Meow

They say that the CAT is out of the bag. Which leads me to the inference in true deductive logic style as expressed in the Data Interpretation section that the bag is now the safest place to be in order to escape its wrath. It has overrun everything that I see and hear about. I open the newspaper and there on the front page are two bamboozled looking guys contemplating over a sheet of paper as if they were chalking out the latest strategy to storm Osama’s cave and capture him alive. Turning to page two or three or four… is no respite either as the darned institutes have overrun them as well with their 2 pennies worth on the subject. Wishes abound from all quarters to the candidates who have filled up the form for the paper and set this great ball in motion which has finally come to bear on this morning’s newspaper ruining my morning cup of coffee. So I decided to host my own take on the matter a la Saurabh Dey SimCAT. Rules for the examination are as follows:
There is no attempt absolutely towards sanity
The following represents the pent up emotions of a disgruntled individual. No channel dare subscribe to them either in part or in whole. If any of them do, help them god.
Any resemblance to any question paper anywhere means that you are watching Channel V and MTV too much and spending a fortune on SMSs trying to answer their questions in an attempt to win a three wheeler scooter for your beloved.
Every question however has at most one correct alternative (if at all).
Number of questions is as of yet nebulous. Depends entirely on my mood and occupation with other pre occupations. Lets see as we progress

And yes almost forgot – if any of you raised a hand at the end of the instructions to ask about negative marking, please stop right now. I fear reading the following will increase your shrink bills and I don’t want your pocket to blame my poor blog for this.

Q1. Select the correct alternative from the following
you gave CAT
you took CAT
you delivered CAT
I never said that every question was going to have 4 alternatives did I?

Q2. What is the phenomenon called CAT?
a religious congregation organized by the national integration front as a show of secular strength of the country
a well organized country wide traffic jam at pre determined locations
a fashion parade at least in cities like Delhi
why does your fickle mind always search for the fourth option? I am not in the business of delivering this part of the question again and again




Q3. Who benefits from CAT
coaching centers that are now finding their founders on hot chairs in talk shows across channels
24 hour news channels that have thankfully found something to cover their schedules now that Osama and his kin have decided to take a week long break
Newspapers that have something besides the glitterati to fill their pages with.
Once again your eyes are on this part of the question. Shoo!!

Q4. What are the aftereffects of giving CAT (attempt this question only if you have answered question numbered 1.)
intense drowsiness
a mind that cannot stop trying to find the remainder after dividing the 8 digit number with another 6 digit number correct to the fifth decimal place
hands that cannot stop filling up circles at the very touch of a pencil
eyes that are searching for the fourth alternative while filling up their father’s name.

That has more than taxed my already dim wits to the end of their tether and therefore I call it a day in terms of the paper. No doubt you would like to know the answers to the above and so they are presented purely for entertainment purposes below:

A1. As the answer seems to be unobvious at first perusal, lets adopt that famous approach that has stood so many in good stead through all the multiple choice papers till date – deductive reasoning.
Option 1 - states that you gave CAT. Now unless you think that CAT is a gift item that can be gift wrapped at the nearest curio shop, I cannot fathom you could give it. Another possibility for this to happen could be that the CAT is indeed of the Tom variety and that you gave it off for some reason or the other. Still no definitive outcome to the veracity of this question. So lets park our thoughts on that for the moment and move along to find a better one. In case nothing else fits, we know where to come back
Option 2 - states that you took CAT. Now in case the first option is correct, and we are agreed that the basic physical law of conservation of mass takes precedence over all other matters, this option has to be correct. Did not understand that last part? Well here’s the explanation – if someone gave CAT, then there has to be someone who took it!! Much like those questions about shaking hands at a party (as if all that anyone attending a party ever does is shake hands with every other person and then stands to contemplate how many hands did he shake so that he can go and earn a penny for every hand). But but but !!! there is the all important instruction that says that there can be at most one correct alternative and in that case both these options are ruled out.
Option 3 - states that you delivered CAT. Now according the evolutionary rules and laws, this option restricts itself to the female population of the living world and the male sea horses. Even among this restricted solution domain for the answer, further cognizance is required of the fact that only the feline females qualify and if there is any exception, then they belong inside an X-Women movie or a bio lab. Sorry not correct this one as well
Option 4 – If you are still in the business of looking for this part of the question, no comments.
A2. You might think that the answer to the problem lies right in front of you in developing an addendum to the problem in terms of developing the fifth option as none of the above and mark it but let me present my case first.
Option 1 – If you have seen the people waiting to enter the examination centre, then you know that I have hit the nail on the head. The guy in front of the third grill of the gate from the right just took out the photograph of his family deity when asked to produce his I card while the girl on the third seat from the front looked heaven ward instead of the question paper when the invigilator dispensed with her duties. And I will definitely swear by the observation that all religions were represented in equal measure by all those gathered at the location. It has also been debated that some guys were garnering unfair advantage by two timing gods as they prayed cross-religion just in case the primary pantheon had decided to go on a picnic at the opportune moment.
Option 2 – If you are one of the people who had to drive to the place of examination then you are going to tick this one without even looking anywhere else. The entire set up reeks of a well organized crime mafia. This is a well orchestrated plan by the petroleum companies that want your car to guzzle more fuel as you wait for the light to turn green and then give up on the last hope of reaching anywhere when everyone else decides that the traffic light was just a fancy idea that someone at the municipal council put forward so that his cousin running the traffic light manufacturing business could get some work. Anyway hold that pencil till you hear the other arguments as well.
Option 3 – Guys in chest hugging t shirts and the latest designer jeans and females dressed to make CAT the quintessential fashion get together on that fateful Sunday morning – tell me if you need anything else to make a fashion statement. The remaining honors are of course served by the snazzy wheels that ferry the divas to the performing arena (read exam center). If you were ugly dressed gate crasher at this high society do, tick this one.
Option 4 – Duh!!!

Going quite well with the answering procedure aren’t you????

A3 – Beneficiaries as if CAT were an exhibition cricket match. But let’s dispense with our duty of presenting the cases in favor of the options.
Option 1 – Suddenly the CEOs of the coaching centers are finding themselves as hot properties and talk shows are lapping them up by the hour. Change the channel and you find another founder principal of another tuition center extolling the virtues of the paper and the ingenuity of their profession in operating a mass assembly line of Management students. The thing that really gets my nerves at their extreme end is the tone with which these management gurus counsel the distraught students that use the helpline being run by the channels. The amount of voice modulation that one person out on show really made me think whether he would have made a better career option out of being a radio DJ or a politician’s lip sync-ing background aide.
Option 2 – If the above is true then along with the tuition center executives, then the talk show hosts hosting them are also finding themselves enjoying a particular enjoyable time under the spotlights. Suddenly they are having a rather nice experience playing agony aunts to the millions of agonized nephews and nieces all across the country and repeating everything that their esteemed guests are saying as if the people that are watching their show have minds that can only process information that has been relayed twice! But they are getting their sponsorship money aren’t they? And that makes them pretty good candidates for the position of the correct answer.
Option 3 – If options 1 and 2 have caught your imagination, then this option is bound to be correct through all forms of induction, mathematical or otherwise. No need for any further explanations, I hope.
Option 4 – (Duh!)^2

A4 – This one has a rider already inside the question so the applicability is of course to only those who have once in their lifetime come across the phenomena of CAT (the type that is not listed inside the Oxford English dictionary)
Option 1 – I confess to having lost my senses sometime between the 35th and 36th minute as the section on verbal drew to a close according to the time management routine that I had set up for myself and therefore, I at least am all for this option. Also contributing to this part of the answer are the fact that the people in charge of doling out the admission cards make sure that the exam centre is so far away from your home that you are already asleep by the time you reach that place. So yeah at least for me this is a correct option but as already evidenced, wait.
Option 2 – I cannot for the life of me understand why they insist on giving preference to non recurring non terminating unreal specimen of the number line. They could have tested the same mental faculties of the people by asking them to divide 4 by 5 but they insisted on adding a further 3 distinct non consecutive digits to the numerator and 5 of the same to the denominator and just so that there fun was not hampered in any manner, they decided to chuckle at the poor examinee when he read the question only to find out that all the digits except the 4 and 5 already mentioned had been kept secret from him. Imagine the chagrin, when someone confronts the question’s remaining part thus – “the product of the digits of the numerator is a number that is twice the square root of the number of cows that the Delhi Municipal Corporation has not dared to remove from the roads till date and that of the denominator is 2 more than the numerator when it was wrongly copied by someone who was looking at the paper upside down. Find the probability that the quotient happens to lie somewhere in the brain of the questioner” (now damned you are if you don’t know the number of cows that find the Delhi roads so amenable to their otherwise sensitive hooves)
Option 3 – At least one hangover that this examination leaves behind is the itching to fill up circles at every possible instant. I still remember the time when some days after attempting the paper all I could do was impatiently scan the papers for Os just so that I could fill them up and satisfy my mind that the day’s quota of questions had been attempted. Trouble began only when I needed to analyze the choices.
Option 4 – Ummmm… haven’t we had a discussion before on this??
That more or less concludes my commentary on this SimCAT. Somehow I have a feeling that the explanations were rather inconclusive and left the reader searching for my address in order to inflict some physical harm. Guess by now you have reached the feelings that I had as I reached for the paper this morning. What can I say other than “wish you the best of luck”.

Bawda Boys

Kolhapur’s answer to the Spice Girls of the world. The sign post outside this particular hair cutting saloon would in the strictest traditions of phonetic transpositions from Marathi to English beg you to consider the insides of the shack as “ B-A-V-D-A B-O-Y-I-J” – the best salon in the entire good god’s creation to get a haircut (strictly for men). That was the first sight that greeted me as I sojourned into the Maratha heartland on a quick recon mission to know more about the place that I would be calling home for at least the near future. Kolhapur comes across as quite the quaint little town that you would think of it to be. It comes replete with its set of “you-call-them-roads?” roads, obnoxious spelling neon signage, tremendously ritualistic Mahalakshmi temples, surprisingly board-able cheap hotels, shacks which pass themselves off as supermarkets (of course they still insist on spelling it as supar-markit) and last but not the least scores of shops selling those marquee Kolhapuri chappals. Nothing out of the ordinary at least to someone who has spent a good part of the entire of last year in the by-lanes that make up the rural map of the country but still there’s something in the air that makes this place stand out among all the places that I have been to yet.
The first reason for Kolhapur to be in the special mantle would of course have to be that for the first time in more than one and a half year, I have been stationed at a place long enough to unpack and lay my toiletries on the shelf. The company finally decided that enough was actually enough and it was time that the menace called me was fixed to spot so as to localize and try to minimize the disastrous consequences of my bare minimum presence. So I found myself taking up the post of a design engineer at the machine building unit of the company which they could have located anywhere in the world actually but then thought of the most non descript locale to make people rot and thus this unit was born. The town boasts of an airport which has the silliest reason for existence till date – a single flight! Yes that too an Air Deccan (aptly renamed Air Dhakkan by the enterprising souls of the place) which decides to land or not purely on the whims of the pilot or the stewardess or any other passenger! Lore has it that they actually have a raffle on board (you know Deccan. They are too “no-frills” to organize a lottery) to pick up the passenger who gets to decide whether they want to stop over at the place or not. Once you are over the initial shock of the airport, the national highway number 4 – part of the Golden Quadrilateral (the signpost tells you in decaying letters – much like Vajpayee’s knee) greets you and you realize that this has to be the birthplace for all traffic rules in the world. You know how they tell you that the scientific method to solve the problem begins by defining the problem first? Well then this highway happens to be the very definition of traffic chaos. They have a notional divide for the left and right side of the road but someone forgot to mention to the drivers here that this separation was not meant to make 2 roads out of one. I guess they took the entire ideal of buy one get one free a little too far.
The highway gives way to the town road and every bone in your body is tested for fatigue failure in a stretch of about 2 kms. Guess where the army got the entire idea of obstacle courses from? If you survive this shock and your heart is still somewhere within the rib cage, then “Welcome to the City of Chatrapati Shahuji Maharaj”. Thankfully they only used the highway to hell as an entrance to the city and decided that the souls brave enough to have weathered the road deserved better treatment once inside the city limits. So they paved the roads. God bless the local authorities. As you enter the place, it’s like any other town that I have seen till date. Dhabas lining the road waiting for the truck drivers to have their breakfast greet you with their “in-your-face” banners, petrol pumps doing brisk business and of course long abandoned police posts. The scenery that greets you inside the confines of the town are reminiscent of any town that was forgotten when they decided to follow the Gregorian calendar and thrust upon its existence the fact that the rest of the world is now in the 21st century. Given a fruitful representation in the Gregorian council, I am sure the Chatrapatis of the place would have bargained for a derailment of the process of setting the clock of human progress ticking by a good couple of centuries. But here I am one of the most optimistic of the gods few good men and I always look at the bright side of things. So let’s forgive and forget and move on shall we?
Next on the list has to be dwelling for the initial few days and I am pleasantly surprised (an emotion that has all the more significance for me because of the amazing rarity with which it decides to manifest itself in my life) to find hotels that are not only cheap but eminently board-able. The rooms are airy and best of all, the hotel staff has not yet come to realize the ideal of all men being created equal the effect of which is that you are treated nothing less than a god or a semi/ demi version of above or in my case a pay per use customer (who in most cases takes prominence over the previous two). As remarked earlier in some post or the other the cellular revolution seems to have caught up well with the junta here too and they are well on their way to a revolution because of the same. I am sure that your eyebrows have done their arching exercise at the mention of Kolhapur and couture in the same sentence but let me elaborate. I am convinced by the very rate at which Kolhapuris are answering their mobile phones that they are well on their way to designing a dhoti with a pocket for the same and if that is not a fashion revolution of the highest order then I don’t know what is.
While I am still considering the ins and outs of Hicksville, I am surprised to note a Mercedes Benz zip by. I tap my head on one side and dismiss this as a hangover of Indonesia where they were plying as lowly taxis. A few steps more and I am distinctly made aware that a Prado wants me to scoot my heavy frame off the road so that it can cross over. No doubt mere hallucinations these. Another few steps and I dare not say those words for I am afraid that I might have to search for a Marathi shrink before anything else in this place. Is it a streak of light, is it a phantom menace? No it’s a goddamn DC redesigned Mercedes S Class in all its splendor jostling for space on the road with a cow who has decided that the particular piece of tar it is presently standing on contrasts with its complexion quite nicely and that this is where it shall attain nirvana. So hell to all the humans and redesigned Benz’s can go jump into the lake. The riddle gets solved next morning when I learn that the region happens to be extremely prosperous on account of the cash crop farming especially sugar cane and so it is that Prados and Benzs are quite the short change for these fellows and had the road authorities been kind enough to build ones that had a lifetime more than a 16 day insect, I am sure all the hullabaloo over Tendulkar’s Ferrari would have gone quite unnoticed.
Slowly the image that emerges from the dust of the roadside is not very rustic if I may put it that way. The string of pleasant surprises pleasantly enough continued through the rest of the sojourn as I discovered a Smokin’ Joe’s Pizza outlet and a Café Coffee Day inside the municipal limits of the city (and for someone who goes by the name of Saurabh Dey, the discovery is as epochal as Newton discovering gravity or Archimedes’ Eureka moment albeit with clothes). So it is that the last few days have been not at all bad even though I am in constant fear of losing the touch with Bengali (my mother tongue) what with all the ikdun and tikdun Marathi that I am constantly having to mouth for daily subsistence. Another thing causing a tremendous amount of concern is the red as oxygenated blood mixed with iron oxide for added effect Kolhapuri cuisine especially the dum biryanis that these fellowa dish out with such fanfare. For someone who is not accustomed to these parts, my insides have on their own learnt that red means danger. (take that you biologists – claiming that cell differentiation took away the power of rationalization from all somatic cells of the body other than the brain. Guess their insides never shook hands with Kolhapuri dum birayani.)
The coming days promise to unravel a lot more about the place and am looking forward to reveling in the friendly winter sun of the place. And of course there is the unending excitement of being an esteemed customer of Bawda Boys isn’t there?