I recall reading somewhere as a kid that “The only thing constant is change”. I’m sure I was impressed with how fancy it sounded, its play of words and the juxtaposition therein. I am certain I noted it somewhere so that I can sneak it into any essay or debate I could, to get brownie points. And I’m confident I did write or quote it whenever I could. But like most, I never really paused to think of what it meant, until now.
Candid Wallflowers came into existence during one clammy summer evening, when the two writers, in midst of their gossip sessions, thought to share their infinitely wise observations of the people around them. With the utmost humility, of course. The very first article was an attempt at decoding the kind of people we are mostly surrounded with in college. You can read it here. With time, the old groupings have disbanded just as people keep shedding old habits and come into new ones.
The season of farewell is upon us. As we move into our last few weeks of college, the level of nostalgia and happiness is palpable. My Facebook and Instagram feed is already inundated with tons and tons of pictures. Pictures that are a lot more than just the few seconds it took to click them. All of them carry within them stories, laughs, tears, friendships and so much more. They are sacred, in some mysterious way. And we have the luxury today to document each and every one of these moments. But I can’t bring myself to share mine on social media. Come to think of it, I haven’t properly wrapped my head around the idea of what college and college life meant to me. Read More
You walk out of the room where the results were announced minutes ago. You’re disappointed to not hear your name be called out. The test had gone well, in your judgement. The company seemed like something where you could have imagined yourself to be. You wouldn’t like to admit it, but secretly, you had already imagined yourself there, in a cubicle of your own, working yourself to a higher position year after year. You snap back to the present, a little shattered, rebuking yourself for thinking too far ahead. Some of your friends have made it through. Some didn’t even make it to this round. You try to understand whether you’re grateful for having made this far or dejected for not going further. You wish your friends luck and walk off silently.
If you don’t know where you’re going, any road would lead you there. – Lewis Carroll
Courtesy – Martin Liebermann (c) martin-liebermann.de
Ironically, I just heard it from a girl in a movie where she devotes her everything to her ambition of becoming an Olympic long distance runner.
Dear Chaitanya circa 2014,
It’s 22 March today and you’ve just walked out of your Computer Science board examination. You know it pretty well that you aced it. Your friends share your expression of relief at having just written their last board exam. All this while, it was hyped up to be this Herculean task that only gladiators survived through, but now that you have experienced it for yourself, you realize it was more of a test of your temperament rather than your knowledge. Congratulations, this is one of the biggest Eureka moments you will have in the upcoming years. Henceforth, most of the tests you will encounter whether of an academic or of a personal nature will test more of your attitude and disposition rather than your factual ability to decompress it and deduce a solution.
For the third week running, I woke up at Wednesday at 10:30 AM, precisely 90 minutes late for college. With 2 lectures already missed (unintentionally, I may add), I forced myself to get out of bed in order to make it to the rest of them in time. After applying the relevant mathematical theorems and lemmas into the Equation of Attendance by factoring the constant of laziness and the proportionality of boredom of lectures, I decided to finally go…… back to bed.
Recently, I was recommended a movie, ‘The Intern’ by my friends. Truth be told, the recommendation was given a long time ago, but I got around to watching it quite late. The Intern, if you haven’t seen, (SPOILER ALERT) is a heart-warming and easy going story centred around a widower retiree (played by Robert DeNiro) who joins a ‘Senior Citizens’ Internship’ at an up and coming fashion start-up run by Anne Hathaway. The movie focuses on the friendship that these unlikely characters end up forming. Starting skeptically, DeNiro eventually finds a place for himself within the organization by assisting Anne in various ways. Their bond strengthens and Anne ends up finding a confidant in DeNiro. With no major ups and downs and a simple narrative arc, the movie ends, leaving a smile on your face. What’s the trouble then?
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?’
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.
Candid Wallflowers 