The Imaginarium

2010-03-07T20:59:00.002+05:30

But it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.

- Alice in Wonderland

It hit me last night while we were tumbling out of college, degrees in hand. It's been a year since we'd walked out together, and we probably never will again. I chose to stick within those walls for a year longer than you, but far from comfort me with their familiarity, what lay within them morphed over last summer into completely new terrain.

People forever reminisce and gripe about going back to school, reliving their whims and breathing at a different pace. What we don't account for is a million little factors perfectly tuned to creating our perceptions of what used to be a flawless reality, if only for a moment.

The roads we walked and sprawled on aren't the same. My classrooms are 500% more animated, but all our 'spots' now teem with strangers and I scarcely know them anymore. Every memory I have of three years ago are of a different place, a place I thought I would re-identify with you all treading the same ground once again, for a night.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

I'm coming to terms with the fact that a greater part of my life will be spent validating and refuting my daily epiphanies. When I stop and think about life, I realise that, overall, it's pretty darn perfect. It's a whack in the face that I should probably be paying it more attention, because the greater details won't feature in real-time reruns.

[/sap]

comma chameleon

2009-12-20T21:53:00.000+05:30

For every time that their became there and who's became whose.

For when it became acceptable to begin a sentence with 'because'.

Because now, beside and besides are the same thing.

For when colour turned into color.

For when we all gave in.

[/rant]

Yes, this is pent-up post-GMAT and mid-application frustration.

while the rest of my country is trying to escape agriculture

2009-11-07T09:27:00.000+05:30

... most of my generation's getting it on with Farmville.

Amidst the hordes of lost black sheep, baby elephants and scars on the face of rumanity that are pink cows are some of the people I had previously referred to as my social life. With 63 million people having been sucked into the vortex since it debuted on facebook, I'd be surprised if your minifeed too wasn't flooded with panicscreechwhine status messages pleading for cats and trees. Have you found some premium white mystery eggs on your friend's farm lately? (Oh no!) Definitely not, twenty people just beat you to claiming them frantically. It only took a minute.

Rare green cows are definitely against my religious beliefs. I vote to boycott.

Thank you, abstruse goose.
My facebook presence hopes to curl up and die before Fishville hits my screen.

you live, you learn

2009-08-29T22:26:00.000+05:30

Summer '09 began quite, quite ordinarily.

Ze Train

-My train journey on the 15th of May was spent next to a creature who resembled a ruminant at best, and seemed to have minimal control over his rear end. Though I'm in training to become one of those saffron-clad beings capable of tolerating most evils of life, this left me at quite a loss.
I therefore alternated between running from compartment to compartment in search of a friend of mine, smiling at unhappy-looking people and slumbering with the greatest agitation plaguing my soul, dreaming of the day when I shall possess spiky golf shoes, capable of deflating the most troublesome bums.

Ze Drive to the Insti
-We got lost.
[Insert frantic waving and dying in front of Kannada-speaking uncles here]

Room 156

-Home to retard(s) for 47 days and ADORED. We're even willing to forgive the little bloodsucking beings and bugs that encroached upon our space and time.

The Blue Loo

-This was almost the highlight of my summer. Home to my green bucket and several clothes that were soaked and left unwashed for weeks, resulting in their untimely demise. Also home to Mal's & Nik's vibrant yellow bucket, which was grossly underappreciated and therefore spat flames at them and made forth to my blue haven.
Weep, idiots, weep.

The Lab

-My eyes widened when I realised that I was -once again- planted in a lab full of Bengalis. However, these nutcases were awesome. Fantabulously fabulously awesome. They're also disturbingly inclined towards all edible items containing sugar and made jaw-dropping transformations into sweetness-seeking Smeagols every now and then. From my lab, I learnt not only about SPIONs, Raman Spectroscopy and plasmons, but also about how to chat up FESEM operators in Malayalam, find bars of Toblerone in refrigerators next to cyanide and peroxide, mess with gold on a daily basis and get a whole load of entertaining scoops on a place which I otherwise considered pretty darn dead. My guide was not only a good teacher and fun company, but also deadly patient. Hats off.

PRODUCTIVITY :)

The Project
-4.5 stars and two thumbs up. :)

My project involved creating SPIONs coated with gold and functionalising them. The fact that every second thing I was to touch was carcinogenic made me realise that the prospect of cancer and death scared the crap out of me. There are some things that I came to terms with. For example, when your solutions turn brown instead of pink after 13 hours of toil, experiment fail. When the brown goop seeps into your skin coz you butchered the purple latex gloves and forgot to change them, G fail. When you pour acetone into the goop instead of distilled water coz they're in similar bottles and look the same (thus signalling a definite 13 hour repeat performance the next day), epic life fail.

It is also to be noted that the ice machine is a creation reflecting pure genius. I could have taken over the planet a decade ago with such a marvel in my possession.

The Schizophrenic Skies

-Rain, sunshine, thunderstorms, wind and wait - more rain. My love for cloudy skies has been reinforced :)

The Slimy & Serpentine

-This summer, our favourite insti decided cough up about 40,000 snakes - big ones, small ones, green ones, brown ones, toothy ones, poisonous ones, ones that crept into my lab and others that I imagined going for my toes while I did my experiments. It was particularly fun to watch Joey run screeching at the mere mention of our slithery friends. I even persevered in my search for a pet mongoose. Thank you, Yahoo.

Thoo.

Gunshot? Like, a Quick Gun Murugan Gunshot?

On a bright Sunday morning in June, I decided to get my nose pierced. This is to Hams (who held my hand and laughed her ass off at me) the piercing uncle (who patiently put up with me in a state of high panic and even answered my questions. These included "but what if you shoot my eyeball instead? I mean, by accident?") and to the gun which should, by right, be called a stapler and embarrassed me considerably. A special mention of my nose, which has kindly consented to stay with me during this rather trying period in my life.

and You.

One couldn't do justice to our summer in a couple of sentences. :)

Movie marathons. Gopal's mokkai. Trips to the stone quarry. Trips to urban quarries. Grinchoo's dirty dancing. Barbarian basketball. Our favourite orange-clad player :D Joey's parties. The absence of breakfast time. Air hockey. Lunchtime panic attacks on GTalk. Bowling. Midnight cheese sandwiches. The Sprite Dog. C.V. Raman's building - our lavatory. Bohemian Rhapsodying the mess. Vendettas against pineapples. Birthday parties and emergency cake. The pujari. The wonder that is Vishraam. Sneaking to washing machines. Van Wilder II. Molecular vibrations and taking over the grass at 4 am. Working on no sleep for days. Waking up the campus to 'She Will Be Loved'. Contemplating the future. All the drama. The 10:30 bus. Farewells and bars of Temptations that we never saw. Bluff. Fruit salad. A lot of shopping. Gym Cafe. Crow droppings and scientific publications. The awful music and all the dancing.

This is to, in effect, one of the best summers ever. I still love you guys. Better late than never :)

<3

Goodbye, scientific inclinations.

I can't wait 'til the morning, wouldn't wanna change a thing

2009-04-28T15:18:00.000+05:30

It's 'the goodbye to summer vacations that never began, hello laboratory' time of year again. Almost. To save you the trouble of wading through a post the length of an epic on May 19th, here's a prelude. A summary of Summer 2008.

I shall now elaborate on each monumental aspect of my so-called summer vacation individually, and explain the roles that they play in the general betterment of life, the universe and everything. Some of you have already been subjected to my rants of 2008, but that's okay. These things will go down in history one day.

--- Written on the 11th of June, 2008

Internships i.e. the reason I'm stuck where I am.

"This year, we work in PhD labs under professors, in addition to sitting through lectures + presenting a project report + a term paper + a seminar in front of several profs & PhD students who, rather annoyingly, have and exercise the liberty to ask fundoo questions.

Its role in the bigger brighter picture? Nothing, really. It serves as good timepass. :)"

My Stipend

"It's now 10k! :) Minus much for accomodation and food, sigh. We'll stow that away as an afterthought though.

Its role in the bigger brighter picture? The pouring riches always begin somewhere. Here's my somewhere. WAHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHA."

The Lectures

"They're periodically fascinatingly wonderful and at other times you want to throw your detty socks at the prof's mug. QMech classes - our moods went from YIPPEEEEEWHEEEEOMG on Day1 to snoregruntglare on Day 5. The rest began snortsnoredrool and continue in the same general fashion.

Its role in the bigger brighter picture? There is nothing big or bright about it. GET ME OUTTA HERE. If people could OD on the phrases 'over here' and 'over there', our lecturer's one guy who'd have kicked the bucket several decades ago. He's very nice. He is also extremely excitable. Optical Spec really makes him tick, and he leaps about happily all thru class, completely oblivious of his audience. Today he waggled his finger at us several times after he made what he called 'sweeping statements' and leapt about telling us not to argue.
Who's arguing? 4 out of 9 of us were this close to passing out on the floor in a pool of sleep-drool. 3 others were clearly brain-dead. One was drinking coffee. A lot of coffee. And I entertained myself by drawing goats and cows on my coffee cup."

My Prof

"My boss is a really nice and pretty darn awesome. Unfortunately, he knows a little too much about life and hence made classes a bit of an overload. But that's okay. He reminds me of a mouse. Not a little mouse, but a mouse. He scarpers around, and is ALWAYS terribly busy. He also has a shiny nose. It had me in a trance, right from Day 1."

My Lab

"This is what I sent Shalin on Day 2."This place is prolly just what I need to get all the drama out of my life. They'd assigned me stuff to read and learn before the program had even begun, deffo a downside. The first set of 25 sheets were on photosynthetic mechanisms and the second set were on advanced quantum mech. I stared blankly at the photosynth sheets for about 25 minutes in the earth-shattering silence of the totallly screwed up Unit until diverting my attention to a long-legged spider proved to be a more a) interactive b) comprehensible c) entertaining d) ALIVE option than the 5 other people in the lab."

I'm glad to say some of that has changed, but not all. They're really nice people, just terribly quiet when they work. And when they're not quiet, they're talking in Bendlish (Bengali + Hindi + leeeeetil English) Yes, they are all north Indian. No, I am not understanding a goddamn thing."

The Food

"Sucks at hostel, rocks at work. I drink black coffee and tea like there is no tomorrow.

Role in bigger brighter picture? I have put on weight. I am now a round 40kg. Gah."

Exercise

"I have taken to running around their hockey field whenever I wake up early enough. In addition to the several kilometres they make us walk, dreaming of food.

Role in the bigger brighter picture? Wait and watch for the muskills. HAAHAHAHHAHA."

And the people? They're retards. All wonderful, lovely retards. We get our geek on together. ;)

May 15th, here I come. One last time!

good old Nostradamus, he knew the whole damn time

2009-04-24T21:52:00.000+05:30

Some suffer colonial hangovers. Fair enough, really - I sometimes wish Brit comedians would take over the country. Especially at times like now - between one clown and another, I'd pick the legit one :]

Also, May 13th isn't far away. If you're old enough to be responsible for the idiot who goes to power:

Get Out And VOTE.

This post is dedicated to celebrating yet another landmark in my educational progress. Indeed, I refer to my completion of 'Blackadder Goes Forth' which, at this moment, outshines my impending graduation by more than a bumswog. Rowan Atkinson has officially earned my highest level of respect. From Bean to Zazu - I didn't think he could get any better.

I was wrong.
Move over, Hugh Laurie. This jungle has a new king. :)
My favourite things on telly. Ever.

A Not-So Comprehensive List of Things I Have Learnt:
How to defend myself against a man armed with a banana. Wait - apples, grapes, cherries, peaches, watermelons and mangos too.
...that it ain't half hot, mum.
If I found my own Humphrey Appleby, I too could be cabinet minister in a fictional Department of Administrative Affairs.
Rasmalaaaaaiiiis.
Queen Elizabeth? Indian.
How not to be seen.
Forgive me, I'm from Barcelona.
Bypass surgery? I can make it at home. All I need is a heart, some blood and a litttttle aubergine.
Prince Charles? African. Where else will you find such elephant ears, haan?
What God did unto the Sodomites.
It's a bit depressing to know that there will be no new Monty Python sketches left to fall over to, no more cunning plans marching with ill-deserved confidence in this direction.
"A man may fight for many things. His country, his friends, his principles, the glistening ear on the cheek of a golden child. But personally, I'd mud-wrestle my own mother for a ton of cash, an amusing clock and a sack of French porn. "
Good times.
:)
In loving memory of Spike Milligan.

people are crazy, times are strange.

2009-04-23T17:45:00.000+05:30

Sure, life isn't always fair.

Sometimes it screws you over, knocks you down and leaves you on the floor.

But really, there's so much more to it than just that.

I have often wondered why people perform multiple shows of their so-called sob-stories - vocalise to everyone around, blow foghorns, and in the process let life pass them straight by. For weeks, with words, tears and more words they whine, dramatise, contemplate, bitch about where everything's heading and nurse what seem to be chronically broken hearts and wounded egos to the world at large, ranging from perfect strangers to the people who sat next to them yesterday, who were then completely unaware of the life-altering catastrophes taking place daily, less than a foot away. That the aforementioned can take little things so seriously for so long is beyond my comprehension, and that they take comfort in what I believe to be mostly noncommittal support is something I could never understand.

Maybe that's probably my problem, not theirs.

Agreed, everybody's caught themselves in the same kinds of webs before. Most manage to pull out before they get in too deep. Before the web ends up defining them. Your issues with life, the world and yourself are only as big as you decide they are. A little faith in yourself, really.

Life, in some capacities, can be be simple if you'll just let it stay that way.

take me wandering through these streets

2009-04-13T18:56:00.000+05:30

Us pseudo-almost-scientist-types are usually pleasantly surprised when people seem to have even more free time than we do.

Where do your favourites figure?

The human race never fails to amuse me.
Tomorrow, I shall conduct a survey in order to correlate the length of one's nosehair to the colour of one's oldest pair of socks or alternatively, one's ancestral underwear. Also, my American alter-ego just bombed the SAT.

Quite gleefully, at that.

A 60 tonne angel falls to the earth

2009-04-10T02:06:00.001+05:30

I love train journeys. You can never really get enough of them. A train is also one of the few modes of transportation on which I do not exhibit my extreme motion sickness. I therefore love them almost as much as I despise flights.

Flights. Post age 8, I have managed to throw up on every flight I have boarded, save one - quite a personal record, I'd say. My green streak includes a particularly short flight that lasted 25 minutes from Chennai to Bangalore. Flights, particularly Air Deccan ones, have a tendency to convert me into a muckfountain, only colourifically different from beheaded people in Kill Bill movies. I have vivid recollections of flying alone from Chennai to Trivandrum on Jet Airways at age 9 and being too embarrassed to ask the steward for an extra barfbag. When the needful had been done, the extra-friendly man insisted that I eat the plate of green chicken he'd put before me. When I didn't, he force-fed me the aforementioned plate of green chicken, which sickened me beyond belief. He also waved crayon boxes and paper at me while I probably blinked at him with increasing dismay.

Fireworks ensued. His lesson for the day? Sometimes food that looks like it's come out of a cat's digestive system just doesn't cut it.

However, this post is not about flights, strange Stewards or rollercoasters [which I have never been on, with good reason]

Trains.

Indian trains have a lot of things going for them, apart from being the country's (well, my) top stop for tomato soup. I've met some of the strangest & most entertaining people on trains and in days of yore, found extreme glee in being a cookie bandit. I've finished books with nothing to distract me. Sat with my abnormally large nose out the window while it rained. Gone on countless retarded trips. Peered at rivers and wished I could throw my sister into them as we passed. Sat up all night, bleary eyed from playing Uno. There are gazillions of memories I could cough up. Even the one where I brushed my teeth with Odomos at 4:30 in the morning.

It's been almost a year since I travelled by train. The last time wasn't under happy circumstances either.

I got on the train at 5:45 in the morning and found myself wedged between PurpleSareeAunty and SqueakyLoudUncle. Being the awesome creature that I am, I passed out about 2 minutes into observing them, only to be woken by PurpleAunty poking me to death because the Shatabdi [a train] has this annoying habit of feeding its passengers every 30 minutes. SqueakyUncle, meanwhile, had pulled out a HUMUNGOUS red book full of numbers [he had this large & flashy phone but clearly did not know how to use a contact list] and dialled numbers at the rate of 5 per minute, every minute. What got to me was the fact that his keypad also made loud noises. He would then yakk away in odd languages at the top of his voice and really didn't need the phone for whoever was at the other end to hear him. The result? I woke up. I also wanted to throw something large, heavy and spiked at him. He then chose to strike up a conversation.

"I am observing you," he said. "That's nice, how fun." is what I wanted to say. What came out instead was an "Oh" bordering on irritation and accompanied by a completely nonplussed expression on my mug. "Yes," he says, like it was some personal achievement, "You are a very poor eater". All I could manage to say was the familiar "Oh" again - at this point I was ready to fall over and curl up on the floor and could not muster the effort to glare. He then proceeded to tell me that I was small, a poor eater [again], that I must grow [this is funny] to be intelligent, that I must grow up to be like Abdul Kalam, that his daughter was a poor eater, and I was a poor eater [again] and that I was terribly quiet [SURPRISE!]

"My aunt passed away" I say. i.e. I am emotionally drained, I want to sleep, leave me alone, stuff your mouth with the GoodDay biscuits you keep eating and STOP TALKING. Then he says "Oh." and I heave a sigh of relief.

But THEN he chooses to lecture me on how I need to pray for everyone's soul, turn to Jesus Christ etc etc etc and I died, leaving him babbling happily to himself. PurpleAunty just stared all this while.

I also remember the time that I decided the shifty-eyed uncle in the next berth was a psychobomber. I attributed my conviction to the fact that he
a) was extremely fidgety & leapt at small noises
b) kept whispering conspiratorially into his mobile phone
c) carried nothing except a tiny black backpack that he kept far away from him.
d) kept running to the door, bag (with bomb, I assumed) unattended in order to blow us all up while he made a quick escape.

In the interest of State Security, I sat opposite him and watched him beadily for what seemed to be a very long time, making what I believed to be threatening yet calm faces that he glared back at while he fidgeted some more. I also mentally prepared myself to throw my charger at his head, if the need arose. This went on until I passed out and woke up to find he had disappeared, bag et al. I then decided it was all my doing, and that I saved the train. Us unsung heroes, we can be terribly fearsome. It did not occur to me that FidgetyMan had reached his destination and seen fit to get off. The possibility simply wasn't exciting enough. Meanwhile, my Dad pretended that he didn't know me.

Maybe I am antisocial after all.

Anyhow, I'm booking tickets to Bangalore for May 15th.

The summer is here :)

I could be standing on a ladder to make it easier

2009-04-08T06:55:00.001+05:30

"On a more serious note, I’ve been thinking long & hard about my future. Perhaps treating psychopaths is not my calling after all. Sitting at my comp 23¾/7 might not keep me alive either. The idea of turning into a modern day pirate appealed to me, except for ~~my tummy tolerance or lack of it~~ my lack of certain necessary abilities. Humbug. I have therefore set my target at more reasonable things - say, a bank robber. Size too is to my advantage. I shall begin by digging holes from strategic positions towards bank’s safes. I like digging; when I was in the 2nd grade, I sat in the school sand pit with a large stick with intentions of digging to China. I may not have gotten to China, but I did get to water, which could either show my obvious talent for digging with large sticks or the fact that the drainage in that area sucked. Clearly, I’m going with the former.
This time, I shall use an electric spork. That will baffle them all. Haha. Hahahaha." -November 6th, 2005

So much for planning. :]

2005 saw me spend a significant amount of my time shitting bricks about getting through finals & getting my butt into college. Well, SURPRISE - years later you still find me shitting bricks about finals & grad school - quite the upgrade. Vicious circles & screwed up circadian cycles? Story of my life.

I don't think I ever saw myself getting out of *college* alive. Now that my foot's halfway out the door, not even my muskillpowerz are assisting this realisation. A few quick notes, bits & bobs about my love for this institution & everything it has given me.

First, our wildlife of choice.

I shall miss the glorious Mutant Kakas. They have taught me that being little, beady-eyed & hopping around is of great significance to Life, the Universe & Everything. They have also taught me how to claw into people's heads, neatly nip at their food and zoom off with it, cawing jubilantly & thus dropping the food on some other aunty's head. Such cunning. I also commend their timing for flying into class & performing awkward musicals together. Most of us have spent many a joyous breaktime dodging their divine droppings & several others mopping off the aforementioned. Gangsters with wings, Bless Thee.
Piggy/Johnny/Ginger/SlutCat/Whatsername - There was once a time when I liked you, but our brief affair is now over. I hope the Mutant Kakas gnaw at your tail as you slumber with your expansive bum in the air all day, everyday.

Classrooms. I have learnt several things in my 3 years as an undergrad. We shall not go into how much of this is academic, it may embarrass me.

In addition to these things, I have perfected the art of nodding on cue to any lecturer's voice. This often leaves me looking like one of these.
This is an Indian Cow Bell - exactly the kind I wore around my neck not so long ago. It surprised many people that my IC Professor didn't chuck me, the bell or both out of class. On the contrary, her beeg-beeg-eyed expressions led us to suspect that she routinely heard ting ting noises go off and therefore must be a complete retard.

Gluttony.

I shall miss the drippy but awesome Nimbu Paani Ice Lollies. And the friendly canteen chaat man. Well no, just the Sev Puri. I shall miss eating Anusha's & Meera's & Raad's lunches [though we rarely find the time to anymore :( ] and making Mithali buy me egg puffs. I shall also miss Magjof Juice Centre, which taught me the meaning of inflation slowly but surely. However, I shall not miss the vegetable-less vegetable puffs and I shall sure as hell not miss the green dabbas (that have replaced Frooti & Maa) that trick us by promising lemony goodness but instead deliver a megadose of Electral.

Inter-Year Culturals.

One of the few reasons I wish we weren't scramming after all. Particularly Drams. From Love-Shmuv [insert :P + cringe here] to Twelve Angry (wo)Men and And Then There Were None. Sigh. Good times :)

Sanskrit

~~I have whined. I have bitched.~~ I have lamented, with tears pouring down my moon-shaped face, positioned facing the sapphire-blue water so as to emphasize the pearl-dropping pink lotus behind my ear, which will, in about 234 more pages of gibberish, reveal the moral to this horrendous story.

No, seriously. I LOVED Sanskrit hours. They gave me a whole new outlook to life. It's fun how passionate about the language our teacher was, it's also fun how she tried convincing us of most of the things we were reading. I shall leave you with my favourite-ever quote [and this was hard - I have books and books of them]

Our Sanskrit Teacher: And Indra came down to earth to prevent the mountains from flying away.
Us: Huh?
Her: Yes, in ancient times, people would climb mountains, which would fly away and when the people got off the mountains, they would be lost. Indra saved everybody. He cut off the wings of the mountains.
Us: Oh.

I shall also remember the watchman everyone tries to creep past, the water-coolers, plastic peas, ridiculous karate get-ups & drills, value education classes, women that refer to a line of Best Outgoing Students as a 'bunch of sheep' and other women who peer and prod at your clothes, gasp & drag you off to the Principal's office.

And my people, the reason three years have been ~~bearable~~ happy.fun.yay :)

Tomorrow's the Valedictory - watch out for us dressed as Mango Delite Ice Creams [or Mutant Kaka style according to the robes they give us, the suspense is killing me too]

All said and done, I think I shall miss it.

More than I am willing to admit.