Right ho, et al

I seemed to have picked my B-school with care and diligence - they want to hone our ability to fight frustration before the term even starts. A 12-question long assignment that made Dad go "I've never seen anything like this!" and my friends go "Who the heck gives assignments and prescriptions before college starts?!" and one of my chief mentors cynically say "They're just having some fun at your expense." is the focus of the day. No matter that I have amassed around 20 pages of material to answer those questions; I still feel like I have learnt precious zilch from it all. Aside from a comparison of the 'Thande ka Tadka' and the 'Pepsi TV' campaigns, I don't even remember any of the other questions. Despite the aforementioned, it is rather fun to give it a dekko once a while, and open a lot of tabs and search for this and that. Gives me the feeling I'm doing something. And maybe the sliver of a chance that I'm learning something.

I read a review of a book by a fourth year student of IIT-D, someone who the reviewer claims has honed his style on the breezy, 'top of the morning to you, old chap' and the 'I sipped a pleased cup of tea while Jeeves oozed gently out of the room' attitude to life, bacon and eggs, old, bad and good, pesky relatives and birds, of similar distinction. Instantly made me mentally perk my ears, only to read a couple of lines later that all he has done is 'cleverly localised' the style to suit the Indian campus-life junkies. Outsourced the style, clethey say. What the heck is outsourcing a style? There is homage, there is imitation, there is unabashed plagiarism and there is originality. I believe if this young man had written the kind of stuff I'd expected to read about, he'd figure in at least one of the first two categories. As is, I guess he'd be called an improvement on Chetan Bhagat, and not much more. The English, the review says, is hardly the Queen's English. It is the language of campus in India - richly inventive, bawdy, full of irreverent references to 'high culture' of Hindi cinema, and phrases like 'He must've felt like shit.' Bravo. But that a fourth year student could actually complete one of these is praiseworthy. And to get a review from The Hindu saying 'highly recommended for all veterans of campus life in India' even more so. So needless to say, I envy the guy. I have had ambitions of writing a movella myself, for longer than most people who have had to put up with my declarations would care to remember. I don't even have a theme. So, I envy the 'desi' P.G.Wodehouse. I wouldn't mind being called a 'desi' Maugham. No sir, I wouldn't.

A lovely, motley mixture of thoughts, opinions and desultory ideas sprinkled desultorily over four pages made for an enjoyable half-hour last night. It was meant to be a letter and ended up being anything but. It speaks to me once in a while, in a token gesture of acknowledgement, but most of the time has a ball watching my face go from grimaces to half-hearted smiles to full-toothed grins and back to exasperated twitches of the mouth in the span of that half of the hour. For all the spasms of annoyance and the sounds of mirth, in prose and otherwise, thank you.

Alan Parson's Project is brilliant band. I love their sound. I love their song 'Eye in the sky' and their song 'Old and Wise' and some of many other songs. Many thanks to Slash for introducing me to them. I'm glad I've got over the phase where I'd berate myself that all I could ever think of writing these days were so much like something I would’ve written about yesterday, or the day before that, and I used to convince myself that for that very reason, it wasn’t worth writing about. It wasn’t even unique in my own life, how could I expect it to be unique outside of it. Glad that I know now that if I keep looking for that unique moment to document, I’m going to let a lot of moments pass by, happy and sad, that are probably far more defining than the ones that I have my mind tuned for.

And it really used to be gibberish, you know? Reading the 'letter' reminded me so much of myself a few years ago, with a little more coherence, and lots more humour thrown in. Then I went to a folder I haven’t touched in a long time, called Articles/My Stuff, and one particular document that I thought was the epitome of the age of random musings. I wrote it in the holidays between Xth class and Junior College.. and called it ‘I Think’. I was very proud of that name, I remember. Thought it very literary and punny and witty. I think I've done this before long, long ago when the blog was still young, now that I am a little older and wiser, I thought it was time to revisit.

Here is an excerpt:
*verbatim, complete with shortened words, uncapitalised I’s, beginning paragraphs from all points in the page, words with letters repeated ten times etc. I can only wonder which version of MSWord I was using back then*

I woke up rather late today. Remembered that we were gonna go shopping today. looking forward to it.haven't learnt to blind type yet. Trying to learn. waaaaaiting for my birthday to happen.i started writing this journal ,if you can call it that coz i really can't think of much better to do. i must say that the views expressed in this piece are solely mine you must not make the mistake of attributing my eccentricities to anybody,either living or dead, and i'm prepared to take the fall for whatever chaos it causes.

none of the views expressed here are debatable..at least not for some time.

.
.
.

( I sometimes talk like this..and then people wonder whats gotten into me). As regards the relationship thing ,i think i'm capable of loving very much,while i'm not so sure about respecting., i don't believe the two go together except in some cases.....i dont' let other people tell me my faults..i know them myself.i'm terribly ambitious, but i procrastinate so much that it just about wipes out the ambition.i want the best for me and the people i care for.i have very strict i deas about scrupulosity,money concerns(i think i'm pretty good at handling it), work ethics, etiquette in various areas,and behaviour...especially behaviour

Oh dear. I don't know if I should laugh or cry.