Thanks for stepping in...

Time:12.53 am
mood:sentimental
When I first stepped in college, I fiercely guarded my heart and soul,for I was afraid someone might see through it. Making new friends was both exciting and intimidating. Sitting in a corner,the world stopped when you walked towards me,with that smile of your's ,said a 'hi'. Is it so easy? You didn't realise it then,but you had walked into my life and your warmth sealed my destiny. You left footprints as you stepped in,you could've easily traced them back,but never once did you glance back. And that,my friend,has made all the difference in the world!
Dedicated to:
multiple options
alias
dee
DC

My first.........

What a day it has been!! FIrst of all, on some instinct, I picked up a Punjabi dress to wear for college, which is completely antagonastic of me. I don't dislike wearing them, but if you travel to college in rush hour it's tough managing the three-piece thing with you. Plus there is the problem of keeping the cellphone with you, I don't have any option but to keep it in my bag, when sometimes the calls and messages go unoticed because you can't hear or feel the ringtone.

Do you sometimes have this gut feeling that everything is not going to be ok today and yet you ignore it? Well today was one such day for me....

Things were pretty cool early morning. Many complimented me on my new 'look' (blush, blush) so I was in high spirits. Plus two lectures were cancelled and we were supposed to be free by 2.45 pm (which is quite a rarity). I spent most of my lectures chatting about the stock market with my friend who had quite useful things to say about it.

For the last lecture, one friend requested me to give his proxy. Now let me make this clear that I am not a serial offender, so I agreed. And I don't need to tell you what happened later. Proxy got caught and I am scooted away to the professor's room with the guy. Now let me tell you I had scored the highest in his subject so naturally he was quite taken aback on seeing me. The worst part was that he didn't yell at me. I wouldnt have minded if he would have yelled and screamed at me, because I knew I was guilty. But the silence was quite frightening. He just mumbled "I didn't expect this from you" and I was left off!

I really didn't know how to react. The guy was apologising and consoling me, but to tell you the truth I really wasnt feeling anything. Absolutely blank. Maybe it was because it had been my first such experience. I obviously felt bad that I had done something of this sort and dissapointed the professor, but then there was this adrenaline rush of having been caught giving a proxy. I think everyone must have one such 'breaking-free-from-the-good-girl-image' experience in life. Seriously. Oh yes, I forgot to add that I was kept standing in class for a good half an hour because I was giggling(yaar, what's wrong with me?). But I had put the professor in quite a situation because no one in the class except me was able to answer the questions so I guess I was forgiven for my uncontrolled fits of giggling.

I must confess the reason I am able to write about this experience is because Sir didn't react much. Or else habitual offenders must be having quite a fair idea how it feels to be in your professor's cabin for giving proxy. Thank you Sir!!

THREE WORDS

Well, this was just a brainwave at 12 at night. Hope you will like it. And no, this has not been drawn from personal experience just in case you come to that conclusion.


Such a long time,
Since we sat under the star lit sky,
Such a long time,
Since holding my hands,
You said,
Those three words.

Lighting up my world with your smile,
Your arms drew me closer,
But it could never calm,
My heart straining to hear,
Those three words.

Interlinked fingers of ours,
Could not bring in the warmth,
The cold misted my mind,
My spirit crushed when I realised,
You never traced on the misty glass,
Those three words.

Never noticed the blinding lights,
The crashing sounds muted my screams,
Before realisation dawned,
My vision blanked before,
I hit the cold tar.

I felt your hands holding mine,
Before the first tear left my eyes,
I heard,
Those three words.

I love you,
That's what you said,
The warmth tingled my fingers,
My gasps for breath lengthened,
My grip on life was loosening,
I realised,

Easing out my hands from his,
Clinging to the last bit of life,
I whispered,
Those three words,
"It's too late"

In a contemplative mood…. At 12 am

It has happened to me innumerable times, when I have woken up in the dead of the night with some long forgotten song reeling in my head, in loops. The worst part is when you can’t get it out of your head and you are humming that song all day long. Now it doesn’t matter if it’s a hit song, but it is from some obscure B grade movie, then you are met with furtive glances.

This time it wasn’t a song, it was a thought. And it was the first time I felt an urgent need to spill it out, so I penned it down before I could post an entry. I can’t say it came in my head out of the blue. On my birthday, I was in a rather pensive mood. No, my friends had called me up dutifully at 12 am to wish me, but not before reminding me that I have grown up. I had to hear ‘Now you have turned twenty years old’ with unusual emphasis on old over hundred times that day. One of my good friends, lets call him Alias (because he has two names, real names I mean because of some goof-up in his birth certificate.), ringed me up to wish me. ‘What have I done in the last twenty years?’ is not something I should be asking on my birthday, but I needed an answer. He tried to brush away my thoughts but when I persisted, there was an uncomfortable silence over the line. I tried listing out things that I thought were worth mentioning. It made me feel a little better (it’s not that tough to silence your conscience), but oblivious to me, a few kilometers away, Alias was mulling over the same question at four in the morning.

Today while I wait for electricity to be restored (load shedding at ten at night, MSEB sucks), I am again trying to find an answer to that question. Sania Mirza, Sharapova, Nadal are close to my age and look at what they have achieved. I don’t want to be famous and I certainly don’t look up to them as my idols, but it does make me think about the kind of life I am leading. Or for that case, we ALL are leading.For years we have been taught that we need to work hard to achieve success and happiness. Sure, it’s true. But landing up a good job and earning big bucks isn’t the only way you become happy. We all have been trying so hard all these years to be the perfect human being that we have failed to realize that being imperfect is part of being human.

In human evolution the most radical change was phasing out the organs from our system which are of no use to us. That’s why we have the appendix, which was used to digest raw meat, lying in a state of disuse in our body and we call it ‘vestigial organ’. But do you know what crushing pain and trauma it causes when it starts troubling us? So what do we do then? We remove that thing from our body that causes us so much of suffering.

We often become so conscious of what other people think about us, we stop short of doing things that we enjoy so much. And it is not just fear of the society that holds us back. There is this little monster of self-doubt inside us that washes away all traces of confidence and courage. It is this monster that has stopped me from involving myself in social work. ‘Will I be able to give enough time?’, ‘Will I be able to manage my studies?’, and ‘Will I be able to continue?’, these questions start creeping in my mind until I am so muddles up that I give up my urge to do something altogether. I have missed out on so much just because I have failed to push myself to do the thing that makes me happy. We all wish for happiness and success, but very few are ready to face the dark times that come with it. I don’t want to be a coward anymore. I now realize that the fear of society is just a crutch on which I used to support my willpower. My willpower was never weak, it was lying unused. I need to exercise it much often so that it doesn’t become vestigial and give me pain later. Instead I need to flush out the toxins of apprehension and self-doubt from my system and come out clean. I am aware I will be resisted, for change is a scary thing for some people, but it needs to be realized that you have got just one life and you got to lead that on your own terms. I don’t know whether this has answered my question, I don’t even know if whatever I have written is relevant. But now I have accepted my shortcomings and found a new purpose in life, to overcome them and that, my friend, has made all the difference in the world.

PUNE CHRONICLES

Going to Pune was an on-the-spur decision. I hardly got enough time to think how much time I am going to stay at my relatives’ place. So I stuffed some clothes and took my faithful college bag because it’s my dumping ground and has every necessary and not-so-necessary thing in it. Though it is yet to be ascertained as to why I need to carry medicines well past their expiry date.

My brother and I caught the early morning bus, which was the best thing we could have done. The weather was cool and breezy which seems to have lifted up the driver’s spirit because we were in grave danger of being thrown off the road. Thankfully nothing of that sort happened. But as the bus snaked through the ghats, motion sickness seemed to set in some folks. I just looked out of the window praying hard that no one pukes in front of me. That sight just makes me so queasy. We reached Lonavla soon and almost the entire bus emptied. I had a brief temptation to check out the chikkis, but better sense prevailed when I had a look at my slight paunch. Hehe.

I soon reached my relative’s place but I had no idea about what places to visit in Pune. The problem with Pune is that it has got an absolutely pathetic public transport system (compared to Mumbai) and I had to rely on my cousins to take me sight seeing. And since they are office going people, they could only take me out in the evening and on weekends.

First day I went to see my cousin’s under construction flat near the airport. I initially thought the area must be noisy. But since the commercial flights are allowed only for particular time duration and the airport is mainly used for military purposes, noise wasn’t much of an issue. We spotted an airplane on the runway and waited and waited and waited for it to take off. Finally it did, and I could bring myself to say nothing else but a ‘wow’ when it soared into infinity. Absolutely breath-taking.

The roads are really good. There is so much of construction work going on that I doubt if they will be able to complete it before its starts raining heavily(it hasn’t yet actually started raining out there). But unlike here in Mumbai where you see debris at every random spot, the one thing I noticed about Pune folks is that they always talk in terms of kilometers. It is quite unlike Mumbai where we talk in terms of minutes. Queer.

Pune has got such fabulous gardens; it can put Mumbai to shame. By saying gardens I don’t mean the places in which a few trees are grown haphazardly; I actually mean a garden- scenic and relaxing. I also visited the snake garden, though there were less snakes and more of other animals to be seen. For a change, the animals weren’t sluggish or inactive. I saw the white eyed buzzard(that's a bird in case you were wondering), star tortoise and really cute peacocks. But the best part was watching two leopards play amongst themselves, quite oblivious of the crowd.
Absolutely amazing sight. I had just started clicking pictures on my cell phone when a man yelled out “excuse me, photography is not allowed”. For the rest of my time, I looked around for some sign prohibiting photography. By the time I left, I couldn’t spot even one warning. Cursing the idiot, I left the snake garden.

Damn, I got bullied again.

Monsoon mania

So finally the monsoon has arrived, though I am not really fond of it. It maybe the perfect time for couples to cootchie-coo under large umbrellas at Bandstand, but try getting into a rush hour local while its pouring and you will realize its not romantic at all. I really hate it when my feet become all dirty and I have to walk in ankle length deep waters that have god-knows-what things floating around. I get my holidays during the monsoons so I under virtual house arrest because my Mom gets hysterical every time it thunders. But still you can't really hate monsoons because it offers welcome respite from the heat and floods your mind with memories just like it floods your streets. I must say my English is getting better these days. Really now, comparing nostalgia with flood waters!

We Indians share a love- hate relationship with the monsoon. We pray that it starts raining when we can’t bear the summer heat anymore, but when it does, we start cursing it for the inconvenience it causes. After days of gazing at the sky, I finally got to see some dark clouds. I was studying when it showered a bit at 2 am. For the next one hour I was at the window enjoying the mystic smell and nostalgia crept in. but it raining only for a few minutes and in the morning nobody believed me because the roads weren’t wet. So I think I was the only one to catch the technically first rains.

The next day, the actual rains started. I was having my dinner but by the time I came out of the building, it had stopped raining. Sorely disappointed, I came back home only to be inundated with smses from friends who were soaking in the rain. I cursed my luck and went back to, what else, studying.

The next day, I was leaving for my exams when I was greeted by a dust storm and I stood in the middle of the road, rubbing my eyes. I almost got knocked off by an auto as I was hurrying to the station. The paper was rotten so everyone was in a pretty bad mood. My friends and I were waiting for the train when all of a sudden it started raining. I don’t know what got into us, we rushed out of the station and started giggling like anything. We weren’t all soaked because it wasn’t raining that heavily, but it did uplift my mood.
And I can never forget the way people at the station were staring. But then, who cares?
I was having the time of my life. I really got nostalgic on the way back home and was rewinding all the memories associated with the rains for the rest of the day. But then I got back with a thud when I was reminded of my pending papers. Trust the University to kill your mood. Hats off to them!

Trials And Tribulations

I know I have been rather lazy and failed to regularly update my blog. I have realized that maintaining a blog is a tough task and I salute all those regular bloggers who come up with ingenious topics. I mean seriously, where do they get the ideas? I haven’t yet been hit by a brainwave for my blog as now, but I think tales of woe and suffering make an interesting topic. At least your own problems seem dwarfed by comparison.

For the past one and half months, I am stuck in a cycle of exam-submission-exam-viva-exam schedule. We were giving our unit tests when most of my classmates didn’t even know the name of the subjects. Cool, na? Managed to pass somehow. The test as a joke with many of my friends extremely proud of the marks I single digits. He he.

Someone seemed to have stepped up the accelerator and time just whizzed past me. All of as sudden we were inundated with assignments with few days to go before the final submission. Something of ‘Operation Pendulum’ (Five Point Someone, remember??) was planned and we divided the assignments. So a master copy of each assignment was available and if the professors had bothered to check, even the wrong stuff in it was Xeroxed. We call it ‘chapna’ coz everything is written as it is with no changes. Some guy came close to copying the role number too!

Then came the prelims and we braced ourselves for endless days of studies, books, coffee and midnight calls asking “Kitna hua padhke?” I was in mortal fear of falling asleep during the exams. The prelims were just the firecrackers; the actual bomb hadn’t yet been dropped. I gaped at the viva dates and realized my batch was having it day after tomorrow. Rocking life, isn’t it?? Don’t ask me how they went, I don’t remember it. With six days to go before the university papers, I was cursing myself for the times I procrastinated saying “Sab padhai PL me ho jayega”.

I am now done with four papers, one was good, two were ok-ok, and one was bad. Four down, two more to go. I think I will lose my nuts by the time I complete engineering. But then, not anyone can boast of surviving such a stressful phase.

P.S.
For all those who think I have magnified my woes and exaggerated my experiences in engineering, here is an interesting anecdote:
My friend was in a tearing hurry to catch a local train which had just arrived on the platform. She tried to get in but lost her balance because of the wet floor and was half inside the train and half on the platform. A group of elderly uncles noticed this and the usual racket ensued. She somehow managed to get in before the train started but not before one gentleman asked her, “Beta, are you an engineering student?”.

BOUQUETS N BRICKBATS

This is the first time I have ever written and posted a poem. I can’t really call it as a poem; it’s just an expansion of my random thoughts. So it is quite natural that some may not quite get with the flow of the ideas in it. Some might find it rough or badly edited, but that’s the way my thoughts were while penning it and I wanted my state of mind to reflect in the poem.
All I want to say is that I REALLY REALLY want a feedback- positive or negative on my first attempt at what I may dare say, poetry. All those who read it, please don’t forget to add some comments. Who knows, maybe some of my other random thoughts might see the light of the day.

ILLUSIONS OF REALITY

It’s just another word,
For you,
It’s a big deal for me.

Thirsty in wide expanse of sand,
I searched for it,
And forever like a mirage,
It fooled me yet again.

Reality is just another word,
For you,
It’s a big deal for me.

The breeze whistled in my ears,
Replaying dire warnings,
The cynics mocked and giggled and pitied,
Mine was a search for the alchemist’s stone,
They said,
Heard, but never seen.

The moment finally comes,
Unannounced and unpredicted.
The desert winds howl,
Kicking up furious dust,
The world around me swirls,
Oh, why did I have to ask for this??

This has to end, this has to end,
The little voice in my head spoke,
Looking above for a guardian angel,
I realized it’s a lonely world.

In agreement, the sky roared,
My hands felt the tears of the sky,
Cleansing and purging my soul,
The rain washed away all grime of the past.
And streams of fear flowed out.

Reality’s no big deal,
Need to sow seeds of
Self realization,
And let them blossom in your life.

The lump in my throat loosened,
I yelled out to them,
Oblivious of my euphoria,
They huddled together,
And mourned the loss of a girl,
Who got lost in the storm of reality.