Just a thought

Just a thought…

(the following was written during my second week at IIMA, for entry into the prestigious Media club.
Now when I read it again, after spending 3 months here, and just one month before placements,
I am pleasantly surprised by the over optimistic tone of it all. Probably the reason it was rejected.
Its surprising how the mental state has shifted within this time span; instead of being more aware,
I find myself all the more narrow minded, targeting "consults" and what not, and forgetting, what I 
actually used to think and believe before coming here. Read on.)

I always thought I needed an eight hour sleep. I thought I could not and would not do without it.

I always knew there were super achievers out there, people with a sense of purpose, the work
hard- party harder lot – I thought I never bothered to be one of them.

I thought MBA was just a rat race. I thought IIM A was just another branded college.

One WAC, Two quizzes, Three weeks, dozen interactions and innumerable deadlines forward I
feel different…well I also feel tired but, but most importantly I feel capable.

For the ones who have lived in hostels before, they will realize that there is something about
the hospitality of the dorms with that fridge and that oven; the luxury of these rooms with that
white board and intercom facility; something has come around, it says you are no more just a
bachelor degree holder now, you deserve better things, once here…you are someone important
now, someone capable.

The place disregards all. With the tucchas gymming and playing tennis at 12 am, lecture halls
being used for ppts at 3 am in night, fucchas flocking CT for group assignments at 4 am, there is
an utter disregard for the sense of time. Then there is utter disregard for dressing congruously.
In the place where one would expect a batch of 400 students crisply dressed in formals
attending lectures, one finds shorts and tracks and beige capris. But then the realization comes
that the disregard is only for the things which are trivial. If you have work to do, the ticking of
clock has got nothing to do with it; the guy attending class in those ragged shorts is perhaps- as
far as the definition of student goes- the most ideal student, the next big CEO. The place gives
you an option to have a completely new view of what is trivial and what is important.

There is no room for procrastination, the place is alive 24 hours, and it demands the same from
you. Doesn’t matter in what heights or depths of self-esteem you hold yourself, this place does
bring out the best in you; it makes you capable and it makes you feel it. It tells you every day
that you are -as the campus tee-shirt rightly puts it - not just another brick in the wall.

Yes it’s a rat race, but it’s not just a rat race. It’s as much about Frisbee @LKP and Ram bhai’s
chaai as it is about placements. And if you cannot find the balance now, perhaps you never will;
all IIM A does is, it gives you a chance every single day. A chance to choose, to prioritize, to
learn.

You decide Phoebes.

“But time…how time first grounds us and then confounds us. We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them. Time…give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical.” – The sense of an ending.

Sounds correct, feels logical, what do I know, might as well be true. So if time has such ways of creating illusions and be the bitch in our lives, what really should decide the right and the wrong of a decision because whatever you decide, time will play its card just at the wrong time.

One of my friends had said, “No decision is wrong”

How lovely would it be to agree and adhere to this thought!

How liberating…from relations, the concept of career and materialism (or luxury as I laud it).

Even a layman has the sense to say, chuck it if you don’t like it…but what do I know about what I really like or not. I mean spend enough time; habit gives way to tolerance, acceptance, then dependence and then…then time out. There…you have completed your exile in your safety zone.

The demarcation between courage and idiocy; maintaining a positive attitude and being a perpetual idiot; working on a relation and being dragged by it; your dreams and those shown by the others; love and sex; is nothing but a cruel joke played by time. You think you are on your preferred side of that line….only time would tell where you stood.

Times like these the only safe thing to do is to perhaps find comfort with a novel in a café…

Aww Man!

I like men. Love some of them too. Some I despise. Others I don’t bother about. For the rest, I maintain my prejudices.  With the Harper’s , as the phrase goes, I have done it all, didn’t bother , then liked, then hated, then loved , laughed, and slept,  as I finally got bored of them all! 

6 seasons forward, I am not claiming myself to be an expert on the series, and this might not be a complete and objective and critical and analysis of the series; just a blog to bitch about the banality of it.

A person grows in a breakup or ruins himself, Allen harper, lives in a Malibu beach house, gets himself a hooker when bored. His failure is perennial. Divorced Allen, Allen living in his brother’s house, Allen with no money, Allen not ‘getting any’, chiropractor Allen, oh give me a break. Or give me more punches in the show.

Jake Harper, I had really believed would grow up and bring some sort of spark to the show. But no, if any man, i.e. a jerk with a penis as they have defined it, is worth glorifying, it’s Charlie Harper only.  It does show utter lack of creativity on the part of show makers, that they have totally wasted the half man’s angle. I mean yes, a dumb farting glutton teenager is funny, but more so is  a Jake grown up to be charming Charlie’s dates away from him. Point being, looser is funny, but not every time!

The endless series of blondes in the show suck, Evelyn Harper is repeatedly ignored, called “soulless” and “not nurturing”, oh well, please check how nurturing these guys are to Jake, anyways, so the same striped coffee mugs, even the breakfast table conversation is same; it’s like watching the same episode again and again, sometimes even the dialogues and the phrases used are the same, the only variety being in the design of the negligees of the blondes.

The hedonist lifestyle of Charlie is supposed to be the backbone of the show, so it’s about a lot of action, but then just sex it is. Unless you really are showing something, tell me what should I watch for on the show, and how hilarious should I find the contrast between a Charlie, sapped of his bodily fluids and an Allen, making himself a cup of hot chocolate on a Saturday night.

Apparently Charlie dying in the coming seasons will be a big twist in the show. I hope Ashton Kutcher  brings more to the show than his looks and “you know what”.  Awwmen.

 

Say it

Tell me how does it feel, to be scared. To be apprehensive, to not know, or worse, to know too clearly. When you are too scared that you behave passive, you don’t do anything directly about it. You freeze everything around yourself, you close your eyes and you so wish its not there. You just want the time to pass, because you know eventually it will as it has, all those times in the past. You are just standing there, eyes closed, waiting the tide to hit you, to take the impact, but you wont run away. You have made yourself believe it wont work, that it will happen anyway. May be it wont hit that hard, but you and only you know better. You spend your time and energy telling it to people who you know will against their will not back off and be patient enough to lend you an ear, and you ask them again and again what should you do, while not so deep inside you yourself know what is the best thing to be done. You know its yours to deal with, not theirs, but still you wish if it were otherwise. You ‘will’ be a victim, just so that you have a valid reason to be rescued, a valid reason to lament. You turn so pathetic that you wish to be a different person, an altogether different personality, some person whom you have known in past, you wish if you could be so robust like him or her. You wish if you could switch to an alter ego, someone who can take care of yourself and pull your life together, while you can hide behind him inside you, till you admit to believe that its over. Somehow a personality inside you which does what needs to be done, is not crippled by fear or apprehension, a bitch, a manager, a mom, a brother, a fun loving careless bastard, someone you could switch to temporarily….somewhere inside, and then be back again. You have read all those books, the secret, the Khera’s, the monk… the list goes on, wt the hell, you have read about it so much that you can write your own book on it for that matter. You know the theory, you know its all in the head, in next 5 minutes you can even pen down 10 steps for yourself to get out of this grip in the next 15 minutes, but you wont. You can’t, because you wont. Maybe you have grown fond of this inactivity. May be you have preference for this kind of face in this situation. Maybe its comfortable after all, it frees you of responsibility, frees you of the necessity of action, frees you of the attribution of the result, What is this now, amusing to you? What is the point here, that I can but I won’t? Do you find it comfortable, or may be you really aren’t that scared. You want it to come and be over with it, so that one day you can come back read this and say, that you were too scared. Say it. You are not scared. You just want it to happen, and fast.

Falling Slowly

Of all the latent blog entries that I have conceived but never penned down and the future ones, this one is so special. Am traveling in a train surrounded by mystic ganne ke khet on both sides, some pul has broken down somewhere and the dominoes effect has lead to this train standing in front of baraut station for the last 20 minutes, instead of getting me home in time this train is giving me a UP side tour, shyamli, baraut, baghpat road station in that order…other station names I wont mention here for maintaining the sanctity of my blog.

Me reclining across 3 seats in jan shatabdi with a waiting ticket in one pocket and sipping jumpin with the hand to the opposite side of that pocket; writing on a borrowed 4 by 2 inch paper with a borrowed pen from an uncle and with no idea whatsoever when and if this train’ll reach dehi, meanwhile my mom is concerned if the rotis will be hot enough by the time I reach home, my boyfriend is killing his time by queuing up for platform ticket and enquiry counter at NDLS; my lead source of information of what’s going on is my dad sitting in his office, who hasn’t replied yet. Dhichik Dhichik Dhichik …..24…..I am Ratika Sablania and this is the longest journey of my life. It all began in 4-2 sem when I turned lazy.


Falling slowly, eyes that know me
And I can't go back
Moods that take me and erase me
And I'll paint it black

Games that never amount
To more than themselves
Will play themselves out

Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time, raise your hopeful voice
You had the choice, you've made it now

January’11 had been one lazy month, with me the prime dragging force. And the slowdown is satisfactory in itself in the sense that I know that life shall never be never so blissfully plain again.

Lazy to pick up a random earthquake elective with chi assuming that she’ll be the motivating force for us to be in the classroom somehow by 8:30.

Lazier to go for an elective change even after finding my elective class, filed with archi and civil people, sans a CS soul, and even when the prof announced that that would be an advanced civil engg class.

Laziest, when the inseparable us, me and chi ended up attending the classes alternately, all promises of being together through thick and thin forgotten.

Laziness took me to another level when I found myself setting an alarm of 7:50 for the very same class, and setting new personal record - dressing up for class, having breakfast and reaching classroom - all in 10 minutes.

All the rainbow cloured plans of having a fun wise superproductive and exhilarating last semester turned yellow or  blue or  black or grey …oh you know what I mean…..when I got lazy.

Lazy to watch 24 24*7, getting bugged of it after 2 seasons,

Lazier when I continued with the third coz I was too lazy to jugaado a good harddisk with better options, and

the Laziest when I slept watching this very series, given the amount of time I spent on it, one would assume me to be in love with.

Lazy to think of how to spend the weekends which nowadays happen to be no more different than the weekdays anyway. And thus ending up going home thrice in jan,

Lazier when I for the first time in my life didn’t mind traveling in ‘waiting’ and booked the ticket on the last day, and

the Laziest when I forgot to put an alarm, kept sleeping and missed the train home in which that waiting ticket had given way to a confirmed seat in D8 coach.

I knew I had transcended to new superlatives of laziness, when even after finding that I had missed my train not one thought of regret, or anguish, or that of going to bus stand crossed my mind. Oh what the hell, I’ll take a train tomorrow.

Its wonderful how being lazy gives way to carelessness, then to aloofness, then to coolness, and then to higher degrees of laziness. All you have to do is sleep through your classes and other appointments for 2 consecutive days and this babe takes you in.

So you see it was this series of events triggered by my being lazy that I am sitting in this train and writing this blog. Am glad I don’t have my laptop with an internet connection here, otherwise instead of writing something I would have ended up browsing where Mr X spent his holidays and Miss Y’s farewell pics on facebook, both X and Y being the last persons on earth whose holidays and farewell I am concerned about, it just kills time without much effort.

For the first time there is no hurry for this train to reach its destination, I am really not minding its 20 minutes stoppages every 10 minutes, I guess am too lazy to bother, but its fine. They say it may take another 2 hours to reach delhi, people have had enough of sitting and are crowding the gates of the train, there are ample empty seats, I think I should move to the AC coach and take a nap.

No Ceiling

Comes the morning
When I can feel
That there's nothing left to be concealed
Moving on a scene surreal
No, my heart will never
Will never be far from here

Sure as I am breathing
Sure as I'm sad
I'll keep this wisdom in my flesh
I leave here believing more than I had
And there's a reason I'll be
A reason I'll be back

As I walk
The Hemisphere
I've got my wish
To up and disappear

I've been wounded
I've been healed
Now for landing 

I've been Landing 

I've been cleared

Sure as I'm breathing
Sure as I'm sad
I'll keep this wisdom
In my flesh

I leave here believing
More than I had
This Love has got
No Ceiling 

Try  listening the song, it’s a real nice one…gives me a reason to like eddie, not that I had hated eddie (currents), wouldnt have been here in that case, just that it never returned any thing in anyway…the endless scribbling spent on it and the others ohms and the rings and blah blah…you know the list …

I never knew when I turned egotist enough to put up my journals online, letting out feelings? Naah, I have my 8 year old journal for that purpose…killing the time could be one, joining the cult could be the other…more importantly…this is for myself, checking what I can put up as a blog, and appreciate it, me. Simple.

Done with the Btech, got a nowkri, what next, so want to run away….away from the society, away from the people, somewhere serene , into the wild…Cristopher McCandless that is, not me....trashing my car could be but burning money is certainly not my thing… But yes, the idea of a solo vacation a.k.a  sanyaas had always been there in my mind and its just tempting me more and more during these supposedly last, blissful vacations. What with all the cat, rats and placements……what with Norman Lewis, Hindu, permutations, 87.5%, 37.5%, to ieee formatted reports, including topics like silence of lambs and tiger servers…to endless ectomies and manipulations of singly and doubly linked lists,  to studying RD Sharma with my folks in library….to trying to rote ‘about myself’ and ‘an instance where I had shown my super duper leadership and  ‘I am the superwoman’ skills’, this had been one crazy sem….

But alls well that ends, so am glad its over…but it has left me with this satanic desire of burying myself deep into luxury in my own space……travel, hike, travel, have a cup of coffee, away from the ones who love me, the ones who I hate, the ones who dominate me, the ones who make me want to be a wannabe but I would rather not say, …not to run away….just to get some fresh air, to tell myself that the titration is over for now……to enjoy.

But ofcourse existential is not the tone you take up when you talk to your parents, and hence my spacial and temporal escape rests postponed. Lucky Christopher, to live something he could die for.