बस एक बार और...

Reproduced below is a wonderful poem I found here. It captures exactly what I was trying to say yesterday and why it is that I'm so upset that I'm flying through Bombay now and not Kolkata:

बस एक बार वापस लौटने का मन करता है
आज हर वो दिन जीने को मन करता है.
कुछ बुरी बातें जो अब अच्छी लगती हैं
कुछ बातें जो कल की ही बातें लगती हैं.
एक बार और क्लास Attend करने का मन करता है
दोपहर की क्लास में आखें बंद करने को मन करता है.
दोस्तों के रूम की वो बातें याद आती है
Exam के टाइम पे वो हसी मजाक याद आती है,
कॉलेज के पास 'काकी के ढाबे' की याद आती है
तब की बेकार लगने वाली फोटोस चेहरे पे हसी लाती है.
अपनी गलतियों पे तुमसे डाट खाना याद आता है.
पर तुम्हारी गलती देखने का अब भी मन करता है.
एक ऐसी सुबह उठने का मन करता है
बस एक बार वापस लौटने का मन करता है.
बस एक बार और
वापस लौटने का मन करता है.

A Diversion.

I was supposed to be writing this post from Bangalore. I was supposed to have reached there last night. Instead am still in Ranchi. Only because Air Deccan did not think it profitable to fly us to Kolkata from where we had our next flight. Anyway, so the plan was such that I would have had a seven hour halt at Kolkata. I was soo excited to be going back to the city 'one last time', to visit friends, go back to college for a while, (maybe even make a face or two at a particular teacher), go 'hang out' again at City Center, have an 'Amul' Mango ice cream there, and what the heck maybe even squeeze in a visit to Mani Square.
Instead I will now be flying via Mumbai tomorrow(Air Deccan willing). Darn!

'Recent' Activities.

Sooo..... I'm BACK! ta..da.. (ok so it does not have the same ring as Terminator's "I'll Be Back!!!" - but no harm trying. what say?) I have had an interesting two months off.... went to Bombay for a second internship, loved it again, changed accomodations 4-5 times in four weeks, got a job towards the end of it all (yaay!!), was back home in time for Diwali!!! (yaay!! again) , went on a mini vacation to Shantiniketan and Bishnupur, saw beautiful terracotta temples there - again loved it, came back to college in time for the girls cricket tournament, got to captain my batch team, had a lot of fun running after tennis balls for two weeks, won the tourney comfortably, played some throwball too, miraculously made it through to the semis, almost got dragged into playing basketball and pittu, am now aiming to play some badminton & hockey, want to join the new gym too (yes winter is the sporty semester in college) want to do a lot more... but am too lazy and now tied up to do even half or any of it, watched 'batch harmony' go for a toss in the course of four tumultous recruitment meetings, have watched it return almost immediately thereafter, and now am in the course of trying to help with the recruitment process in college. Phew!!! 

oh and yes, had a wonderful birthday, saw winter finally arrive in Kolkata, had a fun Christmas with two rounds of collective carols and song singing (one open air and the other in warmer conditions), had a WONDERFUL Christmas brunch and am now waiting for "NUJS Night" on Jan 1st. 

In between, in addition to reading (for updates on which please refer to the 'recently read' and 'currently reading' lists) I have rediscovered my interest in Hindi poetry. Wanted to put up one I really liked... but for some reason, the transliteration feature is not working on my blog. So once I figure out what is wrong, you will be treated / subjected to Hindi poetry!!! :-) till then ciao!

'Twitter Updates'** (with footnotes an' all)

Well, have been meaning to post on a number of issues for some time now. But I blame it on lots of work, unfinished thoughts and general ennui that I haven't actually got around to doing it!. But now exams are done, I've bid farewell to the last monsoon semester in college, am at home and free, so I thought that I must record some of the many things that I have been meaning to post about throughout this very-eventful semester.

Things I Loved: -

1. Few classes and lots of free time.

2. Playing TT nearly obsessively (till even the teacher tired of me and the game), the occassional walks, serious 'netting' (I love this word) and watching season after season of sitcom after sitcom which replaced movies in my list of 'best-ways-to-spend-evenings/nights-in-hostel'.

3. That the monsoons hit us earlier than usual. The recent paving of the college path held up and the days of water logging and wading through knee deep water to college became a thing of the past.

4. The library AC too functioned beautifully, perhaps chilling to the bone people who decided to spend long hours there, but invitingly cool for those like me who 'visited' the library only for small stretches of time.

5. Batch 'bonhomie' as evident CR (non) elections [take a bow, Mallu], in every joint class, The Committee*** (non) elections etc. The friendship that quickly developed between the 9 members who were 'thrown together by force of circumstances' and practically lived in one particular room of the university, that we had gotten through four years of law school without killing each other etc.

6. That we won the most number of medals in Indian Olympic history, including the first gold in.. in don't know... forever!

7. Oh and ofcourse that our very own lovable-know-it-all-who-also-tries-to-be-modest-about-it*** moved back into hostel after a whole year!

Things I hated: - (as a response to each of the above points)

1. I hated that from the last week of July onwards, I had li'l or no time to generally chill. Projects, and presentations, subject vivas and exams all rushed in- with almost no break in between. I have been running headlong into one deadline or the other with hardly a break in between. It could be yet another dispatch or innumerable other follow-ups, or another rough draft or project to submit and presentation to give and finally exams to prepare for.

2. That I slowly gave up the various activities that I had taken up. Also, annoyingly, reading came down. I hate that these days that seems to be a recurring phenomenon.

3. That my umbrella got flicked. And so had to move around with a eye-catchy-red-and-white-(bravery colours) umbrella . Clarification: I am very grateful though for having been lent the umbrella. It was very handy, thank you so much my dear "know-it-all"! :-)

4. That faulty electrical wiring in the college meant that whenever any other AC (in addition to the library AC) in the university was switched on, the power would trip! Also, that not once did the extremely expensive power backup for the conference room work when it was desperately needed.

5. That some things that I had taken for granted turned out to be false. E.g. Had thought people were smart enough to know when it was something that you could control and when it was something that you couldn't. All the abusing and the name calling and the cold shouldering conclusively proved that I was wrong. so...

6. That we as a nation are sad enough to call ourselves the next in-thing in the world and yet celebrate like no tomorrow for the three measely medals that we have won! Surely a nation of over a billion people ought to be expected to be able to put up a better show - at the very least in the opening ceremony even if nowhere else! and NO, it is not a conclusive proof of either (i) that we have moved beyond cricket (we have just stopped winning here too and so it is no longer on the front page all that often) or (ii) that our sports infrastructure has dramatically improved (the three medals were won despite the State and not because of it)

7. Am mildly surprised that dear know-it-all seems to have unlearned all that we had manged to teach her about not HAVING to know everything so as to be in a position to give all exams on a moment's notice!

8. Oh and the realisation that I have only one semester left in college! cha!!!!!!

End notes: -

** This concept was stolen from a feature that I saw and liked, in this blog but was too lazy to add. [This is what comes from acknowledging what you stole from where, over a course of 45 projects - it becomes a habit!]

*** This is my effort towards coding things and people so as to "protect their identity" that I learnt from this blog. Though I must admit that the author of the referred blog is far wittier and much better with nicknames than I will ever be!

P.S: - Since the concept of endnotes itself was stolen from this blog, was beginning to wonder whether anything was original in this post at all! Well at least the list is. I promise.

Of My recent doings or Of Boredom!

As most of you know, Blogger has this new feature that displays your blogroll in order of the most recent postings. It also apparently displays the name of the latest post! Well, I have not yet figured out how to make my own blogroll do such things... but I am tired of seeing my name near the end of other people's blogrolls. Also, a few people also asked me why it was that I had not posted for a long time. Well, I took both of these to be a compliment (since they show that I have more than one reader) and hence, decided to post. But then there was the small question of what to post. I have been doing next to NOTHING these days and spend most of my time fighting boredom. The situation is so bad that I recently realised that I no longer find sundays restful since I never end up working during the week (~sigh what a waste of a sunday~) and also, very shockingly discovered that I actually enjoyed sitting through four mind-numbing classes today. (It has just become such a rarity to have classes these days). So anyway.. for lack of a better topic, I decided to blog about my recent doings (or the lack thereof).

So as I said, classes are random and sporadic at best and we are usually let loose by around 11:15 am everyday! Therefore, in the recent past, I have: watched two movies 'in the hall' - Thoda Pyaar..Thoda Magic (best avoided) and Jaane tu.. ya Jaane Na (excellent movie - universally recommended), watched countless other movies and episodes of other sitcoms on my comp, perfected the art of being able to go into deeep sleep at any time of the day and yet feel sleepy at sharp 10:30 pm every night, read lots and lots of blogs, discovered exactly what internet addiction means, learned new abbrevations, shirked genuine responsibility etc.

I have also, followed in the footsteps of many of my other batchmates in taking up my very own 'activity-for-the-semester' and have found for myself a very patient teacher to teach me Table Tennis - just like others have taken up swimming, strumming, dancing, gymming, running, blogging etc. (refer also here). Here I have proudly discovered that I have this ability to pick myself up and present myself at the TT table day after day inspite of losing all but two games in the past two or three weeks. It must be because I have such a strong urge to learn, No? Or is it maybe because I have a thick skin?? *scratches head and wonders*.... So anyway...coming back to the point, while all of this is a lot of fun... this is not what I consider to be the highlight of my semester so far.

The highlight is - (drumrolls) I have regained my erstwhile reading speed and have a renewed interest in fiction - Yaaaay!!!!! See.. recently I was getting worried since four years of law school had slowly but steadily eaten into my reading speed and had somehow made me prefer non-fiction over fiction! (~shudders~) Now non-fiction is important and has its own place etc etc but to me fiction always comes first. right? So you can imagine how worried I was starting to get when my mind refused to obey my convictions and had started preferring non-fiction! So now that things are back to 'Normal' - I must tell you that I have 'consumed' four books in the recent past (all really really good): -
1. Life of Pi (for the second time round and I loved it better this time)
2. To Kill a Mocking Bird (No - I hadn't read it till recently - so sue me!)
3. The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency (Don't Laugh - it's a really good, well-written, non-children's book)
4. Tears of The Giraffe (2nd part of No.1 Ladies' Decetive Agency - equally well written).

I won't tell you about the first two books since I do not want a repeat of what happenned when I went into raptures about the Life of Pi (on it's 2nd reading) and tried to tell people how great the book is and all I got for my efforts were cold stares which said - "Is this some sort of an insult? I already know... see.. I have READ it!" So... I will only tell you (some other time) about the other two books - which I don't think are half as well known as they should be.

So till then - ciao! while I go think of something else to do for the rest of the day.

Seasons

They served us Aloo-Matar for lunch in the mess today. A perfectly fine meal, well cooked, tasty too. So what is the problem? The ‘problem’ is the matar (peas). Matar in summer/monsoons? I always thought that matar was a winter vegetable. But now matar (both of the ready to eat, frozen as well as the ‘fresh’ variety) is available all throughout the year. So are gobi and carrot and so many other vegetables that I had been told and knew to be available only in a particular season.

The same with fruits. I was in Bombay recently and there I came across ‘American’ apples. Huge, and brilliantly red (every last one of them, down to the very last speck). Now first of all, again, isn’t apple supposed to be a ‘winter’ fruit? And there it was sitting nice and pretty on the fruits vendor’s thela bang in the middle of the summer (and brilliantly red to boot!) Also, what was special about that apple apparently was that it didn’t rot at all… for days on end. It was always fresh and ready to eat and remained like that for atleast a week. Atleast that was how long I kept it to test his claim and nope, it hadn’t rotted at all…. Infact it wasn’t even over-ripe (ofcourse I had to keep it in the fridge – but still!)

Then ofcourse there is the curious incident of the litchis in Calcutta. For those of you not in the know, Litchis are extremely delicious fruits (my favourite). They are also very delicate (they rot very easily) and do not grow many parts of India. Infact, the best litchis are said to be available only in Bihar and Jharkhand and even if they are available in a few other eastern parts, they are not half as fresh or delicious (since they have already undertaken a long journey in their surprisingly short lives). Also, the true litchi skin is supposed to be thin (but not too thin) and red on the outside, colourless on the inside and the litchi itself is deliciously white and juicy. Now, till about two years ago, it used to break my heart to leave home and come to Calcutta in June since litchis were either not available in Calcutta, or even the small quantities that were, used to be exorbitantly priced, rotting and basically not a patch on the litchis available back home. Now suddenly, since the past two years, Calcutta is flush with bright (and deceptively) red litchis, whose skins are way too thin, and are pink! on the inside, and the litchi is not rotting, but is pretty tasteless and does not justify the bright red colour that the skin exhibits! Other fruits and vegetable too are available out of turn and out of place and season e.g. green grapes (they are now available at all times except the monsoons) and bhutta (corn). Others exist I’m sure, but they do not strike me at present.

So I ask… are these the fruits (quite literally) of plant biotechnology? In other words, are they the result of genetic tinkering? I do not presume to pass judgment on whether such use of technology is good or bad for human health etc etc. Lawyers will tell you that it is a sticky issue and I do not like sticky. All that I have a problem with is the fact that all this ‘development’ has robbed each season and each place of it’s unique speciality and personality. I like the fact that you get different vegetables at different times of the year, I like that some places have certain delicacies (of the fruit and vegetable kinds) that are not available elsewhere. I also like my fruits and vegetables to behave normally and ripen when they have to and rot when they ought to.

All else is like deceiving nature. It reminds me of what Wordsworth once said,
‘If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?’

- From ‘Lines Written in Early Spring’.

5th year

Tomorrow I begin my last year of college and there is an overwhelming sense of disbelief that I'm already in final year. It seriously seems like just a few months ago that I walked into college as a fresh faced first year, in awe of all those very intelligent looking seniors. Now I am one of the senior most in college and it seems very weird. Alongside also, there has already started nostalgia for the four wonderful years spent in college and for the fact that we only have one more year left! We will no doubt begin the backward counting almost immediately and acknowledge and relish a series of 'lasts'. The last monsoon semester, the last Independence day, the last football tournament... etc etc. BUT on the bright side, there is an entire year of college left which, I have no doubt, will be at least as enjoyable as, if not more than all the previous years of college.
Looking forward to the beginning of the end!