Vivek Haldar

In Haldar you have a fraudy Bong. This gentleman knows not a single word of Bengali beyond the very rudimentary ones and a couple of expletives. Another thing fraudy about the Hold-All Haldar is his title, Hogger. The only thing he can hog is disk space and he has cut down even that. His huge size conceals a rather tiny appetite. These apart, Haldi is a very jolly person who always looks very contented with life. He actually is a fighter, but who cares, anyway???

The fortune program sure is buggy. This cookie, obviously meant for the hog, got delivered to me instead-

Do you feel personally responsible for the world food shortage?
Every time you go to the beach, does the tide come in?
Have you ever eaten an entire moose?
Can you see your neck?
Do joggers take laps around you for exercise?
If so, welcome to National Fat Week.
This week we’ll eat without guilt, and kick off our membership campaign,
…by force-feeding a box of cornstarch to a skinny person.
— Garfield

Here’s to the Bill Gates of the batch! The hacker with the hump, Haldar would have you belive that there are only four good things in life – sleeping, coding, food, and more food. I don’t think I have ragged anyone half as much I have this fraudie. The nice part is that he has never borne any hard feelings, to date. Well, I’m still trying. Few are aware of his poignant, sentimental side. He gets senti very easily – whenever you criticise his fairy tale, fraudie icons, especially Pink Frauds and Ayn Rand. His deepest love, is of course, Microsoft. He’s never quite got over his gratitude to them for supplying the bugball called DOS that used to crash his first 286. Time has come a full circle for him – he does the coding of his BTP on a win95 machine, amidst Vutukuroo and “shady bandies”, with whom he is quite infatuated.

Since he is writing his own OS (actually, just involves tinkering with the OSkit config files), he is quite used to machines crashing on him. The lawsuit against Microsoft has left him in tears. He passionately believes his partners in crime are being victimised simply for being great and successful, and models it as an Ayn Rand scenario. [ Incidentally, don’t bother reading Ayn Rand – you can get the gist of the thing by reading Cinderella ]. Once he told me that there was nothing wrong in powerful companies forcing distributors at gunpoint to market their (obsolete) product. The Mafia will be glad to hear that. He would have you believe that he is going to spend a few years on California beaches, until he can hone his marketing skills to deceive hapless researchers to give him a Ph.D. Good luck, Mote …

A true hogger in the real sense, be it physical space, memory space or the computers. He will leave his login for hours, and come back to fight with the person who sensibliy logged him off to work for a while. He was a nice friend of mine in first year and little bit in second year, but then he became a fighter and since the days with him have never been the same. I don’t accuse him of changing, the change has been good for him and thats what counts. He is one of the most unpractical person when it comes out to discuss plans/strategies.
What I remember most about this guy is the time when he was going to have his first beer of his life. The way he was pompously telling us of it, at first I thought he was going to lose his virginity. I doubt if this guy has drunk even once after the Dep trip

Know him more than anybody else in our batch. Have done almost all my projects/assgnts with him. He is a mixture of personalities. A computer whiz of course. Also a Pink Floyd cult member. Say anything against Pink Floyd and you can be sure he will start crying. Loves eating from other’s plates. His body has been growing exponentially ever since he came to IIT, thanks to his meals at Mamta and Lucky. No wonder once I said to Haldar, “Haldar, tu din dugna raat chauguna ho raha hai.” Had a great time together in Germany. During our trip, one night myself and Rastogi were able to logically prove to Haldar that he ought to look down upon himself (for reasons I won’t go through here). Next morning, he was back with pen and paper to go through the argument. I don’t think he had slept that night :)