Where is Noah?

...when you need him the most...the proverbial deluge is here...mumbai witnesses the heaviest downpour in thirty years...

and i am stuck almost 35 kms away from home...on a hilltop...stranded without much of a civilisation to talk about...

atop IGIDR...for the last 40 hours...the place that has been inspired by the Ajanta Ellora caves...well obviously the architect got a little too carried away and forgot that it also rains in Mumbai...hence we are wading through shin deep water inside the buildings and sitting in shin deep water for dinner...the dude should have met Howard Roark to get a reality check done on his 'creativity'...

MTNL decides to connect only Emergency calls...i decide to check if my mum has reached home safely and all i get is a recorded message saying 'only emergency numbers are being connected'...if they just connect our calls...half the possible emergencies would be averted...hmph!!

have just about three hours of sleep to my credit...and have discussed our honourable PM's speech at Oxford to the inefficiencies of the Met dept. all in one breath...have decided on Economic History as an elective...

...of love's labour lost...

and all it took was a confession...

all it took was a prank...

if only everything else was as easy to lose...

threw an "easy guide around delhi" map in the dustbin...drew imaginary regression lines out of the scattered lights from where i sat on marine drive...decided upon the corridors in Gokhale that will be most visited...the trees that will be sat under...there is this one tree on campus which was sat under by none other than Gokhale and Gandhi many a time, whilst discussing the Indian National Movement...maybe i should frequent it more often for want of enlightenment...

nearly done with my project at IGIDR...nine precious days left..in mumbai...

have been racking my head on possible electives that i will have to choose...

and when i come back during a hopefuly well deserved break...there will be no home to come to...

Finally the Queen of Entrance Exams Tops!!

...two rejections and I finally top the...

umm...ahem...well...the Waiting List at Gokhale!!

so yours truly goes slam dunk after two rejections...am first on the waiting list at Gokhale...so admission now confirmed...see you all in Pune!

The last'est' time that I will talk about my rejection at JNU...

So while the Americans continue to save the world for us...here's an interesting development that might have had some karmic connection with my life...

remember the comet that NASA blasted to smithereens so that they could configure some more elements of the universe...ironically they have left a much Deep'er' Impact than they thought on human life...

at least a Russian astrologer thinks so...she is planning to sue NASA coz she believes that the latter have interefered with her cosmic balance and changed her horoscope by making a celestial body disappear...

in simple Mumbaiyya lingo she is asking, " kya boss? baap ka raaj hai kya? NASA matlab kisi ko bhi udayega kya?"

i am thinking...maybe...just maybe...this comet that NASA blasted could have been the key element in my fate that could have got me a seat at JNU...now with that gone...obviously the trajectory of my future has also undegone a change...

so i am also thinking...i can't change my fate...might as well join the Russian freak...at least i might stand to make some good money!!

-------------------------------------------------
moving on and forward...

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering thefundamental question of philosophy. All the rest – whether or not theworld has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelvecategories – comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer[the questions of suicide].”

- Albert Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus..

In Turkey..one fine day...some hundred odd sheep decided to jump off a cliff and end their lives...shepherds say this was most bizarre...suddenly when their herds were grazing..one sheep went charging towards the end of the cliff and just jumped off...and almost immediately..several others just decided to play Follow the Leader!!

I am thinking... the developed world is really developed...at least in terms of the kind of disorders that they suffer from...it is said that as a naiton develops the kind of ailments that affects its people also changes..from lower order diseases such as cholera, typhoid, malaria, etc...people graduate on to Psycho-somatic disorders such as Shopping Stress (was discussed at length on Oprah's) and other such fancy ailments...so now lower order creatures start jumping off cliffs for no apparent reason...sheep with existential angst is more than what this world can handle...my 90 year old granny would just blame it on the peaking effect of Kalyug!

JNU Entrance Examination Results
Registration No : 40445
Name : IYER VIBHA ANANTHANARAYANAN
Prog. of Study : M
School :SSS
Center :CESP
Subject :ECO
Result :Not Selected

Two conclusions!!

1) Competitive exams suck!!

2) Am meant for bigger things!!

so my second day at Kalina...

fell in love with the director...has to be the best ecotrics prof yet!! but i am yet to discover if i will be the worthiest student in Trics!!

one of my micro profs is Mas- Collel & Green (recommended book for microeconomics) in voice mode!! we were doing Preference Theory and and everything..word to word...even the examples are picked verbatim from the text...so we start off with a stereo costing Rs. 125...and at the end of the example, the stereo costs $125!! (she didn't even indianise the currency!!) in fact she even clarified my doubt using text language...

another example in perference theory...and the family has to choose between an Opera, an Ice Skating show and a Rock Show for an outing!! wow!! i would love to belong to that family!! rock show! how many of us actually go for an outing with our family to the rock show!! i remember this journo colleague of mine once telling me, how all our text books in school and college are so stereotypical when they talk of family structures, social customs etc..they confine themselves to the typical middle class bracket...generally upper caste elitist approach...and how when these text books are used in villages..kids just can't connect with it...

of course my anecdote was not in any way meant to belittle MasCollel & Green...just that the example was so not in the Indian context...

but the funniest bit was when she spoke of career choices in the context of preference theory and she says, "say you have the choice of becoming a lawyer, a doctor and a gangster.." just like that..no change of emotion...it was like straight out of the book and at us in class..i know i am overreacting...but you should have been there to hear it...she continues, " so say you choose to become a gangster.."

i am thinking interesting career option...but i am not the right size for it...unlike Chhota Shakeel or Chhota Rajan... in my case i will literally justify my title Chhota!!

The first of several firsts...

Yours truly's first day at Mumbai univ today!! was thoda nervous...ma made it perfect by adding the, "my little girl is off to college again" bit.... am sure she was just being all sweet and emotional about it...just that it added to my nervousness...you know generally...getting used to sitting for two hour lectures without letting your attention dip...trying to make sense of the math that the prof would scribble on the board...getting used to being on my own...and of course (can never forget this one...it's a tradition with me!) getting used to being struck a deal for sharing my notes on the first day itself!! the chick sitting next to me has already tried to patao me for an unending supply of notes for the next two years to come....

not so long back..i was the baap dada of my fate (to some extent) what with earning my own money and not having to worry about exams...but now it's back to the routine prior to that...and quite frankly am not that displeased with it...just that i felt like a fresher after a really long time...and there was no one around that i knew..and mumbai univ is a big place...

anyways...first day at Mumbai univ and have already been branded as Radical by the macro prof! am now getting weird looks from batchmates...howzzat for the first day! anyways i am thinking...should do a decent job merging with the vegetation at Kalina!