On Being A Mechanical Engineer

If you did Engineering, you have to admit that the most awesome people in your college were from the Mechanical Engineering department. They would have been the main coordinators of most colleges fests and events. They would have scored with the girls in your department. They would have also been the only group of guys who went around telling people how awesome they and mechanical engineers are in general. One such mechanical engineer went on to be a movie director and he went on to talk about the greatness of being a mechanical engineer in his movies. In most of his movies, the lead character would have studied mechanical engineering (if he had any form of education that is). There is this dialog by Madhavan in one of his movies, which translates as, "A Mechancial Engineer should have a fire inside him". Lame as it may sound, some people had it as their phone's message tone in college. It was intended to remind them and everybody around them about the fire, mechanical engineers carry inside. A Mechanical Engineering degree is more like a degree in Narcissism than a degree in Engineering. So it might not come as a shock when I tell you that I did Mechanical Engineering myself. 

However, I was the least narcissistic of the bunch. In fact I don't have that many qualities that you might usually attribute to a mechanical engineer. There are many misconceptions people have about mechanical engineers, one of which being that all mechanical engineers are car crazy. When guys talk about cars, I understand what they are talking about, (I got an A grade in automobile engineering), but what I don't get, is why they are talking about it with such great passion. I never found cars fascinating. As a matter of fact even today I am car blind. I look at a car and I see its color. But I won't know its make or brand, till I look at the logo. When I was learning how to drive, the driving school had two cars - a Santro and an Indica. They had different instructors and I was assigned to the one who taught people how to drive in the Indica. Both cars were red which was very confusing to me. My instructor thought I was mentally disabled because I went and sat in the Santro for the entire first week. He was always worried that I would crash the car. When I got my license in my first attempt, he used me to inspire and boast to his students, "I taught a mentally challenged kid, how to drive." Just before I left India, he called me and asked me to speak to one of his weaker students, so that he can get some inspiration from me. Some day I might own a car, and if I ever get arrested for trying to get into the wrong car, I can at least turn to my driving instructor to produce a convincing plea for my innocence.