Post Number 11 : Talent and Person- One or separate?

Have you seen The Carmichael Show? You should. For a comedy series in today’s age, it is surprisingly insightful and entertaining.

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I am particularly impressed by the second episode of Season 2 in the series. The protagonist of the show, Jerrod gets tickets to a live show by Bill Cosby for his family on his parents’ anniversary following which there’s intense and comedic discussion over whether they should attend the show or not, given the recent news of Cosby’s scandals.

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Post Number 10 : We are all running. (But do we know why?)

I sit in front of my laptop screen on a fine Sunday evening, too lazy to study something with utmost concentration and too active to simply lie down and take a nap, hence, prone to one of my periodic bouts of overthinking. And with the backdrop of internship and placement season going on in the college campus, there is one overriding sentiment I am nursing currently. ‘Why isn’t the prospect of getting/not getting an internship not affecting me as much as it is affecting my peers?’

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Post Number 9 : The dynamics of online debating. (And why I hesitate to participate sometimes)

On the internet, I rarely engage in social/political/religious discussions. That’s not for a lack of opinion. On the contrary, I am constantly reading up on various issues plaguing the world. Recently, there has been an unprecedented upsurge in social and political developments, developments that have reverberated around the globe, affecting most of us via the ripple effect of globalization. Naturally, people want to discuss and deliberate over the nuances of what is going on. So far, so good. The trouble is, the nuances of the nuances are privy to only a handful.

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Post Number 8: Life and Doubts

Entering the haloed gates of the top engineering colleges is a dream. For most of us, unfortunately the heady feeling of this dream coming true is short lived.

Quite a few of us decided to add Tech to the B only because our parents wished so (maybe even ordered us to do so.). Many others did it because there wasn’t anything else that they really wished to do. Engineering seemed to be the safest choice. After all, chasing our dreams may sound courageous, but courage wouldn’t pay our bills or even buy us the humble daal and roti.
And thus we start the rest of our lives, confused about what we really want. Don’t you worry child, whether or not you make new friends, this confusion may accompany you for a long time…maybe even after college.

Then comes the time for showing everyone what a big shot you are on the first day. It doesn’t even take the first lecture to get over before you’re punched in the gut with the realisation that you’re not really the next Elon Musk. The boy or girl sitting next to you seems just as smart and talented as you are. Thus begins the confusion of self-worth. This too shall be your loyal mistress for the coming years. And after you read the next paragraph, this might be the only mistress you’re going to get for a some time.

Talking of mistress and handsome lovers, we must also talk about our wish to find our soul-mate. For the more hip and happening ones, even flings seem all right. But the cursed male to female ratio successfully destroys all our romantic dreams. This itself can make anyone to become a feminist crusader for all the girls who couldn’t attend school or didn’t take science and engineering. After all, your “coochy-coo” could have been one of them. But alas! Many of us are left to be the secret Romeos or Juliets who post our heartfelt messages on confession pages, constantly wondering if there is something wrong with how we walk or talk or look. And hence our confusion about our looks and personality start.

Meanwhile, you’re also seriously contemplating your future course of life. Do you actually like your stream or should you switch over to something else? MBA sounds cool. IAS doesn’t sound so bad either or should I learn some programming languages and take up coding? For some of us, we’re unable to resolve this dilemma even in our fourth year of college. We just go where the masses go. Not all of us our made to be the shepherds. Some need to fit the roles of the clueless sheep.

Of course, life’s confusions don’t stop here. Just when you think you’ve got a hang of things, life just has to meddle and mess up everything. The only thing we can do is sit back and laugh at the comedy our lives are.

Post Number 7: A Beginner’s Guide to Wasting Holidays

The following program has been crafted and perfected by an experienced individual with an extensive knowledge of whiling away time and accomplishing little of actual relevance in daily life. If you are a homo-sapien predisposed towards utilizing every second out of the 86400 given in a day, then this program is not recommended at all. It may lead to bouts of restlessness and hopelessness, followed by pangs of guilt and a feeling of inadequacy and I at no point encourage such emotions in the process of whiling away time.

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Post Number 6: The 7 Commandments of Surviving Cricket World Cup Season in India

It’s tough being a cricket fan in India. There are so many talented players to keep track of. Obviously, there are a few that you aren’t so fond of. But dare you vocalize that sentiment! There will be ardent supporters of that person at your throat quicker than Hannibal Lector can say ‘Fava beans and Chianti’.

You know what’s tougher though? NOT being a cricket fan. AT ALL. Not even ‘walk past a TV, watch an over and leave’ type viewer. To all those out there, here are some words of wisdom from someone who has no credentials to offer advice. But when has that ever stopped anyone, right?

RULE 1: Thou must be mentally prepared.

You must brace yourself for the storm that’s about to hit you. Read More

Post Number 5:The night before the exam

The clock’s tick-tock grates on my nerves.
Everything is silent and the only sound that can be heard is occasional howling by the bored neighbourhood dog who has nothing better to do.
Immensely grateful, I thank the lords for not forcing my ears to be an unwilling guest at someone’s loud wedding.

I am flipping through the pages in front of me but the words have long since stopped making any sense.
Still I march forward with the studying.
The exam’s tomorrow and there is still so much to do.
The cups of coffee are losing their effect and I am reminded I should take a break and go to the kitchen for some more.
Not that it’ll help much.

The legs of the chair screech as I push back the chair.
On the way to the kitchen, all the different formulae, theorems, definitions swim through my head.
I am so drowsy I could just fall down and not feel a thing.

But there’s still do much to do.
The irony of the promise I made during the last exams isn’t lost on me.
Then too, a solemn promise had been made to study beforehand and not leave everything until the last minute.

Oh well.
Lets get on with making the coffee.
As I add some instant-coffee powder in the hot milk, I go through the syllabus again.
Hmm, there aren’t too many topics left.
I’ll manage to complete them in the morning.

Pouring the coffee powder on the spoon back into its jar, I switch off the kitchen’s light and zombie my way to my bed.
Barely removing my slippers, I plop down flat on my bed and pull the covers up.
Silently praying that the exam goes well, I close my eyes, knowing it’ll be just as terrible as ever.

Post Number 4: Unresolved Resolves

Post Number 4: Unresolved Resolves

At midnight, on 31st December, as the minute hand went past 12, indicating the onset of the year of the Monkey, my Facebook wall was inundated with an annoying amount of “New Year, New Me”  posts and people behaving as if the increment from 2015 to 2016 was nothing short of the New World Order with Inspirational quotes to an extent that would give even Oprah Winfrey a complex. And amidst all this chaos of creating an occasion out of something that should seem ordinary, the passing of time, the common theme in almost every declaration of attention seeking (a.k.a  XYZ is celebrating the new year with his/her profile friends, their pets, the entire city, Superman, Batman, E.T., the creatures from Avatar and 50 others) all of them mentioned one particular thing, Resolutions!

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AH! Resolutions. A wonderful yearly reminder to oneself of one’s uselessness and lack of ambition and dedication. How among everything else, we fail at pursuing the most mundane of things, that too decided by us only! Now, who doesn’t like that? To be nudged not-so gently periodically and be told “You know that thing you wanted to do and should have done WAY ago, yeah you should ‘try’ doing that again.”

I got off my laptop without posting ANY DAMN New Year nonsense (where’s my medal for courage in face of social expectations?) and scavenged through my unkempt bookshelf to find what I wanted to, my dust laden, slightly cobwebby (I should really clean more….maybe I could make that a resolution?….LOL who am I kidding?) ‘Resolution Diary’ . And as theatrically as I could manage, I blew off the dust and opened it with a dreamy nostalgic look on my face. Now it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I hadn’t managed to accomplish most of my resolutions- most of which involved physical exertion(SHOCKING!!). But there was a saving grace- I had managed to fulfill one task, that involved reading around 20+ books in the year. I was ecstatic. 2015 hadn’t been THAT useless after all. I did ultimately pull off one resolution, although the rest peered back at me like sad, neglected children that had been overlooked for their more loved sibling. Why couldn’t I manage to do any other task? If I had managed one, theoretically I could have managed the others as well? *emphasis on theoretically* Why wasn’t I as motivated for the rest of the resolutions ? Why didn’t I end up in better physical shape by the end of the year? Why hadn’t a reunion for F.R.I.E.N.D.S released exactly 10 years after the last episode? Why hadn’t ‘Fetch’ become a genuine English word? QUESTIONS! QUESTIONS!

New-Year-Resolution

As much as I wanted to analyze the psychology behind my actions and inaction, I had other urgently important stuff to do such as judging people by their social media antics and commenting witty one liners on their posts to hoard likes ,so I found myself a new pen and neatly scribbled 2016 RESOLUTIONS in fancy cursive writing and very cleverly extended arrows from the 2015 page to the 2016 page ( Genius I know!) . With a grin on my face, I kept the diary back on the bookshelf, slighlty hidden because I didn’t want anyone else to see it and have a good  chuckle on my account.

I was glad to have taken the initiative to resolve the unresolved resolutions. And so I have decided and I’ll let you all know, that in 2016, I will learn a new language, lose weight, start exercising, eat better yada yada ………….. starting next Monday!

regina

Post Number 3 : The Career Catastrophe

Post Number 3 : The Career Catastrophe

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“Girlfriend hai tumhari?” asked the aunty sitting in front of me, shoving the samosa in her mouth, giving me a sly grin, hoping I would say something that would give her gossip fodder for her evening chat with the rest of her clique. I sidestepped this trap by giving a well-structured “NO”. “Aage career ka kya socha hai?” she sputtered, both literally and  figuratively, as a pea popped out of her mouth. “I haven’t decided” I replied demurely, not willing to discuss my future with a random aunty and also because…..I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And as the aunty went into a monologue, explaining to me how an MBA will do me wonders, I activated my ‘Ignore-them-but-pretend-I’m-hearing’ mode just in time, inclusive of the periodic head nod and monotonic ‘Hmm..’
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