On the movement called ABCD

It all started when I talked to one of my favorite seniors, Ashish Kushwaha, around 15 days ago. He related to me that they will be calling us in the order of decreasing CGPA during convocation. I was disturbed when I got to know this. I just couldn't help myself visualizing the sad face of my parents when they would've waited seeing more than half of my department-mates collecting their degrees, to catch a glimpse of me. I could see them feeling a bit discontented at the public display of my inferiority in front of others. It's not that they don't have trust in me or they don't support what I'm doing; it's just that, much like every other parent, they expect me to outperform everyone in everything I do. Well, that's justified on their part, after all they have put so much hard work on me and I'd been, much like every other IITian, one such student in the past. The feeling of disappointment clouded my mind for two days.

The feeling subsided, the anger dissolved. Some days later, I received a mail regarding convocation procedure, from the IIT administration. When I went through the procedure which involved rehearsals, I lost my mind, on the fact that the same feeling was going to be pushed through my vein not once, but twice. I was utterly frenzied and in a split moment, I updated my status message with a self-pacifying, impulsive, condescending status message, which looked like this:

The angry status update caught immediate attention from people around. Within 10 minutes, our very dear Saurabh Gupta, IR #1, commented on the status saying that he too was against this. His one comment provided me enough impetus to take steps to get rid of the damn thing! I created the google form and shared it on my FB profile. And soon, it spread like fire. My friend, Vikas Prajapati, being the first one to ignite the movement. I was amazed to see the support and response. 180 responses in 12 hours, 320 in 24, 435 in 48 hours. Every time when I think about how it has turned out, I get thrilled. A viral movement within IIT has been instigated on just one angry note. Anger, if directed towards a right cause, can actually bring a positive change(let's hope so).

Saurabh Gupta - the inspiration, Vikas Prajapati - the first supporter and I are going to meet the Dean, UGS; once I return back to Delhi on 4th July to take the matter further. I'm thankful to all the supporters, I just hope that the administration understands our cause and embraces a positive change, which is fair and just to everyone.

And regarding all the academic performers who are concerned, you don't need to worry - they specially award the best academic performers, after the degree has been conferred. Cheers to your academic excellence.

P.S. Please take no offence of the status message, since it was impulsive and self-pacifying, for I felt bad. Geeks are talented. Even Zuckerberg was one, who made this little viral movement of ours possible.

NOTE: the DNA of IIT has changed. From 2012, they started calling students in alphabetical order. Our little movement registered its effect. 

The Suicide Letter

I wanted to share this intense letter that I came across with all of you. Check this out and please share with everyone to make her mission possible: The Suicide Letter

I'm a teacher, finally

P.S. Bootstrapped as an entrepreneur, it's time to get all my talents together to pay my bills! You'll find many such posters stuck in the Malviya Nagar area.

P.S. I always wanted to teach someday. Thanks to entrepreneurship, my dream has come true.

P.S. Sorry for hiding the number. I didn't want to make it public. You know, I'm such a girl!

365 Days

Ziyana.

In 2008, when a 21 year old Indian girl, born and brought up in Delhi, suddenly finds herself away from her country in a completely foreign land, she gets completely terrified. She has not been an outgoing person in her previous avatar and the very thought of adapting in her new city, Glasgow, makes her feet run cold. Upon recommendation from an acquaintance, she joins twitter, in hope to find something new, something worthwhile to spend her lonely time with. But stark loneliness finds her. At first, she's haunted. But she starts liking it.

Twitter becomes her diary as her life unfolds and she comes across people, who make her journey worthy. She finds friends. She finds fiends. She finds love. She finds betrayal. She finds solitude. She finds loneliness. She finds addiction. She finds boredom.

She finds what she wanted to discover when she discovers what you want her to discover.

And thus, she finds herself.

And there's more, that she awaits, in her next '365 Days'.

I'd been restless. Restless to write something outstanding. That's how I met Ziyana.

It had been days since I experimented with writing. I wanted to experiment, explore new plots and new ways of story-telling. Thankfully today, I've got an idea. I'd this plan of writing a book about 365 days of a girl's life in a completely new city. Today, I got a fresh way to put forward her story. Through twitter.

I'll be penning down her story, which I don't know how it will unfold since I don't have a clear end in my mind, but I've kept it open for people like you, to influence her life. I've created a new twitter account with her name and I've started penning down her story. We(She and I) are waiting for something interesting to come up and give her a direction to move forward on that solitary road. She doesn't want too much attention, so I've not made her id public but with time, as her guardian, I would allow people who show interest get in touch with her, to know more about her and if they're impactful, they could influence her life's trajectory. The book will just be a book full of tweets, closely interlinked with each other to make a compelling story.

Being hooked to the social media, I expect to complete the book in less than a month's time since it requires more or less around 100 tweets a day, which is around one hour job. Let's hope it turns out to be as exciting as I'm hoping it to be.

P.S. Tweet to me @harshsnehanshu, to know about Ziyana's whereabouts!