Happy to inform that my book “Neumonia and Other Sketch Stories” is now also available at Blossoms Bookstore, Bangalore. Grab your copy today!

Book details here: http://www.sketchstories.com

Couldn’t help but see this as an exhibit on display. The tree stump is a work of art and the creator’s name is painted on the grill. (Click on image to see it in a larger size)

This tree was one of the hundreds that was cut on a road in Bangalore to make way for the Metro. The place looks barren now, with a lot of construction dust all around. A war-zone like feeling, with all the victims being mute enough to not bother us.

DailyLit, a site I admire a lot (and also a site from where I source books into my e-mail) is running a Crime-Noir in 50 words contest.

You need to write a 50-word crime story (incorporating criminals and cops, the good and bad stuff ) and submit it there.

My entry is titled ‘Cold Dust’ and is present here:

http://www.dailylit.com/forums/other/reader-challenges/2009/09/15/crime-noir-in-50-words

Go ahead and submit yours (registration is free)

While reading this post and the letter written there by Prof. Abinandan (whose blog is highly recommended), I was left to wonder about the state of research in my engineering college.

Back then I had just stepped out of school and, admittedly, didn’t know much about college or engineering. Therefore, I was in for a surprise either way. Barring a few exceptional ones, most professors in engineering were keen on focusing on the examination requirements. Engineering never really got taught as a bunch of great concepts. It was taught as a bunch of highly probable questions for which you needed to know the answers. It is little wonder then that “less than 25 percent of our engineering graduates (and less than 15 percent overall) are deemed employable” as Prof. Abinandan puts it.

Except for a very few countable occasions, I do not recall any of the faculty talking about anything outside the book, or anything that they were trying to work on. Most talk was usually centered around the ‘curriculum’. I personally feel that most of my engineering knowledge was made ‘employable’ once I was out of college and started working. If any of you engineers out there feel otherwise, do let me know.

Stepping into a business school a few years later led to another interesting shift in perspective. Here, there was a concentrated effort on making research a part of the faculty’s repertoire. We had professors who were working on various fields of business, economics and finance and who would freely discuss their studies with us, including seek opinions. For someone who was deeply entrenched in the conventional exam-ends-all mode of studying, I found it rather refreshing. However, for the very same reason of having a conventional mode of education, I found it difficult to contribute and further the new and reformative discussions that would happen in class.

If research is made a mandatory part of all educational institutions, I think it would do wonders to our faculty by keeping them refreshed and recharged and also by giving themselves a chance to see something new everyday. This would have a spillover effect of course on the students and lead to increased collective participation in the topics being discussed.

Imagine the quantum of new work that would emerge by virtue of our professors sitting down and researching on stuff rather than just correcting answer papers, as they are currently asked to do.