I was surprised when Baishampayan told me about Ubuntu and Fedora Core CDs being sold on the footpaths near Mumbai CST station.

We were on our way back from the TIFR campus in Colaba to HBCSE in Mankhurd, and had just stopped to buy some books and have a drink. It was then that I saw it. Amidst a sea of 'unauthorised' audio/video CDs and pornographic movies was a blue coloured packet with white bubbles floating on it: a Fedora Core 6 (Zod) i386 DVD. For Rs 120 it was probably the only legal merchandise that he was selling.

Unfortunately he did not know it. Excerpts from our conversation:

BG: "CD ka key kaha se milega?"
Man: "Puch ke ata hun..." (goes away) "Andhar sare chiz milega, crack kiya hua hai."

DR: "Yeh kya cheez ka DVD hai? Movie?"
Man: "Ekdam latest hai."
DR: "Lekin hai kya?"
Man: "Linux hai."

BG: "XP me chalega?"
Man: "Bilkul chalega."

This summer has turned out to be a really eventful one for me. We arrived in Mumbai on the 1st of June for our (Rakesh + me) internship under Dr. Nagarjuna in Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, which is a national level centre run by Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. We were supposed to work on GNOWSYS, and eventually found ourselves inducted into the core development team, which comprises of Dr. Nagarjuna and Prasanta Baruah apart from Rakesh and myself.

One good thing followed another, and we had a pleasant surprise when we found our project proposal in Red Hat Scholarships was accepted. However there were a few strange events associated with programme that I would like to write about here.

We received a couple of messages from the Eklavya team, which co-ordinates with Red Hat regarding the scholarships, asking us to provide further details about our college and the project itself. Things like 'official college email ID', 'college address', 'number of hours per week to be spent on the project', and so on. However the funny thing was, no matter how hard we tried, the 'official college email ID' field would never accept the value entered by us. No error messages nothing. It simply erased the value once the 'Accept' button was pressed on the HTML form. Moreover there was (and is still) no means to upload the scanned copy of the bona-fide certificate issued to me by my college, as was stated on the Red Hat Scholarships page (http://in.redhat.com/community/rhscholarship.php). Repeated mails to the co-coordinators and the organizers yielded nothing more than the occasional stunted reply.

The matter came to a head when we received a mail threatening to block our candidature, since we have failed to supply the necessary details. Goodness me! Just imagine the irony of the situation. The organizers finally relented and apparently another team from our college had given a different value in the 'official college email ID' field which caused the conflict. Very very strange in my opinion.

In the meanwhile our stay in HBCSE is turning out to be a wonderful experience. The weekly treks, sometimes to the hills (Lohagadh, Maholi) and sometimes to the jungles (Borivli National Park), alongwith the occasional afternoon cricket and soccer sessions can be pointed out as the high points. Prasanta and Shrikant turned out to be good friends, while we developed a good rapport with some of the other staff members and research scholars as well. The adage that any institution is judged by the people it harbours can be aptly attached to HBCSE.

Each session with Dr. Nagarjuna is an experience worth its weight in gold. I must admit that till the time I first stepped into his office, I simply thought GNOWSYS to be this strange thing developed by very strange people. However thanks to the regular sittings with Dr. Nagarjuna (or GN as he is fondly called) that has been transferred to a sound understanding of the GNOWSYS architecture, and a firm belief in its virtues. I had never dreamt in my wildest dreams that I would be here in HBCSE working under the President of FSF India, and have him as my mentor.

Bombay as always has been extremely lucky for me this time too. I got a chance to participate in a pop-science quiz show produced by UTV Productions. The chance arose mainly due to the fact that the Mumbai blasts had caused a number of representatives of the various zones to drop out from the event. Although I was neither within the age limit of 25-40 years, nor was I a resident of North India, the fact that I have spent the last 3 years of my life there made me eligible to participate. With Sachin Kwarekar, the guy who played Netaji in The Lost Hero, as the quiz master it was a wonderful evening spent in Aram Studios in Goregaon. The fun was in no way diminished by the fact that I could not qualify for the second round.