It is a sight I only know too well. After suffering four years in Bombay University's BE program, it's a sight most engineers know only too well. Heads dropping down, surrendering to the seduction of sleep. That familiar drone, that goes on somewhere in the background. That drone you hear, but never listen to. Expressions. Of boredom, disgust, and in this particular case, plain astonishment. This, after all, is an IIM.

The astonishment is not entirely unjustified. People get here by sheer dint of their hard work. There are no quotas to gobble down the seat share without as much as a thankful burp. There are no backdoor entries. So only the really intelligent people make it through. But even they're not intelligent enough to figure that expectation only gives rise to disappointment. They came into the lecture hall for the first lecture expecting a dynamic dude to walk in on time, clip on the mic and go into a rhapsody about numbers, number systems and their ilk. Well, they were bound to be disappointed, really.

Humble apologies go out to Mr Professor Sir, who, undoubtedly, is a master of his art. He just can't teach very well. He couldn't communicate with the class, and something tells me he won't, for the next few months that we will be under his tutelage. Oh damn the expectations, I say.

A non-communicative professor who speaks in a slow, lazy drone can only translate into bobbing heads. The ones that droop slowly, giving into the beauty of dreamland, and then shake up into attention rather abruptly, sporting dazed pupils adjusting to the sight of a stranger droning away to eternity. After four years of tolerating the worst teachers in the country, I only know that look too well.

And then there are the 'enterprising' students. Some tapping away ferociously on their mobile phones, exhorting their mates to selflessly share the agony of the unending lecture. Some looking at the professor without a single blink, lost in deep thought, nodding - perhaps coincidentally - at all the right points in time; a time that seems to have stretched itself like a rugged rubber band. The ones nodding away rather eagerly; needless to say, at all the wrong instances, a nod that says: "No I don't understand what you're saying, even though I pretend I do." The consequence: "So Mr Bhatia, you are a doomed failure at maths." Mr Bhatia, nodding hard, and nodding eagerly: "Yes Sir". And then there are the last-bench dudes, the smart alecs, the young men for whom the world was created, the handsome blokes for whom womankind came into existence. Looking bored, sounding bored - like Calvin says: "Everything bores you when you are cool!" So there. And the faithful-to-our-notes buddies who will be the single-point source for notes on a wide variety of subjects - ranging from "the effects of inter-stellar hot gas diffusion on the ozone layer" to the "consequences of India's ambiguous stand on Iran on the rural animal husbandry industry". Professor's kiddos, the only ones who can redeem his pride for his profession. The only ones who will make him feel like he's accomplishing something substantial in life. Ironically, the only ones who will fool him into that illusory belief.

The air heavy with sleep. The atmosphere pregnant with tired exhaustion. The faces. The expressions that say nothing at all, and in the process, end up saying so much. The bobbing heads. The ill-disguised sighs. Of relief, of disgust, of disappointment. It is a sight I only know too well. A four-year BE was not for nothing :)