On a Permanent Rewind

Permanency does not look good on me. My vacillating nature extends to all facets of my life including music. However of late, I have been listening to these fifteen songs to distraction, some old favorites and some recent ones.

The Beatles - Hey Jude
The Doors - Roadhouse Blues
Pink Floyd - Learning to Fly
The Beatles - Norwegian Wood
Parikrama - But it Rained
The Doors - The End
Oasis- Champagne Supernova
The Verve - Bittersweet Symphony
Dreamtheater - Glasgow Kiss
The Who - Behind Blue Eyes
Steppenwolf - Born to be Wild
Aerosmith - Janie's got a Gun
Led Zeppelin - Ramble On
Eddie Vedder - Hard Sun
Bob Dylan - Like a Rolling Stone

Drugs, Alcohol and Religion

As I write this I feel the last strains of scotch and weed ebbing out of my body. I have been and am suspect to a plethora of addictions, not all fluid in nature. Yet nothing rouses epiphany as does alcohol and weed. Reflecting back, I guess it was the first conscious decision that severed our links from a parochial culture. By succumbing to the poison with a troubled conscience most of us took that leap, we made sure that we had a semblance of control about our life. While it has been argued that abstinence is much more difficult than addiction, I believe the conscious embrace of non-conformance also argues for more steel than society gives due credit for. As for the pure visceral pleasure of it, I suppose few things would come close to give it a run for their money.

The images that alcohol evokes of the last five years is indelible. We just seem to shed off the veneer and seem human and fallible not berated for it. While alcohol brings the best out of our social nature, could there be anything that plunges you to unfathomable morass that is your subconscious than weed. The primal pleasure that engulfs every single pore of your body on being able to discern individual notes of The Doors or Pink Floyd is an experience stranger to weed-virgins.

It is a singular thing that religion is oft mentioned in the same breath as drugs and alcohol. Maybe it is the same exhilaration that people seek in something intangible and yet powerful enough to lift their spirits from the daily hum-drum that life is. As for me I am a Hindu, in the true sense of the word.

A Season of Faith's Imperfection

Seasons as we know it baffle me. Something that has permanency etched all over it, yet remaining so transitional. They are primal in nature, our earliest memories remain attached to them, but their innate fleetingness doesn't leave much of an impression other a half-remembered post-card from the past. A sense of deja-vu is probably the most one can glean from the passage of seasons. Me, I believe the seasons leave their best imprints on our moods. My moods decide my seasons. They can range from delirious sunny ones, to overcast with doubt and indecision, to the tipsy and trippy akin to the first showers, to the keening acuteness of cold reason and the far in between balmy spring ones.

And this has been a season of faith's imperfection. For a cynic like me, having faith has always been a crown of thorns. The longing to step out of the darkness, from the miasma of doubt and dispassion is as strong in me as it is with me everybody. And for once I thought I belonged. For once I felt understood and as normal as I could wish it to be. I was happy. It was something I had been seeking and found serendipity. Yet all good things come to an end, often in a manner that make you doubt if they ever existed. It passed by leaving in its wake a cauldron full of unsaid thoughts, boiling resentment and a barely concealed anger and hatred. Blind faith had turned me blind. The light had dazzled my eyes. And it is time to slink back to my dark shell once more.

The Scales of Imbalance

Often I am suspect to spells of crystal-clear thought and moments of incredulous wisdom. Sadly most of these occur under the influence of alcohol. A remarkable person I know, deciphered some lines of sense amongst a mindless babble. And I believe, being the best judge of myself, that those four lines of sense encompass my whole being and vindicate that maybe astrology has some truth to it.

I am not trust, neither am I doubt. I am the indecisiveness in between. I am Justice.

Musical Me

My balls cringe with shame when I realize how juvenile I was four years ago, when I along with three other morons belonged to the crappiest group in Orkut- I hate music. Thankfully I came to my senses soon and Orkut is history. But then, I sort of redeem myself when I think of the shit that Bollywood dishes out in the name of music, that had made me turn away from music in the first place. Fucking retards, the whole bunch of them and the public who thinks that lots of jiggling melons, preferably white( and we crib about the Australians being racists) accompanied by some plagiarized tunes is music.

Well it took a bit of Nirvana to shake me out of the notion that music was either about some Bolly-mindless-romantic crap or booty show featuring Ricky Martin, Enrique or Snoop Dogg. I discovered that guitar and drums could traverse the entire spectrum of human emotion. They could give an expression for all the angst and frustration building inside you. They could soothe frazzled nerves and provide a panacea for all the wounds you sustain. I could go on and on. But I don't think anything, I can ever write can do justice to music, my music. How do you describe life itself. Its better left to the strains of the guitar and throbbing of the drums to speak the tale.

Be Yourself

The question of the past, the doubt about the future and the hoariness of the future is omnipresent in our lives. Any plans for the future almost always land one in the most unexpected places. The present is a rudderless ship. The past haunts, chides and presents phantasmagorical images of what-would-have-been presents and futures. Its almost like living in parallel worlds, only you are not living in any of them. And the reality has none of the allure. Do we learn anything from the past? Is experience all that vaunted as they make it out to be. Would the future be what we would like it to be, if we start acting on the present. Or learning is all a myth, and our actions are either pre-ordained or plain randomness. What if the anthropic principle is the grand truth-that this present is the best of all possible worlds. Then does the past has any significance. Do the intrinsic qualities of man define his actions or the social and environmental constructs play a larger role. Does it make any sense to adopt any philosophy or set of ideals and change one's psyche under such randomness. If there is no independency of the fundamental opposites then where do we decide to align oneself. Or is being rudderless, the way it was ordained to be. To make serendipity possible. Yes, maybe being yourself is the best decision that we can take under the circumstances. Atleast knowledge of the self wouldn't land one in any unknown shore or uncharted waters. Is there any answer?

February 2011

I had intended to start this on February first. Yet as I am an ardent follower of the philosophy of procrastination, it inadvertently got delayed one day. But its better late than never.

So, February, yet another February, the shortest month of the calendar, the month of purification according to Romans and in modern connotations, the month of Cupid where you get your wallets fleeced, as these days even love comes attached with a price tag.

What are my goals for the month.
1. Stick to this list, which I have never done.
2. Stick to office hours. No more arriving late and leaving at inhuman times in the night.
3. Get back to my old reading frenzy days.
4. Write more often.
5. Prove to my relatives that I am not as anti-social as they deem me to be.
6. Start sketching after a ten year long hiatus.

Enough for two months. I think so.

Inspiration

From the days of prancing around in half-pants to the days of self consciously attiring yourself for your first job interview, one question transcends that vast gap of time. Who has been an inspiration for you? From hackneyed answers like Sachin Tendulkar to the flabbergastingly dumb answers like Mother Teresa(relive Priyanka Chopra-Miss World title), we have seen them all. The spectrum of the answers are also mind numbing. From fathers and mothers to celebrities to business tycoons to sportsmen, actors, models, we seem to have spared none. The bloody self-help writers have made a killing out of the phenomenon of people needing an inspiration.

And yet, no body seems to have answered the fundamental question. Why the hell do we need an inspiration. If every jackass who had Sachin Tendulkar as his inspiration, achieved even an iota of their idol, a Murali Vijay wouldn't have had a chance to flop three times in a row. And as for having your father and mother as an inspiration, I think its a terrible lack of imagination. And instead of trying to ape a Ratan Tata, its better to divert one's efforts to actually try one's hand at entrepreneurship. And I wont even start on actors and models.

I beg to differ. Its hard enough to live upto one's own expectation. And then you have your parents, relatives and peers. I don't subscribe to the foolhardiness to add to that wretched list. I am just about happy being myself.

The Dark Knight

What is it about a superhero, that keeps us humans, so rational and logical at all times forsake those and feel awed at the glaring impossibility of the subject. Yet it pervades all cultures and transcends all civilizations across the eons of time itself. From Gilgamesh to our homemade Ramayana and Mahabharata, from the Nordic tales of Valhalla to the strange chalk paintings of the Australian aborigines, mankind sure loves a hero.

Apart from extolling the virtues that half of mankind surreptitiously chooses to turn a blind eye to, superheroes are an idea of perfection. Something that is meant to be aimed at, while being impossible to attain at the same time. A classic paradox. Yet every superhero has an alter-ego, and more often than not, a very nondescript character who doesn't attract a sideways glance. While it was a matter for deep consternation within me, the reason behind the mask, it was much later that I understood no superhero could have endured the ugliness and vacillations of mankind without a mask. It doesn't take long for the capricious mob to turn a hero into a villain.

And my vote goes for the Batman. The cape, the Batmobile, that batcave, the mansion, the riches, the playboy alter-ego, the utility belt,the Libran sense of justice and the greatest arch-enemy of them all-the Joker. Thats enough in my book any day.

New Home, Old faces

Rewind one and half years, and the last place I wanted to be in, was Bangalore. A lot of well-intentioned relatives with abnormally long noses, a city that held no surprises, and the impossibly obnoxious yuppie crowd. The only thing I could see in the positive was the impossibly temperate and soporific climate.

Now as I look back on it, Bangalore or as it has been rechristened Bengaluru is not that bad a place. I am at my antisocial best, paying a visit to my Grandpa's only when I miss the home made food. The constant penury makes sporadic visits to the pubs weigh heavy on one's wallet and a protective shield of friends makes female intrusion a probabilistic impossibility.

The abject mess that surrounds us, the dump of unwashed clothes, shoes strewn across half the hall, the stinking bags of rubbish that had to be thrown out a couple of days before should put off the majority of the population that deserve to be termed homo sapiens, yet curiously enough it is a throwback from the much reminisced past. The oft disastrous attempts at cooking, the compulsory drinks on weekends, friends dropping in all the time and the reliving of hostel life have made it an unlikely haven.

Last Minute Blast

As I begin writing this post I am acutely aware that yet another weekend has gone by. The pile of unwashed clothes keep piling up, the amount of pending work from office has gone up to a harrowing level and my copy of White Teeth is still awaiting completion. As usual, I wonder if the rules of relativity are relative for me. And as usual time has slipped by akin to coins from a torn pocket. Ans as usual nothing is new.

Nothing has changed from the days where I used to run about a headless chicken on the eve of exams. It must have been a wonderful sight to watch. A drowning man deliberating on the strength of a multitude of straws. It was a time when attending the call of nature could cost valuable marks the next day. As I graduated to a more deplorable state, where the choice was to pass or fail, the habit became more pronounced. Suddenly a game of AOE became more interesting, an elusive picture of Bill Gates daughter almost drool worthy, every message on LAN Messenger sinfully tempting and the buffer time of a HIMYM episode almost nerve jangling.

I just take solace in the fact, that there are empathizing voices all around.

Five Snaps and a Four Year Tale

We live in the past, nonetheless we vehemently protest the same. Yet there is always a fluttering of the heart, a breathless anticipation and waves of mirth rollicking inside us, when we peruse through the past. A simple device, yet the camera unleashes the real person inside us and strips one of the veneer shrouding our drab and dreary lives. Well without further ado, I present the five snaps that evoke uncounted memories and a wish to relive the moments.

1. Awesomeness descends on Koilighughur.

The journey took a shade over five hours, deep into the Maoist ridden forests of Western Orissa. The unsettling and unspoken apprehensions turned into squeals of joy,at the discovery of a pristine waterfall snuggled in the midst of a verdant and virgin forest. Four hours later, in the freezing waters, the seven people in my branch, who made the drudgery of going to class everyday a bit less tiring. Guys, the best picnic ever.

2. Gung-ho at Goa.

It took me just about a minute to decide to leave for Goa, three hours before the train would leave for Mumbai. Bankrupt, ticket-less and without making my parents any more knowledgeable, I departed for Goa to experience the best weekend of my life. Four days, crates and crates of beer, uncounted cigarettes and a healthy dose of weed later, we discovered a simple motto for life. Let the circumstances go fuck themselves, just enjoy what is on hand. Aptly summarized by our Goa tag "fir bhi chalo".

3. E_Clan-We live to game.

I will always take pride that one of the greatest gaming clans ever at NIT Rourkela was christened by by name, albeit as a joke. But E_Clan was not just another gaming clan, it was a way of life where you needed to belong rather than prove your gaming prowess. We never won a tournament, yet we left an indelible impression on the gaming legacy of NIT Rourkela. AOE will never be the same after us. I just have one regret. We could never get the fourteen of us on a single snap.

4. B-Top-Perfection has another synonym.

Was there a more complete wing. I know C-Mid will be after my blood when they see this. But then, when was there competition among friends. The artistry of Amit, the financial genius of Kp, the understated brilliance of Debi, the 200+ IQ of Chirag, the stolid Bhuyan, the hacker-monster-leecher-gamer Zhenga, the simply himself Nuka, the King of good times Gyana, the Mr. Organiser Nk, the pre-evolutionary Pran, the impish Susi and the gentle giant Abhinab. We showed the rest how to have a weekend, didnt we guys.

5. EE-2010.

Period.

On the Wrong Scent

In the yesteryears, there were poachers and there were hounds that sniffed them out. These were the days before technology put paid to the romance associated with tramps and their vagaries. These were the days of Huck Finn and the various unnamed vagabonds. And these were the days when brain triumphed over smell. The tramps used an innocuous yet ingenuous way to ward the hounds off their scent, using smoked herrings to cover their tracks. And hence arrived the term " A Red Herring".

And I loved the concept. I always have found the concept of playing to the part and putting people on the wrong scent perversely pleasurable. And hence the name A Red Herring.

Hey Me...Its Me Again!!

Disclaimer: I write this and hopefully the next thirty posts at the behest or should I say, mortal threats from two of my best friends. Whatever inference may be drawn out of this is to be kept strictly confidential. As for my own vacillating nature, I believe the following fifteen lines are the closest that I can get to permanency.

1. I am a quintessential Libran, as per astrology. I can argue both the faces of a Mobius strip and still find myself in an indecisive morass.

2. Although I am considered an irredeemable optimist, I see pitfalls everywhere. Its a combination of exceptional bad luck and faith in others that I often see myself in those pitfalls.

3. I like talking to myself more than anyone else. And I am generally surprised by the multitude of contradictory voices battling it out inside me.

4. My aim in life is to become literate. In the age of super specialization I prefer to be a Jack-of-all-Trades. I would like to know everything about everything.

5. I love the English language, but regret to see its modern connotations in India. An affected accent and improper grammar hold people in greater stead than proper usage of the language.

6. I believe half the people in the world are blind, and the rest cannot see the truth even if it danced naked in front of them, so wrapped are they in their own perceptions.

7. My anger is imperceptible and often goes unnoticed under the veil of cynicism.

8. For a person who is used to living in a dump, I can be fastidious till the point of ad nauseam.

9. I find the concept of machoism and the associated tenets pre-evolutionary and a flashback from the days of the cave men, where the man with the biggest club was the leader of the pack.

10. Chandler Bing, Andy Dufresne and Cal Trask are my most three favorite characters, respectively drawn from soaps, movies and books.

11. I have a remarkable memory, although I make blatant excuses for a bad memory.

12. I take a perverse pleasure in making myself misunderstood and playing to the part expected out of me.

13. The ideals of politeness and traditional chivalry are endearing to me, while the aura of affected coolness enveloping plain boorishness, equally distasteful.

14. I love smoking and in spite of all the statutory warnings, will continue smoking.

15. Finally, before signing off, Isha and Nick both of you, are a credit to girls all over. Pity that you form a tiny speck of your species. :P

As per popular requests, here I am uploading my latest nondescript self :P

Homage to Nice Guys

Couldn't resist posting this.. 

This rant was written for the Wharton Undergraduate Journal.



This is a tribute to the nice guys. The nice guys that finish last, that never become more than friends, that endure hours of whining and bitching about what assholes guys are, while disproving the very point. This is dedicated to those guys who always provide a shoulder to lean on but restrain themselves to tentative hugs, those guys who hold open doors and give reassuring pats on the back and sit patiently outside the changing room at department stores. This is in honor of the guys that obligingly reiterate how cute/beautiful/smart/funny/sexy their female friends are at the appropriate moment, because they know most girls need that litany of support. This is in honor of the guys with open minds, with laid-back attitudes, with honest concern. This is in honor of the guys who respect a girl’s every facet, from her privacy to her theology to her clothing style.



This is for the guys who escort their drunk, bewildered female friends back from parties and never take advantage once they’re at her door, for the guys who accompany girls to bars as buffers against the rest of the creepy male population, for the guys who know a girl is fishing for compliments but give them out anyway, for the guys who always play by the rules in a game where the rules favor cheaters, for the guys who are accredited as boyfriend material but somehow don’t end up being boyfriends, for all the nice guys who are overlooked, underestimated, and unappreciated, for all the nice guys who are manipulated, misled, and unjustly abandoned, this is for you.This is for that time she left 40 urgent messages on your cell phone, and when you called her back, she spent three hours painstakingly dissecting two sentences her boyfriend said to her over dinner. And even though you thought her boyfriend was a chump and a jerk, you assured her that it was all ok and she shouldn’t worry about it.



This is for that time she interrupted the best killing spree you’d ever orchestrated in GTA3 to rant about a rumor that romantically linked her and the guy she thinks is the most repulsive person in the world. And even though you thought it was immature and you had nothing against the guy, you paused the game for two hours and helped her concoct a counter-rumor to spread around the floor. This is also for that time she didn’t have a date, so after numerous vows that there was nothing “serious” between the two of you, she dragged you to a party where you knew nobody, the beer was awful, and she flirted shamelessly with you, justifying each fit of reckless teasing by announcing to everyone: “oh, but we’re just friends!” And even though you were invited purely as a symbolic warm body for her ego, you went anyways. Because you’re nice like that.The nice guys don’t often get credit where credit is due. And perhaps more disturbing, the nice guys don’t seem to get laid as often as they should. And I wish I could logically explain this trend, but I can’t. From what I have observed on campus and what I have learned from talking to friends at other schools and in the workplace, the only conclusion I can form is that many girls are just illogical, manipulative bitches. Many of them claim they just want to date a nice guy, but when presented with such a specimen, they say irrational, confusing things such as “oh, he’s too nice to date” or “he would be a good boyfriend but he’s not for me” or “he already puts up with so much from me, I couldn’t possibly ask him out!” or the most frustrating of all: “no, it would ruin our friendship.” Yet, they continue to lament the lack of datable men in the world, and they expect their too-nice-to-date male friends to sympathize and apologize for the men that are jerks.



Sorry, guys, girls like that are beyond my ability to fathom. I can’t figure out why the connection breaks down between what they say (I want a nice guy!) and what they do (I’m going to sleep with this complete ass now!). But one thing I can do is say that the nice-guy-finishes-last phenomenon doesn’t last forever. There are definitely many girls who grow out of that train of thought and realize they should be dating the nice guys, not taking them for granted. The tricky part is finding those girls, and even trickier, finding the ones that are single.So, until those girls are found, I propose a toast to all the nice guys. You know who you are, and I know you’re sick of hearing yourself described as ubiquitously nice. But the truth of the matter is, the world needs your patience in the department store, your holding open of doors, your party escorting services, and your propensity to be a sucker for a pretty smile. For all the crazy, insane, absurd things you tolerate, for all the situations where you are the faceless, nameless hero, my accolades, my acknowledgement, and my gratitude go out to you. You do have credibility in this society, and your well deserved vindication is coming...

On Pornography in General

[This topic has been written in a moment of epiphany by the author as he struggles with porn-starved existence for the past fortnight. It’s always the ubiquitous stuff; we miss and need the most.]

A man is the sum of his experiences. A woman must also be, but I am deliberately being sexist as the topic might be slightly misogynist. Well there is one experience which I am curious of the role it has to play in the building up of character and psyche of every man. It has a ubiquitous presence in most of our lives but I wish to delve a bit deeper and strip some of the outer layers which have been socially and morally conditioned and get into the visceral raw selves. I am talking about pornography.

As puberty strikes in and suddenly your eyes are not the same anymore, one begins to be a bit more enterprising and inquisitive about our physical and mental needs. I wish I could accurately pin-point the day when I was acutely aware that girls had developed breasts and then go back in time and experience the joy that nubile discovery. I think that was the most decisive moment of our life-The discovery of one’s sexuality. Now you can be all sacrosanct and high-brow now, but the truth remains that almost half of the adult conversations we have had have dealt with girls, sex and porn.

The role of pornography in our lives is undeniably made even more indispensable with the sexually repressed society that we live in. This is a society where we have grown up with the image of sex as two flowers touching each other, the lights going off or bees humming and the rest of that crap. For a long time I believed that if you tear of the arms of a woman’s blouse it is termed as rape. With this pedigree, the discovery of porn in my early teens was like serendipity, as I assume it must have been for the rest of you. People, who disagree, and I have the misfortune of knowing some please consult your doctors.

But the illicit pleasure of watching porn in its various titillating forms brings a warm glow to my heart. Who can forget those days of criminally high priced internet parlors, the drooling over desibaba, worldsex and hundreds of other sites? Things that seem onerous and obsolete now, like sex stories or browsing for porn used to be like drops of nectar in those halcyon days. Our travails continued in the same fashion till we entered engineering. Till then porn or BP was associated with sneakiness, a forbidden private pleasure with generous dollops of adolescent shame and guilt.

With engineering or better still with the advent of LAN came the new age of porn. Because the primitive days of LAN-less Hall-3 if you guys can remember used to thrive on miniscule mobile videos, stashes of cheap, bawdy sex magazines and a host of filthy porn on some scattered PCs. Then came LAN and changed the playing rules. With the inhibition of discussing the role of porn and jacking off having disappeared due to shared living space, the definition of porn had been altered forever.

With Naughty America, Vivid Entertainment to the fore, we were suddenly exposed to a completely new world of entertainment. While some broadcasted their love of this new phenomenon by indiscriminately stocking their PCs with whatever they could find, there were also the diffident folk who resorted to hiding their stockpile in some remote corner of their PCs. But while the earlier elusiveness of porn had made its worth its weight in gold, with the passage in time, porn got mundane with people honing their tastes and specializing in stuff such as MMS clips, BDSM, Hentai, Inter-racial, 2X et al. The hunger for porn was best demonstrated after a spate of long holidays when a majority of the populace, including some of the porn kings had to empty their closets before donning their veneers for home.

While most of us have crossed the threshold into a more civilized way of life, and wouldn’t admit to our inglorious past selves, I certainly hope that we give pornography the due place it deserves in our hearts and more importantly our loins. Two Parthian shots before I make a disgraceful exit;

1. Does porn hold the same place in the hearts of committed folk as it does in the case of the single junta?

2. Is the stand of this post correct with regards to women-as in porn is extensively limited to the depraved males. If any free thinking female out there desists, you are more than welcome to express your opinion. (Private opinions would be given preference.)

A Week at the Anti-Christ's

I hate kids. I hate them emphatically. Not to sound cool or to make any kind of statement. I just hate them. I am ready to go to arms against the people who melt into raptures when they see kids. I don’t care if they are cute, are innocent or say stupid things in a cho chweet voice. I hate being pestered by their questions, I hate laughing at every mundane thing they do and I hate being told that the kids these days are smarter than us. Anyways let me come back to my topic and tell you about the Devil Reincarnate that I have been living with.

He is my youngest cousin, four years old and unfortunately I share my birthday with him. He is Satan’s emissary. Five minutes with him and you would prefer hell to earth. After my arrival at my uncle’s house, it took him minutes to realize that his latest victim was in his presence. A mere second later I had been pinned down by this pint sized person who was sitting on my neck and all the while I had to smile and remark how strong he was. Then I watched the travails of my aunt as she tried to follow him all over the house trying to force food into his mouth. She finally succeeded after two hours when he found out that the inside of the washing machine is a good substitute for the dining table.

He likes waking me up in the morning by jumping on me, blowing in my ears or pulling the pillow from under my head, whichever catches his fancy. By the time I sit down with the newspaper, and he has succeeded in making my aunt and granny run a marathon for his breakfast, he comes over to make my morning miserable. He takes a devious delight in shredding the sports column to shreds right when I am in raptures over Sachin or the Commonwealth Games. He scribbles nonsense over the Crossword and Sudoku just when I am stuck in a tricky position. Shooting darts at my face is his latest contravention.

He also has a special antipathy to any other channel other than Pogo or Nickelodeon. I swear I will have those two channels cut out when I have my own place. The imp can raise the dead with his screams and cries and he holds the whole family at ransom due to his impressive bawling capacity. When I had just made myself comfortable with my copy of I, Claudius, he promptly tore off the cover page causing me to stop reading there and then, which even my parents haven’t been able to in the last two decades. His favorite way of baiting me is to turn off the power when I am on my lappy, or pressing all the keys at once or spitting on the keyboard. When he is doing none of this he is hanging from my shoulder, or pulling my hair or pulling down my trousers. He can give Macaulay Culkin of Home Alone fame a run for his money any day, I swear.

And trust me I am trying. I spent three agonizing hours building a house from Lego bricks which he smashed into bits because he wanted another design. I have lost in mock alphabet and letter writing contests to him. I have got bitten and spit upon and been made a Bull’s eye for his shooting prowess. I just can’t wait till his school reopens on Monday and I will be rid of him for at least six hours a day. And now I must stop cause he has lost interest in the fire-truck I got him and is making faces at me, which I am sure does not bode good news.

The Illusion of Memories

Memory is a chimerical device. It takes a devious pleasure enticing and torturing the mind. I often think of memories as glimpses of the outside world seen from a speeding train. It leaves behind a plethora of half formed images, poignant in imagery but when reminisced, they seem as if from a spectral world of our self-conjured dreams. They are there but when you look closely, trying to dissect through their innards they vanish in a puff of smoke leaving behind an odor, that tantalizes you and at the same time forming a self-castigation for the futility of the entire effort. The more I start to peer behind those swirling clouds of confusing thoughts, the more pressed I become to question my own sanity. Every day forward erases the past by a bit. It’s as if all the laws of entropy have been vanquished by the forces ruling my mind and the perfect painting is peeling itself of those wonderful colors that once ensnared my mind, leaving behind a sketch that is a travesty of my memories. The pellucid waters are now a mire of confusion bereaving in the loss of their tranquility. The quintessential sense of the balance that my mind used to possess has become hoary and does not allow me to relax in its erstwhile comforting bosom. Reality has become an illusion and vice-versa. Sometimes I feel like I am floating outside my own self gloating in the chaos that preside the reality. Bewitching images from an illegible past mingled with grandiose visions of the future seem incongruous with the stark austerity of the present. I seem to be standing at the cross-roads where time has stuck and I can browse through past, present and future with equanimity and yet wonder when I am going to wake up. It seems that my spirit has detached itself from the travails besetting my beleaguered body and is reveling in this new formless and timeless existence that is beyond the scope of its own comprehension.

A Tryst with Reality

Today we finally embarked on the task that I have been the most apprehensive of- interviews with the parents. The data that we had collected pointed to the fact that an overwhelming, if not a hundred percent majority of the parents were involved in professions that would barely provide for a hand to mouth existence. While the kids had taken to us with an ease that surprised us, I for one had misgivings about what would happen when we would step into their lives after school.
For privileged people like us, who have never had to worry about anything concerned with financial affairs, it was a sort of conundrum. Which questions to ask and how delicately could we put it through to them that we just wanted to know the environment surrounding the education of the child without sounding too nosy or obnoxious at the same time. But six hours after we met with the parents of Monalisa Nag of Class 6 of R.E.C Govt School, I have trouble shaking of the image of that small asbestos roofed house entrenched deeply in poverty and the parents who hope against hope to see their daughters making a place for themselves in society.
Popular culture and media have often fostered the general perception that somehow uneducated parents somehow do not care enough for their child’s education. Think again. The silent despair that we were faced with when we put forward the question to Monalisa’s mother, Devaki, a housemaid, almost abashed us. While she wants to be a part of her daughter’s education, it’s almost gut-wrenching to see the helpless inability to do so. The enthusiasm of the father, Chandrasekhar who earns only 3000-4000 per month as a driver at the thought of his daughter becoming computer literate is infectious. It is not the aspirations that they have of their children that separate them our parents. It is the impotency of poverty and illiteracy that prevents them from doing so.
It is not charity that they want. While economic emancipation for everyone is an utterly utopian idea, the least the Govt can do is spruce up the levels of education in the hundreds of thousands of primary schools. Just making schools and giving free mid-day meals is not enough. The education that they are getting should of the quality that it makes a change in their lives. The society that debates all these topics sitting in the comforts of their homes is even more at fault. Of which I have been an integral part of all my life. I write this with the hope that twenty years from now, if I perchance happen to read it again I would not be smothered by the guilt and shame that engulfs me now.

Do You Remember

Do you remember the look of the hills flush with the green of the summer rains when we first set foot here. The roads were wet, everything was green and verdant. We were green. The anticipation of treading into a new and completely unfamiliar way of life, at the end of which we were expected to become men from boys. I guess anticipation and a mute terror of responsibility lay heavy on every heart on that fateful day in June 06 when we decided to be students at NIT Rourkela. It would mark the beginning of the greatest epoch in our lives.

During the counselling time, the auditoriom did not look so swanky as it does now, with wooden tables and chairs and the blackboard dusty with chalk. The AV Hall had those awful,spindly chairs where we first met people with whom we would be inexorably attached for the next four years. Most of us must have shuddered inwardly when we had our first glimpse of the erstwhile Hall-3. Dark, gloomy and forbidding, it was dusty with neglect and the absence of denizens and cobwebbed with countless memories.
Do you remember the first day at hostel, our first glimpse of the warden KRP, and meeting our room mates. The nervous anticipation of our first day at college. I think bathrooms at NITRkl never witnessed a longer line for the next four years. The memory of us in formals, clean shaved, cropped hair being herded into a line for the entertainment of seniors. We were divided into zones , which paradoxically had a more unifying factor than a divisive one.

Do you remember the subsequent weeks. The crowding into autos to go to the station to buy necessary daily stuff, including cheap porn magazines. The mind numbingly boring classes of DG Sahu, the gradual gravitation towards the last benches, the realization sinking in that we were not going to see girls for the next four years, the ragging that was slowly getting mundane.

Do you remember us getting friends. The nite-outs, the apprehensive visits to JAM to sneak in a dinner without getting unwarranted attention from seniors, the GPL where my room was wrecked by the group slams. The sessions of khatti where we discussed everything from our sordid love stories, from girls to music, from our interests to general banal talk. We grew together in these sessions. Do you remember that antiquated PC of Chinu which became the hub of everything, from group porn watching to interminable sessions of playing Zatacka.

Do you remember those first exams. The first bonechilling winters of Rourkela, the tension of getting through with at least an eight pointer. And in the midst of that when everyone decided that Sushen should have his first bath in a month and it developed into the entire hostel bathing together in the corridors. Makes one laugh when you think about it now. Then second semester started and for the first time during the holidays we felt the absence of friends. It was the first time we realized what a second family means.

Do you remember when Beeshmoy and me tricked a hundred people into believing Peter speaks and the ensuing GPL that we received. My sides still hurt from laughter when I think of Anda and Sutta's reactions. By then most of us had got ourselves PCs and thus started the phenomenon of gaming that our batch will be remembered for. One chuckles when one remembers Mudu going from room to room to install CS. The afternoons of CS and AOE, the cacophony Zhenga created when we managed to beat Bibek at AOE are so hauntingly familiar. It was the beginning of the famous DZ and E_Clan and the rival Spartans and DRG Clans. Do you remember that Holi of first year, of Hadi clad in only leaves. Holi has never been so boisterous, so underclad ever since.
Second year began with the hoop-la of us being the seniors now with the impunity associated with ragging. That miserable first week when we had to sleep in half finished rooms, without electricity and running water in the B- block of Hall 7. Can anyone forget the day when 300 of us marched to protest against the unfair ruling in the ragging case against Bangu zone.

While the first year was about making new friends, second year was about developing a solidarity that transcended zones and languages and cultures. It was about getting initiated into branches. And what a branch Electrical Engg. has been.

Do you remember those long long chats in the room of Dipu. The outbreak of Herpes which mutilated the faces, bodies and in some notable cases the private parts of so many boarders in Hall 7. I remember being awarded the title of Herpes King by Dipu, something I wont treasure.I still remember that grand DSU Party where I was initiated to the pleasures of Whiskey. The herpes outbreak . I was taught the art of smoking by Nishank and Pranaya. I had become an engineer now I guess.

Fourth semester started with the panic of grade backs. I was not the one to miss out on that getting a back in Jack's paper. The engineering transformation was complete now. It was also the culmination of our writing skills with us transforming the institute magazine Renaissance from a lifeless tabloid whose sole purpose was to line the dustbins into Degree 361, which I for the first time saw being read by people. We had managed to turn it around by than 360 degrees.

Do you remember how we invalidated the concept of single rooms with me, Ari and Zhenga in the same room during the dying days of second year. It continued into third year with Zhenga and me still sharing rooms in Hall-2. I remember fifth semester for my whiskey heydays and our first entrepreneurial venture yaareyaare. It did not work out but was the precursor of the downloading spree that was to mark this year. This was also the glorious year of the most famous scooty we will ever encounter in our lives, the eponymous scooty of Hota, Chirag Hota. I hope in earnest that the scooty is preserved in Smithsonian for all generations to marvel at. I spent the best Puja Holidays of my life courtesy Ari and Navin in the North-East.

Sixth semester came and went in a flurry before we even realised it. It was the semester where I discovered the joy of beer and sharing. Sharing because there happen to be guys like KP and Debi around, who donot even mind sharing L'oreal stuff with impoverished people like us. Movies, Series, Dota, Beer binges and suddenly we found ourselves to be Final Years.

Do you remember the hope and optimism surrounding the campus when everyone was sure of landing themselves plum jobs. And it eroded as the companies decided to give us a short shrift. Desperation clouded the eyes with one unsuccessful interviews after the other. By the end of seventh semester it was a rush for any any job that came our way. Somehow or the other this semester has found most of us with some kind of a job. For my part, I celebrated minor successes and major failures at an unbelievable weekend at Goa with friends. Debi ran the naked mile after getting a call from IIM-A. We are still waiting for a treat from Bibek for XLRI and FMS. Farewell season has started with people starting to make guest lists and wondering about debt to be incurred.

I guess change is a constancy of life. The hills are barren now, bereft of any verdant vegetation. The auditorium and the AV Hall stand refurbished. The institute is a maze of construction and reconstruction. One doesn't see first years walking ina single file on the first day. In fact ragging is almost non-existent. People have lappies in the first year. They don't buy cheap porn magazines these days. Celebrity Nite is not held during the Spring Fest. Chirag's scooty is the verge of an honorable death. Saha spends more time with a girl rather than sleeping.

And the batch of 2006-10 is about to graduate in 40 days.