Don’t get us wrong!

We are not here to philosophize about anything. We just need to put a fact across which is prevalent in all mentalities of an Indian engineer.

Anyway, have you wondered what life of an Indian engineer generally looks like?

This topic is being extensively covered in our circles. But what about that? I don’t want to be a part of anything pretentious.

In a world of the gamut of vague possibilities, the life of an Indian engineering student is filled with a myriad of complexities and ambiguities.

1. Birth

More so probably, this is the only thing which an Indian engineer has done wrong. Everything that followed is a cascade of cause and effect.

Why were you born in the first place? In fact, you were the only sperm that won the race to life. But were you really born for doing engineering? Oh my God! What has life done to you?

“Engineers are not born out of choice, they are made out of other people’s rattled hopes.”

Nobody wants to go to hell. But few people do select engineering. Why? Because papa said, “Engineering kar le, life set hai.”

2. “Life set hai” syndrome

This has been the major statement that has pushed the hordes of brain-dead teenagers to the realm of the engineering world.

The typical parent scenario, “Our life is done. All we are doing is for your good.”

Then some distant relative will suggest, “Munne ko engineering karwa do. Life set ho jaayegi.” And then starts the vicious cycle.

I wonder, why don’t start a cow tabela(shed)?

Munne ko ghaas khila do, doodh bhi dene lagega. Aur gobar bhi karega.

There is nothing certain in this world. And you know what? The word ‘set’ has more meanings than any other word in the whole of English language.

So we wonder which ‘life set ho jaayegi’ they are looking at?

There are millions of engineers out there. Ask them, “Bhai, teri life set hui?”

3. Study Now, Enjoy Later

This is again a deadly sentence.

I still starkly remember what my high-school teacher said,

“The best life is a child aged 0-5. Once it starts getting some sense, the world becomes nonsense.”

This bloody race of life!

Why are you even competing for?

To feed your need?

No, I think it is to feed your greed. The greed is endless, and it can never be satiated.

Coming back to the story of ‘Study Now, Enjoy later’ a virtuous child is robbed of its innocence due to this conditioning of the society.

It starts getting serious once you come closer to important milestones of your educational life.

In 10th

Study now, enjoy in college.

In 12th (In College):

Study now, enjoy in your engineering

During BE:

Study now, enjoy after getting placed.

After getting job:

Study now, enjoy after getting married.

#After you marry and pop out a couple of kids, you say the same line to your kids.

And then somewhere in the middle, you lose your childhood, youth and you never know how life just slipped away out of your hands.

4. College in Farms

India churns out a million engineers every year. But the truth is – only a fraction of them are employable. The rest – the majority of them – end up in something they just drag on to avoid the tag of ‘unemployment’.

What can you expect from a country which has opened engineering colleges in farms and any available space possible?

It is no secret that engineering students stay amidst the raw nature when we speak of next-tier engineering colleges.

So raw that you would find drops of water leaking from the roof, smells of heavenly animal shit swilling your nose, and mating of dogs a commonplace on your college campus.

What better way of nature it is!

Seriously man, if you need to improve the quality of Indian engineers, improve the quality of Indian engineering Institutes. Let’s restrict college in farms and inaccessible rural areas.

5. Assignments first, breathe later

Even if you somehow get into those unearthly colleges, they don’t skip the trend of the general practice of education in India.

Be it top institutes or third-tier colleges, cramming theory is unprecedented part of Indian education system. Whatever it is, just keep on writing.

A popular joke says that when an engineer’s grave is dug, the skeleton is found to be writing assignments.

Their funda is: We don’t care what you write, just keep scribbling your pens against that white sheet of paper. Just waste paper, ink, time, and some part of your useless brain.

Who wants to learn when you can just do ‘kala on safed’ (Black ink on white paper).

Your learning? Zero. All we do is just plug in headphones and copy paste the assignments like a fucking zombie.

A very conservative estimate, 30-page assignment becomes a five page one as it changes five hands.

Then there are jugaads: Writing in big handwriting makes assignment look bigger, Draw huge diagrams to cover more pages, leave more spaces between the lines and whatnot.

Students might have learned a nothing in their academics, but they sure have learned ‘jugaad’.

6. Annual Gatherings

Oh man! How can we even forget them?

Those Sanskritized names of annual college festivals.

Ours was a colorful name: Antarang, which meant different colors of the rainbow.

The colors of a festival used to add life to otherwise a boring dead campus, filled with gloomy faces of hapless students bogged down with their respective snags.

All is not dead about it, but since even college fests have become a huge business, they are doing more evil than ever before. A regulation is required for that, and the complete management by students is equally devastating.

7. “Dekh lenge” attitude

The life of an Indian engineering student is subject to various frivolities. From petty street fights, water cooler brawls, shenanigans of logistics, Collegiate factional rivalries, and whatnots…

There is one them that underlines everything: Come what may, we’d deal with it.

“Dekh lenge” attitude can be very helpful when it comes to dealing with day-to-unstructured issues.

But when it comes to dealing with macro problems that cover a blanket of issues, an organized approach would work better.

It’s not just about skipping morning lectures to have a date with that cute girl, or waiting for Thursdays to have sweet dish at the cafeteria or NFS , PUBG or Fortnite competitions on the third floor of the hostel.

There is a lack of a plan in everything which just makes an already confused student more chaotic. Though a little bit of ambiguity is good, an overdose of obscurity will lead to madness.

8. Meetings at the tapri

This may be more important than air-conditioned conference room meetings of large MNCs.

Here a real deal is discussed, rather than the vagueness of PowerPoint presentations that takes an eternity to come down to the ground level. Everything happens on floor, not in the boardrooms.

A decision of creating a building can be made in boardrooms, but a building is actually made through getting hands dirty.

Participation of students in management and having their opinion on a regular basis will help improve the process of engineering.

For that to actually happen, one needs to note down what discussions actually happen at the paan tapri. Those are the real conversations and not the flowery ones you’d like to hear which suits your requirement.

9. Project till Eternity

One has to get away with it.

As I remember Joy from 3 idiots who committed suicide as his professor rejected his invention.

There are many Joys in this world, who get crumpled before they can bloom. Just because the flower doesn’t belong to this place doesn’t mean it needs to be crushed.

Change is uncomfortable, and most people resist change.

Projects in the final year are the representations of this. As someone said, “Choose your project partner more wisely than your life partner.”

10. Placements

Forget it. It was a joke.

11. Death

Now your time on earth is over, it’s time for Heaven. What! It could be heaven… or hell?

Nope, Indian engineers have gone through hell during their stint. So they definitely deserve a heaven.

Rest in Peace, Indian Engineers!