Another year in college ends, and as always, it calls upon us to reminisce about the times gone by.

After 25 glorious years, PESIT has transformed into PES University, adding yet another feather to its cap. The past year has also stood witness to a wide array of events that made it truly memorable, with each one bearing testimony to the incredible energy levels here at PES University!

We take great pride in bringing you this edition of Éclat. You will notice that it is broadly tinged with a personal touch, in keeping with our motto ‘Celebrating College Life’. We have strived to bring out experiences, events and the like through first-hand perspectives.

Through interviews with eminent individuals from different walks of life, we present the plethora of options that are available for building a career. A neat round-up of tech will tell you where the latest and best innovations are happening on campus.

I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to work with such a talented group of people. It has been a treat, and more so a wonderful learning experience - right from envi-sioning this magazine to piecing it together and moulding it into its final form.

The encouragement we received from Dr. M. R. Doreswamy, Prof. D. Jawahar, Mr. Ajoy Kumar and Dr. K. N. B. Murthy has pushed us to realise our full creative potential and take up new initiatives and responsibilities. Dr. S. V. Satish has been a great mentor throughout the year, providing the right guidance and support to ensure our endeavours were properly directed. I wholeheartedly commend the team as well as the contributors from across cam-pus for their efforts in bringing out Éclat 2014.

Lastly, as another batch of engineers step out of PES University into the real world, we wish them all the very best!

Have a good read!

Cheers,Abishek ShenoyEditor-in-ChiefÉclat 2014

EDITORIAL

04 Dr. M R DoreswamyAn interview with the Chan-cellor of PES University and Founder of PES Institutions

05 Prof. D Jawahar, CEO, PES InstitutionsAn interview with the Pro-Chancellor of PES University and CEO of PES Institutions

06 Prof. Ajoy Kumar, COO, PES InstitutionsAn interview with the COO of PES Institutions

07 Dr. K N B Murthy, Principal & Director, PESITAn interview with the Vice-Chancellor of PES University and Principal & Director of PESIT

08 Ramesh AdkoliThe journey from pulp and paper industry to photogra-phy, via IT

11 Murali TalwaiAn insight into working with and developing cutting edge technology

13 Ram KashyapWords of a young entrepre-neur

14 Saad KhanPursue your passion, follow your heart, live your dream

15 Open SpeakThoughts on all things polit-ical and controversial

21 Look Around YouWhen reality stares us in the face, we must change

22 Happiness in PES University is…The best parts about being a student at PES University

24 Social Media and FoMOIn an increasingly ‘connect-ed’ world, can we pull away from social media?

25 The Beatles and IndiaThe amazing desi journey of one of the world’s most loved bands!

27 Metaphorically speaking…or not!To what extent do meta-phors shape and distort our understanding of reality?

28 The Subtle Art of World DominationA satirical study on a dicta-torial reign

30 Slave BluesAbout repression, hope and the desire for freedom

32 Just Another Snow-flakeRevel in the uniqueness that is YOU!

33 Songs of Sad FolksEverything is Broken

34 Comically SaneHumour Illustrated!

36 KAnOEA premier research centre for Knowledge Analytics and Ontological Engineering

37 PES Centre for Intel-ligent SystemsDedicated to the analysis and design of intelligent sys-tems that perceive, reason and learn

39 Pushing the Fron-tiers of Technology at CORIOf satellites, library bots, medical devices and more

40 PES Open Source CommunityPatrons and champions of open source software and hardware

42 Student Nokia De-veloper CommunityThe nerve centre for app de-velopment at PES University

44 Team HAYAOfficial Racing Team of PES University

46 Team AEOLUSThe sky isn’t the limit, it is home!

Table of Contents

48 IEEE PESITAdvancing Technology for Humanity

49 PACE at PES Univer-sitySuccess through systematic planning and global collab-oration

50 FORMULA EAn environment friendly rac-ing initiative

51 Crypto Currencies DecryptedThe nuts and bolts of bit-coins and the way ahead

54 Words of WisdomAdvice from alumni on pur-suing higher studies

57 How to make a good gameGet started with game de-velopment

59 AATMATRISHA ‘14PES University’s annual fest made for a cracker of an event!

62 Prakalpa - My Jour-neyAnecdotes from the annual science and technology ex-hibition of PES University

63 Yamini - a MedleyA first-of-its-kind dusk to dawn musical extravaganza

64 AICSSC 2013All-India Student Congress of the IEEE Computer Soci-ety.

65 SamarpanaMarathons & Bake Sales - Paying tribute to the Indian Armed Forces

67 The Fantom RingsA college band making an impact on the thrash metal scene

68 Quiz On!What drives the quiz whiz-zes on campus?

69 The Synergy of Saa-rangThe result of an unexpected mix of musical talent

70 Rising PulseThe western dance team of PES University, scaling newer heights with every performance

71 Pitch PleasePopularising and proliferat-ing A Capella culture

72 Dancing in TranceMelding diverse dance styles to create power-packed per-formances

73 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to PES UniversityEnhance your college expe-rience - an insight into the opportunities and perks that arise from being a part of a college club/team.

77 Travel TroublesWhat Rising Transportation Costs Means to a Student

79 Department Show-caseA round up of events under various departments

82 Bringing Éclat to LifeDesign – The key to enhanc-ing a magazine’s appeal

84 IPL The aftermath of its inceptionHow the IPL has inspired league models in other sports

86 Magnus CarlsenThe rise of a young chess genius

87 P V SindhuCarving a niche for herself through consistent wins

88 Bayern The wheel completes a full cycle!The tables have turned for the German Club

90 Sebastian VettelA journey from talent to genius

92 Campus Challenge -14Coverage of the interde-partmental sports fest

94 Sports TimelineThe year at a glance

97 Ordell Ugo

98 Team Éclat

Have a good read!

What got you started?

Knowing the significance of education and be-ing a firm believer in the words of Swami Vivekanan-da - “Education is the panacea for all the evils in the Society”, I ventured into this sacred arena.

Millions of students go abroad for education as a result of which India loses a billion rupees each year in terms of revenue and manpower. What solution do you recommend?

There is an unusual craze to go to USA, which can be curbed by meritocracy and by suitably re-warding meritorious students and by providing lu-crative jobs including creating world class research facilities. The Government of India should make it mandatory for students availing scholarships to re-turn to the motherland after their studies abroad, otherwise it is a huge strain on the National Ex-chequer. The curricula should be oriented towards practical application. Industry-academy interac-tion should increase and is required to be on a con-tinuous basis. Reputed institutions should increase involvement to make our students more acceptable by job providers.

In 2008 you became a part of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly. How has it helped in the

growth of education institutions? In general, how can bureaucrats contribute towards educa-tional growth in our country?

Many policy decisions taken by the Govern-ment impact every aspect of our life. Since very few educationists are part of the Government, my involvement certainly can make some impact from the point of view of education policies. The recom-mendations of the National Knowledge Commis-sion headed by our Hon’ble Prime Minister should also be implemented with all seriousness.

How will autonomy help PES?

I am glad to inform you that we have obtained the permission from the government and PES is a University now. With this status, there will be aca-demic freedom to design and implement programs based on our ideas. Very comprehensive and path breaking changes can be implemented within the ambit of the University.

What do you like most about your profession?

I derive my enthusiasm, energy and happiness from the new batches of youngsters that I meet ev-ery year. What can be more satisfying than this? They are my inspiration. PES today is a University, this has been my life time ambition.

Tête-à-Tête

Dr. M R DoreswamyChancellor, PES University

Founder, PES Institutions

04 Éclat 2014

PESIT is now PES University. What new levels of excellence will the university strive for now?

The transition from PESIT to PES University has been the single largest achievement in the last year. But at the core, the spirit of PES continues to drive us. Through our own entrance test and stress on high qualification marks, an influx of quality students will be ensured. The courses will be lim-ited and their quality improved. University status will give us the independence to improve grading schemes, increase the academic rigour and provide new opportunities for learning. Through massive open online courses (MOOCs) and tie-ups with 50 universities world over, students will receive a tre-mendous amount of exposure.

Research will be pushed with renewed fervour, covering 31 domains. Every year, 50% of research funding will be focused on each domain in turn. The university will also reach out to students through the three fronts of Administration, Research and Teaching (ART) to create an enriching all-round ex-perience.

Entrepreneurship has been gaining mo-mentum at the college level. What are your views on it?

I am a 100% for entrepreneurship. I believe that the next big idea need not necessarily come from research. Rather, an application that is socially rel-evant has immense potential to be successful. The university must create an environment to connect students to the market requirement. We are doing good work in this regard, through labs and commu-nities like Ordell Ugo, KAnOE, Center for Cloud Com-puting and Big Data and the ACE program.

What is your message to the students?

The next 5 years will see double the work done in the last 25 years. PES University will herald a lot of change, but we must retain our core values of perseverance, excellence and service. These are timeless values that I believe every graduate must imbibe, in order to stand out in all their endeavours.

Tête-à-Tête

Prof. D JawaharPro Chancellor, PES University

CEO, PES Institutions

05Éclat 2014

What has been the major highlight of the past year?

The transition of PESIT into PES University has been the biggest highlight of the year. It has opened up a plethora of possibilities. We now have the free-dom to chart our own destiny. Through new pro-grammes, internships and foreign exposure, PES University can develop new and unique facets of undergraduate education, to become leaders in the field.

How does PES University adapt to the rapid-ly changing world of technology?

New technology doesn’t mean that basics should be forgotten. A strong foundation can help bridge the gap to master any new technology. With any emerging technology, it is important to know

and understand what developments led to it.

That being said, at PES University, we introduce students to the forefront of technology through var-ious mechanisms. Conferences, workshops, paper publications, interaction with eminent individuals from different domain s of technology and research centres help students connect with and experience emerging technologies.

What advice would you like to give to the student body?

I have always believed in the phrase ‘Continu-ous Improvement to be Investment Worthy’. Wheth-er it is academics, a job or research, you must al-ways reinvent, innovate and strive to add value to your work. Only then do you become investment worthy.

Tête-à-Tête

Prof. Ajoy Kumar COO, PES Institutions

06 Éclat 2014

What are your thoughts on the year gone by?

The past year has been most satisfying on a number of parameters.

Students have excelled tremendously, in curricular, research and extra-curricular activities. 

• A major milestone for the institute was PESIT transitioning into PES University. 

• The institute has received TEQIP funding f or acceleration of PG education as well as research and for establishing a centre of excellence in Knowledge Analytics and Ontological Engineering (KAnOE).

• In many competitions, the students of PES University have gained recognition.

• Another big change is that students have started looking beyond the regular placements, in terms of higher studies, entrepreneurship and research pursuits.

What does the transition of PESIT to PES University mean for the institute?

The attainment of university status has been the next big achievement for the institute after being granted autonomy in 2007. The institute has reached a greater level of maturity in terms of independent functioning, which is marked by the transition from PESIT to PES University. While the previous VTU guide-lines were more generic on account of more autonomous colleges, university status will now allow us to be more flexible while at the same time maintain high standards.

For the institute, this implies a number of processes will be changed or improved. For example, credit transfers will give more recognition to the spirit of work - be it through industry internships or research work abroad. A major and minor specialisation model will be implemented as well, with more flexibility for the students.

What is your advice to the students?

The students must understand that getting into an institute of repute such as PES University is a step-ping stone. To achieve further success, a student must match ability with hard work and focus, as well as make use of the abundant facilities and opportunities. We are all stakeholders of the university and so are all responsible for maintaining its high standards. Ultimately, I urge the students to be extremely profes-sional in everything that they strive to do.

Tête-à-Tête

Dr. K N Balasubramanya

MurthyVice Chancellor, PES UniversityPrincipal & Director, PESIT

07Éclat 2014

The journey from pulp and paper industry to photography, via IT

Ramesh Adkoli

Tête-à-Tête

To begin with, tell us something about your stu-dent life and how you ended up being in IT. Was it by choice or chance?

I had studied Pulp and Paper Technology and worked for some time in Ballarpur, MH. After few years, I wanted to study further. I had two options: Chemical Engineering or Computer Science. At that time, IT sector had just started to come up. I chose CS as it seemed more interesting. I joined MCA at REC, Tiruchirapalli, TN in 1988. It’s not chance, as I had to make it happen. At that time not many soft-ware companies were present in India.

Once you passed out of college, how has your experience been with IT industry, till the time you decided to quit and pursue photography?

I joined Infosys in 1991. It was a very small company back then, with less than 200 employees. We could relate to people, and the work was chal-lenging. It was a very fast growing company, within 1-2 years the growth was visible. As it grew by leaps and bounds, the people who had joined early got very good opportunities in terms of projects, inter-actions with the customers, etc. It was one of the best companies to work for – excellent work culture, great management, a good set of customers and a variety of work. I started as a programmer and then moved on to become a project leader and then to be a manager, which gave me an opportunity to in-teract with clients directly. I set up the Infosys de-velopment center in Canada which grew to have 100+ employees. I worked as Associate Vice Pres-ident - Delivery, Canada and North East Region, I was responsible for the section that generated over

15% of the revenue Infosys had. I quit Infosys in 2003, and started a company called EXILANT Tech-nologies with 5 friends, where I worked as Founder Director till 2009. The company now has over 1000 employees with offices in Bangalore, Bhubaneswar, Singapore, Santa Clara and London.

Why did you not pursue photography earlier? What advice would you give to freshers who like doing something other than what the job they have requires?

I used to do photography occasionally but it was in April 2009 that I decided to take it up seri-ously. For me, it was pretty hard as the job required more than what I could offer. I could not find time to pursue photography, so I never gave it a serious thought. Pursuing a hobby requires time and effort. There are a lot of weekend painters and photogra-phers, etc. It’s good to see people finding time for their interest but the amount of seriousness they have for their hobby is questionable. Very few can do justice to both their work and hobby. I’d suggest people should first settle down in life and then pur-sue their hobbies. They should do what they like to do.

Tell us about some of the challenges that you have faced in life – in education, work or in switching careers.

To start with education, I worked for 6 years before joining college (MCA). I found it extremely difficult to sit in class. But once you know what you want in life, you have to pursue it. Finding a job was hard, as company preferences included age factors,

As told by Ramesh Adkoli to Smriti Jyoti

08 Éclat 2014

and I was senior than most of my classmates.  It was also not easy to work in a growing company, you needed skill set to find new customers. It’s easier to join a settled company that way. In work, setting up a development center in Canada was a challenge. I had to recruit local talent. About switching ca-reers, it was a totally different experience between the manufacturing sector and IT. In manufacturing, you work for 6-8 hours. Once you are out of office, you have no worries - the work is over. In IT, you tend to get a lot more involved. You’ll be busy fix-ing bugs most of the day, even when you go back home, you’ll be in the mood to work. I don’t consid-er Photography as a profession – only an interest, so I won’t call that transition as switching careers.

How has the experience in photography been so far and what inspires you the most?

There are many disciplines in photography. I chose nature, because more than photography, the best thing for me is to spend time with nature. As a photographer my day starts early and we work till around 10:30 a.m., and then later from 3 or 4 p.m. till sunset. Sunrise and sunsets are considered the best time to take photos as they enhance the beau-ty of nature. I like to observe nature as an artist- the choice of colors, tones, views and to capture them on sensor. When you start appreciating nature, you become a better observer. I prefer to do landscape, close-ups and wildlife photography- as they are all related to nature. It takes effort to capture nature in a creative way.

Our country still has this mentality that if some-one is academically strong, he or she should take up medicine or engineering or such profes-sions. Does that make it difficult to take up oth-er career paths right from the beginning? Tell us about the hardships that one has to face.

Be it photography, music or any other art form, there are always challenges present. It is always dif-ficult until you get a good name. I feel one should first get good at it – develop your own style, start differentiating yourself from others. For example, it’s easy to become a photographer, but not all are good photographers. For the rest, it is hard to monetize it. About the mentality, it was very much prevalent 8-10 years ago, but things have started to change now. Parents now realize that they should let their children do what they like.

Do you ever think of going back to IT?

No. Been there, done that.

What do you think of technical education these days? How different is it from when you were studying and what role does education, accord-ing to you, plays in one’s life?

When I was studying, there were hardly any qualified teachers as CS was itself coming up as a new subject. The teachers were also learning with us, so the onus was on us to learn. I have done a lot of campus recruitments for Infosys – at IIT Kanpur, IT BHU, REC, walk-ins, etc. In mid 90s, I felt the stu-

Photo by: RAMESH ADKOLI

Éclat 2014 09

dents were not strong in the basics; the effort put into learning was poor. Even when I was recruiting for EXILANT, things didn’t change much. Unless stu-dents are good with fundamentals, they won’t be-come good programmers. This needs to be fixed, as it comes up when you have to change jobs.  The role of education is far beyond what we perceive. It gives us a lot more room to experiment.

What is the influence of digital techniques on your photography?

Till early 2000’s, I used to shoot film. My pho-tography is completely digitalized now. Digital cameras now match the image quality of earlier film cameras. Nikon now comes with a nano-coating to reduce dispersion, lens flair and internal refraction. There are software tools for processing and print-ing digital images, though media (paper) is still the same. The process has become easier and simpler by using digital techniques.

As a parent, how supportive are you of the ca-reer choices your child makes?

I totally support any decision my daughter makes. She can do whatever she likes doing.

Any advice to our readers?

For engineers – Be strong in your concepts and know how to apply them. For mechanical, civil and CS engineers, learn to solve problems for custom-ers, and you are set for life.

For budding photographers – First learn how to use your equipment properly. Then experiment, and practice, develop basic skills – learn about light and composition.

Photo by: RAMESH ADKOLI

Photo by: RAMESH ADKOLI

Éclat 201410

Murali Talwai is an Engineer-ing Manager at Intel Corporation and works in California.

He has been with Intel for 21 years and is currently a Senior Manager/Leader leading a Center of Excellence team responsible for developing and delivering USB3 Technology across all Intel Products. So, if you have Intel Computer which has USB3, you can thank his team for it!

You were in Intel since the time that they started designing the pentium chips. How did it feel at the time to have accom-plished such a great task? How much do you think Intel has changed since that time?

Working at Intel has always been a dream job for me. It was a wonderful experience being new at Intel coming from India and being part of such an exciting project

The products we work on/deliver now are significantly more complex than during the ‘90s. Also the project teams and customers are lot more global now which makes every project execution much more challeng-ing. Intel is a much larger compa-ny now both in terms of its global reach, product line, brand equity and of course revenues. However change is always good and our current products have immense-ly changed the lives of people around the world. For example

you probably typed these inter-view questions sitting on your sofa and using your laptop, which was unheard of during the ‘90s.

You have been living in the US for quite a long time now. Being an Indian, do you ever feel discriminated among your co-workers or do you have equal opportunities?

Intel is a global company and we have folks from all over the world here in the US. Walking from my cube to the café is like traversing the world since you get to meet people from around the world during that short walk. Each team is very well diversified. It is very professional and no dis-crimination exists

How would you describe the working conditions at Intel? If you have to describe Intel in two words, what would they be?

Intel is a great place to work! Let me use three words: “ Tech-nology Changing Lives”; “ Spon-sors of Tomorrow”.

Being a person in your posi-tion, you do have a lot of pres-sure upon you that can become unmanageable at times. What do you do when you feel things are getting out of control?

You always have to keep Life in perspective. Yes, there is lot of stress given the complexity of our

projects, the business impact of missing deadlines and the high volume of our products which de-mands extremely rigorous quali-ty. But it is good stress and you do get the sense of accomplishment when the task is completed. I try to keep a positive outlook when things seem out of control know-ing that things will pass and some new ones will come.

You have worked and stayed in the US. What opportunities do students from India have in a country like the United States?

US is a land of opportuni-ties if you are smart and willing to put in the hard work needed to be successful. Like anywhere else, there is no such thing as free lunch. Hard work and strong ethic always pays off. There are both technical and management career opportunities in several fields from biotech to computer science.

If you are to be recruiting peo-ple at Intel, and if you have to name just one criteria in select-ing them, what would it be?

Technically Smart;   Strong Work Ethic

The competition is getting tougher as the days pass by. At the same time, students and employees are expected to be perfect in terms of work and ethic. Do you not think that it may be a bit too much to ask

As told by Murali Talwai to Neha Joshi

Murali TalwaiTête-à-Tête

11Éclat 2014

people to follow the classic moral values like, “help each other all the time”, “do no bad to anyone even if they are bad to you”, and other such things when everyone around you is just trying to get ahead of you all the time?

Hard work and strong work ethic always pays off in the end. Also you will be at lot more peace this way than trying get ahead thorough wrong means.  The fun is more in the journey than the destination. You should always give your best to whatever task you are involved in, independent of competition etc.

If you would have to name that one thing which you would feel would be a perfect getaway from the everyday life, what would it be?

Meditate.

Do you think that family is a trade off for being successful?

Not necessarily. Howev-er every individual situation is different as to what you define as ‘being successful’ and what ‘trade offs’ you consider making whether towards your career or family. So you cannot generalize these things. I think each person will know when he/she is making the trade off one way or the other in his/her situation. It is ultimate-ly an individual choice and you have to live with the given conse-quences.

If you had to give one advice to the students to be successful, what would it be?

Stay focused and work hard. There is no easy recipe. Aspire for big things and don’t settle. 4-6 yrs of investment now will make a huge difference in the next 40+ years of your life. It is an invest-ment worth every bit. Don’t give in to short term temptations. There will be a time for every-thing.

What do you think will be the next big revolution that the world is going to witness after computers?

There will be lot more focus on using technology in changing peoples’ lives rather than tech-nology for technology sake.   So you will see lot of advancement geared towards enabling bet-ter human experience than just crunching numbers.

Being at Intel, you do know how much effort it takes in making machines process and “think”. Do you really think that man can develop Artificial Intelligence to an extent that human existence is in danger?

Technology is neutral. How we use the technology is up to us as humans, whether it is towards good or bad. So in the end, it will be humans who will determine whether technology is a threat or not. It is not the other way around.

Éclat 201412

Ram KashyapRam Kashyap is the Founder and Head of Nokia Student Developer. He was the student winner of the Oracle Duke’s Choice Award in 2012. He is also the co-founder of two ventures, based in Bangalore.

Tell us something about your startup(s).I am the Co founder and CEO of a mobile/web based company named Mahithi. Mahithi is a product

that facilitates crowd sourcing and crowd funding philosophies in identifying and addressing social dis-comforts and injustices around mankind.

I am also the Co Founder and CEO of Inoversity (Infini Open University), this is an educational venture that focuses in the direction of driving “Learning by doing” approach towards education into our conven-tional educational system that does not meet Industry requirements.

What do you feel needs to be done in order to encourage college students to take the entrepreneurial plunge?

A lot of world’s top universities such as Harvard, MIT, Stanford, have been the top universities because they have produced the world’s biggest innovations today, in the field of technology predominantly. Our students are more “Placements” focused since that is the intention behind joining engineering colleges, if the focus shifts from “Placements” towards “Creating something useful”, that will make a radical shift towards the way we start seeing the world. Its more about the mindset, motivation comes later. Alongside, colleges should promote entrepreneurship by setting up E cell, creating incubation programs and be a stake holder, supporting the venture throughout its lifetime. 

Your take on entrepreneurs and the current challenges they face in India, as opposed to the Western countries.

Over the next 15 years, we need to create about 600 million jobs to stay the unemployment rate at its current level. This is possible only if we Indians produce more entrepreneurs, more problem solving scenarios and more businesses. A very minute part of the age group 16 - 30 understands this and there is a lack of maturity. We should overcome this.

On the other hand, a lot of people here are not risk takers. They are mostly critics - whether it is next-gen individuals who take the entrepreneurial track, or whether it is the investors who invest in them, or even the organizations that are supposedly customers for a new venture. Thanks to programs such as 10,000 startups by NASSCOM, a lot of success stories are emerging which motivates people to do business with new ventures.

As told by Ram Kashyap to Savitha S

Tête-à-Tête

13Éclat 2014

Nothing short of a comical riot, THE IMPROV left the students of PES in splits on the 28th of February, when they performed for Aatmatrisha ’14. A team of enigmatic stand-up performers, THE IMPROV is an audience-centric improvi-sational performance that never fails to get a good laugh out of its audience.

We had the chance to catch up with Saad Khan, the Founder and Cre-ative Head of Centerstage productions. He conceptualised THE IMPROV with the team and performed nationally, after having toured with Russel Peters, Robert Schneider and the cast of ‘Whose Line is it Anyway’. A fun-loving people person and ever-energetic, Saad Khan is the host of the Improv and director of ‘Sta-tion’, Bangalore’s first feature film.   The social bee and helpful soul that he is, he took the time out to share his thoughts on his career, directorial debut, and col-lege life. Here’s what he had to say:

The Improv has kicked off all over India and is nothing short of a comical riot. How did the cast come together to form this amazing amalgama-tion of unique talent?

THE IMPROV actually started off in a canteen eight to nine years ago. It be-came a brand only when Sid and I start-ed performing professionally with the rest of the team. We strongly believe in spontaneity in every creative project we attempt. We all came together to have a lot of fun, laugh, and most importantly, make people laugh. The work that goes into what we bring on stage should be a best kept secret.

You’ve made your directori-

al debut, STATION, which is Bangalore’s first hindi feature film. How did you make the transition from actor to direc-tor? Tell us a little bit about the inspiration behind the film.

I am not an actor. Even in THE IM-PROV, I’m the host and director. I used to act in plays every now and then years ago, until I realized that directing is my forte. My inspiration? I am literally, fig-uratively, metaphorically, allegorically and psychologically married to movies. I have always been fascinated by the crime thriller genre, and as a writer it’s a challenge to be able to keep your au-dience on their toes. Keeping this chal-lenge in mind, I was hoping to make a movie that would depict a crime thriller in all its raw glory by keeping it engag-ing, suspenseful and filled with intrigue.

What are your views on Indian cinema? What kind of cinema do you want to be associated with?

All my reasons for being a film-maker today are derived from my love for Indian cinema. I want to make films that mean something and that can stand the test of time.

Will we be seeing you in the Improv after the release of Station?

Of course! THE IMPROV is my big-gest stress buster and I love making people laugh, so that will never stop or go away. We want to focus more on the performance aspect of the show now, so after STATION, there will be a lot more

work put into THE IMPROV and anything I helm creatively.

You’re a mechanical engineer from MSRIT. Tell us about your college life. How did your ca-reer transfigure from engi-neering to the entertainment industry?

My college life gave me wings.The truth - I was blessed to be a science stu-dent who was given the freedom to flirt with the Arts. I was sure from the age of 16 that I wanted to be in the film in-dustry. How, what, when, where, how – didn’t matter. I just had to be in this do-main and I chose it. It didn’t  choose me.

What advice do you have for students who want to pursue their passion?

Stop giving yourself excuses. Many students say their parents aren’t giving them a free hand. Well, you’ve got to convince them if you love doing some-thing. And if you cant, then it’s an excuse you have made yourself content with.

Words that Saad Khan lives by.

Respect - for parents and every-one who supports you in the smallest way possible. Punctuality - more of an OCD than anything else. Passion - I have reached this point due to this, and I don’t think there’s any subtitute for it.

With those parting words, he en-courages every student to pursue their passion, their dreams, and most impor-tantly, their hearts. Flooding the world of cinema at lightning speed, Saad Khan is definitely someone to look out for!

Tête-à-Tête

Saad Khan As told by Saad Khan to Supriya Vijay

14 Éclat 2014

Open SpeakOn all things political and controversial

Does the AAP deserve a chance?

The evolution of  the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating incidents of our times. Regarding the new political entity AAP, a large number of questions are being asked, some of them are purely out of inertia with the status quo (Why the new party AAP? Are they anarchists? etc.), some out of genuine concern for the country›s present and future (AAP›s lack of experience and long-term vision, broader goals other than curbing corruption, inclusion of women, issues related to inequality, economic growth and development, etc.) and some other questions that specifically ask what is AAP›s position on national security like Kashmir issue or revocation

of AFSPA, etc. Yet another set of questions come from the left-liberal-secular and minorities: what is the position of AAP on minorities? All these questions are pertinent and deserve some answers.

Experience, Long-Term Vision, National Security, Development,  etc  . -   It is not sensible to expect a year-old party to have developed on these lines of thought. The AAP is still very much in its nascent stage. With more people joining AAP, and some with more experience than others, I am sure AAP will develop those perspectives. We have many newer parties emerging each election season. Some of them make a mark on the political landscape, while others don’t. Those that get to enjoy politics for some time develop their vision or get lost because of

the lack of it! I am sure the AAP is in the process of developing their vision. At present, I don’t think we need to worry too much about their ‘national perspective’. They are not going to rule in the Parliament on their own. Either they will end up supporting or being supported by some other or they will be just another party in the opposition -- making a hue and cry at the drop of a pin! I hope they will do a good job of the latter! 

As far as their mode of functioning is concerned, they are being accused of being unconventional, doling out freebies and have been branded as a bunch of anarchists. While each of these accusations have some merit, the counter-arguments also have takers. The cabinet ministers not flaunting on their cars, refusing to take

FORMALBy Smriti Jyoti & Aditya Sureka

15Éclat 2014

Modi-fying the Balance!

adequate security measures and the Chief Minister choosing to stay in a house of the common man’s choosing - all these actions are highly unconventional. On the one hand, these decisions look clumsy and populist, but on the other hand, by adopting minimalist ways, the elected leaders are trying to live up to their pre-election promises which is a great indication. Most mainstream political parties and leaders forget that the very moment the election is over.

It is praiseworthy that within one month of coming to power, the party implemented policies according to its manifesto while adhering to their promised time-frames as well. The criticisms that these freebies in the form of free water and subsidized electricity would make the state bankrupt do not hold, as the ex-CM himself is said that once loopholes in the existing policies and practices were fixed, there would be more ways of generating revenue.

Activism, Populism, Anarchy: Coming to the question of anarchy, anything that disrupts the status quo is claimed to be anarchic. But which response do we prefer from our elected leaders: deafening silence on our legitimate demands or concrete action when required? The AAP leaders are doing the latter according to the best of their capacities. While delivering their duties, if their means are not conventional, it is not always anarchic. That is why I can’t pass a judgment on their recent episode of activism, populism, stupidity, or anarchy, whatever you want to call it, because every move against the status quo initially looks disruptive and ugly but if it succeeds, in the end, it looks constructive

and beautiful. However, if they do something wrong during the process, we have an established system of rule of law. The police administration and the judiciary should take care of it.

In addition, one point is noteworthy. We have been under Congress rule, which prides itself as the greatest caretaker of minorities, and we know the reality of it. We have experienced NDA regimes at the center and in different states. Except Gujarat, the situation in the BJP-ruled states is not far from that in non-BJP governments in other states. So the worst they can do is side with BJP or behave like BJP. They can’t do worse than that. Normally, I would expect them to behave as other secular parties do. The good thing with AAP is that it seems to genuinely care for the eponymous Aam Aadmi and is fighting against corruption. If they really care for the poor and the oppressed, then they can’t ignore the minorities. The minorities, especially the Muslims, form a principal sub-group of the Aam Aadmi everywhere. So programs aimed at Aam Aadmis are bound to help the minorities. Eradication of corruption helps everyone, including the minorities.

In finality, Aam Aadmi Party, I think, deserves a chance!

Quote – UnquoteFor quite some time now, we

have been hearing comments from some public figures that render us speechless – not for their orator skills, but for the sheer senselessness of the content. We all have such a hard time deciding whether to laugh hysterically – how illogical can one be, or cry soundlessly – for we live in this ‘intelligent’ country.

But of course we can do neither, for their speakers are honourable men. And women. Here are some of such comments which have marvelled me, angered me, made me laugh, but almost always shocked me.

“Don’t give mobile phones to children, especially girls. I say this at all the places where I make my speeches. And if any of these kids have a mobile, take them away. What are they missing anyway? What are the girls missing without mobile?” said Rajya Sabha MP Rajpal Singh Saini. Yes, sir! Also, don’t let us watch TV, ban movies, sports, and computers of course!   “To my understanding, consumption of fast food contributes to such incidents (rape). Chowmein leads to hormonal imbalance evoking an urge to indulge in such acts.”- were the wise words of Haryana khap panchayat leader Jitender Chhatar. How come every girl in China doesn’t have the same fate as us – Indian ones? Maybe Mr Chhatar has done extensive research on food items, and their effect on Indian males, for even after googling for hours, I could find the name of this hormone. I really hope he is right; finally we’ll have a shot at Nobel Prize with this discovery!  

Let’s see how our politicians defend what is not to be defended. “There was zero loss to the exchequer from the 2G allocation.”- Kapil Sibal. Of course, just the way there was zero loss to the public in Bofors, Coalgate, Fodder scams. Maybe he was a science student, never got a chance to study accountancy. “If we send industrialists to jail, we would be discouraging investment.” said Salman Khurshid justifying the government’s inaction in the 2G

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scam. And if we send movie stars/ cricketers/ bankers/ teachers/ govt. officers/ doctors/ any person to jail, we’ll discourage entertainment/ sports/ banking/ education/ public work/ medicine and healthcare/ any profession. It might be easier to just shut down all prisons.

And the most recent one : Claiming that the Hindu population was growing at a much slower rate than Christians and Muslims in the country, VHP leader Ashok Singhal Saturday said “Hindu families should produce at least five children”. Maybe the govt. should introduce benefits for families with over 5 children.

So far, the most hilarious one has been: “If there is no water in the dam, how can we release

it? Should we urinate into it? If there is no water to drink, even urination is not possible,” Maharashtra state deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar has said. You can judge his crassness further from this next statement where referring to the load shedding situation in parts of the state he said, “I have noticed that more children are being born since the lights go off at night. There is no other work left then.” I better not comment on this one at all.

Mr Rahul Gandhi, famous-more-than-ever since his little chat with Mr. Arnab Goswami also doesn’t lack his share of statements. “IIT professor has no idea about what his value is. He has got no idea about what he is worth. Because he is not connected to the market. He does not understand what the market

is ready to pay him. He does, but institutionally he doesn’t.” Sorry, what?!

When asked about the free distribution of Aakash tablet his party had promised, Mr. Gandhi came up with a reply that left us all wondering if he was indeed a developer.   “Frankly, I am not the person who came up with the Aakash tablet. You need to ask the gentleman who came up with it”, was his reply. And the most recent “Today morning, I woke up at night”.

And how can we leave Mr NaMo out of this article. “When we are reminded of the Gupta Dynasty we are reminded of Chandragupta’s rajneeti,” he said at his Patna rally. And here I was under the impression that Chandragupta MAURYA was of

17Éclat 2014

MAURYA dynasty.

At the same rally, Modi went on to add, “Alexander’s army conquered the entire world, but was defeated by the Biharis. That’s the might of this land.” Indeed, Alexander’s great words were “I came (to Ganges), I saw (Bihar), and I left”. “Taxila, the learning hub of ancient times, was in Bihar.” The last I checked, it was still in Pakistan, but then, who I am to comment. The future PM might be able to get it back to Bihar. Maybe the development in Gujarat would also be reflected in better geography and history teachers in the state.

Besides, what’s in a name, of course, Mohanlal and Mohandas are nothing but vessels for the worldly.

“One can have a full meal for Rs 12 in Mumbai. No, no, not vada paav. So much of rice, daal saambhar and with that some vegetables are also mixed.” Congress spokesperson Raj Babbar showed how out of touch he is with reality. Rasheed Masood, trying to go one up on Raj Babbar, said, “You can eat a meal in Delhi for Rs 5, I don’t know about Mumbai. You can get a meal for Rs 5 near Jama Masjid (in Delhi).   “If you want, you can fill your stomach for Re 1 or Rs 100, depending on what you want to eat. We are working to change the life of the poor so they can eat well be healthy and India can progress.” Union Minister Farooq Abdullah said justifying  the Planning Commission’s definition of poverty and proving who the real idiot is. Well, well, last I went to any locality near Jama Masjid, the cheapest Chhole Bhature was also priced at Rs. 25 per plate. Or wait, maybe I checked only posh restaurants.

After all, as Rahul Gandhi puts is, “Poverty is a state of mind.”

One conclusion I was able to reach with my research for this article, was that women have it worst. But again, in a country where women deities are revered, how could it possibly be? Let’s look at some of the most enlightening statements and comments so far:

“Tell me, can you imagine a movie without a villain, could Ramayana have been written without Ravana’s role. Eve teasing is very old, but the preparation is made by the involvement of girls. Their dresses have changed in tune with times. Skirts have become shorter to appeal to men, which should be appreciated. But when it attracts taunts and comments, it becomes a case for eve teasing.” -Chiranjeet Chakraborty, Trinamool Congress legislator reacting to an incident of eve-teasing in his constituency of Barasat in West Bengal where a student returning home from her tuition classes was harassed by some youths. So it was kind of Sita’s fault. Was it not? How come we still revere her then?

A Haryana khap panchayat said the marriageable age for girls should be lowered to prevent the rising number of rapes in Haryana. “I am with the khaps on this issue. This will protect women.” -Former Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala’s quick-fix for rapes manages to faze every one quickly.

And oh, don’t forget Asaram Bapu, the so-called guru, hardly a stranger to controversies, had said that the victim of the Delhi gang-rape could have saved herself by addressing her violators as bhaiyya and beseeching for mercy. I wonder how the girls he

abused addressed him. Wouldn’t have called him Bapu now, would they?

Enough said about a girl’s fault in inciting crimes against her, let us see what comments deserves the ire of women.

“What’s basically happening in Delhi is a lot like Egypt or elsewhere, where there’s something called the Pink Revolution, which has very little connection with ground realities. In India, staging candle-lit marches, going to discotheques - we did all this during our student life too, we were students too - I know every well what kind of character students should have. Those who claim to be students - I can see many beautiful women among them - highly dented-painted - they’re giving interviews on TV, they’ve brought their children to show them the scenes. I have grave doubts whether they’re students, because women of that age are generally not students.” said Abhijit Mukherjee, Lok Sabha MP and President Pranab Mukherjee’s son maligning the women protestors taking part in the gang-rape protests in Delhi.

“Some women, wearing lipstick and powder, have taken to streets in Mumbai and are abusing politicians, thus spreading dissatisfaction against democracy. This is what terrorists are doing in Jammu and Kashmir.” Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Vice-President, BJP commented on the protestors at a rally at Marine Drive against the government inaction during the 26/11 terrorist attacks.

I don’t think we could agree to either of these gentlemen more, for only Men deserve the right to crowd the streets and participate

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in rallies, etc.

Surprisingly, some of the most bizarre comments came for the Women Reservation Bill.

“Only girls and women from affluent class can go forward. Remember this, you (rural women) will not get a chance. Our rural women did not have that much attraction.”, said  Mulayam Singh Yadav, Samajwadi Party supremo giving reasons why the Women’s Reservation Bill will not benefit the “unattractive” rural women while addressing a rally in Barabanki. Sharad Yadav, Janata Dal United supremo, couldn’t have lagged behind now, could he? “Only certain women who lived in cities like Delhi and Lucknow would benefit who are nothing but “par kati auraten’’ (women with short hair).” was his statement.  I am sure both of them have contributed remarkably to the development of rural women since then.

But the most hilarious comment in this genre belongs to Mr Modi again. Replying to a question on what he was doing to check malnutrition, he seemed to imply that Gujarati girls are malnourished because they diet to appear fashionably thin. The middle-class is more beauty conscious than health conscious — that is a challenge. If a mother tells her daughter to have milk, they’ll have a fight. She’ll tell her mother, ‘I won’t drink milk. I’ll get fat.”

Racist IndiaAre we being judgemental?

Maybe we are. Other countries do something about racism; our indifference grievously harms India. The question is not whether India is racist; the question is to

what extent India is racist. Biases of a racial kind have always been a feature of our public life. Sometimes they were brushed aside as clowning, like Sardarji jokes; North Indian derision for ‘Madrassis’ was dismissed by southerners as another instance of the northerners’ ignorance. Sometimes it went out of control, like Shiv Sena’s violence against South Indians first and now against Biharis. But the most injurious manifestation of Indian racism is against fellow citizens from north-east and against Africans. This will grievously harm India, by encouraging secessionist thoughts in north-eastern India and by making India a hated name in economically burgeoning Africa. It’s all very well to say that there is racism in all countries. But most other countries do something about it. The fight against Apartheid in South Africa is now part of the history of political heroism. In America, the northern half went to war against the southern half over the issue of slavery. Subsequently ‘Negroes’ themselves elevated the struggle to an art form, with the ‘Black is Beautiful’ movement on one side and, on the other, with a national hero like Cassius Clay apostatizing Christianity to become Mohammed Ali.

The problem with racism in India is that the system does nothing to counter it. In fact it promotes it for foolish electoral gains and by sheer incompetence. Partition left the north-eastern states separated from India except for an umbilical cord-like corridor. The physical isolation demanded special attention, but governments from Jawaharlal Nehru’s days failed to understand the implications of geography.

Migration from West Bengal and Bangladesh, allowed by the authorities for vote-bank politics, turned the locals in Tripura into a minority; Assamese-speakers in Assam who were, naturally, the overwhelming majority in their state became simply the largest group. Small wonder then that there are 26 active armed groups in the north-east. In five states armed separatist movements are active.

Never showing any interest in addressing the region’s problems, the Centre merely doled out money, accounting for a quarter to more than half of the GDP of each state. This turned the local governments into clients of the Centre and prevented any meaningful economic progress. The result: thousands of local people, English-educated, modernistic and capable, went to other parts of India looking for employment. In Maharashtra, Karnataka, Punjab and above all in Delhi, they became easy prey to racist Indians.

The beating to death of Nido was in broad daylight. The shopkeepers who teased him and then attacked him were identified, and yet the police took no action for days. Then came the twist that there was no conclusive proof that Nido died of the beating. This was typical of Delhi and Delhi police. In 2005 Delhi University announced a dress code for women students from the north-east avowedly to help them avoid sexual harassment. When BRICS nations held a summit in Delhi last year, the police harassed Assamese, Manipuris, Mizos, Meghalayans et al in buses, roads and houses until they produced documents to prove their citizenship status; they were mistaken for Tibetan

19Éclat 2014

refugees.

Delhi is a cruel place. As novelist Rana Dasgupta says in his acclaimed new biography of the city, Capital: A Portrait of 21st Century Delhi, if there is an earthquake in Delhi or if the water supply stops, people will not help but slaughter one another. A writer’s resort to picturesqueness? Not if we see things in the perspective of recurring attacks on innocents, of negative stereotyping of non-Hindi speakers, of the way successive governments have competed to make north-easterners feel alienated from “mainland India”.

Unlike earlier atrocities, the killing of Nido has shocked the whole nation, “mainlanders” included. But the politicians merely make predictable noises about action. Perhaps they should note that Nido was from Arunachal Pradesh, a state that China claims. A sensible India would do everything possible to make people of that state feel happy and proud about being Indian. Targeting them is tantamount to helping China’s aggressive designs. But then again, we can but hope that people realise it, and work to make our country truly united in diversity.

Moral PolicingIn December 2005, innocent

girls were brutally beaten by the Meerut police. These girls were accused of sitting with boys, and were dragged to the police station, where their parents were summoned, and they were finally let off with a warning. In March 2008 girls and boys sitting in a city park in Bhubaneshwar

were chased by the police and guess who - Namita Panda, the chairperson of Orissa State Commission for Woman herself, with cameraman in tow. When a bunch of hooligans not only attacked a Mangalore pub, but also beat the girls who were partying, India was left with a big question- do we need moral policing and even if we do, does this morality stand for beating girls for having a night out, or walking arm-in-arm with a guy or even sitting in the park?

For all I know, the next thing they might tell us would be to start wearing a dupatta all the time and stop going to offices where there are male counterparts working. After all, office affairs are nothing new? What is going on is not called preserving the Indian culture but sheer hypocrisy. If these people actually want to do something for the country, why don’t they join the army, or serve as volunteers to clean the environment? There are so many open sewages, why don’t they help cleaning them? In rural areas where the basic amenities are absent, why don’t they go and help build schools and health centers? And let’s say they want to improve our morals why don’t they start a drive to fight corruption? But how can they when the organizations for which they work have roots in corruption and politics. We as Indian citizens have been given the right to freedom then how can some stupid hooligans teach us how to behave. What is more disappointing is the behavior of the national commission of women - what is their motive? Fine, they wanted to save women from eve teasing, etc but is this the only way left? And even if it is, isn’t India supposed to be a

democracy, then which law or constitution gave them the right to decide what is right or wrong for others, who are they to decide what is ethical and what isn’t?

A couple of years back a police complaint was lodged against Mrs. Renuka Choudhary for giving a provoking speech - she had said that some people were trying to Talibanize the Indian society. What’s so wrong in it, I ask? Taliban justifies its laws about not allowing women to move in the streets without being accompanied by a male close relative, as a protection measure for them. So what are we supposed to do next- ask our brothers and fathers to accompany us to the grocery shops next to our houses? Let these people have their way and this will be asked of us soon.

It’s not about being a male or female either- once these incidents start, there’s no end to it. And another question for this moral police is that if they feel that consuming alcohol is not right, ban it straight away. Form pressure groups, etc, you might even get the support of the public. But all has to be done under a certain limit, and according to the law, because if you have the right to express your views, others have it too. Preserving Indian culture isn’t bad, what’s bad is forcing others to do what you feel right. If you think you are right - first try to convince others, you can’t just go on beating and forcing them.

I would like to conclude with the hope that such things aren’t repeated again. Because if they are, it is very shameful for the government, all our protectors of the law, for us, the people and most important the democracy called India.

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LOOK AROUND YOU“School! I wish I could just sit at home.”

“ I  want the new iPhone5, my Samsung S3 is a year old!”Look around you. The country, the world, is

surrounded by plaguing poverty, and here we are, the supposed “morally sensitive” youth, cribbing about frivolous problems that don’t dare to figure in the lives of the majority of the population.

Kamala is an eight year old girl, dwelling in a small slum in the heart of Bangalore - the city of fun, frolic, shopping and fine dining.  Taking care of her two year old sister by day, and washing utensils by night, she is wanting of a normal childhood – one that is carefree, oblivious to hardships. Yet she car-ries on her face a perennial smile, so innocent, so pure;  a veil that shrouds her reality. Ask her what her dream is, and she responds, beaming, “ I want to go to school and learn to read and count!”.   A group of college students teach her and the other children in her slum, numbers and letters of the En-glish alphabet. Nothing comes close to the joy of learning for them.

A similar story is one of Angad’s. He lost both his parents at the tender age of four, and was left taking care of his two younger siblings ever since. Eight years old now, he was pushed to work in the carpet industry to support himself and his siblings. Catch him playing cricket in the local ground, and you’d think he’s just another happy kid. The depth of sadness in his eyes goes unnoticed. He lives in a small hut with a thatched roof. When it rains out-side, it rains inside too. Devoid of the barebone min-imum - water, liveable shelter, and food – he leads his life monotonously, striving to give his siblings what he never got the chance to have – education and happiness.

The last story shared is something I witnessed firsthand, as did I Kamala’s story. Sohan (name changed) is a six year old boy living in Jaipur. Cute as a button, wearing authentic Rajasthani attire and a smile on his face, he is accompanied by his father who plays the tabla. He dances to his father’s music at a high-end restaurant to entertain the hundreds of fussy rich children and parents alike,  who don’t stop to spare him so much as a glance. The sheer lack of apathy was appalling. He came to our table, and words don’t begin to describe the guilt I felt. Guilt for having an education we don’t fight harder to provide for children like him; guilt for belonging to a generation that has the gall to crib about the things we do.

These are just three stories of the millions all over the world. Throwing tantrums over college, and twisting our faces in disappointment over the lunch our mothers so lovingly pack is not uncom-mon.  Take a moment to stop and look back at ev-erything we’ve been given – a home over a house, education, food and happiness – and feel fortunate.

We are a generation that has the power to fight, the power to educate, and the heart to care. We just need to burst the bubble we’ve created, and get galvanized into action. Join an NGO, teach children locally, or contribute to society somehow. Share the happiness; there’s plenty to go around. Don’t dwell on what you DON’T have, work with what you DO. Be thankful. There are millions who don’t have a fraction of what we do, and still manage to smile.

Wake up, look around you, and be the change.

By Supriya Vijay

FORMAL

21Éclat 2014

The Happy Page by Lisa Swerling & Ralph La-zar is a huge hit on Facebook and has been making news everywhere for its light, optimistic and relat-able content. It has inspired numerous spin-offs like ‘Sadness is…’ and ‘Love is…’.

Éclat decided to go around PESIT campus and start our own spin off. We asked our PESITians one simple question – “What do you think happiness in PESIT is?”. We got tons of surprising, downright sentimental, wacky and…well, unique answers. Here’s the list of our favourite answers:

Being a part of teams like Samarpana, ICare and

CSR.

Samarpana, ICare and CSR are different so-cial service groups on campus, doing their bit for the society. While Samarpana acts as a medium to show our gratitude to the Indian Army, those who risk their lives every day for our safety, iCare and CSR are involved in helping the less fortunate in our society. From blood donation drives to fundrais-ers and marathons, these groups stop at nothing to achieve their goal of making a difference. What makes it better is the overwhelming response of the PESIT students.

Student Quote: It feels like such an honour to be part of such groups. You don’t see groups like Samarpana in other colleges. Working togeth-er and doing something that makes a difference in people’s lives makes me feel good about myself and makes me appreciate what I have even more.

The Long, LOOOOONNGGGG Summer break

PESIT is one of the few colleges in Bangalore that offers a summer break that’s nearly two and a half months long! Spanning from June to mid Au-gust, the long summer break opens doors to a mil-lion possibilities and opportunities. Student Quote: The long summer break is a HUGE relief. Last year, I went abroad for a summer course and I did it without having to miss college!

The summer break allows us to go for intern-ships that last 2 months long instead of the usual one. It looks great on the resume and you also have time for a break.Chilling in the OAT

OAT or the Open Air Theatre on the PESIT cam-pus is one of the most popular student hang out spots. Strategically (or not?) situated near Nescafe and the Natural Ice Cream stall, you can always find

Happiness in PES UNIVERSITY is…

By Aishani Patnaik

CAMPUS

22 Éclat 2014

large groups of students here, studying (or trying to) or chatting with a bowl of maggi in hand. When we asked the students why they liked the OAT so much, this is what they had to say:

Student Quote: It’s open, spacious and airy! It’s sheltered by the trees, which means we can hang out here even when it’s sunny. We prefer studying here before the exams as we can discuss, and help each other out freely without having to worry about making too much noise or disturbing others. Having a friend in your professor.

Most college students reserve the most co-lourful adjectives to describe their college profes-sors, some of which being- strict, authoritative, hardworking and difficult to please. Imagine our surprise when we found out that students of PESIT share a pretty healthy rapport with their professors. Here’s what the students have to say:

Student Quote: When it comes to issues with the syllabus, the professors are more than helpful. They send us notes via email, conduct extra classes and clarify doubts immediately. Some of the teach-ers are very approachable; we can share some of our personal problems with them as well and get good counsel.

Having a family in college

We spend more than half of our day in college; we spend all our time in college with them and we hang out with them after college as well. We share our problems, have a great time together and en-joy each other’s company. Friends mean the world to us, especially to those who’ve left their homes to study. People say your college friends are the ones

the last forever, and from what we hear from our fel-low PESITians, they are not far off the mark.

Student Quote: Well, according to me a fami-ly comprises of a bunch of quirky people who have your back no matter what, care about you and only wish for your happiness. We cannot expect the same sort of people to be around us in the institute we study in but some of us are fortunate enough to have a very similar bunch you can be YOU with - people who’d probably move mountains for you, who help you academically and support you emo-tionally, who stuff food down your throat and eat up your dabba. It’s a different kind of family than the one you have at home but a family nevertheless.

Unexpected holidays

The PES motto goes: Perseverance, Excellence and Service. To live up to that motto, every PESI-Tian has to work twice as hard as your average col-lege student. This was the most popular answer to our query and here’s why we love that out-of-the-blue let off.

Student Quote: “Have you heard of anyone who DOES NOT like a holiday?”

The discounts.

To all the newbies out here, here’s some valuable information. To those who are unaware, your PES ID card makes you eligible for a 10% dis-count  at Chung Wah, Kathriguppe and if you want to go to Wonderla at a reasonable price, take your ID card and a group of 15 other people and you’ll be offered a world of fun at 25% discount. Guess this is why we’re always asked to keep ID card on us all the time.

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Social Media and FoMOBy Aishwarya Kaliki

INFORMAL

It is no surprise that social net-working — revolutionized by Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey — has altered the landscape of our gen-eration’s social interactions. But these websites may actually influ-ence users’ habits and attitudes to an unhealthy extent. We all know at least one - and probably many more - people who have become victim to compulsive social networking. They include friends, family, and even col-leagues who seem to spend hour af-ter hour sharing and communicating over social networks like Facebook. While it may be true that any of us can potentially get “addicted” to the Internet, it’s also possible that some people are more vulnerable than others. That’s where this concept of FoMO enters the picture.

Fear of Missing Out, popularly referred to as FoMO, is defined as a pervasive apprehension that others might have rewarding experiences from which one is absent. FoMO is characterized by the desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing - teens and adults text while driving, because the pos-sibility of a social connection is more important than their own lives (and the lives of others). They interrupt one call to take another, even when they don’t know who’s on the other line (but to be honest, we’ve been doing this for years before caller ID). They check their Twitter stream while out with their friends, because something more interesting or en-tertaining just might be happening.

It’s not ‘interruption’, it’s con-nection. But wait a minute… it’s not really ‘connection’ either. It’s the potential simply for a different con-nection. It may be better, it may be worse — we just don’t know until we check.

We are so connected with one another through our Twitter streams and Foursquare check-ins, through our Facebook and LinkedIn updates,

that we can’t just be alone anymore. The fear of missing out — on some-thing more fun, on a social date that might just happen on the spur of the moment — is so intense, even when we’ve decided to disconnect, we still connect just once more, just to make sure. We’re all in the grip of this fear — the fear of missing out on something or someone more inter-esting, exciting or better than what we’re currently doing or who we’re currently with.

Our relationship with technol-ogy is still in its infancy, and we’re still feeling our way around it. We don’t quite know how to interact well — mindfully, meaningfully — with it. Count how many times you check your email or smartphone for messages, texts, status updates, etc. in a day. 10? 100? 1,000 or more? You may be surprised. Technolo-gy that we’re at one with and that promotes social balance and har-mony wouldn’t require such obses-sive checking behavior, would it? It would understand and complement natural human social behaviour. It would differentiate for us what’s im-portant and what’s not.

We may think we get it — that technology is a natural extension of our social lives. But we’re mis-taken — we’re still crafting our lives around technology and the social connections they entice us with, rather than the other way around. We stay up all night waiting for the next status update. We interrupt a face-to-face conversation to make sure whatever’s going on elsewhere isn’t better. It’s an impulse control problem — we cannot easily control our impulse to ‘check’ the tech-nology to ensure something ‘more important’ isn’t waiting our imme-diate attention.

The reality is that there are few things so truly im-portant in life, they

can’t wait. Sure, I understand it if you’re a President or Prime Minister — you have a legitimate reason to check your texts during dinner, but everyone else, not so much. We’re succumbing to our FoMO when we do so.

FoMO is a very real feeling that’s starting to permeate through our social relationships. No matter how many times we confess the de-sire to simply disconnect from social media, the act is easier said than done. It is a definitive action, an ac-quiescence that we desperately miss the luxury of privacy.

We are all to blame for our gen-eration’s obsession with social me-dia and the FoMO that comes with it. We rely upon social media as a mirror into other’s lives and we use it to portray ourselves according to an image we want others to see. The image we give off on our Facebook page may not reflect who we are, but who we want others to see. For better or for worse, such is the reali-ty of the millennial generation. Have Facebook and other social media hijacked our lives? Perhaps it is time to disconnect or at the very least, give ourselves some limits; after all, there is far more to each of us than what appears on a Facebook page. The ques-tion is — will we ever settle for what we have, rather than cling to the fear that we may be missing out on some-thing bet-ter?

24 Éclat 2014

Indian music has no doubt been one of the most influential, evolved species of music in the world, especially on its classical front. I was watching this Ger-man movie, ‘Run Lola Run’, and it came as a pleasant surprise to me when the background score at the climax, rose to a typical Aalaap in a common Hindustani raga. It was no coincidence that the iconic act The Beatles, were often compelled to add that Indi-an zing to their songs.

George Harrison started, as early as 1965, by writing three songs that featured in their al-bums.

“We were waiting to shoot the scene in the restaurant when the guy gets thrown in the soup and there were a few Indian musi-

cians playing in the background. I remember picking up the sitar and trying to hold it and thinking, ‘This is a funny sound.’ It was an incidental thing, but somewhere down the line I began to hear Ravi Shankar’s name.” - George Harri-son, 1992, about the making of the 1965 movie, Help.

Well, we know what hap-pened next; he developed a strong affinity to the sitar. Later that year, he recorded Norwegian Wood for Rubber Soul. However, Norwegian Wood wasn’t the first Beatles release to feature a sitar. The North American version of the Help! album featured an in-strumental, called Another Hard Day’s Night - a medley of A Hard Day’s Night, Can’t Buy Me Love and I Should Have Known Better performed on a sitar, tablas, flute

and finger cymbals. Influenced by Hindustani classical music, Harri-son wrote Love You To for Revolv-er and of course, Within You With-out You for Sgt. Pepper’s. Though the former was hailed as a ‘filler’ track, it has a unique beauty. Lis-ten for the sitar strains following ‘You don’t get time to hang a sign on me-e-ee’.

Then there was the Mahari-shi Mahesh Yogi episode. After a brief interaction with him during a lecture in Wales, in 1968, The Beatles travelled to Rishikesh, India, to attend the Transcenden-tal Meditation course, headed by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

“John and George were go-ing to Rishikesh with the idea that this might be some huge spiritual lift-off and they might never come

The Beatles and IndiaBy Sramana Dan

INFORMAL

25Éclat 2014

back if Maharishi told them some really amazing thing. Well, being a little bit pragmatic, I thought in my own mind, I’ll give it a month, then if I really really like it, I’ll come back and organise to go out there for good, but I won’t go on this ‘I may never come back’ thing.”- McCartney.

The course consisted of lec-tures where the students would describe their spiritual experienc-es with the Maharshi answering their questions. John and George were especially dedicated, they spent long hours in intense med-itation. During this period there resulted some remarkable songs. Most of the White Album was writ-ten. John wrote Dear Prudence for a fellow student Prudence, while The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill was written about a certain Jungle Jim who used to take breaks to shoot tigers, com-bined with Buffalo Bill.

In I’m so tired, John wrote about his frustration from being unable to sleep ( from absence of drugs):

“I’m So Tired was me, in In-dia again. I couldn’t sleep; I’m meditating all day and couldn’t

sleep at night. The story is that. One of my favorite tracks. I just like the sound of it, and I sing it well.”-Lennon.

Scottish singer Donovan, who was also at the ashram, taught John and George a style of finger picking on the guitar, which they implemented in Dear Prudence and Julia

Paul wrote Back in the USSR, Honey Pie and Rocky Racoon, based on his Indian experiences (though they had little to do with the Yogi’s teachings).

For Ringo, the stay in India was short and spicy ( he did not really fancy the food), and with-in a fortnight he was back home. But he did write his first song Don’t Pass Me By, in India.

Paul left a month later, relatively unimpressed by the Maharshi’s prowess. John and George stayed on for another, till there emerged rumors of the Maharshi’s proclaimed celibacy being mumbo-jumbo. They left abruptly, and on the way back John began writing Sexy Sadie.

“John had a song he had

started to write which he was singing: ‘Maharishi, what have you done?’ and I said, ‘You can’t say that, it’s ridiculous.’ I came up with the title of Sexy Sadie and John changed ‘Maharishi’ to ‘Sexy Sadie’. John flew back to Yoko in England and I went to Ma-dras and the south of India (to see Ravi Shankar) and spent another few weeks there.”-Harrison.

In the years to come, they would regret their hasty action and apologize to the Maharshi, while George would give the ben-efits of a concert to Maharshi’s cause, while Ringo would say “I  feel so blessed I met the Maha-rishi – he gave me a mantra that no one can take away, and I still use it”.

Of course The Beatles later went on to record Across The Uni-verse, with the chorus Jai Guru Deva, which is most likely a ref-erence to the Maharshi’s spiritual master.

George Harrison, most im-portantly, stayed in close con-nection to India, following Indian music and philosophy through-out his life.

The Beatles, New Delhi, 1966Pt. Ravi Shankar with George Harrison

26 Éclat 2014

To what extent do metaphors shape and distort our understanding of reality?Metaphors are phrases that use concrete ob-

jects and qualities to describe abstractions. They are the lenses we use to interpret and understand our reality.

“A heart of gold.”“Being kept in the dark.”

“Turning a corner.”

Metaphors are primarily thought of as tools for talking and writing. However, recently a new group of people have started to take an intense interest in metaphors: psychologists. They believe metaphors when used as mental shortcuts pose hidden dan-gers. By allowing us to grasp unfamiliar concepts by imagining them in terms of concepts already understood, metaphors can obscure or distort our understanding, a pitfall that makes us act in bizarre ways. We take metaphors from the society and cul-ture around us and without realizing it, we are look-ing through them, using them to interpret our world and govern our actions.

Drawing on philosophy and linguistics, cog-nitive scientists have begun to see the basic met-aphors that we use all the time not just as turns of phrase, but as keys to the structure of thought. By taking these everyday metaphors as literally as possible, psychologists are upending traditional ideas of how we learn, reason, and make sense of the world around us. The result has been a torrent of research testing the links between metaphors and their physical roots, raising many questions. To what extent do metaphors shape the way we con-ceive our world? To what extent do they mask our surroundings and alter our perception? How much of our understanding is constructed purely from our imagination through metaphors?

Some researchers have sought to determine whether the temperature of an object in someone’s hands determines how “warm” or “cold” he consid-ers a person he meets or whether the heft of a held object affects how “weighty” people consider top-ics they are presented with. What they have found is that, in fact, we do. Metaphors aren’t just how we

talk and write, they’re how we think. At some level, we actually do seem to understand temperament as a form of temperature, and we expect people’s personalities to behave accordingly. What’s more, without our body’s instinctive sense for tempera-ture--or position, texture, size, shape, or weight--abstract concepts like kindness and power, diffi-culty and purpose, and intimacy and importance would simply not make any sense to us.

Metaphors like this “don’t invite us to see the world in new and different ways,” says Daniel Ca-sasanto, a cognitive scientist and researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands. “They enable us to understand the world at all.”

A few psychologists have begun to ponder applications. Ackerman, for example, is looking at the impact of perceptions of hardness on our sense of difficulty. The study is ongoing, but he says he is finding that something as simple as sitting on a hard chair makes people think of a task as harder. If those results hold up, he suggests, it might make sense for future treaty negotiators to take a closer look at everything from the desks to the upholstery of the places where they meet. Nils Jostmann, the lead author of the weight study, suggests that poll-sters might want to take his findings to heart: heavi-er clipboards and heavier pens for issues that they want considered answers for, lighter ones for ques-tions that they want gut reactions on.

How much of an effect these tweaks might have in a real-world setting, researchers empha-size, remains to be seen. Still, it probably couldn’t hurt to try a few in your own life. When inviting a new friend over, suggest a cup of hot tea rather than a cold soda, or keep a supply of soft, smooth objects on hand at work - polished pebbles, maybe, or a silk handkerchief - in case things start to feel too daunting. However, one thing is for certain, with a change to the lenses through which we view the world, the things we thought were there vanish like desert mirages and the things that remain become the things that matter!

Metaphorically speaking…or not!

By Aishwarya Kaliki

INFORMAL

27Éclat 2014

Hitler was a madman, the boy thought. He had the right ambitions perhaps, but genocide was wholly impractical. After all, who would the upper classes establish their superiority over if the lower classes didn’t even exist? Would they even be the ‘upper’ class?

No, it was far better to let prejudice in-sidiously seep into society. No revolution, no bloodshed.   The people would find it very hard indeed to protest against ideals which would never be open-ly acknowledged.   They could try to revolt- but against whom? They could try to fight- but for what? Gradually, the proud straight lines of their shoulders would hunch with defeat as they learnt - no, they were not special; no, they were not destined for any great or grand destiny for life to bestow upon them; they were just the dust to be crushed under the heels of society. They would never be told they were lesser of course. To outline it in regulations or pol-icies of any kind would be inviting trouble, the boy knew that. No, it would simply be shown in the flash of disdain when they entered the more reputable establishments. Or a tight-lipped smile when they sought employment accompanied by the phrase ‘I’m sorry. We do not seem to have any available positions right now.’ Inferiority would become the hallmark of their souls.

By Abhilasha Ravichander

INFORMAL

The Subtle Art of World Domination

28 Éclat 2014

He could almost taste his victory.

However, one only needed a ruling class in so far as to give them a chance to establish their own superiority. Tell a man he’s special not for anything he’s done or is, but for some innate quality- it could be absolutely anything, ethnicity, skin colour, eye colour, it didn’t really matter- and he would follow you with blind devotion.  The boy understood this - the deep-seated human desire to be special.   It made men so very easy to exploit.

Perfect tools to shape the world.

As he understood it, only two things controlled the developed world- money and technology. And if he could control them both, he could hold the fates of millions in his hands. He had already ruined one man in this way, a man who had been something of

a rival and a dear friend in his childhood.

T h e

boy had with casual elegance obliterated him.  His friend had found all his bank accounts to be fro-zen, his identity erased from existence, a long list of creditors who seemed to have sprung up from the ground. The boy made sure his machinations were kept carefully hidden, ruminating with his friend about this terrible twist of fate, repeatedly offering financial assistance in a way that his friends pride would not allow him to accept…and mourning his friends loss suitably when the time came. A brave man, he said with regret at the funeral, a man who died far too young.

The man’s mother approached him and her voice shook as she thanked him for

being there. “It would have meant a lot to him, I know”,

she said, “He always ad-mired you. The head of the largest conglomer-ate in the world, coming to my boys service…” At

this point she was over-come with emotion.”I’m

only sorry he decided to take this extreme step.” The boy

said sympathetically.

The corpse being lowered into the ground represented everything

to the boy- days spent drenched in warm summer sun, taunts and mockery which were

playful yet somehow cruel in a way that only children can achieve and pure histo-

ry, years and years of things past written in the fading films of memory- it was all

lost forever with every clump of dirt be-ing shovelled on the casket. Here was the proof (not living proof per se, the boy inwardly snickered, as un-liv-ing as it got) that he could rule the lives of men. Here was the proof of how easy it would be, to make or break or mould humanity in his image.  The world was all his for the taking.

Then why did this victory feel so hollow?

He sighed as he cast his gaze to the heavens above, for he found that the world was not enough.

SLAVE BLUESBy Sudhanva Shetty

POEMS

30 Éclat 2014

How cruel is time to be impatient when you’re with someone you love -

That’s how I felt when we worked to-gether in those times so rough,

When we moved mountains and played with fire without a glove;

And it was your face that sustained me when I thought I’d had enough.

From the morrow to the night we’d suf-fer under the scorching sun

And if we couldn’t walk they’d chain us and force us to run.

Your patience and faith would always leave me stunned

And I believed too that someday our mis-ery would be undone.

They’d bind us and beat us mercilessly to the cold ground;

None could stop them – they conquered all that they found.

But you, my lady, with your smile so tender,

With the majesty only Mona Lisa could render,

Returned mute pride to all their leers

And made their eyes quell with fear.

You were my sole solace all those years,

The only reason I shed no tear.

One night we escaped under cover of the rain.

The darkness lit our way as we ran from that haven of pain.

Then we rejoiced over our flight from the sane

And held hands and walked on the shore of the sea so tame.

We screamed out loud to the endless ocean, creating a hurricane

With our laughter so forbidden – like it was always the same:

We didn’t have a care – we were far from their canes.

Together now we roamed the unknown, paving our own lanes.

When we were far we lit a fire and danced, to rid our blues,

To Bob Dylan’s croons; we sang those forlorn tunes.

We waltzed like madmen, free at last from the ruse.

Just the froth, the moon, the wind, me and you – my muse.

We were outlaws in our own country, accused

Of crimes we never committed, of free-dom we never used.

But now the trigger’s faded, life’s how it’s supposed to be:

The raiders were raided: they were so vigilant they could not see,

And our prayers were heeded; we were finally allowed to be free.

We got back what was ours – from the vales to the shimmering sea.

And as I live freely – with salvation ac-quired with a fee –

I wonder, I wonder if you ever think of me.

31Éclat 2014Photo by: RAMESH ADKOLI

Just Another SnowflakeBy Ullas Aparanji

POEMS

I am just another snowflake flitting by, That had its origins in the sky;

And in all this vast expanse on Earth, I wonder if anyone can see my worth.

The wind shall take me where it will

All around me, the life is still I surely see no valid reason

For one to admire me in this season.

I wait for sunshine to melt me down For death alone can wipe my frown

And even then, when I shall die, I wonder who for me shall cry.

And as I brood deep in my thought

Wishing for a twist in the plot, I am jolted suddenly wide awake

By the sight of another snowflake.

The loveliest snowflake I have seen It gives me a smile most serene

I am taken by great surprise To see the happiness in its eyes.

How can it be so happy like this?

Is there something innate I did miss? To it I vent my deepest feeling

And for some sound advice appealing.

It asks, with eyes gleaming like a star “Do you realize just who you are?”

“I am just another snowflake”, I say And with the shame, turn my head away.

“Oh please, why don’t you give me a break,

What do you mean, ‘JUST another snowflake’? Why on Earth do you feel so meek?

Don’t you know you are unique?

Don’t you know every snowflake is born unique

And it is your greatest happiness to seek To embrace yourself as you are Heed my words, you will go far!

Do not be ashamed of yourself, O please! Just think how silent would be the trees If the birds that sang there did not sing

Thinking their songs were not appealing.”

Just then, a child who hasn’t seen the snow Comes to us, picks me up, and turns to go

He says to me, “Make no mistake -  You sure are the loveliest snowflake.”

The next moment I am no longer in his hand

I find myself lying now on the land But a great change has come over me I am not the snowflake I used to be.

I know not whether it was his hand

Or the warmth that I now understand A something I have not felt before

Has melted me, and I’m now no more.

The child sheds bitter tears on me He says, “Oh! You were so lovely

You were one of a kind; you were one apart You were the first snowflake that took my

heart.”

I lie formless beside my friend The snowflake that was a godsend

It smiles so bright at me The loveliest smile I can see.

He says, “Never understimate yourself, my

friend, You never know how things turn out in the

end.” I smile recalling my earlier mistake

To think I was just another snowflake.

32 Éclat 2014

She writes with a broken nib

Every curvaceous word breaks twice before it ends.

While the broken legs squirm

Under the weight of the broken glass tabletop which pretends

Otherwise, just like the broken door

That she locks every night, ceremoniously, hiding the key

Inside the hideous broken vase with

Its long-wilted flowers, that heirloom of a broken fam-ily.

He drives a swanky new car

With a broken stereo set, and every lyric breaks twice

Before overcoming the erratic waves

And gliding past the streets broken from jagged malice

That somersaults its way down

His narrow driveway littered with broken whisky bot-tles

From the last night’s new year’s party

And fits snugly into the symmetric cracks on his broken walls.

One day at daybreak, they will meet

Under the broken billboard, walking gingerly and vexed

Around the fringes of the broken earth,

Unromantic and sullen, hoping, hoping to be fixed

By Sramana Dan

POEMS Songs of Sad Folks(Everything is Broken)

33Éclat 2014

Comically SaneBy Ashish Rao

INFORMAL

Rise of the Planet of Procrastinators

Story of My Life

34 Éclat 2014

Bizzaro Bengaluru

Born out of a passion for research and a quest to aid society, the World Bank fund-ed centre for Knowledge An-alytics and Ontological Engi-neering was founded as a joint venture of the Departments of Computer Science and Engi-neering, Information Science and Engineering and Mechan-ical Engineering. Under the keen guidance of its director Dr. Kavi Mahesh and it’s Chief Mentor Dr K.N. Seetharamu , it has already made its presence felt in the emerging multi-dis-ciplinary areas of ontological engineering and knowledge management.

KAnOE is the only research centre in the world that focus-es on Knowledge Analytics in combination with Ontologi-cal Engineering and through this, its vision is to make a de-fining contribution to knowl-edge management. Its key objectives are to explore re-search opportunities that have opened in the intersecting fields of knowledge analytics and ontological engineering and to apply the research find-ings to the social context of In-dia.

Dr. Kavi Mahesh, the di-rector of KAnOE, has been engaged in the field of Onto-logical Engineering for over 20 years. He believes that al-though the buzzword of the day is big data, to combine ontology and data to produce meaningful semantics is what the need of the hour really is.

There are a number of projects that have been under-taken and successfully com-pleted within the centre and several others that are in prog-ress. The impact has been tre-mendous, with the publication of sixteen papers, not to men-tion two books.

Several efforts have been made to incite awareness among students about these

emerging fields. A number of workshops have been held on topics including Informetrics and data visualization. Re-nowned speakers have been invited to share their knowl-edge and experiences.

The newly started Mas-ter’s program in Web Technol-ogies in the Computer Science Department at PESIT provides an ideal partnership between academics and research, en-riching the learning experience of students. Further, KAnOE is expected to provide a vibrant environment for nurturing re-search in knowledge analytics and ontological engineering, being located in the heart of Bangalore - the Information Technology capital of India.

With PES now having ac-quired the status of a universi-ty, there will not be any imme-diate change in direction of the research efforts of KAnOE. It will continue to strive towards the goal that it had set out to achieve.

With all this and more un-der its belt, KAnOE has kept true to its title as a centre of excellence.

KAnOETECH on CAMPUSBy Deborah Digges

36 Éclat 2014

The analysis and design of system that perceive, reason, learn and act intelligently is the thrust area of research within the Centre for Intelligent Systems. The interconnection of simple systems can lead to seemingly inexplicable complex overall be-haviour with the causes and ef-fects not obviously related.

All systems that surround us today consist of diverse, inter-connected and interdependent entities that adapt to their envi-ronments. The overall behaviour of such systems is often unpre-dictable as a system of systems is inherently complex, nonlinear and time-varying. Obviously, the identification and control of sys-tems that are possibly nonlinear and time-varying – with decisions taken intelligently – are two major areas of research. Results include simultaneous identification of multiple nonlinear systems, iden-tification and control of rapidly time-varying systems, support vector machines to identify and control nonlinear systems, identi-fying and control of unknown sys-tems through a wireless network despite packet loss and delay, improved tracking performance using model predictive control with time-varying prediction win-

dow, and decentralised control of unknown systems.

Cooperative systems are a class of system of systems with each system being autonomous. The latter balances self-direct-edness and self-sufficiency with the ability to handle dynamical-ly changing environments. Pat-tern recognition is a key area of research. A result in this area is a technique to detect and track very fast moving objects. Such autonomous systems may be de-ployed in a hostile area. A tech-nique to simultaneously cancel interference signals and extract the signals-of-interest when the directions-of-arrival of all signals are time-varying and unknown is one result. Detection of very weak signals (as low as -160 dB) us-ing neural-network based pulse compression is another result. The possibility of integrating hu-man and machine abilities is well within the scope of this research. Preliminary results on dynamic hand-gesture based human com-puter interaction appear promis-ing.

Autonomous systems find applications in planetary sur-face exploration, search and rescue missions after disaster, automated vehicle drive assist

systems, and care for elderly to name a few. Systems meant for these purposes require the abil-ity to discern the environment in which they operate as well as plan the sequence of operations as defined by the mission objec-tives.  Such systems are examples of resource constrained real-time systems where performance met-rics have to be traded-off for the intended payload.   The scope of work towards design and imple-mentation of autonomous sys-tems includes exploratory rovers equipped with the capability of in-motion mapping and local-ization. Light-weight function-al computer vision algorithms amenable to real-time imple-mentation using system-on-chip paradigm and embedded compu-tational architectures is the focus of work in developing autono-mous exploratory platforms. Re-configuration at various levels of abstraction, and learning mech-anisms to direct reconfiguration on-the-fly are central.

Decision support systems for healthcare are another class of system of systems, and tele-medicine is a logic conclusion. An integral part of this would be cre-ating state-of-art medical devices for non-invasive sensing. Work is

PES Centre for Intelligent Systems

By Dr. Koshy George, Dept of Telecommunication Engineering

TECH on CAMPUS

Éclat 2014 37

in progress on detection of emo-tions in children with autism. This work is jointly undertaken with medical experts from NIM-HANS and is supported by ASHA, an NGO. An exclusive study on non-invasive methods for the di-agnosis of several cardiovascular diseases is also being carried out with the help of eminent cardi-ologists. Drowsiness detection is another area of research that is being jointly conducted with NIMHANS.

The continual support from the management towards these activities has resulted in about 70 peer-reviewed publications from the Centre since 2010.

It is good that PES Insti-tute of Technology is now PES

University. To borrow a basic premise from the Yashpal Com-mittee Report, “A University is a place where new ideas germi-nate, strike roots and grow tall and sturdy. It is a unique space, which covers the entire universe in knowledge. It is a place where creative minds converge, interact with each other and construct vi-sions of new realities. Established notions of truth are challenged in the pursuit of knowledge.” In all recognised places of higher learning, there has been a con-tinual encouragement to faculty, and hence students, to think in-dependently and seek the truth. Consequently, it is little wonder that a former distinguished Pro-fessor of History at Yale Universi-ty, George Pierson, described Yale

as “at once a tradition, a compa-ny of scholars, and a society of friends.”   An important factor that contributes toward building a great University is the freedom to develop curriculum. It ought to be thematic with the students learning the key concepts of each theme. Each theme is built over several courses, and taught like a well-coordinated relay, with each course-instructor carrying the ba-ton well and passing it on to the next course-instructor within the same theme, changing the focus from rote-learning to critical and creative thinking. PES University has the potential to be a place of higher learning, and the Cen-tre for Intelligent Systems can achieve greater heights in such an ambience.

38 Éclat 2014

Crucible for Research and Innovation, popularly known as CORI, was established in the year 2010 to encourage multi-disci-plinary research with a goal - “To conduct multidisciplinary re-search & innovation by research-ers, technologists and entre-preneurs on various industries’ problems”. This R&D centre at PESIT focuses and interacts with the various departments of PES University, providing opportu-nities for the students as well as the faculty to carry out research activities in a field of their choice. The main research areas include embedded systems and VLSI, electrical systems and battery, communication systems, satel-lite technology, data mining, web banking and cloud computing, sensor technology, robotics, me-chanical and control systems.

CORI has produced some outstanding research projects in its respective fields of work, with every project having its own im-

portance in real world applica-tions. One of them is an imaging satellite PISAT (PESIT Imaging SATellite) which is a nano-satel-lite of dimensions 254 x 226 x 181 mm with three axis stabilization. CORI has also worked on an ISRO project, RF wireless LAN for satel-lites, to replace the bulky signal harness and spread spectrum concept. They have managed to miniaturize the transceiver that is attached to each package. Space based Automatic Identification System (AIS) is a system for su-pervising ships, managing traffic flow into harbours and prevent-ing accidental collisions of ships in the high seas. It is aimed at providing important ship moni-toring services to coastal guards and search and rescue organiza-tions.

CORI is working on a Library Maintenance Robot that is be-ing designed specifically for the PESIT library, to transport books from collection points to the re-

spective racks. It has also under-taken a joint project with Renalyx, Bangalore to develop a haemodi-alysis machine. It is involved in many more interesting projects such as RF communication sys-tems, which is a configuration for LEO satellites and design of a 4 Π sun sensor for low earth satel-lites. This is just a glimpse of the myriad projects that are under-taken in CORI.

CORI provides an excellent working environment. Interac-tion with various companies is also an integral part of working in CORI. . There are many profes-sors with years of professional experience and subject expertise to help and guide those interest-ed. Prof. Manikandan oversees a 2-credit course, where students from different departments col-laborate on mini projects based on Arduino, Matlab, Simulink and System Generator.

TECH on CAMPUSAs told to Namratha K

Pushing the Frontiersof Technology at CORI

39Éclat 2014

Could you tell us a bit about PES Open Source Commu-nity, what it does, what are its aims and goals?

PES Open Source Commu-nity was conceptualized in June 2011 and was started officially on July 16, 2011; that was when we created the Facebook group and we consider that as our birth date.

Our goals are simple and clear - We aim to popularize open source, come out with projects and spread the word on being ‘open’. We are a student com-munity and we firmly believe that in educational institutions, students should make most use of open source software to learn and understand many aspects of design, development, pro-gramming models, etc. One thing about Open Source is that it en-

courages learning and sharing of knowledge. We do that by having regular tech talks, college meet-ups and in IRC (#pes-os in Free-Node IRC), events,etc.

Is your community devot-ed to only open source or does it encourage general technology as well?

Oh definitely! We are not just about Open Source. As a com-munity, we spread open source ideologies, but we encourage technology as well. We’ve in fact held tech talks and workshops on quite a range of technologies over the years.

With the advent of new and interesting hardware like Arduino and Rasp-berry Pi, there’s scope for ‘Open Source Hardware’

right? Do you encourage that too?

Yes! We have an open source hardware wing in PESOS. And yes, there’s a pretty good scope for open source hardware too. Just recently, we’ve seen an open source laptop popping up - No-vena. It’s really exciting to see such projects! Similarly there’s the Open Compute Project, Open Graphics Project, OpenCores, BeagleBoard and most recently Spark. As I said, Open Source is more about learning, collaborat-ing and spreading knowledge. So yes, open source hardware does have scope. In fact, as a part of PES Summer of Code 2013, one team developed a ‘Universal Ges-ture Remote’ that was quite a hit!

What are some of the achievements you’d like to boast about?

PES Open Source Community

As told by Sathyam Vellal to Suraj SrinivasTECH on CAMPUS

40 Éclat 2014

Well honestly speaking, considering that we are an open source community, a student community and moreover in In-dia, where the environment is a bit different, coming this far and still growing is a very big achieve-ment for us. The management has been supportive indeed! That said, we have made quite a big im-pact, foremost in our college and colleges in Bangalore. We have a very strong online presence, since most of our work is done online, except for the workshops or talks we arrange. We’ve had nearly 15 GSoCers from this college alone in just two years. In 2012, we had 8 GSoCers and we were among the top 10 colleges/universities in world. Inspired from GSoC, we started PES Summer of Code and we’ve had great success with that too. We organized an event ‘PyC-ampus’, last August to celebrate PyMonth with the help of Bang-Pypers, and the response was phenomenal. We’ve also been actively organizing hackathons. It still amazes when I look back and see how much we’ve grown in just two and a half years.

Is the community backed by any authority, like a teacher, HoD or Principal? Or is it a completely stu-dent-run body? If so how do you get all the funding for the various events that you do?

Well, one regulation in the college is that any club/commu-nity must have a point of contact, a teacher or someone in the man-agement to facilitate our activi-ties through the HoD or the prin-cipal. Dr. A Srinivas, the Dean of Research, is our point of contact.

He’s been a great mentor and has been very supportive!

What are some of the con-nections that you’ve made in the industry?

We have more than 3 gener-ations of alumni in various com-panies, still active and have made PESOS’s presence felt there. We have some people who’ve pur-sued higher studies who were benefited with open source tech-nologies. We also have some people who’ve started their own companies. In fact, we have good connections with Bangalore startups!

How will new students/freshers joining your com-munity be benefited in their career?

Ah, I have quite a bit of stuff to share here. Students, espe-cially freshers, must realize the important role Open Source plays in their education. Richard Stallman, the father of the Free Software Movement urges every institute in the world to switch to Free and Open Source software for the very reason that students are surrounded with knowledge. There’s anopen source alterna-tive to nearly every software we use! Keeping this fact aside, our community is always ready to help budding developers explore technology. We conduct various events every semester and we don’t charge for most of them. We also have a forum (http://pesos.pes.edu/forums) running now to help people with their queries. We want to push more people ev-ery year to enrol and get through the Google Summer of Code pro-

gram. Open Source contributions help in the overall development, both technically and structurally, and this helps a lot in their career. One needn’t spend thousands of rupees on certifications when they can actually contribute to an open source project and prove their worthiness! That’s what Open Source can do in career and as a community we enable that.

What should a student do to join our community?

Join our Facebook group and you’re in. I’m serious!

Now that PESIT has become PES University, how do you think that this would affect your community?

One thing I’m glad about is that the community was named ‘PES Open Source’ and not ‘PESIT Open Source’; which means we’re fine! Jokes apart, I’m sure that if it impacts us, PES University would only have better opportunities for us. I, personally, am thrilled about it!

Anything you’d like to add?

Well, after two and a half years of learning on how we can manage projects, we’ve now fi-nally rolled about development of projects as a community. We kickstarted that process last year, December 23rd and we’re pro-gressing well. You can have a look at these projects in our github (https://github.com/pesos). We’ll also be having the third iteration of PES Summer of Code which we have plans to expand. For all information, one needs to just head over to the Facebook group (http://pesos.pes.edu/fb).

41Éclat 2014

Student NokiaDeveloper CommunityWhat is the objective of Stu-dent Nokia Developer Com-munity?

The Student Nokia Developer Community was started by an en-thusiastic bunch of students from the batch of 2012, driven by the founder and head, Ram Kashyap. This community was envisaged to provide an opportunity and a platform for student mobile de-velopers to realise their ideas. The community has been powered by students at PES University for nearly three years now. The com-munity aims to reach out to many universities globally, to promote the learning and development of mobile applications and aids in bringing recognition to the student

developer community world over.

The community has immense support from the Nokia developer community worldwide; and hence enjoys access to a wide array of state of the art Nokia handsets. We have also received global recogni-tion and support. We were award-ed with the Duke Choice Award at the Java One conference at San Francisco for being an influential student developer community. With such support and recognition, the community aims to spread out and bring in developer culture to students everywhere.

What are the projects done in the last year?

The last year has seen a com-mendable improvement in the quality of projects being under-taken. The summer internship pro-gram was well received by the stu-dents at PESIT - we had six teams working on a wide array of proj-ects. Expanding out of mobile, we offered web platforms as well and each project was given maximum exposure. We presented the proj-ects at the Eximus Startup Camp at IIM-B, where they were well re-ceived.

The previous summer intern-ship program resulted in the fol-lowing 6 apps:

♦♦ Stelle: A platform for audio tweets with location tags.

As told by Vidhisha Nair to Yogesh ChellappaTECH on CAMPUS

42 Éclat 2014

♦♦ Pollspot: A platform for creating polls on varied topics and generating sta-tistics of the polls.

♦♦ ShopSeekers: A phone application for customers to identify nearby locations to find specific products and for shopkeepers to ad-vertise their products.

♦♦ Fishy Delight: A Facebook game based on hooking fishes.

♦♦ Acclerar: A java based motion-sensitive car game with many interactive fea-tures.

Why is it difficult to find trac-tion for your apps?

Perception plays an import-ant role. People look at student de-velopers first as students and then as developers. They thus lower their expectations, because what we observe is   that student-de-veloped apps lack in some user design aspects as compared to professional apps, even though they may be as technically sound as their professional counterparts. Full-time professional developers have certain advantages and dis-advantages of their own, which must be taken into account. If we can change this mindset and help

them realize the bigger picture, we will have budding entrepreneurs and developers making the next million dollar app.

A number of apps developed as part of the first batch got some good traction - we developed games like ‘tickle bee’ which got more than 150,000 downloads in 3 months where only three high-end Nokia devices were targeted. We also made an app that lists ev-ery Rajnikanth joke - this crossed a million downloads. There are many such success stories in the global community which is more than 5000 members strong. All in all, we did cross an overall 5 mil-lion downloads with the apps de-veloped. Keeping all that in mind, there are many apps which aren’t so popular and the reason is again to do with the idea of ‘student-de-veloped apps’.

What are your plans for the future?

With P.E.S becoming a Univer-sity, our projects are being scaled up to match the curriculum and the intellectual capabilities of the students. We plan to offer exclu-sive paid projects to a few students during the semester along with the Summer Internship Program which we run every year. We will be conducting SND Conclave to bring together students and faculty from

Nokia Labs of other colleges. We are bringing out an online device library portal for the students all across India to request devices from our repository, to aid them in their app development process. We aim to partner with different in-stitutes all over the world.

We are also planning to con-duct workshops in rural colleges to expose those students to the envi-ronment here, and follow up with mentorship to help them develop apps. We are planning to bring in new research level projects, taking inspiration from the work that is undertaken at places like the MIT Media Lab.

We are also looking to con-duct workshops for the school stu-dents - one of which is ‘APP A DAY’, to familiarize them with basic app development and the associated thought process.

Monthly tech talks in different domains, by eminent individuals from the industry are on the cards. We are initiating hackathons on the second Saturday of every month in the Nokia Lab. Our existing events like Incito and Hashcode are going to be bigger and better. In short, we have an action packed line-up of events and are looking forward to your participation!

43Éclat 2014

Tell us what HAYA is and what it does?

HAYA is a team of engineers driven by a passion for racing. We build cars based on the design rules and constraints and partic-ipate in national and internation-al events. The main aim would be to promote outside class learning on engineering concepts.

How will a student from HAYA differ from a regular student?

Normal subjects like me-chanics, thermodynamics, de-sign, etc are only read in text-

books. But as a part of HAYA the students get hands on experience in fabrication, design, cutting, grinding, etc. It inculcates a more practical approach to engineer-ing.

HAYA competes in two for-mats of racing called BAJA and SUPRA, what are the dif-ferences between the two?

SUPRA is essentially a track car competition while BAJA is an off-road car competition. BAJA can be described as rally racing on mud roads whereas SUPRA has more of an F1 racing format.

What are the challenges involved while building the car?

Even though FSAE cars do not involve high end technology as in F1; building a car itself is a major challenge. Bringing about a good blend of good handling, speed balance, etc and building a car based on the constraints of a rule book by a group of new-comers is challenging. We aim at producing a product, keeping a buyer in mind.

It is said that a new market-ing team has been setup, what are its goals and how

TEAM HAYA

As told by Arjun S Raju to Pavan Bhat K

Official Racing Team of PES University, Bangalore.

TECH on CAMPUS

44 Éclat 2014

would it help our students?

The main aim of our mar-keting team would be to bring in more sponsors for our team. Its current goal is to sustain our title sponsors. Again as a part of the marketing team, students di-rectly interact with the industry. They learn to communicate with the customers and get a firsthand experience of how marketing is professionally done.

It is said that until now only a few cars were able to reach the dynamic rounds of the FSAE competition, what might be the reasons for this and what measures have been taken this year?

The recent car had some problems during the dynamic round where grade of fuel used was different- this had some cor-

rosive effects on the fuel tank sealants. This year we know about the problems encountered by the cars made by our seniors and we have taken all the mea-sures to prevent them. We have also decided to complete the car one month before the final event and subject it to rigorous testing.

What is the role of non-me-chanical students in HAYA?

Electrical and EC students play a crucial role in HAYA team. The engine management sys-tems, fuel pumping systems, electrical gear shift, etc are all done by the electrical team.

Telecom students aid us in all the telemetric systems that help us keep track of the car’s performance. CS and IS students also help us in creating interfaces for monitoring car performance.  

Does HAYA have any alumni network? What role do the alumni have in the team?

Our seniors are the only source of practical knowledge to us. e constantly keep in touch and seek their advice. Alumni have helped us by bagging spon-sors and any advice or help is al-ways appreciated.

PESIT is now PES University, How would this affect the team? What are your expec-tations from the college?

Not much would change in the team, but HAYA and its stu-dents are proud to be part of PES University. HAYA would continue to attract more students to join PES. As the team grows, it would be nice to see the workspace ex-pand.

45Éclat 2014

AEOLUSAs told by Chirag Prasad to Sushanth M P

TECH on CAMPUS

What was joining Aeolus like ?When I was in my first year , the team along with

their captain Nishanth were loading a huge plane into their car . The very sight inspired me . Right then , I asked if I could help out . They were quick and I started sanding wood immediately . Just like any college fraternity , joining Aeolus is all about overcoming the contact resistance , about push-ing yourself further along the journey to becoming technically sound . Even today , we administer tests which test the mettle of aspirants . However , we see to it that the probationers work with true passion before they become full fledged members.

What has been the inspiration for Aeolus ?When we joined Aeolus in 2010 , we learnt

of how our founders Ajay Nagarkatti and Akash Ananthswamy had built some good planes . A freak

turbo fan had nearly blown them apart. It wasn’t a long step from there to solid rocket powered auton-omous planes , an idea that our seniors had taken up with passion at the time . Since then , we have diversified and explored spud cannons , water rock-ets ; if it can fly , chances are that we’ve built it .The sheer joy of working together to make something fascinating is what drives us ang a member of Ae-olus fundamentally makes you a stronger engineer , and as you move onto bigger projects , the experi-ence transforms you and gives you a collective iden-tity among a group of passionate co-workers. Aeo-lus instills in a member the right attitude to tackle problems , a passion to work and an ultimate incu-bative environment fuelled by fellow team mem-bers , seniors , juniors and the college management. At Aeolus , we become a part of the family for life.

46 Éclat 2014

What are the current projects you are working on ?

We, at Aeolus recently completed work on a range of exciting projects - spud can-nons , gliders , and water rockets, that won the top positions at various National level inter-college events. In retrospect , the past year saw major wins for the team, including an impeccable performance at SAE 2014. In the future , we are gearing up to begin work on autonomous planes , quadcopters , path planning and optimisation, bringing the de-velopment of drone technology to our col-lege . We even have this wild dream of using the PISAT dish atop the F-block as a giant transmitter receiver for our aircraft .

Where do you see Aeolus in the next 10 years ?

We have worked exceedingly well as an SAE Aero Design team and have established quite a network as of now . The next step would ideally be to compete in longer com-petitions , ace SAE and live up to our stan-dards. We also dream of commercialising our own product line.

47Éclat 2014

IEEE is the world’s largest pro-fessional association dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of hu-manity. IEEE and its members gal-vanize a global community through IEEE’s highly cited publications, con-ferences, technological standards and educational activities. IEEE PESIT has, over the past few years been an integral part of a majority of technical activities on campus. This student run body has had the chance to not only help build but also skilfully enhance the capabili-ties and talent of its members.

The primary goal is reaching out to a far greater audience with the benefits that an IEEE Membership has to offer. The branch aims at ex-panding to a wider array of interests under the IEEE PESIT domain, partic-ularly the Biotechnology & Mechani-cal Engineering areas. Collaboration with Student Branches from other colleges is also being focused upon, with an Inter-College IEEE event on the cards, later this year.

The past year has seen IEEE PESIT reach new heights in terms of their events and initiatives. The All India Computer Society Student Congress 2013(AICSSC 2013) was held at PESIT on 16th and 17th De-cember with the theme: ‘Enhancing technical competencies of Indian students through IEEE Computer So-

ciety’. Here, students got a platform to interact with IEEE leaders and students from other sections and were enlightened about emerging computer technologies. This event saw students from different parts of the country coming in to participate. IEEE Focus is the official IEEE PESIT newsletter. With two successful edi-tions, it makes this student branch stand out from the rest. IEEEXpe-rience is a membership drive that aims to create awareness about IEEE and its benefits with ‘Build the Web’ being its flagship event.

IEEE PESIT also organised ‘Pro-cebo’, a 2-day workshop on Android based bluetooth controlled robots using Arduino. 2013 also saw the in-duction of Adduce, an idea presenta-tion event that allowed contestants to exhibit their prototyped ideas. TechQuiz, the bi-annual IEEE techni-cal quiz had over 100 teams battling it out for the top spot. PESIT’s AT 13 played host to ‘Voltace‘, an inno-vative tech race which had partici-pants exercising their grey matter. Ingineer, an event at AT ‘14 received an enthusiastic response and tested participants on their technical know-how, coding and circuit debugging. Circuithon and Scrapheap Challenge showcased the technical and cre-ative skills of the contestants.

Other than the events, a stu-dent branch is known for its mem-

ber base. In less than 6 months, the branch has seen an exponential rise in the number of members.

IEEE is a platform to showcase not just your technical skills but to inculcate and enhance your leader-ship and networking abilities. With events, workshops and conferences being organized globally, members get an opportunity to work in a pro-fessional environment and person-ally interact with the industry mem-bers providing a greater industry exposure. Shubham Khurana, IEEE PESIT Chairman concludes by say-ing, “The journey thus far of man-aging the branch has been noth-ing short of incredible – from the vast number of people we’ve come across from varying backgrounds to the constantly evolving technology sphere, of which we are the repre-sentatives. From conducting events and workshops that provide an un-precedented platform for learning to the students, to being there for all technical papers/journals relat-ed queries for students on campus, IEEE has given an opportunity to be involved in activities that help build crucial skills beyond the classroom. The IEEE PESIT Execom works tire-lessly to reach these goals. The sup-port from this team and our seniors has been instrumental in the growth that IEEE PESIT has seen in recent past”.

IEEE PESITConnecting You to Technology

As told by IEEE PESIT to Namratha KTECH on CAMPUS

48 Éclat 2014

PACE at PES UniversityTECH on CAMPUSBy Abhinav Kashyap

PACE is a corporate initiative between GM, Au-todesk, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and Siemens, with con-tributions from companies like Altair Engineering, 3D Connexion and MSC Software, among others.

There are 33 Universities across the globe includ-ing major Universities from USA and Europe where Gen-eral Motors has its operation.

PES University was the first South-East Asian insti-tute to be included in this initiative.

PES University has been taking part actively in all PACE Forums that were held from its commencement in 2007 and has been successful in impressing the judging panel every year with their innovative and smart ideas which could revolutionize the automotive sector.

Last year, the problem statement that was given to all the Universities was to design and develop a portable vehicle that can be used as a substitute for the existing conventional vehicles.

And hence the objective was to design a portable assisted mobility device (PAMD) that would help in a hassle free transport in an ever growing population like India.

All PACE associated universities worwere grouped into 7 teams which would develop, design and fabricate a PAMD vehicle. These vehicles will compete amongst each other in PACE Annual Forum where the best idea will be chosen by an elite panel of judges based on var-ious parameters like design ingenuity, product feasibili-ty, collaborative skills and overall functionality.

Amongst the 7 teams, PES University was designat-ed as the Lead Institute for Team 3. PACE PES Universi-ty is under the mentorship of Dr. S V Satish, Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, PES University. There were six world class universities across the globe under Team 3.

•♦ PES University, Bangalore- Lead Institute

•♦ NID Ahmadabad- Design institute

•♦ PSG college of Technology, Coimbatore

•♦ Sri Jayachamarajendra College Of Engineering, Mysore

•♦ Prairie View A&M University, Texas, USA

•♦ University Of Toronto, Canada

The objective of the Year 1 team was to design a PAMD vehicle that would help in easier transportation of the general public of India. NID Ahmadabad was the de-sign institute which designed the PAMD vehicle with the help of students of PES University. Many new concepts like hubless wheel and a convertible model evolved as result of this.

The above model was presented in the PACE Annu-al Forum that was held in California, USA. For its design and the concept, the team bagged 2nd prize in the com-petition in the design category.

The objective for Year 2 team is to fabricate a fully functional prototype that was designed in 1st year. The fabricated model has to be displayed at the PACE Forum which to be held at Turin, Italy in the last week of July.

Students from PES University were recruited by the HR team of General Motors. A rigorous procedure of writ-ten test, group discussion and personal interview was conducted to shortlist students for this project.

PES University being the lead team is responsible for manufacturing of swing arm and designing steering and suspension for the vehicle. PSG College of Technol-ogy is responsible for the fabrication of the mechanical components. SJCE, Mysore is responsible for the elec-tronics of the vehicle. University of Toronto, Canada and Prairie View A&M University, Texas, USA is responsible for the manufacturing of the Hubless wheel.

The project is being funded by General Motors and PES University.

The testing model has been manufactured by the students of PES University and preliminary testing has been successfully completed.

PES University’s PACE team comprises of 11 stu-dents, J Abhinav Kashyap, Chaman Kumar, Sanket Zad, Nagaraj Nayak, Dileep Kumar, Srinitish k, Nivruth Nitin, Debopratim Nag, Nitish Patil, Rohith, Adarsh S.

49Éclat 2014

FORMULA EWho doesn’t love the fast-paced, fantastic

world of FORMULA 1. With their aerodynamic shape and state-of-the-art technology ,each car in FOR-MULA1 is worth approximately 60 million.

FORMULA 1 may be the only sport that is run solely by its sponsors. The popularity and fan sup-port is immense.

Now, with increasing awareness of glob-al warming, a new variety of racing has emerged called FORMULA E - a race run entirely on electric power. A bit of history to bring you up to speed :

In 2008, French designer Frederic Vasseur and his company Formulec unveiled the first electric Formula-style race car. Formula E Holdings(FEH) then bought the technology from Formulec, and Vasseur founded Spark Racing Technology (SRT), a consortium charged with designing the race cars for the series.

FEH is hoping the partnership will work the same magic for electric Formula cars -- which, by the way, will be powered entirely by electricity stored in lithium ion batteries. No hybrids here, no flywheels or kinetic energy recovery system (KERS) either! Here’s a breakdown of the stats:

● 124 miles per hour (199.6 kilometers per hour) maximum speed

● 0 to 100 miles per hour (0 to 160.9 kilometers per hour) in 3 seconds

● 241-horsepower

● 1,720 pounds (780.2 kilograms)

The 90-minute charge required for 25 minutes of all-out racing might be a hard sell, but all the oth-er numbers seem enticing. And not to forget that electric cars have all their torque available imme-diately, as soon as the driver hits the accelerator, making race starts super-fast, and super-exciting!

The inaugural season will see 10 teams, each with two drivers, competing in the 2014/2015 FIA Formula E Championship. All teams come from a variety of top, global championships.

The ten team participating in FORMULA E are:

• MAHINDRA RACING – INDIA

• DRAYSON RACING-UK

• CHINA RACING-CHINA

• ANDRETTI AUTO SPORTS-USA

• DRAGON RACING-USA

• E.DAMS –FRANCE

• SUPER AGURI-JAPAN

• AUDI SPORTS ABT-GERMANY

• VIRGIN RACING-UK

• VENTURI GP- Monaco

Formula E is also an ‘open championship’ al-lowing teams to design and develop their own cars - in accordance to the technical specifications set out by the FIA - and showcasing their electrical energy innovations in a competitive, racing environment. So watch out for this new foray in technology, en-gineering, innovation and entertainment this Sep-tember 2014.

TECHBy Pavan Bhat K S

THE RACE TO THE FUTURE

50 Éclat 2014

So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?

- Ayn Rand

What is the most abstract or arbitrary thing that you have come across until now? Pure math? Theoreti-cal physics, maybe? Automata theory? Now that you come to think of it, think a little more in the context of this article. Ah! That’s right! Currency. That’s the most common, abstract thing that you come across every day in your life. Although, it’s used (in fact, obsessed over) so extensively, that it’s abstractness is being re-placed by the meaning and status we give it.

So, what’s the origin of this currency? And then the hot question, what is crypto-currency?

Etymology of the word currencycurrency (n.)

1650s, “condition of flowing,” from Latin currens, pres-ent participle of currere “to run” (see current (adj.)); the sense of a flow or course extended 1699 (by John Locke) to “circulation of money.”

Currency, in its fundamental form means flow. Cur-rency is basically flow of value from one person to another. In earlier days, they used to exchange goods with other goods or services (Barter system). Later, a standard unit of currency evolved. People used that unit to exchange with goods and services. Thus, the concept of money originated out of the value that the goods and services generated.

So, who decides what should be the value of a unit of currency? A central authority usually. Anyway, that should serve as enough introduction as to what cur-rency is, I guess.

So, what is crypto-currency?

Sounds cryptic, right? Contrary to its name, it’s actu-ally open-source ( in the sense, it’s rules, policies and

processes are accessible to everyone) unlike the cur-rent economic system. Basically crypto-currency is a digital medium of exchange, in which the transactions are encrypted using cryptographic techniques. Hence, the name. Another interesting thing about crypto-cur-rencies is that it’s decentralized.

Who created crypto-currency?The idea of crypto-currency took birth in a mailing list, called Cypherpunks. A guy named Wei Dai, sug-gested the idea of decentralizing the currency system, by using cryptography for transactions.

Later this idea was implemented in the form of Bit-coins. A person, with pseudonym Satoshi Nakomo-to, who is to this day, unknown (although, there are various conspiracy theories about who he is). Satoshi explained the idea of Bitcoins in his paper called “Bit-coin - A Peer to Peer Electronic Cash System”.

How does this work? Like any other currencies that exist, Bitcoins have val-ue because a group of people agree that it has value. However, the value of the Bitcoin depends on the de-mand and supply. For example, if more people start buying Bitcoins, the demand increases and hence its value. And when people lose trust in the Bitcoins, they start withdrawing their money and the value decreas-

Currencies Decrypted

TECH

By Pramodh K P

Crypto

51Éclat 2014

es.  

Bitcoins are decentralized, meaning no one owns Bit-coins. It’s a technology, or even better, a protocol. It’s a set of rules and processes that defines a standard medium of exchange. However, like any other proto-col, you can add more features such that it still agrees with the basic protocol. This can lead to various inter-esting possibilities.

I want the gory details!Well, Bitcoins are really deep and mathematical. I am not smart enough to explain all the details, but I will give an outline of the details.

Each transaction that you do using Bitcoins is consid-ered a block. The block contains the details of your transaction, which is encrypted using a private key. This is added into a block-chain which a chain of ALL the transactions is made using Bitcoins, by everyone. This block-chain is stored in a shared ledger that is de-centralized.

How do you send money to someone?Sending money to someone basically means that you are sending it to their public key. This can be done in the following way.

A signature is generated by combining the sender’s private key (kind of like a password for your account) and the message (information in the block like time-stamp, amount etc.) This is accomplished by various complex mathematical functions. At each node in the block-chain, the signature along with the message is given as an input to another function called “Verify” that matches the public key with the combination of signature and the message at each node. In other words, you are sending your private key in an encrypt-ed way (a combination of message and private key). When all the nodes containing the public key is pro-cessed, a transaction is said to have happened.

To spend money, the receiver should prove that he is the true owner of the public key to which money was sent.

The signature also has various other uses. Since the signature is generated by combining both private key and message, a change in the signature somewhere along the network would result in an an invalid trans-action. Hence, providing security to the transactions.

Balances in BitcoinsThe peculiar thing about Bitcoins is they don’t actual-ly exist anywhere. Then, how is the balance of an ac-count calculated? Balances in Bitcoins are maintained in an interesting way. Generally, whenever you want to spend some BTCs, it checks for blocks containing BTC that you received. If the sum of the amount of BTCs received is greater, the transaction is allowed to go through. So, basically it just looks for the ear-lier transactions made in the block chain. However, this is a tedious process, since all the nodes are to be checked for each transaction.

Who processes these blocks in block-chain?Anyone can process Bitcoins. This is called mining. Once a block is processed, it is added to the block-chain. However, as the number of transactions in the network increases, the mining requires more time and processing power. This is usually done by dedicated people with dedicated hardware.

How are bitcoins created?Above process also explains how Bitcoins are created. The protocol is built in such a way, that, for each block processed, a certain number of Bitcoins are generated and awarded. However, there is cap of 21 million BTC, on the number of BTC that can be generated.

Public Key

Alice Bob

Verify(signature, publickey, message)

Block chainSignature =f(Private key, Message)

Alice sending BTC to Bob

Public Key

To spend, bob proves that thepublic key is actucally his.

52 Éclat 2014

Are Bitcoins really reliable or is it just nerd’s gold?Bitcoins are very volatile. Even though it has all the properties that a currency should have (as mathe-matical functions), it is defined by the demand and supply. If people hear good thing about Bitcoins, they start investing in it, suddenly the price rises. People lose Bitcoins due to some data loss, they start panick-ing and withdrawing, price decreases.

An example of how volatile Bitcoins can be is the fa-mous “7 million dollar Pizza”. Back in the day (2010, actually. But technology runs past fast!) when Bit-coins were not popular, this guy had mined around some 10,000 bitcoins. Since, it didn’t have much value back then, he decided to spend it on buying a pizza. And then in 2013, because of media coverage and for various other reasons, the demand for Bitcoins in-creased and the value shot up to $700. If you calculate

the amount you can see that the pizza would have costed 7 million dollars at that price! If you want to know the pizza’s current worth, go to preev.com to get the conversion rate and calculate it yourself.

Another recent example as to how raw the technology is, is the Mt.Gox issue. Mt.Gox is a BTC exchange com-pany (based in Japan)  that allows users to trade BTC for USD. Recently around 850,000 BTC (~ USD 500 Mil-lion) were stolen from the Mt.Gox and it filed for bank-ruptcy protection. Later, it was found that the theft happened due to a bug in the Bitcoin transactions. Other exchange companies who had patched this bug were unaffected.

Does it have a future?Right now, it’s anarchist. It doesn’t really have a prop-er structure. But like any other open-source project, give it some time and it might just become the future currency.

create

signature = f(private key, message)

message

private key signature public key

message

verify

createVerify: 1=? v(signature, message, public key)

message

private key signature public key

message

verify

53Éclat 2014

Have you ever wanted to be an astronaut or a scientist when you “grew up”. And now you feel that you probably aren’t cut out to be among those who can make a real difference to the world’s knowledge base.

Here’s where we at Eclat are happy to prove you wrong. We interviewed 2 alumni, both research students in hallowed research institutions. Both of them know the

pleasures and perils of being a PESITian, and are on their way to realise their dreams.

Jnaneshwar Das (a.k.a. JD) studied Telecom in PESIT, and belonged to the batch of 2004. He is pursuing his M.S. and now Ph.D. from the University of

Southern California. He is a widely published researcher in robotics and ma-chine learning.

Shashank Vatedka studied ECE in PESIT, and was from the batch of 2011. He managed to secure a direct Ph.D. admit at

IISc, right after his B.E., something which is incredibly difficult to get. He pur-sues research in the areas of information theory and communication systems, while managing to publish his work in reputed conferences.

How has your experience been so far?

JD: It has been an extremely enriching experience, broadening my outlook on both culture and technol-ogy.

Shashank: My experience in IISc has been great. I’ve had the chance to meet some great people, and make good friends. The atmosphere here is very good. Seeing people around you do great work inspires you to do better.

What differences do you find in the education you received in PESIT, and that you are currently receiving?

JD: In PESIT, my education happened primarily outside the classroom. I learned from fellow students by working on projects, participating in inter-college competitions, and by interacting with faculty outside regular course requirements. Although things must have changed through the years since I graduated, it seemed the B.E. curriculum was not designed to foster creativity.

In general, higher education in the US is geared towards critical thinking and creativity. Students are encouraged to ask questions, and majority of courses have a significant portion of the grade reserved for a substantial project. Professors have autonomy in designing the curriculum, and choosing grad-ing schemes for exams. Exams are sometimes take-home especially for graduate level courses, so integrity is critical to gain the most out of the system.

Shashank: BE was all about acquiring breadth in engineering, and a graduate programme is about ac-quiring depth. PESIT is an institution that focuses on undergraduate studies whereas the main objective at IISc is research, and it would perhaps not be fair to compare the two. The faculty at IISc are masters in their respective fields, and yet are very helpful. Most of the courses are also oriented towards research. Another key difference between PESIT and a place like IISc is that there are very few compulsory/core courses (none in the case of a research programme). So you can choose courses based on your interests, and take advanced courses as you proceed. Moreover, you can take courses in any department you want!

ALUMNI Advice from Alumni

Words of Wisdom

54 Éclat 2014

The atmosphere is more informal, and you can just sit through courses you are interested without enroll-ing in it. The course workload here is much harder than that at PESIT, and the Profs make sure that you are busy all the time!

What words of advice do you have for a student of PESIT?

JD: Be passionate and multi-dimensional. Devote time on challenging hobbies and work on projects out-side the curriculum. Your communication skills will be extremely important when you finish your bache-lors and get a job, or pursue a higher degree. So, try to collaborate with friends and faculty on whatever you care about.

Shashank: Take courses seriously. Your grades do matter when you want to apply for jobs or higher stud-ies. It’s always good to decide what you want to do after BE as early as possible, and plan well. If you want to work in the industry immediately, it is helpful to pursue some internships/projects in companies. Talk to people in the industry, your seniors, develop contacts, and find out what skills are required to help you thrive. If you are interested in pursuing higher studies, do some good projects, and get your hands dirty. Identify an area you are interested in, approach faculty who do good research in that area and would be willing to help you. If you can do some good work and have a research paper or two by the time you grad-uate, it would really, really help you.

Moreover, if you decide early on whether you want to pursue higher studies or not, you can prioritize on preparing for placements or entrance exams. You can devote more time to what you want most, and believe me, it helps! But whatever you want to pursue, always remember to have a backup in hand. The world is very competitive, and sometimes you have to settle for something less. Be patient, you may not get the results you want immediately. But most importantly, take time off, and enjoy life too!

How should one go about doing undergraduate research?

JD: Passionately. If you want to work on research projects, at no other time in your life will you find the enthusiasm from friends to form meaningful bonds to work together. Get the most out of it, and have fun while you’re at it!

Shashank: Find out what subjects interest you, and talk to your professors if they are interested in advis-ing you on a project. If you can, it would be great to do a project at a place like IISc, DRDO, ISRO, etc. A lot of such institutions offer summer projects. But note that the advice from your supervisor would be very limited if you work outside. A key factor is to start early. If you can latch on to a problem by your 3rd year, you get 1.5-2 years to do a solid project, that may end up becoming some good research work. If you get the opportunity, publish at a good conference. If you can secure a decent conference publication, and good recommendations from your profs, you have a good chance of cracking the top universities.

What are some mistakes which you did in your undergrad days which you would like others to avoid?

JD: I wish I had understood linear algebra better.

Shashank: Make sure that you learn your subjects well. A good foundation plays a great role later on. Math is especially one area that most people tend to slack off on, but if you want to study further, it is essential to have firm basics.

Another piece of advice I’d like to give regarding placements, is that it usually does not go as you would like it to. There is a lot of competition, and sometimes luck plays a factor, coming in the way of your dream job. The same holds for admits to universities too. Life is rarely fair to you, but you must not lose heart. During such times, it is necessary to be patient, there is always an alternative. But you must try your best, and be prepared. Keep polishing your skills and work hard, you will eventually reap fruits. Keep in touch with your seniors, be updated about the trends in placements, etc. This always helps.

‘Life is rarely fair to you, but you must not lose heart.’

55Éclat 2014

How should go about preparing oneself for a career in academic research?

JD: Stay curious and learn how to ask the right questions.

Shashank: Like I mentioned earlier, always plan properly, and plan early. Try to do some good projects early on. Aim for the best universities, but make sure that your goals are realistic. Secure good recommen-dations; it also helps to be a student assistant for a course so that you can get an extra recommendation! If you are interested in doing a PhD, but do not get into the university of your choice, then do a masters (even if it is an ok university), and try doing a good summer internship. It can greatly boost your chances. And as I said earlier, always have a backup plan. In general, it is good to finish your studies in a stretch than

working in the industry for sometime and then doing a masters/PhD. Also consider doing some research assistantships at IISc/RRI/TIFR, etc.

How hard is academic research? How does one generate new ideas that are worthy of notice?

JD: Academic research requires insight, creativity, and persistence. Persistence is probably the most important quality in research, since there will be many false starts and dead ends. Unlike taking class-es during bachelors, there is no curriculum or well defined goal, other than expanding the boundary of knowledge. You are in charge! The best way to generate new ideas is to be a keen observer, and to keep thinking deeply about problems you care about.

Shashank: I’d say it’s hard to answer this question! Academic research requires a lot of hard work, and a lot of patience. You spend most of the time going around in circles, frustrated, and it’s common to get stuck in a problem for weeks together. It generally takes weeks, if not months, to get a reasonable solution to most problems. Research is not as rosy as it is often made out to be, but if you persevere through all the problems, it is equally rewarding.

An analogy of doing research, is that you are put in an unknown city, with unknown people who speak an unknown language, and you don’t know where you are, or where you want to go. Initially, you are lost, but after a while, you gradually pick up the language and can talk to other people. Later, you get acquainted with the surroundings, and find out where you want to go. When you ultimately reach the destination, you feel thrilled. However, what is most crucial is not the destination, but the journey. It is for the pleasure of this journey that you do research.

It’s hard to say what problems are `worthy’; as long as it interests you, and keeps you going, I think it’s fine. Another thing to keep in mind is that when you start out doing research, you don’t have much free-dom in selecting a problem of your choice. You generally have to work on a problem that your advisor is interested in (even though they may not help you in finding one!), and it takes some time to find a problem that matches both your interests. Sometimes, it is necessary to optimize, and settle on a problem that only barely matches your interests. But after you work for sometime, you get a certain degree of freedom and can choose the problems you are interested in. Gradually, you get enough experience to set your own problems, and pursue independent research.

I’ve found the following resources very useful, and would like to share the same them with you:

• “So long, and thanks for the PhD,” an article by Ronald Azuma, available online at http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/hitch4.html

• “The PhD grind,” a very nice memoir by Philip Guo. He very nicely describes the different phases a PhD student goes through, and it also has a good description of what PhD is all about. It can be found online at http://www.pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir.htm

• “You and your research,” by Richard Hamming. This is a transcript of Hamming’s talk at Bell labs in 1986, and can be found here: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html

‘Stay curious and learn how to ask the right ques-tions.’

56 Éclat 2014

I’m sure you play some sort of video games once in a while. If I ask you your choice of good games, you’d probably list out a few easily.

Here’s a new task - develop a new game for me that would be ‘good’ by your standards. Take some time to think over it. I’m sure you’ll come up with some great ideas, but do you think you’ll be able to materialize them? No worries. I’ll help you out!

For the purpose of this article, I’ll talk about a game project I have started and is still in develop-ment. I call it ‘Momentum’.

Now, let’s cover all the important aspects one by one.

An idea that’s worth presenting to the world is what you need to come up with. Innovation is what

drives the gaming industry. Just imagine what the world would have been if all games were based on the same idea and nobody ever thought of anything different. We would have faced the Bollywood of the gaming industry (no offence to any Bollywood fans!). The audi-ence you are targeting should find something to talk about in your

game; otherwise it would simply be pointless.

Sketch out your idea and be clear about what you are developing. Work should not stall later due to an unfinished game plan.

“I got an idea! Let’s make a game where you launch birds through a catapult to hit pigs standing on castles!”

Developing games that are based off the ideas of another game is usually not a good idea to start

with. I’m sure people who have played Angry Birds would know what I’m saying. You could definitely take inspiration from such games to develop your own idea, but be sure not to end up with a spinoff of someone else’s game.

My game Momentum focuses on teaching the ideas of physics to the players in a very subtle way. You sure don’t launch birds, but you can launch ex-plosive projectiles here!

“Momentum is a game which makes the player see the world through a machine’s perspective as it learns physics and the player uses this knowledge to move forward in the story” – The description of the game.

Graphics of a game is definitely one of the most important areas to concentrate on. Good looking graphics is what catches the eye of most players, don’t you agree?

“But all popular games contain super HD ultra reality mega quality graphics. How do you expect me to do that sitting at home??”

Good graphics doesn’t always mean realistic art. If your target audience finds the graphics ap-pealing, you’ve done your job in that aspect.

For example, take a look at the popular Indie game called Fez. It’s simplistic yet beautiful graph-ics can be considered a success. Don’t you agree?

Mechanics, without any argument is the most important aspect of a game. Most of the time in game development is spent in developing a game engine, implanting the game mechanics and test-ing the physics. You wouldn’t want any unrealistic responses by the game character while playing, would you?

TECHBy Anurag Lingam

HOW TO MAKE A

GOOD GAME

57Éclat 2014

Just imagine if in Angry Birds, you launch the yellow bird in the air and when you tap it again mid-air, it shoots itself in the opposite direction. Re-minds you of Dhoom 3, doesn’t it? How outrageous would that be?

“But, it’s a game! It’s not supposed to follow real world physics, right??”

Of course not! Game mechanics are the rules of the game that implements your game design and allows the player to have an engaging experience.

My game focuses on simplicity and stresses more on the physics of the game, since that is what the game’s basic idea is.

Audio is a crucial factor in enhancing the user’s gameplay. The audio and video cohesively build an interactive environment for the player to have a memorable experience. Without audio, even the most mind blowing graphics would seem rather dull. I can’t even imagine playing the Mass Effect trilogy with my speakers muted.

You should find someone who can compose good tracks that suit your game and are fun to listen to. For my game, I designed a piano tune for pre-

serving the simplicity of the game.

The music dictates the mood of the game at a particular instance. Without knowledge, the play-er’s mood changes accordingly. I noticed that many times while playing Mass Effect 3, I tried playing the same scenes without music and noticed a drastic change. My mood turned rather dull and the pas-sive effect of mood change due to the music was missing.

Many games have been known just for their amazing soundtracks. Yes, there have been games that were released with herculean efforts, but didn’t deliver as expected, but are still known for their soundtracks.

“That sounds like a lot of Bollywood movies!”

Besides, many players like me, have certain soundtracks close to their heart.

Of course you remember the soundtracks of legendary games like Pokemon, Mario, Chrono Trig-ger, Megaman, etc. don’t you?

Publishing! When you have finished making a prototype of your game, wreak havoc and active-ly promote your game wherever you should! Look at how famous the game Flappy Bird had become! Some reviews rate it as a sloppy game with poorly designed mechanics and some other gave it thumbs up. But the bottom line is that good advertising can definitely make your game famous regardless of how close to legendary it is.

Now that the major points have been covered, it is up to you to learn and develop your own tech-nique to perfect your game design and create a suc-cessful game. Good luck! Download ‘Momentum, a tank’s tale’ at: http://tinyurl.com/qhfydpr

58 Éclat 2014

The campus had been trans-formed fittingly for the gala. The stage, the banners, the artwork, events – the sum total of the stu-dents’ hard work over the past few weeks would prove fruitful. A variety of hues and fest parapher-nalia welcomed visitors at AT-14.

As first time organizers, with our bones tingling with anticipa-tion, we reached the venue too early and too edgy. Still unsure of the gravity of the task at hand, we were discussing the rules and regulations of our event and di-viding duties when the partici-

pants started to roll in.

It cheered us to notice that they were as nervous as we were. At that moment the reality of or-ganizing an event sunk into us. Our event – like the rest – was meticulously planned out and prepared for. The stationery, the requirements, and the rules – nothing could be amiss.

The nervousness peaked as the clock ticked time away from us. At a particular moment while reciting the soon-to-be-delivered speech in the empty class room

next to the one where our par-ticipants were patiently waiting, we decided that we were as pre-pared as we’re ever going to be.

It began, and things just started to fall in place. May-be we were lucky, maybe the over-preparation bore fruit; whatever be the case, the event proceeded efficiently.

All in all, it was exciting to handle an AT event - being re-sponsible and having fun simul-taneously.

AATMATRISHA ‘14

The Frenzy BeforeEVENTS

By Sudhanva Shetty & Anurag Gaur

59Éclat 2014

EVENTS

Colours of India.

How do you represent that? How do a handful of people breathe colour into a fest? Faced with this mountain of a task, a million ideas, and brimming withacollectiveartisticenergy,thecreativeteamofAatmatrisha’14setoffontheirjourney.

Planningforcollages,huntingforbanners,draw-ing at gargantuan scales - this became the order of theday.Planschangedandideasmorphedintotan-gible,beautifulincarnationsofwhatwasenvisioned.Enormous hangings were drawn, admired, painted, finishedandhungup.

The week preceding the fest saw all hands on deck, all day long, and some mighty colourful hands those were! Paint - Red and yellow, green and blue, black and white, and every colour inbetween!Help camein from unexpected quarters; passersby watching us work shared encouragement andcritique.Compassion,camaraderie,cre-ativetalent,tension,joy,everyfeelingonthewidespectrumthatishumanemotion,somuchcame through in the last few days leading up to the fest. We worked with brushes and tissues,buckets and bottles, even with sponges and pa-per-plates.Wehaggledwiththecarpenters,ropedineverypoorsoularoundtocarrytheartwork,ranaroundforsupplies,rushedtogetpaintoffthosefavourite pairs of jeans! Skippingclasses to paint was magical!

The show stealers and our pride-n-joy were the elaborate,stand-alone plywood cut-outs, painted with intricate detail - Moth-er Durga, Mohiniyattam, the twinDussehra elephants, the auto rickshaw, therhinoceros,andthePalatialentrance!

The Rain God did dampen the outcome of our effort, but not for long. Come themorning of 7th March 2014 and every teammember went all out to repair the damage causedbytherain.Agroupgrabbedhammersandnailsandputupeverythingfromthepuppetstothehandmade streamers, others grabbed the cut-outs

and placed them on the lawns around college, all the whilesettingupthefineartsevents.Awholegroupofhelpfulstrangerscametogethertopropupthefi-nalbannerwiththekindofcooperationthatmeltsyour heart and makes you feel like a part of some-thinghugeandbeautiful.

Theteamreceivedpraisefromallends,andwedon’t know who else cheered but when the team wasthankedonstage,allthescatteredmembersoftheteamcouldbeheardindividuallyscreamingtheirheadsoff!

Cheers to awonderful fest, andwe’d do it alloveragaininaflash!

Creativity BrimmingBy Yazhini Baskaran

60 Éclat 2014

A fest stands firmly on the foundation of the atmosphere and excitement it generates. The above was clearly educed on the 7th and 8th of March, 2014 when PESIT organized its annual tech-no-cultural fest, Aatmatrisha. The stage was set, the university grounds transformed wonderful-ly with artefacts scattered about that captured the essence of the theme – Colours of India!

Although the campus was quite barren in the morning, peo-ple soon bustled in, crowding at the various food stalls and at dif-ferent venues, either taking part or playing spectator to the pleth-ora of events taking place.

The hours went by and it was soon time for the Cul Night to commence. Hordes of people were attracted toward the main stage where they gathered to watch the various music groups and bands perform. First up was Fantom which wooed the gath-ering with their fast percussive beats and heavy guitar riffs giving the crowd a musical adrenaline rush. They were followed by the a capella group, Pitch Please and the rock band, Alter Ego which gave its last performance this year.

With no time to settle af-ter the musical jaunt, the crowd

was thrown into a terpsichore-an treat. It started off with some astounding performances by an assortment of Indian contempo-rary dance groups that portrayed an array of out-of-the-ordinary themes. Next up, our very own In-dian contemporary dance team, Sanskriti mesmerized the specta-tors by dancing to Malhar Jam, a marvellous song by the Carnatic rock band, Agam.

The audience were given a few minutes to catch their breath and the evening proceeded with brilliant Western dance sequenc-es by various colleges from all over Bangalore. Trance left the viewers charmed with a scintil-lating performance depicting the ‘Colours of India’!

This got the mass all pumped up for the spectacular fashion show which had a unique concept and an interesting se-quence. Pulse put on a great show with even higher levels of energy and fervour. After some trademark popping, locking and grooving, they got the audience reminiscing by dancing to the Popeye theme song.

The crowd started to move away from the stage, presuming that the evening had come to an end when one of the highly re-garded faculties of the institute,

Mr. Nitin V Pujari went up on stage to make an announcement about the charity foundation, Apeksha. He left the viewers captivated as he started to sing the popular Hindi song “Lungi Dance” which commanded us to dance! The evening ended on a high note and the gathering dispersed, with the widest grins on their faces.

The sun rose again, shining light on some new experiences on Day 2 of AT ’14. The afternoon saw the entire campus coming to-gether - Paisa Vasool, PES Univer-sity’s Mad Ads team performed to a packed auditorium, eliciting hysterical laughter and thunder-ous applause from the audience. This set the mood for what was to be exhilarating evening!

Seasoned playback singer Anushka Manchanda, who has belted out hits for Bollywood, Tamil and Telugu cinema set the stage on fire with a power-packed performance! She drew the crowd into a dancing frenzy with her raw energy and enthusiasm. Two hours later and crowd still wanted more.

But just as all good things come to an end, so did AT ’14. With the customary appreciation for the organizing team, the stage lights faded out on yet another successful AT!

This is it!

By Shruti EswarEVENTS

61Éclat 2014

Prakalpa ’12 and ’13 are among the best experiences for me at PES University. Since its inception in 2009, the event has given the best minds of our col-lege a platform to demonstrate their technical skills.

Being the Team Man-ager for two consecutive years, it took a lot of toil in managing a group of over 25 people. We were also supported by an enthusias-tic team of designers, creative artists and innovative thinkers brought in an out-of-the-box per-spective in displaying the best department features at the an-nual event. I always consider the team first, over anything else that mattered, in making it a huge success for the past 2 years. Cred-it goes to each and every member of the team who worked selfless-

ly in giving their best for the love of the Department. We remained organized right from the begin-ning and until the very end.

Winning the prestigious Best Department Stall Award for the Department was the highest moment in my engineering life. It has truly been a special journey, in moulding every social aspect of me. Never did it cross my mind that we would win two years in a row. The only thing we, as a team, believed in, was letting our ideas flow. Being engineers, I think it is ideas that actually change a per-son’s perspective about them-selves, eventually changing the world around them. 

It is my little hope and small dream that the trend con-tinues in the near future, as we

leave the grand stage for the bud-ding students of our department to take over and raise the bar even higher. My message to the juniors is this - Always believe in giving, rather than expect something in return. You will never lose any-thing by sharing knowledge with your fellow companions. Help others, and in turn, the world will help you!

Many regards go to our HoD and our professors - we would never have gained the nec-essary self-confidence otherwise. Thanks a lot to my family, friends and well-wishers who support-ed me throughout the journey. I hope to make you all a lot more proud someday by using these experiences to reach greater hei-ghts.

PrakalpaMy Journey

EVENTSBy Nilesh Nayak

62 Éclat 2014

‘Yamini’ was an all-night music and dance festival held on the 26th of October, 2013. It was organized by Spic Macay and PES on the PES campus as part of the university’s Silver Jubilee celebrations. It was an event aimed at promoting Indian art forms among today’s youth. Being a part of Ninaada, the cultural and classical club of PES that undertook the organization of this event, I enjoyed running around for it all.

Headed by V.K Sir, this endeavour has been a huge milestone for us. From setting the stage to seeing the artists off the next morning, we the students, guided by certain humble seniors, worked to make this successful.

It began with us inviting the artists and preparing to meet every artist’s requirements. The artists who graced Yamini with their performances were -

Guru Dr. Sonal Mansingh- Classical Dance (Odissi)

Gundecha Brothers- Classical Music Vocal (Hindustani)

T V Sankaranarayan- Classical Music Vocal (Carnatic)

Hariprasad Chaurasia- Classical Music Instrumental (Flute)

Mysore Brothers- Classical Music Instrumental (Violin)

It is not often that one gets to see the college after the working hours. At 6pm, the campus looked beautiful, bathed in fancy lights and tasteful decorations and soon enough the audience began pouring into the auditorium. Apart from the regular seating, there were comfortable cots placed, owing to the dusk to dawn long event. The atmosphere was vibrant with classical melodies. The artists, in their impeccable styles, performed with fervour. Students were assigned an artist each to look after their requirements. The event was covered by the media and was telecasted on Doordarshan. With music, refreshments, food and interaction, the event buoyed everyone’s mood and kept them entertained till dawn.

The artists were gifted mementos and left satisfied with the hospitality they received. It was a proud moment when the faculty appreciated the efforts of the student body.

Truly a success, I personally feel such events must be held at least once a year to inculcate an ap-preciation for classical art forms. It was simply a wonderful experience to have been associated with it so closely and I enjoy and cherish all the memories, be it while organising the event or of the event itself!

EVENTS

Yamini - a MedleyBy Medhaa Shankar

63Éclat 2014

What does one expect from a congress? We know what a workshop is; we can understand what a conference is. However, what was a congress supposed to be? The All India Computer Soci-ety Student Congress 2013 on the 16th & 17th of December was the perfect opportunity to find out.

The very first event caught our attention. It was the Presi-dent of IEEE Computer Society, David Alan Grier who completely blew us away. His talk on the phi-losophy of Software Engineering was filled with facts, anecdotes

and humour in equal measure.

He had a great c o m m a n d over the stage, and was certainly an excellent orator.Later that day, we

had an icebreaking session where we were divided into groups for the purpose of ideating on spe-cific futuristic domains.

That session was a lot of fun - we met interesting people and there was an exchange of ideas. The day ended with a scrump-tious dinner, readying everyone for the second day.

The next day was a platform for enlightening talks by highly accomplished people. By high-ly accomplished, I mean ‘having their own Wikipedia page’ ac-complished. These people are really famous! Whether it was Mr. Monendra Sahu, who pro-vided vistas into the world of hacking, or Mr. Satish Babu, the open source champion, or Dr. Srikrishna from the National En-terpreneuriship Network (NEN), who spoke with so much life and vigour that would drive even the laziest of people to think of entre-preneurship - it was fascinating to see them take the dais and in-spire people so easily and effort-

lessly.

There was another ice-breaking network-

ing session where participants were divided into groups and assigned tasks. We solved ques-tions, earned virtual money, and bought materials to build some-thing interesting. It was an event that proved fun for all, and the energy levels soared.

Finally, there were some talks on how to manage IEEE stu-dent branches by the keynote speaker Dr. Xun Luo and former IEEE CS Chairperson Dr. S V San-karan. The panel discussion by Dr. David Grier, Mrs. Angela Bur-gess and Dr. Xun Luo gave us a peek into the trio’s lives, their philosophies and some general principles which they adhered to.

At the end of the day, there were underlying themes emerg-ing from the congress. Network-ing, entrepreneurship and hard work - these featured majorly across all talks and activities. Such events are excellent for teaching these valuable skills to students, and making them real-ise their importance and impact. As engineers, it’s easy to underes-timate these qualities. Attending this congress made me realise how wrong I was.

AICSSC 2013EVENTS

By Suraj Srinivas

Stalls sold out within min-utes of the recess bell ringing. Most of the stalls were sold out before lunch! But those who missed out during the first break weren’t disappointed -The Bake Sale also catered a sumptuous lunch. There were throngs of peo-ple shuffling to get some space just to get a taste of the event, literally!

“Yummy”, “It was so crowd-ed, I could see more people than food”, were few of the responses when I asked my friends about their experience. Speaking to the organizers about The Bake Sale’s inception, it was amazing to know how a random suggestion

sprung into a full blown success-ful event. Vivek recounted how the previous year the response was so overwhelming that with-in 10 minutes of the stalls open-ing, they got a call from the cash counter saying the coupons were sold out!

For those who felt guilty about the added gravitational pull on them after The Bake Sale, the organizers had the perfect solution. ‘Log Out, Shut Down, Go Run’ was the mantra of the 2014 Samarpana Run!

The charity run was the second such marathon to be or-ganised by the team. It was truly spectacular - thousands of par-

ticipants from all walks of life, running to support the jawaans and to keep alive the memory of those who put their lives on the line for us every single day.

The event kicked off with a lively warm-up session in the wee hours of the morning followed by the meticulously planned run. From registrations, t-shirt distri-butions to route maps and glu-cose – everything was spot on! Camera rigged quadcopters were a new sight this time round and covered the run from the heav-ens. Refreshment pit stops re-stored drained energy and helped to keep the momentum going.

It was truly remarkable how

SAMARPANAA tribute to the Indian Armed Forces

EVENTSBy Neha Raje

The aroma of freshly baked cakes is even sweeter when they are for a cause. The Bake Sale conducted as a part of Samarpana 2014 was a huge success thanks to the delectable food, zealous organizers and the ever enthusiastic campus. This being the second time such an

event was conducted, the organizers were very happy with the turnout. The number of stalls tripled from last year.A few stalls sold items baked by teachers! It was amazing to see their enthusiasm and wholehearted participation. With quirky stall names like ‘Babaji ka Stall’, one

just knew that this was all about guiltless gluttony and having fun.

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well we were taken care of. Vol-unteers at all junctions, manag-ing traffic, ambulances and po-licemen on the vigil, bikes going around to make sure everybody was alright - everything was grat-ifying. The signboards and the cheering volunteers encouraged us to go on - “Just 1 more km!!”, they read.

Upon completion of the run, the amount of satisfaction felt was tremendous. At a personal level, an achievement of sorts. As we reached our destination, ripe bananas were distributed to boost our potassium levels. The breakfast was simply delicious too. Collecting the certificate was a moment of pride. Back to where we started, the student lounge hosted the felicitation ceremony which began after a few minutes of regalement. The level of orga-nization was truly commendable. Hats off to the organizers for such a great show and an amazing ex-perience!

A tête-à-tête with one of the

organizers was amusing - revealing how they went about from ideation to organization was one interesting tale in itself. The idea of a marathon inspired by the Delhi run held to commemo-rate Kargil Diwas sprout-ed when a brainstorming session on ways to gener-ate awareness about Samar-pana took place. Though the idea as such clicked immediate-ly, everyone was rather skeptical about the entire concept, espe-cially since it involved obtaining the necessary permissions from the department of police. The college management supported the team wholeheartedly. With no prior experience of hosting an event of this scale, the team went on to host one of the most suc-cessful events, and this time, his-tory repeated itself with the run scaled up to a whole new level.

The team work and coordi-nation was apparent during the

run. The current team which

conceived the event involved the juniors in all avenues so that they could understand the working of the team to carry on the legacy. The level of dedication displayed by the team was phenomenal. I guess this comes naturally when the ultimate goal is a much larger cause and being in the team is a matter of pride. Jai Hind!

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They’re not exactly PESIT’s own band, but they sure know how to create fast percussive beats and speedy, low-register guitar riffs. Fantom is one of the few collegiate thrash metal bands ever to have a lot of exposure to the fierce, nascent scene. The band members were thick friends in school, and being musicians who were hardcore fans of pure thrash metal, they decided to get together and create music. They claim to draw inspiration from Metallica, Megadeth and Slayer, three out of the big four in thrash.

A personal interaction with them divulged their deepest in-spirations.

For Akshay, it’s the drum-ming legend Dave Lombardo while Shashank is strongly in-fluenced by Angus Young, Dave Mustaine and Jimi Hendrix. Ar-jun, being the bassist and lead

singer, draws inspiration from James Hetfield, and Roshan is loyal to Death, Slayer, Metallica and Megadeth.

When asked about the grow-ing metal scene in India, they simply said, “It’s the toughest scene to grow in, there are a lot of bands being recognised at an in-ternational level and we respect them a lot”.

From playing for pre-AT to the Garage Jam tributes for Megadeth and the crowd starting a mini moshpit when they per-formed at Cobalt Skies, Fantom has many a feather in their cap. A certain mix of aggression, speed and incredible guitar skill is reflected in their songs Royal Flush, T.H.R.A.S.H and Helluci-nate. Being a Slayer fan myself, The Hell Reigns a Sinful Hero is reminiscent of it and would most definitely be my personal favou-

rite. I’d advise people who have an affinity towards music, regard-less of the genre, to give Fantom a chance to be on their playlist. They deliver 100% pure Thrash Metal to their audience. After all, you’re not hardcore unless you live hardcore.

Members:

Akshay Suresh – Drums, Arjun Umashankar – Bass & Vocals, Roshan Sridhar – Rhythm Guitar, Shashank DP – Lead Guitar.

Follow them on:

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/fantom.metal

Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/fan-tom_band

The Fantom RingsCAMPUS LIFE

By Shruti Eswar

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“Things as simple as comic books can be great quiz-zing material”, says Sathvik Ashok, one of the most promi-nent figures of quizzing at PES University.

For people dedicated to inquisition and acquisition of knowledge, the Quotient Quiz Club is the sanctum here at PES. They are the quizzing enthusiasts of college, exerting a command over facts and trivia like no other.

You will rarely find as dedicated members of a club as the hosts and organizers of Con-quiztador - one of the greatest quizzing events in Bangalore, now spreading to eight other cit-ies across India.

How & When?

QQC was started some

6 years back, by Raveesh Maiyya, an enthusiast who was interested in “knowledge beyond the text-books, which sates interests and keeps the mind busy”.

What?

One of the most pomp-ous kaleidoscopic assortments of young minds, Conquiztador pro-vides a platform for the inquis-itive to get recognised for their talents.

Not just that, there is one quiz or another that is organ-ised every Thursday as part of the EWD activities. The guys joke, “At times, when there were no rooms available, we have held quizzes in the corridors.”

During the college fest Aatmatrisha ‘14, they awed par-ticipants with the depth, variety

and presentation of questions.

Why go for a QQC quiz?

Well, the reasons are many - their quizzes are the most anticipated ones; they give you a chance to grow through interac-tion with like minded people and by gleaning facts, trivia, stories and the like; just for the sake of quizzing; to stimulate the mind and specifically for info-maniacs – get something interesting to Google or Wiki.

So next time you want to test your knowledge on any of your interests, look out for a QQC quiz. If you don’t fare well at the quiz, don’t fret - QQC says, “there is no such thing as ‘difficult’; it is just that people are unaware, and there is a lot to dig deep into.”

Quiz On!CAMPUS LIFEAs told by Sathvik Ashok to Pulkit Chandra

68 Éclat 2014

When Saarang started off, its members had the common aim and vision of complementing and augmenting each other to create something special.

Saarang’s first performance was at the VTU fest in 2012. For Samarpana 2012, the group sang a self composed Kannada song. That was just the beginning – since then they have shown their flair at various fests.

Back home, they performed in AT’13 and more recently in AT’14. They participated in Goonj

and secured the second posi-tion, another feather in their cap. Some of its members also partic-ipated in ‘AT’s Got Talent’ and got through to the final , where one of them secured the third position.

These experiences have been wonderful they say - a chance to prove themselves as well as improve.

Saarang has a great med-ley of guitarists, tabla, violin, keyboard, mridangam players, composers and vocalists which creates the unique synergy re-

sponsible for their success.

The team members share a wonderful bond with each other - mutual respect, strong unity and a passion to do their best, which results in great co-ordination. The artists bring to the table dif-ferent genres of music and often mix and match to achieve a won-derful blend in their performanc-es. Above all, they share a bond of love and understanding - Saa-rang believes that where there is love and fun in music, success will follow!

The Synergy of Saarang“Music gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagi-

nation and life to everything.” - Plato

CAMPUS LIFEAs told by Saarang to Samaravel I

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Rising PulseHip hop - the first word that comes to mind

when anybody mentions our western dance team, Pulse. But that is just barely scratching the surface of something deeper than just a bunch of talented people who can dance. While I was taking this inter-view, it was so evident that this group of seventeen people work together as one unit glued together by their passion for dance and a common mockery of Gundeep’s PJs.

Their recent performance at the Channel V fest held in Goa showed that they are among the best of the country’s crews, something that took this team to a whole new level and not just from a dance point of view. Goa proved to be a great opportuni-ty for the crew to integrate the newest members of the team. It was also the start of an enduring bond with the college mad-ads team, Paisa Vasool, one born out of mutual admiration and appreciation for each other’s work. The first of its kind here at PES University.

Every member of Pulse has been carefully handpicked in three intensive rounds of auditions, each member having something unique to offer.

Older members of the team come back, to help shape the new recruits to the level that we have come to expect from Pulse, a special mention going to Vijetha.

Pulse wasn’t in the big picture till two years ago. But in the last year they have hit the scene like never before and now have many victories to boast of. They were victorious in nine out of the eleven fests they attended last season, with four winners, four runners-up and one second runners-up. They started off 2014 by qualifying for the Channel V In-dia Finals. Reaching a national level competition was itself a big achievement in their eyes. They also bagged the first place at the Deccan Herald ‘Brains and Beats’ competition this year, beating the de-fending champions from BMSCE and twenty-five other participating teams from all over Bangalore. It has been two victories out of two fests this season and they hope to keep the dream run going.

With the kind of values and passion I saw, I know they’ll go far. As team captain Vikas very wise-ly said, “We’ll let our dance speak for itself!”.

CAMPUS LIFEAs told by the Pulse Crew to Rituparna J

70 Éclat 2014

Pitch PleaseInstruments and gadgets,

you say? We make music as na-ture intended us to!

That is the motive behind PES University’s first and only A Capella group - Pitch Please!

A form of music as old as the oldest churches, A Capella start-ed off from the ancient choirs of the world, where the melo-dy came entirely from the lilt of spirit, needing no instruments to inspire spiritual involvement. Since then A Capella has seen in-credible adaptations, the latest of which is into the loving form of Pitch Please.

Enough said about history, what does Pitch Please do?

This insanely creative group captures the essence of popular and queer-fun-crazy music to turn it into an explosive medley that has crowds grooving. Debuting at Aatmatrisha ‘13, they caught the college unawares with a musical confluence of breathtaking vari-ety, from Gotye’s Somebody That I Used to Know to the Spongebob Squarepants Theme and even the impossibly compelling Win-dows 8 song! Add in classics like Dil Se Re and you’ve got one hell of a mix!

Origins?

A team member tells us it was actually a case of dulcet ser-endipity! The entire idea came from a few students singing dif-ferent harmonies in class for amusement.

The group has since per-formed at a number of colleges and at the Ion Bar and Kitchen. In February Pitch Please held au-ditions and the fresh talent they found blew them away! Their most recent show was at Aatma-trisha ‘14 where the entire team, new and old, sang together

We believe this is the beginning of what will become a legacy of PES University!

CAMPUS LIFEBy Yazhini Baskaran

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Scintillating moves, daz-zling costumes and an energetic bunch carrying it all off effort-lessly – that is team Trance. They sprouted in 2009 and have since been performing a range of dance forms, many a time leaving the awe-struck audience cheering for an encore.

A breezy conversation with few of the members gave a deep-er insight into the lives they lead and the influence of dance on their life. Taking up the oppor-tunity and beginning right from the onerous auditions, joining the team was definitely not easy. When asked about joining the team, Divya mentioned cheekily how it was always meant to be. Seniors being really helpful, “they encouraged us and instilled con-fidence”, says Anusha who is real-ly proud to have learnt it all with-out formal training. Her journey of discovering her latent talent under the guidance of Dhara is an inspiration in itself from both the trainer and trainee perspectives.

From having an inferiority com-plex and no self-confidence at all, to performing various routines on stage in front of a huge audience, might be a miracle for few, but is not a wonder given the travails of practicing after-hours. But work is play when you love it!

A noteworthy spin off of be-ing a part of such a team is the associations one builds through the journey, which last for years to come. “All of us absolutely love to dance and are very passion-ate about it. Rehearsals are the times when we bond and bounce off crazy ideas”, says Divya who was really touched to have made amazing friends. Inspired by the seniors reappearing for perfor-mances, these gals definitely do not mind turning up for a few themselves!

Undoubtedly talented, they are driven dancers who would practice at 6 in the morning to put up the stunning show that they did for Aatmatrisha ‘14. The team

has been performing at various inter-collegiate fests and pro-grams. These graceful beauties and skillful guys gave a stunning show for Freshers’ Day as well. Trance, having originally started off as a Bollywood team, believed it was a risk totally worth taking, mixing different genres for the AT performance. Moving out of their comfort zone and tuning into the theme, retro to metro, they re-ceived an amazing response.

Fun, exciting, memorable - these words hardly contain the emotions that were betrayed as I spoke to them about the one thing they loved. Anusha narrat-ed how every semester, she tried to elude performing but would always end up reconsidering and prancing about. “I cannot think of dance without Trance as I have always associated one with the other”, she says when asked about continuing her passion fur-ther. With the following quote, Vandit concurred with it all!

“Dance isn’t something that can be explained in words. It has to be danced.” - Paige Arden

Dancing in Trance

CAMPUS LIFE

As told by Trance to Neha Raje & Medhaa Shankar

72 Éclat 2014

As ludicrous as it may sound, here we present to you the Hitchhik-er’sGuide-toourveryowncollege!Let’s say this is more of a personal cheat sheet, a Marauder’s Map to help you navigate the many variedavenuesinPESUniversity.

Wearespoiltforchoiceinmoreways than one. Being in PESU, thedilemma is not between an ordinary

path and the one not taken before, but it is the choice of the varietiesof paths explored by our seniors and new paths which we may create along theway.

As one might recollect in the poem ‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost,giventhemultitudeofoptionsin college to direct your energy into, nomatterwhatwechoose,finallywe

mightjustregretwithasighthewishto have trodden down a differentpath.Sincethere isnoturningback,andwehavealimitedframeoftimefor all the feats we can accomplish, why not read on and find outwhatawaitsyoudowneachroad.

Comealong,andexplorethejig-saw puzzle you are a piece of!

Putting Pen to ParchmentBy Neha Raje

I remember joining Éclat as afresher.Thethrillofpassingthewritten test was just indefinable.Instantlyhittingoffagoodrapportwith the seniors, and them being supportive throughout helped usnewbies settle in. Assembling intheOATafterclasses,beingapartof one of the literary teams was a trulyanexperienceinitself.

It was amazing to discov-er similar thoughts in a candid session with a senior and former team member Jayanta Dasgupta -whatstartedoutasan initiativeto get to know like-minded peers

proved to be an opportunity tobecome a part of and grow with-in the team, with the whole ex-periencebeingfantastic.Theverymotivationtojoinanyclubsprungfrom exploring what one really wantedtodo.Believingthatbeinga part of the magazine team pro-jectedoneintotheleagueofpeo-plewhocouldthinkdifferently,hesaid,“IfeelI’vegrownasaperson.Every time I tried penning downsomeone else’s experience, I tried to understand things from his/her perspective.”

Contemplating on matters

critically was another take-away.I guess the high point was when I learntthathehadgainedajobof-fer based solely based on the man-nerinwhichhereviewedamovie.“It was one of the best things that happenedtome”,hesays.Thoughthis is a common thought shared byall,everyonehasenjoyedbeingin the team thoroughly, and at the same time, taking responsibilityeverytimeataskhadtobeexecut-ed. I am confident that themostmemorable moments were those of the photo-shoots, trying to piece in the many hands that went intobringinglifetothemagazine.

Culture Through DancingBy Shruti Eswar

Classical ContemporaryDance, a recent form of dance developed in India stresses onversatility and improvisation. Theanomalousdancestyleisverydy-

namic and incorporates exuberant floor movements. Through con-certedobservation,perceptionofbreath, weight and energy flow,light and conscious dancing with

use of space and levels is envis-aged.Itisamedleyofvariousclas-sical forms such as Bharatnatyam, Kathak,Odissi,Mohiniattametal.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to PES University

CAMPUS LIFE

73Éclat 2014

Sanskriti, one of PESIT’sdance teams, explores this verysortofartwhichisanintercalationofaplethoraofmovementstakenfrom modern dance forms fused withIndianClassicaldanceforms.

They portray mythological stories like theDashavatar,whichare the 10 embodiments of Lord Vishnu and Ramayana, the Legend of Prince Ram. Their other per-formances include an expose of themes such as Time, Blood and Music. Their enrapturing perfor-manceswhichhaverenderedthethemespotonhavealwaysbeenacrowdpleaserduringfests.Thisacademic year has been one of op-

portunitiesfortheteamasthey’vehad quite a few performances, be it for freshers’ day or for intercol-legiatefests.

Whenaskedabouttheperksassociated with being the Head of a college level Indian contempo-rarydancegroup,SanchitaNayaksaid, “Being Head is very chal-lenging as I need to manage and co-ordinate rehearsals while fac-ing impediments such as accom-modating every member’s ownschedule. If the rehearsal isn’tgood,ithindersourperformance.I must also ensure there is har-mony within the team and there aren’tanyegoclashes.All inall,I

enjoyitasIlovetodanceandIama bit of a prude when it comes to practice”.

India,beingadiversenationdefinitely appreciates dance asan art form, be it classical, folk orwestern.Althoughpeopletakepleasure in watching popular folk dances like Garba, Dandiya and Bhangra, there are unexplored ones such as Kuchipudi, ChhauandKummi tonamea few.TeamSanskritiunquestionablyfeelstheneed to endorse uncharted dance forms prevalent in India as theymight soon become a dying art form.

iCare - Do you?By Samaravel I

Thename(iCare)itselfisselfexplanatory about what the group does.It’s members not only careabout their academic progress but

also on what they can contribute totheirsociety.

The year 2013-2014 has been aneventfulyear.Itsstartedwithan

event‘Samarth-enhancingcapabil-ity’wheretheyvisitedtheSamar-thanam Trust for the disabled.The experience was profound and

74 Éclat 2014

cherished by all members. Theycollaborated with ‘Volunteer for Better India’and facilitated regis-trations for the electoral lists forthe upcoming elections and alsocreated awareness about voting.The ‘JoyofGivingWeek’wasan-other successful event in whichthey collected clothes, books, shoes and e-waste. It was do-nated to BOSCO Mane and theyalso indulged in a few sportingactivitieswith the children there.

iCarealsohadanantismok-ingdoodle-makingcompetitioninwhich 750 people from our col-lege took part and pledged to not smoke.Theykickedoffthenewyearwithablooddonationcampalongwith CSR crew in which around800unitsofbloodwerecollected. ‘Raunak-Rise and Shine’ was an-other event this year in which

the members visited ‘SnehadeepHelping Hands’ which is an NGO forthevisuallyimpaired.Thestu-dents from there were appreciat-ed at the Republic Day programme inPESInstituteofTechnology.

The iCareGroup pursues its flag-ship programme ‘Shiksha- learn-ing for the less fortunate’, which brings in children from a neigh-bouring slum to our college to be taughtby theirmembers. Italsohas an active branch in AcharyaInstitute. People may think theyareabunchofveryseriouspeoplebut in reality they are a crazy and fun-loving gang with the utmostdedication to their work. Theyshare a healthy relationshipwiththeothergroupssuchasCSRandSamarpanaandhavecollaboratedwiththeminthepast.

Sowhatdoitsmemberslookfor in the future?

Meeting more people withsimilar goals, working selflesslyfor something gives you a senseofsatisfactionthatisunparalleled.Thejoyofgivingisunlimited;youcan never give enough. And theloveyougetinreturnismorethanyoucanaskfor.Ithasgiventhemareallypositiveoutlookthattheycan help, in any small way, to bring happiness and positivity to thelives of others. They have madegood friends along the way too andbelieve the journey is totallyworthit.

Sonexttime,youseeabunchofiCarestudentshangingout,joinin!

Soak in the Madness -Paisa VasoolBy Siddharth K S

The stage, acting, the mikeand the audience has always been my first love. It was always my

dreamtobeapartofaPESITthe-atre team and when I watched the ‘Mad Meniacs’ perform during our

Freshers, it only strengthened my desire.Theyshowedusanentirelynew form of Mad Ads that inspired

75Éclat 2014

us.Whentheycalledforauditions,I had no second thoughts. Aftertwodays of the filtering process,a new teamwas born.We knewthat there was a lot of work cut outforus;afterallwehadtoliveup to the brand name that the se-niorteamhadcreated.

Currently we are a team of11consistingofboth secondandthird year BE students. It wouldbe a mere understatement if I said that these are the most brilliant guysI’veevercomeacross-everyperson with his own strengths, bringinginanewperspectiveandin their own crazy way. After all,ourartdoeshavetheword‘mad’in it!

Ourjourneybeganonahighwhen we were placed winners in ourveryfirstperformanceatBIT.After that, every competition wecontendin,wehavecontinuously

strived towin forPES. The insti-tutionculturehasinculcatedinusa sense of responsibility and we have always believed in keepingouractscleanandcrisp.Ourvar-ious performances, both within the city and outside have givenus a fresh outlook towards this performing art. Social messagesthrough a comic angle is the crux ofourideology.

The exposure it gavehelpedus further develop and improveuponouractsandscripts. Itgaveus the opportunity to interact with thewho’swhoof the film indus-try and a number of other noted personalities. Our proudest mo-ment was when we represented the Bangalore Zone in the Nokia V IndiafestatGoa.

While the stage act is onething,sittingdownandscriptingisaltogetherdifferent.Alotofhard

workgoes into it. It is just that itseems more like fun than work.Wesitdowntogetheraftercollegehours to discuss funny incidents - one leads to another and slowly a script takes life. The team hasalways tried to keep the scripts fresh, clean, updated with respect to current affairs and also drivehome serious messages through comicacts.

Personally , this experience has given me a completely newoutlooktowardscollege life.Hav-ing visited at least 18 other col-leges, I’ve had the opportunityto meet a lot of people and also understand team dynamics bet-ter. Nothing beats the feeling ofperforming in front of our home crowd.EverystageactinPESIThasalwaysbeen special. Eachperfor-mancehasbeendifferentandev-ery second on stage has taught me somethingnew.Thisissomething

76 Éclat 2014

Travel TroublesFEATUREBy Sudhanva Shetty & Utkarsh Ranjan

What Rising Transportation Costs Means to a StudentWe all need transportation

- whether it’s to travel to work, import or export goods, visit Grandma, tour the continents, go on a ride along with that special someone... you get the idea. It goes without saying that trans-portation is an integral part of lives, regardless of our profes-sion or location. But as students our transportation is chiefly con-cerned with journeying to and from PES University. Some of us take the college bus, utilise pub-lic transport, while others have their own vehicles.

Thus rising transportation costs have worried us all due to its boundless impact - our budgets have been constrained, options limited and wallets made light-er. Added are the innumerable side-effects of an ever increasing want of fuel and conduits, which has literally crippled our environ-ment and is a global tension.

With rapid urbanisation comes the need for enhance-ment in the quality of civil and municipal governance. The grow-ing cities with rapidly increasing population present a case for standardisation of public ser-vices. A major contributing factor in this endeavour is the increased use of public and private trans-portation. Small wonder then that the increase in its cost is making the general public edgy.

To understand the gravity of the situation, we first need to

come to terms with the multipli-er effect that rising cost of basic transportation has on the state of the overall economy and ulti-mately on us, the common cit-izenry. Rising transport costs spur rising commodity costs which leads to goods inflation and further food inflation. This in turn sends shockwaves on the wholesale price index of the gov-ernment of India which is tanta-mount to sending distress signals in the kitchens throughout the country.

It spells trouble for us too – yes, the students. While its effect can be felt more severely by the day scholars who travel in excess of 10 km one-way and take about an hour to reach college, even the general crowd will express their anguish at the current state of affairs. They don’t just see it as a 20% increase in their daily fare but rather a straight 20% deduc-tion in their pocket allowance which they could have used for better purposes. Only children at this stage of their life can under-stand how that extra sum could have supplemented their meagre but mean existence. More impor-tantly, the more serious impact of the increase can be felt by the school going class and their par-ents who also face the prospect of increasing fees and further stress on their education budget.

The resentment is increasing - but towards whom or rather to-wards what is the more important

question and within this question lies the answer. If we look at it from a microscopic point of view and analyse the policy failures that could be behind it then we need to first pinpoint the almost stagnant rate of planning and progress that the transportation sector of our country received in the pre-1991 era. The systematic neglect ensured that no proper roadmap was set to meet the lo-gistical needs of the increasing population and hence we did not have set mechanisms to deal with spiralling costs or for that matter even traffic congestion.

Any seasoned BMTC patron will have a thing or two to say about regarding the current sce-nario. A little more than half a decade back, BMTC strengthened its fleet with gleaming red Volvos, which came in as a relief for many young working professionals as well as long-distance commuters. Added initiatives like ‘Bus Day’ were meant to encourage use of public transport to ease traffic congestion. But again, inade-quate planning and systems have resulted in non-uniform service – from buses that are uncomfort-ably packed with people to mul-tiple empty buses plying along the same route simultaneously. However, though bus fares have almost doubled over this time, one can at least remain confident of some punctuality.

Consider auto rickshaws on the other hand. Fuel price rise

77Éclat 2014

Do you think the Bangalore metro will solve the city’s traffic woes?

Yes-60% and No-40%

What factors contribute to rise in trans-port costs?

Domestic - 90% and Global - 10%

Preferred means of cost control (in order of preference):

1) car pooling 2) public transport 3) cycling/walking

Do you travel by your own vehicle?

Yes 20% and No 80%

Is the parking lot space ample?

Yes 30% and No 70%

has driven their rates even high-er, to a point where a 5 km ride in an auto would cost you the same as a 23 km ride in a Volvo or buy you a litre of petrol. And if you didn’t have to spend that money on travel, well, you could just buy yourself 3 burgers at McDonald’s!

The world has become a small place and that just goes to show how integral travel is to us, as humans. There is no quick and permanent solution to the issue of rising transport costs – it is a problem that is intricately linked to so many other aspects of our lives. It is only through carefully

thought out policies and effec-tive remedial measures that the situation can be brought under control.

A total of 26 PES University students were surveyed in this re-gard. This is what it revealed

78 Éclat 2014

CAMPUS

Department Showcase

Dept. Of Mechanical Engineering

Dept. Of Science & Humanities

• A Faculty Development Program (FDP) was organised on ‘Thermal Management of Electronic Equipments’.

• International Symposium on Micro/Nanoscale Heat Transfer

• Site Visit to Brigade Apartment Complex and Training programme on “Application of Total Station and DGPS for Projects”

• Mr. Mutthu M , winner of National Level Design Competition and Educational Trip to KRS Dam

Quriosa – A science fest organised by the students of first year of various departments.

Dept. Of Civil Engineering

79Éclat 2014

Dept. Of Telecommuncation Engineering• Aveksha 2013 – A Community Development Program and Workshop on Wireless Cellu-

lar Networks

Dept. Of Computer Science Engineering

• Ayana 2014 – A 24-hour hackathon.

• Rhythmic Act – A mega EWD

80 Éclat 2014

Dept. Of BiotechnologyEngineering• TEQIP Sponsored National Conference on Emerging Trends in Bio Process

and Simulation

Dept. Of Electronics & Communcation Engineering• Circuitus ’14 – A 2-day Hardware Hackathon

Dept. Of Information Science Engineering• Faculty and Industry Development Workshop on IPv6 under TEQIP-II

81Éclat 2014

Design, though a very important aspect, is something that is often overlooked. It marks the difference between an object that is stunningly beautiful and one that is dismal. Apple products are wide-ly admired. Have you ever wondered why? Sir Jonathan Ive is the Senior Vice President of Design at Apple Inc. He employs his unique eye for design to create wonderful products, right from scratch. It is not very hard to see then, that the right design is extremely essential in creating something that appeals to the masses.

Adobe is another big name in design circles. Its products have now permeated into most of our lives, be it through Adobe Reader or Photoshop. I, personally can’t imagine a world without Adobe and its suite of software. A few useful applications are Adobe Premier Pro - for video editing, Adobe Flash & Adobe After Effects – for animation and Adobe Audition – for audio editing.

A magazine must make use of good design to draw the atten-tion of the reader. For this edition of Éclat, we made extensive use of various design techniques and formulated our own standards and templates. This was made easier with certain tailor made design software, listed below.

Bringing Éclat to Life!Design - The key to enhancing a magazine’s appeal

The Theme - Circular images in the entire mag-

azine.

The verb ‘Photoshop’ has found its way into our common lingo, purely because of its power and capabilities. At this moment, Photoshop is older than most of our readers. It was created by Adobe in 1990 for graphic editing purposes (image manipulation). Adobe continuously works hard on making this tool better with every passing day. The version we used for all the editing was Photoshop CS6 where CS stands for creative suite (basically the collection of all the applications by Adobe). Technically, images are made up of small elements called pixels. In Photoshop, parameters of a pixel are manipulated to create amazing effects. Along with this, one can draw using the pen tool, use filters to add great effects to photos and use more than a hundred other unique features to get desired results. All the images in this magazine have been Photoshopped in some way to ensure they fit perfectly into each article.

Adobe Photoshop

By ASHWIN SHROFFDESIGN

‘Design is the most immediate, the most explicit way of defining what products become in people’s mind’

Jony IveSenior Vice President Design, Apple

ÉCLATis recruitin

g!

Do you have a flair with words?

Can you paint word pictures with

nothing but ink and paper?

If so, ta

ke up the pen and come be

a part of Team Éclat!

Technology, Formal, Informal, Review, Sports, D�ign, PR and Photography

Avenu� open for the following teams:

Date: 5th September 2013 Time: 3:45pmVenue: ECE Dept, Panini Block

@eclatpesitwww.facebook.com

/eclat.pesit

Éclat: PESIT's o�cial mag�ine

5th

Sept

More details contact: Abishek - 9945103342 & Srikanta - 9035598139

ÉCLATis recruitin

g!

Do you have a flair with words?

Can you paint word pictures with

nothing but ink and paper?

If so, ta

ke up the pen and come be

a part of Team Éclat!

Technology, Formal, Informal, Review, Sports, D�ign, PR and Photography

Avenu� open for the following teams:

Date: 5th September 2013 Time: 3:45pmVenue: ECE Dept, Panini Block

@eclatpesitwww.facebook.com

/eclat.pesit

Éclat: PESIT's o�cial mag�ine

5th

Sept

More details contact: Abishek - 9945103342 & Srikanta - 9035598139

Love writing?!Here is a chancefor your article to be featured on Eclat 2014

Éclat For all PESStudents

Few posters designed for various events organised by Éclat

If Photoshop is the one hand of man, then Illustrator is the other. There are two types of images. The first type is pixel based images, as discussed earlier. The second type is vector images. These vector images (maybe a straight line or a curve) are based on mathematical formulae, so they can be scaled up or down without getting pixelated. The prints you see on t-shirts are nothing but vectors. Adobe Illustrator is a powerful vector based editing tool. All the vectors in this magazine have been edited or created using Adobe Illustrator CS6. It goes without doubt that a good graphic designer should have solid expertise in both Photoshop and Illustrator.

Now that we have tools to edit and create images, how does one put togeth-er a magazine? InDesign, an industry standard for magazines and books, makes it a cakewalk, albeit with a steep learning curve. We used Adobe InDesign CS6 for this edition. It allows you to easily piece together a magazine from its individual articles, while providing some features of its own to enhance the visual appeal. InDesign is also used in typeface editing. Typeface is the set of fonts used, and is crucial to design in such a case.

Adobe Bridge CS6 is another handy tool for a graphics designer, which provides an easy means to navigate between files and folders. In addition, it has the ability to display previews of Photoshop, Illus-trator and InDesign files, all in the same environment, something that is difficult to achieve otherwise.

Through these tools and processes, we breathed life into the words of these pages. I do hope you have a good time reading through. Passion for design is most often the first requirement, and then every-thing else follows. In this light, I leave you with a quote:

“Love what you do, and you will be paid to do it”

Adobe InDesign

Adobe Illustrator

83Éclat 2014

IPLand the Aftermath of its Inception

Mr. Lalit Modi must have had a eureka moment when he thought of the Indian Premier League. The IPL has indubitably changed the way we perceive T20 cricket, if not all of cricket. IPL is considered to be the highest profile showcase of T20 cricket. Its 2010 edition was the first sporting event to be broadcasted live on Youtube. The 6th season of the league was valued at a whopping US$ 2.9 billion. Its impact on how players and viewers look at cricket has been astounding. Its influence on the financial aspect of cricket is undeniable, but perhaps its most important and long lasting after effect. The cash rich league has actually influenced a billion or more minds to look at sporting events in a new light. Our view of sporting glory is now broader than national prestige, it’s more personal now. Truth be told, we now appreciate the value that domestic leagues can provide to self improvement as well as enhanced entertainment. This outlook is spreading like wild fire. This key question is ‘what is making chiefs of national and international sports agencies propose new league formats?’, we shall look at four leagues across four sports that are making news and money of late.

The Celebrity Cricket League: This league was the first IPL-inspired league to be formed. Its formation in 2011 with only four teams

was critiqued by a huge number of fans. This cricket league comprises of major regional movie stars form-ing teams and competing against each other for the championship. Though it was initially written off as a publicity stunt, it has proved to be a bundle of pleasurable surprises for all stake holders. The familiarity with the stars from their movies, the love for cricket and the lust for entertainment is a cocktail that is too irresistible for the general masses. The fact that CCL matches have recorded more TV viewership than many ICC (International Cricket Council) games is proof of its immense popularity. The franchises in IPL cost on average 340 times the franchises in CCL, but the public appeal and the love for players is still the same. This particular league is evidence that the IPL took a cricket-crazed nation and turned it into a ma-niacal cricket obsessed nation.

Hockey India League:Hockey had sadly lost most of its popularity among the youth. The government itself seemed to fa-

vour cricket over hockey. A country which won 6 consecutive Olympic gold medals, has failed to win one medal since 1980. This slow death of Indian Hockey had to be stopped. Somehow the zeal for hockey had to be reignited. Hockey India decided it was time to do an IPL spin-off for the sport! Hockey India League was formed with five franchisees consisting players from India and abroad. Did this help us out? The league is broadcasted in USA, Canada, South Africa, South Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Hero Moto Corp signed a multi-year agreement to sponsor the league. Viewership for hockey games has risen exponentially. Its influence on the game itself is yet to materialize, however its impact on the game’s pop-ularity is incomparable.

SPORTS

By Chandrakanth Cheturvedi

84 Éclat 2014

Indian Badminton League:Badminton Association of India decided that India needs another IPL-like tournament and came up

with the IBL comprising of 6 franchisees. Badminton in India has definitely seen an increase in support and popularity with the likes of Saina Nehwal, P.V Sindhu and P. Kashyap playing phenomenally in the international circuit. The timing couldn’t have been better for IBL. A nation brimming with talent, just about getting into badminton and a colossal stage is set up. Players from Malaysia, Indonesia, China and Russia have graced the event with their presence and impressed everybody with their agility and strength. Although not broadcasted to as many nations as the HIL, IBL is still a huge hit in India and Hong Kong. Twitter was abuzz with IBL tweets at the inaugural season of IBL, which impressed the audience with its grandeur and power.

International Premier Tennis League: Although not a purely Indian owned league, this league, announced in January 2014 is the brain

child of Mahesh Bhupathi. The league is hard evidence to the impact IPL is having on different sports. Bo-ris Becker, Justin Gimelstob and co-founder (Yes! co-founder) Mahesh Bhupathi announced the launch of IPTL in Paris. This league will star Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray, Jo Wilfried Tsonga, Janko Tipseravic, Tomas Berdych, Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova, Li Na, Caroine Wozniacki and Sam Stosur amongst other big names playing for 6 Asian City based franchisees. In nations like India and China where tennis has not grown to great levels, this league will be a stepping stone. Boasting of rich funds, it will defi-nitely change the way tennis fans look at the game when the league commences in December.

IPL showed the world that in sports, a win-win scenario does exist. It showed the world a game can be both about money and pride. A number of IPL-like leagues have popped up with similar intentions. We can only hope that these leagues take only the good from IPL and lead to the betterment of sports alone. Somewhere down the line, the money, the fame, the name won’t matter; for all that is important is the game!

85Éclat 2014

When Magnus Carlsen, the 22 year old chess player from Norway humbled Vishwanathan Anand in his own backyard to claim his maiden World Champi-onship title, everyone knew that it was the beginning of a new era in World Chess. After all, Anand has been a five-time world cham-pion and one of the greatest chess players in the game’s his-tory. Anand’s defeat also meant a generational change in world chess

Is Magnus Carlsen the New Hero?

The Anand - Carlsen match was billed as one of the most epic matches in the history of chess. It was a clash of the titans that saw two players from two different generations battle it out against each other. Both of them had contrasting styles of play - while Carlsen is known for his brand of aggressive chess and loves to play by intuition, Anand, nick-named ‘Lightning Kid’ for his fast moves, is known to rely on super-computers to prepare for games. 

However, Carlsen proved to be too good for supercomputers too. The Norwegian dethroned India’s super Grandmaster to claim his maiden world title. Carlsen won three games and played out a seventh draw to score an amazing 6.5-3.5 victory over Anand in Anand’s home city of Chennai.  Carlsen’s new and aggressive style of play seemed to have surprised his opponent

and Anand cracked under the pressure. Anand made costly mistakes which saw him lose the world title and with his compre-hensive defeat, an era had cer-tainly ended in chess.

Magnus Carlsen is a ma-gician! This ‘genius’ became a Grandmaster at the age of 13 and World No 1 at 19 — the youngest ever chess player to do so. For more than three years, Carlsen has been the uncrowned king of chess. He has firmly retained the top spot since January 2010. In fact, he has dominated the World Chess Federation’s list of top players in the last three years, with a top rating of 2,870 points, beating Kasparov’s best of 2,851 points achieved in 1999.

Now, the world of chess is on the threshold of a generational change. It took Anand 20 years to inch his way from the Grand Mas-ter title in 1987 to the undisputed world title in 2007. Carlsen how-ever, did it in less than 11 years. 

When Carlsen became the world chess  cham-pion a few months ago, I don’t think anyone in the chess world lost money. All bets were on the young Nor-wegian beating the reigning grandmas-ter. With play in Chennai, Anand had the home-court advantage, but at nearly 44 and getting old

for top-level chess, he allowed Carlsen to gain momentum as the match progressed. He hadn’t lost in ten games. Perhaps the biggest surprise was in the last one, when Carlsen played to win rather than accepting what looked to be Anand’s offer of a draw, which would have clinched it for him anyway. He could have been the world champion a cou-ple of hours sooner!

When asked by a reporter, he replied, “I feel I know a lot more, but it’s not easy to make that evident on the board. For-tunately, it’s good enough to win most tournaments and the World Championship title.”

Magnus Carlsen SPORTS

By Sourjya Chowdhary

86 Éclat 2014

P V Sindhu Pusarla Venkata Sindhu, or

better known as P.V. Sindhu, created Indian badminton history on August 9, 2013 after a 21-18, 21-17 win over former world no. 1 Shixian Wang of China in the World Championships. The victory ensured her a bronze as she booked a place in the last four.

The 18-year-old from Hyder-abad, not only eclipsed her much fancied Chinese opponents in the pre-quarters and quarters but also overshadowed India’s no. 1 Saina Nehwal, who made a quarter-final exit at the same tournament. Un-fortunately she lost her semi-final clash against Thailand’s world no. 3 Ratchanok Intanon the next day (10-21, 13-21) and missed out on a chance to play in the final. It would have been her shot at the gold med-al and she would have been assured at least silver. While Saina’s game had been on the downward spiral in 2013, with the London Olympic bronze medalist not winning any major tournament this year, Sindhu has been on constant rise. She won her maiden Grand Prix title with the Malaysian Open win in 2013.

Sports runs through her veins

and that is due to the fact that P. V. Ramana and P. Vijaya - both former volleyball players - are Sindhu’s proud parents. Incidentally, her fa-ther was a national player and recip-ient of the prestigious Arjuna Award. This latest Indian sensation started early at the tender age of eight and worked hard with the great Late Mir Mahboob Ali, who also schooled Saina in her early years, at the bad-minton courts of the Indian Railway Institute, Secunderabad. She then moved on to Pullela Gopichand’s academy soon after. 

Sindhu inculcated the habit of winning in her formative years lifting several titles in the under-10, under-13 and under-14 categories. At the international level, Sindhu’s first big break came at the 2009 Sub-Junior Asian Badminton Cham-pionships held in Colombo, with a bronze medal. She then reached the quarterfinals of the 2010 Junior World Badminton Championships held in Mexico and got noticed for the national side at a tender age of 15 when she was selected for the Uber Cup, a women’s team competi-tion, in 2010.It has been a spectacu-

lar journey since then.

On 7 July 2012, she won Asia’s Youth Under-19 Championship beat-ing Japan’s Nozomi Okuhara in the final. In 2012, her biggest triumph came when she stunned London 2012 Olympics gold medallist Li Xuerui of China in the Li Ning China Masters Super Series tournament, to enter the semis. Eventually Sindhu lost to another Chinese, 4th seeded Jiang Yanjiao. In the India Grand Prix Gold event 2012, she made it to the finals without dropping a game, but lost out to Indonesian Linda Weni Fanetri. Sindhu is currently ranked 12 in the world.

With the sort of progress that she has made it is no surprise that she is already being touted as a fu-ture Olympic champion by badmin-ton greats all over the world. In the year 2014 she has already set targets of breaking into the top 6 of the BWF rankings. This goal is difficult, yet achievable for a player of her cali-bre. She is only 18 years old and we should definitely see this ace shut-tler racking up a lot of titles in the near future.

SPORTS

By Hemanth Kulkarni

A Champion in the Making

87Éclat 2014

Last season, both the German teams, Dort-mund and Bayern, took European football by storm. Bayern especially, with a stunning and shocking 7-0 aggregate win over FC Barcelona, whom the mere prospect of facing is absolutely scary! Jupp Heynck-es lead his team to a historic treble with the Bunde-sliga crown, the DFB Pokal and the elusive Cham-pions League crown. What characterized this team, who seemed unstoppable at the time, was sheer pace and athleticism combined with a ruthlessness and trade-mark German efficiency! Robben on the right and Ribery on the left and the striking force of Mario Gomez and Manduzkic in the centre, with a powerful mid-field comprising of Schweinsteiger, Toni Kroos and Javi Martinez and Thomas Mueller drifting in and out of the wings and (I am not going to talk about the Bayern defense!), now this was the team that could not be beaten. During the summer,

Mario Gotze joined the ranks of the elite mid-field-ers to lend a keener edge to the attack.

Now this honeymoon was all good until the arrival of Josep ‘Pep’ Guardiola, who had taken a year’s hiatus after having resigned as the manag-er of the Blaugrana at the end of a dismal season 2011-12, where FC Barcelona conceded the League title to arch rivals, from the Spanish capital of Ma-drid, and bowed out of CL in semis after a loss of 2-3 on aggregate to Chelsea (who went on to win the CL that year). After having won the treble, Jupp Heynckes resigned as Manager to make way for Guardiola, but whether he was forced out or he quit on his own terms isn’t known.

The model of ‘holding possession’ with quick passes, aka the ‘Tiki-Taka’ that, at one time, was the

BayernSPORTS

By Srikanta R Somayaji

The wheel completes a full cycle!

88 Éclat 2014

hallmark of Barca’s play, was the pivotal reason to Guardiola’s success at the Catalans! He won three League titles, won the CL three times in a row, and a host of other glittering trophies with Barcelona, becoming the youngest man to have coached a Champion’s League winning team. Despite the mer-its of this system, the obvious flaws in this came to light in the CL semi-finals of 2011-12. The ‘Tiki-Taka’ employs quick passing and holding possession so that the team doesn’t have to switch between at-tack and defense. While this helps to move the ball forward, combining both offense and defense and employing the entire team cohesively, it can also be thought of as a ‘slow, meaningless and directionless extreme’, leaving the side prone to lightning-quick counter-attacks that teams like Real Madrid, Borus-sia Dortmund, Chelsea and Bayern specialize in. Now that season and the reason for Guardiola’s departure from Barca should have rung the warn-ing-bells for the Bayern management

Coming to the season of 2013-14, exactly a year after Heynckes’ Bayern thrashed a hapless FCB, Guardiola’s Bayern lost 4-0, at the Allianz Are-na (home to FC Bayern Munich), by a rampant Real Madrid! The reasons for this are many, but the pri-mary culprit, in the author’s view, is the Manager. From the beginning of the season, the Bayern team has seen a paradigm shift in their style of play. The team once known for its speedy and ruthless counters now replaced it with a possession-based play, similar to the Tiki-Taka of Barca. Many players

have also seen a change in position, with captain Philip Lahm (once the most consistent right-back) moving to a mid-field position while the defensive mid-fielder Javi Martinez moving to a centre-back position. But on the biggest stage in club football, they have failed miserably. The chinks in this once invincible armour came to the fore in the initial phases of the knock-out stages of the Champion’s League. A 1-1 draw to a somewhat mediocre Arsenal side, followed with a 1-1 away draw to Manchester United seemed like a beginning. Yes, they thrashed the Red Devils at home in the Second Leg and yes, it is true that Bayern won the Bundesliga title with 7 games to spare (which happens to be one game more than the margin that Heynckes won with last year!), but what followed was definitely not the kind of results that you would expect from a team that had just won the League. Arch rivals Borussia Dort-mund destroyed the Bavarians, leaving them to ab-ject misery, after a 3-0 win. Real Madrid then beat them 1-0 at the Santiago Bernebeau, where the Los Galacticos seemed content to defend after Benze-ma scored a 19th minute winner. But the final nail in the coffin came in the second leg of the semi-fi-nals where Carlo Ancelotti’s Meringues, boasting of the likes of the speed demons Cristiano Ronaldo and Gareth Bale destroyed Guardiola’s FC Bayern Munich, at the Allianz Arena 4-0 and the headlines on The Guardian  read, “Real Madrid power bat-ters Bayern before speed ends tiki-taka’s rule”. The wheel has now come a full cycle, truly!

89Éclat 2014

Sebastian Vettel definitely is one of those athletes who com-pletely transforms their sport with herculean efforts and titan-ic feats. The 26 year old German driver had a spectacular F1 sea-son for Redbull Racing team this year. The odyssey that was his conquest of the F1 world drivers’ championship will forever be told and retold with amazement and adulation of his invincibility and skill.

Vettel began the 2013 sea-son on a bright note. He secured his 36th career pole position for Race day in Australia, but Kimi

Raikonnen stole the show and Vettel had to settle for 3rd.The Malaysian GP was a controver-sial one as the steely nerved Ger-man overtook his RedBull team-mate Mark Webber to win the race against his team’s wishes. The then 3 time world champion spoke out after the race saying he wouldn’t apologize for winning. He unabashedly displayed his ruthless hunger for victory in the 2nd race of the season. His visit to China was a frustrating one. The German was held off a podi-um finish by a witty Hamilton. His disgruntlement at the fact that Hamilton finished a meagre fifth

of a second ahead of him, showed that he would not give an inch to any other driver no matter what position he was in.

The comfort with which Vet-tel conquered all in the Bahrain GP was astounding. He himself described his 28th win as “fault-less, seamless and beautiful”. It was here that his domination of the sport started taking shape as the Redbull driver extended a 10 point lead in the drivers’ champi-onship in only the 4th race. The local hero Fernando Alonso came on top in the Spanish GP. He fin-ished 4th, one of his worst results

Sebastian Vettel “Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can.”

-Owen Meredith, Earl of Lytton

A Journey from Talent to Genius

SPORTS

By Chandrakanth Cheturvedi

90 Éclat 2014

for the entire season. The Spanish GP was the last race that made him look even remotely suscep-tible; for every race after that he occupied a podium position. In Monaco, the 26 year old German had to settle for the 2nd position to a rampant Nico Rosberg. This incident packed GP helped him stretch a mammoth 21 point lead at the top of the table.

Vettel was truly dominating in Montreal, Canada. He was at his absolute best as he emerged triumphant after a grueling 70 laps, finishing a cool 15 seconds before Alonso and Hamilton. In Great Britain, an unfortunate gear-box issue forced Sebastian to pull a DNF (Did-not-Finish) for the first and only time in 2013. The German was not thrilled at all to have pulled out with just 12 laps remaining. His 30th career race victory could not have been sweeter, as it came in front of his home crowd for the first time. The German held off a late chal-lenge from Kimi Raikonnen to se-cure another win for Redbull and once again extend his lead.

The Hungarian GP was the last of his frustrating races. A clearly irritated Vettel, was not

happy with his 3rd place finish but this race was the last where he had to comb his mind to won-der why he hadn’t won. Every race from hereon, he held first place. His second straight victory came in Monza, Italy. The German driver who expressed more grat-ification at beating Ferrari’s driv-ers than occupying pole position yet again, had now made it al-most certain that he would clinch his 4th world championship.

In Singapore the Redbull racer, continued his unstoppable march to pole position. A hat-trick of victories for the German who was now metaphorically playing in a league of his own. The Kore-an GP is a comfort zone of sorts for Vettel. This time beating out Raikonnen again, he secured an-other pole position and laid one hand on the world championship title. Further, the Japanese GP’s win allowed Sebastian to steer 90 points clear off the only man capable of dethroning him. Vet-tel had one five on the trot which indicated his supreme command on the asphalt covered tracks.

He became only the third man in formula one history to win the drivers’ world championship

four times as he achieved the un-assailable. His pole position in In-dia meant that he had six consec-utive victories under his belt. The world champion was in no mood for mercy as he celebrated his 4th championship by winning the Abu Dhabi GP. The brutal dominance that he has shown this season was testament to his 7th straight win. His twelfth win of the season and eighth straight pole position meant that the record books had to be re-written. The German also celebrated his first American GP victory ever since debuting here way back in 2007. Alberto Ascari’s 9 successive wins and Michael Schumacher’s 13 victories in a season were two of the records equaled by him after winning the final race in Brazil.

After 1120 laps he finished with 397 points. The 26 year old legend amassed these points from 16 podium finishes studded with 13 wins with 9 pole positions in succession. This remarkable season was decorated with 7 fastest laps by the German which ultimately resulted in a well de-served 4th time world champion-ship for the one and only Sebas-tian Vettel.

91Éclat 2014

SPORTS

Campus Challenge - 14

92 Éclat 2014

The Campus Challenge-14, an annual interdepart-mental sports fest, was conducted at the PES Uni-versity campus from 13th to 21st March 2014. The vision of the Sports Department gave birth to this sports fest. With the support of the Principal, this fest spanned over 8 days with cricket, basketball, football, badminton, table tennis and chess events for both men and women.

The fest received enthusiastic participation from a whopping 1200 students from across campus. The fest committee, headed by Vikram K M from the Department of Biotechnology, comprised of Uday Kumar C M, Vishwanath K, Yashavanth P R, Aditya K and Tabish Armar and a team of 20 volunteers. It was their dedicated efforts that culminated in a

successful campus sporting event.

The fest saw various teams battling it out in differ-ent sporting arenas, with cricket alone garnering a participation of about 50 teams! This was also the first time that an interdepartmental college sports fest of this magnitude was organized in the city.

Spectators of the cricket matches found themselves involved in the action with ‘Catch it, Win it’, a lucky draw contest that gave them the opportunity to win fantastic goodies if they caught the ball hit by the skippers.

All in all, it brought together enthusiasts for over a week of competitive sports, action and fun.

This is what participants had to say about the event:

Varun Srivatsa, ECE Dept.: Firstly, hats off to the umpires and other volunteers, who were present on the field throughout those 9 sunny days. The credit goes to Vikram and team for organising such a wonderful event in college. My college experience has been enriched by such events and I hope it con-

tinues. Three cheers to PES University!

Pooja Bhat, MBA Dept.: The tournament was very well organised. I thank the college and the core committee members for giving the students an op-portunity to participate in such a huge event. It was a nice experience.

Fest Committee - Tabish, Uday, Vikram, Vishwanath, Aditya

By Sports Team

The Winners!

93Éclat 2014

Sport Winner Runner-up No. of Teams/Participants

Badminton

Men’s Singles Shivalingesh, Mech Dept. Gowrav, BBM Dept. 60

Men’s DoublesShivalingesh, Mech

Dept. & Adrian, Biotech Dept.

Prithvi & Avinash, ISE Dept. 40

Women’s Singles Shravanthi, TE Dept. Swathi, ISE Dept. 48

Women’s Doubles Pooja & Padmashree, MBA Dept.

Swathi & Radha, ISE Dept. 40

Table Tennis

120

Men’s Singles Aditya, Mech Dept. Shubham, Mech Dept.

Men’s Team Aditya & Raghaven-dram, Mech Dept.

Sandesh & Ayush, ECE Dept.

Women’s Singles Anushree, ISE Dept. Deeksha, Civil Dept.

Women’s Team Aditi & Shivani, Biotech Dept.

Anushree & Sanchitha, ISE Dept.

Football Bibek & Team, BBM Dept.

Vedanth & Team, S & H Dept. 32

Basketball Ankit & Team, Mech Dept.

Kuldeep & Team, BBM Dept. 30

Chess Tejas & Team, CSE Dept. Karthik & Team, S & H Dept. 30

Cricket Sourabh & Team, ECE Dept.

Ajitesh & Team, Mech Dept. 50

Shravanthi, TE Dept.: It had been more than two years since I had played badminton and so for me, Campus Challenge-14 was one of the most await-ed events in the college. We have one of the finest courts and we were given the professional stan-dard equipments. A set of capable organisers, who

were extremely supportive throughout, managed the large number of participants and the cheering crowd very well, making sure the matches were held systematically. Encouragement from the col-lege and Mr Chinni Shridhar, the sports director, made this event possible.

• Virat Kohli named International Cricketer of the Year at CEAT cricket awards while Pakistan was named the best cricket team of the year.

• Messi wins his 4th Ballon d’or after shattering Gerd Muller’s re-cord of 85 goals in a year by scoring an unprecedented 91.

• Novak Djokovic and Victoria Azarenka win the Men’s and Wom-en’s Singles of the year’s edition of the Australian Open.

• India wins a record 46 medals at the special Olympics held at Pyongyang, South Korea for the physically challenged.

• In a shocking decision, the International Olympic Committee decided to drop the sport of Wrestling in the 2020 Olympics.

• In a shocking match fixing scandal, Pakistan bans two umpires for spot fixing, Nadeem Ghauri and Anis Siddiqui.

• Explosive batsman, Chris Gayle steamrolled his way into the re-cord books, smashing the fastest T20 century in just 30 balls. He also broke the record for the highest individual score in the same match scoring 175 in just 66 balls.

January

March• At the All England Open championship, the Women’s singles

title was captured by Tine Baun of Denmark while the Men’s singles title was claimed by Chen Long from China.

• The Laureus sports awards saw Usain Bolt win the Sportsman of the Year, while Jessica Ennis-Hill, a track and field athlete from the Great Britain was awarded the Sportswoman of the Year. The European Ryder Cup team teed away with the prestigious team of the Year award.

• The inaugural race of the F1 season at the Albert Park Circuit.

February

April

TimelineSPORTS

By Manoj M V and Srikanta R Somaiyaji

94 Éclat 2014

May • India’s emerging badminton star, PV Sindhu wins the Malaysian badminton open.

• Spain’s Fernando Alonso wins his first home race at the Circuit de Catalunya in Spain.

• Barcelona win their 22nd La Liga title pipping their closest rivals Real Madrid yet again.

• Mumbai Indians lift their maiden IPL trophy with Mike Hussey emerging the highest run scorer in the tournament for Chennai Super Kings.

• Andy Murray becomes the first Briton to win the Wimbledon since Fred Perry in 1936. French Marion Bartoli claiming the Women’s Singles.

• Famed athletes Shane Warne and Martina Hingis are included to the ICC Hall of Fame and the Tennis Hall of Fame respectively.

• Indian women do the country proud by securing gold at the Ar-chery World Cup held in Belek, Turkey.

July

• Captain cool M.S Dhoni receives the ICC ODI Championship shield for finishing as the no. 1 ODI team

• Rafael Nadal wins a record 8th crown at the French Open beating David Ferrer in the final.

• India proves yet again its No. 1 ODI tag, beating England in a drama filled ICC Champions Trophy final.

• American swimmer Missy Franklin wins 6 gold medals at the FINA World Swimming Championship held at Barcelona, Spain.

• Australian opener, Aaron finch hits 156 off 63 balls against England creating the record for the highest International T20 individual score.

June

August

95Éclat 2014

November

September

• 22 year Old Magnus Carlsen destroys reigning World Champion Vishwanathan Anand to clinch the World Championship with a stunning score-line of 6.5-3.5 at the end of 10 games.

• Australia win the First test of the Ashes at the Gabba, Brisbane in what turns out to be one of the most entertaining and action packed Ashes that cricket has seen in a long time.

• Serena Williams wins the Women’s singles at the US Open while Spaniard Nadal continues his rich vein of form from the French Open winning the Men’s Singles.

• The little master, Sachin Tendulkar announces retirement from all forms of the game after the second test of the Farewell Series against West Indies at the Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai.

• Sir Alex Ferguson’s “My Autobiography” is publicly aired for the first time with the Former Manchester United manager revealing how he turned down the chance to manage England on two differ-ent occasions.

• Bayern Munich emerge winners at the FIFA Club World Cup to cap of one of their most successful seasons winning the German Bunde-sliga and the prestigious UEFA Champions League under manager Jupp Heyneckes.

• A hapless England succumb to a 4-0 defeat at the hands of the mighty Aussies in the 4th test at the MCG, Melbourne.

October

December

96 Éclat 2014

Ordell Ugo, conforming to its meaning, is the place where I began my vision of mastering tech-nical various skills. But it had many more things to offer!

Ordell Ugo gave me an insight into the funda-mentals of how a corporate firm works, right from presentations, team participation, team coordina-tion, weekly reports, information gathering, select-ing appropriate technical tools, articulating known facts/ideas, planning an efficient and executable workflow etc.

I also learnt how an idea can be encapsulated as a business solution along with some marketing skills. After successfully finishing my first project at Ordell Ugo, I was all set to take up new challenges.

The confidence that Ordell Ugo imbibed in me helped me bag a job in the first company that visit-ed campus. I, myself, was pleasantly surprised with

the confidence with which I faced the interviews. Ordell Ugo taught me the effectiveness of self learning by exploration and indeed, I had a good learning curve too.

Apart from technical aspects like projects, open source tools, papers, journals, industry asso-ciations etc, Ordell Ugo offers many more exciting things. Abhyas sessions,team bound activities, impact talks, time management skills, charity work are a few among them.

The greatest takeaway that I had, is the con-stant interaction with founder Prof. Nitin V Pujari. I was fortunate enough to pick up some good traits and values from him.

In all, Ordell Ugo has created a conducive environment where students are self motivated towards achieving long term constructive goals.

Significant Achievements :1. Number of Projects: 732. Number of Project Batches: 903. Number of Publications:144. International Journals: 055. International Conferences:066. National Conferences:037. Number of IEEE-Ordell Ugo iNoah workshops:0068. Number of Industry competitions won: 029. Number of Invention disclosure and Innovation:2010. Number of Industry associations: 003

Ordell UgoTECH on CAMPUSBy Rohith Raaj

97Éclat 2014

Ordell Ugo Tech Bound Activity Ordell Ugo Projects Ordell Ugo PES Impact Talks

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This magazine is the culmination of a number of coordinated efforts, driven by collaboration, passion, a strong team spirit and determination to achieve a common goal.

Here is the team behind Éclat 2014!

98 Éclat 2014

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