Next is what?

So, it's another couple of days or so in IIT, for I dont think dilly-dallying the final formalities could take any more than coming monday or tuesday, and hence the end of college life (finally) and a hostelite mode of existence is definitely imminent.
The last few days have been eventful, but not in a nostalgic way. Just using all the time to spend with friends who'd now be much more infrequent in hanging around than desirable. And once I move back home, there are other issues to work with. Like the fact that BCG has decided our joining to be September 14 (!!!!!) which means finding something to do for the next 3.5 months! Or that they decided to send me off to Mumbai base office, which means fretting over living in Mumbai, finding a house/housemates and all that crap (Help!). And basically handling parents psyched out over these things. Finding an intern is another thing, though I have found one at Hindustan Times (thanks to this blog, partially :) ) for June.
Among all this, saying goodbye to IIT is almost irrelevant, but I will sure miss the atmosphere, the independence and the people once I'm out. That said, IIT feels like it has already left this campus the way things are these days. Things have changed in a way much too cold, and the end of nescafe was probably the last straw.

Onto newer things, now.

The 2009 verdict: a hope, a challenge

In adverse circumstances, when you do not have power to misuse, staying holy isn't too difficult. It may not be the only option, but is the most reasonable one. The mark of character, however, is what you choose to do with power when you have it. In a lot of ways, the verdict of Elections 2009 throws up exactly this challenge to Congress and its trio-at-the-top to establish its character. Every newspaper and news channel, indeed every drawing room discussion across the country, has drawn up theories for why India voted the way it did. For once, the Indian voter has thrown up a surprise to be proud of, a definitive result when everybody anticipated uncertainty and gloom worse than 2004. I believe more than anything it was this fear and anticipation of gloom, horse-trading and a rift-ridden myopic government unable to lead the country in the current global environment that drove people to vote for stability, and the most likely candidate to provide that. For that, at least, we need to thank our political pundits and news commentators who have incessantly , even if irritatingly, driven down our throats the last three months or so the likelihood of post-election scenarios ,and the rise of Third , Fourth, Fifth front which made both Mayawati being PM/re-elections in two years seem dangerously real. In the current scenario, Manmohan Singh was the best choice we had, given not just the inability for NDA to raise the numbers without too much importance to pain-in-the-ass outfits that Left and SP proved to be in the last term but also the fact that the country really needs to avoid communal divisive agendas from dominating the mainstream at the moment, but even Manmohan really has work on his hand now to put the country on fast track of reform, growth and social welfare. In a lot of ways, it is the coming five years rather than the last five that would define for history who Manmohan Singh was, and what his legacy would be.

And now that Congress (almost) has the mandate to independently and assertively work for national good, now that Left has happily been decimated and BSP's rise stinted, now that it's obvious to national and regional players alike that good governance and development will get you votes no matter where and social engineering has limited relevance, I, just like the rest of the nation, fervently hope that our politicians collectively rise to the challenge. Clearly the victory of Nitish Kumar and Naveen Patnaik, and the poor showing of Left, Maya and BJP in Rajasthan show the importance of good governance and its translation into electoral gains, and hence it is a historical intertwining of people's (development) and politicians' interest(power) that is finally evident (one that should have been logical and always present, but that's another matter) and I hope the political class of the country regroups and puts that at their top agenda. For once, I hope it's not too much to expect. Imagine if all our politicians spent all their energy competing to provide development and social welfare, where would our country be!

Maybe, it's just wishful thinking on my part. But if nothing else, the 2009 verdict has provided a hope to citizens like me, and a challenge to the politicos. The times they are a changin'...

A cooking experiment

When someone says love is inside them, how do they visualize it? How do you visualize it?

Try.

Do you see one solid whole thing somewhere inside, just like a heart or a kidney or a brain, one essential alive life-sustaining organ, or even the thing that fills up my heart, and will leave a deathly void if lost, one that makes your chest ache with heaviness and chokes every ounce of air from the lungs? Or, alternately, as an atomized/continuum omnipresence, existing in every single molecule all through you, almost like a plasma or a halo that bathes you, which will give the sensation of pricking needles everywhere in the body, every inch revolting in sheer pain?

Make a choice. Feel the pain. Now add the balm of time to the concoction. Let it burn. Add distance, add change, add solace, add fresh joy and fresh pain. The more adventurous should add fresh love too. Saute till fatigued. Sprinkle a mix of maturity, wisdom and pragmatism. Finally, add hope to taste.

Pick the spoon and sample the flavor. Careful, let the taste linger. Now, can you make out the residual void, in the core or in the tiny overused atoms of the little curry in your mouth?

If you can't, congratulations.
If you can, damn you and welcome to the club.

First love.

Waqt saalon ki dhund se nikal jaayega
Tera chehera nazar se pighal jaayega
Aankh band hogi to
neend aa jaayegi
Raat ye bhi guzar jaayegi....

PS Work of fiction. Rather, part of one. The ultimate conversation, but I can't find the words yet for the other part, hence the post. So don't go all awww on me, just help me find those words. :)

Inside

What kind of a place is this? Sweaty, filthy, lecherous creatures everywhere!! Is this the stuff this city is made of? Do they have no shame? Everywhere I go, I get stared. I can feel it, gazes piercing right through me. Do I even belong here, on the outside? Should I stare back? Will that stop them, or make them come after me?

Oh no, him again! This is the sixth consecutive day, and there he is, at the exact same spot at the exact same time, standing aimlessly, just looking at me. Ogling, rather. And I must admit, in clean clothes today. Would have been cute on someone more human...

Oh-my-God is he trying to touch himself staring at me? Goddammit, I need to break this eye contact. Shit! Why is 100 feet such a long distance that it takes forever to walk through? Especially in my 2k heels. Why is this the only possible way to get inside this place that is otherwise heaven for it houses my God every day for a few minutes? Oh my, A, the things I do for you! For you, I am willing to even live through this humiliation everyday. And the constant teasing of B and N. I just hope the money I stole from N for looking exactly like your Park Avenue types girl is not discovered. The bitch has too much of it anyway. Oh God if she got to know...but see A, you're worth much more than a friend like her to me. Just look at me today ok!

Damn I wish I could come through the front door acting like a mademoiselle like her who you run after. Look at me, I look prettier than that bitch. Brown eyes are better than hazel eyes, and I'm even curvier than her. Oh please, look at me. Once! Oh shit my shoes, this whole under-construction backdoor path is so dusty. I wish I had another option to make you see me, to get inside of your sole. The only thing dirtier is those illiterate construction workers, swarming like insects, dreaming of shinier things. Ha! Ewww...I just remembered him and his stares. He disgusts me!

Ok, my shoes are prim now...honey, sweety, look at me. I and not her deserves to walk by your side from the front door, like your princess. And your slave!! What would I not do for my love...you're so perfect, the man of my dreams. Why am I still so invisible to you, I look just the same as your-types! Not as fair, this fairness cream is taking too much time to work, but still beautiful to you, no. Oh please please please say yes. Five days, five fleeting glances, please look at me today. Please make me mine. You're the most amazing, the bestest guy I've ever seen. Please say you like me too. Please say you love me like I love you. Not hearing it from you, not seeing it in your eyes is killing me.

Oh now the thought of you is making me horny. Ten feet, that's all the distance between us. I want the distance to dissolve, this ten feet, your money and my middle-class mediocrity, your glamour and my invisibility. I want us to dissolve within each other. I want you inside me. What a perfect body you have! Shit I'm wet already. Fuck me, oh please. Feel me A, here press my boob just like this.
You saw! Oh A A A A....these eyes of yours I wanna just...
Hey why did you take your gaze away...hey where are you going...I know you saw me, I know you want me just as bad...come back. Please don't leave me so...incomplete, so unsatisfied.

Shit! You're gone for today aren't you...but no problem, I saw that sparkle in your eyes. You saw me, and you know it too. Admit it, we belong together. I'd be back tomorrow.

Someday, I just know this, someday, you'd be at my knees saying every word I wanna hear and loving every bit of me. Someday, honey, you'd be mine. I'd be inside your world and you'd be inside me.
On a side not, amazingly, the path feels much shorter while walking back and I never notice a single of those ubiquitous worker types.

Farewells

The worst part of being in a 5 year dual degree thing at IIT is that not only your own batch, the 4 year variants, graduate before you, even your junior batch's 4-yr species finishes up a couple of week before you. That's so unfair that it even beats the irony that your department and your hostel actually give you a farewell in fourth year itself because it is more convenient to them when you are not going anywhere! The only possible thing worse I can imagine to top an extra year of torture is being invited to a reunion with the Graduating class 2009 instead of the entry year 2004 couple of decades from now.

So, while I await the final two weeks before the thesis defense, I attended tonight the one farewell that we still gracefully get, the one at Director's lodge. The place is beautiful, the dinner was supposed to be better than it was, and it is kinda nice seeing all those people. And then I was asked to speak something on the behalf of outgoing batch by the dean. I said something random, half out of the last Hostel mag article I'd written, and was thankful that almost nobody was listening, except the profs maybe.

The worst part though was the decision to wear a sari, with a slightly oversized blouse that aids my accumulated fat from the last six months and makes me look soooooo fat, I only realized how horrible after looking at the pics! :( I desperately need to lose some weight, and all that putting off till sem end because I did not want to gym alone and could not sustain exercising by myself turns out to be the worst ill effects of laziness. Time to say farewell to this extra laziness, and the extra flab, eh?

Approval

I have a question: Why do we, all of us, seek approval all the time from a certain finite intimate set of people? This need of approval and assurance, need for all our self-justification for every decision and choice to be backed by a chosen few, why is it so important? And the lack of it, so crippling. I suspect it is one of those things that keep us from becoming inhuman and cold-hearted stones, so it cannot be a bad thing per se. Yet it signifies the stranglehold of the emotional side on even the most non-sentimental of minds and throws open the question of whether we could ever stop caring, whether self-esteem is an entirely self-dependent entity.
The question floats in my mind also because how approval becomes more important when one has to struggle to get it, or when one is faced with a decision so important and life-changing that there is a need to muster up courage and self-belief (and backing from at least some of those we trust) and go ahead with something in the absence of approval (at least from some of those who matter). How do some people automatically gain the right to do this to us, without even knowing sometimes? Parents, friends, lovers, those we admire. Do they always care? We think they know better, we like them, that is why they are in that elite list, yet, are they always aware of how important they are? Do they even always know us reasonably well to make a sound judgment for us? Why do we not always reason this out? Why, for even the most pragmatic, rebellious, self-confident of minds, is "I know I'm right and I'll do it in any case" not nearly enough? Unless maybe, for one in a billion people. Unless maybe, it is a question of life and death. And even then, why is the ultimate satisfaction reached only when later, some of them finally come around and acknowledge the correctness of your choice and embrace you with pride for you, and until then you can't help being a little restless all the time?

Maybe it is not even about finding the answer to the shower of Whys above. Maybe that's just the way it is and will be and should be. Maybe all our "support group" is, is a projection of our internal conscience and value system on those we trust enough. But still, what about all the in-between times. When it's not a question of life or death, when it's not a choice so important that you need to rebel against the world, or when some of those you look up to approve and stand by you, and some do not. What about all those little everyday instances. When you continually strive hard so as to not let down this select group of people and be as good as they expect you to be, and when you fail? Or worse, when you succeed and look upto them to get that approval, that pat on the back, but all you get is indifference, or a reaction that falls far, far short, and then you can't stop yourself from facing the question, did I not do enough. And then, you can't stop yourself from trying even harder the next time and the time after that, and keep striving for that elusive approval.
Sometimes, the point comes when one feels "they", the trusted adored ones, do not really care, do not really notice, or do not really know who you are and what's important to you. The point comes when you try expressing your needs and your admiration to them, and draw a blank. When efforts at laying out your problems/points of view/convictions are met with either indifference, or misunderstanding, or a nonchalant manner that makes a joke about it till you know you're not being listened to: you're not interesting.
At that point, is it possible for one to stop trying, to rationalise and decide this person does not care and therefore should not be in this list for me, and this person's attitude does not matter? Or all one can do is stay in the vicious circle and try even harder, because afterall, those people in there, aren't they above judgement and questioning, weren't we convinced of their absolute brilliance and vitality to our lives before we put them there (sure some came by default, but still), isn't this lack of approval an indicator of our flaw and failure in reality?

Is it possible to reason out with things like emotional strongholds?