Somebody once said “Mechies are destined to be gay.” Looking at the state of affairs at IITs I certainly believed it ( note that I don’t follow it so you can be sure that I am no fairy 
). In the IIT system, the light ( I mean a girl ) first came to the department in 1981 ( they ran news articles in the papers with pictures of the brave lady) . It was thought that the perspective might change after the guts the first lady showed however it hasn’t changed much. Looking at the batches at IITK, one is bound to be gay! The batchwise NMC ( None Male Count and this is a term coined by this humble blogger ) for recent batches goes thus:
Y1 : 3
Y2 : 0*
Y3 : 1
Y4 : 2
Y5 : 0*( I think some girls in the Y2 batch got their branch changed to Mech. Monomita Di?? Someone from IITK, plz correct me on this.)
However, this november came with another ray of hope. The IITK chapter of AME ( Association of Mechanical Engineers ) publishes its monthly newsletter by the name AMEN ( AME Newsletter ). I was sleeping in my room when somebody slipped in this shitpage. I woke up and picked it up. The front contained the usual bullshit about a Prof winning some schol. There was this interview with the Director of CMMACS ( Communion of Mathematical Mads And Cynical Stupids was what I thought to be the full name but it turned out to be Center for Mathematical Modeling And Computer Simulation ) about research scenario in India and things like that. Bored, I was about to show it the dustbin when luckily I turned the page and saw this :
SPEAK OUT
TA201 is the machining and manufacturing course being offered to students in their 3rd semester. The course is different from rest in respect that it involves practical application along with bookish knowledge. The major onus of the projects lies on the students themselves, giving them a brush to deal with machines to manufacture the various components. Innovation met with time and ability constraint is a trying situation indeed. So what we are left with is redundancy, the old ideas being modified a bit. In the end students have gone for the time tested ideas. Nevertheless, the students are working enthusiastically on the project. But can the project be truly called as an ‘innovation’? The answer to this question lies in the hands of time.
Seeing from our perspective, the labs are quite interesting and exciting, despite an apprehension arisen after the frequent questioning,“How would you (being girls) manage in the labs?” As for now it looks more of skill than mere brawn work. It’s a myth that girls find it difficult working in TA labs. We have no less interest or enthusiasm than our peers.
( Isha Ghai & Surbhi Goel )
Although the sex ratio is lopsided in all the departments, the Department Of Mechanical Engineering seems to be specializing in repelling girls. With almost all of the Mechies being XY chromosomed, most of us poor guys spend hours and hours worth of classes without seeing a single woman our age. Profs are all we get in those hours of mental slumber. May be, some girl out there reads this, gets inspired ( or conspired ) by Isha and Surbhi and decides to be brave. Do us some good buddie. Mech’s cool. Talk about swindlers, here’s one!!
PS: Why am I posting so late? Afterall, this newsletter came out in November. Well it was lost in the tonnes of pages dumped in my room. Today I was looking for some waste paper to make paper aeroplanes and luckily fished out this. Worth a post, that newsletter.
