#47 Independence Day

This day means differently to different people. For me, it was a day to let go of certain shambles and scuffles in my life. It was a day to finally break free of the mind block that I had been carrying for over a year now, one that was a constant source of anguish and negativity. It was a day to take a stand and give justice to myself and my happiness, for a change. To let go of the unnecessary and unmindful thinking and over thinking and yet some more thinking of what they would think, say or react. It has always been about them. While I kept losing myself. Today I set free the real me that had become a slave of what I was trying to be. She is ecstatic, wild and free. She is happy. That is all that matters to me right now. First time in 21 years, I listened to my heart and just let it be !!

Happy Independence Day people :) I'm sure this day means something or the other to you too. If nothing more than just those clichéd independence day speeches and songs and a lazy holiday, its high time you searched for your reason.


Our college on Independence Day eve.. Love it :)

#46 Headstrong !

"When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A moment is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny"
-Paulo Coelho

Couldn't have made more sense than it does to me today ... Hoping many more such moments ahead.. :)

#45 Typo Queen that I am :P

OK so a FRIEND of mine just pointed this out to me. Wonder why I put "friend" in caps? Well, nothing to do with the overrated Friendship's Day, please. Its because i spelt the word wrong in the title of my previous post !! :P
Error of speed, I must mention. I frequently make such typos, some of which have landed me at some embarrassing situations with people too. I was surprised to be pointed out to that I had got an error in the title itself. No doubt this friend is an Editor in our Editor Board.. But wait a minute, so am I ! How they hell did they find me worthy enough O_O
Ohh, and by the way, before I end this senseless post, heres congratulating him again on securing a job in Shapoorjee Pallonjee Constructions. I know I MUST HAVE got the spellings wrong, but its better than Cheepunji that I called it the first time :P
So congrats buddy , and don't forget the treat ;-)

#44 When I fought with my boyfirend...

Nature has its own queer means to teach you its small yet important lessons, especially at times when you get too busy with your own self to sit back and reflect upon those tiny signals it keeps poking you with. It tries to remind you that you have been ignoring it for too long, like a selfish girlfriend forgetting her wonderful boyfriend for her dumb preoccupations. And when you keep ignoring it for long enough, it has its means to get even with you.
The same happened with me, it had to. I landed in Bhopal from Delhi 10 days back to be welcomed by a sight I was dying to see. The monsoons had arrived and it was a treat for me to be finally relieved of Delhi's unbearable heat. The campus never looks so beautiful and fresh as it does in this season, probably the reason why the freshers and their parents seem uber excited about the campus at the time of admissions (little do they know our campus is a perfect example of a shrewd marketing strategy, sell to the customers right when its at its best, later leave them to their own misery). Anyway, so I returned to the college with a great excitement and plans for the final year (coupled with a lot of anticipation too but that is outside the scope of this post for now).I decided to live and cherish each and every moment I spend here in the college to the fullest, so that when I leave by the end of this term, I leave with a heavy yet satisfied heart, with no regrets for having out missed the best Bhopal had to offer to me. I promised to myself I shall visit the lake more often, enjoy the early morning breeze and the sunrise, stay more in my room in peaceful contemplation beside the window-side, spend more time looking outside at the moon and the stars and the clouds and the birds and all those wonderful things that make me smile.
So I silently told the nature, who happens to be my boyfriend since as long as I can remember, of my dreamy plans. He initially laughed at me with a "ya right, I know you since 21 years now. Don't play these games with me" look. Then I coaxed him further trying to convince it that I really did mean it this time. He reluctantly agreed, warning me of unpleasant consequence lest I ditch him again this time. I promised him I wont, I was a better girl this time. Thus started my quest for a perfect final year anyone could have dreamed of.
First I got busy with shifting into the new room, which took most of my first week. He patiently consented to let me settle in first, understood that it was an arduous task and already a lot of people were stuck in a chain waiting for me to shift. I was awed by this gesture and promised to make up for the time I had already lost by spending more time with him later. He merely grimaced. Then began my classes and CAT coaching, where I was already lagging behind others by miles. I was told to get on track as fast as i could, as I had already wasted a lot of time. The placement season in the college started too, with 5 from my batch securing their jobs already. The pressure started building soon, and the realization of a not-so-dreamy final year started to hit hard at the back of my mind. I decided to plan my time well, to accommodate part of everything in my day, utilize my time efficiently, and still have enough free time to spend with him. He knew what I was coming onto.
I don't think it would be appropriate to divulge into details of how I kept ignoring him and hurting him everytime by breaking the promises I made to him every single day. Its something very personal, plus he hates it when I talk about our fights in public. He waited me for too long it seems, only I overlook his desire for me to be with him by choosing to involve in mindless activities instead. The last blow came when day before yesterday I returned from my coaching after giving a mock exam, opened the window of my room breathing in the cool breeze, and instead of reciprocating his excited greeting with a smile, let alone an overdue rueful apology, I decided to moan about messing up the Verbal Ability section! I went on and on about how careless I was in attempting those questions I should've left and not spending more time on solving Quant, something I am so fond of. Guess it was too much for him to take. He replied with an angry thunder, and I snapped back at him accusing him for being heartless. I left him there outside the window and got to my Gtalk, speaking to everyone else but him. His temper got worse and he threatened me of shooting me down with sickness if I din't relent. I cursed him and told him to stop blackmailing me, I had developed defence against sickness over months, since it had been long I since I had another of those regular sinus attacks. I told him with pride that such tantrums of his wont work with me anymore, turned away and walked off dramatically.




So here I am now, on the bed since two full days, unable to do anything else than sneeze my guts out, and shoving tablets down my throat. I've been sniffing and sneezing and sleeping since what seems like ages to me, and now even my room mate seems bored of seeing my puffy eyes and nose swollen to thrice their already large size. The fan is switched off, the ipod is playing When You're Gone by Avril Lavigne, the window is open and im sitting beside it with a mug of hot tea, looking outside for any sign of him. But he is not ready to budge, I'm sure he is sitting at some corner smirking and grinning at me for having taught me life's important lesson this cruel way.

#43

I seem to be running behind time... way way way behind time.. Will I ever be able to catchup with the pace? Or was I an idiot to let such a situation arise ? Is it too late already? Or is it not? And if its not, why the hell am I not doing something about it..... :|

#42 Of Bliss and Anticipation....

Waking up on a lazy sunday morning to the chirping of birds outside..... rubbing your eyes open to see rain drops by your window side you were dying for..... smiling hard trying to feel the smell of the wet earth, finally..... putting up Yanni on the player......hugging your first ever official huge soft toy your family finally decides to gift you when you turn 21 (and you couldn't be happier)......... and then you hit the sac again :D :D :D
Ohh I love this life. Wish someone could just pay me for being lazy like that :P
I feel the urge to spend the whole day with just myself. No running around. No obligations. No fretting. No frowning. No worrying. No complaining.NO whining. No waiting. No calling. No asking. No wanting. No expecting. Just I me and myself. Its been a long time anyway, and will be so after I get back to college in another 10 days for what lies ahead, a long, tiring unpredictable, intimidating year, the thought of which freaks me out right now. For all I know now, I wish to savour the moments I have with me right now and consciously drive away the anticipation for what lies ahead.

#41 When everything is allright, and still its not...

Its late in the night and I am not able to sleep. I feel low sad and lost. I guess this has been happening for the past couple of days. I have a comfortable life here. Have loads of lovely friends too, its not like I'm lonely without friends and family here. Still something seems to be badly missing these days. I am not able to figure out what. Or maybe I do, but don't want to acknowledge that and hold responsible for the agitation going inside. For reasons I can and should handle but still having difficulty dealing with.
There are times when you act like a little kid, as much as you try not to. You have everything you could have ever wanted or asked for. God is more than kind to you. He gives to plenty of toys and mates to play with. But still you get hung up on that one candy or friend he chooses to keep away from you. You keep moaning and grumbling over it and begin to disregard all the other things you otherwise have with you and should be cherishing. Your entire energy gets channeled towards associating your happiness and peace with that entity and you can't seem to find a way out of this mess. It only builds up to your anger and desperation to disassociate yourself from the entity, only to end up thinking all the more about it and wanting it bad. Today was one such day. Everything about the day was perfect except that one nagging feeling constantly rattling at the back of my head, pulling me into gloom and punishing me for having an otherwise good day, like I was not meant to have one until the issue is well put to rest. And the damn issue just refuses to untangle ! Stupid stubborn brat :x
I decided to go around and speak to a couple of friends and try to confide my anguish, as if seeking instant solution from them. Only to realize that they are probably suffering from far more terrible woes themselves. One of them has his father seriously ill, another one having trouble with his family, while the one I thought was in a perfect dream relationship I could die to have, told me that he had to break off with his girl due to some unfortunate reason a month back .. I am too stunned to even remember what my problem is now. Can only recollect the words my nani used to and now my mother keep reiterating..... "nanak dukhiya sab sansaar"' [its in punjabi fyi, if you wonder.. please look up the web for what it means since
1. I'm lazy
2. I'll possibly just alter the meaning and you wont get it right ]
3. I'm stunned, dint i tell u? ....

#40 And the week that went just amazing....

It had to .. I needed a break from my mad life for a very long time now.. Two of the Six weeks of my internship here are already over and none of us has really gotten into the workig mode :D
These people have pampered us, with two COMPULSORY [yeah, they get mad at you if you refuse :O] tea-breaks between lectures (in the mornings ) and lab (in the afternoon), a bus to ferry us in lunch break to and back from the hostel which is just about 500 mts away, freedom to use the lab anytime of the day and do whatever (read: facebook and chat :D ) and absolutely no restriction on hostel timings ! I just love this life :D
So we took their liberty to a higher level and decided to bunk the lab on friday , with the overtly loud mouthed obnixiously friendly lab attendant supporting us, and went to a mall nearby. All of us interns made a genuine effort to hang out together and get to know each other, and so it turned into a riot. From running up and down the escalators trying to play hide and seek, to 5 people fighting over one tiny piece of chicken topping over the pasta dish, to attacking the box of doughnuts like wild animals devouring on their prey, to the game of truth and dare with only one standard question for truth ( kaun hai, kahan hai , kab se, kaise :P ) and craziest dares ever, it was a day to remember. The people stared at us with bewilderment while we ran and screamed around with each other like chimps in the jungle. I'm sure they must have been contemplating calling over the security! We all returned late in the evening with scores of photographs and tonnes of memories , and friendships made for a lifetime. It was decided that we'd go there every friday after lab to gorge on the doughnuts.........since they sell them at half the rates then :D
The weekend was spent in shopping and roaming around the city, fighting with the autowallas over fares ( bargaining ka naya naya josh :D ),getting into the wrong buses and making a fool of ourselves ! ( "bhaiya, saket jaane ke liye ticket dijiye" .."madam, yeh bus saket se aati hai" ),acting smart with the guys ( " hum to yehin se bus lenge" , "but yahan se toh IIT ko bus jaati hi nahin ! " ), and nearly vandalizing the tantra showroom in search for that one size and colour !! And oh yes, we did bump into Abhishek Bachchan too, who happened to be in the same mall that time for Raavan's promotion. I dint find him cute at all, wonder what girls drool over him for :O
yeh lo..aaap bhi dekho






But now , since the Monday has finally arrived ( kyun kyun kyun :( ), we are back to the lab, still not over the handover of the weekend together, waiting for out prof to assign our projcts. We'll be given a list of projects today , from which we'll have to decide out topic to work on for the following month, in groups of two... Watt lagne waali hai boss :O
adios

#39 The week that went wrong...

Heyyyylo Blog waalon !

Back after a long hiatus, again :P Absence is supposed to make the heart grow fonder, nai? I'm honoured I've been missed by you, at least some of you… Please… Someone anyone… Tell me you missed me… Please please… I'll give you a candy... Chalo theek hai 2 candies... Nai? Chalo koi nai...............................sniff

Sorry for not being around for a long long time. Was absolutely jobless during exams, after which I got super duper bujeee... First with the vivas and the minor project, then the registration for the final year that I had to do before leaving for home ( oops, im in final year now :O :O ), and then dashing back to home at such a short notice. Parents had to leave for videsh to my brotherji's place, and I had to make it home the evening before their flight. The Chowkidaar had to be given duties, you see :P
And, since Mr. Murphy looooooooooves to put me through unnecessary adventures, he coaxed IRCTC into refusing me a tatkal ticket this time back home from college. Delhi main break lekar Jammu dhakke kha kha ke pahunchi ( read: the coupe was full of chattering and howling couples and kids and old auntyji's and flashy bunty's )
Meanwhile at hometown, I (was made to) stayed at my cousins' place more than at home, and couldn't surf net at all...for the online practice tests ofcourse ;)( . They finally let me off the evening before I was to head to Delhi, during which I could just manage to pack some stuff (and leave more behind, as I realize now) and seal the entire house for another month or so. Reached the station just moments before the train was to depart, dashing frantically towards my coach with my laptop, my cousin panting behind with my luggage, and his kids making way from getting squeezed in the chaos. I have never ever caught a train such dramatically. Little did I know , the drama was yet to begin........
The train started just moments after I got in, my cousin and his kids looking happier than me. I guess they were glad to finally get rid of me :O
I reached my seat to be welcomed by a bunch of uncles and auntijis and score of kids , and some more auntyjis staring at me like they saw an Orangutan just out of the zoo, one of them claiming my seat to be hers. Confident of this being some misunderstanding , i went up to the Ticket Checker to confirm who seemed more interested in earning some quick bucks form the guys with unreserved seats. He brushed me off by suggesting that i share my seat with that aunty!! Furious at his nonchalance and determined to get my seat back from that weird lady and retire for the night peacefully, i went up to the senior Ticket Incharge, who immediately turned around to me with a wide grin. Guess he thought he could make more out of a kid-looking girl. " hanji madam, boliye, aapki kitni RAC hai, confirm karni hai ?? Bhai 500 se kam nahin lagenge" ... Grinning at his stupidity, i snapped back " nahin, confirmed hai, ek aunty ko confusion hai, aap unki RAC kahin aur clear kijiye aur meri seat khaali karwayiye "

Dumbass right ????


ME !!




I HAD GOT IN THE WRONG TRAIN !!! That was one of the times in my life , when I couldn't help but stand there open mouthed. Too stunned to even begin to formulate a reply to the complete and utter idiocy I had committed, I could only gurgle out some inhuman noise that sounded something like " humph?? " followed by a gut curdling chill down the spine. Turned out that the train had the same name and route, with its number being 0414 , and the one I was supposed to take was 2414 and had got 2 hours late at the station. Too shocked and helpless, I had to give in to the man's greed and pay him his 500 bucks to let me travel in the same train. And that aunty, the very same mean auntyji, now feeling vindicated, consented to let me share her seat with the daughter !! Haye Rabba...

So finally , with all the adventures and misadventures, G landed in Delhi and somehow managed to make it to the IIT-Delhi campus, where she would me interning for the next 45 days. Thats not all, im in CSE and my workshop involves all Electronics. So i'll have to slog for the next few days with some electronics subjects and hardware design languages, catch up with these IITian's standards and somehow complete my project. I wonder why God chooses to drop shock bombs on me one after the other in a go. Right when I'm dealing with one mess-up, BAKOOOOOOOM !! yeh lo, ek aur, khaas aapke liye, ting !! I think we need to talk !

And as for the Railways , G has decided, shaadi karungi ( if at all ) , toh railways ke ticket incahrge se hi..



Abhi ke liye tata bye bye,
for more on my stay in this fantastic institute and the goof-ups here [please no, God , please please please no :( ], watch this space :)

#38 Those (apparently) in love

please stay away...

or atleast don't make a huge fuss of your love by talking incessantly about your boyfriends/ girlfriends or how much they love you and think of you and call you every half an hour. Good to hear that they share every bit of their day with you, where and when and why they are going and what are they wearing. But boasting about how they even tell you about what flavour of candy they are eating right now or what colour their undie is just not so impressive. Sweet and mushy it may sound to others to some extent, but no one gives a rat's ass in being told all the time about how they suck up every inch of your space and life. You people undermine the value and the sanctity of love, and there is no way your immature trumpeting of your undying love (which is nothing less than an attention-deficit disorder in reality) will get people to respect your relationship. There is a certain dignity about relationships that one needs to maintain, and that is only how you get others to respect and look upto you..and not by over dramatized display to the world of every tiny occurence with your other half..
I say this because I don't want to turn cynical of the idea of relationships and love to see people around me happy with their loved ones. Its a blessing I long for. But with people like these that completely change the definition of mature love, I can only get more repelled..

#37 They say love is there at every corner of the world......

and i think i'm probably running around in circles !!


okay before you jump into some exercise of the grey cells, please don't bother ;) Its not any desperate-chasing-of-love-attempt rant, but a text I received by my friend a couple of days back. I liked it a lot, so I put it up on my Google Buzz status.

Its this one reply by a batchmate that got me literally open mouthed..He gave me a link of a page in reply to the staus.. Its a research paper by a Tristan Miller of German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence...dates way back to 20 December 1999. You must read this! Someone can actually propose a mathematical model for the reason behind the inability of some men to find them suitable dates!!

Here's the link
Why I Don't Have A Girlfriend !


Apparently I have Artificial Intelligence paper to write tomorrow o-O


Crazy !

#36 Anger

There's a lot of anger in me today. Anger over not having a control over myself regarding certain things I need to be focussed and clear about. Unfortunately, even after 20 years of existance I still havent figured out an effective and constructive outlet to this anger,and more often than not the anger turns into misery and turmoil in the head.
Will things truly be ok? We don't know if they will remain the same, change for the better or change for the worse... and that is what life brings us... questionable moments of this sinking time...time that washes away or lifts us up to the surface..
How much more of this can one take? Others do have it worse that I do, but I am going on sinking and I am questioning and I am wondering about everything and anything. Am I even making sense?

They say everything will be ok. It all needs time.

They don't know or they havent done enough. I have given enough time. Much more than enough. Waiting for things to settle and start over again. And I have noticed them not getting back to OK, but reaching a point of no-return. Time is needed only to get the stupid stuborn head to realize that the moment is gone and nothing can be done about it, and its time it move own and give up brooding over spilled milk.........


But what if you just dont want to let things go out of hand, and keep on trying to set things OK and figure out ways, no matter how illogical, to keep holding on to those things? Only making yourself sillier in the process??

#35 Sometimes

I wish I could start afresh. Absolutely from the scratch. From the beginning. Not a new chapter, but a whole new book alltogether. No trace from the past. No one forms any notion of me based on past instances. No judgements. No opinions. No questions. No ill-feelings. No animosity no mockery. Just the wisdom from the past experiences...

#34 I Want You Back..... NOW !

Hey baby,


Its been 12 long cruel days and sleepless nights since i lost you from my sight. Not a moment passes when i don't think about you and worry about where and how you'd be doing. I think about you all the time. The loss is too much for me to handle. I miss you all the time. And so does my laptop. We both miss you every damn time when we need to transfer data or just play around with you. Miss the times when I would proudly flash you around and others would marvel at your beauty. You tiny cute little thing, i did every possible thing in the world to look for you, pestered everyone to give me any tiny lead about you, and even offered a stupid pendrive in return for you. Ohh I could give my entire fortune to have you back.
You are just so special to me, and so was the way you came into my life. The one who gave you to me is gone too, I can't afford to lose you now. I remember how he took the pains of ordering you for me and gifting it to me during the time I badly needed someone to take away my grief of parting with my final year friends last year. You may be gone, but I can't rest until I have you back. I'm so much in love with you. I confess I would secretly stare at you for hours alltogether when you lay beautifully on my study table and I would pretend to be reading, while i would actually ogle at you. I was too scared to let you know, lest you shall get angry. I promise I wont offend you now, just don't be mad at me and come back please. please :(

To the person who stole picked it after it got dropped, or the one who took it from me and dropped it somewhere , I really hope you choke a cookie and get a spaz attack return it back soon.





*sob sob*



In a childish tantrum + heartbroken lover's moans,

G

#33 Past imperfect, Present tense....

Today I opened the preparation material given by my coaching, something that I was supposed to have done 8 months back. But the proud owner of the lazy bum that I am, I kept procrastinating. After the CAT results and one Mock Test by another coaching centre in the city, some batchmates of mine have started fretting and begun preparing at a pace that makes us feel ashamed of our laziness. To avoid the embarassment and more importantly to pretend to be serious about my preparation ( and hence avoid feeling left out form the league), I picked up the Verbal Ability module book and picked up what i thought would be a cake walk- Reading Comprehension. Among the reading techniques and the deterrents explained, there was Regression that was stressed on quite a bit. It strongly discouraged the tendency of going back to the words and lines just read. It gets one stuck at the past thought and also slows down the reading progress to a great extent, resulting in a loss of comprehension and a lot of time.
This got me into thinking. Strange how the text I was reading as a part of my course had an uncanny similarity to the thoughts going on in my head since the morning, thoughts that kept me restless throughout the day. Isin't it very common in our lives for us to regress into the past? We tend to go back into the past thoughts and memories and somehow get stuck with them for a long time, and just don't know how to get out of them. We think we have well moved on with our lives and are doing just well will the present, when all it takes is one tiny memory from the past to hit our head and we start losing our composure. I have seen friends going about their daily life smoothly suddenly falling into the abyss of their hangover of the past- breakups, lost friends, unsatisfactory academic performance, family tensions, failure- anything. Its not the regression that bothers me, but the instant recovery is what I am seeking. Regression is sad. Its upsetting and unhealthy.

#32 The roommate who never was..

It was a cold Saturday evening, and I was sitting in my room watching a draggy movie when the phone rang at 7pm . "Hello?" I said.
    A boy's voice came over the line. "Can I speak to Katie, please?"
    I share my room with Natasha, and my name definitely is not Katie. It was probably a wrong number and I was bored.. I replied, "I'm sorry, she's not in right now. Can I take a message?"
    "Do you know what time she'll be back?" he responded.
    "I think she said she'd be back at around 10pm"
    Silence on the other end... a confused silence. "Is this Rosa?"
    My name isn't Rosa, either. This was definitely a wrong number. So
I replied, "Yes, it is. Do you want to leave a message for Katie?"
    "Well... she said she would come to meet me in the evening and asked me to call her," he said in a slightly irritated voice.
“ahh…got a perfect entertainment for the night”, I sniggered to myself and so the devil took over..
    I replied, "Well, she went out with Ben about an hour ago, and said
that she would be back at 10pm."
    A shocked voice now: "Who's Ben?!"
    "The guy she went out with."
    "I know that! I mean... who is he?"
    "I don't know his last name. Look, do you want me to leave a message
for Katie?"
    "Yes... please do. Tell her to call me when she gets back."
    He was sounding pretty irate at this point, and I could hear his temper
flaring. "I sure will. Is this Jesse?"
    He exploded, "Who's Jesse?"
    Apparently he wasn't. "Well... she's going out with Jesse at 8pm. I
thought you were him. Sorry... it was an honest mistake."
    "Katie's the one who's made the mistake! Tell her that John called her and he's very upset and that I would like her to call me as soon as she gets back."
    I smiled and said, "Okay, I will... but Ben isn't going to like this..."
    *Click*    



based on the incident that took place a couple of years back when i was in high school. I was alone at home, TV and internet had failed to amuse me ,and i was obviously in no mood to sit down with aldehydes and ketones. Ghosh whatever in the world were we made to do then in the name of STUDIES ?? The naughty kid in me, which is almost always dormant, had stirred up a bit..errr..as u might have read, turned devil in this case....
Its funny how recollecting past memories still manage to bring back that smile on your face and that twinkle in your eyes. Well Mr. John, whoever you are, I feel sorry for you. But now to think of it, you probably deserved it. You couldn't trust your girl even a weenie bit to realise your calling mistake. And you really have to get so insecure if she went out with a guy ? I mean excuse me?? Just that one piece of incomplete insufficient inconclusive information and you have to get that paranoid !! Serves you right, your bad :D

#31 Dirtiest prank ever

How do you feel when you are like this ".." close to achieving something you hadn't expected even in your wildest dreams, which by a terrific move of your fate is brought right in front of you that you start expecting it to be indeed meant for you. And then, suddenly by another terrific, rather terrible move of the very same fate,the thing gets snatched from you at the mere flicker of an eye, like it was just an illusion, a crazy trick for the mind. You somehow happen to make it to the top of an otherwise unapproachable cliff, and just step away from your destination, someone suddenly kicks you off the brink. And you are left bewildered at what exactly happened at the first place for such a thing to occur to you. When the thought of making it that close hadn't sunk in properly, your hopes are raised and then suddenly crushed in the cruelest possible manner..
So, what is the best way to react to such a situation? When you know it isin't your jig, but you are made to believe that it is , and then suddenly it gets taken away at the last moment.
The thing in question here being one of the most sought after companies visiting your college for internship recruitment, shortlisting you among 16 form the batch for the interview after a horrible written round, and suddenly in the midnight before your interview, striking 6 names off the list. Need I say what happened to G ?

#30

Hello. Long time. Yeah. Wont delve into the reasons for the hiatus. And wont promise to be regular from now on and gibber stuff like that. Just to let you know that I won't be here for some more time to come. I'm going out to search for myself. Its high time I did that. If you find me somewhere before I return, please tell me to wait. 20.5 years is a hell lot of time to chase the elusive me in me.

ps: happy new year in advance. I'll be travelling back to college on 31st n 1st, so this time my new year will be on the go. humph.

#29 Budday :)

My blog completes her(obviously :P ) one year today .. It has been amazing having her in my life. She, like a perfect friend, has let me vent out whatever i had in my mind, though most of it might not have made any sense at all; and understood even more when i did want to make sense but would fall short of words. There have been times when i would leave incomplete drafts and chose not to publish them. When i would open the dashboard, start typing my mind and suddenly decide to scrap it all off. When i would be unable to share my feelings with anyone and run to her, stare at her for a long time but feel at complete loss of expressions. When i'd get irritated and tired of her that i would contemplate dumping her(delete her that is),then somehow decide against it but not speak to her for long. She would still tolerate my eccentricity with utmost patience and maturity, and stuck around with me throughout. Cheers to the space that i am absolutely in love with !!

#28 CATastrophe

A complete wtf situation. CAT decides to go online, outsourcing the process to Prometric for a hefty $ 40 mn. Prometric is known to conduct the online exams GRE and GMAT for years now and since CAT is touted as one of the toughest and sought after entrance exams, going online to save on the paperwork and provide flexibility to students to appear per their will felt like a good decision. Only until the C-day.
Servers crashing, exams cancelling and mismanagement on the first day created chaos everywhere. I can only imagine the extent of inconvenience and trouble the examinees might have gone through, but refrained from jumping right onto conclusions and censuring the process simply because I felt this was the first time and certain hiccups were bound to be confronted with when one tries to introduce something new. But four days on and more than 7500 students unable to take their exam is extremely vexing. Instead of owning up or trying to provide some respite to already frantic junta, the authorities have been displaying utterly irresponsible behaviour with all possible weird explainations. Latest being virus attack .. Virus attack !! How could a virus possibly communicate with the computers, since it’s a Computer Based Test connected to a local server and not ‘online’ in the real sense. ( Or am I an ignorant here to have not understood the virus-deal? )
Leaving the technical snags aside, how does one explain the negligence and incompetence shown by the invigilators in the centres, talking shamelessly on their cellphones while some students suffer near heart attacks on failing to take the test and others desperately trying to concentrate on their tests through the mayhem. Also Prometric failing to make a dry-run of the CBTs well in advance to ensure the fool-proof performance (saving them the mockery they have made of themselves now). Din’t they announce that they were well prepared and had ‘strategies’ for, like they said, ‘terrorist attacks’ and ‘natural calamities’ ? These people really have a nice sense of humour I must admit.

Amidst the usual failure on part of the authorities to account for the faults and our dear ministry keeping a convenient mum over the matter ( yea, how come none of the politicians have come forward and blamed the other parties or our favourite “ foreign hands” !! ), the real sufferers are the lakhs of aspirants whose careers are at stake. I’ve seen some of my own friends taking CAT to be their life’s ulterior motive and who have turned nearly insane during the rigorous preparation. They were already showing symptoms of dementia ranging of frequent tempramental outbursts to anorexia to blackouts to insomnia as their test date was approaching. I just hope they don’t get a nervous breakdown if their computer screen suddenly refuses to load questions for them !
Its very unfortunate to see such a farsighted initiative landing in a fiasco. And its more unfortunate to see the way these people aren’t even able to manage the situation properly ! Weren’t they supposed to be the management gurus?
Announcement of CAT going online next year too is what gives me the jitters now, since I am also supposed to ( until I change my mind which I think I should contemplate) sit for the exam.