Whose Life?

Sehnsucht

2010-11-01T11:30:00.004Z

It’s the Longing that ultimately undoes you. When it finds you, it gnaws at your bones and tugs at your chest. It fills you up inside like rot and makes you dream dreams and it drowns you.

The Longing keeps you in bed, clutching at your sheets while the world goes on outside. It smells like old leaves and cigarette smoke, mixed with the scents of far-off places you will hear of, but never see. It’s the gloss on a lover’s lips the moment you realize you will never kiss those lips again.

It is the bittersweet, unrequited love of creation and it will break your heart again and again and again.

If you know the Longing the way I do, then these words are redundant. We understand each other perfectly, you and I.

House of Mystery #04, from Room and Boredom, by Matthew Sturges

Once again, I come to the conclusion that some words just cannot be translated into another language without a complete and ludicrous dissipation of the meaning they intend to convey.

Once again, it's a German word that gets me there.

Aaaarghh!!

2010-03-13T13:09:00.003Z

I woke up this morning, with an inexplicable, and completely overwhelming and all-consuming urge to write. It felt like a diverse and very powerful set of emotions was welling up inside me, gnawing at my innards, begging me to be given expression in the form of words, much like a bunch of seven-year-olds on a hot Delhi summer afternoon, begging their parents for five rupees to get a cola-bar. It was unbearable, and I distinctly rememeber thinking to myself that if I didn't write, I would soon be tearing out my hair, and running around the house half-naked, alternately clucking and shouting obscenities.

It was with such a bent of mind, in the complete and overpowering hold of just such a feeling, that I sat myself down to write this post.
Thankfully, it has now passed.

OK Go

2010-03-12T02:52:00.000Z

Oh such grace, oh such beauty. So precious, suspicious, and elegant, and viscious.
Oh, Darling, you're a million ways to be cruel.

Remarkable Lives

2009-09-02T14:16:00.002+01:00

King of Vampires: You seem very sure of yourself, you little mortal bastard, so I'll tell you what.... If you can tell me why your ordinary, piss-boring life is better than mine, you can walk out of here alive. If you can't, I'll cut your throat and drink my fill and leave you half alive forever.

John Constantine: Easy. Can you go for a walk in the park and hear the birds sing in the morning? Can you kiss a girl and know she loves you? Can you go out and get pissed with your mates? I can. And just so we're sure who's better off, why don't we sit here together and watch the sun come up in an hour or so?

Hellblazer - Issue 50, by Garth Ennis

And They Lived Happily Ever After... Not!

2008-12-10T00:41:00.003Z

I have long nursed a grudge against people who, for reasons I can not even begin to comprehend, seek to believe that they are in complete control of their lives. For as long as I can recall, I have been confused and perplexed by the fact that people, or at least the vast majority of them, in their infinite idiocy, completely and absolutely refuse to acknowledge the forces at work in this world.
Before I begin being misunderstood, which I more often than not am, allow me to hastily clarify what I mean. It must be pointed out that I am, in now way, a subscriber to the fatalist way of life. I do not believe that man is subordinate to inevitable occurrences and experiences, or that he can not mould his own future. And I would be the first to concede that a world-view which encourages action based on the fundamental notion of all-pervasive control is, very probably, the most proactive way of looking at this less than perfect universe. Even I must, myself, plead guilty on the count of occasionally looking at the world as centered around what I do and think, as anyone who has been fortunate enough to know and interact with me on a sustained basis would know.

I do, however, in moments of somewhat muted egotism (which I admit are few and fairly infrequent), realise that while the surmise that one is wholly in control of one's life and destiny may be the most convenient way of looking at the world, it is far from being the most accurate. Man, in spite of his multiple advances, or maybe because of them, has not yet come to terms with the fact that there remain, and always will remain, forces beyond his control.
Allow me to illustrate using a completely arbitrary example. Most people seem to be, or pretend to be, I know not which one, completely oblivious to the fact that meteorological phenomenon play such an important part in our lives. To borrow from Messrs Gallagher, who, before anyone else I knew or came in contact with, made the revolutionary claim that nobody ever seems to remember that life is a game we play; Nobody ever mentions the weather can make or break your day.

It can.
And if you don't believe me, well, gather around, and I shall tell you a story.

I remember it was raining that day. If you are of an inquisitive bent of mind, as I daresay I would've been, had I been the one listening to this story, you may ask me how I remember it was raining, for it was a couple of weeks back that this (wholly fictitious) incident occurred, and rain isn't so much an event as it is the routine, in this city. My memory, like everyone else's, is far from infallible. However, I do know the answer to the question now asked. In fact, it is one of the few questions regarding this story that I have a definite answer to, and which I shall therefore entertain.
I remember it was raining that day, for it all began when she offered him her umbrella.

No, wait a minute. I must pause here, for I have a strong suspicion I am slightly wrong. It definitely did not start there. The moment which involved the umbrella in question being offered was not the moment when the story I now recount started. Quite probably, it was merely the point in time in the story, much like there is a point in time in every story, when the people involved first realised, quite suddenly and irrevocably, that there was, indeed, a story in the offing.

But I shouldn't start a story from where the people involved first knew they were in the middle of one, should I? I should start at the beginning, for otherwise I am sure to confound and bewilder.

It all started innocently enough.
It was raining, and he knew he was in a hurry. The rain was, still, far from severe, and he, a veteran of many monsoons (but not too many; about twenty or so ought to do, I think), wasn't unduly worried. He knew he was in a hurry, but if you would've accosted him then and there, and asked him why, he would have been, quite uncharacteristically, lost for words. Maybe it was because he was getting late, and he knew he had to be where he was trying to get to pretty soon, for he had traveled a while to get this far, and he didn't want to miss a thing. Or maybe it was simply because he was, even then, strangely pulled to her, attracted without knowing why he was attracted, or even that he was, in fact, attracted. He hardly knew her; she was, till then, a mere acquaintance he'd run into a couple of times. But the last three quarters of an hour had been absolutely magical, starting from the instant his eyes had met hers across the length of the crowded platform, right up to the point when they had exited the train, and started walking to wherever it was that they were going.
He was desperate not to lose sight of her dark coat as she wove her way through the crowd. She was but a few steps ahead, and he knew he could cover the distance between them whenever he chose to, if he chose to, but he was afraid of slowing down, for although it was just a little over half past five, darkness had fallen, as it is wont to at higher latitudes, and the last thing he wanted to do was to lose her in the crowd.

It was still raining. The funny thing was, and I'm sure he thought to himself the very same thing at the time, it was no longer the mild rain that he'd been subject to over the past few minutes. Almost imperceptibly until now, without him having noticed or acknowledged it, the rain had grown worse. It was no longer the ordinary, routine rain that is so common here people almost completely disregard it; not the gloomy, irritating, damp but not quite wet, particulate horizontal rain that sticks to your face and merges with the air that you inhale. What he was experiencing now was more the heavy, gushing, the Gods being upset and letting their anger be known kind of rain, tinged with a hint of sleet, and touched by a mild sense of ill tidings for the couple of hours that were to follow. I know now, with the privilege of hindsight, that the rain, which at the time seemed quite fierce, was merely a precursor to the fiercer snow storm that was to follow, but he didn't know that at the time, and I am fairly confident that she didn't either.

The rain intensified, and he buttoned his coat and turned his collar to keep out the cold. About him, people, most of whom were just as ill prepared for the rain as he was, started stopping under awnings and trees. But he merely breathed in the icy air, tried valiantly but failed to control the slight shiver that escaped him, and continued walking. Maybe because he was in a hurry. Or maybe because she continued walking.

For the next couple of minutes, as they kept walking, the crowd around them, which was quite surely headed in the same direction as they were, and therefore was just as late as them, thinned as groups of people gave up walking in the rain for the altogether more pleasant occupation of standing in the shade.
They weren't too far now, for they could hear the mass of people in the distance, the people who had already made it, and it would all start any minute now.
It was, still, raining.

She glanced heavenwards, maybe intending to make a fresh evaluation of the now substantial rain, giving her head a casual and nonchalant turn that threw back the hair that had been covering her face. It was an effortless flick, yet it served its purpose beautifully, and the elegance with which her slightly damp hair acquiesced knocked the wind out of him, and made him shiver slightly; the second time that evening.
Her inspection of the skies complete, she deemed it appropriate to take action (a tad late, some would probably argue, but that was the last thing that flitted through his thoughts at the time, being as we was, still, and would continue to be for the next few minutes, rather enamored of the way her hair had conducted itself), and thus fished into her handbag, to emerge a few long seconds later with an umbrella which, even on its good day, would have struggled to completely protect a full-grown adult from the rain. It would have probably, with a huge amount of effort, and very strategic placing, just about shielded her from the downpour, but it was most definitely not, I must stress, an umbrella that could accommodate two.

Then she looked at him, smiled, and she offered to share her umbrella, just as the first few fireworks lit up the sky.
And he knew, as you and I have for a while now, that there was a story in the offing.

He fell into step with her, and they moved ahead together, their brisk pace even more pronounced now, for maybe it seemed to them that some of the promise that the evening had held had already materialised, and they were both now eager to explore and take part in the developments that were to follow. They walked on together, as she tried to keep up with his stride, and he tried to manipulate the rather limited umbrella to maximize its effect. The fireworks rang out clearer now, and each time they did, they were closer, and the sky was brighter.

They reached the clearing just as the fireworks display reached its peak; the light and sound which for so long had been ahead of them, now directly overhead. They stopped, for the first time since they'd started walking.
And then, also for the first time since they'd started walking (and indeed, for the first time altogether) they looked at each other. His hair was wet, and her feet were cold, but for a few brief moments, those things ceased to matter. As did everything else.
They stood there, in the cold and damp, looking at each other, silhouetted against the fire in the sky, oblivious to the sound, the light, the gathering storm and the crowd around them.

They looked at each other, and he could see the fireworks reflected in her eyes. They looked at each other, and they knew they didn't want to look away.
But their eyes soon began to water, and he started to suspect that the fireworks may well be, if viewed directly, much grander compared to their rather limited representation in her eyes.

Which is when they looked up, just as it began to snow.

Are We Human?

2008-12-07T17:17:00.003Z

Pay my respects to grace and virtue.
Send my condolences to good.
Give my regards to soul and romance.
They always did the best they could.
And so long to devotion.
You taught me everything I know.
Wave good bye, wish me well.

You gotta let me go.

Chuck Lorre Productions, #212

2008-06-11T21:40:00.003+01:00

I believe that the voices of fear, both from without and within, can only be dispelled by trusting the voice that comes from the heart. Be still and listen to it. If it speaks of love and compassion for others, for the world itself, it just might be the voice of God -- or a reasonable facsimile. If, however, it snarls with fear of the unknown, fear of losing what you have or of not getting what you want, then it just might be the voice of Rupert Murdoch -- or a reasonable facsimile.

The last fortnight, although unusual and mildly interesting, hasn't exactly been what most would describe as scintillating, primarily because of the prodigious amounts of surplus time I suddenly seem to have on my hands. Having much time and very little to do with it, I have, as I always do in times of intense ennui, turned to sitcoms to fill the hours that otherwise hang heavy.
Consequently, all of you who are in the rather unfortunate position of still being in Delhi, and hence being riddled frequently with my otherwise delightful company, should know that the wise-cracking, TV show-quoting Manu Saxena that you witness these days is not really all that me. The next time I compare you to a Sheldon Cooper or a Steven Hyde, or crack an obscure joke and break into raucous peals of hysterical laughter, kindly forgive me, for it is merely a passing phase.

On a slightly related note, I have a small confession to make. Of late, I've been watching Chuck Lorre sitcoms almost as much for the vanity cards that appear at the fag end of each of his shows, as for the actual humorous content in them (the shows, not the vanity cards).
You can read through all of Mr. Lorre's Vanity Cards at his Official Vanity Card Archives. They make for interesting reading, especially if you're in what can aptly be described as the dazed, disordered and tumultuous state that borders the absolute emotional pits.
That, or if you have absolutely nothing better to do.

And being...

2008-06-04T20:34:00.002+01:00

Caught in between,
All I wish for, and all I need.

Be a Man!

2008-06-01T22:57:00.005+01:00

A couple of days back, being in a state very aptly described by the word vella, and having nothing but time on my hands, I lay sprawled across the floor in front of the television, watching, for what must surely be the 45th time, the Russell Peters stand-up routine; desperate for something cheery that would lighten up my disposition, and disperse some of the clouds of gloom that I usually find myself surrounded with these days.
Which is when I heard, for what must surely be the 45th time, Russell Peters shrilly exclaim, in a high-pitched, what he would have us believe to be a Chinese accent, "Be a Man!", and noticed, only for the first time, how indiscriminately he followed it up with, "Do the right thing."

Which set me wondering about the rather incongruous pairing. What is it exactly about men that makes people think they will do the right thing? In fact, if my limited experience is any indication, it is exactly the opposite which is true, and I myself have to grudgingly plead guilty on this count. Men, in general, and I would like to apologize on the behalf of my gender here, do not do the right thing. In fact, given a set of circumstances, and a man, it is my solemn guarantee that the man will do the wrongest possible thing there is to do. Which probably explains why there exist in this world things such as wars, traffic and Mechanical Engineering.

If there are some of you who are reading this and thinking that I am kidding, I assure you such is not the case. I wish it were, but unfortunately it is not. And, as always, I have undeniable proof.

A few years ago, as I was randomly leafing through a magazine, or browsing the Internet (I don't really remember which), I came across this rather unconventional do-it-yourself quiz, the likes of which so overwhelmingly abound on the Internet these days, which illustrates my point rather well.
I must mention, before I present the quiz in its entirety here, that I am not, in any way, stating any untruth when I say that I did indeed come across this quiz, and that someone had actually put it up on the Internet (or in a magazine, I don't really remember which) in all seriousness, and it is not in any way a figment of my imagination or an MCQ questionnaire fabricated by me to prove my argument.
The quiz, quite lucidly and uncomplicatedly, was called, "Are you a man?"

Are You A Man?

1. You are trying to hang up a painting which you've just bought on a particular stretch of wall which is perfect for it, and your friend (For the sake of simplicity, let's assume that the name of the friend in question is Prabhpal Singh Grewal, who shall, for the benefit of brevity, be henceforth referred to as Pal) is helping you in your sincere endeavors to get the rather heavy painting up on the wall. As you stand on the foot-stool and ask Pal for the nail, he hands you one which is clearly too short to serve the purpose, and the next thing you know is that you're sprawled on the floor, one hand on the bump caused by the painting colliding with a particularly sensitive part of your scalp, looking up at Pal half-grinning, half-leering down at you in a maniacally apologetic way. What do you do?
a. You tell Pal everything is fine, and that it was as much your fault as his, and you continue to behave normally, but, deep within, you know that Pal is completely responsible for the mess, and you never forgive him for it, carrying your grudge to the grave.
b. You get up, dislodge the pieces of painting glass strategically placed somewhere in and around your posterior end, reluctantly accept Pal's apology, and start thinking about how to best effectively cover up the huge patch of cement that your wall now is.
c. You punch Pal.

2. You're out with friends watching the final in which your favorite sports team is completely clobbering the sh** out of the team they're playing against. Another few minutes, and they're sure to be crowned champions. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, the other team claws back into the game, and in the final moments of the match, snatches a victory from the dazed and confused hands of the team you're rooting for. What do you do?
a. Favorite sports team? I'm not sure I'm familiar with that concept.
b. You shrug it off; tell yourself that winning and losing is a part of all sport, and maybe your team will have better luck next time.
c. You punch Pal.

3. You're driving to a class you're particularly late for, and on the way, run into another car, leaving your car's front-end looking like something out of a scrap-yard sale. It's clearly the other driver's fault, and you emerge from your vehicle with the intention of giving the person who drove into you a piece of your mind. Then...
a. You notice her shoes, and Oh-My-God, are they gorgeous. You ask her where she got them, and she says she can take you to the store if you want, and you both go shop together for shoes and other assorted items constituting a wardrobe.
b. You get out, firmly tell the driver of the car that ran into yours whose fault it was, and demand compensation.
c. You drive to class. Later, when you next see him, you punch Pal.

Here's how you score the quiz. If you've got mostly a's, you're a woman. If you've got mostly c's, you're a man. The quiz thing didn't say what you were if you got mostly b's, but I've got a strong suspicion that if you've scored any b's whatsoever, you're bordering on abnormal and insane.

It's amazing, isn't it, the kind of quizzes they come up with these days? I think they're one of the banes of our DIY generation, these amazingly dense quizzes that so infest the media these days. Why would anyone in their right mind want to know which Desperate Housewife they are? Or, for that matter, which teletubby most resembles them. And, whatever be their demerits, those ones are still relatively tolerable. Some others I've run into are actually, as hard as it may be to imagine, even worse; like 'Which color is your heart/liver/spleen?', or 'Which animal best represents you/your girlfriend/your best friend/your neighbor/the random dude who spat paan out on you from the moving bus you were trying to catch two days ago?', or, for that matter, 'Which city should you be living in if you have sudden, powerful urges to overdose on heroin, get into a fight with a friend, bludgeon him/her to death with your thermodynamics textbook, nibble off his arm, and prance around with it attached to your own forehead?'

They are just amazingly absurd, some of these quizzes. I still haven't been able to figure out what justifiable function they serve in society. And why are they so completely pervading the world we inhabit? It's ridiculous, and it makes me so effing mad.
I think I'm going to go punch Pal.

Words of Wisdom

2008-03-18T22:57:00.005Z

I have, for as long as I can remember, been a firm believer in the deceitfulness of man. People lie. And I'm not saying that some people lie, or, for that matter, that most people lie. Being in the mood for gratuitous and sweeping generalizations, I am confidently proclaiming that all people lie.

All people lie. Deception is one of the life skills that need to be mastered by us all if we aspire to live comfortable, reasonably conflict-free social lives. It is one of life's necessities, like food, clothing, shelter, and vodka. And like food, clothing, shelter and, to a far greater degree, vodka, it is the glue that holds the world together. The force that binds us all. The set of tools we use to work our way through life. The thread that runs through the social fabric of our existence, and prevents it from getting ripped in multiple places as a result of the constant pressure from all sides, if I may put it so.

All people lie. And all people cheat. And all people, far more frequently than you would imagine, resort to duplicity, guile, treachery, and general underhanded skulduggery to obtain what they want, or what they think they want, or to prevent other people from getting what they want, or what they think they want, or any one of an entire host of other reasons, some a lot less noble and a lot more petty. How many times, if I may cite an example, have you been told by people (dentists and doctors, mostly) that this isn't going to hurt one bit. And how many times have you told people (not dentists and doctors, mostly) that this isn't going to hurt one bit.

My basic point, in case some of you are wondering, as I am sure you would be inclined to do, is that people, under normal circumstances, are not, and never can be, completely open and candid with other people. There's always a hidden agenda, a minor twisting of the facts, a proclivity to say what you believe others want to hear (or don't want to hear, depending on the degree of mutual animosity you and the aforementioned others share). Which is, and this is the crucial part, perfectly fine by me. A slight amount of deceitfulness is, as has been mentioned before, necessary and, quite ironically, almost prudent. A little bit of oompus-boompus seems, to me, a small price to pay, when we consider that its complete absence may lead to a rather altogether undesirable consequence; that of the unraveling of the social fabric that has already found a mention earlier in this post.
No wonder they call it the naked truth.

Having said that, however, I find it sensible to mention at this juncture, lest you lose interest and drift off to sleep (I would know, for I did), that this post isn't about lying.

I have, for even longer than as long as I can remember, been a leading proponent of the belief that there are ways to circumvent men's (and women's. Especially women's) dishonesty and prudence (both of them being pretty much the same thing, as I have already mentioned before, and then conclusively proved). This post is, as far as ways of circumvention (Is that even a word?) go, about one of my personal favorites; this post, or what's left of it, is about alcohol, which, now that I think about it, has also found a mention earlier.

Alcohol is, without question, one of the most pleasant, and definitely one of the most potent approaches to making men (and women. Especially women) speak the truth. People say what they really mean, and they really mean what they say, once they've got generous doses of the hard stuff inside of them. It has been my observation that some of life's maxims, life's most incontrovertible truths, emerge from one's very depths after copious amounts of alcohol have been consumed. Other things also emerge from one's very depths after copious amounts of alcohol have been consumed, but we shall do well not to concern ourselves with them now.

Having had indulged me for so long, you must allow me, at this stage, to put forth an example to substantiate my claims.

Imagine then, if you will, the organizers of the 3rd IIT Delhi Parliamentary Debate walking out of IIT Delhi's main gate after the completion of the finals of yet another satisfactorily-organized (I am tempted to use the phrase wildly successful, but the jury is still out on that one) edition of the annual parliamentary debating tournament, and making a bee-line for SDA. Imagine also, as I would like to request you to, all of them seated at a particularly crowded booth at Masala Junction (IIT Delhi's very own, in the absence of a more appropriate word to utilize here, theka; these days being promoted as a bar and lounge by an overly enthusiastic management) about an hour later, singing, dancing, arguing, smashing beer bottles on each others' heads, and generally acting like booze-addled buffoons.

Which is when Siddharth Krishnamoorthy, a strange and singularly entertaining hybrid between an IITian and a Stephanian (yes, such species do exist), with a few measures of rum and a few more pints of beer within him, in a bout of particularly severe angst, came up with the lines that made us all, in a perfect moment of clarity, see sense, albeit fleetingly. His opinions gave us pause, if you will, and compelled us to think. Singing, dancing, beer-bottle smashing, and other allied activities that go hand in hand with drunken revelry ceased, for a few brief instants, to occur, and anyone who has been waist-deep in drunken revelry before shall know how difficult it is to even momentarily suspend the above-mentioned activities in such a situation, and therefore how momentous a turn of events this was.
Everyone listened to Siddharth Krishnamoorthy.

Before I go into the specifics of his monologue, let it be known that I will be, in the interests of general decency, intentionally omitting most of the choicest swear words that SK decided to sprinkle his speech quite liberally with. Without a doubt, this purging of profanities will make his words appear a little more bland than they actually were, but I do hope that the gist will not be lost.

These were his words. Not his exact words, but slightly paraphrased words, for this is a family blog.

"Dude, what's the deal with women, man? Like, why do they have to get married? I don't get relationships, man. It's like, a choice between the deep sea and the devil. I'm 21, and every time I date a woman, and it gets slightly serious, I am expected to get married to her. Why in God's name is that?"
"And that's not the worst of it. The part that really gives me the shivers and makes me stay up nights is that If I really like a girl, I have to make my move fast, like, really fast, because dude, let's face it, if you wait long enough, dude, she might just get married."
"What kind of a sh** deal is that?"

What kind of a sh** deal indeed.

And while we're on the subject of life's most horrifying truths, there's another one I want to share. Have you ever noticed how all the new stuff you buy comes neatly packaged in a shiny box with all the polystyrene packing material and all the bubble wrap? And then you open it up, clawing at the thermocol eagerly, hardly being able to wait a moment longer before you can get your hands on what lies inside.

The thing is; and this is the part that really (for lack of a more suitable word which captures the emotion adequately well) sucks; nothing goes back into the box the same neat way it came out.
True story.

Total Recall

2008-03-12T20:39:00.001Z

I would not know if you have ever had the experience, but a thing I have found in life is that it, in its infinite wisdom, tends to provide you with, on occasions more than a few, just the tools you require to worsen an already unpleasant situation.
It is on occasions such as these that occur moments which, as you jog along the road defining your existence, you recognize immediately with the naked eye as high spots. Something tells you that they are going to remain etched, if etched is the word I want, for ever on the memory and will come back to you at intervals down the years, as you are dropping off to sleep, banishing that drowsy feeling and causing you to leap off the bed like a convulsed electric eel on losing all semblance self-control.

Accumulate enough of these moments, and you can hardly ever get to sleep.
And then you're just left in the unenviable position of being awake at two in the morning, knowing not what to do, and passing the time by scribbling nonsense on your now all but obsolete blog.

May God bless this now all but obsolete blog. It may not be much, but at two on this particularly lonely morning, it serves my purpose beautifully.

Valentine's Day Sucks

2008-02-14T17:58:00.000Z

Incidentally, I'm only saying this because I'm single and bitter. If I was in a relationship, I'd be all hearts-and-candy-tastic, I assure you.

Happy Thursday.

That Sinking Feeling...

2008-02-10T21:40:00.000Z

There come times in life, and I sincerely hope and pray that it is not only my life in which they so unceremoniously turn up, when an invisible limit is surpassed. When the amount of chaos around reaches a critical level. When a bar is reached, beyond which life gets messy enough to abandon all hope of deliverance. In actuality, it is an inconsequential moment, because by the time you realize that you're pretty much buggered and abandoning all hope of deliverance is the only rational thing left to do, it's already been a while since things had first gone wrong beyond repair. Psychologically, however, it is a brilliant moment, when you are suddenly made aware of the fact that you are not going to make your way out of this one by putting up a brave face and telling yourself that everything will work out fine in the end. It is a moment of clarity, when you suddenly know you've stepped off the edge; the cartoon moment when gravity waits for the coyote to realize his mistake before the plunge.
I am due to reach that moment any minute now. Which will allow me just about enough time to complete this blog post. That done, I shall run around the house naked shouting half-veiled expletives to express my extreme distaste for life.

My life is in ruins. My friends have begun avoiding me, for I take them for granted, and they resent that, and they're also slightly wary of the constant under-the-breath muttering and sly looks. My family thinks I am crazy since they last saw me running around the house naked. My minor tests were either missed by me on account of my debating (which also, I must add, continues to remain woefully substandard), or were unmitigated disasters, and my courses this semester invoke in me about the same feelings a dead rat would, only slightly worse. My B.Tech. Project has run into a dead-end that is so dead it could give an entire cemetery an inferiority complex, and my degree is very probably going to take me an entire extra year to complete. To top it all, I haven't slept properly in weeks, and everything is tinted green and sort of swimming around, like in an algae-infested pool. Also, sudden noises cause my eyes to fly out, my heart to get entangled in my front teeth, and a complete loss of control over my knees. Sleep, and therefore any hope of recovery, remains currently a non-viable course of action, because if I sleep for even a bit or otherwise waste any time whatsoever, I cannot possibly meet the deadlines for the work that I have promised to the multitudes of people I know, much of which is menial and inconsequential, and many of whom are presently actively involved in avoiding me.

Which is why I revert to this blog. I have no time, no plan of action in mind, and no chance of success. It's like the old days again. Except slightly bleaker.
And while writing about it here won't help things in any way at all, at least the crash, when it comes, will be well-chronicled.

Teachers Never Die

2007-09-05T18:17:00.000+01:00

They live in your memory forever. They were there when you arrived, they were there when you left. Like fixtures. Once in a while they taught you something. But not that often. And, you never really knew them, any more than they knew you. Still, for awhile, you believed in them. And, if you were lucky, maybe there was one who believed in you.

Ironic?

2007-05-07T21:04:00.000+01:00

The one course in which I actually did put in some kind of an effort this past semester will not, and can not, even slightly affect my CGPA, one way or the other.
I must admit, however, that the likelihood of 'the other' happening is quite significantly higher than the 'one way'.

Or, being the probability stud that I am, P(one way) << P(the other).

Sumbudy gonna get a hurt reeal bad.

Rapid Hope Loss

2007-04-25T07:54:00.000+01:00

Yep.
That about sums it up.

People Aren't Chocolates

2007-04-16T11:01:00.000+01:00

Do you know what they are mostly?

Bastards. Bastard-coated bastards with bastard fillings.
But I don't find them half as annoying as I find naive, bubble-headed optimists who prance around vomiting sunshine.

Accidentally In Love

2007-04-14T13:57:00.000+01:00

I saw the movie version of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy a few days back, and absolutely hated it. I had been warned of its demerits in the past, which is probably why I never went to watch it while it was still running in theaters a couple of years back, for being the huge fan that I was, and continue to be, of the book, I was playing it safe. The last thing I wanted was a substandard movie to come along and ruin the book for me.

But a few days ago, as I mentioned, curiosity got the better of me, and after much contemplation, I finally decided to, as many would say, fuck it all, and thus thinking, procured a DivX print of the movie, and sat myself down to watch it.
It was, as I also mentioned, terrible, especially for someone who is as fond of the book as I am. The story was all wrong and messed up, and the best parts had been cut out. The beginning was corny, and Zaphod's second head was most shoddily done. John Malkovich was completely wasted as Humma Kavula, Deep Thought had a female voice (which was not, I might add, rich, resonant and deep), and Ford Prefect was black (which makes sense, actually, because Ford Prefects are, usually, black, and Mos Def does end up doing a fairly good job, but the fact remains, they made Ford Prefect black), a travesty I have still not managed to overcome.

So, as you can probably make out from the preceding paragraph, I absolutely detested the movie, for what it was, and for how it reflected on the book.

You would, therefore, be most puzzled to know, that I watched the entire movie again a couple of days back. It is a matter that, I am sure, baffles and perplexes. There seems to be no logical explanation that can satisfactorily explain the given situation. Why would a seemingly sane man (and I say seemingly for I, like you, am also not too certain if the assumption holds, although I am desperately trying to hang on to the belief that it does) watch a movie he professes to hate a second time within a fortnight?

A logical explanation, however, I assure you, does exist (which is probably what enables me to desperately hang on to the belief that the above mentioned assumption holds). It goes somewhat like this.
I am, completely and most definitely, in love with Tricia McMillan, or Zooey Deschanel, as she is more commonly known.

Which brings me, finally and in a somewhat long-winded way, to the reason why this blog post is being composed. I have often, and to a much larger extent in the recent past, been accused of falling in love far too easily. I try valiantly, whenever such allegations are brought up, to defend myself by vehemently denying these baseless claims, and proceeding to viciously assault the character and authenticity of whomever it may be making the accusations.

However, a little bit of closer introspection reveals, and I am trying to be brutally honest with myself here, that what many are saying might indeed be true. Over the past fortnight, I have fallen completely and irreversibly in love with Lena Headey (Queen Gorgo from 300), Preity Zinta (a couple of hundred times), Mirinda advertisement girl (I don't quite know what her name is), Minissha Lamba (the pretty new Bollywood actress working in Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd.), Meg (from the animated feature film, Hercules), Priyanka Chopra (spotted her on the telly while channel-surfing), Abigail Spencer (from Angela's Eyes), Emma Watson (I was watching the new Harry Potter trailer), in addition to, of course Zooey Deschanel, as well as a couple of other people who I happen to know slightly better than the ones mentioned above.

But then, as I see it, this isn't necessarily a problem. I have no qualms with falling in love at periodic intervals of time, and I see no reason why I, or anyone else for that matter, should be denied the liberty to do so.
I am, however, I have to admit, not a little disturbed by the logical implications of the situation at hand, for it is quite clear, on a bit of closer rational analysis, that the very obvious upshot of, in essence the very factor that enables my being excessively prone to fall in love is just a tad bit worrying.

It's not the falling in love as frequently as I do that bothers me.
It's just that I seem to falling out of it just as frequently.

Is that Dopey in your car?

2007-04-08T20:54:00.000+01:00

I completely fail to understand why any self-respecting Bollywood actress would let someone like Emraan Hashmi within arm's-length distance of herself, let alone permit him the occasional kiss. I mean, the guy is nothing but disgusting. Whoever encouraged him to take up movies ought to be dismembered and clubbed to death with his own left leg. The chap looks more like a government office peon than an actor, what with the mangy stubble and the scruffy clothes, not to mention the permanent hang-dog expression. In fact, within our household, and indeed among much of my extended family, mostly at my mother's instance, we have taken to calling him The Bhikmanga (The Beggar, or The Mendicant, for the ones not in the know). In fact, to be quite precise, he is referred to as The Bhikmanga II, the coveted and highly prestigious post of The Bhikmanga I (or The Original Bhikmanga) being already occupied, for a fairly long time now, by a certain gentleman by the name of Ashmit Patel. As you can probably figure out, subtlety isn't exactly my family's area of specialization.
But I digress. My objective is not to talk about my family's unique inclination towards finding unflattering names for B-Grade Bollywood actors, and Ashmit Patel's non-existent talent and looks shall serve as another subject for another day. What I merely mean to convey as of now is that the only good thing that Emraan Hashmi could possibly have going for him is the fact that his surname has the word 'Hash' in it, a word that for many people goes hand in hand with a variety of undoubtedly pleasant associations.

While we are on the subject of issues I completely fail to understand, I would request the reader to indulge me a little while longer, while I voice my feelings on the subject of soft toys. I mean, what is the entire deal with these soft toys? What is the objective these big furry things are serving, besides acting as extremely large pillows and/or handkerchiefs for your children? If your child wants something to lie on, give him a pillow. If he needs something to wipe his nose with, give him a handkerchief. But, as I see it, this unhealthy obsession to combine the two clearly does not bode well for you, your children, or mankind at large. There are combinations that work, and are called for (like the new iPhone), but quite frankly, soft toys as a seamless coming together of pillows and handkerchiefs don't quite cut it, mostly because you end up lying in your own snot.
And one can rest assured that if there exist daft objects such as soft toys, there will exist, in much greater numbers, people who are dense enough to take them to even greater levels of stupidity. Even if I do assume, for argument's sake, that soft toys are one of those civilization-altering creations, like fire, the wheel, and vodka, what could possibly come out of keeping a dozen of them in one's car?
Just the other day, as I was walking to South Extension to satiate my golgappa cravings, I spied a car (I believe it was a WagonR. Never liked them much.) with an entire array of soft toys, which on closer inspection turned out to be all of the seven dwarves, staring at me from behind the rear window. The answer to the question, "Why would any seemingly sane man spend hard-earned money to buy a set of soft toys and place them next to the rear window of his car?" completely eludes me. Surely, thus placed, these soft toys would be completely incapable of fulfilling either of the only two possible aims I have talked about previously. Moreover, spare a thought for the collateral damage such a move would cause. Merely glancing at the dwarves while I was walking down the street made me freeze and almost resulted in me being run over by an ice-cream cart (Grumpy had an exceptionally belligerent look on his face). Imagine what the upshot would be if I were driving a car and suddenly noticed the seven pairs of small eyes trained on me. Surely I would have a heart-attack, slam into the divider, and kill at least a dozen (four or five of them urinating) pedestrians.

It is getting late, and I must leave you now, for sleep beckons. But before I conclude this post and take my leave, at least for the time being, I must write about one last thing that I have not been able to understand all these years. Indeed, this one has puzzled me even more than the two mentioned earlier, and for a much longer time.

How can a healthy, full-grown, adult man be so tired at the end of the day, when a swallow weighing less than an ounce can fly non-stop across the Atlantic.

As You Like It

2007-04-07T18:29:00.000+01:00

It is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, which, by often rumination, wraps me in a most humorous sadness.

My Life

2007-04-01T15:23:00.001+01:00

As a dear friend very aptly puts it, Oh... it's like animated and stuff! (Whee!!)

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

These Pretzels Are Making Me Thirsty

2007-03-31T18:55:00.000+01:00

As March slowly draws to its eventual and inevitable end, I cannot help but look back at the last quarter-year that has been, and though I strongly believe in the fact that I am a straightforward and simple being, the set of emotions that slowly take possession of me are by no means uncomplicated.

The last three months have gone by in a whirlwind of activity; a fact that I now become acutely aware of, on looking back at the period in question, completely occupied as I have been throughout its duration, and therefore unable to notice just how frenzied life has been of late.
There have been classes, those indescribable, insufferable occurrences that I had almost forgotten existed over the six month period I spent away from IIT. There have been projects, presentations, tutorials, submissions, and consequently, deadlines, a word I now remember exactly how much I dreaded before, and have come to dread even more, if possible. There have been outings with friends, outings with family members, get-togethers, parties, treats, weddings that I just can't seem to have wheedled my way out of, relatives visiting, closer relatives leaving, seemingly countless trashy movies, followed by a couple of good ones, minor tests, debates, mostly bad, both in India as well as across the border, both as a speaker and as an adjudicator, the fact that the ones I adjudicated were consistently worse than the ones I participated in making the entire situation even more grueling to endure, cultural festivals, technical festivals, seminars, more minor tests, arguments with parents, arguments with friends, unnecessary complications, irate professors, quizzing events, marketing meetings, filling up of forms and other variations of needless paperwork, and people who, for some strange reason I am yet to understand, can't seem to get enough of talking to me.

What makes the entire experience even more unbelievable and surreal is how starkly it contrasts with the six months I had spent immediately preceding it, lazing around, traveling, soaking up the sun, and spending much of my time reading.

However, I am not the one to complain. This year has been, if anything else, exhilarating. There has been, at any given point of time, loads to do, and somehow that always seems to spur me on.
The only possible reason I could have for complaint is that, somehow, time and time again, the social and academic aspects of my life seem to, ostensibly without fail, get in the way when the clock reads half past seven every weekday evening and I am compelled to forego, for the sake of fulfilling prior commitments, yet another installment of Seinfeld.

Any sane man, I firmly believe, must be allowed at least a few minutes of pure, unadulterated pleasure every day, and I have this niggling suspicion that whoever is in control is keeping me from experiencing my share of the joy.
Make no mistake, I am pretty darn pissed about it.

Things, however, are not as bleak as they seem to be on the Seinfeld front. Changes are most definitely afoot. The week that has just passed saw me managing to catch four out of a possible maximum of five episodes, due mainly to completely unexpected holidays on Monday and Tuesday, and a rather fortuitous timetable that ensures that I am free, for the most part, on Thursday and Friday afternoons.
Four out of five. Not bad, eh? Almost reaffirms my faith in myself.

I am, yet, the Lord of the Manor. The King of the Castle. The Master of my Domain.

I'm Mr. Brightside

2007-03-26T11:12:00.000+01:00

Well. It's official. India has, without a doubt this time around, crashed out of the World Cup. And Greg Chappell will very probably be dead by the time you read this.

But being the eternal optimist that I am, I choose to see things in a more positive light. At least he hasn't been murdered as yet. Furthermore, as if that wasn't good news enough, I am not one of those thousands of crazed cricket followers who have made travel arrangements and ticket reservations worth crores of rupees to travel halfway around the world to be able to catch the by now sold-out Super Eight (How I hate that phrase. Never liked Super Six either, but at least that had the entire alliterative jig going for it.) match to be held on Sunday, the 15th of April, rubbing their hands together with glee and drooling copious amounts of, well, drool, keenly anticipating a succulent India-Pakistan encounter in Barbados in the offing.
They shall now all be fortunate enough to witness Ireland play Bangladesh, in probably the most evenly matched of the Super Eights; just the kind of encouragement the minnows (Never liked that word either. Reminds me of fish, a section of the Animal Kingdom I most singularly abhor.) need.

After all, isn't that what the Cricket World Cup is all about.

I, Robot

2007-03-22T19:25:00.000Z

Eerily apt, if you ask me. Especially the Nullification bit. Suits me well.

300

2007-03-20T21:27:00.000Z

There are movies, and let it be known that the ones I talk about are precious few in number, that aren't merely movies, but existence altering visual spectacles that reaffirm your belief in your own ability to be influenced beyond your wildest dreams.
300 is one such movie.

It is almost impossible, I strongly believe, to watch a movie like 300 and not praise it publicly. Which is probably what prompts me to sit down in front of a computer at three in the morning, merely a few hours before my first minor test, with an aim to making it apparent, to all who would care to listen, exactly how brilliant the movie is.

The film reeks of virility. It's a two hour long testosterone driven slaughter-fest, with supercopious doses of overstated masculinity. It's like the film takes you by the testicles and yanks you into this world of sex and violence where men are real men, women are real women, and honour, duty and freedom are dicta people live, and die, by.
300 allows you to vent the frustration that is very much an integral part of being a male in contemporary society. For two hours, 300 allows you to feel like a real man. Within these couple of hours, you long for combat, you guiltlessly lust after women, you hunger for blood, and you crave for battle. Within these couple of hours, you can give yourself up to your baser instincts, to feelings of rigidity, of absolute and irrefutable power, of stubborn devotion to duty and intransigent truths, of intolerance, of honour unto the very end, and of intrinsic superiority. Which is probably why you walk out of the cinema hall so fulfilled and satisfied, for once having been able to let out that part of your self which society deems unfit for public portrayal.

The screenplay is beautifully done, as I am sure anyone who has read the graphic novel would agree. Each frame is a work of art. The slow-motions are cringe-inducing, coupled with one of the most haunting soundtracks I have been fortunate enough to come across in recent times. When the arrows fall, you are nearly compelled to duck for cover, and as bodies get de-limbed and heads get severed, you almost cower in your seats, eyes half-closed, expecting the warm spatter of freshly spilt blood that abounds on screen, ominously threatening, to drench you and run slowly down your skin.
And when I say blood, I do not mean the sickly pale-red, syrupy variety that we seem to come across so often in most movies these days. What I am talking about is thick, dark and rich, globular liquid, viscous enough to give my fluid dynamics professor pause.

The narration is impeccable, with Dilios (David Wenham, of Faramir fame) taking over the reins from the narrator in the Frank Miller version. The dialogue is brilliantly written, but this, once again, I would mostly, although not wholly, attribute to the graphic novel. What the movie has intended to do, and undeniably succeeded in doing, is to start with the graphic novel as a basic stepping stone, and then build upon it to achieve a level of spectacle seldom seen before. The movie, and I do expect and eagerly anticipate quite a bit of opposition to this belief, more than lives up to the graphic novel, and achieves so much more.

For then there is Lena Headey, who as Queen Gorgo, is simply awe-inspiring. She brings into the character the intensity and toughness it needs, without once compromising on her feminity. Her strong face, set defiantly through much of the movie, only serves to reinforce her womanliness, and her very feminine concerns about her husband and her son. She becomes the cornerstone of the entire movie in that brief moment when she faintly nods in tacit approval when Leonidas asks her to decide the fate of the Persian emissary who comes asking for 'Land and Water'. In that one brief moment, I am quite sure I fell in love with her about a million times.
And how she works magic with a single, coarse, unadorned piece of simple white cloth is something that can only be experienced by watching the movie, and for that magic alone, if nothing else, the movie is worth watching.

Hair and Now

2007-03-08T19:36:00.000Z

For the first time in a period of a little over two years, my hair is exactly like it appears on the right. Not any longer. Not any shorter. And not worn any other way.

All of you, therefore, who happen to possess the good fortune of seeing me over the course of the next couple of days, will find me looking quite like I look in the picture, except for the fact that I probably won't be in the middle of voicing my displeasure in the form of a particularly violent expletive, as I can be seen doing in the picture.
But then again, given the strange set of circumstances I seem to find myself in these days, I might well be.
I apologize for the inconvenience. I mean, in most cases, no, and in some, very minimal, offense.

Important Advice, and a bit about Birthdays

2007-01-19T16:20:00.000Z

I have a lot to write about. However, lest you get your collective hopes up too high, I must warn you now that all of it is, as are most things that concern me, totally irrelevant. However, now that you're here, (deep breath) which is a considerably more than slightly surprising occurrence in itself, keeping in mind that it has been close to a year since I last posted anything substantial, and a lot more than that since I posted anything even remotely interesting or humorous, but we shall talk more about that later, primarily since it would necessitate me harping on about my lack of motivation and my readership's lack of what is known commonly as a 'life', and I do not feel much like either today, being in a greatly and, if possible, more than usual self-congratulatory frame of mind, and understanding that I can ill-afford to insult my already dwindling audience, for the fear of making them turn away in disgust on realizing the pointlessness of their own existence (phew!), I urge you to stay and read on, the post's complete lack of significance notwithstanding.

Today I shall talk about birthdays. Or more specifically about my alarming proficiency at forgetting them.

I can't remember birthdays. I just can't. Don't ask me why, for if I knew, I would have long ago found a remedy to the situation. But as things stand, I can't and therefore, quite simply, don't. I am one of those few people who have managed to, in the same year, forget all the birthdays in my family, save mine, which I remembered sometime halfway into the morning, when I was wished by a close friend at college (which leads me to wonder that had it been a weekend, would I have discovered at all). My family, needless to say, was less than ecstatic at my complete lack of acknowledgment on their birthdays, especially my sister, who completely refused to talk to me till a few days and a couple of very expensive belated birthday gifts later.

The point I am trying to make is that I am pathetic at remembering birthdays, as any of you even slightly acquainted with me would probably know. Relations, girlfriends, fellow students, old contacts and even distant acquaintances (in my defense, the last quite justifiably), have all bore the brunt of the famed 'Manu Saxena Selective Amnesia' (or MuSSA for short) when it comes to birth dates.

And the strangest bit is, from what little I know of myself, MuSSA doesn't even have any logical or personal basis for its existence. I mean, I am a fairly sane individual. As far as my memory goes, I have never received any complaints, and have no reasons to doubt its soundness. I am not bad with dates per se, and always have been an excellent History student, always performing well above average and with a sterling reputation for remembering facts and figures. My learning-by-rote skills have always been the envy of most, proving that my retention is, and always has been, unquestionably impeccable. Ask me random dates from the Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, like the day Frodo was attacked on Weathertop, and I shall tell you, without pausing for a moment's thought, but ask me my best friends' birthdays, and all I'll probably be able to give you is roughly the quarter of the year they lie in, and that too after much nail-biting and brow-furrowing deliberation.

So why is it that I cannot remember people's birthdays, even the ones' I have known intimately over a period spanning a number of years, and with whom I have celebrated many of these very birthdays that trouble me so?
If any of you would happen to know, or even have a hypotheses or an at-first-seemingly-inaccurate conjecture as to the reason behind this apparent malady of mine, please do let me know, for I desperately seek help.
In the meantime I shall look for alternative ways to remember these irksome birthdays that trouble me so, so that I can prevent offending any more people, for I have already offended many, and further alienating some may lead to potentially dire consequences.
Maybe I'll start keeping a diary, a journal of sorts, where I record birthdays and names (No, no, they've never given me any trouble, but just a list of birth dates would kind of defeat the entire purpose, don't you think?). Or maybe I'll revert to using the knowledge given to us by our ancient civilizations, which told us how to find out a person's exact age (to the day, I have heard) by processing physical attributes like body structure, weight, height, face-shape, amount of hair, skin complexion, number of eyelashes, color of teeth, ratio of thumb-to-finger thickness, body hair, bald patches, and a variety of other easily observable characteristics that we usually consider quite useless.
Or I could start using Orkut. It's almost as accurate, from what I am told.

That done with, I shall now move on to the actual reason I am writing this post, which is passing on a piece of sound advice to all my readers, for I am a firm believer in learning from others' mistakes, and I would hate nothing more than all of you making the same mistake that I did, simply because I was too lazy to pass on my life's learnings, thinking, only too selfishly, that no good could come of it, and failing to realize that it may, in fact, lead many to salvage a lot more when faced by a somewhat similar situation.

Never underestimate a woman's intelligence. It can lead to potentially fatal consequences.

My primary aim fulfilled, I think I shall go now. However, before I bid adieu, I shall leave you with the Sasta for the Day.

There are, primarily, three races of man.
The 100 meter race, the 400 meter race, and the Marathon.

The date, incidentally, was 6th October, 3018 (1418, Shire-Reckoning).

Jamais Chez Moi

2006-10-05T19:08:00.000+01:00

For, If what you seek is the wise man's treasure,
You know it's buried beneath your feet.

Whipped and Devastated

2006-06-30T21:35:00.000+01:00

Life, and much else associated with it, seems to take on a slightly greenish tint after four days, and nights, of next to no sleep. Inanimate object seem to possess a mind of their own, and stubbornly refuse to slide into sharp focus. Muscles expand and contract without prior notice, and sudden noises never fail to startle. Individual words seem to make sense, but sentences get lost somewhere in the depths of one's brain. Worst of all, horrifying latent urges become apparent and most difficult to control, and on many occasions, one almost commits oneself to heinous acts such as swiping pearl necklaces and hiding them in flower-pots. Oh, and lest I forget, the imagination boggles.
Therefore, for any of you who inadvertently find themselves in a similar situation, I have advice. Energy-intensive physical activity doesn't quite help the situation.

That said, let the games begin.

As for the title to this post, its irrelevance is merely an illusion, as is the irrelevance of the rest of this post. The title, if popular opinion is to be believed, is what I am going to be in a little more than 24 hours from now. Or so they say.
I would like to disagree, but I can't quite be sure.
For, as I briefly mentioned earlier, I'm no Superman.

Oh, Bloody Oh!

2006-06-25T09:30:00.000+01:00

This is what I found out today.
It takes an average of 10 years for somebody’s spit to get completely cleared out of your system. 10 years. 10 effing years.

Do you people realize how significant this news is? Do you people have any idea of the implications of this find? It has opened up an entirely new line of thought for me. Questions earlier unthought of are now vying for my very limited mind-space.

Do spits retain their individuality in someone else’s system? Do they practice healthy, communal living, or do they have their own petty feuds and quarrels? Do they lose their vitality and uniqueness with time? Most importantly, what happens when two spits meet?

Spit-Sample 1: Hey. You seem new around here. Who are you?
Spit-Sample 2: Hi! You’re right, I am new here. I arrived yesterday. I’m ABC’s spit. What about you?
SS1: I’m XYZ’s spit. So how might you be doing?
SS2: Quite good. I am, however, a little curious. How did you end up inside Manu?
SS1: Manu? Oh, are you referring to the tall, good-looking guy we’re having this conversation inside? Pretty much the same way you did, I’m guessing.
SS2 (Gasping): WHAT!! How long have you been here?

Case 1 (Manu has a narrow escape):
SS1: A fairly long time, I think. A couple of years, maybe. I’ve begun to get a bit bored, actually. There’s not much to do around here. And to think, I have another 8 or so years to spend like this.
SS2 (Relieved): Oh, it’s okay then. For a minute there I was a bit scared. Anyway, don’t worry too much. We could hang out together if you want. Those are some lovely enzymes you’ve got, by the way. Where did you manage to come across those.
SS1 (Pleased): Ooh, you like them? I got them somewhere near his Pancreas. We could go there sometime.
(They end up going enzyme-shopping together, and compliment each other on their shoes).

Case 2 (Manu is not so lucky):
SS1: Two, maybe three days ago. Why, what happened?
SS2 (Now slightly pale. More pale than usual spit, anyway): WHAT!! The louse. He’s going to pay for this. Somebody gonna get a hurt real bad. Somebody.

(They bitch about Manu and his wanton ways.)

Man, this is scary. I should be afraid. Very afraid. Earth-shattering information like that, I could very well live without.

After all, I’m no Superman.

I’m Still Alive

2006-06-08T12:13:00.000+01:00

It’s been a while. More than three months, if I be slightly more precise. The comments to my previous post tell me that my absence has not gone unnoticed. Many have left comments asking me where I am (or was). There has also been much unnecessary theorizing about the causes of my extended leave. Quite a few have put forth their own hypotheses, some of them, like Mr. Kant’s, being unclear to the point of absurdity, but many more, mercifully, have asked me to make clear my reasons, instead of venturing to explain them on their own. Most, and I am very thankful to God for this, have merely enquired as to my whereabouts, or, to put it as many of them have, whether I’m still alive.

I am. I’m still alive. I’m more alive than I’ve been in a very long time. I can feel myself again. I can feel every little joy magnified a thousand times, and every little jolt made a thousand times worse.

The last three months have passed in a whirlwind of activity and excitement. Some of it has been good, and some of it has been bad. But I’ve lived through every single moment of it all. In every sense of the word, I’m still alive.

All of my alleged well-wishers can therefore stop worrying. And Mr. Kant can go stick his head in a pig.
Thank You.

On communicable diseases

2006-03-03T14:15:00.000Z

Life, on the whole, seems to be looking good. But, needless to say, I do have qualms. Not very big ones, but qualms nonetheless.

My iPod earphones have finally died on me. The right earphone has ceased to function. I always knew their doom was swiftly approaching, especially after I let them lie in my shirt pocket last week, as the shirt, pocket and all, went through a couple of very thorough soak and rinse cycles, followed by a brisk two-minute spin. It is a surprise, and says much about the left earphone's resilience and courage in the face of the enemy, that both of them didn't meet the same sticky end (subtle pun there, I gleefully note). I have, as a result, been forced to listen to Bus Music over the last few days.

I am tremendously short on sleep. I have slept less than, and I do not exaggerate, 14 hours over the past week. I have been home precisely twice during the same period, and then too primarily to brush my teeth. On one of these trips home, I also managed a quick bath.

My MEL 120 professor has fallen into the annoying habit of asking questions such as, "Why were you not in class yesterday?", and, "Why are you stealing jobs from the workshop?", and the occasional, "What does a stripper do?"

My feet hurt. And the world does not care about what I think.

Worst of all, I recently came across, as I was reading through one of my favorite books the third time, some very disturbing information. Although, as I have said, I've read the book two times earlier, for some strange reason it was only this time that I came across the disturbing information that I came across.
There, somewhere in the middle of the book were the words that I came across and that contained the disturbing information that I came across.
"Insanity is Contagious."

So now, in addition to guarding against a cold and Bird-Flu, I also have to guard against Insanity. And at a place like IIT, I will have to guard well.

But then, as some might say, we will find a brighter day.

Phew!

2006-02-22T21:48:00.000Z

The last couple of paragraphs are nice. The rest of this entry is very eminently skippable. Just thought I'd let you know.

The minors are over. They reached their conclusion this Sunday, much on their own volition. They were, expectedly and quite unsurprisingly, unmitigated disasters. Each and every one of them. But, they're over, and, while I am quite happy that they are, the complex set of feelings that I experience currently do not quite conform to the usual sense of exhilaration that I generally experience immediately after a set of minor examinations. They are, to put it simply, different. They are much of the same quality, but not quite of the same magnitude. But before that, for purposes of better understanding, allow me to acquaint you with the way examinations usually work with me.

It all starts with denial, and it sets in about a week before the examinations are due to begin. I wake up in the morning, and simply refuse to acknowledge their existence. This period usually lasts about four days, and during these four days, I flatly refuse to admit, to myself or to others, the fact that the set of examinations in question is fast approaching. I flounce about, doing the things I usually do, doing them the way I usually do them, and, and this is the trickiest part of the process, filtering out all examination related thought and talk from normal non-examination related thought and talk and fiercely guarding against its entry into my head. It is this stage which probably sees me at my hysterical best, mostly because everyone around, at this point of time, is usually completely losing it, and seeing them completely losing it makes me hysterically happy. People don't like to talk to me too much during this period, for I am, most undoubtedly, quite a handful even when not at my hysterical best.

Then, approximately 70-80 hours before the first exam is due to start, comes the critical point in time when it suddenly dawns on me that the examinations are approaching, and not thinking about them, while an excellent means of keeping myself sane, wouldn't quite be very effective as far as making them go away is concerned. At this juncture, I almost invariably sit up rather suddenly, and cause all the things in my lap to fall down (I once broke a thermometer that way. I also once banged vital organs against the table that way. They hurt like crazy. Needless to say, I didn't do too well on the exams that followed.). This is when I completely lose it. I reach an excited and frenzied state, and it is in this excited and frenzied state that I start studying. I study for about an hour. Then I realize I am not getting anywhere. Then I call Mridul.

Mridul informs me about the syllabus, and tries to persuade me that much of it can be managed within the time that I have left. Somewhat reassured, I return to my studies. But try as I might, I am still unable to make much sense of the course. This is when I take contingency measures. I call Mayank.

There is much that can be said about Mayank, and most of it is not pleasant. But one must admit, if one is an objective observer and does not have a clandestine propaganda of one's own, that when it comes to patience, few manage to even come close to achieving levels that for Mayank are merely a walk in the park. The man is a virtual storehouse of patience. He cultivates, especially around examination season, an almost Buddhist attitude towards life. He listens to me ranting and raving for about 20 minutes (sometimes more), and interrupts only at times when I become insane enough to be unable to form coherent sentences. He then puts in a word or two, allowing me to cool down, and then promptly reverts to listening me rant and rave.

Then I sleep. All the shouting and yelling gets me tired. And when I get up, I get cracking. I study day and night, losing interest rarely and contemplating suicide only once every 3-4 hours. I direct all my (with me, that's not a lot) mental resources towards one goal, 'Surviving The Exams'. I consume jars of coffee. Somehow, under-slept, under-fed and half conscious, I make it to the first exam. I take it. I invariably mess it up. Then I get sad and disillusioned and my frequency of contemplating suicide goes up marginally. I start questioning the utility of my existence. These philosophical pursuits leave me rather unequipped to handle my second exam. After screwing that one up, I manage to settle to an almost consistent level of incompetence, and I wreck one exam after the other as the week crawls along.

When the last exam finishes, I sigh and say to myself, "Well. That didn't go too well. That didn't go too well at all. I'll study more next time." Then, I jump with joy (carefully though, for some of these IIT tables have very sharp edges), exclaim a joyful exclamation (like 'woo-hoo', or 'whoopa', or words to much the same effect), and spend the rest of the day dazed and high-spirited.

However, something odd happened this time. I did not go into denial-mode. Four days later, I did not hurt my dick. I did not make the customary distress calls. The minors arrived, and passed in a dull and hazy blur. One thing, however, did remain unchanged. They were just as bad as always.

When I reached the end of the last test, I sighed the sigh. I said to myself, "Well. That didn't go too well. That didn't go too well at all. I'll study more next time." Then, I jumped with joy (carefully though, for some of these IIT tables have very sharp edges). Then, something odd happened.
I stopped. I knew there was supposed to be more, but I couldn't figure out what that more was. It was only on my way home that I realized what it was, and the realization left me reeling with the slightly odd sensation of having been slapped in the face with a wet rag.

There had been no exclamation. There had been no 'woo-hoo'. There had been no 'whoopa'. And there had been no words to much the same effect.

Something was wrong. I was not exhilarated. I was very clearly not exhilarated. Relieved, yes, but not exhilarated. For if I was exhilarated, I would have exclaimed. I would have said 'woo-hoo' or 'whoopa' or words to much the same effect. But I hadn't, and I was, therefore, very conclusively not exhilarated.
My hypothesis is that age is finally catching up with me. But then, I could be wrong.

My lack of exhilaration, however, did not quite prevent me from having the time of my life on the rest of Sunday and Monday (which was a holiday for me). After being closeted in my room for about a week, leaving only about once a day, and that too to take a test, I found it very pleasant spending two whole days outside the house, in the wild outdoors, where men are men, beasts are beasts, and small furry creatures with pink noses that multiply quickly (the creatures, not the pink noses) are called rabbits.

On Tuesday, I slipped back into the monotony and tedium of IIT life. The last time I checked, I wasn't feeling too pleased with my dull and boring life, for I seldom do, but I definitely was relieved, for there seemed to be no more minors in sight to screw up. It will be a good long month before they rear their ugly head again.

Till then, I continue to grapple with myself, trying to find ways to maintain a philosophical calm while I am stripped of all dignity by the irony that is life. How else can one explain the fact that while Parvesh Nehra (He's an ass, by the way. That's all there is to know about him.) walks away with a simple and gentle reprimand for the 5 practical classes that he misses, I get deregistered from the same course for missing 1.
For the uninitiated, deregistration is not a good thing to happen, especially if you're at IIT. It tends to give rise to some rather inconvenient complications.

Before I sign off, I have a very pertinent question to raise. It is something that has been bothering me for a while now. I gave it some thought, because I was initially under the impression that the question, due to its rather awkward nature, was not quite fit to be put to people at large, but after much thinking, the answer continues to elude me, and therefore I have decided to ignore prudence and propriety, and have decided to ask for help. I hate unsolved puzzles, and any help in arriving at the answer to this particular question will be much appreciated.

Why do men spit in urinals?
If I've seen it once, I've seen it a hundred times. I've seen The Urinal-Spitters. They spit in the urinals. Their modus-operandi is somewhat similar. They enter the Gents' Washrooms as normal men do. They then proceed to relieve themselves, like normal men do. And just when they're about to leave and you begin to start thinking them normal, they look down and spit in the urinal.
So what exactly is the point that they are trying to make? What is the purpose of this wanton Urinal-Spitting? What makes men weak and despicable enough to stoop to such levels? What is their aim? Are they trying to show contempt towards the urine? Towards their own urine? Are they trying to tell us that they have nothing but disdain and derision for their own urine? And exactly what point does that serve?
Somebody help me, for I am lost. The questions just keep coming, and the answers, unfortunately, not so much.

Good Morning.

How Many You Have?

2006-02-16T08:22:00.000Z

Me, I have 5. And the first one begins in a little less than an hour.

Somebody gonna get a hurt real bad.

Somebody.

Happy Tuesday

2006-02-14T08:09:00.000Z

Every year, the 14th of February brings with it, as it approaches, dark tidings of evil days ahead. Every year, with unerring inevitability, St. Valentines Day, as it is commonly called, causes an almost overwhelming avalanche of nauseating mush. With sickening menace, it crawls up behind you, unseen and unheard. And then suddenly, it jumps up and corners you with its almost unlimited ammunition of love-struck schoolchildren, red painted hearts, roses, red painted heart-shaped cards, more roses, pink painted hearts, dreamy looking youngsters, more red painted hearts, heart shaped chocolate boxes, pictures of roses, more pink painted hearts, and the odd shameless couple making out in full public view. It is enough to make the strongest stomachs churn with disgust and leave the best of us unsuccessfully trying to grapple with our ill concealed distaste.

One may feel that my views on Valentine's Day are influenced, to a certain extent, by my current single status. Many might say that I am bitter merely because I am single, and that if I was in a relationship, I too, like many others, would be all hearts and candy about the whole phenomenon. I must, therefore, assure you, at this point of time, that that is not the case. I am, and have always been, a vociferous opposition to the whole Valentine's Day deal, although I have not very frequently voiced my opinions on the same. I have, nevertheless, stuck to my views over the past few years, relationship or no relationship. There is something about Valentine's Day that seems to go against my finer feelings. The entire exercise, I feel, is not only disgusting and insides-turning, but useless to the very extreme.

The entire concept of celebrating a relationship when everybody else around you is doing much the same is absurd. And then there is the RSS and The Bajrang Dal.

People, depending upon their personal preferences and idiosyncrasies, have different concepts of an ideal date. Different strokes, for different folks, I always say. But even I, accommodating though I might be, refuse to believe that anyone can genuinely enjoy a date when he (I speak mainly for all men, for the female of the species has a mind of her own, and it works in mysterious and unfathomable ways. You never quite know with them, as I frequently say.) has to keep in mind the fact that he might be thrown stones at or have his head shaved off sometime during it. Why anyone would agree to risk life, limb and hair merely to entertain on a particular day is a subject that has greatly mystified me over the years, and continues to, till this day.

While we are on the subject of the RSS and The Bajrang Dal, I would like to mention that though I might not, and do not, in any way, condone their actions and ideologies on a variety of issues, I do believe that their thoughts on Valentine's Day are not too far from mine. I do admit that when they wrench young men and women away from each others' embraces and proceed to shave off their heads, their methods are, perhaps, a bit crude and unwarranted, but at the same time, I have to say, that anybody who campaigns against Valentine's Day and throws stones at heart shaped paraphernalia, appears to me to be fundamentally sound in his/her thinking.

But I digress. Coming back to the topic under consideration, I would like to conclude as follows.

The square thing, therefore, for any self-respecting couple to do, I think, would be to denounce Valentine's Day in its entirety, and find some other day to cavort around the city. To others, you will give the precious gift of the ability to avoid death by mush-overload. And you wouldn't be doing too bad for yourself either, for the roads will be less congested, the coffee-houses and eating joints quieter, and you wouldn't have to worry too much about dodging stones aimed at you by men in brown shorts.

But what then, some might ask, do we do on Valentine's Day. Do we let this day pass, unaccounted and unused? Do we fail to utilize it? "No", I say. "Use it, by all means." Take my advice, and refrain from gifting your loved ones the usual and unimaginative roses and candy. I, on my part, would encourage you to take some time out and select for your significant other one of a variety of innovative Anti-Valentine Cards instead. In fact, I believe that they are such a good idea that you should go one step further and send them out to your insignificant others as well.

I just sent out 7.

Happy Tuesday.

Mind The Gap

2006-02-12T20:16:00.000Z

As tolerant as one might pride oneself to be, there come times when others' actions (or alternatively, inactions) chafe not a little. Irritability and exasperation at others, at times, take a hold on the best of us. Reading fairly long-sized posts with titles such as 'Revival', expecting great things to follow, and discovering that the blogger in question is not delivering, and is choosing instead to confound readers with apparently profound one-liners, does not, usually, go down well with the audience. It tends to leave many readers with the slightly odd sensation of being slapped in the face with a wet fish, and though it might not be at the very top of the aggravation-inducing-acts spectrum, like say, murdering a close relative, it does manage to come perilously close.

Therefore, I feel it compulsory to begin this post with an apology. My plan, evidently, never really took off. I failed quite miserably in achieving the modest goals I had set myself with respect to this blog. I never quite got around to fulfilling the objective of restoring this blog's continuity. I would, at this point of time, like to bring to everybody's notice that the reason I have thus failed to deliver is not, as many of you would undoubtedly believe, a lack of time, creativity, or motivation. Indeed, I have, over the past fortnight, written much more than I usually do. During this period, I have been successful in amassing a fairly large body of written material on a variety of subjects. However, most of this material remains unpublished on this blog because of the simple reason that I had, on a previous occasion, taken upon myself the responsibility of restoring this blog's continuity first, and only then proceeding to move on to the present or the near future. Recent events, however, and I am sure you will be glad to know this, have compelled me to abandon my plans.

This does not, however, in any way, mean that I no longer consider continuity to be one of the most fundamental aspects of a blog; a diktat to be adhered to assiduously at all points of time. What it merely means is this: Practicality and reality have finally caught up with me, and have forced me to, for the time being, shelve my idealistic aims, and move on with life, such as it is. I have, in short, decided that the moment seems to have finally arrived. The time is right, it seems, for killing the past, and coming back to life. One stage of my journey is over, but another has just begun.

Manu. Yes. That is what they used to call me. Manu Saxena. That was my name. I am Manu Saxena. And I come back to you now, at the turn of the tide.

Hello

2006-02-09T19:10:00.000Z

Nobody ever seems to remember; life is a game you play.

Revival

2006-01-22T18:21:00.000Z

There are many, though why and how they exist I cannot fathom, who have followed the fortunes of this blog closely over the past few months. They have often graced it with their much-appreciated presence, and at times, have even been kind enough to leave behind their keen insights on varied subject matter before departing. Some of them have even pursued me beyond the accepted-at-large and well-defined boundaries of Blogspot, and have mailed me thoughts on subjects that they have, in the course of their daily browsing, stumbled across on this blog. Many of these people that I talk about have seen this blog in better days, and they would surely concur with me when I say that the general health of this blog has been, over a considerable amount of time in the past, undoubtedly deteriorating.

It all started with the annoying song lyrics. They just kept coming. But that was not where it ended. The next to arrive were the galling one-liners. They left many mildly irritated, and many more, more irritated. But the worst was yet to come.

It was probably a bit more than a month back when this blog, exploring new depths, rather abruptly reached its nadir. It was undoubtedly at its lowest ebb when in addition to all that mentioned above, this blog encountered, for the first time in its rather short existence, poor grammar.
And in poor grammar, it seemed to have finally found its nemesis. After that, the updates got infrequent, the comments got boring, and the posts got close to downright disgusting.

It was apparent to all, save a few dim-witted morons who kept trying to persuade me to the contrary, that this blog had finally fallen upon ill days. It was, in all probability, close to breathing its last. It needed relief. It desired quick intervention. Now was the time, as the commonly known expression goes, for all the good men to come to the aid of the party.

Unfortunately for it, most of the good men in question didn't quite have the mandatory password required to come to the aid of the party. The responsibility, therefore, for better or for worse, finally came to me. In me, it found a somewhat reluctant and slightly diffident taker. For I had had little experience in such matters, and till that time, my heroics were mainly restricted to fields where damsels in distress were involved. Fallen blogs, so to speak, comprised completely new and uncharted territory.

So I vacillated, and procrastinated, and all this while, this blog continued to tread perilously on the thin line between glorious life and ignominious absence thereof. Fortunately for it, and this was probably the only little bit of fortune it had come across in a rather long time, there were other, higher, forces at work.

There come moments in every man's life, when he witnesses the absolute, unadulterated truth. When he becomes one with the complex flow of the universe, and can experience first-hand how rotten a place our universe is. It was during one such brief moment of clarity that I realized how closely the existence of this blog was tied up with my own, besides also realizing how rotten a place our universe is.

Then I hesitated no more, and arduously set out on the task of saving this blog. And today, close to the dawn of the 23rd day of January in the year 2006, I promise to never abandon it again. At least not till I feel like it.

I do realize that a lot needs to still be done to ensure that this blog attains accepted standards of normalcy, or at least generally-known standards of its former abnormalcy. As I have always said, for purposes such as blogs, continuity is of the essence. Continuity, however, in the case of this blog, seems to have been force-fed about a ton of dynamite and consequently set off. My first task, therefore, will be to restore continuity.

Tomorrow, or whenever I post next, I will be posting with an aim to restore this continuity. I shall therefore be resuming from where I left off. I will start there, and continue till where I presently am. Then, continuity restored, I will proceed further.
At least that's what the plan is.

On life, among other things

2006-01-21T21:02:00.000Z

There was, once, in a land quite reasonably far away, a man. Although he lived, as mentioned before, in a land reasonably far away, he was, in fact, much like men that live everywhere else. He was, therefore, mildly good at times and slightly evil at others. He had, over a considerable period of time amounting to nearly a couple of decades, surrounded himself with many friends, some good, some not so good, and some unambiguously vile, but, very significantly, and this reflects much on the kind of person he was, none indispensable. He belonged to a pleasant family, and had, like most others, his share of cool, irritating, and cool and irritating relatives. And he thought that digital watches were a pretty neat idea. He led, in short, a normal and happy existence, and passed his days in relative contentment. He was genuinely satisfied with his lot, and thanked the Lord every day (and sometimes, even twice a day) for his fulfilled existence.

Although far from exceptionally talented, he had done well for himself. He was not extraordinarily intelligent, nor strikingly good-looking. He was not very good at expressing himself, and rather slow on the uptake. His dress sense was, at best, shoddy, and his sense of humor was only one step away from appalling. He could not play the guitar, and, worst of all, he didn’t even own a digital watch.

Yet, as I have pointed out earlier, he had done decently well for himself. He studied, for he was a student, in a fairly prestigious institution, and did not do too badly there. He was, inherently, highly interested in a variety of subjects, and had, therefore, over a period of time, accumulated an air of worldliness about him. Most importantly, and this was probably one of the few things he had working for him, he was aware of himself. What really set him apart from others was this sense of knowledge about himself that he possessed. He was, at all times, in complete control of his life. He had an almost impeccable hold on the various components of his being. He was, in short, the Master of his Domain.

But life, especially at times when one is not really paying much attention, has this uncanny, and rather suicidal, knack of taking a turn for the worse. It’s one of life’s biggest problems, ranking right up there with finding the largest prime number. For, like the latter, it has no known solution, and worse still, you can’t quite see it coming. You stand back and look at your life, and find yourself much in control. Then, as soon as you throw a quick glance the other way, it swings into action, and when you look back after a brief moment, all you can see are the ruins of your (erstwhile) life staring back at you.

Now, when life takes a turn for the worse, it really does become a bit of a bother, especially for those who like being in control, and are used to being in control, like the person who has been written about in the preceding few paragraphs. He didn’t like it a bit. It all seemed a bit chaotic to him, like he couldn’t see where he was going. All about him, things that were intimately linked to him were occurring, and he was being left out of all of them. He, as I said before, didn’t like it one bit, but he couldn’t quite see what was to be done. He did know, of course, that he had two choices ahead of him. He could fight the change. He could put up some resistance. He could get back in the driver’s seat. But, for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out how.

Or, of course, he could choose to continue looking the other way. He could let things unfold. He could let himself drift along a seemingly predetermined path. He could let things happen instead of making them happen. As often happens in such matters, this latter path seemed a lot easier than the first one. Whether it was because of the fact that he couldn’t quite figure out how to combat this sudden change, or merely because he was already not really in control of his life any more, he chose the latter path.

And he enjoyed it. He loved his new self. For once in his life, he was blissfully unaware of the minutiae of his pathetic little existence. He viewed himself as an audience would have viewed a play, when he should have actually been backstage. Apparently, life moved on just as well, or so he thought, because everything seemed just as before from the outside. Outwardly, he remained unchanged. He was having far more fun than he had ever imagined. Everyone seemed to like him better, and he had found a perfect excuse to avoid much thought.

He stayed in this half-dazed state for a long time. Far too long, I believe. After about three months of aimless drifting, he finally realized that something was amiss. Yet, he couldn’t figure out what it was that had gone awry. What’s more, even if he had known what it was that had gone all wrong, I very much doubt that he could have actually set forth and done anything about it. It didn’t quite seem like he was fully bent on it just yet.

But one thing you can count on. Push a man too far, and chances are, sooner or later, he’ll start pushing back.

Manu Saxena recently realized that things had indeed, as he had expected, gone wrong. Very, very wrong. It was probably then that he understood that his options had descended to a singular course.

He’s still not quite out of it, but he’s finally trying his best.

How long...

2006-01-19T17:27:00.000Z

Before I get in?
Before it starts? Before I begin?

Any guesses?

Before I forget. Again.

2005-12-28T07:18:00.000Z

A Very Merry Christmas to all.
And I will be back.

Grades due today

2005-12-08T02:54:00.000Z

Somebody gonna get a hurt real bad.

Somebody.

Indian Writing in English

2005-12-01T09:54:00.000Z

If I am surviving or even retaining my sanity up to 10:00 AM on 3rd of December, 2005, I am throwing away party.

Also, if I am getting any CG of more than 7.0 in this semester, I am throwing away even bigger party, and I am jumping up and down with joy.

All are being invited, but I am feeling that it is being my duty to inform that keeping in mind current affairs, there is most likely being no party-sharty.

The Indian in question is being me.

I Hate This Fucking Place

2005-11-27T18:48:00.000Z

I, however, love bubble wrap.
(In an entirely non-creepy way.)

They seem to be here again.

2005-11-24T19:26:00.000Z

To the best of my memory, I had promised my readers, if any, a substantially long post the last time I had posted. At the very outset of this entry, I would like to make something very clear, it being my firm belief that it is my duty to keep my readers, if any, informed.

This is not the long entry I was talking about.

In fact, this post, if it goes even loosely according to plan, should probably end up being another very short one. The long post shall have to wait some more. I have it all worked out in my head, but I haven't actually begun writing it out as yet, for reasons that I shall now proceed to specify.

The majors are here again. They shall start in less than a week. I am running out of time. There isn't too much of it left. Time is, to put it rather tersely, short, and there is much work to be done.

These new developments have resulted in somewhat curtailing the flexibility I once enjoyed in matters of time. From this moment onwards, in case of any free time that I get, precedence will be given over blogging to sleeping and eating. And studying.

I shall, therefore, be writing less often, and most of my posts will be short.

Also, I am hopelessly in love with Emma Watson.

Good Night.

Procrastination

2005-11-20T19:13:00.000Z

I'd thought I'd post tonight. I had a lot to write about. I sat to write about what I had to write about. But then I realized I didn't feel much like writing.

So, the next long post shall have to wait.

In the meantime, I leave you with but a quote.

"It matters not whether you win or lose; what matters is whether I win or lose."
-- Darrin Weinberg

And did they get you to trade

2005-11-19T09:21:00.000Z

Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?

Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange

A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?

It's been quite a while

2005-11-17T17:42:00.000Z

One year in fact. One year of publishing insane drivel online. One year of indiscriminate writing. One year of irresponsible, yet, at times, highly entertaining prose, as well as some very odd and mind-bogglingly dull poetry. One year, in short, of doing what I do best. Act like an ass.

It's been a fun year, nevertheless. I've written about people and things I wouldn't dare talk about otherwise. Lots of people and things have, as a result, taken offence to what I have written over the past year. To them, I would like to apologize, not so much to the people as to the things, for people are dispensable, and there doesn't seem to be too much of a shortage around.

The blog's done well for itself. It has been quoted extensively and at the most unfortunate times and places. It's gotten me into trouble. Lots of it. And on more than one occasion. It's seen a lot of traffic; 200 visitors on some days, and 20 on most others. In all fairness to it, it has fulfilled most of the purposes it was set up for, and a good deal more for which it wasn't. What's most important is that it has, for the past year, constantly been there. It's been with me through the good times and, more importantly, the slightly longer bad ones. It hasn't run away like most of the people I know tend to, after a while.

I know it hasn't been in very good shape lately, what with all the one-line posts and fake poetry, but I do believe that it'll stick around for a little bit more.
For now, that's good enough for me.

The Genius of the Hole

2005-11-02T18:54:00.000Z

No matter how long you spend climbing out, you can still fall back down in an instant.

2005-10-29T10:16:00.000+01:00

Sooner or later, it's going to catch up with you.

Just when you discover that lady-luck is really a hooker, you're fresh out of cash.

Into The Shining Sun

2005-10-21T04:56:00.000+01:00

Where were you, when I was burnt and broken.
While the days slipped by, from my window watching.
Where were you, when I was hurt and I was helpless.
Because the things you say, and the things you do, surround me.

While you were hanging yourself on someone else’s words,
Dying to believe in what you heard.
I was staring straight into the shining sun.

Chhutti Khatam

2005-10-17T19:00:00.000+01:00

Today marked the end of a wonderful set of holidays. They were brilliant. They were not too long, so there wasn't much scope for boredom, and they were not too short, as for us IIT students, nine days is anything but short. We don't usually get those many holidays at a stretch.

As I said, the holidays were perfect. I had the most wonderful time. I read a lot. I slept a lot. I blogged a lot. I ate a lot. I caught up with friends. I watched a lot of movies. I listened to a lot of good music. I played a considerable amount of cricket and badminton. I went on my first Delhi Metro ride. I did a lot of strange things, like blindfolding myself and running around the house, and trying to take a pee upside down (Don't try this at home. If you, however, do, I strongly advise using facial protection). It was, in short, one of those weeks when things just kept happening one after the other and plans materialized out of thin air at astonishingly short notice.

Today, however, I went to college. I had to sit through 3 hours of lectures, followed by a 4 hour long Mechanical Drawing Practical. And then, I walked into a door and hurt my nose. I've been continuously sneezing since.

College sucks.

Oh, Bloody Oh!

2005-10-15T08:53:00.000+01:00

What I wouldn't give to get my hands on one of these babies.

Solely on poetry

2005-10-13T20:33:00.000+01:00

Regular readers of this blog, especially the ones who have been around long enough to have read an earlier (much earlier) post on poetry, would know that I'm not too good at it. People, who happen to know me decently well, would also know that I'm not too good at it, besides knowing that I'm slightly insane. Mr. Karan Misra, who happens to be unfortunate enough to be both (a regular reader of this blog and a person who happens to know me decently well; not bad at poetry and slightly insane), put it very aptly, when he once said, with characteristic eloquence, that Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz could have written better poetry. I am quite sure that he was correct.

What I am trying to convey is that I have never been very good at poetry. I haven't even been a little good, and have escaped being dreadfully bad only by the skin of my teeth. A very long time ago, I had tried, and failed, and being a man who knows his limitations, I had, until very recently, resigned myself to a poetry-less existence.

But recently, when I took a look around, as I tend to do every couple of months or so, I saw everybody writing, believe it or not, poetry. It seems to me to be the latest fad. All my good friends are writing poetry. All my not-so-good friends are writing poetry. All the people I know but am not quite friendly with are writing poetry, and I am very sure that quite a few of the people I don't know at all would be writing poetry as well. I feel, to put it bluntly, quite left out.

A friend of mine, a real stud, recently said, "Today, if you're writing poetry, you're cool. If you're not, you're not." When I heard that, I told him I wanted to be cool. He laughed at me. But when I told him I was serious, he said grimly, "Manu, I'm not going to lie to you. It is going to be tough. But just do as I say, and I assure you, one day, you will be." "Where do I start?", I asked him. He thought a bit, and then said, expectedly, "Let's start with poetry."

So Ladies and Gentlemen, without much further ado, allow me to present my first step on the road to cooldom.

Another Day

He wakes up from a dream,
And sees the daylight streaming in.
He sits up in bed,
Trying to remember himself again.

He looks at himself in the mirror.
His face is drawn and weary.
His eyes are tired,
Yet they seem to him to shine.

And he knows he's still alive,
And forces himself to smile.

In case any of you got what I was trying to say in that poem, do let me know. I didn't understand much of it after the first couple of lines, and I would love to know what it means.
Thank You, and a very Happy Belated Dusshera to all.

Arbitaapa - 2

2005-10-12T19:22:00.000+01:00

At the very outset, before I move on to other, less important things, I would like to explain the title to this post. I wrote a post titled Arbitaapa about a month back, and since I prefer to name all my posts uniquely, Arbitaapa - 2 had to make do for this one. The title, however, is not read 'Arbitaapa Part Two' or 'Arbitaapa the Second' or even 'Arbitaapa Hyphen Two'. It is read 'Arbitaapa Dwiteeeeya', BigB-style.

I just finished reading a wonderful book called Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger. It is a most delightful book, and a wonderful read. It's not too long, and most of it written in the form of a conversation. It is, as a result, an extremely difficult book to put down midway. In case any of you have an afternoon on your hands, and don't really have much to do in it, I would strongly recommend a read.
Immediately after Franny and Zooey, I started on this book called The Shadows of Sherlock Holmes. It's a collection of detective short-stories, put together by this man called David Stuart Davies. It has a few short stories which I have already read, a few I have merely heard about, and then some more. It seems like a wonderful combination of the well-known and the obscure. I haven't read much of it as yet. I have read, in fact, just a couple of the stories in it. Yet, it seems, already, a very, very interesting book, and I am, presently, eagerly looking forward to picking it up again.

The other subject I wanted to bring up during this post was that of my 100th post. I have been a bit busy over the past few days, and, as a result, forgot all about the 100 post milestone I was about to reach a few days back. I checked my post counter a few minutes ago, and I was surprised to see that not only have I already posted my 100th post, I have posted 15 more since then. This, then, is my 116th post. So happy 116th post to me.

Before leaving for the day, I have a request to make. In case any of you reading this possess the new Coldplay X&Y original Audio CD, or a copy of George Orwell's Animal Farm, kindly get in touch with me ASAP.
Thank You.

You'd better get busy, though, buddy. The goddam sands run out on you every time you turn around. I know what I'm talking about. You're lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world.

I like to move it, move it...

2005-10-11T19:17:00.000+01:00

I saw Madagascar yesterday. It is, as I am sure all of you would know, an animated kids' film; the kind that is watched by 7 year-olds in huge groups on class-outings. I, as a result, loved it. It is by far the funniest movie I have seen in a long, long time, and the best animated film I've seen since Finding Nemo. And I should know; being an avid follower of animated movies. They, I think, go well with my intellectual level.
The movie was full of colourful and amazingly well thought-out characters. I personally found the lemurs and the penguins pretty cool, but the best of the lot were the monkeys. They had delightful English accents, and an uncanny tendency to come up with absolutely brilliant lines like, "Of course we're going to throw poo at him."

I also saw Raincoat at a film-festival at Siri Fort a couple of days back. It was a nice movie. The story, loosely based on 'The Gift of The Magi', by O Henry, was expectedly good, but the direction could have been a lot better. The movie also tended to drag a bit in the middle, although not for a very long period of time. The most interesting and entertaining aspect of the movie, however, were the English sub-titles. English subtitles in Hindi movies are always rather shabbily done, but it was amazing just to what extent the sub-titlers had messed up in Raincoat. Bhabhi was translated as Madam, and khichdi as pulp (??). The cake, however, along with pretty much all else, was taken by the sentence that appeared on screen during a scene that had Ajay Devgan shouting at Annu Kapoor, who was playing Ms. Rai's landlord. "Aap to bade hi bekaar kism ke aadmi hain.", yelled Mr. Devgan, which was very unceremoniously, if somewhat erroneously, shortened to, "You asshole!"

And then there were these two kids who were sitting next to me during the movie. As usually happens when two kids between the ages of 4 and 8 converse, one of them was playing the role of the all-knowing, all-powerful stud, while the other was playing the reverent and meek disciple, hoping that some of the stud's gyaan would rub-off on him, and he too, one day, would have his own legion of adherents.
"Yaar, yeh picture khatam kab hogi?", asked the disciple, with suitable obsequiousness.
"Tu ye bata, ki picture shuru kab hui thi?", boomed the stud, playing his part to perfection.
"Teen baje, yaar.", replied the disciple, making sure he kept his voice low.
"To phir chheh baje khatam hogi, bewakoof. Tujhko itna bhi nahi pata. Cinema hall mein saari picturein fixed time par chalti hain. Yeh waali teen se chheh. Phir chheh se nau. Phir nau se baarah. Phir raat ke show; baarah se teen aur teen se chheh. Phir subah ko chheh se nau, nau se baarah, baarah se teen, aur phir phirse teen se chheh. Log saara time baith kar picturein dekhte rehte hain. Samajh aaya bewakoof?", said the stud, surprised by the extent of his companion's ignorance.
"To kyaa hall mein chaubees ghante picturein hi chalti rehti hain?", asked the disciple, now awed beyond comprehension.
"Aur kyaa.", said the stud, now clearly trying to recall why he had agreed to sit with this dufus in the first place.
"To phir, yaar, yeh cinema hall waale log sote kab hain?", asked the disciple, with much anticipation.
With infinite simplicity, the stud replied, "Arre bewakoof!! (He was, very evidently, in love with the word 'bewakoof'.) Saturday aur Sunday ko sote hain naa."
The disciple was too overwhelmed with the simplicity of it all to continue the conversation.

Before I leave, I would like to post some lyrics. They are from a most delightful song, probably one of the best ever. Download the song, and sing along. Dance, if you can. Jump up and down, and wave your arms around. You'll love it all, I assure you.

I Like To Move It Move It
-- Sacha Baron Cohen

(Chorus)

I Like To Move It Move It
I Like To Move It Move It
I Like To Move It Move It
Ya Like To (MOVE IT!)

All Girls All Over The World
Original King Julian Pon Ya Case Man!
I Love How All The Girls A Move Their Body
And When Ya Move Ya Body
Uno Move It
Nice And Sweet And Sexy Alright!
Woman Ya Cute And You Don’t Need No Make-Up
Original Cute Body You A Mek Man Mud Up
Woman Ya Cute And You Don’t Need No Make-Up
Original Cute Body You A Mek Man Mud Up
Woman! Physically Fit
Physically Fit
Physically
Physically
Physically
Woman! Physically Fit
Physically Fit
Physically
Physically
Physically
Physically

Woman! Ya nice
Sweet Fantastic
Big Ship Pon De Ocean That A Big Titanic
Woman! Ya Nice Sweet Energetic
Big Ship Pon De Ocean That A Big Titanic
Woman! Ya nice
Sweet Fantastic
Big Ship Pon De Ocean That A Big Titanic
Woman! Ya nice
Sweet Fantastic
Big Ship Pon De Ocean That A Big Titanic
WOMAN!

(Chorus)

Woman Ya Cute And You Don’t Need No Make-Up
Original Cute Body You A Mek Man Mud Up
Woman Ya Cute And You Don’t Need No Make-Up
Original Cute Body You A Mek Man Mud Up
Eyeliner – Pon Ya Face
A Mek Man Mud Up
Nose Powder – Pon Ya Face
A Mek Man Mud Up
Pluck Ya Eyebrow
Pon Ya
Pon Ya Face A Mek Man Mud Up

Gal Ya Lipstick
Pon Ya Face A Mek Man Mud Up
Woman Ya Nice Broad Face
And Ya Nice Hip Make Man
Flip And Bust Them Lip
Woman Ya Nice And Energetic
Big Ship Pon De Ocean That A Big Titanic
Woman! Ya Nice
Broad Face
And Ya Nice Hip
Make Man Flip And Bust Them Lip
Big Ship Pon De Ocean That A Big Titanic – WOAH!

BOP!
WOAH!
BOP!
WOAH!
BOP!
WOAH!
BOP!

(King Julians Bit On The End:)

I LIKE TO MOVE IT MOVE IT
HE LIKE TO MOVE IT MOVE IT
SHE LIKE TO MOVE IT MOVE IT
YOU LIKE TO, MOVE IT!

WE LIKE TO MOVE IT MOVE IT
YOU LIKE TO MOVE IT MOVE IT
I LIKE .. OH I DID I HAVE I DONE I? DID I DO I LIKE?
I THINK I DID I LIKE.. WE? WHAT ABOUT WE? THEY? THEY? I DID THEY.

OH I GOT IT, I GOT IT I GOT A NEW ONE I GOT A NEW ONE.. THEM?
NO NOT THEM.. DID I SAY THEM OR NOT?

THEM LIKE TO MOVE IT MOV... I'M GONNA SAY THEM

THEM LIKE TO MOVE IT MOVE IT
WE LIKE TO MOVE IT MOVE IT
UMM WAIT THERES GOTTA BE ANOTHER ONE WE... WE... NOPE.. OH US!
CAN WE DO US LIKE TO?

US LIKE TO MOVE IT MOVE IT THATS THE ONE
US LIKE TO MOVE IT MOVE IT
US LIKE TO MOVE IT MOVE IT
US LIKE TO.. MOVE IT!

MOVE IT! MOVE ITTT.. MOVE IT! MOVE IT! MOVE IT MOVE IT

OKAY THEN, WANNA HEAR,
I JUST WANNA TELL YOU A LITTLE STORY THIS LITTLE STORY
THAT MY DADDY USED TO TELL ME HE WAS A KING AS
WELL I WAS BORN, PROBABLY ABOUT 68 YEARS AGO OVER BY
THAT TREE OVER THERE YEH
AND I REMEMBER THINGS CHANGED A LOT IN THOSE
DAYS, IN MADAGASCAR IT WASNT SO COMMERCIAL, YOU KNOW,
THERE WASNT ALL THE FUSS BOUT WHO'S GOT THE LATEST TREE
AND WHAT LEAVES
ARE YOU WEARING AND WHO'S GOT
THE LATEST FUR ON THEIR BACK YOU KNOW,
THOSE DAYS IT WAS JUST ME AND A COUPLE OF THE OTHERS YOU
KNOW, DOING THE JUNGLE BOOGIE YOU KNOW,
JUNGLE BOOGIE... JUNGLE BOOGIE
WOAH WOAH WOAH WOAH WOAH WOAH WOAH

I LIKE TO MOVE IT!

YOU REALLY THINK THIS IS NEVER GONNA END COZ IT IS 3,2,1

NOT BAD EH? I LIKE IT

In case you were wondering...

2005-10-08T22:42:00.000+01:00

I have, recently, through sources entirely my own, become aware of the fact that some of you; occasional visitors to this rather dormant blog; have been, for some time now, puzzled as to my whereabouts over the past few days. "Where has Manu been?", is the buzz in and around the by-lanes of IIT. "How has he been keeping?", is the oft-heard refrain as one strolls around AIIMS. "Is he dead, or is it just his blog?", is what one hears at places frequented by Dipsites past and present.

And since I happen to be a firm believer in the age-old adage, "Unanswered questions are bad.", I return from near-nonexistence to dispel all doubts, and to deliver to the people the answers they so desperately demand.

The objective of this post, therefore, is to let my reader(s) know where exactly I have been.

I have been in deep shit. Deep, deep shit. What's more, I still am.

A friend of mine asked me yesterday why I always wear shoes two sizes too small for me. "My life is in ruins.", I replied, "My parents are convinced that I have finally lost it, and are seriously contemplating disowning me. My friends point at me and laugh. I've been single for over 7 bloody months. I study at IIT. I have completely messed up 5 minors within the last 48 hours, and by evening today, I expect to get that figure up to 6 (as it turned out, I managed to do just that). My life is an unmitigated disaster. I feel miserable all day. The only time I feel good is when I get home and take off my shoes."

2005-10-02T19:11:00.000+01:00

Whatever you do will be insignificant. But it is very important that you do it.

-- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

(Suitable title here)

2005-09-29T17:51:00.000+01:00

It has been raining on and off for about a fortnight now. Which is good, because I like the rain. There are few things in life more blissful than walking in the rain. Especially when the rain one walks in is like the rain these days. The rain these days is nice. It's the kind of rain that doesn't drench you within 10 seconds of stepping out, and doesn't hurt your eyes when you look up to catch a glimpse of the cloudy, yet amazingly blue sky.

The point I am trying to make is that I am talking funny, am extremely tired, and desperately need to get some sleep.

And just so you know, Bewitched is a pathetic movie, but Nicole Kidman has never looked prettier.

Good Night.

For the record...

2005-09-27T17:23:00.000+01:00

I seem to be back.
Just about.

2005-09-16T23:20:00.000+01:00

Far over the misty mountains cold,
To dungeons deep and caverms old,
We must away ere break of day,
To seek the pale enchanted gold.

-- Thorin Oakenshield.

Tagged!

2005-09-14T18:47:00.000+01:00

That's what I've been. Tagged. Tagged by the Evil Multi-Colored Monster. I've been told that people who don't respect such tags develop knobby knees and die young. I don't really have a problem with dying young, but I don't think I'll be able to stand the knobby knees. I am, therefore, going to play by the rules, and obediently answer the following set of meaningless questions, before dumping them on some other poor, unsuspecting and hapless soul.

Five things I will look for in my Fiancée:
1. Must be able to sustain conversation. I hate nothing more than uncomfortable pauses.
2. Money. I'm not going to be able to make much on my own. So I guess I'll have to settle for a rich fiancée.
3. Breasts. Breasts, breasts, breasts (I tend to repeat that word a lot. Kinda like the way it sounds). Yep, gotta have those. And legs. Long, long shapely legs. And a nice, perfectly-sized nose. Nothing beats a nice nose.
4. Glasses. Call me weird, but I find hot girls who wear specs very attractive.
5. Hair. Long, soft hair really works for me.

Five things I like to eat:
1. Other people's food.
2. Kismi Toffee Bar.
3. Mango Bite. Parle Mango Bite.
4. Sandwiches with Peanut Butter (Crunchy) inside.
5. Paapads. I love Paapads.

Five Goals of Life:
1. Procreating.
2. Acquiring the ability to talk less and listen more.
3. Learning to remain as calm as possible. (Serenity Now. Serenity Now.)
4. Killing Chawla (I shall use a compass).
5. Being able to live a life free from the menace of evil tags.

Five things I say a lot:
1. "Ohh!!!" - My way of greeting people. Anything longer is too elaborate.
2. "You're breaking my balls, dude. Breaking my balls." - My way of telling people they're breaking my balls.
3. "Go stick your head in a pig." - My way of telling people to go stick their heads in a pig.
4. "Screw you guys, I'm going home." - I'm an attachee. This line, as a result, works.
5. "Haaha!" - Usually goes well with pointing. Regular watchers of 'The Simpsons' would, I am sure, concur.

Now comes the good part. The passing of the tag. I choose to pass it on to Aseem, Saurabh, and Saira. If you don't answer the stupid questions, you shall develop knobby knees and die young.

And I think I forgot to mention that your hair might fall off.

Runnin' in Circles

2005-09-10T08:26:00.000+01:00

Nobody said it was easy,
It’s such a shame for us to part.
Nobody said it was easy,
No one ever said it would be so hard.
I’m goin’ back to the start.

Let's get some things straight.

2005-09-07T20:24:00.000+01:00

1. At IITD, there exists no such thing as a good minor.
2. EEL 102 lab is the most arbit and fraudy lab ever devised, and the lab-assistants are too busy fighting amongst themselves to pay any attention to us.
3. The maximum grade one can hope to achieve on MEP 201 this semester is an F.
4. One must never venture within arm's length of Solid Mechanics professors.
5. IIT DOES NOT ROX.
6. Points are fun to write in.
7. All girls are weird, psycho-bitches. The hot ones, more so.
8. The guy manning the Nescafé counter at IITD is an ass, but a very entertaining ass with very poor taste in women.
9. Nothing beats pointing and laughing, Nelson style.
10. Kazimi is a very confused man.
11. I think I shall sleep now.

What the...

2005-09-06T18:43:00.000+01:00

I took 40 minutes to reach home today. 40 minutes. I drove for 40 minutes in heavy traffic and the blistering heat. I took 40 minutes to travel a distance of 2.5 kilometres, and never once did I manage to get to the 3rd gear. And as if that wasn't unpleasant enough, I was surrounded throughout by Dhoom-enabled motorcycles and cars playing, "Aririrarara, aririrararu, aririrararo, aririrarari, Jaast Loveme. Jaaast Loveme."
I reached home, and I switched on the telly, and what did I see? 'King of Queens'. Not 'That 70's Show'. 'King of Queens'. A show about a fat man in brown shorts. Just what a guy needs after a long day.

And life, in the meantime, continues to get worse.

I have been taught...

2005-09-04T19:47:00.000+01:00

He who knows, and knows he knows,
He is wise. Follow him.

He who knows, and knows-not he knows,
He is asleep. Wake him.

He who knows-not, and knows he knows-not,
He is a child. Teach him.

He who knows-not, and knows-not he knows-not,
He is a fool. Shun him.

Aaarghh!!

2005-09-03T08:18:00.000+01:00

Goddamn F***ing Minors.

Kanthapura

2005-08-30T23:22:00.000+01:00

SPOILER WARNING: Plot and/or ending details about Kanthapura, by Raja Rao, follow.
The following piece of text is intended to be viewed only by people who have read the book, or have no intention of doing so in the near future and are here merely so that they can survive the minor tomorrow.

The HUL 239 minor is to be held tomorrow. Most of the people I am doing the course with are yet to embark on the long and arduous journey that reading Kanthapura entails. I don't blame them. Kanthapura is, easily, one of the most boring books ever written. I sympathize with them and understand their rather difficult position. It is with them in mind that I begin writing this post. Feeling particularly benevolent right now, I intend to spend the next half an hour outlining, in some detail, the main themes and incidents the novel concerns itself with. So go ahead. Read this post. Print it out, run copies, and share it freely with your friends. Write it down in your notebooks, if need be, for what I am about to tell you will get you through tomorrow's minor.

Kanthapura, as a novel, sucks. It is the first major Indian novel in English. It is also boring, long, and old. It is one of the few novels by an Indian writer in English that is almost entirely untouched by Western values or attitudes. It was first published in London in 1938, and didn't, very understandably, sell much. It was only later, after India had gained her independence, and ineffectual courses like HUL 239 had been introduced at crappy Indian universities, that Kanthapura sales rocketed, and made Raja Rao a rich man overnight. The book has a history of inducing wild patriotism and long periods of extreme ennui among readers. It is an established cure for insomnia. And it doesn't cost too much.

The Language
The language one comes across in Kanthapura is strange and unlike anything else seen before. It is a highly bent, broken and battered form of the English we are all accustomed to. The words are dull and short, and are selected carefully so as to generate the maximum amount of boredom possible among readers. The narrative brightens up only during the parts in which the colorfully-named characters abuse each other. Characters in Kanthapura come up, whenever called upon to, with the choicest of insults. The only part of the novel I shall probably remember for the rest of my life is abc-amma calling xyz-ayya 'a son of a concubine.'
The style of writing is rambling, diffuse, and mostly incoherent. The excuse provided is the 'Difficulty in conveying, in a language that is not one's own, the spirit that is one's own.' The narration is, allegedly, flowing and digressive. While the individual words seem to make perfect sense, the sentences are just meaningless and insurmountable chunks of lettering. As you read through the novel, it would seem, initially, as if everything was progressing just as it should be, but sit back for a moment, and all you will be able to recall are long meandering lumps of writing separated by periods.

The Story
The story, at the beginning, is very boring. That sort of sets the tone for the entire book.
Kanthapura is the story of a village in South India called, very predictably, Kanthapura. The narrator is a widow named Achakka. Kanthapura, according to her, is much like other villages. It is divided along caste lines, but is, at the same time, harmonious and united. All the villagers are mutually bound in their social and economic functions.
Religion plays an important part in the village, and the two main religious influences are 'Kenchamma', the village Goddess, and Himavathy, the river flowing near Kanthapura. The various ceremonies and festivals held in the village hold the villagers together religiously.
The story has two main individual leaders, Mahatma Gandhi, who, very wisely, chooses to remain out of the novel, and Moorthy, the main protagonist. The story takes off, if it ever does, when Moorthy, a young Brahmin, suddenly gets influenced by the Mahatma. He starts spreading the Mahatma's message among the villagers. He visits the city sometime during the beginning of the narrative, and returns a 'Gandhi Man'. The villagers, in the absence of anything better to do, start taking Moorthy seriously.
Moorthy gets support from Rangamma, a kind old widow, Ratna, a hot young widow, and Patel Range Gowda, a man. Together, they form a Congress committee in Kanthapura and, as per the Mahatma's philosophy, start mingling with the lower castes. They face skeptisicm from many, like the foul-mouthed Venkamma. They also face opposition from Bhatta (an ass) and Swami (a local religious leader), who threatens them with excommunication. All this becomes too much for Moorthy's mother, Narsamma, to handle. She cries a lot, and then, very prudently, makes a hasty exit from the lousy-excuse-for-a-novel. In other words, she dies.
The real resistance comes from the British, symbolized by a horny white man at the Skeffington Coffee Estate, and Bade Khan. As Moorthy expands his committee, the British get impatient, and finally send policemen to arrest Moorthy. The villagers protest, but Moorthy gives himself up silently and peacefully, and urges the villagers to do the same, if and when the need arose. He is taken to Karwar, where he refuses the services of a lawyer, thinking that The Truth shall protect him. When he finds out it won't, it is too late, and he ends up spending 3 months in jail.
In Moorthy's absence, Sankar takes his place at the head of the Congress committee. The British bribe the Swami with fertile land. The villagers fast for 3 days for Moorthy, and then the women decide to form a Sevika Sangh. Their husbands object, ostensibly because they thought the women would neglect their chores, but actually because they thought they weren't getting laid frequently enough. The men and women, however, soon reach a compromise (I think they drew up a schedule) and start working together for the greater good.
When Moorthy is released, he picks up where he had left off. Soon after, Gandhi launches the Non-Cooperation movement with the Dandi March. The villagers follow the march carefully, and start preparing for their own Non-Cooperation movement.
That's when the toddy shop business begins. The people of Kanthapura, in a fit of enthusiastic impracticality, decide to picket the toddy shops. They are joined by volunteers from the cities, and coolies from Skeffington.
So the villagers march to picket, but encounter the police en route. The policemen have guns, and they use them. They also beat the villagers mercilessly. Moorthy and a few other people get arrested. A couple of people die. One woman gets raped, and another delivers a child. All this amidst a one-sided, LOTR-style war scene.
The policemen win. They start wreaking havoc on Kanthapura. The women who are left behind decide to burn the village, rather than let the fields and houses fall into the hands of the oppressors. The village, therefore, burns, and in the end, there remains neither man nor mosquito in Kanthapura.
Then begins the journey to another village. The women reach a place called Kashipura after going through many difficulties. Once there, they stay there.
The Mahatma, in the meanwhile, signs a treaty with the Viceroy that frees all the non-violent prisoners. Many villagers, including Ratna, are released, and return to tell the villagers at Kashipura the conditions inside the prisons. Moorthy, however, does not return to Kashipura. Seeing his ambitions thwarted, he reacts in a way common to the youth in those days. He goes over to the Nehru Camp. However, he soon realizes that playing second fiddle to a well-dressed, young and smooth-talking man is a much more difficult and frustrating task than playing second fiddle to an old, bald, half-naked and bespectacled one. He then becomes disillusioned with life and the Freedom Struggle, becomes an inveterate alcoholic, comes out of the closet, and, on not receiving the public acceptance and sympathy he had hoped for, commits suicide.

The Message
There are two rather important messages that the novel deals with.
Firstly, the role of the National Struggle in changing the very framework under which our society traditionally functioned. Throughout the narrative, we see the gradual blurring of caste lines. We see how the village changed and became a strong unit in the face of crises, and most importantly, how the changes in the village structure came not from the outside or due to any external agent, but from the inside, due to the efforts put in by the villagers. Moorthy plays a very important role in the novel in this regard.
Secondly, the Feminine Principle fundamental to the narrative. While the novel does not explicitly question the then existing gender equations, it does tell us the rising importance of women in society, and how that rising importance was both a cause and effect of the National Movement. While subjects like equality and husband-wife relations have not been questioned, they have been commented upon. Most importantly, it has been mentioned that the women of India played an active part in India's struggle for Independence, and while they might not have been viewed as equals by men then, they were not treated with outright contempt either.

That about wraps it up for Kanthapura.

If you just read this post, and still can't understand a thing, here's what you do. Memorize the following phrases. Learn them up by heart. Then use them lavishly in you minor answers. I guarantee results.
1. "Microcosm of the Indian National Movement"
2. "You son of a Concubine."
3. Peaceful Non-violence/Non-violent Peace/Satyagraha
4. "Corner-House Moorthy"
5. "You son of a Concubine."
6. "Kenchamma Kenchamma"
7. "Picket-Toddy-Shop"
8. "You son of a Concubine."

On the 1st of August, from about 11 to 12, May The Force Be With You.

Iris

2005-08-29T20:55:00.000+01:00

And I’d give up forever to touch you,
’cause I know that you feel me somehow.
You’re the closest to heaven that I’ll ever be,
And I don’t want to go home right now.

And all I can taste is this moment,
And all I can breathe is your life,
’cause sooner or later it’s over,
I just don’t want to miss you tonight.

And I don’t want the world to see me,
’cause I don’t think that they’d understand.
When everything’s made to be broken,
I just want you to know who I am.

And you can’t fight the tears that ain’t coming.
Or the moment of truth in your lies.
When everything feels like the movies.
Yeah, you bleed just to know you’re alive.

And I don’t want the world to see me,
’cause I don’t think that they’d understand.
When everything’s made to be broken,
I just want you to know who I am.

And I don’t want the world to see me,
’cause I don’t think that they’d understand.
When everything’s made to be broken,
I just want you to know who I am.

I just want you to know who I am.
I just want you to know who I am.
I just want you to know who I am.

Arbitaapa

2005-08-28T18:30:00.000+01:00

Here at IITD, the minors are upon us once again, and as always, they bring out nothing but the worst in all of us. There is just a slight difference. This time, I am strangely unconcerned. All about me, students are losing their heads over AML 160 and EEL 102. Everyone is worried about syllabi and there seems to be a mad rush to procure textbooks. I, on the other hand, have no idea about the date-sheet, and my textbooks are lying around in friends’ cars. All I know is that the minor tests start sometime on Thursday, and I have to take six of them within a period of 3 days. Thursday, however, seems a fair distance away, and as of now, I am spending my days much like I have till now, averaging 2 ‘Coupling’ episodes, 2 ‘South Park’ episodes, 1 ‘The Simpsons’ episode, 1 ‘That 70’s Show’ episode, and a couple of hours of Need For Speed Underground a day, except for on weekends, when I have to forego ‘The Simpsons’ and ‘That 70’s Show’ thanks to the bastards in charge of program scheduling back at Star World. I do not, as yet, feel the tiniest bit of guilt, as I would surely have half a year back, for so blatantly wasting my time. I might flunk all my minors (which, as I said a bit earlier, no longer concerns me), but in the meanwhile, I seem to be having a pretty good time.

I did, however, try studying a bit in the afternoon yesterday, just to see what it feels like after all this time. But I fell asleep reading my notes. I woke up in the evening and tried again, and fell asleep again. I woke up this morning and actually managed to get past an entire page before my attention got diverted. Being far too well rested to sleep again, I ended up drawing moustaches on all the people in the newspaper (which was unlucky enough to be lying around) with my black pen. They came out pretty well too.

Moving on, a friend has successfully undergone an overnight transformation into an ass. One day he was okay, and the next he was suddenly acting all hoity-toity, bitching about me all over the place. It was quite alarming, seeing a normal and good-natured person change into a foul-mouthed ass.
Now, as a rule, I do not hold grudges against people who bitch about me or detest me, mainly because, being one of the most arrogant and intolerable people around, I realize that I well deserve most of the names by which I am addressed, and that if I went around holding grudges against people who call me these names, I would probably be holding grudges against most of the people I know, and quite a few I don’t. But there are limits to my tolerance, and overnight changes in attitude, I found out recently, surpass these limits. Overnight changes piss me off. They disturb routine. And when they involve a ‘friend’ destroying my meticulously cultivated image among people I have known for a fairly long period of time, they disturb routine rather adversely. I could, of course, talk to the person involved, sort things out, and, that done, proceed to forget about the entire incident, but, aggressive and vengeful bastard that I am, I shall not. I shall have to, to put it quite bluntly, kill him.

While we are on the subject of killing, Kanthapura is killing me. It is the most boring book ever, and the language is all awry. I could have, like most of my friends (Many of them are doing the same Humanities course as I am, and have to, therefore, read Kanthapura like me.) left it midway, but I have issues with leaving books half-read. I have never, and I say this with much pride, abandoned a book midway, which basically means nothing more than the fact that I have spent a very large part of my life reading absolute crap. I could go on and on about Kanthapura, but I intend to devote an entire post to it, for a few of my friends have urged me to write a brief summary of it on this blog, so that they can save themselves the trouble of going through it on their own. I shall, therefore, refrain from further commenting on the book in this post.

In other news, quizzing season at IITD has begun. The first inter-hostel quiz of the year was held on Friday. Rohan Trivedi and Shalabh Gupta, the quizmasters, did a wonderful job, and came up with some amazing questions. The quiz was, consequently, lots of fun. It was also lots of fun because, for the first time since I’ve been participating in QC events, our team came first. From what I heard later, it has been a rather long time since Jwalamukhi finished first in an inter-hostel quiz. Wonderful, innit?

What’s even more wonderful is the fact that I started growing my first wisdom tooth yesterday. It came out of my gums. It hurts a lot, but I don’t mind much, for, contrary to all indications, I might finally be growing up.

Goody Goody Gumdrops. Again.

2005-08-18T18:20:00.001+01:00

I received the perfect birthday present yesterday.
Curiously enough it came not from my family or my friends, but in the form of an advertisement on Star World.

Seinfeld is soon going to be back on Indian TV.
Woohoo.

Hum bhi agar...

2005-08-17T08:18:00.000+01:00

Hum bhi agar bachche hote,

Naam hamara hota Babloo Dabloo,

Khane ko milte laddoo,

Aur duniya kehti, "Happy Birthday to You."

Where's my Bush?

2005-08-15T18:05:00.000+01:00

Note to readers: I am an apolitical person. This is an apolitical blog. This post shall, therefore, make no reference to a certain Mr. George W. Bush. All of you who have been misled by the post-title, and are expecting a post that describes, in meticulous detail, Mr. Bush's unique existence on this planet, are advised to leave. For you shall not get what you seek here. I would like to say, however, that my reserving comment on Mr. Bush does, in no way, mean that he isn't as big a blundering buffoon as he is universally acknowledged to be.

Curiously enough, this post is about MEP 201, or more precisely, Mechanical Engineering Drawing, the most exasperating course ever designed to be a part of any curriculum anywhere.

Those who view this blog regularly (Losers!!) will know that I have spoken about MEP 201 before. Still, I feel I must refresh everyone's memory before I proceed further.

The story thus far: MEP 201 sucks. All the teachers are sicksadistic bastards. And they use fresh wax on the slanting tables before each class to make them as slippery as possible. They shall rot in hell. Every last one of 'em.

And now to continue: Mechanical Engineering Drawing, or MEP 201 is a pathetic and painful 4-credit course. It has one lecture class every week that takes place on Tuesday, and one practical class every week that takes place on Monday. We are given Tutorial-sheets during lectures, and we are supposed to draw what the sheets tell us to draw during the practicals. What's sad is that there is almost a one week gap between the lectures and practicals, and since one week is enough time to lose the average Tutorial-sheet twenty-eight times over, most of us reach the practicals without the faintest idea of what we have to do. The fact that the professor taking the course is, like most professors at IIT, an utter ass who refuses to give out spares in case Tutorial-sheets get lost doesn't really help. What really gets to me, however, is the fact that he takes attendance as if we're all prison inmates. He addresses us by numbers ('Quaidi number 746' types) rather than names. The ass calls me 495. 495. Can you believe it. 495 is like the worst number ever. Just my luck to get stuck with it.

But the professor notwithstanding, lecture classes are just about tolerable. They last only an hour, and can be spent sleeping/awake depending on one's own personal preferences, and one's distance from the professor. The practicals, on the other hand, are four hours long. 4 friggin' hours long. And we have to stand through them. Not sit. Stand. For 4 hours. And the work to be done in 4 hours is roughly the work an average man does in a lifetime. So unless you stay sharp and spend every minute with your nose glued to the drawing-sheet, you will, in all probability, be unable to finish your work, and you'll get no marks for that particular practical. Even if you do manage to stay sharp and spend every minute with your nose glued to the drawing-sheet, you will still, in all probability, be unable to finish your work, but that is a risk you must run. The only guaranteed and sure-shot method to finish the work in 4 hours is to ensure you sit next to Mr. Mridul Ganesh, in which case you have to merely copy measurements and deal with the waxed desks.

And dealing with the waxed desks is no mean job. For everything slips. Pencils slip. Pens slip. Protractors and set-squares slip. Tapes and sharpeners slip. Even erasers slip.
And then there are the compasses. And since compasses rain like cats and dogs on precious body organs, and miss only narrowly each time, one does not, fairly understandably, look forward, with infinite eagerness, to the next MEP 201 practical class.

But that's not the worst part. Not by far. The worst part is the embarrassing questions people ask. "Can I see your bush?", they ask hopefully, and seeing me shrink in horror and disgust, they add, somewhat helpfully, "Only a brief glance, I promise. I won't take long." And they say it so naturally and unhesitatingly, you'd think it was their birth-right.
The first time I was asked that, I, like any other sane and self-respecting person would have done, flatly refused, at which the requester had merely shrugged nonchalantly and had moved on to the person sitting next to me, who, I have a feeling, had readily obliged, for I saw the two of them walking together, laughing loudly, immediately after the class.
I would have forgotten all about the incident, but the questions just kept coming, and the fifth one, if I remember correctly, set me thinking. "What's with everyone?", I thought to myself, "Why the sudden fascination?" And that was when it hit m. As I stared at the assembly components I had drawn (shabbily, I might add), thinking hard, I suddenly saw the light. I looked for my Tutorial-sheet, for it alone had the power to confirm my beliefs, and sure enough, s I looked at it, there they were, the small and poorly-Xeroxed letters I was looking for: COMPONENT 7: BUSH.
After this, every time someone asked me if they could take a look at 'my bush', I, being the person I am, went into a 20 minute-long, hysterical, laughing fit, five minutes into which the requester merely shrugged nonchalantly and moved on to the person sitting next to me. I, in the deal, spent most of my practical class laughing, taking brief breaks only to dodge falling compasses and to hurriedly copy Mridul's work.

But today is the 15th of August. Today is our Independence Day. And I am feeling uncharacteristically patriotic, for today is also a Monday, and I am tremendously happy. Happy that our great nation won her independence just when she did, which enabled, 58 years later, a boy named Manu Saxena to celebrate the day in its true spirit, by proclaiming freedom from an MEP 201 practical that would have otherwise taken place as on every Monday, and freedom from being asked embarrassing questions, that would have undoubtedly been asked during it, and freedom from dependence on Mridul to complete drawings and assignments, albeit for a day (I have MEL 211 to catch up on before tomorrow afternoon).
But most importantly, I thank this day for allowing me the opportunity to keep my genitals safe and impalement-free. For another whole week.

We are like this only

2005-08-15T07:50:00.000+01:00

I was talking to a friend a little while back, and something she said reminded me, very unexpectedly, of a particular incident that took place about a decade back, almost to the day. Surprisingly enough, it remains, even today, as clear in my mind as it was 10 years back.

Scene: Manu Saxena's Class IV PTA, taking place in Manu Saxena's Ground-Floor classroom, at Delhi Public School, Vasant Vihar. As the scene opens, Manu Saxena's parents are seating themselves in front of Manu Saxena's class-teacher, and a highly unusual discussion on Manu Saxena's progress in class is about to ensue.

Manu Saxena's Parents: We are Manu Saxena's parents.
Manu Saxena's Class-Teacher: Aah. Manu Saxena.
Parents: Yep. Manu Saxena.
Class-Teacher: Wonderful. He's a wonderful child.
Parents (Taken aback and quite visibly surprised): He is? How come we never knew about it?
Class-Teacher: He is one of my best students.
Parents (Still unconvinced): Are we talking about the same person here?
Class-Teacher: Of course. I know Manu well. He's a wonderful student. He's academically strong, does all the work he is asked to do and more, and is, by far, the most animated and spirited child in class. There's just one slight problem.
Parents: And that is?
Class-Teacher: He doesn't use the door.
Parents: ???
Class-Teacher: He uses the window instead.

My 19th birthday shall come along in a couple of days. It scares me. Terrifies me, even. In another year I'll be twenty. Twenty. I'll be all old and responsible and old. Nevertheless, it's good to know that I still have a year. And it's even better to know how little things have changed over the past decade. I wish things could always remain the way they are. It's just too bad they can't.

Ohaiyo Gozai Masu

2005-08-10T20:16:00.000+01:00

Where's my Dhaastaar?

The 'interesting' Freshers' Quiz

2005-08-08T19:26:00.000+01:00

Before I begin on this post, a few clarifications, I feel, are due.

Hej! is a greeting commonly used in Sweden and on blogs whose authors have recently read Going Loco by Lynne Truss.
I am fully aware of the fact that most of the comments to the previous post do not make any sense. I would do something about them, but there are too many, and I am too tired to reply to each one of them. We shall, for now, assume that replying to only the relevant ones is a course of action that does not occur to me. I shall choose, therefore, as of now, to ignore them.
I have, as some of the more perceptive people following the progress of this blog would have noticed, not posted in 10 days. I have also not, as some of you would know, replied to any mails during this period. A few of you, who happen to share the common misfortune of having me on your MSN or Yahoo Messenger Contact Lists would have also noticed, or so I like to believe, my 10-day long absence.
I have been, in short, online precisely zero times in the last 10 days. I have been hibernating. And I have 21 unanswered and mostly pointless comments, and 84 new mails on my Yahoo account to show of it.
Why I have been away for 10 days is a topic I shall not go into now, for I have no time to explain. It is a thrilling tale. I wish to do it justice.

I shall therefore, start where I left off. A lot has happened in the past 10 days that I wish to document on this blog. Whose Life? shall, therefore, during the coming week, be written in the past-tense. I shall try to return to the present as soon as possible. Leaving senseless comments, however, shall only delay my recovery.

The Freshers' Quiz was, as I pointed out earlier, interesting. Interesting because of the large contrasts. Contrasts in the quality of competition. Contrasts in the quality of questions. Contrasts in the degree of organization. And very significantly, although it might not seem so important to most people, contrasts in the attitude of the audience. I shall not be going into all these contrasts in detail in the course of this post. They were, nonetheless, very apparent.

The competition was, to be quite frank, poor. Two or three people did stand out, and stand out well, but the general level of the quiz left a lot to be desired. Team Shiwalik was good, primarily because of, from what I hear, Anurag Sud. Team Satpura, which really impressed, especially in the prelims, also had a couple of very good quizzers. Vindhyanchal's freshers, I thought, were a distant third. The fact that they bagged the 2nd spot shows, once again, how important placing and luck is in an infinite-bounds quiz. Karakoram and Jwalamukhi, the other two teams who were a part of the final five, were, at least on both days in question (prelims and finals), very ordinary. The fact that they made it through the prelims says a lot about the level of the quiz. A couple of freshers from Jwala I talked to on the days preceding the event seem to have some potential, but that doesn't seem to stop them from passing sitters. To Kara's credit, they did not pass a single question. They came up with the most ridiculous answers, but they did not pass. Mr. Prabhpal Singh Grewal insists he was instrumental in making them behave the way they did. Mr. Prabhpal Singh Grewal is a fascinating man.

Moving on to the questions. They were worse. And they played no small part in making the quiz as ordinary as it was. Most of them were based on senseless trivia. The one's that weren't were ridiculously simple. And the ones that weren't either were copied verbatim from Quiznet. Come to think about it, even most of the trivia-based and the absurdly-simple questions were, in fact, copied verbatim from Quiznet. There were a few wonderful, original and insightful questions, but they were rare, and their brilliance was completely overshadowed due to all the poor ones.
I must, however, mention that Mr. Aditya Meduri (excellent quizzer, commonly referred to as Meduri, more commonly as Khajury) from Aravalli came up with a few extraordinary questions, and no doubt must be cast on his abilities, for almost all of his questions fitted neatly into the original, insightful and wonderful category. Mr. Arpit Nanda (I hope I have the surname right), from Karakoram, also came up with a few amazing questions, with a little help, I believe, from Mr. Amandeep Singh.

The organization was good, but not as good as it was last year. I guess it had a lot to do with the time restraints, and the newly put into place, ridiculous interaction-period rules. The quiz did seem a bit hurried towards the later part, especially because it had moved at so leisurely a pace in the beginning (what with everybody passing and nobody ready to answer), but a well-deserved round of applause for Bala for putting together as good a show as he could. Couldn't have done much about the questions and the competition, could he?

The audience was awful. It couldn't even have been called an audience during the prelims. There were just a handful of isolated groups scattered around the hall, and one could just about sight one such group if only one possessed a pair of binoculars. Though there were a few more people present during the finals, they didn't do much else besides whistling loudly when a picture of Kylie Minogue was briefly flashed on the screen during one of the Audio-Visual questions. And this at the height of the interaction period, when pro-hostel cheering is supposed to be of paramount importance. Disappointing. Terribly disappointing.

That about wraps it up as far as the freshers' quiz is concerned. Bad, but could have been worse.

And since I haven't said this on my blog before, I shall say it now. MEP 201 sucks. All the teachers are sicksadistic bastards. And they use fresh wax on the slanting tables before each class to make them as slippery as possible. They shall rot in hell. Every last one of 'em.

The inescapable truth

2005-07-30T11:56:00.000+01:00

Hej!

The holidays have ended. A new semester has begun. I am now officially a 2nd year student. Classes began a couple of days back. And, very frankly, I am a bit surprised about the fact that I have no idea how I feel about all of these recent developments.

The past few days have left me confused. Very confused. Till about a week back, I was sure about my reaction towards going back to IIT after a (very) long break. I was sure I was going to feel sad and dissatisfied and immensely unhappy about going through another 4 months of uninterrupted torture at a place I have, over the past year, come to strongly dislike. I was angry and irritated about the imminent end of the vacations. I was filled with dread at the prospect of attending never-ending lecture classes in the ominous-looking main building. I was filled with even more dread at the prospect of worrying about grades and marks all over again. Still more dread filled me when I thought about walking once again among people who were never more comfortable than when talking about the latest difficult Kinematics problem. And more than all of that, I was dreading the prospect of being addressed as an IC as I walked down long, seemingly endless, corridors.

But that was a week ago. Very surprisingly, as the day college was scheduled to reopen came closer, my angst and frustration were slowly replaced by very mixed feelings about my return to IIT. It is true that I never, at any point of time, actually looked forward to attending IIT again, like I used to do when school was involved, but I distinctly remember moments of uncertainty, when I remember feeling not all that bad about going back to IIT as I would have myself believe.

The last two days have done nothing to help me make up my mind. I remain as uncertain as ever. My feelings of ambivalence have, in fact, augmented since the day college reopened. If I was undecided about my feelings towards IIT at the time college reopened, I'm downright confused now. On the one hand, I am, after a gap of more than two and a half months, once again seriously contemplating suicide as an option. However, on the other hand, contrary to whatever I may have said earlier, and in spite of all the magnetic darts and brief newspaper appearances, I have to admit that the just concluded holidays have been a bit more boring than I had expected them to be. I can't really say I'm happy to be back at IIT, because I'm not, but saying I'm unhappy would just be an uncharitable lie.

Which brings me to a peculiar and rather upsetting conclusion that emerges logically from the above given facts. I have no idea when or how this happened, but for better or for worse, IITD and some of the people I know here have become an important part of my life. And nothing I might do or say, including bitching about IIT on this blog to keep it up and running, can change that.

I had intended to make this post a lot longer. I had intended it to be an introspective post telling everybody (myself included) what I thought about my holidays. I had also intended it to be a detailed account of the past two days, wherein I was supposed to write about the as-boring-as-ever classes, the as-weird-as-ever professors, a revamped CSC, a delightful couple of hours I recently spent in the Nilgiri Music Room, and a very interesting freshers'-quiz, but the philosophical implications of what I have just written have left me a bit dazed, and I don't much feel like writing any more.
So screw you guys, I'm going home.

Aaj bhi hain...

2005-07-22T23:27:00.001+01:00

Aaj bhi hain pakde ye ummeed ki dori,
Don't lose hope is the moral of the story.
Jisne inse seekha life mein kabhi bhi naa jhukna,
Hot-seat pe milega bhaiyya, ummeed se dugna. Haha.

Insomnia

2005-07-20T17:51:00.000+01:00

College is just about a week away, and the mourning, as a friend of mine with a very happy gift of expression puts it, has begun. The last two and a half months have come and gone quickly. So quickly, in fact, that I could almost hear them whoosh by. Undoubtedly, I have had fun, and could not have hoped for a better and more carefree set of holidays. But as the day college reopens nears, I can't help but feel a bit dismayed. I've enjoyed a lot, but there is still so much left to do, and so little time to do it in. There are more friends to meet. There are more movies to be watched. And there are so many more needless and insignificant arguments to be won. I feel, to put it in a nutshell, an acute shortage of free time before college reopens. I have therefore, stopped sleeping at night.

I know that many of you would like to express your reservations concerning the appropriateness of the course of action I have planned for myself. Many of you would be thinking it unwise and unhealthy. Many of you would even be going as far as questioning my sanity. I would like to say, therefore, at the very outset of this post, that I am not crazy. I admit that this might not be one of my brightest and most prudent ideas. I daresay it might be one of my most preposterous and absurd ones. But I can't do much about it, simply because it is not a conscious one.

What I mean to say is that there was at no point of time a single moment of inspiration when I suddenly sat up, sweaty and exhausted from mindless thinking, and said to myself, "Manu. You aren't going to sleep tonight. What's more, you aren't going to sleep tomorrow night either. And not the next. And not the next. And so on and so forth." What really happened was that I lay down one night to sleep, and couldn't. So I got up and started watching a movie instead. I lay down to sleep again the next night, and waited for sleep to take me, but it didn't, so I ended up reading all of the newspapers from the month of June instead. The next night, I couldn't sleep either, and re-rated all the songs on my iTunes library twice over to keep me occupied. The fourth night onwards, I gave up trying. It seems that my body, in a state of extreme panic due to the approaching end of the holidays, has simply forgotten how to sleep.

There's obviously nothing very wrong with not sleeping at night, except for the fact that one does tend to feel very tired throughout the day. But that, as far as I am concerned, is but a minor side-effect. The much bigger problem for me is to keep myself occupied at night, when everybody else is asleep. I usually see off my last friend on MSN at about 2:00 AM, and nobody at my place gets up before 5:30 AM. The three hours and thirty minutes that elapse between these two times are the hardest to pass, unless you happen to have an unread Harry Potter book in your hands. However, I have managed to do it for about a week now (6 nights actually, if I don't count the night I did have an unread Harry Potter book in my hands), and I am getting increasingly proficient at it.

So here, ladies and gentlemen, are some things one can do between 2:00 AM and 5:30 AM, and still live (as against die of boredom) to tell the tale.

1. Music. There's nothing better than listening to music at night. Everybody's asleep, which means that there's nobody to disturb you by asking you to clean your shoes or take a bath in the middle of your favorite song. All you need is lots of music, and relatively docile neighbors, and you're ready to go.
Harmful side-effects: Fit-to-burst parents and/or sibling(s), temporary deafness from 5:30 AM to 7:30 AM, and general tendencies exhibited by shoes and by you of getting excessively dirty.

2. SouthPark. If your parents can't stand your music, the next best thing to do is to watch SouthPark episodes. They're perfect for night-time viewing. They're not too mentally taxing and the names of the characters are short and easy to remember. Aseem Suri, a like-minded friend of mine, who also seems to be afflicted with a bad case of insomnia these days, compares watching SouthPark episodes to meditation. I totally agree, except that meditation is never as much fun.
Harmful side-effects: A marked increase in abuses/beeps in one's speech depending upon the extent of censorship in the watched episodes, rapid deterioration in one's sense of humor, and a general inclination towards using the phrase, "Oh my God! They killed Kenny. The bastards." excessively and completely out of context.

3. There's nothing that relieves the tedium at night like a long, winding walk. The weather, obviously, has to be nice. Walks are a complete waste of time when it is hot. A pleasant breeze that runs through your hair is much more desirable. The best weather to take a walk, however, is when it is raining. And at AIIMS, post-midnight rainfall, especially at this time of the year, isn't too much of a rarity. I must, however, make clear at this point of time that any post-midnight attempts to take on the wild outdoors are not entirely free from danger. Any mishaps occurring due to embarking on walks late at night after reading this blog will not be my responsibility. In other words, take walks late at your own risk.
Harmful side-effects: Colds and kidnappings.

4. Playing NFS: Underground. It's fun. It's fast. And you can watch cool cars collide and crash without experiencing any of the pain that is usually associated with such situations.
Harmful side-effects: General urges to drive at 160 mph on city roads, usually leading to undesirable consequences. Frantic searching for arrow keys at turnings, leading to still more undesirable consequences.

5. Reading: Reading is, by far, the best way to spend free time at night. No angry parents/siblings/neighbors, no risks involved, and no irritating withdrawal symptoms. When in doubt, pick up a book.
Harmful side-effects: None.

Of course, if nothing else works, one can always resort to aimless net-surfing. Reading blogs, posting comments and pointlessly taking worthless online tests takes up a lot of time. Which reminds me of this particular online test I took yesterday. Try it. It works well.

That about wraps it up for things to do at night. While none of them sound as good as sleeping, they fill up time just as well.

Before I go, I have another couple of things to write about.

I finished reading the 6th book in the Harry Potter series a couple of days back. It is, in short, an excellent read. As most of you would know by now, Dumbledore dies at the end. I always thought, ever since I was sucked into the Harry Potter phenomenon 4-5 years ago, that Albus Dumbledore was invincible. That come what may, he will be there, a solid rock of support for Harry to fall back on, and an eternal source of wisdom and intelligence that will continue to elucidate and enchant till the end of the series. I was wrong. He was, by far, my favorite character from the series and the fact that he was not as indispensable as I think he was, more than his dying, makes me sad.

Also, my hair has once again reached, as it tends to do every three months or so, the awkward length which lies somewhere between short and long. It is looking, very frankly, quite dreadful, and my mother, like is expected of her every three months or so, has started asking me to get them cut. If any of you reading this have any idea how to convince mothers that long hair is a good idea, kindly let me know. I will be grateful to you for the rest of my life.

Oh my God! They killed Kenny. The bastards.

Go make some science

2005-07-20T10:42:00.000+01:00

Yesterday

2005-07-16T19:25:00.000+01:00

I have much to write about, and not a lot of time. For I must get back to Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince.

The purpose of this entry is to keep all the people interested in my dull life updated with what's been happening. I wouldn't have gone through the time and trouble of posting this entry but for them. They seem to be more interested in my life than I am, and as a result seem to flock to this blog in large numbers. I would hate to see them leave disappointed. And therefore, I write.

Not much has happened since I last posted. Yesterday was fun. I went to VM. For the uninitiated, VM is an abbreviation for VidyaMandir, as in VidyaMandir Classes. VM is located in West Punjabi Bagh, and it is a place where students are taught Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics to help them prepare for the JEE, or the Joint Entrance Examination. The JEE, as all of you would probably be knowing, is the test one has to take to get into one of the seven IITs spread across the country. I used to study at VM for a period of two years, and I usually make it a point to go there at the beginning of every set of vacations, to see how things are getting along there. However, during these summer chhutis, every time me and my friends used to schedule a trip to VM, something or the other came up at the last moment, and we had to postpone the visit every time. Yesterday, however, me and three of my friends, who also studied in the same batch at VM as me, managed to finally realize our plans to drop in on the VM bhaiyyas (that's what we call our teachers at VM) at about 10:00 AM.
We spent quite a bit of time there. We met with a few of the bhaiyyas, and exchanged views with them on subjects ranging from ragging at IITD to recent movies. It was, as always, a pleasure to be at VM, and it was only at about lunch-time that we left the place.

The question that the four of us faced then was, in true H2G2 fashion, where to have lunch. In the absence of a better alternative, we settled for a McDonald's outlet. Then we decided to watch a movie, and once again, in the absence of a better alternative, had to settle for a movie called Maine Pyaar Kyun Kiya. I shall write more about it when I write a detailed post on the movies I have watched this week, so look out for a review then. Till then, all I would like to say is that if you have decided to go catch the movie sometime, you would do well to reconsider your decision.

That about wraps up the boring part of this entry, and I now move on to more interesting, although very slightly more interesting, things.
But before that, allow me to digress a little. I know I am straying from the task at hand, but I would like very much, at this point, to introduce a friend of mine. I have known him for quite some time now, but very surprisingly, he never quite got around to being mentioned on this blog. All that is about to change.

Rishi Kant, as this particular friend of mine is called, is a from the same school as me. He was in the same section as I was in classes XI and XII. After school, he, like me, made the awful mistake of deciding to pursue engineering, and as a result, is almost as sexually and mentally frustrated as me, and indeed most of the other engineering students of our country. He studies (I am not quite sure if the word 'studies' can do full justice to what I am trying to convey here, but whatever) at the Delhi College of Engineering, also known as DCE.

Besides that, Rishi is one of the best players of cricket I have had the fortune to meet, and one of the worst drivers I have been unlucky enough to travel with. He wears specs, has extraordinarily big teeth and an almost perfectly elliptical head. He is also in the habit of addressing people as 'Pandu' , and incessantly muttering obscenties when he has nothing better to do, which is always. Rishi used to, until a day back, stay at Green Park, and since Green Park is, geographically speaking, quite close to AIIMS Campus, I used to, until a day back, visit him quite frequently. He had therefore, over a period of the last 3-4 years, become a rather good, if somewhat eccentric, friend.

To put it in a nutshell, Rishi is an utter ass, and as a result, is extremely interesting company. Keeping a straight face is next to impossible when he is around. The sad thing is, he won't be around very often now.

Rishi left for the US yesterday. His dad got a very cool job there, and as a result his entire family has shifted to New Jersey. He will, very probably, come back sometime soon, but it is unlikely that he'll stay for a long time. He has applied for a transfer to a few US universities, and, being the person he is, he very probably will get one. He will, therefore, in all probability, spend the rest of his life driving fast cars (not very well, I might add), minting money, and pataoing hot, white chicks. In short, he'll be doing all the things I would love to do but would probably never get a chance to because I'm stuck at stupid IIT. Sad. Quite sad.

Anyway, what I am trying to say, perhaps not very successfully, for I never am at my articulate best when talking about such stuff, is that Rishi was a nice guy to have around. And while I might not exactly be devastatingly depressed and miserable because of his departure, I will go as far as to say that he will be missed. Rishi, dude, if you're reading this, keep in mind that coming from me, that's a lot. I don't usually say things like that.

Well, that done, I shall get back to Harry Potter.

Customary Calvin and Hobbes post

2005-07-13T20:54:00.000+01:00

And you can't really blame them. Who wouldn't be?

Guess who's back?

2005-07-11T19:18:00.000+01:00

If you guessed Manu, you were correct. You can pat yourself on the back, and commend yourself on a job well done. If you didn't guess Manu, you might as well just go away, because there is not much chance of you understanding most of the rest of this entry.

Moving right on, I would like to, firstly, make clear the reasons that kept me away from blogging for such a long time. Although I do realize that I do not owe anybody any explanations, it will make me feel better if I can justify my longish absence. The reasons are complex and varied, and might seem, at first, especially to the shallow-minded and superficial, to be slightly capricious. But they are not. They are extremely valid reasons.

At first, I didn't feel much like writing. This phase lasted about a week. And during this phase, I, well, didn't feel much like writing. Then, and this is where it gets really interesting, so follow me closely, I fell ill. And it was no ordinary illness. It was a fever, but not quite, for it was also a stomach problem.

Now, the thing is, I don't usually let illness affect me much. But as I said, this was no ordinary illness. A fever I can handle without much difficulty, and I have been known to show much courage and bravery when confronted with stomach problems, but ask me to handle the two simultaneously, and I would be compelled to refuse the generous offer. They just don't go well together, fevers and stomach problems, if you ask me. They, together, possess the potential to get in the way of your daily routine. And activities such as blogging quite lose their charm and significance when you are too busy alternating between visiting the lavatory and having thermometers stuck into your mouth.

After that, once I got over my illness, about a couple of days back, I was waiting for the comments counter on the previous post to come up to 42, for reasons entirely my own.

Well, the pleasant news is, I am all good and cured now, and the previous post has received the 42 comments it was destined to receive. I am also eagerly looking forward to regularly blogging again, and I have lotsa stuff to write about. So watch this space. Carefully.

Of 'Aam Ke Ped' and cockroaches

2005-06-24T20:43:00.000+01:00

Before I begin on the subject(s) I intend to write on during this blog post, I would like to make a very special announcement. Anyone who thinks Aishwarya Rai is not looking nice in the Bunty Aur Babli item number can, for all I care, go to hell. I have, after a lot of hard work, managed to convince myself that the movie was worth the time and money I spent on it solely because of Aishwarya Rai and her item number. It has taken a lot of hard work, and what I do not want is some stupid ass coming along and ruining all that hard work by saying that he/she thought Ms. Rai was actually looking fat and ugly in the song. Therefore, this moment onwards, I expressly forbid such opinions on my blog.

With that out of the way, let me move on to the 'Aam Ka Ped' (Mango Tree) I wish to talk about. There are lots of 'Aam Ke Ped' (Mango Trees) in AIIMS Campus, but the 'Aam Ka Ped' I shall talk about is the one situated right outside my house. The branches of this particular 'Aam Ka Ped' extend right up to my bedroom window, and have caused me a lot of trouble in the preceding few weeks. As most of you would probably know, the mango-season, at least in most of North India, is in full swing, as a result of which, the 'Aam Ka Ped' in question is almost always heavily laden with mangoes. These mangoes, though real mangoes, are not like traditional, sweet, the-ones-you-have-at-home mangoes. They're green and small, and are not usually eaten as they are. They are usually processed and are ingested only in the form of eatables like achaars, chutneys, and pana (a thick, sweet, mangoey liquid which is supposed to make one immune to hot winds). Another special thing about these green and small aams is that they fall down a lot from their trees. All it takes is a slight breeze for most of a tree's small, green mangoes to reach the brown, hard ground underneath the tree. Even when there is no breeze, aams keep falling down from their trees at regular intervals, and, as I recently found out, in times of extreme boredom, counting them as they fall is a good way to pass some time.

Another important characteristic of an 'Aam Ka Ped' is its natural ability to attract crowds. An 'Aam Ka Ped' is not truly an 'Aam Ka Ped' until it has about two score people solemnly assembled in its cool shade. I believe the phenomenon has its origin in ancient practices. A long time ago, when India was nothing but a large cluster of spacious villages; when two men wanted to meet, one of them would almost invariably say cordially to the other, "Woh Balli ke ghar ke pichhwade mein jo aam ka ped hain, uske neeche mil jaayenge." (We shall meet 'neath the mango tree behind Balli's house), Balli, in this case, undoubtedly being a third party known to both men, but otherwise quite unconcerned with this conversation. The other man, not one to cross his fellow villager without good reason, and not seeing anything objectionable with meeting under the mango tree behind Balli's house would, somewhat less eloquently, but equally cordially, reply "Achha.", the motive behind meeting under an 'Aam Ka Ped' probably being the fact that meeting under anything smaller, like a 'Kele Ka Ped', would be extremely taxing on the back due to the continuous stooping required, besides being extremely undignified, akin to meeting behind a bush, and meeting under anything bigger, like a 'Bargad Ka Ped', would be unsafe because of all the bhoots and dissatisfied aatmas lurking in such trees, and superstition being widely spread in backward villages of olden days.

The exact reason for men being found in close proximity to an 'Aam Ka Ped', whether it be an uncontrollable urge written into the very genetic code of us Indians due to years of continuous socializing under one, or simply a matter of greed for aams that accidentally fall down from the ped, will probably never be known accurately to me. What I do know accurately is the fact that every day, about three dozen people hold a get together of sorts under the mango tree near my house. I am woken up in the morning by whoops of joy from children who are under the tree at about 4:30 AM, looking for aams that have fallen down overnight. Then, during the course of the entire day, I am forced to hear opinions of all kinds of people on all kinds of subjects through my window. The crowd dwindles only at about 9:00 in the evening, and that too provided there is electricity in the campus, which, more often than not, is not the case. Some people go as far as to climb the tree (Halfway up, roughly at my window level, they realize their progress is being keenly followed by me. They then look sheepishly at me through the window, and having done so for an adequately long time, proceed to continue climbing shamelessly up the tree), although in the recent past, fewer people have been climbing trees, no doubt due to the incident involving one of the AIIMS postmen who climbed a mango tree in search of mangoes, fell down, and promptly died. Now, most of the climbing is done by the monkeys, and since AIIMS Campus happens to be amply endowed when it comes to monkeys, there is, even now, more climbing than there ought to be (the poor postman, God bless his soul, seems to have died in vain), and I am still woken up at 4:30 in the morning, for monkeys are much like children who like aams and climbing on trees.

Besides 'Aam Ke Ped' and monkeys, cockroaches, rats, mosquitoes, and other not-very-pleasant species are also found in abundance at AIIMS Campus. Presently, there are two cockroaches that are residing at my house. While most cockroaches, as is expected of their kind, stay at a given address for only a very limited time, ranging from a few minutes to a few days, these two cockroaches have been living at my place for a decidedly longer time now. I have a feeling that they are more than enjoying their stay here, and therefore do not seem in a great hurry to leave. One of the cockroaches is bigger than the other, and I call it 'Bada Cockroach'. The other one, which is smaller, has been named 'Chhota Cockroach'. Bada Cockroach lives in the bathroom and Chhota Cockroach lives in the small passageway just outside my room. I am not very fond of them, but I have, over a period of about a month, learnt to peacefully co-exist with them. We may not still be what is described as a happy and satisfied familial unit, but we get by.

In other news, I continue to be ecstatically happy about nothing. There are, I think, essentially, two types of people. The first category is made up of people who, when they are happy, express their happiness by singing loudly, laughing, and jumping up and down. The second category is mad up of people who, when happy, go about being nice to dogs. I belong to the first category, as a result of which my parents continue to think I am on drugs.

Also, it's getting terribly hot and humid in Delhi. Life without an air-conditioner has become difficult, and venturing out of the house during the day has become almost impossible. I am, therefore spending much time indoors. I have been reading a lot. And I have been listening to a lot of music. These days, music plays in my room round the clock. I sleep with music on. I wake up with music on. I read with music on. I eat with music on, and I do pretty much everything else in between with music on. Therefore, in addition to thinking I am on drugs, my parents also think I will go totally deaf before the end of these holidays.

In addition to books and music, I have also been spending a lot of time watching home videos. There are lots of them lying around the house, and a lot of them have a much younger me in them. On watching them, I have come to the conclusion that I was quite an awesome guy when I was about two. But then at about four, I started getting weird and creepy, and by the time I was nine, I
1) Looked mentally ill.
2) Had the weirdest hair.
3) Wore purple pants.
4) Was terribly fat.

I think I was pretty much at my worst in life when I was nine. After that, I started recovering a bit, although most people who know me since then would say that I never really recovered much. Nevertheless, I feel I am definitely better now than I was at nine. And at the current rate of improvement, I think I should be almost as cool as I was at two by the time I am about seventy. I just hope I am around till then.

I have returned

2005-06-19T19:24:00.000+01:00

After a very very long break from blogging, I have returned. And I come fully loaded. With three movie reviews and lots of juicy tid-bits to follow. So, without much further ado, allow me to get to the reviews. In alphabetical order then.

Bunty Aur Babli, which I watched today, was a decent watch. I did not love it, as I had expected to, but it was a fun watch nevertheless. The beginning is wonderfully done, and the plot is pretty decent. But the later part of the movie is a bit disappointing, and the last half hour left me a bit stunned. Stunned at how they could mess up such a brilliant beginning, and at how miserably the movie fails at living up to the promise created by its unusual plot. The movie was, till then, impressive in parts, with the highlight of the movie, without doubt, being the item number by Aishwariya Rai. I thought Ms. Rai was looking breathtakingly beautiful. I do not usually like Aishwariya, but this song was something else. It made me almost forgive her for all that giggling and fake accent putting-on during Letterman and Oprah. The movie does have its moments, and most of the attempts at humour are pretty credible. Rani Mukerjee is looking very hot at times, and not so hot at other times. Amitabh Bachchan, as always, has done a bloody good job. In retrospect, I have a feeling that if it wasn't for the last 30-40 minutes, the movie would have been a delightful one. But as things stand, it isn't.

Mr. And Mrs. Smith was, to put it bluntly, terrible. Once again, the plot held great promise, but at no point in the movie did I feel that justice hasd been done to it. The movie doesn't even come close to being a good watch. Agreed, the dialogues are crisp and witty, and Angelina Jolie has never looked hotter. But even Angelina Jolie, aided a bit by witty dialogues, can't hold together a movie that has no story, with no clear beginning, no clear middle, and no clear end. Not taking Angelina Jolie into account, the movie was a big waste of time and money. It was a miracle that I survived it. I guess the only thing that saved me was my realizing, at a very early stage in the movie, that the only way to enjoy it was to keep staring intently at Ms. Jolie. It might be that I am being unduly unfair to the movie because I sat in the first row of the hall to watch it, but the only other time I have felt as disappointed with a Hollywood flick was when I watched The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Both the movies were very similar in how they made me feel once they were over. After watching both, I was left with nothing but a rather odd sensation of having been slapped in the face with a wet fish.

Parineeta, the third movie I watched this week, was simply brilliant. It was, easily, the best of the three. While Bunty Aur Babli, at least in the first half, looked like beating it to the first position, it lost out in, as I said, the last half hour. Mr. And Mrs. Smith didn't even come close.
The reason I liked Parineeta was that out of the three movies I saw this last week, it was the only one that actually made full use of a superior and unusual plot. Maybe it was because Mr. Sarat Chandra Chatterjee had already done all the hard work, and the movie makers didn't have to do much. Whatever the reason, the result is an extremely well made movie, with well-delineated characters and a well-paced, convincing screenplay. The direction is praiseworthy. All actors have performed very well. It is difficult to believe that this is Vidya Balan's debut movie, for her acting is of a caliber not usually associated with newcomers. Something tells me that she shall do well in the future. She is reasonably good looking and, as she proves with this movie, a very good actor. Saif Ali Khan, as in many of his last few movies, has come up with an impressive performance. Sanjay Dutt has made the most of his rather limited role. The peripheral actors have also delivered satisfactory performances. My only complaint with the movie is its weakness in the music department. Also, Rekha is too fat to do an item number. But then, one can't have everything.

This post has now become long. And it has become late. I have to go and sleep, for I am extremely tired. The juicy tid-bits, therefore, shall have to wait. But I promise I shall return soon. And then I shall write a long and nice post full of them. Till then, let the comments keep coming in.

It's been a while

2005-06-10T17:50:00.000+01:00

Quite a while actually. I'm writing a post (here, by writing, I mean writing something original, on my own, unaided) after almost 2 entire weeks. The two interim posts that appeared on this blog were, although very meaningful and significant entries, not very well received by people other than myself, as I gather from the comments, and more importantly, the hits-counter. It seems that people want me to stick to original prose, and to rescue this blog from a premature death, I think that is precisely what I shall have to do.

There has not been much to write about in the recent past. When I think about the preceding two weeks, the first thing that comes to mind is that I have been unbelievably happy. I have been in a constant state of almost ecstatic euphoria. I have been incredibly excitable, overtly enthusiastic, and pretty much bordering on insane. I have been running and jumping around the house, singing (if one could call it that) as loudly as possible, and have generally been acting excessively buoyant. If you would ask me why I have been so happy, I would tell you that I have not the faintest idea. But elated I have been, and not just normal elated, but abnormal elated. My sister now refuses to talk to me, for she says I have lost my ability to make normal conversation and give straight answers, and though my parents have not actually told me this explicitly, I have a very strong suspicion that they think I am on drugs.

While we are on the subject of parents, I must point out that mine aren't very happy with me. Besides thinking that I am doing drugs, they also seem to not like me being out of the house the entire day, and being in front of the computer the entire night. And that's not all. They also want me to sleep. You'd think that with me just having finished a hectic IIT semester, they'd be a bit more understanding.

Besides that, not a lot has happened since I last wrote. As you have probably gathered from the last paragraph, I have been spending a major part all of my days out of the house. I have been working a bit for Rendezvous-2005, which means that I have to go to IIT once every 5-6 days. I have been meeting up with a lot of friends, many of them after a very long time; as quite a few of them, from school as well as from the Campus (AIIMS Campus, that is) have returned to Delhi after a considerable amount of time. I also saw a few of my IIT friends a few days ago. In short, I am seeing a lot of friends. I am also seeing a lot of movies.

I bought a new desktop computer on the 31st of May, which was, incidentally, also my sister's birthday. Since my old desktop had become very old, and I did not like gaming much on my mother's laptop, which has a small screen and an iffy mouse, I decided to buy a new one. The new desktop has resulted in me taking back to gaming with a vengeance. Presently, all my nights are being spent alternating between Max Payne and Warcraft III, with only a little bit of Spiderman II (The Game) in the middle to break the monotony. According to a recent estimate, I have slept only 53 hours since I bought my new computer. But I see no reason why I should be complaining.

Before I conclude this post, I would like to write a bit about Max Payne. Don't play it. It's frighteningly addictive, and it has great potential as far as turning your life upside down is concerned. I started playing it about two days back, and it has seriously fucked up my mind. I haven't slept a wink since I started playing it, and I have a very strong feeling that my nights will continue to be sleepless stretches of time spent in front of the computer as long as I do not finish the game.

That'll be all for tonight. Hopefully the hits-counter will be a tad better when I look through it tomorrow. Till next time, I would implore all of you to take care.

May you never meet your personal apocalypse.

If I could

2005-06-08T19:28:00.000+01:00

This might make my blog look a lot like an online lyrics listing site, but I really don't feel much like writing these days. If your blogging name is Aidoneus, read the next paragraph. If it isn't, you may skip to the lyrics.

The following lyrics have been taken from the song 'Be Like That', by a band named '3 Doors Down'. They are not, in any way, wholly or partially, my creation. Call that a disclaimer, or call it whatever else you want to.

Be Like That

He spent his whole life being too young,
To live the life that's in his dreams,
At night he lies awake and he wonders,
Why can’t that be me?
'Cause in his life he is filled
With all these good intentions.
He’s left a lot of things
He’d rather not mention right not.
But just before he says goodnight,
He looks up with a little smile at me,
And he says,

If I could be like that,
I would give anything,
Just to live one day, in those shoes.
If I could be like that,
What would I do,
What would I do?

Now and dreams, we run.
She spends her days up in the north park,
Watching the people as they pass.
And all she wants is just
A little piece of this dream,
Is that too much to ask?
With a safe home, and a warm bed,
On a quiet little street.
All she wants is just that something to
Hold onto, that’s all she needs.
Yeah!

If I could be like that,
I would give anything,
Just to live one day, in those shoes.
If I could be like that, what would I do,
Lord, what would I do?

I’m falling into this, dreams,
We run away.

If I could be like that,
I would give anything,
Just to live one day, in those shoes.
If I could be like that, what would I do,
What would I do?

If I could be like that,
I would give anything,
Just to live one day, in those shoes.
If I could be like that, what would I do,
Lord, what would I do?

If I could be like that,
I would give anything,
Just to live one day, in those shoes.

If I could be like that, what would I do,
What would I do?
Falling in,
I feel I am falling in, to this again.

Before you make up your mind about not coming to this blog now onwards, I would like to assure you that the next post will be a proper one, written wholly by myself. It will be in prose. And it will come within the next couple of days or so. I promise.

Good Night.

Wait For Sleep

2005-06-06T21:35:00.000+01:00

Standing by the window,
Eyes upon the moon.
Hoping that the memory will leave her spirit soon.
She shuts the doors and lights.
And lays her body on the bed.
Where images and words are running deep.
She has too much pride to pull the sheets above her head.
So quietly she lays and waits for sleep.

She stares at the ceiling.
And tries not to think.
And pictures the chain.
She's been trying to link again.
But the feeling is gone

And water can't cover her memory,
And ashes can't answer her pain.
God give me the power to take breath from a breeze,
And call life from a cold metal frame.

In with the ashes,
Or up with the smoke from the fire.
With wings up in heaven,
Or here, lying in bed.
Palm of her hand to my head.
Now and forever curled in my heart.
And the heart of the world.

Yay!! I'm in the papers.

2005-05-30T18:13:00.000+01:00

I'm famous.
All of you who live in Delhi and get Hindustan Times at home, go get it. Locate the photograph on the top-right quarter of the first page of HT City. If you see a guy in a blue checked shirt in the photo, that's me. If you don't, get your eyesight checked.

Hahaha. I'm famous.

On focus

2005-05-27T12:40:00.000+01:00

I had a very interesting and unique conversation yesterday with an acquaintance of mine on the subject of, believe it or not, focus. It was a highly entertaining conversation, and at the same time, it was an exchange that made me think (The wise course of action, and one that I would highly recommend, would be to stop reading this post right now, for when I start thinking, bad things happen, as I am sure all of you who have been kind enough to visit this blog regularly for a reasonably long period of time would know. Go read the archives instead. They'll be funnier). I learnt a lot from the conversation in question. Although I don't really consider myself a focused person, I learnt that I might well be one. Most importantly, the conversation reminded me of an extract from one of the books I had read a very long time back and had immensely enjoyed, and which I read again very recently, and continued to immensely enjoy.

The book, strangely, happens to be Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll. Even more strangely, It happens to be one of my favorite books. Maybe it is one of my favorite books because it suits my intellectual level, for contrary to popular belief, it is not a childish or non-serious book; I think it is one of the deepest and most profound books ever written. Or maybe it is one of my favorite books because every time I read it, I find newer and deeper meanings in the text (most of which are completely baseless; unrelated to the text; illogical; and predominantly, merely figments of my imagination). Or maybe it is one of my favorite books just because, for a book, it happens to be a very funny and entertaining one.

The extract that yesterday's conversation reminded me of is one I particularly like. It is a passage in which a conversation is taking place between Alice and the Cheshire Cat. Although it is, in itself, an extremely simple conversation, the message it conveys is a complex reflection on life and reality. Every single line has a deeper meaning, and if at first you don't see it, don't worry, for for quite some time (Hahaha. Correct grammatical usage of two 'for's together. Take that, Mr. Misra), I couldn't either. The passage goes something like this.

Alice was a little startled on seeing the Cheshire Cat sitting on a bough of a tree a few yards off.
The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-natured, she thought; still it had very long claws and a great many teeth, so she felt it ought to be treated with respect.
"Cheshire Puss," she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. "Come, it's pleased so far," thought Alice, and she went on, "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to walk from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where--" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't really matter which way you walk," said the Cat.

"--so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

Nice, wouldn't you say.

I had intended this post to be a lot longer, but I don't really have much else to say. In any case, I have a lot of work to get done before my Rendezvous Marketing meeting tonight.

So back to work, as Master Yoda would have put it, we must get. For otherwise, in deep shit, as he might or might not have continued, depending upon his views on such language, we shall be.

On diverse subjects

2005-05-25T07:05:00.000+01:00

The last one week has been boring. Incredibly boring. I hadn't thought that my life could get any duller, but it has. My research, though still being carried out with extreme devotion and great intensity, has gotten a bit monotonous, and a friend of mine, who I was talking to yesterday, pointed out that it wasn't even completely accurate and error-free. My existence has been reduced to a series of mundane activities. I sleep. I eat. I read. I listen to music. Worst of all, I think.

And thinking, at least in my case, usually leads to disastrous consequences. Take, as an example, the last post I posted on this blog. It was entirely a result of my excessive thinking. I won't go into the other, much more disastrous consequences right now, for they project me in an extremely unfavourable light, and make me feel very stupid. I shall say however, that I have received a rather serious threat from my parents. They have threatened to throw me out of the house if I do any more thinking.

Besides that, work has started for Rendezvous 2005. Some of you might be knowing that Rendezvous 2005 is being organized by Jwalamukhi Hostel, which is also, as most of you would be knowing, my hostel. The preliminary preparations for Rendezvous 2005 started about a week back. I had been given a lot of work that was to be finished by sometime yesterday. I shall have to start working on that ASAP, for if I delay it too much, I shall not be looked upon favourably. More so because of the fact that there was a meeting to discuss how the work was coming along last night, which I forgot all about.

I visited Anything Mac, the authorized Apple reseller that is situated somewhere midway between Yusuf Sarai and Green Park a couple of days back. I came back highly impressed. Before I launch into a detailed account of my experiences there, allow me to give you a brief history of what led me to being there in the first place.

About a week back, when I had gone to Reliance Web World to meet some of my friends (I would like to add here, that I had gone only to meet my friends, and did not spend a single paisa on gaming, keeping in mind the promise I had made to myself of not spending a single paisa at Reliance Web World on gaming.), I had been unfortunate enough to break my iPod case. I was comfortably seated on an armchair, but as I was getting up, the case got caught against the arm of the armchair, and detached itself from the belt-clip that was originally attached to it, but was now not. The case, as a result, was reduced to a state of uselessness, for I could not use it to attach the iPod to my belt, and I do not like carrying the iPod around in my pocket. I asked people who were a lot more experienced than I was at such stuff, and finally came to know that if there was any hope that my iPod case could be repaired, it was at Anything Mac.

It was under these circumstances that I walked into Anything Mac. It didn't look a very big establishment from the outside, and once inside, it continued to not look a very big establishment. But the moment I was inside, I was completely convinced that it was, indeed, the best place I could have brought my case. "Here," I said to myself, "is a place where my case shall be in good hands."

The scene inside was appropriate for a store associated with Apple. There were iMacs, and iBooks, and PowerMacs, and PowerBooks, and iPods, and assorted accessories lying around in delightful disarray. The walls were plastered with Apple posters, all of them colourful and informative and brilliantly catchy and humourous at the same time. People were working here and there on brightly coloured workstations. And the moment I walked in, I got everybody's undivided attention. They asked me my problem. They understood exactly what was wrong. Then, one of them took the case from me, and, cradling it delicately in his arms, made his way somewhere towards the inside of the shop. A couple more people followed him inside, all the while heatedly discussing what would be the best course of action that one could follow to repair my case. People ushered me to seats, and asked me to sit down. Other people offered me water. Still other people came to me at periodic intervals of time and gave me updates on the latest condition of my case and how it was being taken care of. About 5-7 minutes later, the man who had taken my case inside with him reemerged. He handed me the case, and I could see he had done a good job on it. My case was, although not as quite as good as new, once again capable of carrying out the work it had been designed to do. And the best part is, I did not have to spend any money. They did all the repair-work for free. Before I left, they even apologized for the case breaking, and implored me to come back if I ever, in the future, felt something was wrong with my iPod or my iPod case. Never before have I seen such attitude from people running shops in India. I came back with tears in my eyes, ear-phones in my ears, my iPod nestled cozily in its case, and the case firmly attached to my belt through its belt-clip. It was an almost spiritual experience.

On an unrelated note, I have had the fortune of watching some very good movies in the past few days. I shall now briefly review one of them.

I watched Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of The Sith four days back. I absolutely loved it. Although I had not seen a couple of movies from the original trilogy, and did not remember much from the Star Wars movies I had seen, I had a rough idea of the plot, thanks mainly to Mr. Rohan Trivedi. He was kind enough to give me the gist of the entire original trilogy, and I was, I believe, more or less successful in understanding what was happening during Episode III: Revenge of The Sith. The movie is brilliantly made, and Anakin's gradual transformation from a Jedi Knight to the much known and much feared Darth Vader is very well documented. The action scenes are, as expected, breathtakingly wonderful, and the story moves along at an easy and comfortable pace. A few scenes here and there, especially the ones concerning Anakin and his wife, the Amidala female (she's a looker), do tend to drag a bit, but fortunately, there are not too many of them. Most of the performances are convincing. Ewan McGregor (Obi-Wan Kenobi), Hayden Christensen (Anakin Skywalker), and Ian McDirmaid (Supreme Chancellor Palpatine) have played their respective parts very well. The duration of the movie is perfect, and the special effects are, without question, the best that I have seen as yet.

Overall, it is, most undoubtedly, a mast-watch.

Just a Dream

2005-05-23T04:52:00.000+01:00

I thought that I heard you laughing.
I thought that I heard you sing.
I think I thought I saw you try.

But that was just a dream.
Just a dream. Just a dream.
Dream.

'The Blue Dart', and other stories

2005-05-20T05:26:00.000+01:00

It has been about 4 days since I last posted. I intended to post yesterday, but immediately before I was about to compose this particular post, I came across a very very scary blog. After going through this partiular scary blog, it took me about 24 hours to recover from the trauma it caused me. Those 24 hours have just concluded, as a result of which I am now nearing a state somewhat fit to compose another post.

What you see here is a dart. It is a dart I own. I, for certain obvious reasons, call it 'The Blue Dart'. It might look like other darts, but it is not. It is no ordinary dart. For it is a blue dart. It is also a magnetic dart. Which means instead of having a pointed tip, it has a magnetic one.

"So why has he posted a picture of a blue, magnetic dart on his blog?", you may be inclined to ask. And I would only be too pleased to give you the answer. 'The Blue Dart' that you see in the picture helps me do my research. What my research is all about, and how I got involved in it, you will soon learn.

It all started a couple of days back, which was about four or five days into my summer vacations. The first four or five days of my summer break had been fun. I enjoyed the new-found freedom. The freedom from studies. The freedom from following a set schedule. In short, I enjoyed my first five days very much. But as time went by, I started getting bored, and by the end of the sixth day, I was absolutely fed up with the absence of things to do. "Manu," I said to myself, "you need to get yourself some work." And so I decided to do some research. Nothing heavy or intellectual. Just some simple things that will make my days seem less wasted than Mr. Suri's.

The next thing I needed to do was to find out something to do research on. Being an imaginative guy, that problem didn't trouble me long, and I soon found a ready solution to it. This is how I do my research.
1. I take my blue, magnetic dart, a notebook, and a pencil.
2. I close my eyes.
3. I throw the dart in a random direction.
4. I see if it sticks.
5. I write down in my notebook whether the dart stuck or not.
6. If necessary, I maro fraudy.
7. I move to another room
8. I repeat steps 1 through 7.

I usually take about 60-70 readings in a day. The algorithm I follow, which you see above, is simple and linear, and needs minimal thinking. It is, therefore, stuck to strictly. I try to do my work with intense concentration and dedication. According to the rate I am currently moving at, I should have about 1000 readings, taken all over the house, by the end of a couple of weeks. Once that is done, I plan to do the same at some of my friends' houses, and by the time the vacations are complete, I shall, and I say this with much confidence, have a nice thick report ready on the average incidence of magnetic materials in South-Delhi homes.

On an unrelated note, I saw an absolutely amazing and extremely entertaining music video yesterday. It was by a group of two full-grown surdarjis who call themselves the Balle Balle Boyz (inspite of them being full-grown surdarjis) and the name of the song was 'Chak De Saturday'. I say it was a very interesting song because throughout the video, the two surdarjis were running around large halls and into doors marked with the days of the week, wearing long, black trench-coats and recreating stunts from 'The Matrix' series. Between running and recreating stunts, they were also repeatedly saying stuff like, "I love only Saturrr-day!", and I, to be frank, found their multi-tasking abilities quite impressive. My friend Mr. Aseem Suri, who has been talked about earlier in this post, and who has great knowledge and expertise on such subjects, says that the video is typical of the Balle Balle Boyz, and that some of their other songs are even better. He even named a couple of them which he thought were worth a look, and which I am currently downloading.

Besides that, not much has been happening. I recently met Ms. Tara Kaul, Mr. Maanick Nangia, and Ms. Smita Misra over lunch. Tara, I do believe, has already been introduced on this blog. Maanick (which I, for a long time, spelt as manic, but now spell as babboo) is a precious gemstone/beast of burden depending on personal preference. To know more about Smita, click on her name.

I also met Mr. Karan Misra and Mr. Manav Kapur a couple of evenings back. As is bound to happen when such people get together, the conversation veered to weird topics. Somehow we got talking about the absolutely atrocious songs that have, over the past few years, found themselves a way into Bollywood movies, and which one was the worst of the lot. Inspite of the extent of competition present in this particular field, we were, by the end of the conversation, able to reach consensus on a clear winner, although after much deliberation and arguement. I shall, for the moment, exhibiting uncharacteristic good taste, refrain from naming the song.

Till next time, may the force be with you.

Still eight point someone

2005-05-16T19:10:00.000+01:00

I got to know my grades on all the courses I took this semester a little while back. And like at the end of the first semester, I am pleased. Considering the amount of preparation I had put in, and the way my tests had gone, an SGPA (Semester Grade-Point Average) of 7 seemed most improbable. But the grades are in, and I am, once again, well above 8. This inspite of the fact that this was one of IIT's reputed even semesters (Traditionally, even semesters at IIT are supposed to be a bit tougher than the odd ones). If I was happy with the results at the end of the last semester, I am absolutely ecstatic about them at the end of this one.

Besides that, not much has been happening. I have been getting very bored on some days, and having a lot of fun on some other days. I went to Daryaganj yesterday with a few friends. I had heard much about the Road-Side Sunday Bazaar there, so I decided to go and check it out myself. I also wanted to buy some books (fiction, mostly) to keep myself occupied for the coming few days. I went at about 1:30 PM, intending to spend the afternoon scouting for books. It was an intensely hot and tiring afternoon, an afternoon spent walking long distances in the sun and haggling with road-side book-vendors. But in the end, it was all well worth it. In the evening, I returned home tired, but satisfied. In a little over 4 hours, I had managed to acquire 1 Alistair MacLean, 1 Jeffrey Archer, 1 thick collection of Contemporary Short Stories, The Life of Pi by Yann Martel, and 3 Wodehouses. And all that for a neat sum of Rs. 250 (Rs. 264, if I include conveyance). An extremely productive afternoon, I think.

Later on, after a nice evening spent playing Badminton, I borrowed another Jeffrey Archer from Karan. I also, as a result, had to borrow a movie, which Karan insisted I take if I wanted the book. He flatly refused to lend me the book unless I agreed to take the movie as well. As a result, and in the absence of anything better to do, I was compelled to watch Khooni Dracula last night. Click on the link to read a review. I shall not write much about the movie here. I shall suffice by saying that the movie made me feel almost good about watching Kya Kool Hain Hum.

I shall now stop writing, for it is getting late, and I am extraordinarily tired, not having slept much in the last two days.

P.S. - Nobody is more awake to the fact than I, that the last few posts on this blog have failed to soar to the great heights of eloquence and witty humour that one has, over time, begun to expect from the entries posted here. The problem, though grave, is, I assure you, temporary. I am, if I may so add, working on it. So start expecting a nice and funny entry on this blog. You shall, hopefully, see one very soon.

On scribbled-on shirts

2005-05-14T08:58:00.000+01:00

The picture you can see here shows my Scribblers' Day Shirt. On the shirt, you can see my school blue tie.

All those of you who were with me in class XII can try to find your messages on the shirt.

All those who weren't, can't.

I'm freeeeeeeee!!

2005-05-11T08:14:00.000+01:00

My Major Tests are over. They all went terribly, but they are over. No more studying and chasing deadlines for the next two and a half months. Yay!!

My Major yesterday went quite terribly, but I'm not going to talk about that. I'm going to talk about what I did after the majors.

After the majors, I saw a couple of South Park episodes. Good stuff that, if you've just finished your exams and have nothing much to do. Adequately obscene and entertaining.

I also saw an episode of The Wonder Years. After about 6 or 7 years. It was amazing. The episode, as such, wasn't an exceptionally good one, but seeing something that I hadn't seen in such a long time was an awesome experience. Watching Kevin, Wayne, Paul and Winnie again after such a long time brought back memories from when I used to watch the show, before Star Plus was overrun by Saas-Bahu sagas (Is that the correct plural?). I didn't remember much from the show, but as I was watching it, I began to recall stuff I never knew I still had stored in my brain. I wonder if this is what people call nostalgia.

Before I go, I must review the movies I have watched (completely or partially) since yesterday.
Pulp Fiction : Saw the first half hour. Didn't get most of it. Seems interesting. Must watch the rest of it some time soon.
The Godfather Part III : Good, but not as good as the first two. I personally feel that the first was the best one. Many people do like the second as well. However, the third one is, I think, although a good watch, a bit of a let-down after the first two.
Kya Kool Hain Hum : Don't ask me why I went to see this movie. More importantly, learn from my mistake. Don't.

Till next time.

Three down, two to go.

2005-05-06T19:59:00.000+01:00

I am a little more than halfway into my Major Tests. I took my Computer Science major test on Wednesday, followed by Mathematics on Thursday, and finally Manufacturing Processes today (or rather, yesterday). The Computer Science and Manufacturing Processes Majors were, predictably, unmitigated disasters. The Mathematics one was, surprisingly, as I had prepared the least for it, a somewhat mitigated one. It was, however, a disaster nonetheless.

My next two majors are on Monday (Physics), and Tuesday (Thermodynamics), which means I can take it a bit easy today (or rather, yesterday), which is probably why I am posting. After Tuesday, I will be, hopefully, posting a lot more frequently.

Besides that, not much has happened. I got a haircut on Tuesday. Well, technically, I finished getting a haircut on Tuesday. I started getting it (the haircut) on Sunday. Why I get my hair cut in installments is a topic I don't feel much like writing about right now. Maybe I'll write about it in the comments.
Feel free, therefore, to ask me about it.

CSTs

2005-04-26T07:04:00.000+01:00

I just saw two lizards mating on a lecture-theatre wall.

It was absolutely disgusting.

It was, in fact, the second most disgusting thing I have ever seen in my life.

I also just finished my PHP 100 lab-test.

I, not very surprisingly, got completely screwed in it.

Co-incidentally, it was too, I firmly believe, the second worst test I have ever taken in my life.

To find out what I think is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen in my life, or to know more about the worst test I have taken as yet, leave comments asking me about them.

Preferably separate ones.

On farewells and open-houses

2005-04-24T17:20:00.000+01:00

I have no time for lengthy introductory paragraphs.

My blog-hits on Nedstat have gone up to about 9,500 (Since 4th December, 2004). Since I registered for Nedstat about a month after I started blogging, I think I would be quite justified in assuming that my blog has now been visited about 10,000 times. Yay!!

Cranium-2005 was held on Friday night/Saturday morning. All the IITans reading this will know that Cranium is the QC (Quizzing Club) farewell event. The questions are made by the passing-out batch, and the quiz goes on all night. It started at about 7:30 in the evening, and ended at about 5:30 in the morning. The prelims were easy, and although my partner (ROTB, or Rohan of The B****s) did not arrive until they had almost ended, we managed to get through to the finals. The quiz basically consisted of a lot of questions (as would be required for it to last the entire night), which were being answered by various people in varying stages of sleep and drunkenness. The quiz was, on the whole, very interesting. It did get a bit tedious at times, but the fact that the SAC (Students' Activity Centre) committee-room, the venue for the event, has a door that leads out directly to the SAC lawns, helped greatly to relieve the monotony. Whenever things got a bit boring, I popped out for some time, and enjoyed Delhi's cool, fresh, nightly breeze (which was extraordinarily cool and fresh on this particular night), along with interesting conversations with other QC enthusiasts.

Cranium-2005 was the last QC event this academic year. It makes me feel almost sad to think that the next time I attend a QC event at IIT, Delhi, quite a few of the familiar QC faces will be missing. There will be no more of Arnav Sinha, no more of Ashish Jhina (whom I am, for some weird reason, widely assumed to be terribly afraid of), no more of Pushan Sengupta (or Pushan Singh, as a scorer, who has, over time, developed an almost altogether unhealthy dislike for Pushan, would have us believe), no more of Varun Sud, no more of Saket 'The Stud' Jha, and no more of the rest of the passing-out batch. I cannot help but feel that without all these people, QC events are no longer going to be as interesting, or as insightful, as they were all of this year. I sadly bid them goodbye, and may they succeed wherever they go in life.

After Cranium, I came back home. I reached home at about 6:00 AM. After a longish nap, I was back in college by about 12:30, for the 'Open-House' that was being held there. Lots of projects by IIT students were on display there. The special feature was a colouring/blood-testing kit developed by the BioTech. Dept. that costed only Rs. 25. Here's how you use it.
You take it out, add a bit of water to the given dry-colours on the paper, and use tooth-picks to colour up the circles. Then you add a drop of your blood to each circle, and watch the neat patterns appear. You show the neat patterns to a person,who is seated there for the special purpose of looking at the neat patterns, and he looks at the neat patterns and tells you your blood-group.
Very neat, I thought.

I also saw some of the projects made by the 2nd year Mechanical Engineering students, which were up for display. There was a slidable stretcher, a matchstick-wood saver, a bulb-changer, and other such stupid contraptions which all of us could perfectly do without. But then, I, too, am in Mechanical Engineering, and I guess in another year or so, I, too, would be thinking that these are pretty neat ideas.

Besides that, the semester is about to end. I have assignments to submit, projects to finish, and studying to do. Deadlines are passing by, making whooshing noises. I have quizzes (the real ones) lined up on most of the days of the coming week, and my Major Tests start on the 4th of May. My life, something tells me, is going to continue being an 'Unmitigated Disaster', unless I study, and study hard. It is, therefore, very likely that I will not be able to write a lot in the coming two weeks, except for short posts telling you how my life deteriorates with each passing Major.

Till then,
So long, and thanks for all the hits.

Origin

2005-04-23T18:00:00.000+01:00

My Immortal
Evanescence

I'm so tired of being here,
Suppressed by all my childish fears.
And if you have to leave,
I wish that you would just leave,
'Cause your presence still lingers here.
And it won't leave me alone.

These wounds won't seem to heal.
This pain is just too real.
There's just too much that time cannot erase.

When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears.
When you scream I'd fight away all of your fears.
And I held your hand through all of these years.
But you still have all of me.

You used to captivate me,
By your resonating light.
Now I'm bound by the life you left behind.
Your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams.
Your voice it chased away all the sanity in me.

These wounds won't seem to heal.
This pain is just too real.
There's just too much that time cannot erase.

When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears.
When you scream I'd fight away all of your fears.
And I held your hand through all of these years.
But you still have all of me.

I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone.
But though you're still with me,
I've been alone all along.

When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears.
When you scream I'd fight away all of your fears.
And I held your hand through all of these years.
But you still have all of me.

Yes, I am posting only so that people do not assume that I have quit blogging.
Wonderful song, though.