Transient

29-04-2011




23:42


My last 18 minutes as a second year engineering student, which means I am now officially ass deep in my 'chosen' career. Screwed up my endsems big time after a neat performance in the midsems, which basically means, I am staying put as a 7 pointer. Engineering Grades Inertia, the mystical condition where the graph of your academic performance gets suspended in time and space, making you fight to hang on to your average while offering no chance for improvement, has claimed its latest victim.


23:45


The electricity returns to our rooms, breathing life back into my desert cooler. The noisy apparatus drowns out the irritating voices of the final year students, who in a collective stroke of nostalgia, had been playing antakshiri for the last half hour. My cooler served me well for these two months, its water-choked breeze seeing me through the worst of the summer. I shall be returning it tomorrow, its stint over in room B-318, the meagrely dimensioned space I shared with another full-grown human for the last one year. We had settled on staying here because it was the only room that wasn't locked, infact it didn't have a latch, and no lights either, and one wall covered with graffitti that was both meaningless and obscene. When we leave it tomorrow, it will have a layer of debris thicker than a hedgehog's hide, and infinitely more dangerous( I sometimes hear sounds from under my bed that convince me, the two of us aren't the only occupants of this room), a very hastily hammered together latch, and FOUR walls full of meaningless obscenity. And we intend to take away the lights.


23:50


"Self-imrprovement is masturbation."
Me not being a smoker, the backpost wasn't at all the reason why I had chosen to come to Hall 7. "Its got a gym better than DTS, a music room and many other such designated 'rooms'" is what my senior, a Hall 7 addict had told me. Here I am ten months later and I am yet to see what the gym looks like. If there is one word I associate with Hall 7 it is 'ennui'. In a corridor that has Gulti M.Techs and people from the strangest parts of India playing the most obnoxious form of music ever invented in the most obnoxiously loud speakers, it is no surprise that I hardly ventured out of my room. My days here were spent stretched out on my bed staring glassy-eyed at my laptop, occasionally strumming my guitar and/or reading the previous occupants' wall-scribblings for the umpteenth time.


23:55


Hall 7 wasn't all about boredom and inaction. There's a reason why this place has been christened Hell 7. And if this hostel is hell, my corridor, the hill-facing B-top, is where Satan takes his dump. His minions, the little red ones, swarm this place, arriving in thousands every evening, all year round, wreaking havoc. You need nets everywhere, on your windows to protect yourself from these tiny terrors. And even that is not enough. I personally don't have a single part of my body that does not have scars testifying to the my ordeal here, my suffering at the hands of this plague.


23:58


Two minutes to go now. All in all, Hall 7 is where I wanted to come at the end of last year. Now, I never want to see this place again. Its not about how good the place looks from the outside. Its about how it makes you feel inside. The environs of a person do affect his outlook and state of mind. I know I am going to try my damnedest to get shifted to another hall next session. But there is this one place where I can never go back to. It was a place where you always referred to your room as "our room", where ALL doors were broken, yet we somehow never worried about our belongings, where the mess was the size of the room the Hall 7 night canteen is in, but it had a fridge and you could wake up the guy anytime in the night to give you an amul kool. It was a place where I had the most helpful of GMAT's living next door, the craziest of gamers a few doors away, whose desktop was as good as a public computer, and who could solve any technical issue with a swipe of his mouse, and a college-superstar-in-the-making sleeping right next to me. It had a real lawn, one that was not surrounded by concrete and people on all 4 sides, where one could have a long phone conversation without everyone in the hostel being able to see you. It was less silent than Hall 7 but infinitely more peaceful.


00:00


I miss Hall 4.

In Lonely Hour

There is a heaviness in my heart. And to think of it I can’t remember the last time it had actually felt light. So much time in its company has afforded me the unenviable chance to analyze it, to look within, figure out what it is. Not much good has come of it though. Its a mixture in there. Pretty much everything I have looked for, I have found. If I thought maybe it is because I carry so much hatred in me, for everyone and everything around, that is what I found. If I wondered whether it is because I am deeply in love, I have found that in there too. But thats not it. The weight never lifts. Nostalgia, boredom, irritation, regret, sense of achievement, helplessness- its all there. But there is more, or maybe it is something entirely different. Maybe I’ll never know, maybe I can never know.

People tell me I should smile more, that they get negative vibes from me from the very first meeting onwards. That I ought to be more amiable, or sociable. I want to tell them I can’t. I can’t because I AM guilty of all that they accuse me of. I really don’t like to smile. Laughing is not a problem, but smiling makes me something I am not. I do stay wrapped up in my own existence. I like it that ways. I like empty classrooms. I breathe a subconscious sigh of relief everytime my room-mate goes off leaving the room to myself. I like it when its dark. Not because I can’t be seen, but because I can’t see others. I do feel that I exist on a different, not higher, level of existence. I am genuinely disinterested about other people’s lives, and find their problems and stories plain mundane and boring. That is why my ‘Hello’ is more of an acknowledgement, rather than a greeting. That is why I feel it to be too much of an exercise to distort my face into a smile. And even if I do, my eyes simply don’t obey.

I have trouble letting go. Even when I was a kid, I always found it tough to part with old toys. My wallet’s back pocket is evidence of the fact that I like to preserve. I like to hang on to stuff long after they have outlived their usefulness and even if they have become downright harmful. Maybe that is what this weight is all about; bits and pieces of the past that have accumulated over my two decades of existence. The memories are long gone, but the regrets and disappointments have not. Will they? I don’t know. Do I want them to? I don’t think so.

It doesn't Matter

I’m sick and tired of faking smiles. Sick of all the happiness around me. The world’s a sham, life’s a joke. No one fucking cares. No one. There is no all powerful being sitting up there in the clouds looking down at you with a benign smile, slowly and masterfully guiding your life to eventual peace and contentment. He doesn’t give a shit. And neither do I. Coz I have learnt it the hard way. I have learnt it the hard way that there’s no plan for any of us. I learnt it when dreams I had built painstakingly were brought crashing down, ruthlessly, without a second thought; like a child who gives hours of effort and patience to build a sandcastle, and without warning, a sudden fluctuation in the ocean’s tidal dynamics produces a freak wave which washes it away. A loss so big for the poor kid, but did the ocean with its billions of metric tonnes of water even notice what it did? Somebody should have just walked over to the child when he was beginning to build his castle, picked him up and told him, “Whatever it is that you’re planning to do, it wouldn’t matter”. And it doesn’t matter. Never. Do what you want to pander to your desires, but in the end, the happiness is only momentary. IT DOESN’T MATTER.

Is this that hard to see? Why do people around me laugh? Why are birthdays celebrated the way they are? Don’t they see how overhyped the concept is? Pretend to rejoice the day you were thrown into this pigeon-shit existence for the next seven decades(barring the few lucky ones)? What’s in that fucked-up flower your lover gave you that’s making you give me that big-toothy one? Its gonna fuckin dry up, and then stink as fungi and bacteria make a meal out of it. Why the applause when the teacher announced he would not be taking classes tomorrow? Do you think that made him any nobler than he is? Do you for one second doubt his intentions to screw your lives the first chance he gets? So you landed a job? Congra-fuckin-tulations! You just signed away 50% of the waking hours of the rest of your useful life (if that’s even a phrase) to working your ass off doing something we both know you hate the guts of.

So why the fuck do you laugh? Or even cry for that matter? Why do you celebrate? Or mourn? If you think it matters to someone, go get a good look at yourself in the mirror. All of it is inconsequential, YOU are inconsequential. Puke out the food you eat, bleed till you drown in it, shout till you can’t hear yourself anymore, or simply hold your breath and just keep holding....

Time for The Sphinx

The Black Sphinx
My second blog where the Black Sphinx will take you on a journey into the lives of people, fictitious and real, where the only thing common between the various events will be utter irrelevance and disconnection. so time for me to shut up and let the Sphinx take over.just click.
http://theblacksphinx.blogspot.com/

64 down, 12 more to go

Its the 5^th of july, which means the summer holidays are now 2 months and 4 days old. And without getting caught up in any philosophical debates, something i have had a lot (thanks sidharth, thanks sehraan) in these vacations, i will take a bold leap of faith and declare, being of  brilliant mind and amazing body, that yes, i am still very much in existence. I look back now and there’s hardly anything i remember at all about the last four fortnights. Nothing. Its kinda hard to describe. I mean the events that transpired in the last week of april somehow seem closer in time than the ones that happened in mid-may or maybe the ones in june. Thats weird right? It feels like yesterday that i was with Ankita at IG park and we were sitting at Pizza Den or the shop-hopping that we did, but sitting in my bedroom in front of my lappy and watching the first season of Prison Break seems like ages ago. Doesn’t make sense because while the former happened on 30^th april, Scofield did not start dropping his origami ducks till the last week of may. Freak you out? Didn’t think so either.

So that is one of the things i did this summer. What else? Well, i went through a large number of movies, some of them really good, most of them chickenfeed. Completed season one of Lost earlier today. And it makes me regret having confined myself to sitcoms for so long. Far cry from the summer course i had expected to end up doing. But there are people out there who have made the most out of these vacations too. C/C++/JAVA/VLSI/AUTOCAD, take your pick, attend classes 2 hours every weekday, march out one month later with a certificate in hand and a clear cut advantage over the likes of me when we return to the insti for our third sem. There are people who flunked their semesters, and now have done summer courses, adding Ex’s and A’s where there were F’s in their marksheets, and have pushed up their pointers big time. Some have learnt to swim, others now play billiards, fuck! some have even scored interns in their first year! The first of my friends have started losing their virginity. And if not anything, there are people who have set world records in boozing and/or shagging! And what have i done in the last 60 days?  

Well i did get started on my guitar, but the progress is hardly anything worth mention. I have joined a gym whose instructor has taken it as a personal affront that someone as skinny as me is walking around in his gym. He is now on a mission to either make me a Schwarzenegger or kill me off. With every passing day the chances of the first alternative becoming true are rapidly fading. In fact, its time for me to go hit the gym again. See you on the other side. Adios.  

What is it about First Love?

is the question that has been making me go Plato since yesterday. Why is it that your first love never ceases to be in your life? Never goes away for good? You cut-off all bonds, try your damnedest to move on, endow your affections, in far greater measure, on new objects, but you look within, and you look hard enough, and there is this tiniest of spaces in your heart still occupied by that vestige of the past. And it scares you so because you see in that tiny trickle a real possibility of a deluge. All it needs is a push and a prod and its there, right at the forefront.

Richard Marx, this rock artist from the late 80's and early 90's, used to be my most favorite of all musicians, his music, my most adored. His tracks dominated my playlists for the better part of three years. But then, towards the beginning of my 12th, i went through this phase of musical stagnation. Marx and other favorites like Lionel Richie, George Michael, Linkin Park, Evanescence,The Rasmus to name a few got boring, and hitherto untried bands didn't seem interesting enough to have their albums downloaded and listened to track-by-track. And then i went to NIT.

NITR, with its DC++, enabled immediate, lightning speed and free downloading of almost any album by almost any band, and of course, plenty of free time to try them out too. So, sometime in early september, what i did was format my entire playlist and put in a whole new stock of tracks. In came Skillet, Nirvana, Daughtry, Alterbridge, Creed, Switchfoot, Coldplay, Celldweller et al. It went like, "Hey this song seems pretty neat, let me get the full album" and more often than not, i liked the album too. I was so fed up with my old favorites that i remember vowing to myself never ever to listen to those artists or those songs again (towards august i would sit and scroll through the songs, searching for something which might remotely be less listened to than the others). And i hadn't. That is until yesterday.

A week back i got myself a guitar. Too tired and bored of playing the same chromatic scales and those retarded nursery rhymes again and again, i decided to search the tabs of some good slow songs that i, with my nascent skills, could pull off. Yeah, i tried some coldplay and greenday shit, but playing and changing cords with the required speed turned out to be too much for me. And then, flash of light. Surely the intro music of Right Here Waiting by Marx was something worth trying. I mean the beat is pretty sluggish and it involves only plucking of single strings. I downloaded the tabs and voila! i could play the tune within an hour of trying. Really playing that tune by myself, as i felt the music come out of my own fingertips, it reminded me of just how poignant and beautiful it was. Individual notes assembled with pure genius and finesse' to give rise to the tune that was Marx's coup de grace. I went over to youtube and gave the original song a listen. For a moment, i was back to being that 15 year old kid who had heard the opening piano solo for the first time in a random collections' cd. I remembered in exact detail, how i had felt at that time, maybe because, in a certain measure, i felt that way again. i saw the video 3 more times. That was day before yesterday.

Yesterday, thanks to mininova.org and my internet plan that permits free downloads of upto 2.5 GB, i got a Best Of... collection of Richard Marx. I have listened to that album top to bottom thrice already. From the classic ol' school rock n roll feel of Satisfied to the hauntingly beautiful strains of Hold On To The Nights to the euphonious use of the saxophone in Endless Summer Nights; from the surreal Hazard to the smooth and suave touch of Touch Of Heaven to the mellifluous, yet a bit heavy-ish Angelia; from the laid-back Keep Coming Back to the masterpiece that is Right Here Waiting, each one of these songs enraptured, enthralled and liberated me. I can't believe i had been missing out on these for such a long time. Or is it that that i hadn't listened to these songs for such a long time that made me enjoy them so much? Maybe your first love never goes away. Maybe its there all the time while you wander off after other pursuits, liking and doting stuff you think you love more than that one. And while that might be true, your first passion is just behind the curtains waiting, because after a long enough break, all that is required is the tiniest of sparks to remind you how exactly it had made you feel THEN. I know i am listening to a lot of Richard Marx now, but am i gonna give up on Kurt Cobain for him? Or am i gonna prefer him over Switchfoot? I don't think so, because there is a reason we use the word "FIRST" in First Love. At the end of the day, they are picture-perfect sweet recollections to be treasured, cherished, honoured and, while in the midst of your REAL and PRESENT life, to be dwelt upon once in a while. It will make you smile, trust me.