I just smiled

“IIT ka naam aap ke saath lag gaya uske baad toh accha package milega hi”, said the man sitting next to me. I just smiled in reply.

I was coming back to Roorkee on the jan shatabdi, the train that I have taken more times than any other. Sitting next to me, was this man from the army, posted in Roorkee. His son had just taken a drop after 12^th to prepare for JEE. Once he found out, I was a student at IIT Roorkee, he started talking and that is when the above comment came up. Rather innocent and apparent.

I didn’t know what he meant by “accha package”. I didn’t bother asking. Neither did I bother clarifying on the stark difference in the starry ideas outsiders often have about the placements at IIT and the humble reality. Too much trouble. It was easier to just smile.

And then we wonder where those starry ides come from. 

Coming back to life

It’s been almost three quarters of a year since my last post, and there’s really no excuse for not writing, at least for the last three months that have been the beginning of what looks like the most lazy and agenda-less year I’ve ever had. It’s been three months into fifth year and I won’t be able to answer what exactly I have been doing. There is no real agenda to any day except making the daily trip to the department at the godforsaken hour of 9:30 (Imagine waking up at 9:30 on a Sunday, and then remind yourself that in fifth year, every day is a Sunday), except when one realises that one hasn’t met the dear guide in a month and shouldn’t stretch it much longer. But somehow this ‘doing nothing’ begets more ‘doing nothing’. Once you’ve spent three hours crawled on your bed, munching chips, engrossed in watching ‘House of cards’ it’s almost impossible to do anything even remotely useful.

That’s just the last three months though and a lot has happened since December. There were 5 frenzied weeks of putting up TEDxIITRoorkee, a semester that was dominated by EDC – painful and memorable at the same time, the never ending stream of Farewells, a vacation in China, paid in full by the government of India, and coming back to an empty hostel and an empty campus. All of these deserve separate posts of their own, and the impending vella-ness might drive me to writing them. But that’s all talk and this is it for now. So long!

The entropy of an isolated system is always increasing...

I am not sure you are going to find the observations that I am stating in this post as interesting, intelligent or exciting as I seem to find them right now. In my defense I have been through a couple of days of mid-sem ghissing and just when I was getting into the groove, my department has decided to make history by postponing the midsems. Yeah, I can’t believe I am complaining about this, but I would rather just get over with them. Anyhow, with that rant out of my system let’s get back to the topic of discussion.

So, one observes, one will find almost everything today seems to be worse off than it was ten years ago, or six months back or yesterday.

We complain about how better music was made in the 70s and about how books written today will never match up to the ones we inherited from the previous generations let alone the classics. Of course, there can be only one P. G. Wodehouse and one Ayn Rand. We complain about how India has had more scams in the last one year than in all years together since independence. We complain about how the world is at a greater risk of complete annihilation courtesy nuclear weapons than ever before. The list is endless.

The world seems to be on a downhill slope and there’s no coming back. The quality of life is constantly degrading and the world seems to be getting only more chaotic. I don’t know if it’s just our perception or it’s actually true but it seems that the second law of thermodynamics has proof in more than just the absence of a perpetual motion machine. 

The Harvard Resume

It’s been long accepted that it’s a fierce race out there, and the smart thing to do is prepare oneself to brace it well. Preparation can, of course, begin only once the destination has been decided. And it’s never too early to decide.

There are kids today, who have decided they want to take the JEE right in class eight, and what follows this clarity in vision is five years of dedicated single minded working towards the set goal. And then the kid fulfils his goal and finally enters the hallowed gates of these prestigious institutions, left quite without a goal for some time, having achieved the single objective he had. However, you must always have a goal as only then can you prepare and you must always prepare. So it isn’t long before our kid has found yet another goal. The clarity in thought is almost enviable. He knows what he wants, he is in a place where there’s no dearth of success stories to look to to and emulate  and he will soon have figured the best way to get there, and then it’s just a matter of doing exactly the right things at exactly the right times for the next four years. The path is set. A tad too set I think.

I have always been envious of this kind of clarity in thought and aim, and maybe this is just a case of sour grapes, but I have begun to sincerely believe that our generation has gotten trapped in a CV making rat race. For everything you want to be there’s a Harvard Resume, the perfect profile. And there’s a race out there to get as close to this Harvard Resume as one can. So, eventually one’s objective, the destination one is working so hard towards is but a Master Resume.

And there’ll be plenty who may see no reason to change this, but I think it’s rather ironical that resumes which are supposed to reflect upon an individual’s personality have now begun to dictate it. 

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!