my grandparents who reside there. All well and good. Yesterday was the date to return. I boarded the Bardhaman-Howrah down train, and was surprised to find that most of the seats were empty. Quickly, I grabbed hold of a seat and in a moment was seated. Stations came, and they passed by. It was after the train passed Chandannagore station that a blind young man, probably in his twenties, boarded the same compartment and started playing a banjo-lik...

Two days after winning the Indian Premier League cup, two time champions Kolkata Knight Riders were felicitated today at the Eden Gardens. The Knights have equaled the record of holding the cup for two years after the Chennai Super Kings, led by India skipper M.S Dhoni. The felicitation program was organised jointly by the Cricket Association of Bengal and the West Bengal government. Well, honestly, I could not visit the Stadium- and I did a good thing. According to reports, there was utter chaos before the program was to begin. It was so worse that mounted police had to be brought in to control the situation. Thousands could not even enter the stadium because it was already over-packed. However, at the end of the day it was all good and fine. It soon became known that the King of the Knights, Shah Rukh Khan will arrive late to the party because of a delay in flight. The anchors for the day, June Banerjee and Rudraneel did a fine job. Greatly aided by Usha Uthup, who kept the ...

Note: You can download my free String-to-hash converter that securely deals with passwords and converts them to MD5. It stores the string you provide in your desktop in a text file. DON'T convert your password to MD5 online, they add it to their databases. This software by me doesn't do that and it stores in your computer. If you need source code, you may drop in a comment here and I'll mail it to you. Download here:  https://www.mediafire.com/?d8d91fp8m927lt1 In this world of today each and every software/website gets hacked one fine day, and we are left in tatters. Especially when the site is some banking or online shopping genre. Of course, it is natural for us to be so and we don't want anyone to be peeping in our financial activity in our day to day life. With recent reports of eBay, one of the biggest online retails of the world being hacked ( READ: Reuters Article on eBay hack ), many are scrambling now to change their passwords at the last moment. I, too h...

There was much hype in the market about Moto E releasing soon. Motorola seems to be on a fly especially after making huge profits from Moto G and Moto X. Flipkart has again bagged the rights for Moto E, as it did for Moto G and X. Flipkart is doing a smart commendable job here. I, too logged on Flipkart to get a view of the specs that Motorola is offering at this decent budget range. For seven grand bucks it has packed a whole lot of things, most importantly a good processor and the latest Android (4.4, KitKat). The value for money of these phones is worth considering and is definitely better than Samsung's smartphones at this range. It also allows a decent resolution to watch. Motorola placed a huge advertisement at the backpage of The Telegraph (Calcutta edition) yesterday, and I decided to check this out . The link I just mentioned is going to take you to the official page of Moto E at Flipkart. Here's what I got at the landing: Yes, you read that right, and it does...

We have reached the nearing of the closing showdown of the world's biggest election frenzy, the General Elections of India. The Election Commission had been extra vigilant this year, credits to criticism from authors about it's functioning. The Independent Body did a lot to ensure the elections go on successfully and peacefully this year. Good work done, E.C. Millions voted, and millions didn't. The voter turnout has been 66.2%, which is a record high. The youth, the ones who have reached the age of 18, constituted 3% of the electorate, up from 0.75% in 2009.     Young voters constituted 3% of the electorate this year. Up from 0.75% in 2009. What possibly could be a factor for such high voter turnouts? According to analysts, the youth feels they need to exercise their newly-bestowed rights, among which one is the Right to Vote. Moreover, campaigning by political parties have been excessively heavyweight. It was not just for a constituency. Opposition slammed the ruli...

Human beings always had a fascination for the skies. It was quite long back, really back in time when the first person stared at the sky with awe and wonder. Since then, this hobby of looking into the dark skies for other stars, planets, and celestial objects have been popularly summarized in a word known to us as “astronomy”. Astronomy is not just scanning the skies- it is much more than that. In this brief essay I will be writing about why I love astronomy, and the endless possibilities it creates for the youth community.  I got my first telescope at the age of seven, a sixty millimeter aperture Celestron TravelScope model. It was good, not quite bad, for a novice astronomer. It was satisfactorily good but it did not quench my thirst for exploring more and more. At the age of ten, I got a Celestron NexStar 102SLT gifted to me. It had a better mount, and the auto-tracking software made things even better. I started out by looking at the planets in our solar system- Mars,...

It's been quite some time that the exams had ended, and we all have been relaxed enough (seriously, anyone there who needs more time?) Personally, I have been successful in deleting all the junk data of subjects like Bengali, Chemistry, Biology, et cetera.  Now, during this vacation, it feels like as if time doesn't pass by- it merely stands still. Believe me, I had thought that this time after the exams would be "super-cool"; on the contrary it has been boring and brought me tons of idle time. " Idle mind is the devil's workshop" says the famous proverb. More than twenty days remain for the new academic session to begin. The euphoria of meeting with old friends, reliving the fun on the campus, taking down tedious notes and learning lessons, is too tremendous to be explained. But as days pass; months pass - when time seems to run - that's when the mind again longs for this break. Uhh. That's the human mind, like a maze. You never know w...

Here's something interesting for you all. Observe the night sky carefully, and try to find out the star Betelguese. It's easy to find- here's the trick. There are three stars lined up together in the sky, easily seen across India and actually all over the world. They form the Orion's Belt. I am attaching a photo so you may understand how to f ind it out.  The interesting this is, that Betelguese, a red supergiant in the Orion constellation, in the near astronomical future (which may be within the next million years, or even a year since) will explode and convert itself into a supernovae. The explosion will be seen precisely 642 years later after the incident actually takes place. Why is this so? It's because it's distance is 642 light years. Light takes 642 years to reach us. At that point, Betelguese will give out gamma rays. The gamma rays are sort of a hell for any celestial object that gets in it's path. For example, if earth was in it's path, ...