Wokay!

The air conditioner in this room has kicked in, and I’ve finished my Career Launcher exercise. I am now ready to write again. Delight. Joy. Let’s get on with it, shall we?

I’ve been talking to even more people since I came back. What with this heat, talking over the phone is all I can do- going out and meeting them is infeasible. It’s still all good. This Fillet is about the deeper cosmic significance of the nostalgia attacks I’ve been suffering.

The first flutterings of nostalgia were triggered this February. It started with a guy from Final Year Mech. called C. Seshagiri. For obvious reasons, he’s called C-Dot.

What C-Dot did in February was this: he took a committee of the IEE student chapter called the Survey team and did lots through it. He started French classes on campus on his own initiative. He started a publicity team to market TIET to corporates for research projects and placements. He even tried to organise an inter-university techfest, and would have done so successfully, only the Director pulled the plug at the last minute.

That C-Dot did this at all is quite remarkable, and shows him in a very good light. He’d got brilliant grades, he’d been placed in Maruti, and it was final semester. He didn’t need to do anything for the college, especially since our college doesn’t really do a lot for us, but he did it anyway.

By now, you must be asking yourself what all this has to do with nostalgia.

Well, here it is. Even though they had very different motives, this flurry of activity on C-Dot’s part reminded me of the one initiated by Maya [She still talks like the TGV moves- Baldy (Quotes 16:44)] Jain back when I was in Class 12.

That was what triggered it. The resemblance is trivial, but nevertheless it affected me at the time.

After that, of course, I started the W-Fillets, and started getting replies from people whom I had classified as long lost- Ankur, Dolan, et cetera. Nostalgia piled up a little more.

Another trigger was Rishi getting his exchange programme, which reminded me of his earlier exchange programme, my own trips abroad, and brought back a little more memories.

So now we go into the whole cosmic and spiritual significance bit.

I think it isn’t just nostalgia. I’m beginning to believe that my life these days is actually beginning to take on facets of what it used to be like five to three years ago.

Here are the resemblances:

• My co-curricular life- quizzes, programming, et cetera is on an upswing. I’m quizzing after three years, and coaching (well, trying to coach) after the same duration. The quizzing isn’t a lot, either, but at least it’s there.
• Rishi’s off on an exchange program again, just as he was four years ago. Similarly, Baldy is once again globetrotting to attend global conclaves.
• Many people are once again either just entering a new educational program or about to leave it. I know that’s something pretty obvious given that a Bachelor’s degree is only so long, but it’s a resemblance nonetheless.
• On a psychological level, also, people seem to be what they were in those days. Shiven, for instance, who was quite depressed for almost a year is now back to his old areskicking, determined self. Madhav, too, has started using bad words after a long period of abstinence.
• You want coincidence? How’s this for coincidence? Two Sundays ago, at my Career Launcher MBA coaching class (where I’m being coached, not doing the coaching, please don’t get confused with the earlier point), who should walk in but The Person Formerly Known As The Q? Unexpected and unannounced.
• Most importantly, perhaps, is that my love life is hopeless once again. Since Class 12, I was always trying in one direction or the other, hopeful that something would work out in the face of all obstacles. Nowadays, though, I’m resigned to being cast in the mould of Bertie Wooster. Class 11 again.

There are other coincidences, too. Like the first question of the first exercise of the English Usage book from Career Launcher being about Preity Zinta. Or the ratio of N/(N+1) being discussed out there. Or Mansha being propositioned by a lesbian. Or many other things. Chances are, if I’ve written about something in a W-File, a W-Fillet, or Quotes List, it’s popped up in some other context somehow. And I realise that I’m not explaining it very well, but it’s something so nebulous that even I don’t know exactly what point it is that I’m trying to make.

But let’s summarise.

Over the past few months, there have been a series of remarkable coincidences in my life, which seem to link all its different facets together, and which have also sparked off a nostalgia wave. When I act upon the nostalgia wave, and call my old friends up, I discover even more connections.

So, there are two conclusions that can be drawn. The first is that I’m beginning to see what Dirk Gently, aka Svlad Cjelli calls ‘the fundamental interconnectedness of the universe’.

The second is that there is no fundamental interconnectedness in the universe, and these visions of connections are merely a symptom of schizhophrenia, which happens to run in the family.

If it’s the first, though, then the implication is this- that for an unknown period of time, I’m not driving my life so much as surfing it on a wave of fate. Setting a route isn’t relevant any more, it’s foreseeing and navigating the obstacles on the way that’ll be important. That is my current fatalistic frame of mind.

Do let me know what you think. Particularly you, PP, I want to know whether your initial reaction was ‘How DUMB!’ or something more on the lines of ‘Classic sci-fi, fitted into all the characters we know so well’.

It’s taken me almost two hours to write this Fillet. I’m going to sleep now. Fin.

I am now 75% of an engineer.

Carp. Out of the five people who were taking this course, one didn’t even show up for the endsem. The instructor told us not to worry about grades, so I guess he didn’t. I’m now thinking he was actually very smart, especially since I could have taken all my stuff home a week ago and been done with it.

On the other hand, giving the exam may have benefits anyway. I’m waiting to find out what they are, though.

Things to do today- pass textbooks on to juniors, book a taxi for tomorrow or day after, buy a carton for the books I still need next year or at home, and separate the PC into it’s component pieces.

It’s the PC that’s causing the whole problem, really. I can leave everything else at the hostel, but not PCs or music systems. My bedding will go to the cloakroom, and so will the books, but the PC has to come back with me. The clothes, I already took back last week.

For the first time ever, I’m appreciating the portability of a laptop.

Anyhow, third years over, and it’s been the best one so far.

I’m on the last day of a five day break before my last endsem. In a couple of hours, I’m going to zip out of Delhi, reach Patiala, study through the night, give the exam tomorrow, and zip back into Delhi.

The past two or three days, I’ve been calling up almost my entire phonebook. More of my old friends are back in Delhi right now than ever before. It’s a delicious feeling.

In the past thirty-six hours, I’ve talked to Asim, Vedant, Rukhein, Deeksha, Shiven, Pranita, Nidhi, Arnab, Akshay Bhatla, Zubin, Shiv, and Rishi. Vedant, after four years, and Rukhein and Deeksha after almost three. There are even more people who weren’t at home or whose phones seem to be dead- Divyanshu and Charu. And there’s lots of numbers still to call.

I’m swimming in a sea of nostalgia, which to my mind is even more pleasurable than swimming in a sea of chocolate. (Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mannis.)

My self-conferred title- Keeper of the Memories is beginning to actually become relevant. In the conversations I’ve had the past two days, I’ve been having to remind people over and over of stuff they did. After about five minutes of prompting, Rukhein finally remembered the great day we had three years ago (Damn, it’s been so long!) where we went to Sagar and had dosas, after Mriduben got frustrated sitting on the bed while he gobbled up meat curry and paranthas. That was such a cool day.

I had to remind Rishi of the significance of NSCP and IP, and though Vedant remembered who I was, he had forgotten all about giving me and ShrutiG lifts in his Contessa at the peak of the monsoon.

Sigh. Everyone’s growing old. Hopefully they’re growing wiser too.

The next stage is to meet people- some of whom I haven’t met for even longer periods. I haven’t met Asim or Deeksha since first year, and Rukhein or Vedant since they passed out. I’ve already fixed up with Bhatla for some sort of plan for the 2nd of June, before he leaves for training.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to make a few more phone calls.

Back after a long long break. Blame it on exams. (The long break, that is, not the being back).

Coming to the point- Indian TV ads these days are filled with cute kids. Cute to the point of inducing nausea.

I Am Not A Grinch and I have nothing against cuteness per se, but in the past two or three years, ad agencies have overstepped all limits. They’re trying so hard that cuteness has mutated into a sort of fake tweeness. It shows. And it induces murderous thoughts- not in me, for I have a sunny disposition, thanks in large part to Preity Zinta- but definitely in my brother Bhavya and other hair-trigger, short-tempered, type-A control personalities. Bhavya, I should mention here, has gone over the edge, and is engaged in compiling a list of kids in ads for whom to lay ornate death-traps.

The most prominent example of smarmy little gits trying to sell us stuff these days is the kid in the “healthy AC” ad. He’s horrible. “Why take chances?” he pipes in that ingratiatingly concerned voice. The effect of the ad would be to make one rush out and buy blood pressure pills, and not ACs, but somehow advertisers don’t get it. In the face of all common sense, they seem to be convinced that this sort of soppiness is a good thing. And they persist with this tactic.

Not that other ads are any better. There’s the McDonalds ad from a couple of years ago with the whiny brats, to name an extreme example.

The whole trend of twee kids in ads, like many of our other modern ills, can be blamed on Karan Johar. It’s all his fault. He started the trend.

Yes, Karan Johar. It all started with that diabolical miasma of sickening sappiness, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, which was filled with horrible little kids acting cute. Acting cute, mind you, not being cute. Things have been going downhill since then.

It’s not really the ad agencies fault. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai was commercially succesful, and emulating it must have seemed a good idea. But then, it’s commercial success was assuredly the result of a pact with a devil.

After all, the characters in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai were some of the most repellent specimens I have ever come across. There were Shah Rukh Khan, and Salman Khan, whose faces are enough to make one throw up. There was that disgusting kid sardar, who was mentally deficient even by the standards of his species. And there was that precocious girl, who- infamy of infamies!- was named Anjali. Anjali, a name that by rights belongs only to the sweet mechanic in Jo Jeeta Wahi Sikandar.

But despite all that, these stereotypes are being perpetrated. And there’s no escaping them if you have TV. You’ll be forced to suffer through kids selling you ACs, kids selling you cold drinks, whether fizzy or not, and kids selling you all other sorts of goods and services. And all of them condescending to be cute.

So, if you too are ready to explode and grab a gun, do so by all means, but don’t go after the kids. They’re just the symptoms. If you’re planning to mow down someone, go for Karan Johar. It’s all his fault.

In the India Today Special Issue on the Best and Worst States of India, there’s a guest column by a Market Strategy consultant called Rama Bijapurkar. I can’t seem to locate the online version anywhere, but you can try your luck on www.indiatoday.com.

Anyway, the article discusses how Indian small towns are catching up with metros at a blistering speed.

That was just the article. I’ve been noticing it for the past two years. Patiala is going wild. There’s a dynamism here that you don’t see in Delhi- at least, not in the established markets like South Ex or Greater Kailash. Sure, people in the previously mid-level markets like Green Park are tearing down their old shops and building new ones, but it doesn’t compare to Patiala.

The thing about Patiala is that people here will do something, fail at it, do something again, fail at it again, and keep doing something new until they get it right. This may be due to the fact that most of them are Sardars, and have a historical tradition of rushing in to battlefields without planning and preparation. Then again, it may not.

Take, for example, this one place about half a kilometre down the road from the college gates.

In the first semester, it was a Domino’s Pizza- a sit-down Domino’s pizza!- which folded up after about six months. Six months after folding up it was reincarnated as an NIIT franchise. The NIIT franchise never took off, what with the tech meltdown, so now it’s a Ford Dealership. It’ll probably be something different- a call centre, perhaps- by the time I graduate next year.

Down the road from that, there are a bunch of PCOs which have indulged in price wars until you now get photocopies at 50 paise a sheet- equivalent to 1 USD for 74 sheets. There’s a Chinese restaurant, a mini-mall, and a Reliance WebWorld. And that’s just one road. In just one town. And $deity knows, Patiala’s no comparison to Ludhiana.

On the other hand, Patiala and other small towns might be growing up much faster than Delhi as far as economic development is concerned, but Delhi finally seems to be getting its act together where the softer sides of life are concerned.

The air is cleaner, the traffic moves faster, and road rage notwithstanding, is really more disciplined than in Punjab. It’s got a ways to go before it hits international standards, but I think we’re getting there. Delhi’s going to be a very good place to live.

My brother is a racist. He looks down upon French and Bengali people. One of these prejudices has returned to bite him in the ass.

Those of his batchmates who had taken French as thir optional language in Class X are currently on an exchange program where they’re visiting France. The ones who took Sanskrit- such as my brother- are stuck in Delhi, where they’re wilting under heat and dust.

That’s not the half of it.

One of his friends- named Gian- is being hosted in France by a “hot French girl”.

That’s not the half of it either.

They have been going on picnics to the wine country in Bordeaux. Chaperoned by her parents, but it still counts for something. Meanwhile, my brother goes for tuitions to Malviya Nagar. Oh, and there’s a strike on in France, so he’s not even going to get the olive oil seeds that he asked for.

But that’s still not the half of it.

The girl’s name is Fanny.

Let that sink in.

And let your imaginations run wild.

And let this be a lesson to you to never be racist.

It’s been raining for two days now. The temperature has fallen, the air of Patiala smells fresh and clean, and my feet aren’t tanning any more. W00t!

As a point of fact, my life is quite wonderful these days. Here’s a quick runthrough of why.

I am almost assured of getting As in my two elective courses. I received my evaluated engineering drawing sheets today, and it looks like an A in that course might not be too far off either. That will be good for my CGPA. Chem, though, is another matter altogether, but there’s still the endsem in that. Plus, my Chem practical evaluations went pretty smoothly- three concurrent readings in three attempts, baby!

Only a drawing viva-voce tomorrow and an SPM quiz on Thursday. After that, I’m done with the semester (barring the minor inconvenience of endsem exams, of course).

The big news, though, is that I scored 114 out of 145 in the Career Launcher Diagnostic CAT. This is supposed to be an excellent score, according to them, I don’t know if they say that to everyone to boost their morale, or if it actually is a good score. But hearing so sure feels nice.

Arising from that, here’s the career/ life plan for the next two years.

I’m enrolling in Career Launcher’s two-month crash course for CAT preparation this week at the South Campus centre. It’ll begin on May 25. After the two months, there’s a series of thirty tests, to be followed by two months of Personality Development- read practice with Group Discussions and Interviews.

So here’s the answer to what some of you must be wondering- why an MBA, and not an MS.

Well, it’s what my family would like me to do. What’s more important, though, is that I have no desire to do an MS and specialise even further in Computer Science and Engineering.

What I love about CS, see, is the fundamentals- Discrete Maths, the Introduction to Programming, Basic Algorithms. Cool as specialisation is, I no longer feel any desire to get into a narrow area, and lose my focus on the fundamentals. Hence, an MBA, which is ultimately a generalist course covering the basics of everything.

So, the plan for Semester 7 is- prepare all out for the CAT, and don’t sit for placements unless someone immensely cool like Infosys comes to campus.

If the MBA plan doesn’t work out, try for campus placements in Semester 8- the final semester. If that works out, get a job of any sort, get a year or so of work experience, and then go for MBA entrances again and yes, the GRE also, if I feel like it.

If even that doesn’t work out, I’m doomed. So let’s not go into that.

For now, let’s focus on IIM-B.

There are many problems associated with summer. The fruits and vegetables are tasteless and unappetising. Walking around Delhi dehydrates you, and iced tea isn’t exactly cheap. For that matter, neither is fruit juice. Until this year, there used to be frequent power cuts, but the privatisation of the distribution companies seems to have heped in that matter.

One problem that is of more immediate consequences to me, though, is the footwear I wear in summer. With the ground hot enough to fry an egg on- not that you’d want fried eggs at the height of summer anyway- heavy sneakers are ruled out. My mum threw away my canvas shoes, so that leaves me with floaters.

Floaters keep your feet well ventilated, and air-cooled. You don’t need to wear socks. As a direct consequence, you don’t need to wash socks either, and thus you lose less socks. It’s a win-win situation.

On the other hand, when you wear floaters, most of your feet are exposed to the elements. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that in the height of summer in an agricultural state; water, air, and space are in short supply. The only elements left, then, are fire and earth. Or to put it plainer, heat and dirt.

Wherever my floaters are open, my feet have gone dark and splotchy. I’m not sure whether this is a tan, or just dirt, but I don’t like it. Last year, they didn’t fade away until November, and I intend to truncate their existence this year.

Truncating their existence, though, will require a change in footwear.

I’m thinking canvas shoes or Adidas trainers.

Almost three years ago, after a happy and enjoyable day spent with Rukhein, Mridu and Asim, I had bought what became my favourite shoes ever- Adidas trainers on sale at 800 rupees. They were cheap, light, and very comfortable. Alas, six months later the right shoe was cut to shreds when it got caught in a rickshaw-axle when I bicycled to close to it. Damn.

Adidas trainers are still to be had for less than a thousand rupees (just a rupee less, but less is less). I can’t find canvas shoes anywhere.

On the other hand, maybe I should tolerate the strange stains, and spend the money on food and books. Or again, maybe not.

I got back to Delhi yesterday. Once I hit the border, I switched my Walkman off my self-compiled tapes (Metallica, Ugly Kid Joe, Aerosmith, Rolling Stones among others for those who’re interested) and on to FM mode. I was curious to see what the three private FM stations that had launched while I was away were like.

My first impression, after surfing through them for about an hour and a half from the Delhi border to home in Safdarjung Enclave, was that they’re lousy.

This was because all I heard on them was the very worst Hindi film music. By contrast, AIR FM 102.6 – yes, the government owned AIR- was playing amazing soft bluesy guitar rock- Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler, Fleetwood Mac. And the RJ knew her stuff.

I gave the private stations another shot today. I’ve revised my impressions somewhat. The private stations aren’t all that bad. At the same time, they’re not much better than AIR.

This is the situation- AIR has terrible radio jockeys for the general shows- news, Hindi music, Indi- and English pop, countdowns, request shows, and the like. On the other hand, for about the four to six hours of niche programming they do everyday- classical, rock, jazz, and the like- they have fantastic jockeys who know what they’re talking, and play very high level stuff. Those four to six hours are excellent- even if you don’t listen to that particular niche by yourself, the radio jockey will educate you and ensure that you won’t really turn off- unless, of course, it’s the heavy metal half hour, and you’re still unable to digest iron.

The private stations, I discovered today, have very good RJs for the general shows- self-assured and funny. They don’t do what the AIR RJs do- try too hard. But here’s the problem- they don’t have niche shows. It’s twenty four hours of current Hindi movies and pop. Not even news. Phew.

The last bit is surprising. It’s understandable that there won’t be much of an audience for rock or classical music (Hindi, Carnatic, or western) in Delhi, but even so, one would have thought that they’d have at least an hour of news. I mean, the number of 24-hour TV news channels had run into double digits by now. Then why this strange recitence on the part of radio?

Hopefully things will improve, but for now, I’m sticking to my cassettes.

British swear words are wonderful.

They sound much more posh and poetic than their American or Punjabi counterparts. This may be because they tend to be longer. The extra letters and syllables seem to indicate that a lot of care and precision has been taken to cuss. You aren’t mouthing off in abject frustration, say those extra letters. You’re making a calm, cool, and collected decision to use bad words.

Then again, maybe not, but I like this theory.

Another advantage of British swear words is that they’re never censored. Star Movies and HBO, which revel in pressing down the mute button on the slightest provocation and will even clip frames containing an upright middle finger, do nothing of the sort when foul language comes out in a British accent. ‘Bollocks’, ‘poof’, ‘wanker’- they all remain audible and intact.

Until last night, that is, when Star Moves muted all instances of ‘shag’ during the Bridget Jones’ Diary broadcast.

I put the blame for this on Mike Myers.

As long as the word ‘shag’ had a British mystique about it, it was inviolable. Then along came Austin Powers, and made it generic. Nobody outside Britain used to use the word, much less know what it means. Austin Powers changed all that. Everyone started using it- why shouldn’t they. Four letters and one syllable- it was accessible and easy to use. And now the party’s ended.

However, the Austin Powers franchise seems to be winding down, so it does not appear likely that more Biritsh cusswords will be brought into the public domain, and then similarly muted. That makes me feel very relieved.