10 Images On Costly Onions That Will Leave You In Tears With Laughter

 Onion prices have shot up like a rocket fired by ISRO. People have used this situation to their  advantage by sharing cheeky images and posters on social media to garner more likes.  Unfortunately, these likes cannot be used to buy onions, but they can sure be used to have a good  laugh. The author's gallery is filled with these images (courtesy: whatsapp) and so is his news feed  on facebook. Hence, he decided to compile a list of 10 of the funniest of the lot.

      1.The richest man in India

 We have grown up watching uncle scrooge taking a dive into the piles of gold coins in his vault. This  scene awed everyone with the degree of his richness. Well, the times have changed and this person  resting on sacks of onions is now considered to be one of the richest. Bye bye uncle scrooge, we  have found someone richer.

      2. Can’t get onions without a PAN number

 Onion prices have reached such a peak that the sellers are not sure if the customers would be able to  pay the requisite amount. Hence, like the seller shown above they have started to demand a proof of  authenticity of the customer’s paying power. In this case, a PAN number suffices. In other cartoons,  sellers demand a minimum bank balance.

      3. Onion cutting a man

 On a serious note, this cartoon is a satire on the present situation. Since the establishment of the  present order of things, humans have cut onions. Onions are having their revenge in the new order  (well, not literally but at least metaphorically).

      4. The Manapurram Onion Loan

 “Jab ghar me pada ho sona tab kaahe ko rona?” This was the slogan of gold finance in  the popular    ads. The company encouraged people to leverage their assets in the form of gold like gold ornaments  and the like as a collateral to get easy loans. This cartoon can go along with the slogan, “Jab ghar me  pada ho pyaaj to araam se bharenge byaaj ”. Forget about gold people, now   realize the power of   onions with the Manapurram Onion Loan.

      5. Na Khaunga na khaane dunga

 This image is a comical take on Mr.Modi’s campaign to curb corruption. You have to bribe someone  to get something done in this country. Till today, the bribes ranged from cash to other valuables to  some return favour.  Today, we have reached a point where we can use onions as bribe. Seeing such  a valuable bribe, the receiver is bound to shed some tears of joy. What the author is expecting next is  images on “selfie with onion”. 

      6. The  new way to propose

 Diamond rings have lost their value to onion rings. The above images show the latest way to  propose. Those who have proposed this way have confirmed that the person to whom they proposed  was in tears afterwards. Gone are the days when you used to go to archies or a flower shop or a  chocolate shop before meeting your gf/bf/crush. These days, you are bound to fall before a onion  seller after falling in love.

      7. The most expensive deodorant spray in India

 This image shows the most expensive deo in India. You guessed it right, it smells like onions. Onion,  which is the most valuable commodity nowadays is bound to produce the most valuable fragrance. It  is high time that you replaced the adidases and reeboks in your wardrobe with the onion deo. The  author is sure that by now, it would be available in a store near you.  

      8. The most eligible bachelor

 There was a time when people looked for traits such as a good salary or nice looks in a guy before  marrying off their daughters. This cartoon shows peoples’ preferences in the age of the onion. A boy,  whose mouth reeks of onions, is being considered of a royal birth. After all, it’s not everybody’s  capacity to be able to afford onions in their everyday meal. So, the next time you go to visit your  bf/gf/crush’s parents, be sure to eat an onion or two so that your mouth smells of acceptance.

      9. Onions make their way into bollywood dialogues

      “Mere paas pyaaj hai” is the ultimate answer nowadays. The rich kids who brought their fancy            bikes  and fancy gear to school are finding their toys being beaten up by onions. Forget your          chances  of  being a cool kid if you don’t have at least a kilogram of onions. Uncool kids, this is your chance  at  becoming cool, just grab a polythene and gather those onions that your mother bought before the  price escalation.

      10. The new hot seller on e-commerce sites

 The e-commerce sites have started selling this valuable commodity. Flash sales of pen drives and  mobile phones are a thing of the past now. You have to click fast to get your onion. Keep looking for  the best discounts and the best prices.

 Other honorable mentions:

India TV is at it again

Share traders becoming onion traders

So, who has the final laugh?

11 productive things that you can do to spend your time at a hostel

So you are a hosteler and you have plenty of stuff to do like completing your homework or assignment. As always, you find that to be uninteresting and plan to do it the next day. You roam about thinking of stuff that is interesting and worth your time. This search is an exercise in futility.  You end up in a room of friends, chatting or doing other stuff that you do every day. Why not do something different today? We have compiled a list of some interesting things that may be worth your time.

  1.     Learn origami

Origami sounds Japanese and in fact originated in Japan. However, in modern terms it is used to refer to all folding practices irrespective of the culture they are associated with or their origin. The reason it is listed here is because we are always short of things of daily utility in the hostel like pens, leave alone other things like scissors and glue. You can use the small number of basic origami folds to create things of intricate design. You can learn the basics here and I can say that once you warm up to the process, it will be fun. You can surprise your roommate with interesting stuff like this:

or impress your crush/bf/gf with stuff like this:

  2.     Learn to solve the Rubik’s cube.

Actually it is not that tough. You just have to learn the algorithm and rest is practice. You can find good tutorials here. But then, you’ll have to promise to watch the second part too. Just tell people that you can solve a Rubik's cube in under 30 seconds and you'll have an awesome conversation starter. My friend Vivek Anand can do it well under 30 seconds. He lives at 4C-226, KP-6 and will be more than happy to help you.

  3.     Learn to Cook

What? Really? Just read through before these questions get a hold of you. We all hate mess food. Don’t we? So, it is actually nice to learn to cook with the limited resources that are available. Most of us have access to an electric kettle or a water heater. With Maggie out of the question now, you can use your kettle to cook these. The fortunate of us have access to induction cook tops which you can use to cook an even greater variety of stuff.  You can make salads like this if you were frowning upon not having any of the above appliances.  Now, being able to cook for one self gives the kind of confidence that nothing else can. You also get the added advantage of not running to mommy every time you feel hungry at home.

  4.     Play hide and seek.

This activity can provide you with a break from the above serious activities. You may also discover secret corridors in your hostel or come across the chamber of secrets.

  5.     Write a blog

Ideas grow when you put them down. There is some stuff that catches each one of us’ interest. It can be your hobby or favourite past time and you have plenty of information to talk about it. Writing a blog about it will connect you with people who have similar interests. Putting your thoughts into words and arranging them in a logical order will also go a long way in improving your communication skills.

  6.     Do crazy 3 idiots kind of stuff.

The hosteler community is thankful to 3 idiots for showing that a hostel is not all boring stuff. You come to meet different people with different background and it enriches your experience. Apart from bollywood songs, a hostel is the only place where a large number of people can go crazy at the same time. Remember one thing; you cannot do such crazy stuff once you go out into the real world. According to some law, craziness is infectious and this law holds stronger than anywhere in a hostel.

  7.     Make a mobile app

So you’ve tried being crazy and want some seriousness in your life. Learning and then making an app will give you the satisfaction of having done something important. We are all equipped with at least a mobile phone and a laptop and these are all that are required. You don’t necessarily have to be from a CS/IT background to be able to make an app. There are free tools like the App Inventor from Google that makes it as simple as making a jigsaw puzzle. Apart from Android, you can also make apps for Windows phone through Microsoft’s tools like visual studio. We use multiple apps on our mobile phones daily but creating what we use will be a good confidence booster. There is a plethora of resources related to mobile app development that is available on the internet like this. If you accumulate enough skills then you'd be eligible for multiple vacancies for mobile app development that exist in the market.

  

  8.     Practice puzzles

The brain is like a machine. You have to keep servicing it to keep it running at an optimum level. Solving logical and mathematical puzzles is a nice way to keep yourself busy and develop your analytical and problem solving skills at the same time. It would be a good practice for your placement exams too as they test you on your aptitude and logical ability. Some good sites and mobile apps are:

1. Brain Jiggle - It’s an Android app containing 50 puzzles spread across 10 levels of varying complexity. 
2. CSE Blog - Quant, Math and Computer Science Puzzles for Interview Preparation and Brain Teasing : A must-read blog for anyone preparing for interviews. 
3. The Ultimate Puzzle Site - Contains an exhaustive list of puzzles categorized into sections .  Basic Puzzles, Logical Puzzles, Math Problems - this site has it all!

  9.     Read

Just as a machine needs servicing, it needs fuel too. By fuel, I mean something that the brain can burn (process) to produce output. Reading autobiographies is a nice idea because you can put yourself in the shoes of successful people and then see what they did and what they avoided to become successful. We all have our teachers and parents but good books can be a good guide too. Not only books and novels, you can spend your time going through newspapers and journals as well that have information that is relevant to you.

  10. Learn video editing.

That was cool, ain't it? Now, all of us have been fascinated by those amazing special effects that we see in the movies. You'll be surprised to know that you can create your own. Knowing how to create a movie out of pictures and adding sounds and effects to make it better can come in handy at multiple occasions. You can start your video editing journey with Windows Movie Maker which is easy to learn and you can start making movies right away. Check out this tutorial. If you feel that you've had enough practice with Movie Maker then you can advance yourself to the Adobe Premier Pro. It is an amazing tool for movie editing and offers nice sound editing tools. You can access Premier Pro tutorials here. For even advanced editing, you can try Adobe After Effects. It offers various 3D effects too. This software is used by professionals and can be used to create a full length animated movie. You can access the tutorials here. My friend Manish Sakariya has been doing this stuff for quite some time now and you can see his creations here. He lives at 3A-67 in KP-6 and enjoys talking .Feel free to have a chat with him and he may offer you some fafdas and singh danas too!    

  11.  Volunteer

For a day, when you are free you can volunteer to work in the mess or any such work that you are comfortable with. This will strengthen your relations with the people who keep your hostel running and in the process; you’ll realize what it takes to feed so many people at the same time. 

If this post made you restless, then I've got one thing to say to you:

6 Remarkable Things That Happened at Launchpad 2k15

So, the Launchpad 2k15 successfully came to its conclusion on the 15^th of August, and it sure did launch some success stories.
Siddharth Mishra of 3^rd Year Mechanical and Anupam Kumar of 3^rd Year Civil emerged winners that afternoon. Adwait Kumar and Lalit Mundhra belonging to 3^rd Year Information Technology and Computer Science respectively were the Runners-Up. Subhodeep Chatterjee and Himadri Sekhar Barari, both of 4^th Year Mechanical were the Second Runners-Up. Ritwik Kundu and Prakhar Saini, both belonging to 2^nd Year Mechanical were Fourth. Navnil Niraj of 4^th Year Electronics and Telecommunications and Soham S. Bidyadhar of 4^th year IT came in 5^th. Rajiv Dubey and Srijeet Burman of 3^rd Year Electrical were 6^th.
Ankita Das and Shalini Rai constituted the highest scoring girls team. The footfall was around more than 220, despite the fact that many other events were occurring simultaneously, other than the day being the Independence Day.
Innumerable small and big things made the event possible and a success. The author has come up with a list of 6 of these things that are worthy of mention:

   1. Our Quizmasters Put Up An Awesome Gig

Abhinav Dhar, last year’s Tata Crucible champion from the Bhubaneswar region, was the primary Quizmaster.
Mr. Dhar has the experience of hosting innumerable quizzes at the Qutopia sessions and elsewhere. By elsewhere, I mean the Megalith quiz hosted at IIT KGP.
He sure didn't fail to give us an awesome experience. The Quizmaster was generous, giving ample hints at the difficult ones, playing with words as a coy, to give hints to confused teams, and confuse the all knowing ones.

Along with him, the presence of Arko Biswas, Aman Sinha and Asif Ghazi as the Quizmasters, gave the afternoon a different sense of occasion.

When asked about his experience at the launchpad, Mr. Dhar replied in his trademark style with "k"

He is now concentrating upon his attempt to break the world record for using the letter k most number of times

   2. Our Presenters Were Awesome Too

Miss Shovna Mohapatra, a student from 4^th year Electronics and Instrumentation, was our main presenter. She had brushed her teeth with Close-Up especially for the occasion. She wore a beautiful smile throughout the event and kept the show together with her eloquence.

Later Miss Mohapatra showed us that her teeth are good at chewing too.

Mr. Aman Sinha, 4^th Year CSE took an audience round and a written round on stage as well. His recent association with Quikr has brought good tidings for Qutopia, as things get done Quikr with Mr. Sinha around. He was resolute and handled things to perfection.

Mr.Arko Biswas, 4^th Year Mechanical too took a themed round on stage. What Mr. Biswas is doing in the pic is not a dance step. He is explaining a question with passion. He is a fun guy and did his part with a cool head.

Mr. Souradeep Dey, 4^th Year Civil handled the end of the program with his remarkable presence of mind. Mr. Dey is said to have lost 2 kgs in a single day, as a result of the hardwork he put in.

   3. We Had An Awesome Set Of Winners

Siddharth Mishra and Anupam Kumar were clinical and scored a whopping 24 out of a maximum of 25 in the prelims. They maintained their streak throughout and were the winners on stage too. When asked about their intentions with the prize money, Siddharth responded by saying that he’ll use his share towards a trip to Alaska where he plans to meet his cousin.

They plan to hibernate together

Anupam has pledged to use his share towards a relief fund for those who have suffered brain damage because of his jokes.

Lalit Mundhra and Adwait Kumar proved their mettle by emerging the First Runners-Up. Lalit Mundhra will use his share of prize money to buy his 101^st pair of shoes while Adwait Kumar will invest his share in the miniature nuclear reactor that he is building in his hostel’s basement. Apart from the cash, the finalists received a Goodie bag each, containing various vouchers, a book, and some other fun stuff.
This was along with the prize money that each received with respect to their standings.

Shalini Rai and Ankita Das getting the Best Girls' team award

   4. Our Volunteers Were A Personification Of Dedication

Our volunteers woke up as early as 5.00 AM and rushed to the auditorium to make sure everything started and finished on time.

Miss Akansha Priya, 3^rd Year CSE has been adjudged the multi-tasker of the year

Handling so many registrations at the same time was not easy, but our volunteers proved themselves up to the task.

Amritendu Dey, Nihal Nayak and Aman Sinha checking prelims answers (we had some funny ones that tickled everyone’s funny bone)

Debdeep Mukherjee and Anindya Padhy

Soumya Sen and Akansha Priya

Asif Ghazi

   5. The participants were a creative and energetic lot

Participants honoring the national anthem just before the prelims

We had some awesome team names like this one here.
The award for most innovative team name went to a team named "Flower Fluff Whirls", apparently a play on "Power Puff Girls".
Siddharth and Anupam named their team as "Thought The QM was smart". Adwait and Lalit had a nice team name, "Les Quizerables". Lots of audience prizes were won during the audience round and people from the audience were also able to answer some questions that remained unanswered from the teams on stage.

   6. We Had Lots Of Encouragement

Navodit Gautam and Santosh Shubhankar Mishra

Mr.Vikas Sethia from Saheli Beauty and Mr.Anant from Jovees

Our alumni and senior Qutopians, Navodit Gautam and Santosh Shubhankar Mishra decided to pay a visit to Launchpad 2k15!
Nothing can be more encouraging than to see your seniors coming all the way, just to see you put up a show. To our happiness, they were all praise for the event.
One of the participants, Souradip Chatterjee's father was also kind enough to join us.
Mr. Vikas Sethia from Saheli Beauty and Mr.Anant from Jovees were also present throughout the event and our faculty mentor, Mr. Sudipta Dey Sarkar was there too.

Navodit Gautam has his way of motivating people

The event ended with this awesome pic of the family.

Debjeet Sarkar and Pratik Das did a great job with their lens, and the author is grateful for these pictures. Those who have started to miss us already need not worry because we will be back with Udghosh and more, this calendar year.

Till then, enjoy this meme which happens to be the World's first after-event meme.