Coffee Break, Part 2

It's been a fun day. Had a enthralling football session in the morning. Ain't it funny how a football game you win is always enthralling, be you in the big league or be you I-play-football-cuz-everyone-does? Come to think of it, it's the same with any game. Come to think of it, it's the same with everything! Ah, me and my generalizations...

Had a very nice afternoon. Spent most of it reading up about excessively random stuff over the net. Amazing how useful a tool the net is when you REALLY need to unwind. I could write volumes of useless knowledge based on a day of the internet, and trust me you will, it would be REALLY useless. Not many things relieve your stress as much as useless knowledge does! I'm not gonna get into examples, partly because it would just be plain boring. Mostly because I don't have any right now, being in Coffee Break again. Loneliness as usual.

I'm halfway through "The Bridge across Forever". Trademark Richard Bach material. When I say trademark, I mean this - everytime you read the book, there's a different interpretation. There's a different outlook, a different perspective is built. A lot of the intense thinking in Coffee Break I spoke about in Part 1 was inspired by that man. "Illusions" is possibly the one book I'd call my bible today. A must-read, I tell people. Sometimes I wonder whether I should roam about with a "Practice what you Preach" board hanging 10 inches away from my nose.



There's a girl here today who's beautiful. I don't even wanna call her "hot". She's just plain beauty. Caught her eye a couple of times. A general good feeling. They're playing weird crazy frog-ish music. I hear an incredibly fascinating remix of Crazy Frog and We like to Party (better known as the "vengabus song"). Just heard the "I like to move it" mix. Memories of the Madagascar addiction on campus come to me. I suddenly miss the campus a lot. I should start calling this place the memory place instead of the solitude place, shouldn't I?

I really think the stuff and way I write depends quite a bit on my desktop wallpaper. When I write, the notepad window is the only one open,if you don't count the occasional spell-check through the Oxford Dictionary. Am I getting too conscious of my writing these days? I almost wondered aloud. Everything I write is running the gauntlet before it's approved. of course, the gauntlet and the criticized is both me, which makes the whole thing very interesting.....

I met Duks and Varun today. Felt good. Caught up with old times. Swapped weird stories like old times, and Duks came up with the weirdest one. Just like old times! These people are one of the few here I don't find jejune these days. And I try and convince myself I haven't become snooty. Sure.

I've to meet campus folk for dinner in half hour's time. Looking forward to it quite a bit. How long has it been, a week since I left campus? Goodness me have I become impatient or WHAT?

Why the negative words today? What's with all the self-criticism?

I was about to end it here, but the usual whooping feeling is making me go on. I sat looking around for a whole 5 minutes before continuing here. Finished the remains of my once hot Mocha. Read Asimov's short stories for a while. Watched amusedly as a guy tried to impress his girlfriend's friend with his palmistry. watched a man outside desperately trying to sell of his day's stock of lockets and bracelets to collegians hanging out outside Coffee Break. Blankly stared at a No Parking board for almost a minute. Had few more looks at the beautiful girl.

And then I realized I don't have anything to write about! How many times does it happen that we wait for something we want to come our way, and know that it won't? How overrated ARE anticlimaxes?


Very.

Random Thoughts Episode 1

I hope and pray this to be the beginning of a great great series :D

Will be updated as and when they start spilling outta my brain and start showing themselves around.



Random Thoughts Episode 1

1> Why do Random Thoughts that make considerable amount of sense disappear right before you put them on paper?

2> They say the dreamers are the doers. I somehow think most of the dreamers are only dreamers. "All doers have been dreamers" would be more apt. But then, who cares about the dreamers if they aren't doers?

3> How is it that we idolize so many different people, who are all so remote that you almost end up believing they don't have anything to do with each other? Maybe YOU are the link...

4> Richard Bach is God. Just God. Every line he prints is has all the prudence you'd ever want.

5> This is a pliagarised thought - Any book can be your Messiah's guide to your thoughts. It works. Take any book and open any page, and the answer to your latest query in life will be there.

6> Isn't it hard to write something when you're forced to write it? I find essay writing in exams the hardest thing to do. Never have I been able to write something when someone's told me to. Some people tell others to write. Period. That can't happen. Epitomizing this are people judging writing skills.

7> Why do I think a million times before pilfering even the tiniest of snippets from books I've read?

8> Does the name JD bring with it the general megalomania? I pray to the almighty it doesn't :-|


9> Random Thoughts are fun to pen down, especially when you know nobody's gonna figure your head out.

For the heck of it

It's been such a mediocre day, I wonder why I'm writing at all. It probably has something to do with the major writer's block I'd had a few months back. Dozens of incomplete posts and another dozen of unposted ones, I finally declared it high time to clear the block. It was quite the advent for me, this realisation. To the people who'd tried to convince me that a writer's block is a myth -


A conversation with Maddy left me wondering whether I should do something for QUARK. Seems like the right thing to do. All that jazz about next year being a tad too late to start and third year being very late was churning through me. I don't know what to write about that. It's just one of those conflicts which don't have anything subjective to say about them - it's binary. Still thinking.

Went to Marz-o-rin today. It'd been a while. Felt good to dig in to those sinful chicken sandwiches. Rode Divya's bike there on the way. Delightful in general :)

That's about all that happened today. Oh, of course, except football in the morning. Felt pain in muscles I'd forgotten existed. It's a brilliant feeling, especially after a long hiatus from the game.

Coffee Break. Part 1

Pune hasn't been as tenebrous as I thought it'd be. Or maybe I just like to overdo things, and maybe it was never gonna be as boring as I made it out to be. The campus had been so insanely nice to me over the last four months, I'd forgotten I had a life in Pune. I'm typing this in Cafe Coffee Break. Sitting alone, as usual. Been ages since THAT happened. Memories of hours spent here with a PG Wodehouse and Mochaccilo to keep me company flood back. Pre-entrance exam days. What times they used to be. The solitude, the intense thinking about literally nothingness, the awesome coffee this place gives me, the ocassional catching of the eye of a cute girl sitting somewhere around, all of it. Never since I've left for campus have I gotten that kind of solitude. It's people all around the place, people in hostel, people in class, people when I go to Nescafe or Monginis. Maybe that's what making the Pune days not half as bad as I thought they'd be. Lonliness reloaded.


A JEE class reunion happened yesterday. With the people I'd spent the most constructive two years with. Maybe not as academically constructive as past ones. I was quite at a loss of thoughts when our prof called it "a gathering of the future of India". Didn't last too long. First thing I wondered about was the "India" part. I don't wanna enter that cliched area, but the whole brain-drain saga came to me. Then I wondered, almost aloud, about the whole phrase. How many of us would actually make the difference? How many of us would be lost in the sea of dreamers who just wanted to make a difference? How many of us knew how vast that sea actually was and how many of us just thought we knew? How many of us even cared? How many of us were there just for the free food? I casually threw a look around, as if they were hearing me and waiting to answer. A guy next to me was playing Snake on his phone.

The food was good, though.


Had a wonderful meeting with the HCL main guy of the Pune office. It was routine work, but my first stunt at the routine. Amazing how accurately Chief and his cronies had worked out the sponsorshup simulation game. Complete with reactions and expressions and talking styles.

It's barely 7:30 pm. Coffee's really good. It's cold outside. Possibly the first time I've had a hot cuppa here. I can see a couple hitting each other outside. I can't say whether they're being playful or fighting. I wonder why I'm wondering that.

Anywho, I'm off. More from this place later.

Campus Blues

So I'm back in Pune again. Traveled in a bus full of collegian couples, returning home after a good time in Goa. Goa didn't satisfy them enough though, or I wouldn't have checked my ticket to see whether it said Honeymoon Travels.


It's been an eventful month between Diwali and the end of Compres. Loads has happened.


To start with, an event that made me a part of what is probably the greatest cult following ever. The Led Zepp reunion. The gig that made Prashant and me go insane over the band for a week straight.

Led Zeppelin. The only quartet arguably as famous as that Fab one from Liverpool. The trademark screams. The guitar solos that told the world what a guitar solo is. The insane drumming from a carpenter's son. Music that changed rock forever.

I'd heard about it earlier, for some reason never given the reaction I should have. This time though, it hit. And it hit hard. It was one of those moments of truth when everything points to just one truth. It's one of those moments when nobody says anything, but everybody's thinking it. This was Holy Grail all over again! This was a stone idol coming alive. This was dreams come true, a gig made in heaven. Bonham's son took over his mantle. I hadn't even heard of him till then. Jason Bonham. Described to me as a "befitting tribute to his father", and that is SOMETHING! The rest of the lineup was the same. As original as it could get.

And the concert was described as the greatest gig seen by many. Plant's voice was at it's best, and Page did a 10 minute Dazed and Confused. It was Nostalgia for many, rediscovery for some, and a new beginning for most.




Then there were the godforsaken compres themselves. Bad, bad times. A little less talking, a little less sleeping, and an immense increase in caffeine levels. The less said about that, the better. A good experience nonetheless. I'm ready to see that overrated place they call hell now!


And then there was those two post-compre days spent in campus. Days that exalted our spirits over the sky. It was amazing and almost amusing to see how we got over the disastrous exams so soon. First there was Bogmalo. We added a few Russians to our elongated list of the scandalized. To singing "Touch Me" loudly at a shack where folk come for peace and quiet to talking about the weirdest of things (read: censorship at work). All hit the J for breakfast the next day and ravaged into the food like the famished folk of an African country. A wonderful morning. Brought about the much-needed bonding back.

And then, after all that, we had to say goodbye.

All those cliched Bollywood goodbye scenes have years of friendships, romances and all the blah blah relationships being said goodbye to. Never did i expect to be part of any one of those, and not even in my wildest dreams to be the part of one which involved friends of 4 months, being apart for 20 days. Yes, that is the extent of the bonding that has happened.

Maybe it's the living in the same campus, eating in the same mess and cursing the same mess food, being together at Monginis till 11 pm almost every. Maybe it's the singing of the weird songs together (The title track of Dexter's laboratory being one of the saner ones we've done), maybe it's the insanely long walks had together, along the Children's park and shopping complex. BITS Pilani, Goa Campus has bonded us like those fevistick advertisements that they show.





It's gonna be a long, long stay here.