On a hot and humid day, the crow [our Hero!], hungry and tired, was gliding around swearing at the communication engineers for bringing in wireless and optical fibers. He settled on the sill of an engineering college classroom and strained his ocular muscles hoping to satisfy his energy needs. His bird’s eye view [crow- animal kingdom of aves] couldn’t materialize anything to silence his grumbling stomach.
The voice from the classroom [some wise guy lecturing!] was saying line of sight increases with height [los = sqrt(2h)]. The crow, blaming his stature went in search of a new perch and found one over the 6th floor cantilever beam. That happened to be the canteen [Talk of coincidences!!].
The crow phase locked its thought waves with the incoming aroma of hot ‘vada’. His tracking skill was being tested and he rose up to the challenge! Well, with his stomach grumbling, acquisition of the ‘vada’ became his prime task. Craning his neck at impossible angles [which then is possible!!] got sight of his target. Letting out its war cry [or the only one it knows] attacked with split second timing only to find the place deserted. [Come on! Engineering college canteen and empty???] Thanking his stars flew away with his prize onto a tree in the campus.
Meanwhile a fox [Yup, there is a fox!] was roaming mindlessly from the library to laboratory to gobble up some lecturer [whose absence will not be noticed]. And when it caught site of his potential prey, it dawned on him that it was world vegetarianism day! [if u could believe someone was actually listening to a lecturer in class then..] Being a man of his principles [actually fox] the dejected fox decided to call it a day when his angle of elevation brought into frame the crow with his prize.
His cerebral cobwebs got fumigated in a second and using all his technical know how formulated a plan to prove lunch=vada. So, undetected like a signal in spread spectrum, approached the trunk of the greenery that held his lunch.
“Mr.Crow,” bellowed the fox in Agent Smithish tone. “What would u be doing in an intellectual place like this?”
The startled crow replied “ummm mmm!! Mmmm mmmum uumm..” [Vada in mouth]
“How delightful to hear! Now that you are here you might as well help me with a few doubts that have been eating my brain.” Without giving a chance for the crow to respond he continued. “As u are the one who seems to be the most affected, can u suggest a low attenuation low skinloss transmission waveguide that might make wireless obsolete?”
The crow felt like he was being zonked with the stun gun. He just kept staring at this creature who seemed to have materialized out of vacuum!
“Let it pass. With your intelligence and experience of flying over the obnoxious Nox and SOx gases, do you think a separation of these gases based on their magnetic properties feasible? Is this a solution to the Green house effect?”
Still no response but our crow was getting frustrated. After a few more such probing intellectual questions from the cunning fox, the crow lost all its cool.
“You $#%&@^ [college atmosphere guys! I hate this #$%^# editorial censorship!!] Can’t I have my lunch in peac..” [oops! Too late. Gravity took over!]
The victorious predator darted eagerly towards his prey [a stationary one at that] and gobbled it greedily. The crow, who felt like rupturing an artery, watched first in horror and then in delight the changing expression on the fox’s face. The expression of gloat gave way to greed to satisfaction to laugh to oh-oh to I’ve-got-to-use-the-loo!! Yes, the vada had triggered the change of state of matter in the large intestine of the fox.
The Crow took off uncontrollably laughing, learning 2 important lessons
· Never lose your cool to screwed up questions and more
importantly
· Never eat the food from a college mess/canteen!!
Note: The separation of the green house gases based on their paramagnetic properties won the Honeywell innovation award for the year 2005. It was the brainchild of Keerthi, Ashwin, Pratik and Harish of VIT Bio-tech department.
2 comments:
the crow would have died as soon as it took the vada. too much of transmission lines and wave guides huh!
hey! i remember you showing me this on paper in your final year! dont you?
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