I got my IIMK interview in 7 hours and IIMA on Monday… I don’t know why I’m here at this hour. Filling up my form I remembered that I had/have a blog. Pages full of updates pending… its been ages since I wrote but I still feel I’ll fill in the gaps until now. Optimism? That’s a good thing to start tomorrows day with. Bye for now.

longing for a time when there's no battles being fought in my mind... when there'll be tranquility and peace inside and i can lie on a beach in the shade of a coconut tree and look out at the huge expanse of the ocean and sky merging somewhere beyond infinity.

Mumbai... 3 months now... If I think of it, time has just flown. Its been a very different life here. Life would rather be a misnomer. The entire day goes with just office and more of it. Whenever you talk of Bombay you talk of the local trains and the amazing rush everyones in. 3 months after moving in here I feel very much a part of the crowd I used to be awed of at one time. The wierd thing is being a part of the crowd you don't realize you're a part of it.

Everyday I wake up and its a race; to the dining hall, to the train, to office and then the whole process in reverse. By the time I'm back after 12 hours, energy level wise the day's over. But not everything is that awful. The good feeling that accompanies the salary debited to my bank account in the beginning of every month is new. Its a nice cyclical thing, where every month by the latter half you begin looking forward to the month end.

Talking of which I must talk of my first big buy with my salary. I bought a Sony Ericsson K 550i. Comes with a 2 megapixel camera, radio, mp3 and all the regular stuff you get in phones nowadays. It's my fanciest possession till date. And it feels so good to have bought it off my own money. A fast track watch also was bought.

Parents keep calling to ask when I'm going home next. I will miss pujos for the first time in ever I guess. Pujos, though, had ceased to be the crazy festival ever since Kgp happened. Most Kol friends had left the city after school. But nevertheless... now even the few Kgp-Kol friends have left what is/was home. So I wouldn't know what to do much other than the para pujo. But still something special always turned up every pujo. The thought of which at this moment makes me smile.


The post is rather haphazard. With so many things that could be put in here, it's always that way. Shall leave it at this for now.

BACK

Okay, here goes one final time. Enough half posts, enough procrastinating the perfect return post, enough unfinished incoherent rushed thoughts filled posts on my dashboard now.

I must, must, mustest see to the end of this one and publish it! Its been a HUGELY long time since I've blogged. Whats gone past in these unblogged about months is too much of information and of no use to anyone. But just so there's someplace I know I've stored away this information, I shall put in anything and everything that comes boiling up in bubbles to the surface and key them in.

I've graduated, left college, got a job and am leaving Calcutta (home for the past 19 years!) for Mumbai.

I'm apprehensive, worried maybe a bit scared too. Just like I was before I had gone off for my internship. It was then, the first time I'd go and live in another city for that long. But looking back at it, it seems as if it came off as a dream!

Now, I'm leaving this more or less familiar city to go and live in another city. A city I LOVE completely. Yet there are so many things that one worries about, needlessly perhaps. At present my biggest concern is finding accommodation there. And I'm looking for co-house-hunters. Moving in alone will be prohibitively expensive in the commercial capital.

Leaving Kgp was difficult. Even now when I think of all the things that will change with the 4 years coming to an end, I feel this odd corner of my body go hollow. There are too many things that come to mind. Trying to capture the essence is beyond my limited abilities. I miss my friends, people with whom I've shared the craziest times of my life ever. The parties, the treats for flimsiest reasons, the inter-halls, the 24 hr. campus lifestyle, the hostel and its inimitable way of life, the intense competition and fighting spirit so intrinsic to Kgp life and yet the unfaltering friendship you'd share even with your sworn rival... Its difficult to try not talking about all the things that won't ever come back; yet I feel any attempt I make will just ruin the picture I'd try to paint.

Its all a past well remembered and dear. To be recalled many many years later with a warm glowing fondness. Of all the things we learned and shared in these growing up years.

I still remember the final weeks spent preparing for the Grand Viva and Project Presentation. Nights and days were spent waking and grappling with the enormous amount of work, the feeling of things coming to an end sneaking in only as much allowed by the worries of the final deadlines and finally swamping you once the whole ordeal got over. And then before I knew it, I'd got my stuff packed and was standing outside the door of my room looking at the bare walls and being incapable of comprehending the hollowness I saw and felt.

Its a pretty long post already, I shall call it an end now. Have a day of packing ahead and then off to a busy busy time in my life. A very important period for me. I'm not sure when I shall get the chance to fill in this page. To whoever's reading this... thank you for stopping by :)

Will surely be back sometime, just don't know when.

Diwali

Diwali brings together a lot of things. Mostly happy memories. Back in Kgp, Diwali is a magical affair. Captured in the lighting up of thousands of diyas in a few seconds. The transformation of darkness into form and light. For most of us in the village it is a time away from home. We hardly get any vacation. So for the student community, when the sleepless nights of hardwork and days of planning finally crystallize into that magical diya lit composition, the longing for home takes the back seat, even if momentarily. And even if we mull the same topic every year, Illu or no Illu, being a part of the whole process and watching the thousands of diyas, lighting up in a few seconds to give form to the shapes on the chatais and life to the story put together by all the chatais... it all seems worth it.

Back home, theres a Kali Pujo in the para. And theres a different set of things to be worried about out here. For me its a much needed breather. A little time-out to enable me to stop and breathe a little more. Other than the flurry of activity centred around the para pujo its laid back and free from the precipitating tension of the world outside. Give to a villager this picture and he (and the very few she's) shall name it heaven. Now, almost at the end of college (haan yeh movie waala effect hai, with background music for the punchline:) i realize that most of us crave for times like this. And within a few months time we will be all too far away from it....

Over the years a lot of my friends and myself too, began liking the stay at Kgp during vacation times. The peaceful calm that pervades the village during vacations is in sharp contrast to sem time. Its a time when you can go to bed without the impending thoughts of assignments to be done, guide to be met, football practice to wake up for, worry about your future and realize that IIT didn't make much of a difference, somehow the ticket you thought you had got was lost now... and then curse yourself and wonder where you're headed. Though the worries are shared by almost all of us, the art of grim thinking is my area of specialization.

With college coming to an end, one is often flooded with such profound and scary questions on a regular basis. The good times to mull over such important issues are meal times, it helps the digestive process which begs for support as the battle to eat and digest mess food rages every single day of hostel life.

And therefore one has come home to escape the voices in his head from doing all sorts of shit to him... and eat good biryani and mangsho and sit by the lake under a firecracker lit sky...

Happy Diwali to you all...

Sorry for a long and winded post. Has been a long time, with a lot of things on my mind...

drug

It always happens this way he thought, it starts off with this crazy rush that no drug can give you; but unlike the drug it's difficult to keep getting back the rush every single time. And unlike the drug, unless you find something after the heady feeling gives way, it becomes a just burning flame, susceptible to the gust of wind that would just turn the page in your book...

He'd seen his friend go through the same thing, one moment you see the perfect picture to hold on to forever; and then next moment you just switch off. For his friend that urge to hold on died an unexpected death. And what seemed to be the most amazing thing to have ever happened after she left him just dissolved into the distances and the fog of memories... leaving him lost again.

But for him it was different, he had found something beyond the rush, something that was as inexplicable as it was powerful. This strong urge to hold on, to keep it close and guarded and safe. Maybe because the first time you fall so hard for this drug, nothing can seem to match the intensity. And nothing will. Ever.

But lets say that the tragedy of it all lay in the realization that the more he tried to hold on the more it seemed to slip away. "Kind of a catch-22 situation" he laughed himself to comfort, which was rare.

This was and had been the best of everything, but I guess even God charged taxes for extra benefits, for his was the stuff dreams are made of. The stuff that can keep you smiling in the darkest of storms. Something easy to make others jealous of you being God's favourite child. There was a lot of pain involved in it, maybe it was a test? He doesn't know, but now he keeps company with songs in the lonely hours after midnight. Hoping that things would fall into place, that all the effort would be worth it, because he knew he'd given everything and could give yet more only and only hoping he wouldn't lose the best thing that ever happened to him.

The village can drive you crazy, its not a place but often a depressing state of mind. I feel so much more healthier when I'm home. And funnily I feel disconnected from home...

Right now, too many things seem wrong.
.....

Earlier in the day I was watching a few delightful PIXAR videos on the LAN... heres one I loved! Watch out for the expressions of the birds.

long time...

on orkut i'm connected to over 2.7 crore people, if each gave me a buck i'll chuck any job coming my way, go to goa buy a house and then fly to leh and do the same there. summers would be spent in leh whilst the goa house would be rented out to tourists and the process reversed in winter...

life would be made...

5 minutes after i had this thought the flaw appeared on the horizon and poof!

it was all gone...

if everyone borrowed this idea then the 2.7 crore people i'm connected to shall want a buck back :(

moonlit nights by the beach, stunningly beautiful rugged mountains... damn!

i know.. i didn't have anything better to post!! and yes, my midsems began today...