Mixed Feelings

August 20, 2003

Life is terrible.

Everybody’s going back to college abroad, and I haven’t been able to see them off. The weather is terrible in Patiala. The air is laden with moisture and hangs still over the ground. I desperately need a nailcutter and bathroom slippers.

I have to prepare two project reports in twentyfour hours. The deadline is 4 pm on Thursday. Each one is expected to be fifty to seventyfive pages long. Aargh.

My performance in the last FLT (Full length test- the sample CAT I give every Sunday for practice) was painful. The Quant section was terrible.

On the other hand, life is beautiful.

Everybody else in my batch has also been a lazy procrastinator, and they, too, have to prepare their report in twentyfour hours. We’re all in the same boat, which takes a little bit of the bite out.

There’s a holiday tomorrow for Janamashtami- so I actually have twentyfour hours to prepare the reports. Whee! Things are looking up.

I have money, and buying the nailcutter and bathroom slippers is hardly a ten minutes job.

Sure, everybody else is leaving or has left, but Vikram is back in Delhi. And he’s been promising to do ‘ek saal ki masti ek mahine mein’. The imagination boggles.

As for the FLT- even with a performance as disastrous as I thought, I’m still in the 99th percentile, and clearing the cutoffs. So there.

There’s always a silver lining. The trick is to appreciate it.

And yes, I will start writing something more interesting than status reports as soon as I have the time.

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Hiatus Explained

August 12, 2003

I haven’t been writing for more than two weeks now. Here are the reasons why.

While I’m at college there’s nothing to write about. For probably the first time ever, I’m following a routine. I get up at seven, attend classes from eight to five, come back to hostel and study coursework from five to seven (or, as today, come out and surf), have dinner, and then do my CAT prep from ten to midnight.

Is this boring? Does this routine fail to provide me with adventure and excitement and really wild things? Yes. Will it increase my chances of getting into an IIM, thus allowing me to have an awesome amount of adventure and excitement and really wild things? I hope so.

The weekends, though, are a separate matter. They’re filled with so much excitement and adventure and really wild things that there’s no time to write it down. Until today. So here goes.

In the past two weeks, I’ve met Baldy, Shiven, Dolan, Machhi, Ishaan, and Rishi. Baldy after six months, Machhi after a year, and Dolan after two years. That’s been fun. More so, because even after going through stuff like Europe-hopping, graduating, and two years away for home, people really haven’t changed. Sure, Dolan’s gone from being tweet-tweet in the head to being tweet-tweet-tweet, but what’s one tweet more or less? Baldy, despite tapping hitherto undiscovered wellsprings of maturity is still Baldy at heart- photographing me and Machhi as we attempt Bharatnatyam movements, and wearing an earstud. I just might get me one of those, the day I have both money and spontaneity enough. Right now, both are in short supply.

Oh, and my preparatory test series for the CAT started this Sunday. I seem to have got 105 out of 170 on the first test. Cool. I need to work to about 90 to a 100 on the actual CAT to make up for my CGPA. I’m getting there.

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Bookshops Revisited

August 1, 2003

Things change. The Best Bookshop I Have Ever Seen is no longer Midlands.

The Best Bookshop I Have Ever Seen is now in Patiala. It’s called Biblio, and it’s right here in Patiala. It started while I was home for the holidays.

Biblio is located halfway between Gopal Sweets and Chawla’s Chic-Inn. To get there, you have to climb up a flight of very high, very awkward stairs. It’s worth it when you get in.

It’s just started, so the selection isn’t extensive yet, but what they do have is pretty neat. In addition to the new stuff like Sue Townsend’s The Queen and I that I haven’t seen even in Delhi, there are things like the complete set of RK Narayan, including A Writer’s Nightmare, a collection of essays that I used to have and lost. Whee.

Oh, and it matches Midlands with a 10% discount on everything. More whee.

But what really makes it the Best Bookshop I Have Ever Seen is its membership scheme.

For a hundred and twenty rupees down, and two hundred rupees a month, you get eight hours of Net time, twelve hours with their CD ROM collection, and you can come in and read any time between nine am and nine pm. Wow. Nobody in Delhi does that.

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