Farewell 2010

First things first. The awards were rigged. All you heads of departments, shame on you!

Apart from the disgraceful favouritism rampant in the farce called Farewell Awards, I think it went pretty well. From the minute I got into the bus in the morning and till the moment I got out, I was pretty entertained. It started out with the cake cutting, the fake snow, the impromptu scream sessions and the jokes about leaving jail.
All the girls from each department wore matching saris and naturally had to take like, a million pictures of themselves in the mess hall, in front of the department, the bathroom, the auditorium...it’s a girl thing. The more formal and uncomfortable something is, the more pictures you need to take to commemorate it.

The guys were in really high spirits as well if the spontaneous fist fights and dancing were any indication of how happy they were to be leaving the place. And wearing traditional Tamil clothes didn’t stop them from throwing people in the air or mock beating up guys who won all the awards. It was fun to watch. One minute all of them have their arms around each others' shoulders and the next, after the winner is announced there is a collective gasp of ‘Machan! Neeya?!’ and the poor guy gets beat up by the entire department. Very entertaining stuff.


Some of the programs were really funny, I’ll give them that. It really did feel like a Farewell and in my college, that’s saying something. I’m just waiting for my own and wondering if I should turn up wearing a leather jacket and torn jeans when everyone else is in a pink sari. The idea is very appealing.

Wish I could fish

Do you know how it is when you see dark clouds on the horizon moving threateningly closer every moment and you’re lying comfortably in a small boat, ignoring the sense of impending doom in favour of lazing around with a good book and a fishing rod? No? It’s a little similar to what I’m doing right now. Substitute the clouds of disaster with semester exams and the fishing rod and novel with birthday parties, movies, lunches and well, novels and there’s your analogy.

Everyone’s really feeling the pressure of the model exams, the semester exams, the constant, nagging fear of not getting placed or not making it through GRE/GATE/MAT/TANCET and God knows what else these people are writing these days. Also, there’s a new directive from Anna University that all practical papers will be set by said University and not by the respective colleges. Oh joy. Now I can look forward to doing that lousily as well.

And as if this isn’t enough, college day got cancelled. Not that I’ve ever really enjoyed college day, but it’s the principle of the thing. It’s yet another Machiavellian plot to oppress our souls and break our spirits. To all the Nicolo Machiavellis of the college management (no offence to the actual Nicolo Machiavelli whom I’ve heard was a very quiet, nice man with somewhat ruthless ideas when it came to winning at checkers and the like), I thumb my nose at you! With panache! If there was an appropriate nose-thumbing smiley, I would have included it here as well to express the sentiment better. That’s how supremely unconcerned I am with your plots to make us sit in class all day and dream of scaling the college compound walls in a desperate bid for freedom. So there.

Right, I think I’ll get back to my novel and wait for the fish to bite.

The pointlessness of it all

Have you ever felt completely content with life at the end of a long day? When you enjoy your work and you feel like you’re not just another person because you’re proud of the way you can do something in a way no one else can, it does you more good than a vacation ever will.

Why does the world want us to stop thinking when all the progress the world has seen depends on men using their minds? Why does the world want to condition us to expect a safety net? Why is it so wrong to make mistakes and so right to compromise on life? Why do people smile cynically when you speak of moral rectitude?

Why are men and women who do menial jobs chosen more carefully than the men and women shaping young minds? Why is it that, when these minds scream out in frustration and rebellion, men only seek to suppress it and succeed nine times out of ten?

All I ask for is the strength to not bother about offending the world or anyone in it in the pursuit of what I want.