Maclagan Edition 6

MACLAGAN Featured article

Inside the Issue

HAVE YOU BEEN VACCINATED? The light at the end of the tunnel is in the form of vaccination, with states providing free vaccines for their citizens.

DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH LITERATURE DURING THE COLONIAL REIGN India, emerged as the launch pad of the flight that English literature took on the educational upfront at a time when the majority of the western countries were still steeped in the Latin and Greek classics.

A WOMAN'S REPUTATION Though not outwardly expressed with similar passion as much, it is the topic of conversation for many to deride a woman and judge her based on actions that are otherwise deemed acceptable from a man.

How to : Intern Edition with Lakshay Sharma, Batch of 2022

PEC: AN ONLINE FANTASY The glitzy stories of the best college culture lured all of us to the sacred, decade-old, deemed to be university- since forever- PEC

PEC: An Online Fantasy

By Dolsi Varshey The glitzy stories of the best college culture lured all of us to the sacred, decade-old, deemed to be university- since forever- PEC. Let's all face reality, the main motive behind filling PEC in the JoSAA counseling was not the 6Lpa package(exceptions, of course) but was the glittery background painted for us. A famous "100" year old college, situated in the hearts of "The City Beautiful." The mere smoky odor of a lit romantic tale was enough to tempt teenagers with two wasted years, romanticizing integrals and chemistry exceptions.

Glitz Glitz unwrapped unwrapped

But here's the catch. The fact that 150 acres of college was, in reality, 100 acres of staff houses wasn't known to us until the 1st-semester examinations. The virtual tour with whimsical filters was able to hide well all the cobwebs in the SAC rooms. The stories of the PEC market and Nescafe never ended, just like our wait for college reopening. The major tourist(yes, till now, we have all been able to secure the position of tourists and not students) attraction- PEC fest was also online. It was funny to see all the viewers switching on flashlights in Anuv Jain concerts while they sat comfortably alone in their well-lit rooms. The forced laughs in the standups were, in reality, our protests for an offline college.

A monotonous schedule of bunking classes to binge on anime could have been better if it was bunking to hang out on Lake with non-virtual friends. One night before the exam, group study has now been replaced by derogating thou existence.

Our college, as I presume, is the only one kind enough for its students to give virtual(a synonym better supporting my term will be imaginary) knowledge to take offline exams.

The only college we get to see is under 2020 Pascals of pressure. Several times, a virtual tour of the labs with presumingly heavy equipment has been given, and we are still unaware of what all our slender bodies can even lift. I believe the sacred library with the musty smell of books will soon be seized by little mushrooms surfacing on untouched books.

Not saying that online college just brought more problems to our lives. The PEC authorities and students tried their best to stay put in hard situations like these. Various club activities were held to welcome the newcomers.

o j y n e

@

PEC

Despite restricted communication, clubs organized several events, like literary, dancing, improv competitions, etc. Even the MUN’s and debates were held on the online platform.

The stressed exam hours were lightened by club meets. I guess a dose of hefty pizza with a hearty laugh at club freshers is all it took to brighten our few days' stay at PEC. In my eyes, the offline education system, howsoever flawed the critics call it, was a boon. The students understood the worth of extra curriculum only when they sweat off in classrooms cramming in knowledge. The very feeling of getting rewarded by Maths teacher-- A free games period stands unmatched by a whole day holiday from online classes.

The zeal of working hard is slowly dying out with no competition before us. The laughs at lunch breaks are replaced by silently eating all by yourself, watching a sitcom, listening to the characters laughing. The day end, witnessed us sprinting through the corridor bidding adieu to our friends, "Bye Bye, meet you tomorrow," followed by a water splash on their faces, is now replaced by us taking a nap while our parents barge into our rooms, splashing water on our faces to wake us up!

Well, all in all, this is the only college experience we have received. But we are engineers with burning hope in our hearts that the day will come where we cherish happy moments in our college. With this hope, I would like to sign off.

Peace Regards Dolsi (A freshman. A sophomore soon)

GUESS THE Ed-Board edition

KNEW A CAN DEMI CLOCK

SEE MEN ellence ExcSEN TROPHY

KNEE ASS COUGH A

MEE EGG TWIN TEA ONE

PO KA?

Answers: Siemens centre of excellence, New academic block, Nescafe, Mig 21

Development of Indian English Literature during the colonial reign

By Jessica Punj India, owing to its intricate colonial history and contemporary colonial heritage, trails the evolution of orientalism; from being on the forefront to exercise the influence until it faced British intervention and was denounced

by Indian critiques. History has it, that India, emerged as the launch pad of the flight that English literature took on the educational upfront at a time when the majority of the western countries were still steeped in the Latin and Greek classics.

Although the premiere of Indian literature in English began with the translations of the Indian texts, it was Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s ‘Rajmohan’s Wife’ that inspired the commencement of an imitative phase for the Indian writers, there was a western fall out where romanticism was pejoratively referred to as ‘poets in the Indian garb’ or ‘Matthew Arnold in a saree’. This was soon followed by an assimilative period when the Indian poets amalgamated romanticism and consciousness of the Indian renaissance between nationalism and political changes. A phase where romanticism was swarmed with nationalism, spirituality, and mysticism. This widened the horizons of romantic literature through the refined visions of Sarojini Naidu, Rabindranath Tagore, Aurobindo Ghose, and Harindranth Chattopadhyaya. All of them had fine ears for not only English poetry but Persian, Urdu, and other rich cultures as well. It would be inapt to appropriate Tagore as a writer of English because he painted and playwrighted with equal felicity and grace, with ‘Geetanjali’ elevating him to literary immortality.

But in no time soon was there a tremendous British influence on contemporary Indian literature, that took away the essence of the Indian narrative.

As Raja Rao says “One has to convey in a language that is not one’s own the spirit that is one’s own. One has to convey the various shades and omissions of a certain thought movement that looks maltreated in an alien language.”; Indian literature did not remain ‘Indianised literature’ under British influence which was reflected in the English as well as regional literature. European culture scouted its way into India and the Indian writers had responded effectively. The famous Indian writers dealt with the social issue and the realistic view of society in the short stories and novels. The new generation of authors put their pen on political rights and representatives for the Indian government, focused upon the ways in which Indian women of the middle and upper classes were crushed by their lack of economic opportunity, education, and freedom of mobility which was finally marked by the longcherished independence in 1947.

English is a language of our intellectual make-up it is not that of our emotional make-up, they say, but soon with the dawn of a new horizon on the edge of midnight, an entire literary era hovered around India’s independence that brought life to the souls that breathed under her oppressed ‘Nile’ for years.

"For every independent thought that dares to penetrate our minds today, a foundation was laid for it, tiny seedlings planted from the hands of men and women who translated their dreams into it, which rose like a beacon under the sunlight, in the form of our literary Nile"

HOW TO: INTERN EDITION

By Lakshay Sharma, Mechanical Engineering, Batch of 2022 Edited by Saachi Talwar

With

the

senior

half

of

the

college

preparing

for

the

internship

and

placement cycles, this month’s edition of Maclagan brings to you the firsthand

account

of

Lakshay

Sharma,

who

secured

an

internship

at

Vibroacoustics.

The job-hunting had started out by emailing all the research institutes (IITs & Foreign institutes) with my resume and I had enrolled for a few courses on project management, finance & investment. I researched and reached out

to

all

available

sources

in

g g g n n n i i i d d d l l l i i i u u u B B B

order

to

find

opportunities

for

a

core

internship. Thus began the brief period of unreturned emails and relentless efforts. If one can learn the design (CAD/CAM/CAE) packages, there are some

firms

in

Bangalore

that

r r r e e e e e e r r r a a C C Ca

hire

fresh

Mechanical

Engineers

with

AUTOCAD exposure as trainees and after training will place them in India for 1 year and then give on-site experience in their overseas plants in Germany or other places in Europe. Applying for Management Trainee positions in PSUs viz., BHEL, IPCL, NTPC, SAIL, IOCL, BPCL, etc. is another great option.

I looked for an opening in any Core Manufacturing Unit, either processing unit

or

engineering

equipment

manufacturing,

be

it

production

or

maintenance or design job where one could get an opportunity to gain relevant experience.

After facing rejections in the later stages of organizations like L&T, suddenly one day I got the acceptance email for an online internship at SCL, Mohali.

Finally, I had an internship at hand. I was ecstatic, but I aimed for an internship at a Germany-based MNC - Vibracoustic and received the NOC for it. I went and gave the interview and got selected. After months of rejection, now I had the option to choose between 2 internships wherein I went for Vibracoustic.

C Ca ar ree eer r

Vibracoustic is one of the leading companies in the automobile NVH (Noise Vibration Harshness) sector. The profile involved a team of experienced application engineers delivering industry-renowned end result guarantees by working closely with consulting engineers at the design stage to reduce the risk of noise through the proper application of products or solutions.

B B u uiil ld di inng g

Assigned to the Mohali facility, I worked in Production Planning and Control.

There were a lot of process parameters, procedures, and standards that I had to get familiar with during this project. I had to perform an in-depth analysis of the processes and collect data after experiments.

Apart from all the wonderful machines and facilities, this kind of job is quite physically challenging. You have to be constantly moving around the facility and be on your feet for a major portion of the day to work on different aspects of the project. But you end up learning something new every day.

Something I wish someone had told me before all this is that no matter how good your skills and achievements are, there may be times when things don't go your way. So what one needs to learn (apart from resume making, soft skills,

technical

knowledge)

is

to

deal

with

rejections

and

keep

moving

forward. The only way that you can crack an internship is by being proactive and trying to create opportunities when you don't find any.

A WOMAN’S REPUTATION— A LOOK AT ITS DEPICTION IN PRIDE & PREJUDICE AND ITS RELEVANCE TODAY By

Simran

Tyagi

Jane Austen’s satirical classic has been on reading lists since what feels like the dawn of time. Perhaps attributable to the original “Young Adult Fiction”, this piece delves into daily concepts of family, marriage, love, and society. Being a work of the 1800s, it is startling to be flipping through the chapters and realizing how some of the notions surrounding the said themes might still hold water in today’s landscape. For readers having no familiarity with the book, this article will aim to quote instances to draw one’s attention towards the use of satire and dialogue in conveying the significance a woman’s reputation was awarded at the time. This is done with the best intention of not divulging spoilers that may ruin your reading experience should you decide to pick up this classic.

A memorable scene from the 2005 motion picture is of the young protagonist Elizabeth Bennet hastily running through muddy fields to reach her sickly sister in order to tend to her. Following her arrival at the place where her sister was situated, the company she was greeted by was sure to pass comments on her state afterward.

To quote Miss Bingley, a minor character whose primary purpose is to quench the woman-hating-woman narrative— "To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles, or whatever it is, above her ankles in dirt, and alone, quite alone! What could she mean by it? It seems to me to show an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country-town indifference to decorum."

Such pick-me behavior is copiously displayed by Miss Bingley throughout the novel, but it brings to light the role other women have in fostering misogynistic ideals that were attached to a woman in order to deem her as un-womanly or unreputable. Though petty, similar snide remarks passed back in the day and even now are proof of how ingrained misogyny is the true evil we try to fight and sometimes fail at doing. Taking this one step further, the juvenile nature of one the younger sisters of Elizabeth’s leads her to say the following of another sister, Lydia, who was in the midst of a scanda

"Unhappy as the event must be for Lydia, we may draw from it this useful lesson: that loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable; that one false step involves her in endless ruin; that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful; and that she cannot be too much guarded in her behavior towards the undeserving of the other sex."

The concept of the female virtue, not unbeknownst to modern society, is briefly mentioned by name in the book but is hinted at in numerous ways otherwise. Heavy words like ‘endless ruin’ and ‘irretrievable’ make you ponder over the origins of such a view that decides whether a woman is ‘pure’ based on the usage of her reproductive organs. To deem a sexually active woman damaged and dirty is not unfamiliar to us today. We navigate these philosophies every day as we try to learn for ourselves what truly matters— purity or humanity.

This account would also be incomplete without the unsolicited words of a gentleman poking his nose in the business of a woman and providing his thoughts that offer no help whatsoever. Mr. Collins, a cousin of the protagonist, upon hearing of her sister’s scandal relays— "The death of your daughter would have been a blessing in comparison to this.

They agree with me in apprehending that this false step in one daughter will be injurious to the fortunes of all the others; for who, as Lady Catherine herself condescendingly says, will connect themselves with such a family?”

Now finally cogently laid out, the idea of reputation seems to be one of conductive nature.

It seems to be passed on to family members in proximity, almost as if it were a contagious virus capable of spreading by droplets. Should an unmarried sister find herself in notorious circumstances, her sisters should consider it the end of the road for themselves. This man even suggests that being deceased would’ve been a more favorable outcome. Such was the status of a woman’s reputation (queue the bops from 2017).

It may be said that the severity of similar beliefs has abated in recent times. Though not outwardly expressed with a similar passion as much, it is the topic of conversation for many to deride a woman and judge her based on actions that are otherwise deemed acceptable from a man. If 200 years is not enough time to wipe out prejudice from the human mind, then it seems unlikely that it will go away any time soon. But hey, at least women can vote now!

Have you been Vaccinated?

By Ishaan Verma

The Covid 19 pandemic has shattered the economies, sent many families through periods of trauma, brought about many humanitarian crises, and led to emotional lows and depression for many people who have been confined to their houses.

The light at the end of the tunnel is in the form of vaccination, with states providing free vaccines for their citizens. These vaccines have shown a positive effect on the state of the fight with covid 19.

And while most of us are preparing to return to a mostly normal life, with the buzz of colleges and universities being reopened for the students, a few have taken a completely 180 approach to this vaccine, and used the flaws of this vaccine to forward their broader ‘agenda’, if we should call it that.

The anti-vaxxers, or the people who deny the administration of vaccines to them due to a variety of reasons (for example, viewing vaccinations as an authoritarian compulsion by their governments) had, till now, been a small community of relatively obscure groups of people. But due to the novelty of this vaccine, the lack of credible information about it, public fears, and the virality of the conspiracy theories spread by these groups has transformed this certain community of people from a few to the many.

The anti-vaccination ‘movement’ was quick to spread among the special interest groups, specially among religious groups which sermonised the pandemic as a “will of God”. However, the most widespread reason for some groups to reject the vaccines is their view that compulsory vaccines are part of a wider conspiracy by the government and capitalists who want to establish “control” over the people.

Most recently, Mumbai, among many other cities in India saw protests against vaccines on the 25th of July, calling for “freedom from vaccines.” What this has brought about is not just a denial of covid vaccines, but a broader denial of any vaccine.

Vaccines are one of the safest and most effective health interventions available for fighting infectious diseases.

They have been fundamental in the eradication and control of many formerly devastating illnesses, such as polio. They are effective, and in many cases, such as smallpox, measles, chickenpox, and, of course, COVID 19, the most effective defence against diseases. More importantly, today, as we are faced with this pandemic, one’s decision to not get vaccinated would put the rest of the community at a heightened risk.

There is a growing culture to accept anything one reads on the internet. One placard in one of these anti-vaccine rallies called for “NO MORE LOCKDOWN… VACCINES… MASKS… 5G NETWORKS…” The effects of such misinformation can be tragic, when people die trying fake cures, such as drinking bleach, or smearing animal faeces on their bodies instead of getting vaccinated. If we are to emerge from this truly powerful and rapidly evolving foe, we must get vaccinated and follow the guidelines provided by the medical associations. Only then can we hope for a better tomorrow.

Follow Us On: @the.beansta

The English Editorial Board

Check out all previous editions at www.issuu.com/thevista-pec