General Interest

The Story of Nowhere Man

By Chandna Sethi ('86)

"So where are you from?” I mull over this question as I stir the gajar ka halwa while it cooks and as the amti boils. I am cooking for tonight’s dinner at which we are to be joined by guests, an Indian couple I met at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris last week. Like me, Anil and Saumya were waiting that day to board the plane to Nice. I was returning home; they are residents of New York who were traveling here on vacation. We got talking as we waited and exchanged phone numbers after I gave them some information about the region. We spoke again on the telephone a few times this week. We seemed to hit it off and agreed it would be fun to get together before they went back. So my husband and I have invited them to eat with us tonight. More...

Is there a God ? 

By Raghavan Damodaran (98C6)

ASK a majority of the world this question, and they'd emphatically tell you, "Of course there is, you atheistic lunatic!" Herein lies my problem. I, of the worldly and scientific kind, have certain reservations I know none (except for, maybe God) can satisfactorily answer. Maybe it is just my background that makes me think this way - born in Libya, where religion was a cause for the country being abolished from the international arena; bred in Kenya, where fighting among the tribes over their Gods has led to instability; based in India, where thousands die each year because Muslims & Hindus cannot see eye to eye. Everyone agrees there is only one God, and that Jesus, Ram, Allah are but people's customized images of Him. If that is the case, would He want to create so much fighting and hatred amongst people over His name? More...

Briefings from the Land of the Dragon

By Tirumala Rao Talasila ('84A7)

"You really have to master the Chinese language to understand Chinese business and people", advised a 76-year old retired businessman on a flight from Shanghai to Beijing. I nodded in agreement as I looked back at my own experience. My two semesters of Chinese in the United States helped, but I got a long way to go before I can master the 5000-odd Chinese characters. What added to my confidence is the fact I "mastered" the indecipherable "Modern Physics" during my first semester in Pilani, circa 1984. So Chinese shouldn't be that bad, I comfort myself. More...

Skydiving: Of fear and fun

By Sagarika Jaganathan

My passage from childhood to adolescence had one significant undercurrent—rebellion. Despite growing up in a not-so-conservative suburbia of Chennai (then Madras ) I faced one obstacle to unfettered childhood: fear. Not my own, but my father’s…indelibly scripted over any tendency I may have developed on my own.

Ours was a dad-daughter relationship wrought with tension so thick one could cut it with a knife. Growing up in an all-boys neighborhood, ‘fear’ was non-existent in my dictionary. My dad found that out when I was five. Having searched the entire colony for a whole Sunday afternoon, he found me perched among the coolest and tallest confines of the backyard Neem tree, with three of my pals—all next-door boys. He ordered me down and marched me to his study, quietly fetching his wooden ruler. With three resounding thrashes that day, he inserted ‘fear’ into my dictionary. More...

Alfa Alfa: The Naked Truth

By Dilip D'Souza

Party at a friend's place. Several new faces there; I met most as the party went on. One was, I found at one point, surrounded by a small group. As I strolled up to listen to what was going on, I heard him asking, and this is verbatim: "Which is the only word in the English language that follows the pattern 'x-y-z, x-y-z', repeated till infinity?"

Ignorance quickly got the better of me. Reluctantly, I had to admit that I had no answer. The rest of the group, more persevering, muttered on a bit. But they too gave up. Our questioner, pleased to score a triumph of the intellect over us, grinned triumphantly as he announced the answer. More...

The BITS Centre for Entrepreneurial Leadership: Named one of the top 5 centres in India

By The BITS CEL Team

For the first time in BITS history, a significant effort has been made to institutionalize the teaching of Entrepreneurship through its newest and eighth centre of excellence, the Centre for Entrepreneurial Leadership. The idea was seeded by the BITSAA Center for Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital (CEVC)  with the vision of promoting the spirit of entrepreneurial thinking among the BITSian community back in March this year. The students and the Institute shared this vision and came together in record time to set up the centre. In a short space of six months, the vision, energy and enthusiasm of a combined group of students, faculty and alumni has resulted in a significant progress in this direction – and in being named one of the Top 5 Centres of Entrepreneurship amongst Indian Universities. More...

(c) Copyright 2003 BITSAA International Inc.

Webmaster | Website by jPeople