Tuesday, September 27, 2005

(A bit IITK specific, but it should make sense to the general audience, if any)

You know you are in Hall 7 when you survive to eat and not the other way round.
Note: Hearsay. Despite many unsublte hints, I am yet to taste the envy of IITK.

You know you are in Hall 4 when your canteen bill exceeds your mess bill.

You know you are in GH when
- People eat, sleep, dance, sing, walk and do every other activity imaginable on the basketball court except play basketball.
- Your fruitwala bill exceeds your mess bill and canteen bill put together.
- There are as many people in the T.V room watching the daily saas-bahu drama as there are watching an Indo-Pak nail-biter.

You know it is 12 a.m. when guys come pouring out of every nook and corner of GH, much like mice had poured out on the piper's tune centuries ago.

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Doesn't matter that with the kind of work we do, I might end up defending my senior's thesis 8 months from now. Doesn't matter that I blew away thousands on the scan of a supposed "shoulder injury" and all the report says is "mild right shoulder joint effusion" (something I strongly suspect the kind doctor put in just to make me think I'm getting my money's worth). Doesn't matter that my guide can and will eat us alive when we report the amount of work we've done this week. The half an hour that I fiddle with a friend's guitar, trying to get "Sa Re Ga Ma" right, everything is forgotten.

The power of small things.

Thursday, September 15, 2005

"Passengers are requested to report at the airport two hours before the flight is scheduled for takeoff"

The alarm is set for 8 a.m. Everyday. Not that I'm ever going to wake up at the first alarm. It's just a way to ease myself gently into the shock that its morning. Says a lot for the mess food that not even the thought of breakfast can get me out of bed. "Later", I tell the alarm and go back to hiding from the day.

"This is the first call for passengers of flight ... "

An hour later, it rings again. Persistent fellow. Not much self-respect, I must add. "Ya, ya, I get it, its morning. May I be permitted just 5 more minutes of bliss?" Without really waiting for an answer, I shut it off. The breakfast fairy (hopefully a Brad Pitt look alike - aha, I'll stay awake all night waiting for morning) will wake me up 5 minutes later. He doesn't come. I continue uninterrupted.


"This is the last and final call for passengers of flight..."

However skewed, rusty and unreliable, I do have a biological clock. On 9.75 days out of 10, it wakes me up 5 minutes before the deadline. Some kindly neighbour takes care of 0.2499999 days by banging on my door a few minutes before the deadline. A super quick brush of my visible teeth later, I'm in the mess being served breakfast by people who consider it a gross violation of duty to hand out food a minute past 9.30.

I have considered suggesting the installation of a giant gong that scares sleep away from even the most hardcore hibernators. But the question remains - who will sound the gong?

Sunday, September 11, 2005

Life right now is a scene right out of some Jane Austen novel. All we seem to discuss is parties. Can't blame us too much though. For us mess-fed souls, any outing involving food is big. Big. BIG.
It just so happened that a lot of happy occasions and occurrences touched our lives. And a party of course, is the best way to share joy. Or rather, transfer some of it from the giver to the receivers. And so we plan. When, where, who, who not - endless topic, endless pleasure. Everyone is so excited, it even rubs off the unfortunate soul who knows she will end up spending a weeks hard earned wages (in most cases earned teaching Java to ungrateful brutes most of who end up knowing more about the language than them in a months time) in a day. Having paid my dues early, all I do now is look forward to weekends with a smile on my face and a hand rubbing my tummy.
Hmm. What then, is the difference between most of Jane Austen's characters and us? Can I throw emptiness and superficiality at them, living in a glass house myself? Of course! For us, this is an break from life. For them, it was life.

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Question: "Hey, you've lost weight! How did that happen?"
Wrong answer: (delivered with a very serious face) "Its a combination of exercise, diet control, and yoga."
Correct answer: (with a slightly surprised and very happy expression) "Really? Well, I don't know. I did nothing special."

You'd like to believe its some kind of magic. And that it'll happen to you too someday. All you have to is wait. And meanwhile, that chocolate cake can't do too much harm!

Friday, September 02, 2005

Sound, camera, silence!

Some trivia inspired by my recent trip to a heaven called Pachmarhi (Heaven for me being a place where I can become a monkey, a mountain goat and a buffalo by rotation)

Its not that your friend is bad. Its that she's so bad, she makes me want to put my finger through my eye into my brain and swirl it around.

- F.R.I.E.N.D.S, Episode 206
(someone at Central Perk describing Phoebe's singing)

My sentiments exactly, when I hear those sadistic deaf brutes, also known as drivers, honking away at helpless or worse, non-existent traffic. One of them did it all the way from IIT to the railway station, making sure that everyone for miles around knew the IIT bus was passing through. The journey is bad enough, without you having to lip read what your friend sitting right next to you is saying, 'cos you dare not remove your fingers from your ears. Another one did it inside a national park which had explicit instructions about not using horns! This one was a more refined kind of torture. His horn was actually a switch which he'd turn on and then forget to turn off. Even the slightest bend in the road was negotiated with a blaring horn. So much for national parks being animals' home and us being guests!

***

Don't get me wrong. I LOVE digital cameras. No trip is ever complete without at least one around. Even planning to buy one myself. But sometimes, I get the feeling that it all becomes a little too much. Hotel, click, bridge, click, someone fell, click, sunset, click, walking, click, eating, click. We get so busy recording memories, we stop making them.

***

This year has been a year of visiting temples. I've gone to way over my average yearly quota of them. But I'm yet to see a temple that actually inspires God in me. The crowd, the noise, the rituals! The only thought is my mind when I enter one is - when will I get out? One temple that comes close to my ideal is the Lotus temple in New Delhi. The vastness, the silence, the beauty! The only thing that spoils the effect is rows and rows of chairs meant for people to sit. A little too systematic and earthly to mesh with the divine!
 
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