The August post

Honestly, I’ve started this post (as the title suggests) just because I’ve had a post every month for the last three and I’d like that to continue for whatever it’s worth and because I’ve spent the last hour trying to figure where to study from, for the six subjects I have, for the impending mid sems and I think I deserve a break.

If I had to describe the time since the last post, it’s been busy. I’ve completed my internship, come back to R, gone back home for a week and back to R again. There’s so much happening, but if you ask me pin point exactly what, I don’t think I’d know. Yet as I try to write this post, thoughts seem to be flowing freely.

Everyone around is busy doing what they can to ensure they can do what they wish to do once they pass out of here in a year’s time. I still have a year to go for all that, but I can’t help wonder what is it that I want to be preparing for. I am rather disappointed that even after three years of college education I am almost as confused about what I want to do for a career as I had been when I first came to R. What I regret is not that I don’t like what I came here to do – Chemical engineering, but that I haven’t yet figured what I do. No doubt I can see more avenues now, and understand better what they mean but the lack of clarity is somewhat disturbing.

But a line of thought I am growing to believe is that there is not necessarily something like figuring what you want to do forever, that’s going to keep changing. You just got to do what you like at present and move on to something else when you feel the need to. 

Sometimes

Sometimes I really wonder from where I acquired notions that I’ve held on to for long. They’ve just been there for all time, and then one day it seems ridiculous you ever believed such a thing. Oh well. 

The Intern - 1

I know, the assumption that there will follow more posts about the internship, inherent in the title, is somewhat premature and also optimistic given my previous record but then what’s life without hope eh?

Knowing that my summer would be spent interning at ITC almost 8 months in advance, I had had my share of opinions and advices on what to expect and what not. It was going to 2 months of working your ass off, strict deadlines and tough deliverables. And all this in some random small town called Guntur in the middle of an alien state speaking an alien language. I was scared.  

A month into the internship I can safely say, most of what I’d heard was true. The working hours are long, deliverables are clear and deadlines are meant to be kept. And Guntur is a small town. (Bigger than Roorkee though, if that counts. It has a theatre that is much better than Neelam talkies in all fairness! ) And a lot of people around me speak nothing but Telegu.

What’s surprising though is that I don’t hate it as much as I thought I would. In fact I like it here. The work is fun, and people are helpful. I am doing a project, about which I didn’t have the remotest idea when I received my project brief two months back, but I am finding it pretty much very interesting now. And it’s been a roller coaster ride getting wherever I have.

And while at it, I’ve made some progress with the language, learning crucial statements like ‘I want coffee/tea/food’, gotten used to being served 1 weeks rice in 1 serving, travelled to quite a few places, started hating the transitions from one place to another less, brushed up my skills in making Powerpoint presentations, and realized what an idiot I was to have eaten Biryani without Raita for the last 21 years! 

The summer of 2012

The summer of 2012 is anything but over, in fact it has just about started, I know. But I’ve seen enough of it to know it’s going to be an experience I am not going to forget.

I think I am going to try and be regular here, at least for the next one and a half months. Not for anything else but so I have more than just a fleeting memory of what I did in these two months.

What remains to be seen though is whether I’d want to remember it or not.

But talking about things that have happened so far this summer, I’ve fallen in love with Instagram at first sight, finally learnt to appreciate the benefits of owning a smart phone, have a new found respect for Google maps, found myself in the middle of nowhere, figuratively and literally, and learnt bits of an alien language. 

I had to have a Women's day post

I really don’t know how or why Women’s day began to be celebrated. Today it’s mostly a day to talk either about how women today have come of age or about how they haven’t yet, and needless to say both sides find enough illustrations to prove their point effortlessly. Personally, I think that’s a rather pointless debate. We are talking about roughly one half of the entire world population. It’s ridiculous to put it all under one blanket. Each has her own definition of progress and happiness and shouldn’t be measured against a set standard.

To me Women’s day is about celebrating the amazing women we know and for me, that most amazing woman is my mom. How she manages to do everything she does and as effortlessly and beautifully is something I can never fathom.

It's a privilege being your duaghter, Aai. Love you! 

That thing called Media

Call me paranoid, but I really don’t know how much of what I read to trust these days.

For one, there was this game ‘Chinese whispers’ that I played as a kid. You whisper a sentence into the next person’s ears and see what becomes of it when it reaches the last person. No doubt, a very amusing way to pass time when I was a kid, but I often wonder if the same thing happens with news.

But anyway, if we assume that these guys have gotten their facts right, the media, something that was supposed to be just a tool for communication, has become way too powerful for that. It has the power to decide what we know and what we don’t. It has the power to decide how we feel about a particular issue. And it also often has the power to decide whether we feel anything at all about that issue or not.

This just makes me wonder whether the media has indeed become a powerful manipulator and I am but a stupid idiot (I know one of the words is redundant, but that’s how stupid I feel) who is walking into a carefully set trap.

The year that went by

Well, I am back in R, extremely bored and have yet another New Years Eve to look forward to with no plans whatsoever. So, left with a lot of empty hours, and swamped with a deluge of twitter trends like LastFridayOf2011, 2011In3Words, MyCrushOf2011 and the sorts, one can’t help but look back at the year that has been. So here’s a (hopefully) small rant about 2011 and what I thought of it.

2011 has been a good year. It came with its share of highs and lows, but all in all it’s been good. It’s been a year of many firsts (not all good), first debating tournament in college, first intern, my first ‘6’ in a course, first SG below 8, and of course, my first blog (and many more actually). I am not a person who is terribly excited about changes. To be honest I detest most of them. Even then, I don’t regret the many firsts that this year brought with it. Some have made for happy memories, some have taught lessons I’ll remember for a while. But more than anything, it’s taught me to hate changes lesser, to try new things, and that in life, more than the things one does, one always regrets the things one doesn’t. So, do whatever you want to, follow your heart, we all have only one life and it is now.

This year has introduced me to a lot of new music that I have now grown to really like. Fellow Dodo, Simon and Garfunkel is a real pleasure, I wish I’d heard it earlier, way earlier. Chest monster, I guess it should suffice to say that if I start listing every song you’ve suggested and I’ve liked, it will have to be a different post.

I’ll also remember this year for the books I read. Shantaram was an experience I’ll never forget. It’s one of the deepest books I’ve read, and looks at Bombay in a way no other book has.

I am a different person from that which I was at the end of 2010, and I am happy that’s how it is. Cheers to 2011 and everything it brought along!