Letting Go..

We...share a very strange relationship.
It's odd in many ways...like we both are...
We have always been aware of each other, but never bothered to take some time out and interact..
We always remained indifferent to each other....after an initial period of bliss...
It was really so fine in the beginning...We hit off great back then...
I still remember the first time we met, some five months back...It was nice...
An almost-pleasant feeling...
No, it wasn't exactly love at first sight...not at all, in fact...
Even then we knew that it was just a matter of a few months...after which..
We would never have to see each other again..
Hopefully.
All we had to do was to try and get along as well as we could, possibly, until we parted ways..
For good.
But all didn't go well, and I think to some extent, I am the reason all of it fell apart.
Wellwishers who saw me crumbling under pressure confirmed...to my utter dismay, that:
I never paid attention.. I ignored, I overlooked...
...that I was just so busy living my life that I barely had time for anything else...
....that I saw it coming all the time, and I did nothing to stop it.
But what could I possibly do?
It wasn't like I didn't try!!
I tried everything I could to make up for the time lost..I made every effort to understand....
But beyond a point, I failed to understand....and to be honest...I didn't even want to.....
I mean, like.....how can you understand something so complicated.....so so weird.....so damn incomprehensible....so puzzling!!
And at a point of time, I realized that it wasn't just me..me alone...but we were BOTH practically disgusted with each other...
And it wasn't like I didn't suffer....I suffered...badly....
All that sorrow, disappointment and so many sleepless nights that went by...
Before I lost my peace of mind....I chose to take the best way out..
I decided to call it Quits....
Finally....I Let Go....
If there were drastic consequences to follow all this...so be it...
I could not take it any more...

And so the inevitable finally happened...
It was over.
















...
After I got a 'D'...
Me and my 'Advanced Engineering Mathematics Textbook' never saw each other again.

.....

SkooL.....

"School" ,she called it.
Mum said I'd love that place, and I was equally sure that I would hate it.

She fed me and dressed me with so much care that morning.
Packed my tiffin in a brand new shining red tiffin box with Micky Mouse and Donald Duck dancing on its top.
I was given a new pencil box, too...this one had Barbie stickers all over it. It contained a long green pencil with a tiny rubber at the end, a long violet one, a cute scented pink eraser, a little green sharpener and a 15 cm long ruler. Mum carefully sharpened both pencils so that it would help me write the most beautiful "A for APPLE" ever written by any kindergartner.
I still wasn't sure of what all the fuss was about. Mum combed my hair into neat piggy tails held together by little white hairbands...and made me wear a "uniform", whatever that meant. I found it embarrassingly funny with a bib in the front and a bow to go with it, but Mum kept calling it "cute". Of course, Mums will find you cute when the whole world doesn't.
Also I got white socks and new black shiny Ballerina shoes, that Mum polished and polished till I could see the reflection of myself when I bent over them.
She handed me over my new pink school bag, after stuffing into it my red tiffin box, blue pencil box, two neatly covered notebooks, a book on mathematics, another on English and a School Diary.
Dad called out to hurry up, while Mum was putting finishing touches to making me look hilarious...pinning a folded handkerchief on to the bib and putting a water bottle around my neck.
All set, we got into the car and headed for my first day at "school".
I had a funny feeling driving away from home, it was kinda eerie...reminded me of the time I was being taken to the dentist. Mom patted my head every now and then, and such affection scared me even more.
Where was I being taken to??!!

After a drive that lasted ages, we got off in front of a huge building with gigantic gates. A big board bearing the name of the school was right ahead of us.
"In a few days, you'll be able to read what's written on it", Dad smiled.
As we walked into a corridor, a bespectacled lady greeted us cheerfully. She ushered me away from Mum and Dad. I felt chills go up and down my spine as they waved byes to me anxiously and promised to pick me a few hours later. Mum stood there until she could no longer see me.
I was terribly frightened by then and was planning to turn back and run for my life before I was thrown into some dead, dark dungeons with slimy demons teaching me how to read the alphabet.
Contrary to what I had imagined, the corridor ended in a bright classroom, and there were no demons in it, but scores of other timid kids...looking as hilarious as me in new uniforms and powdered faces and colorful handkerchiefs pinned on to the bibs.
They stared at me and I stared back, as the lady showed me my bench and told me to settle down.
The teacher introduced herself and asked each of us our names. I fumbled thrice with mine, and the kids laughed. Damn....
She told us to open our notebook and take out pencils, while she hung before us a chart with huge pictures and strange symbols.

"This...is ....A...and that.....is an...APPLE"..

After a while we were all busy scribbling those weird symbols in our notebooks, in horribly distorted handwriting. The period ended and another teacher walked in with a chart containing another set of crazy-looking symbols.
"Numbers", she called them.
She taught us how to count, and at the end of the day I realised that I had five fingers on each hand.
I scribbled numbers in another notebook and the tip of my pencil broke thrice while i tried to write the digit '8'.

A bell rang and announced recess. Most kids had nibbled through half their tiffins already by then. Each of us chewed through our food awkwardly, and messed up the new uniforms, too.
Later we were taken to a playground, with swings and slides and see-saws and colorful cubical structures to climb through. We tumbled together, fell face down, ran around like a bunch of squirrels...had loads of fun! It wasn't awkward any more, I hardly knew the names of other kids, but they were friends now. There was the boy who fell of the see-saw, the girl who kept crying when she was pushed, the girl who threw her shoes into the fish-pond, the boy who could make goat-like sounds....
Before we realised, the day was over, and even before the bell rang anxious parents lined up outside the gates, to pick up the tiny tots.
I slipped on my bag and water bottle, and ran to where I saw Mum waiting for me. She was kinda shocked to see my piggy tails out of place and shoes all brown, uniform crumpled beyond recognition.
"What happened!?", she asked.
"Mum, can I come here again??", I said as I waved bye to my new found friends heading home.
"Yes, honey...you'll be coming here everyday now.", she smiled as she ruffled my hair.
It was a really great day.
.....

Gone in 10,800 Seconds...

I will not tell you how all this begins.
I have assumed you have been through this at some point in your life.
So let me get down straight to the dreadful details.

Examinations, if they were ever personified, I am sure would have been mercilessly shot dead on any street or building they were first seen at.
Fair enough, going by how menacing they can be.

The very day of an exam is remarkably different from any sleepless preparatory night before it. There is a strange calmness of mind one feels when he wakes up in the morning, from underneath a pile of books, pens, sheets of paper and new found notes.
No, not to be confused with peace or tranquility. It is merely the height of hopelessness, when one realizes that sitting down with books, or sniffing through chapter-end summaries is nothing but useless.

It is the final acceptance of the fact that "what could not be done in 5 months can't be done in 5 hours".

Me and my friends religiously follow this pattern each semester: putting off preparations till the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute, and waking up on D-Day with fluctuating blood pressure and red eyes.

I'll bring together the four idiots again...(and this time give you ample proof that we are idiots):

(End-Semester Examination, Paper: Operating Systems, Time: 9 am to 12 pm)

7:05 a.m.:(Bus Stop)
I sleepwalk to the bus stop and bump into a few strangers before knocking down the right person. I find Jaz yawning @ 4 yawns/minute, and ask her the obvious question:
"Kuchh padhaa?"
She gives me a disgusted look, like what I just asked was the stupidest,most illogical and the most embarrassing question on earth that one could have asked her. To put it more simply, she reacted as if I asked her something out of the actual question paper.


7:15 a.m.:(Inside the bus)
DJ shakes me out of sleep and almost out of my seat. She is perhaps the only one of us who "REvises".
She asks me to explain something I have never come across in my life.
I laugh, hysterically.


7:29 a.m.:(Inside the bus, again)
Annie shows me the syllabus, and I realize that my copy of the document was the outdated one and whatever I had managed to study has been removed from the curriculum altogether. Jaz has to bear with my constant chant of "Damn it, Damn it!!" for the next forty-four minutes.


7:58 a.m.:(Still inside the bus)
"....And hence if relocation is static and done at assembly or load time, compaction isn't possible, unless relocation is dynamic and....." DJ elaborates on while I cut her speech short and ask her:
"What IS an operating system?"
"An operating system is basically a system that uh...operates..umm...a ...system..", she clarifies.

8:26 a.m.:(In college, finally)
I chew on the edge of my notes and go "Damn it, Damn it.....".
Annie consoles me by saying that out-of-syllabus questions will fetch me grace marks, I shouldn't lose hope.


8:50 a.m.:(Bell!!)
I scatter pens and pencils in the hurry, drop my admit card, Annie picks them up and hands them over to my pale hands. We look at each other and find uniquely weird expressions on each face. We do only one thing that is left to do. "All the best...."

9:05 a.m.:(Exam Hall)
I spend 3 minutes staring at the question paper and the strange things written in it,shift in my seat and look around, seeking faces that looked at least as bewildered and shocked as mine.
A few benches away, Jaz returns me a mirror reflection of my own expression, and I heave a sigh of relief. Annie looks more confused than me, as if the typewritten letters were moving around in her copy of the question paper and she was waiting for them to settle down.
DJ meditates for 2 minutes and then bends over her answer sheet. She lifts her pen and puts it down at 12:01 p.m., without looking up even once during this time.


10:00 a.m:(Exam Hall....and Bell!!)
The sudden ringing causes me to jump and drop my stationery again. I get back to scribbling nonsense on my answer sheet.
After some amount of analysis I notice that the questions were from exactly those sections of the syllabus that I conveniently left out, thinking they'd never appear in the set of questions (Murphy's Law #39).


11:10 a.m:(Exam Hall....Grrr...)
"Chhikk, chhikkk...sshhh...Oye!!", I hear from someone behind me.
"1 ka 'e' aata hai??", the voice asks.
I turn back and beg for answers to 1 ka 'a','c','d','e','g','h', and 'j'.
The voice doesn't call again.


11:24 a.m.:(Exam Hall....Darn..)
I am practically at the end of my wits, morphing my cramped knowledge into unrecognizable theories and yet-to-be discovered mechanisms in the field of computer architecture.
The same sentence appears in a variety of disguises on different pages of my answer sheet.
The diagrams are all box-oriented ....hence I stack them at my own sweet will all over the page.


11:32 a.m:(....Still...Exam Hall)
I count the number of pages filled with fantastic elaborations and huge diagrammatic representations of ....well...non-existent...technology. Then sick of writing further, I wrap up my stuff and hand the answer sheet over to the invigilator. As I leave the room, I turn to find others staring at me in disbelief. I give them a foolish smile and walk out.


12:17 p.m.:(Buses leaving)
The rest of the gang walks up to me, thankfully with no question paper in hand. We can read faces better than books, and clearly each of us messed up the paper in our own way.
We break into giggles as we see each other's faces.

"My Gawdd....Maine life mein kabbbheee itna nahin phenkaa!!", DJ whines.
"Abey kya tha woh???"
(I am referring to the question paper).
"10...12...15...yes....15 marks out of syllabus....PASS!!", Annie computes.
"Aaj ka paper toh ekdum bakwass gaya....1 down, 5 more to go"

Then after giving accounts of our ordeal in the examination hall,
Jaz says something that Annie said last semester, DJ said the semester before that, and I say each semester......

"Iss baar toh gayaa.....Agli baar pakka padh ke aayenge".....

We burst into violent laughter as we walk off.

Not Blind..... But Retarded.....

"Love is in the air...", chirped Nishi, while strolling beside me in the park.
I pondered over her statement as she heaved a really deep sigh.
It seemed oddly pathetic that the smoke and dust particles in the city air were more conspicuously visible to me than the "love".
She flicked a few popcorns into that love-filled air and did a little jig which she usually does when she is very, very happy.
And she was particularly happy these days...
For reasons obvious from her statement.
She was in "LoVe". Precisely for the third time..........

My cousin Nishi is a confused little soul.
The more she thinks she has a clear idea about what love means, the more clouded her judgement becomes. She has been into the labyrinth twice, and has admitted losing her way, both times.
She hasn't committed yet, and I thank God that she has retained that minimum cerebral functionality to not jump into relationships.
Now it may seem very weird as to what her definition of love is.....
Well, it is as messed up as that of any average teenager's.
She grew up reading Grimm's' Fairy Tales. And she believes that "Knights in Shining Armors riding White Stallions" do exist. Just that these days the Knights have traded their armors for Levi's Jeans, Calvin Klein shirts and accessories from Ray Ban & Fastrack. And the low-mileage white stallions have been chucked, enter "kewl" 150 cc bikes.
She has always dreamt of bumping into her soul mate in some scenic location (the Alps are her favourite), and rehearsed the "love-at-first-sight" thing numerous times in her head. And then comes the "lived-happily-ever-after" nonsense.
I'll say that the Idiot Box can be the worst friend-philosopher-guide to any young mind.
Especially to a mind like Nishi's.
Thanks to the world it has opened up to her, she hopes for a partner who looks like Enrique Iglesias, dances like Hrithik Roshan, has an aura like that of Prince William,as funny as Woody Allen, is at least as suave as Brad Pitt...and the list goes on...undergoing regular changes.
And she herself aspires to have the eyes of Aishwarya Rai, the tresses of Catherine Zeta Jones, the figure belonging to Cameron Diaz and the charm of Kate Winslet (minus signs of ageing).
And as she tells me more about the new "love" of her life, I get to know that this one is apparently much better than the guys she had admired in the past.
The first one she liked had a remote resemblance to Enrique (purely according to her)....her high-frequency "Eeeps!!!" of delight still ring in my ears like they did when she first told me about him. After a couple of months, she refused to talk about him. Coaxing out the reason was easy enough...she found him too "unintelligent".
Then a year later, she couldn't stop talking about a classmate who was so smart with integral calculus that she didn't mind him being average-looking. That was the only phase in her life I guess when she actually took interest in current affairs and social issues, until the long discussions on studies bored her for good.
I couldn't help but smile at her innocent and confused thoughts about this thing called "love". I knew very well that she was far from even guessing how and when these things affect one's life and the very course of existence, right now happy in a virtual dollhouse where everything is supposed to be pink and perfect.
I don't intend to break her happily chugging train of thoughts until the time comes, when she'll grow up and herself realize what it means to be responsible for another person's happiness, how difficult it is to hold on to everything in life at the same time, and what a tough experience it is, to be the reason that holds together someone else's world, too. It'll be a long time before I inform her that there is a really thin line between practicality and uncontrollable emotions she'll walk one day....
Till that day.....I constantly watch over her....
My stupid little Nishi....
In what she thinks..... is......love...

The following lines will definitely make no sense to her......

You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love;
the running across fields into your lover's arms can only come later when you're sure they won't laugh if you trip.
~~~Jonathan Carroll, "Outside the Dog Museum"

Bring A Tale, Take Two Away

Just when a person gets tired of thinking what to do with his own life.....the only thing that seems to be the next feasible option is to......start thinking....what to do with......OTHERS' lives!!
No, I'm actually serious on this one....why can't people mind their own business?
Like others' business is easier to mind, and nose-poking into foreign matters gives some pleasure that I haven't experienced yet?
And being a social animal even I can't help being dragged into this stuff of discussing absurd details about other people that would otherwise seem irrelevant to me.

Like the other day, I was fiddling with my pen and looking out of the window of my classroom. And I didn't realise that the class Gossip-monger, let's call her Lola, nah...Pupu...nay...OK, let's call her Guddi........fine, yeah.....Guddi........I didn't realize that she was closing in on me. Had I known I would have reached for the nearest book and some copy and scratched a few lines on it with my non-functional pen to give her the impression that I was not to be disturbed. Oh well, I was too late to implement my plan of action (damn my poor reflexes)...And she came down on me like I was the only person in the world she had to talk to.

"Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii, whatcha doin'?", she squealed.

I fumbled with a book I held, and mumbled something like, "Uh.....doing a bit of reading for the proje-".

"Ooooooohhhhhhhh.........So studying?????", she asked me.
"Yes, kind of". She didn't buy it. Obviously.

I looked at her. Away from her. At the desk. At the non-functional pen in my hand. At the book that failed to serve its purpose in warding her off. At her again.

"Okay.......", She heaved a sigh.

It was a cue to what I was supposed to do. I kept the book down. The pen, too. And asked her.
"So wat's up?"

"Hmmmmm.....nothing." Yeah, nothing, right.
"So who's there with you in the project grouping?"

"Ashi, Dev and Richa...of course Richa didn't show up. And so I have to handle most of it." Oh you poor soul, I thought for a split second.

I asked the most logical thing I could ask..."Why didn't she show up?"
I opened some floodgates I realized.

"Well she said she had a tutorial to attend, which was a lie, obviously , because a friend of mine saw her at an ice-cream parlour that evening with....."

I don't know what followed for the next 20-odd minutes. It all droned into something about a guy.......a date...... roses....movies....I remember nodding to her animated expressions, and nothing else.

".......and then she also flirts with......."
5 minutes go by.....

"And I'm sure this you haven't heard of....that she....."
8 more minutes....

"...And could you believe that she could........."
13 minutes.....

".....I was Shocked!!!".......that stress on the last syllable woke me up.
"Oh my Gawdddd.......reallllllyyyyyy?????"...This is what I usually say...and what she usually wants me to say.

"Yes!!...Even I didn't believe that!!....Anyway.....promise me........you won't tell this to anyone else....ever!!.....Okay?"...I'm sure I'm the 63rd person in this week she has told this to.

"Yes..yes....I promise...this dies with me....", I say.
"You are a true friend....Okie, byeeeeeee!!"

Contended, she finally leaves.

I look across the room to where poor Richa is busy with lab work. I wonder if she knows how popular she has become in the past few days.
Even if she knew....there's nothing much she could do about it, because trying to squash a rumour is like trying to unring a bell.

The above was just a teeny weeny example of how people deftly mind the business of others more than their own. By the end of the day, I collect a lot of info about a friend's heartbreak(how, when, why, all perfectly detailed), another friend's shopping spree( including what items she added to her cart! ), yet another's secret(?) crush, someone having a bad hair day(details of how bad!), and a lots of other stuff, from people other than the ones concerned, of course.
People like these seem to amuse me...and amaze me as well, to some extent....because they are so capable of witnessing with their mouths what they have never seen with their eyes.
But then these are the kind of people you would mostly find around you...and perhaps even one inside you, knowingly or unknowingly, spreading a word we never should have bothered about, lending ear to what we should have never cared to hear.
But confining his interest to his own activities would probably rob an average person of half of his existence, of course. I wonder why people don't gossip about one's secret virtues........funny......

I guess it's apt enough to cite here, that...

"What is told in the ear of a man is often heard 100 miles away."
~Chinese Proverb

The Meaning of Being Lonely.....

Who exactly do u call a "loner"?
Someone who sits in a corner of a crowded room and looks into empty space?
Or someone who doesn't seem to pay attention to what people around him say....and snaps back to reality on being reprimanded....
Maybe someone who cuts conversations short and walks off to be on his own....
Perhaps someone who has no friends to talk to...or someone who shuns the very idea of talking to fellow humans...

I fit into this description precisely well.
I am tagged a "loner".
If only people paid heed to my explanation, I'd beg to differ.
It is funny how people confuse the idea of "solitude" with that of "loneliness". For those who have never noticed that the two things are entirely different, I'd happily elaborate, that, I'm not
lonely...I'm not a loner, either....

I haven't been staying away from crowd because I don't like being with other people. I've been doing that just because I like being with myself more than being with anyone else.
I do need to do this, because I hardly get time to ask myself how I'm doing. I need time to introspect, which I do a lot.
I love my hours of solitude, because it is during this time that life seems clearest to me. I feel happiest when I spend time with myself. I listen to myself like no one else does.....
I have questions that no one but me can answer...I have answers that no one else has to my questions....
I have the right to tell myself where I'm going wrong....I can assure myself that what I'm doing is right, even if I have the whole world up against me...
It's true that I have stopped accepting others' estimation of myself..since a really long time now.
I have never been self-centred, but then I can't stay out of touch with myself.

And why I pay so much of attention to myself?
I know what I do seems odd to people who believe in gregarious existence being the ideal one.
I don't say that my family or friends have been disappointing. I have been lucky to have such amazing people in my life.
But there have been times when I have felt like being responsible for my own existence, without any help whatsoever from anybody else. And during such times, I have had to fall back upon myself and myself only.
I am happy to say that I have found a great friend in myself.
There have been so many things about me that I never knew. There were so many things I was...and so much more I could have been only if I had paid attention to what I was capable of.
I have never found any voice more reassuring than the one in my head....when things go haywire in life.
Living up to what others expect from you is an amazing feeling, but living up to what you have set as your own standards of existence is something what can't be compared to any other experience.
And I push myself to my limits only when I am sure I am capable of doing so....hence I have helped myself to cope with external pressure as well.
It's great to know that you are in tandem with your own soul.

And then again there are times when you feel like breaking down. This , for me in particular, is difficult, when I am in the presence of anyone else. Had I been the kind of person who wears her heart on her sleeves, it wouldn't have mattered at all. I hate complaining about things beyond my control. But I also hate disappointments in my face. And the only one who I can crib about life's ups and downs in front of, is....no guesses....me, again.

I always wondered why people around me weren't perfect...But until then I hadn't noticed that I contained all the perfection I was seeking.
It has been a very fruitful transition, from times when I regretted being the person I was.....to this day, where I'm glad to have found my true self.
Unless you are in harmony with your own self, you'll never be able to fully appreciate whatever else you have been granted in life. And having learnt that now....I am glad that in this journey....I have myself for company.....
Would love to tell anyone reading these lines to take some time out to meet the stranger in the mirror..And I can guarantee that you'll no way be disappointed. That person in the mirror is THE best friend you can ever have.

To do that one needs to spend time with the self....not necessarily away from the world, but closer to one's own heart. There's a child locked away within it who deserves due share of attention.

The following lines sum up the essence of what I'm trying to convey here....

"You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.
What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself. "
~Alan Alda~

FoUr IdioTs

Life isn't always sunny. Days aren't always blissfully pleasant.
But a dull day can be made memorable for sure.

This is how "we" do it........


Now you can begin wondering who this "we" are.....

"We" are friends.

"We" are ordinary people, all different in personalities, attitude and degrees of maturity. But "We" have at least one thing in common---we are crazy......plain crazy.


An example of a crazy day we spend together will make the picture more clear.



Monday morning

• 6:10 am: (Home)

Jaz calls me up. "College", she utters the dreadful word. "Damn", I mutter to myself.

After that, she does that sequentially to the rest of them.

• 7:10 am: (At the bus stop)

Waiting for the bus, we all grumble within ourselves, missing sleep and
hating another Monday morning. We know that a long day lies ahead of us.
Needless to say we hate going to college.

• 8:30 am: (College campus)

We gather outside the classroom. "Andar chalein?", someone asks.
We stare at each other's faces. None of them show any interest in attending classes.
Still unavoidable circumstances(strict rules for attendance) force us to walk into the
room half-full....nah......three- fourth empty of students.

• 9:30 am: (Inside the Classroom)

The lecturer talks and talks and talks on I'm not sure what topic of which subject. I turn around to look at classmates. No one behind us.

Oops...I forgot to mention we love being backbenchers, for many reasons. I turn to Annie sitting beside me. She tries to make sense of what is being taught in class once in a while. And failing to do so, she turns to me and says:"Kuchh samajh mein aya?"

I shrug, and scan further along to DJ. She appears to be half-asleep. She moans, "Kya bore hai bey!" And her eyes redden with each passing moment. Beside her sits Jaz, fiddling with her cellphone in one hand and a pen in the other, occasionally looking up at the lecturer to give a clueless nod at whatever is
being said.

Not far along, I notice a guy nodding more often than necessary, quite rhythmically, in fact. Then I catch a glimpse of his camouflaged ear-plugs with cords leading probably to an iPod in his pocket.

Some others look outside the window, willing to see and hear anything except the lecturer.
At the farthest distance, at the front bench I can see the heads of the class nerds, intently listening and jotting down each and every word being said. I am sure they have also noted down the "Be attentive"s and "Don't talk"s the lecturer mumbles every eight minutes.

The hour slowly crawls by, minute by minute, and we sit with a "highly uninterested" expression on our face throughout.

The only time we come alive is when we get to sign the attendance sheet that gets passed on to us, and then we get back into "standby" modes.

• 11:00 am: (Outside the Classroom)

Break Time. We rise up from the dead.

Laughter rings in the corridors for the next 39 minutes as we crack anecdotes, share experiences, chat our hearts out.

Someone realizes it's way past 11:15 am, time for the next class to begin.
"Oye, class nahin jaana hai kya?"

We brace ourselves for another hour of torture and in chorus we speak at the
door:
"May I come in?"

"No, you may get out".

We stand sheepishly for a few seconds and then leave the doorstep. In the next one hour we immerse ourselves in fun-filled discussions in some peaceful corner of the campus.

• 12:59 pm: (Inside the Classroom, Again)

We are bang on time for the next class, having been driven out of the class before that for being 30 minutes late. This time we sit attentively, armed with pens and notebooks and a fake layer of enthusiasm on the face. The professor begins talking in Greek.

I note down in Latin.

The professor continually drifts away from the topic. The frontbenchers steer him back whenever they dare to. His words merge into a droning sound. I feel sleepy again. And then with a sudden change in the pitch of his voice he shouts:

"What does .com stand for??"

Silence.

"Any idea??"

Silence again.

Not that no one knew, but no one was quite paying attention to his words.

"Okay!! It stands for COMMERCIAL!"

DJ comments from behind me....

"Isssssssshhh....mereko toh pataa hi nahin tha!!"

This sent me and Jaz burst into sudden and violent giggles. Damn.

The professor glared at us angrily for the next 32 minutes.

At the end of the topic, whatever it was, he asked "Any doubts??"

And me, Jaz and DJ prompted Annie....."C'mon Annie, FIRE!!"
In the spur of the moment she shoots....."Sir, what is the use of .com in a URL??"

Googly!

He looks up at the ceiling , then outside the window, and at the piece of chalk he's holding.
And declares...."Next Class".

• 1:55 pm: (Buses Leaving, For Home)

Jaz says, "Kya bekaar din tha be!"

I agree, "Rotten, in every sense of the word."

DJ chimes in......"Isike liye tune mujhe sawere uthaaya??"

While splitting Annie finally asks......"So coming tomorrow?"



We all wave byes, and shout back......"Yes!!!"

Make Me A Child Again!

Babies are so cute, aren't they?

(No, this isn't an advertisement for Baby products, please be patient..)

Yes, so I was saying...babies are so cute. Little humans, tiny angels, bundles of joy...
But the truth is that babies are also the dumbest of creatures. They grow up with that attribute of dumbness within them, just that as they grow up they powder some intelligence on to their behavior, so that the dumbness doesn't get noticed easily.

And why I'm so critical of babies??

......Precisely because I'm NOT one. I have grown up. I am not blissfully ignorant of the things around me. I can't cry out loud to get the attention of people, and be sure that someone would pick me up. Damn, I can't cry at all! Grown ups don't cry, do they?(.....especially girls...they have mascara issues...)

There are a lot of other things I can't do now that I have crossed that golden period of existence long back.

Like it was fun to hurl toys at people you didn't like, and still manage to be called awfully cute. I remember I aimed well enough and did considerable damage. Definitely can't do that now! Now those toys have been replaced with a new weapon-- "attitude".

It was great to give Mum sleepless nights and she cuddled me close even when I made life hell for her. Now I'm a big girl, and it feels bad to trouble her at all for trivial matters. It's my turn to behave now.

Then I had time....plenty of time. Time to waste, doing nothing but staring with big eyes at everything , everyone, observing God knows what, making cute gurgling noises and quick, jerky movements with the limbs. And now, days shatter into hours comprising of incoherent minutes, seconds ticking in irregular beats. Time flies when you want it to stop, stops when you wish it would just fly.


And also I was ignorant of what reality is like. Little did I know back then that the world isn't filled with soft toys, but big grown up people. All kinds of big, big people. Good people. Bad people. Cute people. Not cute people. Pink people. Blue people. Green people. Yellow people.

Then there was the warmth and security of the cradle I loved, which I outgrew in an unimaginably short span of time.

The gap between dreams and reality I bridged when ...I don't remember, but I realized while I was growing up, this very important fact that "when we are young, we feel that dreams have the power to design reality, but as time passes by one understands that it is reality which actually designs those dreams".
I didn't realize how fast time flew by, as I grew up from a careless kindergartner, to a nerdy fifth-grader, to an average tenth-grader, to an undergraduate clueless about both studies and life. Somewhere during this time I also learnt that what you want in life and what you get, are entirely different things.

As I write this, I still feel that though there have been ups and downs, growing up hasn't been too bad an experience after all, with all the things I got to learn and the wonderful people I got to meet, the lessons I learnt about life, love, and ambitions.
But for many reasons I miss being a child, and would love to live that
part of my life all over again.


If granted One Wish, what I'd ask for would be.................

Make Me a Child Again.

Twenty Miles to Nowhere.....

They say.....the roads to greatness are strewn with thorns....

This very thing I realized when I actually had to take the turbulent roads to greatness. The destination I'm talking about is my Institution (again, it's not somewhere I want to go...but somewhere I have to)......Situated right in the middle of nowhere...and trust me the journey is something not ordinary.

What makes it so remarkable is that no number of "Have a nice journey" wishes are going to make it nice. Read on to find out why....
The saga begins early in the morning each day. I myself have big trouble making it to the bus stop in time (totally my fault...I don't pay any heed to my alarm clock). Even when I do manage to get there, I find myself surrounded with a huge number of sleepy-eyed, drowsy boys and girls, yawning at regular intervals, exasperated expressions pasted on their faces...one can sense that they are silently cursing the rising of the early sun, and deeply regretting the dawning of a new day.
They say, in India, there are three things that are never on time....Trains, Chief Guests and Buses. Our bus was no exception, and made it a point to be at least 20 minutes late, if not more, to pick us up. It's a long wait, and meanwhile there are a lot of things to do: you could stare at your surroundings, at sky, at earth, at fellow college-goers, or ask the person standing beside you the reason which made him/her decide to come to college at all (answers range from practicals to library books to dodging fine but never came across attending classes as being a reason), or you can simply use the time to recall what important thing you forgot to bring along in the hurry (as far as I'm concerned I realize that I've worn mismatching stuff and my hairstyle suggests that I have been electrocuted).
And finally when the bus arrives, and you get on to it, the first thing you notice is that it's running "packed houses", literally. It happens very often with me, and while I stand and scan along rows of people in hope of finding a seat somewhere, the most chivalrous of fellows throw back their heads, close their eyes and fall asleep all of a sudden. Girls show more mercy and invite me to adjust in their seats (eternally grateful to them). Then all well-settled, we begin the long trip.
The "trip" is an experience in itself, being some thirty kilometers long, passing through the countryside and terminating in the jungles (our college is located in these "jungles") and the vehicle itself rickety, having all hinges and nuts loosened by the rough roads. I can say that in the bus I travel in, everything except the horn actually makes noise. Once inside the bus, again there are a lot of things you could do: Stare at fellow passengers (long enough to make them wonder if you are nuts), try to overhear the conversation between a couple seated right behind you, scribble on the plastic sheath behind the seats, pull out big pieces of sponge from a torn edge of a seat, observe how the driver hurls abuses at buffaloes blocking his way, gossip to fill awkward silence, or just fall asleep to resume the dream you abandoned to get to the bus stop on time. I spend most of my time marveling at the scenic beauty of the countryside-the ponds, the hills, the clear sky, the lush green farms, the fresh air, huts and cowsheds, and not to forget the countless cows themselves. In the background I hear the bus's stereo screeching out melodies, probably the favorite collections of our driver, mostly "Bewafai Ke Nagme Vol-I & II" and some "hit" scores in undecipherable languages. At times I'm interrupted by sudden jumps and jerks and acute-angle tilting of the bus, during which I cling on to the nearest rod/railing/seat-edge/human/whatever for dear life(yeah, my bus literally "rocks").
Thus the hour-long journey continues giving me a sense of what it feels like when time stops, space loses dimensions and someone asks after every five minutes....."Are we there yet?"
..After passing on the way numerous temples, slums, open lands, mountains, tea stalls, miniature repair shops, finally the bus slowly "rocks" and "rolls" into the gates of the huge building.
I, one of the few passengers awake, get up with great difficulty from my seat, still wobbly with the inertia of motion, and step down on to the grounds of my Institution. Destination.