Tag Archives: exams

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Ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings

Whoever came up with the quote: “Sticks and stones may break my bones…” had never had my set of friends. Brutal honesty, expressed with an absolute finality of a coroner: “Your blog is dead!”, is sufficient reason to post soon. With the stench of mid-sems hanging in the air like some imminent doom, I believe this is what Coelho had in mind when he writes in ‘The Alchemist’: “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it…” – Just the perfect excuse for sitting in front of the lappy and staring away at the screen as blank as your mind.

It’s a rough crowd out there in the campus these days – students going berserk, profs going on strike. Even my otherwise hibernating neighbour was driven by a fiendish zeal, meticulously masterminding and executing his devilish plans. Aah! The evils of poli. The admin as usual remains clueless. Ignorance is sheer Bliss. When fights erupt between two rival poli groups, they shut down all canteens. I mean what do they think this is, some medieval-age castle warfare? Cut off their resources, choke all their escapes… With no rations, they are bound to give in sooner or later.

The only time I felt genuinely proud of the IIT-R faculty was when I came across an article in ‘Business Standard’ explicitly mentioning the Roorkee crowd opting for an additional four day leave as a protest against the insufficient pay hike. The happiness as such, was short lived. Not only was the strike called off, they even graciously accepted to keep Saturday a working day (How in the world did it help their cause?). In the midst of all this the students were conveniently forgotten. Couple this to the frenzy surrounding poli and SAC posts, and the humour is ironical.

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Of late, I have acquired some unhealthy habits like going off to the library when the exams appear uncomfortably close. Not that they have really helped me a lot; except maybe raise my CG a couple of digits on the wrong side of the decimal. Yet there is hope. My blog survives….

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Life beyond Grades

Roorkee summer and the endsems – it doesn’t get any better than this! I am either sweating under the blazing sun or after a glimpse at the course syllabi. The room offers no respite from the heat either, and soon lecture halls and library seem so much more inviting for all the wrong reasons. Trudging along the dreary road back to Azad one such day, I find a rick-puller under the shade of a tree, swiping off the sweat from his face. Remnants of his youth still lingered there somewhere, but flecks of white peppered across his head were in stark contrast – a witness to the grim struggle that was his life. I wonder, for the rest of my way back, about life – with all its unfairness and ironies, and despair and regrets; and yet the innate sense of hope within it and the joy of living. I wonder what secrets my future conceals….

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Never an absolution

Compared to any ordinary mortal, I have always found myself to be relatively free during such days as these – bearing threats of an approaching midsem or endsem. Unlike the afore mentioned lesser humans, scuttling around in a state of hysteria, I can be found in my room doing… ummm… nothing! This apparent disposition of calmness which people may mistakenly attribute to my superior preparations, is more of a stupor, owing to the lack of the same. It is the hopelessness of the whole predicament and the acceptance of the inevitable doom that renders me worthless.

Interestingly, this uselessness gives rise to an ardent desire within me to immerse myself into all sorts of new ventures, just as long as they aren’t even remotely linked to my acads. First, it was the Rubik’s cube that caught my fancy, and hence ensued an unsuccessful attempt of learning to solve it; next followed an addictive spell of DoTA. Unfortunately, these whims of mine, rise and ebb with the tides of time – that are the examination season. Conforming with the traditions, this time around, it is gonna be my blog and my neighbor, The Sage’s guitar (which, incidentally, has been taken on lease from a particular inmate of SB; and conveniently forgotten by both the lender and the borrower – to my delight, I may add!).

Sporadically scattered across such suspended states of my existence are moments of panic which find me with a textbook – in a feeble attempt to justify my presence in the insti. More often than not, such a delusioned state soon culminates into another one with me daydreaming or better still, dozing off – the whole nine yards! Consistent through all of this is a thought gnawing at my mind – slowly, persistently – consuming, within me, any desire to savor that moment. It is the acceptance of my need to study combined with the realization that everyone else is doing it; and my innate disability to follow suit.

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Piercing through the lulling melody of  the LOTR soundtrack, comes hurtling a string of curses and expletives of most ingenious kinds! Left in its wake, are the shattered remnants of a deathly silence that only moments ago haunted the narrow corridors. Someone just failed to make or break a new ‘Minesweeper’ record!  People stir – rudely awoken from their reverie. And a smug grin spreads across my face as I get back to finishing off this post. The world is so much more marvelous, if only you aren’t alone! The future lies safe still, with those of us who will defy all odds (and commmonsense!) and follow their hearts. Not everything is lost… yet!