I love train journeys. Or rather, I love to say I love train journeys. The former was true in times when train journeys were few and far in between. They would be family affairs, with at least 4 berths to our name. One could sleep anytime, sit by the window anytime, stand at the train door anytime... Now, life consists of bi-annual train journeys undertaken alone, unless luggage can be counted as a companion. One can either sit at the window all the time or sleep all the time. And not even think about standing at the door. People without exception behave as if girls traveling alone are more likely to be swept off by the wind. And the pantry food manages the impossible - makes me wish I was eating in the mess! I do not step into a train without a book. But more often than not, the book turns out to be one sent to stress-test my patience. I can almost hear Him laughing at the cheap shot. Unable to read, unable to not read, I end up spending most of the journey sleeping.

Despite all this, I still get excited at the prospect of a journey. Those five minutes spent gazing out the window, cool wind in your hair. The day spent among strangers you've never seen before and will never see again. Waking up suddenly, sure that you have overslept, finding that its just ten minutes since you last did the exact same thing, happily going back to sleep. All those crazy things you think about when you are alone.

This time, the TC gave me something to think about. Its night. I am in deep sleep, minding my own business when a hand shakes me awake roughly. A voice follows.

"Bhaisaab, ticket dikhana."

!!!

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.

If it wasn't for the policeman, every one of us would be a thief!

No. No one great said it. Just me. This is the conclusion I have come to after watching myself for the past couple of weeks. Me, not long ago considered to have machine like sincerity, having to fight with myself for five minutes of work. Just because there is no one to answer to. I never realized I had to be driven!

I look around and see I am not alone. And I wonder, if everyone wants to be a thief, why do we have policemen at all? Why don't we have a "all you steal is yours" kind of society? A friend told me that I leave a lot of unanswered questions on my blog. I agree. Only, she thought I was too lazy to think about the answers while I maintain that I am too dumb. This one too is beyond me. The only explanation I can think of is that some super intelligent fore-father of mine figured out that we'd get wherever we are going sooner if we didn't have to keep checking our backs.

London! The land of my dreams! Amazing how the thing you yearn most for can be staring right at you and yet you don't see it. I never imagined there'd actually be such a place. Paradise! Though I generally turn up my nose at settling abroad, London is something else. It'd be very difficult to pass up such a chance. Be it a call center job or a waitress at an Indian Dhaba - it'd be very difficult to pass up, as long as its there. If you are up there and listening, please please let me be a Londonwasi in all my future incarnations.

I hear it is quite respectable there to bathe just once a week.


P.S. I realize this is a recurring topic, but it is a recurring problem.

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?

Heard this line in a movie once:

Most of us don't have to face the fact that given the right circumstances, we are capable of anything. Anything.

Terrifying. And the only lines that kept coming to my mind when I was watching Schindler's List a few days ago. I've read about the atrocities in numerous books, watched it in several movies and what scares me the most is that it was all carried out by ordinary people! That given the "right" motivation, you and I are capable of such inhuman acts puts a big question mark of the future of our "civilization".

The question is not Will we have a future, but Should 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.

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!

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!

Psychohistory doesn't seem all that impractical, especially when one studies the behaviour of people faced with the prospect of a trip. The first reaction is always an enthusiastic "I-can't-wait-to-get-away". It is when you start discussing the time, the place and in some cases, the money, that reality sets in. The sheer quantity and creativity of excuses I've heard in the past weeks would have staggered me, if I hadn't heard them all before. Having been party to around 7 trips over the last couple of years, I now know the whole process by heart. What follows is the prologue of the trips of a specific group. It can be very easily generalized, as anyone who has ever planned a trip will readily agree.
It always begins with a "Hey, lets go for a trip". To which there is always a general agreement. The when is agreed upon surprisingly fast, the options being restricted to weekends. And then someone pops the question - "Where"? Which is always answered by "the expert" (which I think is a very good thing. One, he knows what he is talking about. And two, ten people talking about a trip invariably come up with twenty suggestions). The expert of course doesn't answer right away, but first demands the facts of the case. And the most pertinent, weirdly enough, is how many people. And thus begins one of the most vexing chicken-and-egg problems in history. A sample conversation that a recruiter has with a prospective candidate invariably takes the following course:

R: Hi! We're planning to go for a trip somewhere next weekend
PC: That's great! Where are you planning to go?
R: *silently cursing the PC for asking the unanswerable* Err.. we haven't quite decided on that yet.
PC: (growing apprehensive about spending his weekend in the company of people with such exceptional decision making capabilities) How can I answer without knowing where we are going?
R: Of course you're right. But can you at least give me a tentative yes? You are free that weekend, right?
Wise PC: Oh no! I suddenly remembered I'm going home that weekend. Sorry!
Desperate PC: Oh no! I suddenly remembered I'm getting married that weekend. Pity you can't make it! *Poof!*
Unwise PC: Yes, I think so.

And thus a very approximate number reaches the expert, who then proceeds to include it in his calculations. A list of prospective locations with pros and cons is sent out. Calculations have to be frequently redone as the variables fluctuate. 3 days to go for D-day and all we have is a very confident expert and no destination. 2 days to go and the expert finally breaks his silence. He names a place that the majority accept with relief and gratitude. The minority is asked to shutup or get out.
If you think that's all there is to it, you've obviously never been a part of this before. All throughout the negotiations, there are *concerns* to be addressed. Concerns about the capability of the drivers, the availability of food, the range of various mobile service providers, the accommodation, the weather... Even after all of them have been addressed to the satisfaction of the candidates and their parents, there are the inevitable dropouts. Client interviews, deadlines, visiting friends, mood swings, academic registrations... I've heard them all. But we always end up with enough people to fill the expert's maruti 800.
However painful the prologue, the story always makes it worth all the headache!

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!

Got this wonderful feeling of achievement after ages. Weird, its happened only 3 or 4 times since I've been here. I always thought IIT life would be filled with challenges, chances to improve yourself. They are there, I guess, but they're not thrust upon you. Its up to you to grab one. And for that, you have to be super-interested, super-motivated, super-proactive or super-desperate! And I of course don't fall into any of these categories. If you put an obstacle in my way, I'm most likely to run away. Maybe walk around it. Or simply stop walking. Only when you have me surround from all sides and sit on me will I even try to think of overcoming it. Getting me to rise to a challenge is a challenge in itself!
(I know I shouldn't feel proud about it, but today, nothing can get me down!)

All in a morn's work

The devil got to me. Finally. Why else would I suggest we prepone a trip to a nearby Hanuman temple on cycles to 5.30 a.m. when I know I can't fall asleep even if someone gives me sleeping pills before 2 in the night? And why else would I set the alarm for 5 *shudder*, thinking I will have a bath before we leave? Common sense had taken over by the time the alarm rang and I decided to give in to half an hour of bliss. After all, my sleep logged brain reasoned, we go to the temple to cleanse ourselves.
And so we set off, the 6 of us (4 uncleansed) on our mini pilgrimage. I was really looking forward to the ride. A cool breeze, the cloudy July sky, greenery all around, perfect roads and practically no traffic - I could cycle forever! All of this lasted till the IIT gate. And then a rude awakening - Kanpur city! With all its dirt and potholes and traffic (yes, even at 6 in the morning). Don't ask me how I forgot what the city was like. Maybe I was not completely awake.
It only got worse. Rains had left water-filled potholes everywhere and if you spied a truck at a distance you ran for dear life and dear-er clothes, whose cleanliness becomes all the more scared when you wash them yourself. There were stretches of road that the municipal corporation had in all its wisdom decided to lay with pointed rocks. One such stretch and Shailaja and I decided rafting had been less adventurous. By the next stretch, we had become experts. "Peddle forward", I yelled. Grade 3, we decided when we got out of it.
Many such ups and downs later, we reached the temple. It was like any other temple. Darshan over, we braced ourselves for the journey back. We crossed some children cycling to school and I couldn't help thinking that in the afternoon these children would run back home, all excited, yelling - "Mummy, aaj main school pahuncha!" We reached the grade 3 rapid again and I this time I had to cross it with added hurdles - a tempo and some cyclists. Feeling rather proud at having done so without incident, I waited at the other end for Shailaja to catch up, only to find that she had taken a much simpler, safer by-lane and was way ahead of me. No, it was not a stupid thing to do, and no, she was not laughing her head off.
As we entered the campus gates, the contrast hit me once again. And maybe because of it, the campus seemed all the more peaceful, serene, quiet. It felt like I had entered a temple.