RAMANAN NO MORE......

This morning (sunday, 13th June) i woke up early in my daughter's home in Chicago and logged in to check my mails. It has become a habit of sort to start the day with ramanan's mails to paniit yahoo group. And his mails are as refreshing, if not more, as the first cup of coffee.
So, when i saw the one liner from Ramesh, i just couldn't beleive it. For a few seconds i thought someone was pulling a fast one. I read that mail again and also the others on the subject. Finally, it sank in, that our dear ramanan is no more.
I hardly knew him on a one to one basis. Last time i met him was perhaps at the ISB meet a couple of years back. But, he had become a friend close to my heart, through his regular mails to the paniit. I enjoyed his style of writing, his wit and sense of humour, his ability to laugh at one's own plight, his deep conviction on social issues, his never say die spirit, his wisdom on display through his understanding of various issues.
Sometimes, i used to write to him, one to one on issues and opinions and he used to reply promptly. He used to address me 'Sir' , showing his culture and respect to me because i was his senior. Ramanan, in short, was a very dear friend.
He is said to have died in his sleep-- what we call 'anayasa maranam' , death in that way comes only to those whom Gods love dearly. The sudden death is a shock to his family and friends.
Dear friend, knowing your spirit, i am sure, you would be busy up there, spreading joy and message to those who are around you.
Dear friend, our group will never be the same without you and you would be missed by all of us everytime we read or write a mail in our group. You would live on in our memories for a long time to come.
This is my humble, inadequate, tearful homage to you.
MAY YOUR SOUL REST IN PEACE.

D.S.RAO

IITM - The Hindu - Mentoring Session @ May 15th

Written by Ramanan R, Spokes Person of PAN IIT HYD Alumni Society:

IITMAA & The Hindu organised a counseling program in Hyderabad yesterday, the 15th May. An amazing over 1000 turned up - may be more. Even the balcony in Ravindra Bharati was full.

Many Senior Alumnus spent the morning explaining, what to expect of each branch of engg & the key skills required. Then they answered wide range of questions.

There technical questions, questions on career prospects, how to plan a career, and was there even a questions on physical handicap. To which Sridhar answered that only very few cannot be surmounted - like colour blindness in aircraft certification.

Many dropped guard and used language they would use in the campus. Dr.Venugopal started off with - I am an IITian, so expect me to talk about myself first then the subject. That had the whole hall in splits.

The credits for the organisation were shared by Murali who lead along with many others like Srinivas, Praveen, Vasu, Kishore and many volunteers. It was an absolutely professional job with a bunch of researchers sitting in the background with their laptops picking up data from the internet to back up experiences of the counselors.

The Hindu is putting up all the presentation on their website.

http://www.hindu.com/2010/05/16/stories/2010051660790200.htm

An insight into engineering and its careers

R. Ravikanth Reddy

Alumni of prestigious institutions interact with IIT and NIT aspirants

— Photo: Nagara Gopal

Expert guidance: Resource persons at an interactive workshop held by The Hindu Education Plus interacting with students and their parents on Saturday.

Hyderabad: Follow your dreams and excellence, and not money, was the advice for the IIT and NIT aspirants from the distinguished alumni of those prestigious institutions even as they gave an insight into engineering as a course and a variety of options it throws up in terms of academics and careers.

Strong basics

The alumni were addressing the IIT and NIT aspirants at the counselling session organised by The Hindu Education Plus in association with Gajendra Circle, a subset of IIT Madras Alumni Association here on Saturday. The programme was inaugurated by the Hyderabad district Collector, Gulzar Natarajan. The event was sponsored by State Bank of India. Demystifying the IIT education, the galaxy of speakers, who are mostly successful entrepreneurs in India and abroad now, said the difference between IIT and NIT engineering from others is that students get to compete with the best in the country while having access to highly qualified teachers and world-class facilities. The brand name of IIT that gives them recognition across the globe is an added advantage for the job seekers or entrepreneurs. Whatever the course might be, students need to acquire strong basics in the core subjects.

The evergreen engineering courses like mechanical, civil and chemical will continue to provide newer and better opportunities to students in the job market, they said. “Whatever course the students take up, it all boils down to the hard work and effort the student puts to achieve excellence,” they said.

K. Ramchandra Reddy, CEO and co-founder of MosChip Semiconductor Technology pointed out that to be an ideal engineer a student should be willing to go beyond the course work. He said electronics engineers will have bright future with the ever expanding gadget market and innovations in it.

Civil Engineers will always be in demand in a growing economy like India, said R. V. Chakrapani, Managing Director of Aarvee Associates. India will see investments of Rs. 17 lakh crore in infrastructure projects in the next five years and it showcases the demand for civil engineers. Firm grip on basics, logical and analytical skills, visualisation, ability to work in a tea and social awareness are required to become a good civil engineer.

P. Venugopalan, Director, Defence Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL) who introduced students to Mechanical Engineering explained the opportunities in both private and government sector. Be strong in physics, maths and sciences because they form the basics, he said adding that Mechanical was the base of all core engineering subjects.

Computer jobs

About six million computer jobs will be available in the next five years said, Santanu Paul, CEO of TalentSprint explaining opportunities in the software sector. He wanted the students to follow excellence and a bright future will be assured. Specialisation subjects in computers like artificial intelligence, computer architecture, computer graphics and robotics will be in huge demand.

Nagesh S. Walimbe, founder of Zen Consultants said ideal chemical engineers should be passionate about chemistry, mechanical and bio-chemistry. “Clear concepts in chemistry, physics and maths are mandatory. Being an industry that has elements of chemistry, mechanical and biochemistry, you need to like these subjects to excel,” he said.

A knowledge panel consisting of Prof. Kesav Vithal Nori, Prof. P. Sriram, H.S. Kalsi, G. Sreedhar, V.A.Srinivasan, K.V. Ramana, Venkatesh – all distinguished alumni from IIT, and Ajay Antony answered questions of students. Neeta C. Rao, deputy manager of State Bank of India provided detailed information on education loans and special schemes available to IIT and NIT students.

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Statement of Accounts

We are almost Up!

Two good news!

We are registered society now!

PAN IIT Alumni, Hyderabad! (name issue being resolved, earlier we were PAN IIT Hyderabad)

and our website is up!

paniithyd.in (although its still under construction) :)

IITH Trip - Sports Fiesta!

Sports Day!
~~

The day started early. Nike woke me up @ 5:30. (bugger)

Naresh, me and nike started from kothi to paradise @ 6 AM

As usual, the hyderabadi IITH bus driver said he will reach paradise in 5 mins @ 6 AM.

We started @ 7:30 from Diamond point near paradise, picking up people on the way.

Finally after going through desert, crossing mountains, oceans and a few cows, we reached the metal factory where the current IITH campus is located.

~~~~

Our first impression on seeing the campus was, "where is the campus?"

:) We were expecting huge labs, buildings, workshops, ad-block, library etc, etc.

We had to manage with one flat warehouse structured hostel "boys Hostel". And the real insti was 2kms away(which was the only multistoried(2) building they have!)

But the priority of the moment was quickly shifted to food ! (we were all hungry!)

We entered "the mess", and i was "macha, same seats as himalaya opp godav in iitm".

And to our surprise, paratha's and Chai-coffee glasses were also similar.

~ We quickly munched away the breakfast, took few snaps of noticeboards and moved to the Battle Zone.~~~~

Since we arrived a bit late, we adjusted our schedules a little bit.

~~TT~~

We started off on a winning note with PAN IIT's Invincible TT team of Ashwini Chadda and Ajay Gupta - IItian team was like "jahanpannah tussi Great ho".

~~BAdi~~

At the same time, in Badi Court, We were on a losing streak!

There badi insti no.1 was standing and making our teams run from one corner of the court to another. In 30 mins, we were 2 matches down.

(Pasha-Shailesh and Dinesh-Naresh both lost :P)

Somehow we managed to regain some lost pride when Godavari-Saraswati Combo of IITM (Mahek and Nimit) beat there team of Badi no.1 and Sports Secretary!!

~~Anyways this was just the beginning. ~~

The iitians were smart. They knew that our numbers were limited and participation would be a bit repetitive, so as the day progresses we will get tired. We moved to cricket after two games(TT and badi)

~~Cricket

LO. SHOCK OF THE DAY. We were asked to play with GLACE BALL. Naresh, who went to Gym for three days and had done extreme preparation for the Cricket match, almost ran away from the field. :P

We also came to know, that the IITH cricket team practices everyday from 7-9 in morning. They have been doing it for past 16 months.

We unanimously agreed to play with glace ball (although everyone was shit-worried about balls getting tampered in the process :P)

We won! (the toss) and elected to bat.

We had only one strategy in mind: if we do very badly, we will bat our innings and get lost. :)

The Team: Mr. X, Dinesh, Sanjay, Nimit, Arun, Mahek, Nikhil, Pasha, Ajay, Ashwini, Naresh and one IITH electrical Prof.

Somehow, We managed to put up 82 runs on board after a blistering, mind blowing and ball-saving 4-5 runs from two overs start, by our opening batsmen :P!

Mr. Extras top scored for our team. :D with 25% of the runs coming in extras :P only Two people managed to reach double figures. :P Most were happy to get out and pass the guard onto the next batsmen. :D

~~ But with only 82 on the board we were a bit worried. We started off well and picked up a few wickets in the first 3-4 overs, until there real batsmen began to dominate. We had a very high scoring over from sanjay and a never-ending over from Nike to cheer us up! Poor Naresh didn't get a chance to take ha-trick for which he had practiced in Gym for three days. :P

Khaled from IITH was the top scorer (i think) who was making fun of bowlers and hitting them all over the ground.

~~End of Part 1~~ Lunch Session~~

"Tu kahaan tha, kal raat" - Popular quote quoted by Pasha on the field.

---- Story to continue -----

(Watch the pics in the mean time: http://picasaweb.google.com/mahek.m.shah/PANIITTripIITH?feat=directlink )

While we all were playing cricket, Shiv(Shivaldo) , madhu and few other pan-iitians were at war in Scrabble. They even had a few tit-bits -- small kids-- in there cheering squad. Kite-flying was also going on outside the boundary line.

~~ coming back to the match ~~ :) Sanjay's body line bowling troubled them for a while.

But in the end, we lost gracefully. They took much more time to win than we had anticipated. :P

~~ Lunch !! ~~ Roti's were exact photo-copies of iitm mess!

After lunch, we thought, we will play one game and head back.

We ended up playing Basket ball, football and Volleyball !

Basketball was new for many of us! we just wanted to have some fun! The real fun was the iitians were badly cheering for us and mocking there our mates! After sanjay scored our first points, people were religiously chanting, "sanjay ka tempo high hain!"

Football - Instead of 6-a-side, we played full ground 11-a-side. With high hopes on Shivaldo, Pasha(aniket), and Nimit, we kicked off the game. At the end of 30 mins, they scored 5 goals and ran 20 times more distance than us. We again came to know, these guys also practice for two hours everyday, religiously. The second half saw us returning with a few attempts on there goal ! But no glory for us!

And it was 5:30 PM. We were all very very tired. Wanted to go back to mess and get some grub! We ended up playing volleyball for 45 mins!!

Myaan. Playing half-a-dozen games in one day was tiring.

For a change, it was good exercise. Nice to meet new people and scared college students who were worried about jobs after passing :P !

Sanjay and U B desai(Director) finished off the day with a promise for more such games and meetings in future!

Nitin from IITH had made perfect arrangements and his day ended up being tagged as "uncle" by Sanjay's younger son :D

Thanks to Harish the Sports secretary for planning out a marvellous schedule!

more pics from naresh:

http://picasaweb.google.com/neo.iit/SportsMeetIITH?authkey=Gv1sRgCIuGvaHkoPrr0wE#

more pics from Madhu:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=189826&id=717642488&l=d1b7166ed8

~~ signing off ~~