Thursday, August 16, 2007

Mundaaysing @ the IISc

Making myself some time to blog though i've been assigned a boringly stupid task since 4 weeks.

Dont get confused looking at the title with my previous posts on IISc. This is totally different one. One much before i came to know people at IISc.

Probably this was my first time going to the Tata Book House @ IISc. It was in my 4th semester of Engineering. As few of you might know that i had topped our class in 3rd semester. The annual day was conducted in our 4th semester and we (the toppers of 3rd semester, though i hate to get recognised that way) were asked to buy books of our choice in any outlet preferrably Tata Book House(TBH). It was the idea of our then Princi Prof. Anthony Thomas to get it from TBH as he was a professor @ IISc.

Four of us were asked to get books worth Rs.500/- from our pocket and were assured to refund it back but bills were supposed to be submitted. I had to get books for another 500 more in the same scheme as i was getting 500 more from my HOD Prof. Hemavathi as I had scored the maximum marks in her subject, Logic Design. I was happy that i would be purchasing books for Rs.1000/- which would be refunded. Hehe!! First time ever.

On the eve of Annual Day, I went to TBH getting Rs.1500/- from my father. 500 extra if I found something interesting. After a long search, i finalized on four books which i remember were

1. The Complete Reference UNIX
2. Compiler Design - Aho, Ullman & Sethi
3.
4.

(Will update once i remember all)

On adding up the prices of the four it had come upto Rs.1000/- and odd (Might be 1026), I thought that was sufficient and asked them to bill it! Only then I came to know that they were offering 20% discount. After the rebate, it came down to Rs.876/-. I was even more happy that i could buy some more books to patch up the difference between 1000 and 876. I found another book, Discrete Mathematics by C.Liu and asked them to add it onto the bill. I had asked them to bill them seperately into two bills so that i can give one to Princi and the other to HOD. After adding another book to one of the bill, instead of going up, it came down to Rs.786/-. I couldn't get the thing properly. How can it get low?? Even the shop owner, a lady of say 45-50 then who added up manually asked me to get only 786 rupees. I was confused and paid her the amoun, took the books and was going out but my mind was all calculating how can this be possible???

I came home thinking the same. Took the bills and started tallying. It didnt take long for me to find that she had cut the discount price of the book rather than adding onto it. I felt triumph at that instant getting to know that i had saved a bit. I will be having some money with me after getting the thing re-imbursed. I was happy for that! I had narrated the whole story to my friends to get a pat on my back for my deed.

I got it re-imbursed and spent the money in a good way getting more books. But later, i felt bad for what happened. I didnt had the bills by then to make the correction rectified.

Was cribbing within for some days for this when i realised that i had my misfortune with somebody else some other day. That was her day of misfortune. And even she'll have a day of fortune. This is merely fortunate to experience such incidents. I then decided not to cheat somebody this way. I hadn't cheated her but had walked away in confusion. I must not give reasons says another part of my mind.

Everytime I go to TBH, i recollect this incident which is why I wrote this as I had been to TBH yesterday! Hope this brought some smile on your face or some serious thought!

Thats it for today! Have fun! \m/

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