Goan Learning Curve

    It's like the hand of God(A rather mischievous one. I'm guessing that brat Krishna) shoved in and turned his sand pit upside down, exposing the city's rather dark underbelly. No, 'dark underbelly' is not a metaphor for some non-existent mafia or it's nexus with the cops here. Literally, the whole city is being dug out, whether it is for Metro rail construction in 100 feet road or for storm water drainage in T Nagar. It's not like roads were world class or anything, but hey, at least you could spot a bit of black tar here and there, reminding you that you gotta pay road tax for it. Right now it’s time to test that Scooty's off-roading skills, eh?

   Was speaking to this BITS, Goan(Oops, BITS, Pilani, K.K. Birla Goa Campus) about how his first year had been. Generic answers. Either he’s bored or showing attitude. Attitude. Must stem from somewhere. So I decided to stun him with my level of exposure about internships. (The level being I know that people are going for internships in their first year holidays itself. Worship me.)

Uh, oh, HUGE learning curve ahead...

Me: So, you thinking of any internship options? (You can almost taste the smugness the air reeked of...)

Him: Already went for one. Lasted a few weeks…

Me: Oh. (Thank god for Facebook chat. He didn’t have to see me do the Kangaroo hop around the room, mouthing out muffled expletives and curses at myself…)

   The next hour was spent kissing ass and asking him where and when he went, how he got it and what exactly he did there. Sheesh. The next day was spent asking dad about them and applying for one. The following days were spent eating at Subway, Pizza Hut and Rajdhani respectively and sleeping for 8-10 hours, convincing oneself that ignorance is bliss, only if you’re ignorant of the fact that you’re ignorant.

Leftover Clocks

    The complete and resounding success of the previous post A Dream inflated an already bloated ego of the writer to the limit, thereby pushing him into an era of complacency, laziness and apathy, and resulted in nothing less than the forgetting of consecutive birthdays of two women very dear to him. Jolted out of my permanent supine and almost comatose(This thesaurus thing is awesome) posture, I begin to dish out more and more crap.
   Well, the prolonged summer, the even more prolonged summer holidays(more than two months), the scorching heat and humid weather, the power cuts and rolling blackouts, the soaring Petrol prices and House MD are to blame. My brain has stagnated, bored to death and has run completely out of ideas. Should have joined that German language class at Max Mueller Bhavan my dad was telling me about.(The definition of Aryan racism is throwing up red squiggly spelling error lines for Bhavan while Max Mueller sir gets a clean chit...)
    All of us friends met up at Creamy Inn, an Ok ice cream joint in Anna Nagar to discuss what the first year in college had done to us. The IITians and wannabe IITians huddled together, discussing internship prospects(After only a year in college), how low the sex ratio was, coding(Doesn't matter even if you're in Naval Architecture, everyone discusses coding) and other stuff which went way over my head the moment the chatter started. Us mere mortals, crept around, talking about how our brothers who were now in the vicious circle of school and JEE coaching were doing. Mere mortal talk.Well, other mundanely interesting things also crop up.

Me: I left a few things in my room while packing by mistake. Damn, I forgot my door mat!
Sid: I had a few problems too. When I came out, I noticed I was late for the train and left in a hurry. Retrospecting, I thought, "How did I notice I was late?", and answered myself, "By looking at the clock".
Me: And where was the clock?
Sid: In my room! Almost missed the train in running back to get it.
Gautham: Shit. I forgot mine!
        
      It doesn't matter which college you go to, as long as you have friends who lighten your heart and keep you laughing, I guess. 

A Dream

      He walked down Gandhi Marg, the default chillness of the night barely negating the searing heat of the day that had just passed. He liked walking alone in the night, a denizen of the dark. He was a shadow, black, stark in contrast to the white that gleamed the road, painted so by pigeon droppings. His destination was near. His weary feet that had been complaining of the claustrophobia that usually accompanies upper-side berths in an uneventful 2000 km long journey by rail and an even more nauseating drive down from civilization to well, 'civilization', trudged along, silently plotting rebellion.
      He was a sophomore now, as he loved to call himself. It made him feel, 'senior'. The  past academic year had imbibed in him certain changes, some for the better, some for the very worst. To his achievements, he proudly remembered going to the temple at least once a week, every single week. Whether it was just to get away from Ghatam practice or screwed up acads or general flotsam and jetsam floating around meaninglessly in his wandering mind. He did pray, but not as much as he did just sitting there, watching the multitudes of pigeons flying round and round the temple's towering structure, having his twenty minutes of blankness every man supposedly has.
     The night was fresh. The end was near. He approached Shankar Bhawan, just beyond Patel circle. He smiled.
     The steps which lead to the upper T-wing were suddenly easier to climb as the mind was prowling on some other chain of thought, one that involved knocking on the poor junior who had just been assigned the room he had stayed in, the past year. His 'room-son' must be sleeping now, his bio-clock hardly accustomed to what it was in for in the next couple of years. Kid was just a day old in college.
     263, Shankar Bhawan, Raj-333031. The day he discovered he had got a single room.The incessant banging when he slept in the afternoons. His own door mat.  Empty packets of chips and coke bottles on the floor. The mound of sand and dirt when he decided to clean it. "Siddartha", which he never finished reading. The torn Physics I quiz paper. The "ANNA" written with Duct tape on his door. It later became his hostel nick name.
  He approached his old room, his head pounding. The light was on. Good.
  He heard voices. Parent voices. Damn. Tonight is not the night.
  Suddenly, the kid's dad came out and examined the door. The "ANNA" sticker shone in all glory in the white corridor light. The newly admit's dad swore. "We have to complain to the chowki. Otherwise they'll slap a fine on you for scribbling on the door instead of the idiot who actually did this", he said to his son inside.
     Blood rushing in his ears, the protagonist tried to walk past coolly. He didn't know nothing about this. He almost reached the end of the corridor, ready to break into a run. How the hell had the they not seen the damn thing when they had entered  the room for the first time?
    "ANNA! My favorite south Indian!", boomed a familiar voice. The protagonist froze. Shit. The dad turned, first towards the silhouette at the other end of the corridor and then at him, his face a mixture of surprise, confusion and increasing anger.
  Apparently 257, Shankar Bhawan had decided to visit his old room too.