Author Archives: Ramya

Umm, This was Crazy – Part I

This post should have been here a long time ago. But, given the rather erratic MBA schedule and the regular succumbing to the whims and fancies of my professors, this post got inevitably delayed. Of course, I also went home in a rush which added to the further delay. Anyway, read on now.

Disclaimer: All names are real. And no incident here is fictitious.

This is the story of one night. A rather simple and funny story of just 12 hours!
It all started with Dipsen walking into my hostel room at 9pm. I was acting a slave to my laptop at that time, trying hard to start reading the case pending for Brand lecture the next day, with two more assignments nagging at the back of my mind. Ok, alright! I won’t brag about my academic schedule here but, what I mean to imply is I was busy with terrible work load. (In fact you know, to validate, just that evening I was chatting with Raghu and Anish, and they would willingly agree that I was dead meat then!). Anyway. So, Dipsen walked in with the biggest grin and even more intense sheepishness written all over her face. Then, she blurted, “let’s do something!”. Puzzled I stared at her for some time, obviously prompting her to explain! The next couple of things she said sounded just like her – determined yet confused. Mm hmm, Determined because she was sure she had to do something. And Confused because she did not know how to.


Half an hour later, some part of her craziness rubbed off on to me. The “let’s do something” had changed to “let’s run off from campus”. By this time, Nivi was also in my room and she looked at both of us very disapprovingly. And so, we knew she wasn’t going to “do anything”!

Like some random shots, we phoned and Googled a few places around our isolated campus. When I say isolated, I really mean Isolated! There is nothing around my college campus apart from vast stretches of green and only green. And, as expected our search was all in vain. But, Dipsen wasn’t to budge at all. About one thing, she was very true, “It’s a chance of a lifetime – to have this kind of crazy enthusiasm. We might not have the time and the place to do this again!”

So, like all management graduates, we tried to first set up a team of like-minded people – people on campus who were ready to take on a crazy night. Most of them did not agree. We finally called up Nishadh, almost expecting him to get convinced in a jiffy. But it was Tj who unexpectedly agreed almost instantly! Finally, Nishadh gave in too. And so, we found our team.


But what was it that we were “to do” exactly? Haah! We hadn’t decided yet.


As we all got ready to leave (with no planned destination), it was past 10pm. Now, like in all college campuses in real life, there are some rules you are supposed to follow. Like not go out of main gate without permission post 11pm, like sign in the Out-Register while leaving campus. And there are certain general rules of Life that you are supposed to follow too. Like not travel on a deserted road with no street lights in an auto at the middle of the night. Anyone would call you insane if you did that.

But, those are exactly the things we did that night. The four of us quietly packed our laptop bags, convinced each other that we were doing this now or never, and casually walked out of the main gate.

For The Last Time…

This is a good news to declare to everyone. I am on the brink of writing the last three-hour final examination (popularly called as Comprees in some part of the country and Externals somewhere else!) of my life. We’ve all had our share of waiting for this D-Day, and aloha, here it is for me! So, although a bit nostalgic about it somewhere within, the excitement is overpowering and it is definitely a moment to savour!
Needless to mention, with exams ending, the day tomorrow also brings the end of the long academic journey I embarked on at the age of 3! It is overwhelming to think of it that way. I Learnt and Un-learnt many things. But, this post is not to tell you about the serious and sentimental stuff (that’ll bring an unnecessary halt to my last night-out preparation!); so, I am going to do what I logged on to do.  
As a tribute to all those days and nights of exam-preparation, tension, lectures, professors-teachers alike, techhy classrooms, out-of-syllabus incomprehensible questions, really weird invigilators, and to all those wandering imaginative brilliant minds — suited to the occasion, here are five of my most favourite from the world of Calvin and Hobbes:





























No one does it better than him; I am sure you agree! Cheers!

The Blues and Hues

Disappointments are difficult to handle. You don’t know what you are disappointed with more – yourself or the situation you found yourself in. You don’t know whether it was you who did something wrong or if it was the situation that went against you. But clearly, you are dejected. And, that is why I presume disappointments are tough to handle. Because of the sheer ambiguity they carry with themselves. For a while, you are immersed in a feeling of loss – loss of something good, something you wanted but did not get; later perhaps in the lack of a feeling itself. The vicious circle that the mind then weaves gets you weary to even fight any longer.

I am talking about one such disappointment I experienced today. I will tell you why I call it an experience later. It has not been easy to overcome. Absolutely because of the confusion it clouded my mind with. I did not know who to blame, if at all I wanted to play the blame-game – myself or the series of events that led to the disappointing outcome; or both. And, I did not know of a way to find comfort in my chaos.

It wasn’t somehow a regular college day right from dawn; and yet I dared to march into the unknown armed with… nothing. Or maybe, with some hope against hope. And, as I sit here in the library reflecting on my day that just went by, one thing stands out. Life is not easy. There are days when you become a victim of Murphy’s Law and chance upon the sad realization that the road ahead might only get worse. And that’s exactly what happened today. Being hopeful is even tougher on days like these, but then that’s the best you can do. Perhaps the day was chalked out to be like this, says a friend philosophically. But I don’t know that. Yet, I mean.

Like in most Bollywood movies, where the good wins over the bad, the disheartened feeling also saw a heartening comfort in the end. Sipping on tea sitting outside the college mess, I had a ‘lecturing’ conversation with a friend. So when I say lecturing, you can imagine it to be completely one-sided. And it was not the lecture that was the actual take away. It was the fact that no matter how bad your day is, at the end of it you will always have friends to sit on your either side, who’ll try to make you believe that the script you have been writing for your life will win just when the time is right; that the blues within would soon be replaced with newer, brighter hues; and that there is no greater delight in having faith in yourself, patience with life and wielding your pen no matter what happens.

With the day at its end now, I realize I shall wake up again to dare and march into another unknown armed with… maybe, the experience of having done this before. And, that as they say, is Life!

Variability

This is the exact sequence of events of an evening a few weeks back.

I was on board the college bus that plies to the city (of Hyderabad) every evening at around 5.00pm from my campus. I looked out of the window, it was getting dark and the wind was chilly. I tried to decipher the tiny print of the crossword puzzle that I was trying to solve only to realize I shouldn’t be straining my eyes any further. I folded the newspaper neatly and lied back for a much-deserved nap. I looked at my cell phone timer: it was 5.39pm.

I was fidgeting my cell phone when my eyes caught the time again. It was 6.39pm, exactly. I couldn’t believe the evening was turning into an almost disaster in just an hour’s time. By normal standards, I should have been in the city forty minutes back; but here I was, seated in my college bus stuck in a traffic jam in the least expected spot in the city. My mood was livid although I knew it was not helping the situation in any way. I tried to look around if I could find a way out of the traffic myself, by walking a few meters to-fro maybe. Feeling too restless and angry sitting there, I got down from the bus to fight the traffic on foot.

Something had happened to the auto-walas in the city that evening. I agree it was Bakrid and everyone was out celebrating in the hub of the city leaving Old City and the Charminar area quite deserted. But the auto-walas disagreeing to go towards Old City with the fear of returning empty sounded rather pretentious to me. I had finally managed to find an auto for half the distance and was now wading through the other half of the distance in another shared-auto. I was to meet some family friends in the city. With the anticipation that this ordeal would finally get over, I took out my cell phone and informed that I would be arriving shortly.

Time flies quickly right when you least expect it, worse when you don’t want it to. The time spent at our family friend’s was great. I got to see all the wedding-shopping (which I had hoped to be a part of when I started from my college) – gold jewelry, junk jewelry, and lot many beautiful sarees. I gorged on a few Besan ke Laddus as we chatted, and got a packet full of bakery biscuits for myself to carry back. And although, I couldn’t wait for dinner, I was feeling happy now. I had done what I had come to do. As I was hurrying up to leave, I checked on my cell phone again for the time. It was 8.39pm on the dot!

I reached Punjagutta after another auto-ordeal. There were about fifteen minutes for my college bus to leave for campus. I was feeling hungry now. Thinking of Plain Maggi at Bingers, I calmed my growling stomach. I bought a few magazines to empty my wallet of some heavy notes. Right outside the book store, I spotted Nishant near the crossing. Felt glad I had found some company for my journey back, I was already too weary of the traffic in the city. Upon listening to my entire tale of the evening, his only reaction was to move in quick steps towards a small fast-food joint and get me an egg-roll! It was 9.39pm, he claimed he had 6 whole leisure minutes to get the roll and get back. Quite pleasantly surprised and a bit worried for his hurriedness, I walked towards the area where our buses were lined up…

Human emotions make for an interesting observation. I recalled all my own emotions and varying moods at those hourly intervals late that night. They formed an entire spectrum. And I, was left smiling at the ceiling.

Hope

The leaf lay there
Waiting for its rain drop
At the edge
Of a window sill.


Parched,
It swallowed hard
The stillness;
Stillness of air
Of silence
Of motion
Of Life.
The leaf lay there
Crouched,
Waiting for its rain drop
At the edge
Of the window, now sealed.