Life's Worth

WARNING!

Those who are not the sentimental type or not even the pseudo-sentimental type, just close this window/tab and wait for the next post. If you are convinced that you are capable of human emotions, then you may continue reading.

My last post had great response from readers in my college and they wanted more of it. Honestly I was surprised that people even like my writing because I've started focusing on humour so much that the whole post looks like the script for Russell Peters Show. And to be even more honest I got sick of writing about my goddamn (blasphemy!) college. But I wanted to write one more post about it to wrap it up, until 3 days ago.

3 days ago, a friend called. She's got a beautiful telephone voice but since she had got cold, I mistook her for a prank caller. After she convinced me that she was really her, we had some small talk. Small talk got into something more serious and set me on a trail of thoughts. But they were so random and incoherent and mostly full of anger, self-contempt and sadness that I promised to call her back later and tried to figure out what I was really thinking. And I promised myself that I will make a post on my blog about this. I started retracing on what actually gave me those thoughts.

We were talking about our plans after college. She was going to do a post graduate course. Good for her. What was I going to do? Hmmm. I am also going to do a PG, perhaps an MBA. Wait, I'm so sick of studying, so maybe I'll work. But then again, I thought, who was I to decide?

Huh?

Well, I'm Eggman, the master of the eggs. Who buys the eggs? My dad. Who cooks them? My mom. So what the hell do I do? I eat. Is that the only thing my mom and dad are involved in? No. Well, what else are they Involved in? Well, there are some things...actually a lot of things.

Practically everything.

Right from the shoes I buy, the clothes I wear, the money I spend, etc., if my mom or dad's better judgement is not involved then I'm not Involved. And readers, atleast those of my age will agree with me on this point. But have you ever asked yourself why this is so? Because you already know the answer to that question. Because that’s the way it is. It’s like gravity. You know that when the apple fell down, gravity was responsible for that, but you don't know why it was responsible.

Let me take you on a ride through my memory lane as I tell you my side of the story as to why my thoughts on what I was going to do after college made me sad with self contempt. I guess I was so happy in my childhood that I don't really remember much about it. The fog in my memory lifts as I can see some of my life in my mind when I was 10 years old. It’s like watching old black and white Polaroid pictures. I know that I was me when I was 10 years old, but I cannot believe that I grew up to be the same guy. I'm much less happier now.

12 years old, memory gets clearer as I can see myself transferred to a new school. When my dad filled out the application form, or when I wrote the entrance examination, I really didn't feel how much that this will change the way I lived. I thought I did the exam badly, but I was the first of the five to get selected. I got to go to school in a car since its 40 minutes from my home.

First day at school. Remember it quite clearly...as if watching a high definition movie. Tailor did a bad job with my uniform, my trousers are embarrassingly short. Teacher asks me a question in English, and I don't understand what she's telling. The most embarrassing day of my life.

13 years old. I got a crush on a girl. Did a lot of things that when I think about it now, I can't help laughing at myself.

14 years old. Everyone's focussed on the public exam except me. People tell me to get serious but I don't. Life becomes harsh on me all in the sudden. I give up on my crush; decide it’s a passing cloud. Should've done it earlier. I am forced to go to school on MTC buses. My father must have thought I was a bad investment and decided to reduce transportation costs. Exam is over and the results come out and I pass with very average marks. Now my father was convinced that I was a bad investment. I meet a few old school friends. They ask my marks. I tell them. They laugh at me. They can't believe I went to a school 40 minutes away from my home to get these marks. I change the topic.

15 years old. I think I might be good enough to make it to the IITs. 3 months into the school year, I'm convinced I'm not even fit for school. I barely pass that year.

16 years old. I already knew what was going to happen at the end of the school year. I get marks so low that I get a counselling date a month after the counselling began. My father gets me a seat in a reputed college which, I find out after a week in it, is worse than a nut house.

17 years old and life is hectic. It was so much for me that I don't remember much about it except the good times I had with my friends. 18th year was a little easy on me. I get my driver's license and passport. Soon I realise that both will not be useful any soon. My dad says the only way I get to go abroad is for my studies. Useless passport. My brother advises my parents that I'm a rash driver and shouldn't own a bike, out of vendetta because I gave him a troubled time (tore his stamp collection when I was 4 years old, poured water on him when he was sleeping, that was when I was 11 years old) when he was back in India (He works in US of A now). Useless license.

19 years old, I have an argument with my mom about my love life, my point being that since I am the one who is going to tie the knot, I get the freedom of choosing the one I want to marry. Her point is that she gets what she wants...which is actually not a point but a suppressed expression of dictatorship.

And at this point of time I had the same feeling that I had 3 days ago and I looked back on my life just like this. If I had stayed in my old school, I might have scored better marks. When I left my old school at the end of 7th grade, I had the top marks for that year. I have a picture of me getting a prize for that. Now you may think that I blame my dad for getting me transferred to another school and eventually leading me into a pothole of failures, but I don't. He had the best intentions in his mind when he got me into that school. But shit happens. People screw up. Especially those who spend more than two hours on commuting to school.

Getting back to the present, I finally figure out, why I recollected all of this. It’s because I wanted to get reminded of how much my life is worth. I thought am not in control of my life but actually I was. Everything in my life happened with my silent approval. If I had told my father that I was fine in my old school, things might have been better. And I honestly I should not have poured water on my brother when he was sleeping, bad move. So to sum it up, I fucked up.

And I feel absolutely great. Now I know that i'm in control. I have a mom, who makes the best lunch for college (and I regret that sometimes because my classmates eat my lunch), a dad who can buy my bare necessities, even if they are branded. I passed math in middle school because my brother tutored me. I have great friends who expect nothing from me except to be myself. And for these reasons I am forever grateful to the above mentioned people.

Now I am happy.

So when you feel sad or depressed or simply "feel like shit", think about all those people that I mentioned above. They have all spent a chunk of their life for you, they have made an investment on you and some don’t expect returns. And to them you owe a lot. And for the same reason, pull yourself together and go on living your life. If bullies in your school beat you up, fight back. Even if you get your nose broken, you will feel great. Can't have fun in college because of too many rules? Break the rules without getting caught, it’s much more fun. Hate working at your workplace? Save up some money, quit your job and get a new one.

So whatever you do in your life, do it because you want to, not because you have to. You can say no when you don't want to do something. If they don't listen to you, say no louder. Say louder until they listen to you.

I fell great after writing this. Thank you for reading this. And thank you for being my dad/mom/brother/friend.

Ciao

Learn The Hard Way

This college thing is more time consuming than I had thought. I now have less time to play games, orkutting, chatting, facebooking and doing nothing. So when the weekend comes I go all the way. Finished the game Prototype an hour ago and got bored already. So here I am typing away like I'm writing record due tomorrow but the difference is, this doesn't have a deadline but I have the duty of satisfying my fans who are now less than the number of fingers in my hand if both my hands are cut. So without further ado, as I promised you, I'll introduce my lecturers and professors.

No, not all of them, just the ones who deserve to be mentioned. Personally I think everyone in my college is a egocentric weirdos who don't even have the least bit of decency not to scratch their balls in front of female staff but there are some weirdos who can cause more damage than sleeping gas with their teaching skills. They are,

The Dumb Bums

I had great expectations from this guy who teaches me Dynamics. He's an author of many books which students actually like, not the usual copy-from-the-standard-text shit. Now this guy walks into the class room and everybody is like standing up and a good friend of mine just had to laugh after hearing a joke. The prof doesn't even bother greeting us with a customary good morning, he calls out to my friend, referring to him by the word which is the Tamil equivalent of "waste-land". I wasn't impressed. Turns out that the word was his favourite.

Then there is this guy who teaches me Gas dynamics. His problem wasn't his language, his problem was his mouth. He can't stop talking something as if its some kind of an obsession. In the name of recalling the previous day's stuff he repeats the same thing for a week. We were going no where with this guy.

Then comes the guy who tops them all. His was a problem of completely different sort. He graduated from the IIT with a degree in Chemistry. It was probably Fate's dark hand that threw him in this college but he seemed to enjoy every moment of teaching. The only problem was that we weren't. Actually most of us don't know whatever that goes on in his class because we will be sleeping. I try to avoid sleeping in his classes(not that I love to hear his lecture, I don't sleep in class because it disrupts my sleep-wake cycle), but since it is so difficult I try to distract myself from sleeping. This was how : instead of taking notes, I noted down every mistake he makes in his pronunciation. These are some samples :

"Forests act as a large sponse(sponge) absorbing all the rainwater".

A student irritated him very much and he decided to flaunt his knowledge :

"I have laand(learned) more than you".

He's probably a rich landlord from the country. The other day he was explaining the blue baby syndrome :

"Even the footus(foetus) gets affected".

Some other day he was explaining the dangers or using pesticides :

"Some pesticides affect both tarjet(target) as well as non-tarjet organisms".

The same day he was explaining how burning fossil fuels affect the environment :

"Banning(burning) of fossil fuels lead to pollution".

And how could I forget today???

"Deforestation leads to degrees(decrease) of rainfall".

God I feel sick already. Look I'll be honest with you, I didn't graduate from the Oxford with a literature degree but no one has to be to speak good English. Especially its got to be the teachers who have to be careful in these things because they're going to stay in the same college for probably the rest of the eternity but in a few years we will be going places and we don't want to show off in the office meeting what we "laand" in college.

I always thought learning by experience was the hard way and learning through schools and teachers was easy. And in the place where I study, its the other way around.

Ciao

RIP Poovaraghavan, 3rd yr EEE student who lost his life to a dreadful road accident. Loss of life could have been avoided if he was wearing an helmet. Once again it has shown us that a simple precaution like wearing a helmet can make the difference between life and death.

Update

I just got my result! And I passed!! I fucking passed!!!

Eggman Goes to College

And I'm eggman. Hereafter I'll call myself by that name, so don't get confused.

Vacation was over and after that interview debacle there was this college debacle that i couldn't avoid...for 2 yrs and this is the third year.

I've always had a twisted view of college. And I was not to blame. It was Tamil cinema. They always showed students having fun. There wasn't a single scene depicting the amount of studying involved. And even studying is not my problem. Its the rules. None of the movie guys wore formals. Most of them had pony tails, french beards and piercings. And that created a lasting impression of how college life will be.

Let me tell you a story from my life. Or rather a page from m life story. Back in the day when we wore school uniform and started growing a rudimentary moustache, i.e. the high school days(or rather "daze"), there was more testosterone flowing in our blood than the amount of water our government(TN) gets from Karnataka. As a result most of my classmates (including me) and a few friends were trying to get a girlfriend(bottom line of the matter was that no one was successful but that was a different issue). After an unpleasant experience I reached a conclusion that my attempts at getting a girlfriend were futile(since most of the girls in my school placed themselves above Aishwarya Rai and thought that they were too good for us even though the fish vendor in my street looks better than them), and even if i did manage to get a girlfriend, school was just too early to make a commitment. So I gave up the womanhunt. One of my friends was really disappointed with my decision(he wasn't a quitter, unlike me) and asked me what better place was there to get a girlfriend than the school. Can you guess what my answer was?

"College".

At the end of high school, I guess I maintained my "average" performance which was not going to get me into a good college. Luckily my father came to my rescue with a case full of money. I was going to be an engineer. And where was i going to graduate from?

V for Velammal.

Touted to be one of the best colleges in the city, rumoured to be worse than school. But with my marks I didn't have much of a choice. Something was better than nothing. I didn't know what to expect since most of the guys who made out of the college did so well in their career but they never said a nice thing about the college. In the first week somethings were very clear to me. I've listed them out(it has become a habit since the first list).

1. No, I'm not going to get a girlfriend here.

2. No, I won't have a beard that I longed to have.

3. No, I wasn't going to bunk classes which seemed so easy in the movies.

4. No, I will not have that sense of freedom that school offered so generously.

5. No, wearing an ID card around your neck with a rope is not so cool(feels like a noose).

6. No, my love life is going to be an insignificant footnote in my college life.

and many other conclusions which have too many obscenities that I won't list for the fear of my blog getting flagged. But the whole thing was pretty much fucked up. My master plan for getting a girlfriend crashed and burned. And eggman continues his journey through the land of the barren.

Adventures of eggman will continue. Next time I'll introduce my lecturers and professors to you.

Post how our college life turned out in comments.

Ciao.