(A fraud post, in keeping with my current way of life)

There are so few people in the world who know what they want to do, it is a pity/waste/crime to keep them from doing it. For whatever reasons.

What's eating Vinaya N?

Apart from a report that a snail would say is going at snail's pace and segmentation faults that drop in unannounced, bug you the whole day and then disappear without giving you the satisfaction of having driven them away, it is this. Is it right to do unto others what they do to you? On one extreme, you can sink down to the level of the lowest human you meet, letting him get what he gives. And on the other, you can decide to take the high road, letting people take advantage of you in the process.
The answer, as usual, lies somewhere in between. In defining limits. A lower bound below which thou shalt not sink and an upper bound beyond which though shalt not be nice (My language affected by too much association with the people of a certain room in the department and re-watching I Dream Of Jeannie). And while the theory seems sound enough, the devil is in the (implementation) details!

Some things in life are only possible in a college hostel.

Spending hours sitting on a structure suspended between the second floor and the terrace of the department, gazing at the night sky, discussing life, the universe and everything...

Deciding on a whim to go to the faculty building roof at 12 in the night (inspired by five point someone?), half expecting to find people drinking vodka. Climbing 6 floors, making our way through dark corridors (feeling very much a part of a detective novel) looking for the way to the roof. Only to find that though the roof is very much there, the only way to get on it is to climb down a rickety ladder.

Four people. Three guitars. Tuned to three different pitches. One song (Uthe sab ke kadam...). Girls Hotel terrace. Again past midnight. It must have been cacophony, but to us it was pure music!

Past 1 A.M. Basketball court. A bunch of super enthusiastic classmates, most of whom had never touched a basketball before. And one of the most enjoyable games of basketball ever, despite me being blinded halfway because of broken backup specs. Surprisingly, I have one more pair to spare. When did I become one of those people who have a second backup for everything? Noooooooo I didn't, this just happened to happen.

M Tech second year students ready to play anytime I whip out a sponge ball (a very cute birthday gift with the original yahoo smiley drawn on it). 20 somethings who are soon going to take up responsible jobs actually making faces at each other, the same faces that tiny tots 20 years their juniors make in play school. Going from lab to lab, asking people to narrate their love stories or lack of them. Water fighting in someone else's lab, wetting some innocent non bystander's keyboard in the process and making a sworn enemy out of him until he gets a chance to wet some other innocent non bystander's keyboard. Hiding each others keys, purses, mobiles...

Damn! I am going to miss it all. Terribly :(

Been a while since I got back from the ski trip. An amazing week filled with trains, rocks, snowfall, snow, skis and fireplaces. Snowfall is breathtakingly beautiful, snow simply amazing! Rock climbing is a little scarier than I thought but as much fun. Skiing is a lot more hard work than I'd ever imagined! But once you learn enough to be able to zoom down the slope fast enough to get the feel of a free fall, there are few things better. Presenting some random snapshots of the week.

Whether they were coming back from lunch, dinner, skiing or a short 5 minute stroll in the sun, the moment anyone entered the room they made a beeline for the fireplace. A small stove kind of a thing that ran on gas, it was a life saver! Frozen body parts, frozen gloves, wet socks, damp shoes, there was nothing it couldn't set right. I'm sure none of us have looked at God with as much devotion and hope! And even incidents like someone's shoe catching fire could do nothing to lessen it. I dried and re-dried Anjali's gloves so much that they shrank a couple of sizes at least. Varun and I had planned on giving one glove each to our respective kids so that if they ever meet at Kumbh Mela... But Anjali liked the shrunk version so much, she took them away :(

It amazing how one snowfall can turn a barren mountainside into a thriving market! Suddenly there were shops, snow mobiles, snow carts, yaks and scores of instructors. What was more surprising was the number of tourists that suddenly sprang up to meet the supply. Oh how I envy people who can turn up in Manali on a Thursday, on barely a day's notice! Took a short yak ride up the mountain, my yak being uncharacteristically reluctant to climb. I wonder why. Also slid down the mountain sitting inside a truck's tube. Reminded me how much fun simple things can be. Also discovered that the inside portion of a truck's tube is not as spacious as one would like it to be.

Chandigarh. Never seen a city so obsessed with cleanliness. Even the railway station is clean. The lady in charge of the waiting room actually drove us and our baggage out so that the room could be cleaned. Waiting rooms are meant to be cleaned. That people use it for waiting is only incidental, a nuisance at best. The platform cleaner was no better. Neither we nor our baggage came up to his standards of cleanliness and so we all got doused with water. He would have scrubbed us too if only we'd let him! Only when I landed at Lucknow station and was welcomed by a cow and the accompanying smells did those little inconveniences seem worth it.

To the kind soul who had wandered this far,
This post consists solely of the ramblings of someone who has not written in some time and will not be able to for some more. So if you are looking for coherence, meaning or anything remotely interesting, please look elsewhere.

Wait. Wait... I changed my mind. Feeling too lazy to ramble so just the highlights.

a) The weather is just glorious!
b) My guide took us out to lunch yesterday. Amazing food!
c) I finally rode a motorcycle here!! Refer to a) for the weather conditions. A couple of rounds of the academic area with a friend sitting behind and I didn't fall or stop! The only blemish on my record was that I followed a cycle-rickshaw wala for some time, too scared to overtake. A high speed ride as the pillion rider and I was wishing I could break my legs just to get a bike inside! Okay I rambled, but this is special!
d) I leave today for a week long skiing trip to Manali! Finally!! My first look at snow... Reminds me of a couple of twenty somethings who were seeing the sea for the first time. Their independent first reactions were - "The water is so salty"! I hope I have something better to say!

And 12 days later, I'm back! How much disciple does that imply? Some, but nowhere near enough. And I've come up with an explanation for its absence. Even after taking into account the prescribed dosage of movies/books/bulla, there are two kinds of people in this world - those who count every minute and those who don't. And I am the queen of the latter! I never say no to anything - be it being the 13th girl in a basketball game (which is 5 a side game), or being the one to go early and stand in the queue in a theater, or watching a movie for a second time within the span of a month. You name it, I'm your girl! The thing is, I don't feel I am wasting time, I feel I should feel I am wasting time. I've been pondering about the possibility of attaching artificial value to my time. 'Cause people will value your time only if you do. So the next time you want someone to go to the flower show with you, I'm going to be too busy! Even though I may have nothing better to do and might be dying to go there myself.

An observation on the counting class (Ha! That's one name I remember from my Computational Complexity class!). They do use some of the minutes they count, but in general they seem satisfied with the count of minutes they have not spent doing something light/enjoyable/pointless, and don't bother too much about what they actually spend that saved time on.

The frequency of posts on my blog is directly proportional to the discipline in my life. If I am in one of my eat-watch movie-sleep cycles, you are unlikely to be treated to a peak into my life. 'Cos believe it or not, it takes time on my hands and space in my head to come up with this rubbish. Whereas if I am in my eat-work-watch movie-play-sleep cycle, I am more likely to be hit by an idea or an incident. And that is when this blog comes to life.
This post? Is an indication of an attempted transition from the former cycle to the latter. Hoping to be back here sometime soon!

"If your girlfriend says she wants to talk to you at 5 in the morning and you don't have an alarm clock, you will of course stay up all night. That is the kind of passion you should have for sports", said Kapil Dev when he inaugurated the 41st Inter-IIT sports meet at Roorkee. Do I have that kind of passion? Err... well... no, or I would not still be struggling with my tosses and smashes. The lack of passion however did not stand in the way of a thoroughly enjoyable week spent at IIT Roorkee. There were so many firsts, I don't know where to begin.

It was the first time I was living with a gang of girls all younger to me. I was promptly christened "Super Amma" and was expected to take care of the lot. An expectation which I cruelly crushed on the very first day by losing the house keys. Singing, dancing (not me, of course), breaking the 10 o'clock "curfew", climbing over closed gates and running away from the pursuing watchman, imposing atrocious crushes on one another - we did it all!

It was the first time I had hot chocolate and it was love at first sip! We (I should not take all the credit) managed to finish their hot chocolate supply within two days of our arrival and had to spend the rest of our days licking our lips in memory.

It was the first time I saw hooting as it should not be. Dirty, personal and irrelevant, I'm sure it equally disturbed players of both sides. At times, it even seemed to have a life of its own, independent of the match. There was good hooting too, my favourite being
"Bombay/Delhi/... tum sangarsh karo
Hum tumhare saath hain
Tum hamare bete ho
Hum tumhare baap hain!"

which we adapted for girls matches as

"Bombay/Delhi/... tum sangarsh karo
Hum tumhare saath hain
Tum hamari bahuen ho
Hum tumhari saas hain!"

It was the first time I had 6 meals a day! Almost everyday. Three in the mess and three in the canteen. And at least half of them involved paneer/cheese. It's a wonder I didn't get to a stage where I could form the badminton doubles team all by myself!

Most importantly, it was the first time I participated in a tournament. Saw the pressure, the tension. Got nervous in my first tough match. Realized in the second that nervousness can be controlled. Played decently and we won the gold (!!), all thanks to a brilliant captain, a dedicated coach, and the super-patient and enthusiastic folks back home at Persistent who got me started.

All said and done, there is no place like Inter-IIT to motivate you. It shows you how far you have to go and makes you wish you were there yesterday!

It was not as grand as last time, although it was more fun for me because I was a part of it. The recently concluded IIT Kanpur sports meet - diluted in the hope of avoiding certain unpleasantness also ended up avoiding the festive atmosphere. Half the fun in such events is seeing your hostel and roads filled with strangers from another world - they somehow make it a different place. Less teams, less competition and hence less satisfaction, especially in the games I played. I watched the guys fight it out in the same games and man! The difference in level!! I was not sure it was the same game! A rather uncharitable idea occurred - with certain exceptions, beating the best girl player in a sport can be an entry level criteria for the boys team.
A couple of observations when I was watching the guys play. These observations have been made as a complete outsider, for, the level at which the games were played, I am an outsider.

Anger. Frustration. Despair. Elation, no not exactly, more like triumph. The feeling you get after you crush your opponent. Revenge. All so much a part of the game. And very likely to affect it. I wonder if a calm, controlled player would be more effective than one who gets carried away. Sometimes, you need the anger to propel you.

Got to see how extremely important fitness is. You might be the best player there can be, but it can all so easily come to nothing if you can't last for the entire game. It is very painful to watch people huffing and puffing, or playing with a sprained shoulder or ankle. They can't possibly enjoy it. And if you can't enjoy the game, it reduce to senseless physical torture. Games look so beautiful when the effort is not visible.

This from a person who reaches the end of her stamina after 5 minutes of knocking and sprains her shoulder every two days. Now that I've seen how it looks, I'll do all the running the coach asks me to.

Another trip. This time to a jungle (redefined to mean a few bushes on a mountain) and a waterfall. Some thoughts follow.

When will the Kumbh Mela be held?

Why do Indians consider the cow to be sacred?

What is the difference between different newspapers like The Hindu, Hindustan Times ... Do they have political leanings?

All questions asked by a French exchange student traveling with us.

Kumbh mela? Yes, I remember reading about it in A Suitable Boy. Its supposed to be held near Sangam, I think. The mela where thousands of babies are lost and hundreds of movies are made. No, no idea when or where or why.

Cow? Sacred? Well, yes. But I mean, what nonsense! We don't believe in all that. We are the new generation. We throw all old beliefs out the window, no questions asked.

The Hindu, well, I think it is a little boring. The Times of India is too populist. Of course newspapers have leanings. No paper is impartial. What are the leanings of these newspapers? Well.. umm... err... I don't really know.

No Past. No present. Will we have a future?

The holiday season is upon us. Let us go around spreading joy and cheer! Joy and cheer? All I seem to be able to do now-a-days is mutter threats under my breath and throw dark looks at anyone I remotely suspect is going home. Why am I never the one who gets to go home while the world remains behind to work? This time, I don't even know why I am not going!
The standard way of dealing with this is to tell yourself that you will avenge it all by doing ground-breaking research in 10 days, publish a paper or two. However, by now yourself has heard this so many times, it refuses to be taken in and screams back - WHOM ARE YOU KIDDING?
What scares me most though, is the Diwali-depression. Yay, I get to remain back during Diwali too, to carry out "change-the-way-the-world-works" research while the world wastes its time on fireworks and sweets. Lucky me!

I hate pseudo-holidays.

(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.

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.

"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?

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.

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!

Hell to a crossword puzzle lover is a room filled with puzzles and no pencil.

I hate feeling so helpless.

I'm back! Ideally, this post should stop with those two and a half words since i have absolutely no idea what i'm going to write. But of course it doesn't 'cause its not an ideal world. My PC crashed about a couple of weeks ago and since then the urge to write has been fighting the complete abscence of ideas. Who won is there for everyone to see. Presenting below, the spoils of war.
Hmm... well.... Oh yes! I got one! The surest way to make someone want something is to give it to them for a few days and then take it away. No matter how complete their life is without it, no matter how useless they think it to be, all that is needed is for them to give it a little space. And then, when you take it away, voila! there is a void! Genius, ain't it? I should become a sales manager one of these days.
Umm...what else? Nothing! Zilch. The urge might have won a battle, but the idea (or lack of it) won the war.

The week that was

- Got back my first ever installment of clothes from the dhobi. They looked wonderful. They smelt wonderful. And best of all, I hadn't moved a finger to affect the transformation. But before I could completely enjoy the lightness that ancient man must have felt on seeing golden brown toast pop out of an automatic toaster, an immense sense of responsibility weighed me down. I realized that a major attitude and lifestyle change was called for. No longer could clothes be carelessly strewn on my chair, bed or floor. No longer could they be stashed in the cupboard to make place for the occasional visitor. They had to be respected!

- Met the mother-in-law and 2 year old daughter of one of the new students. They had come all the way from Chennai to Kanpur to settle her into what will be her home for the next two years. And were going back to life(?) in Chennai. At first, the child appeared surprisingly unaffected. She readily left her granny and followed akka to the TV room to watch Pogo. But she'd walk out every 5 minutes and ask any passer-by "Amma enga" (where is mother?), not caring that she never got an answer. The granny of course put up a brave front and said she'll get used to it. Sometimes, right thing at the wrong time amounts to a wrong thing.

- Realized that at least in the technical arena, any problem you face someone else has already overcome! And google helps you get in touch with that special someone. Restores your faith in humanity when you see how helpful people are towards faceless strangers sitting at the other end of the earth!

A few days ago, on the 23rd of July, I happened to travel from Kanpur railway station to IIT. I couldn't help looking back. Exactly a year ago, to the day, I had landed in Kanpur to start a new chapter of my life. A year that just flashed by, even though each moment was lived to its fullest. A year filled with more novels and movies than any other year of my life. A year in which I kept odder hours than I ever thought possible. Suddenly, all 24 hours were equal. A year of finding friends who tolerate me at my silliest and friends who motivate me to my brightest. A year of teachers who gave me glimpses of beauty in computer science. I got senti over almost every question paper I had to solve. A year that almost rid me of my fear of presentations. A year which made me wash my own clothes. Believe it or not, it was a first for me and gave me an immense sense of achievement and independence! A year that made me appreciate simple home food. Thier saadam (curd rice) was always heaven, but all the more so now, since it was so rare. A year that made me realize that though not at the "where-I-lay-my-head-is-home" level, I could settle down in any place without too much fuss. A year in which I realized I had changed, but not as much as I thought I had.
A year very different from any I've had. I would have been a different person, had this chapter been differently written.

Happy new year!