Added 4 articles

_posts/2016-08-06-the-heroic-in-men.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "The Heroic in Men"
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: editorial
+---
+
+What is it about the Wailing Wall of the Herod’s Temple or the St Peter’s Basilica that it leaves us gaping in awe at the majestic structure? What is it about the stupendous pillars of Karnak, rooted in the ground and outstretching out to the sky,  that we feel so timid and fragile in front of the massive boulders and sink to hunches, as if the heavenly weight were to be borne by our undernourished shoulders? How do the gargantuan pyramids manage to diminish a man’s existence and disparage
+his birth, by the virtue of its size, even when most of it is contrived to be empty? Is it the sanctity of those beautifully carved colossal stones that makes us look small and our deeds appear blasphemous in contrast to its holistic superiority? Or is it just something in our brains?
+
+Men have always worshipped greatness more than any God. Humans are enticed by enormity more than any form of beauty. This is the lust that drives the sudden influx of emotions when we stand facing the aforementioned works of architectural dexterity but to anything and everything that a man feels small and insignificant, in front of. 
+
+Ponder over why man never has sculptured a bourgeois figure for a Demigod but always the humongous Herculean figures with oblong cheek bones and robust body. He has always felt inadequate for himself but dreamt of the extraordinary. 
+
+But look at it this way. This underestimation of ‘self’ has worked wonders for him, apart from the cases it hadn’t. It is this submission to the ethereal that leads to introspection. Its equivalent to the ‘divine intervention’ that we talk about, which directs you to look back at your life in the chronological order of the events and realise the wrong of your ways. You close your eyes, feeling the cold summer sweat in a place of worship maybe, and it's when the first
+tear that rolls down that you feel the sacrilege on your part. At this moment are the epiphanies reached and characters change. It would have been the time when the most ruthless would refrain from killing and the most nefarious would drop his stolen bag of gold. You open your eyes slowly and exhale, penance in your breath.
+
+The central theme of the entire episode is the way the man looks down upon his own self as a diminutive element, dwarfed by all that is ‘majestic’ and ‘great’, brings about the change in him. It’s with an agonising heart that he is able to look into the mirror and this is when the metamorphosis happen.
+
+But think of a man, the one who is in the zenith of his career and tell him that altruism is the noblest virtue and that he must live for others. Admonish him that he has been such a narcissist monster and then he would question his own beliefs. He would marinate in his own mediocrity with the guilt for his own unworthiness. Unable to become what he considers as the ideal, he would give up trying. And since the noblest is beyond his grasp, he gives up eventually all ideals. Integrity
+killed by internal corruption. Conscience used against itself. He takes himself for a sinister who can never come clean. 
+
+Now that he has taken himself as your disciple, praise the ordinary so that greatness is no longer a distinction. Imagine again those Greek sculptures of the Gods be grotesque pieces of stones rather than the virile muscularity contoured all through their body. Would you bow? Now that you know whom you bow in front of is someone amongst you. This way you have destroyed his strive for excellence. Just as a hiker would lose his prerogatives if one amongst every ten scaled the Everest. 
+
+Now that we have unravelled our weaknesses, would it be rather comfortable to say that Randist theories on the philosophy of individualism were correct and have provided a plausible explanations of the loopholes in our idea of self-assessment. Can a temple be contrived in such a way that, instead of a feeling minimalistic, we could feel extravagant. The one that could have the horizontal blind like pillars and not those towering kinds; whose interior would be scaled in such a
+way as to magnify the spirit of humans rather than stunting it. Will this modification in structure figurative bring a change in the gusto by which a person approaches life?
+
+Something to think about, indeed. For he, who thinks of himself as the master and not the slave, is unimpressionable. He would have the audacity to embark upon new journeys without flinching to the fangs of hatred hurled at him during the course. The most peculiar idiosyncrasy is cutting the chase for the great, as greatness can be found within the self. Self-amplification instead of self-pity. Recognising your worth and fostering in an healthy environment and not giving away to the
+wrath of a crushed self esteem. Being driven by a vision and not by social acceptance and appreciation. It would take a diligent effort to suppress an individualist because it is only himself that he works for.
+
+Titillating it is, to talk of glory but this person, an individual, is susceptible to becoming a self-centered narcissist. And if everybody begin exercising their independent will then societal harmony would shrink to niches and civilisations would fall. Shadowing one’s inadequacies is ignorance and change doesn’t happen until challenged by disapproval of the self. 
+
+_Hence, the assertion completes the cycle, in the argument of how to be look at oneself and whether to believe or not in the heroic in men._

_posts/2016-08-07-childrens-crusade.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Children's crusade"
+image: children's crusade.jpg
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: editorial
+---
+
+Wars are absurd. World war II was more so in the sense that it was fought by people who had no place in it - school teachers, bakers, farmers, fishermen and fresh graduates - ranks and ranks of people enlisted as bullet fodder. These people who had no or little experience in handling a gun were like children in most respects. Thus it would not be wrong to call it a Children’s Crusade, as Kurt Vonnegut does in his novel ‘Slaughterhouse - Five’.
+
+The propaganda of the time glorified enlisted men as heroes and unfortunate victims as martyrs, inspiring impressionable young men to enlist in search of an adventure. Once the first bullet whizzed past them, all the philosophy went right out of the window. All the mattered was their survival.
+
+Most retellings of the war, paperbacks to movies in full 3D, are quixotic when they depict the soldiers of the Allied forces as brave men fighting a righteous war.
+
+If we juxtapose this analogy to our lives too, aren’t we too part of a Children’s Crusade? As kids we always looked up to the achievements of great men and women. We decide to pursue our dreams but when we actually achieve them, all that remains in us is sense of accomplishment mingled with a tinge of disappointment. An example we can all relate to would involve the conundrum created by the brand-IIT. In contrast to the utopian IIT we had in mind before coming here, it would be a humble understatement to even admit that we weren’t disappointed after coming here. ~~Since our idea of glory itself is a fallacy, we are bound to fail whenever we strive to achieve it.~~ _Our  sense of glory, hence gets clouded by the abominable lull created by this feeling of uneasiness._
+
+As children, we are too innocuous to ask the right questions. Or even if we do, we are told never to ask such a question again. We believe whatever we are told. Once we grow up such questions become hackneyed and trite to the effect that we don’t bother what lies beyond those questions. Yet, sometimes we are left with no real choice but to keep living our old dreams that no longer make any sense. Life is in itself the war we must survive by contributing our part to society (be it by studying or by working for Thomso/Cognizance or whatever). In some way or the other we are playing our part in the Children’s Crusade.
+
+The idea infesting the paragraphs above, being a product of a casual musing on part of some random minds in this campus is merely an observation of not much consequence at all. So, coming up with a conclusion has been a bit of a pain in the backside as they say. At the risk of straying from the topic, it is worth mentioning that few people do come and take world by storm forever changing the world. Looking at them, can we say that they too are a part of a Children’s Crusade? Maybe we haven’t seen much of the world or lack the intellectual means to realize the nature of the world. The world in itself can never be contained in as crude a philosophical observation as the Children’s Crusade.

_posts/2016-08-07-philosophy-is-death-of-man.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Philosophy is the death of man"
+image: philosophy.jpg
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: editorial
+---
+
+Albert Camus once said, “Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is”. I guess he simply felt that our need to be acceptable takes away a part of us that was meant to define our individuality and instead leaves behind something alien in its place. What some call transformation and self-actualization could be a futile and miniscule attempt to make ourselves a little similar to that which we deem worthy of existence. How does one decide what is worth existing or fighting for?
+Is it what makes us happy? 
+
+![Albert Camus](/images/posts/albert-camus.png){: style="width: 65%;"}
+Albert Camus, the man behind __absurdism.__
+{: style="text-align: center"}
+
+Probably not, because if you look around for just a moment you’ll surely find more frowns and grimaces than smiles. Everyday I see people running scared of happiness, scared to let it out as if it’s a disease; on the corner most tables of restaurants, in buses, in workplaces, in the market, in the balcony of their homes pretending to enjoy company if they have any at all. Nothing deserves attention until it is spoken and even then we jump at the first chance of escaping that
+situation. We’re not blind, we just don’t feel responsible. 
+
+If I say something is worth my time, it would rarely be my honest opinion. I’d be hoping that the person I’m doing it for is looking at me. But that can’t happen in every case, true- we hope the society does make a note of it; after all what the people say becomes the truth. I’m not blaming anyone; all I’m saying is that many of us live our lives without realizing what we really want. We’re a nation that criminalizes homosexuality on the pretext that it is unnatural, this being
+one of the many ways in which our traditions defy logic and violate the universal freedom rights. So if we are so smart as to make pompous intriguing claims like __‘philosophy will be the death of man’__ we must really know our world well, we must have disobeyed every living social being that is conditioned to the system to the point of irreversibility. But then that’s not the case either.
+
+So in the absence of free will or absolutism we would be but different versions of the sole form of existence we know, different only in the way we look. Take this for example, when you see an animal in the zoo or in the wild, you associate some attributes to it which are present in all the other creatures of the same species. You might distinguish between them based on their skin colour, size, countenance; but these are all physical features and we have only nature to thank for it.
+Animals differ from us in this respect, they blindly follow the laws that nature has set down for them, they don’t defy rules because they lack the ability to question them or to even notice anything out of the box in the first place. This beats the whole purpose of an ethical treatment of dilemmas in their world.
+
+In our world however, man has suffered every time he has stopped questioning. Man must question, he must strive to find answers, he must dare to think different, he must; howsoever scary that may be. It is the only way we grow, evolve on a psychological level. It is the only way we can realize what we really are capable of: our strengths, our weaknesses and our mistakes.
+
+As an underlying thought in the Shiva Trilogy by Amish, it has been said that a tradition that makes sense today might not make sense tomorrow. The caste system, for instance, made sense during the early Vedic period but is no longer valid because we have come a long way from those times. Our physical attributes have remained the same, we still resemble our ancestors but our thoughts have changed. And psychology is the science that helps us understand this change, it only seeks to
+direct us on a path giving us someplace to begin figuring out this vast ocean of the human mind and its working, it does not however wish to order us in anyway. The psychologists themselves have nothing more concrete than their own imagination to prove their hypothesis.
+
+This also begs the question: could it all be a part of the natural order of things? Is it possible to experience cognitive changes without inducing thoughts? This could also mean that animals might have the ability to extract emotional content from the most extreme of their experiences in whatever minute way they can. Maybe we don’t see it because it’s not the way we do it.
+
+![The Time Machine Cover](/images/posts/the-time-machine-cover.png){: style="width: 40%;"}
+
+Maybe philosophy doesn’t possess the power to mold our cognition in the absence of an initial thought in the same direction, latent but natural and strong. After all, philosophy itself comes from the ‘scientific’ treatment of some emotion (and bear in mind, I say ‘scientific treatment’ only to prevent myself from transgressing into a completely irrelevant domain). But then maybe this is just an idea you fall upon one day that ceases to make sense the next. Nevertheless,
+the comparison to animals, though, important is not absolute. One could find some idea about it in the novel, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells where the author explains a futuristic world devoid of technology that has turned into one, way more backward than the history we’ve developed out of. Interestingly psychology is the only science where we are free to make sense out of every idea the way we want to. And if that philosophy is unfathomable to you, you’re probably
+reading something you don’t need to. Philosophy was never meant to be complex.
+
+Saying that philosophy will be the death of man is like saying that neuroscience will be the death of free will or in other words - the cure is the root cause of the illness. Something like religion - it caused the Crusades and ended it, it teaches us to live in peace and harmony but works as a whetstone for perpetrators to sharpen their weapons against humanity. 
+
+Furthermore we create an illusion for ourselves to satisfy our need to be as per someone else’s liking. And the forces that drive us to achieve the same can be attributed to the laws of philosophy. We think, and we reach conclusions. Conclusions wherein we tend to attain beyond reach and somewhere we keep draining ourselves. But, isn’t that what life is all about- “To grow, to be more”. And it’s our ethical reasoning that shall be responsible for the aforesaid endeavor. Will
+philosophy ever make sense as a whole? I do not think so. It is like a huge mountain of knowledge that gets covered in layers of foolery from time to time.
+
+The understanding that it demands is currently missing somewhere behind the sheets of our casually accepted beliefs, do we ponder upon things to satisfy a personal thirst for knowledge and depth or just because a random idea flew into our minds from the factory of world cohesion? What makes us different from animals is our cognition; it is there because we have immense scope for bringing a change that can revolutionize everything and not just our own lives.
+
+The man of today lives as if there is no philosophy. Does that mean we are content, that we have all the happiness of the world in our hearts or that we have perpetually accepted the universal truth- desire is futile because nothing lasts forever?
+But then does philosophy have a ‘survival value’- a term often used by C. S. Lewis? Can it die? It sure can disappear because we won’t die instantly if it does but even then, philosophy has no survival value, it gives value to survival instead. Philosophy has lost importance today because we have failed in our duty to preserve the art. Everything ranging from music to motion pictures to our actions and the words we say are becoming meaningless. We’ve been so numb to the pain that our
+words and actions cause that it’s difficult to realize it anymore. Philosophy was supposed to grow but everyone chose to abuse it. I’m still not sure if philosophy can ever be the cause of such agony that it leads a man to his grave but there is one thing I am particularly certain about- we will cause the death of our own philosophy and the process has already begun!
+

_posts/2016-08-07-summer-diaries-tata-steel.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Summer Diaries : Tata Steel, Jamshedpur"
+image: tata-steel.jpg
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: career 
+---
+
+_Aman Mansuri is a 4th year student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Read on as he recounts his experience of interning with Tata Steel, Jamshedpur during the summers of 2016._
+
+If you want to have an intern in core engineering which leaves you with enough time to still pursue other career options, Tata Steel is the company for you. The Inspire Summer Internship Programme through which Tata Steel recruits paid interns comprises an 8 week project which focuses on live problems the industry is facing.
+
+### Making it there
+
+Tata Steel follows a typical selection process that includes an aptitude test, group discussions followed by personal interviews. Aptitude test consists of the core questions from your respective field of study along with logical reasoning and English. The questions are easy and you will be able to clear it with your basic concepts being clear. However, a good score in department specific questions will increase your chances of getting shortlisted irrespective of your
+performance in the other two sections. 
+
+Aptitude test is followed by a group discussion on a current affairs topic. Make yourself comfortable with the topic that has been in news lately and if you are lucky, you might get the same topic you went through a night before. Group Discussion further narrows down the pool to a few candidates. It is followed by a Personal Interview round with different panels for different departments. Interview is mostly technical with a few typical HR questions.
+
+### Work
+
+Induction day at Tata Steel is where they give you a sneak peak into the reach and working of the company. It is followed by a safety training and then projects are allotted based on your personal preferences. Projects vary from highly research focused to extensive experimental analysis which requires frequent plant visits. 
+
+![Tata Engineers](/images/posts/tata-2.png){: style="width: 55%;"}
+
+Tata Steel Jamshedpur division is an integrated steel plant where right from the raw material processing to rolling out steel coils is done at the same place. So as an intern, you have the opportunity to work in plants ranging from Pellet plant, Coke Plant to Hot Strip Mill. I was assigned a project in the furnace area of Hot Strip Mill. The aim of the project was to increase the reliability of the Induced Draft( ID  ) Fan in one of the three furnaces. It revolved around Vibration
+Analysis and bearing temperature reduction. I was able to decrease the delay time to close to 50% during my 2 months stint as an intern. Your work experience heavily relies on the guide and plant allotted to you.Working hours are from 8:30 am to 5:30 pm, 5 days a week which is subjected to change depending on the attitude of the guide allotted to you. All the workers are very co-operative to the extent that they might consider giving a thought about leaving their work to help you do
+your own. Work is not very hectic and is easily manageable. 
+
+
+![Basketball Court](/images/posts/tata-1.png){: style="width: 75%;"}
+
+The company provides 3rd AC return tickets from Jamshedpur to respective institutes. The accommodation is also provided in its Graduate Trainee hostels with a double sharing and a single room if you are lucky enough. The food expenses are not covered, though there is a mess in the hostel that can get you through 2 months time. However, Jamshedpur does have good eating options to say the most. Anand, Madrasi, Moti Mahal, Novelty are the places to soothe your taste buds if you are not
+satisfied with the mess food. There are a lot of street food options available around the hostel area. 
+
+### The place
+
+Jamshedpur doesn’t have much entertainment options. Dimna lake, Dalma Sanctuary, Jubilee Park and Zoo are the major attractions in and around the city. It also has a multiplex and a bowling alley. And if you find yourself with enough time on weekends, you can pay Kolkata or Puri a visit which are 4 and 8 hours via train respectively.
+
+### Takeaways
+
+To sum it up, Tata Steel is a very good option for both the core enthusiasts and the people who want to have a core experience while still pursuing some other career options. Work culture is culled out and people are warm and helpful. The city might seem boring at first but once you get used to it, you may start enjoying its peaceful and slow life. And if you are diligent and hard -working enough, you might end up getting a PPO!
+
+_If you have an internship story you’d like to share, get in touch at watchout.iitr@gmail.com_
+