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.