so turned 24 today!

am 24...
feel 40..
look 18... ( ok fine 20...)

can life get any better? (or worse?)

is this what they call fate?

the fact that i have the best conversations when i am sleep talking...

Mumbai Quickie!

went to mumbai for precisely 14 hours...day before yesterday...

finally put a face to a pseudonym that appears quite regularly in the comments section of my blog...landed up at his wedding...haha..congrats acheck!!

met joyie...(who is still pretending to be let lagged...a week after coming back from london...hmph...grr..)

and as i wearily lugged myself along in the wee hours of the morning trying to head back to pune...asha bhosle crooned "Khallas!" from a radio blaring at the nearest chai stall...

i miss mumbai!

so saved up some money...maaroed some emotional drama with the flowers guy and got a little colourful spray of flowers...for a little less than the usual price one would have to pay...yesterday...

and then went to wish him Happy Birthday!! spread the word around and organised a surprise party...and he sat there much like a little school boy...piled up all his gifts on the dinner table...(te flowersi got him were quickly placed in a vase) and as we sat and talked...he was quick enough to click a pic of all of us...and then we talked of bombay, of memories from IGIDR, of the sea in Goa and if it had an international airport...and of discussions in class...and as the rest of the class trooped in with cake and more gifts ...he was quite flustered..."well..it's never happened here before and...i think i know whom to blame.."he said looking at me with a broken smile..."of course" I quipped...and then we sang for him...made him blow out the candle...cut the cake...completely embarassed him...

and as we all trooped out...his wife called me aside and said softly, " thank you...it's quite sweet..you know he has been upset for the last two months..."

here's to all those brilliant classes in economic history...here's to someone who taught me how to argue and reason rigorously...Here's to someone who made my life a little more delightful here in Pune..
----------------------------------------------

anyway folks...am a confirmed second semester student now..cleared my first sem...and best of all i cleared math...finally!!

and yet another professor will be leaving...he won't wait for the semester to end...

they tried to break him...but he'd rather go about his work and not mull over the past...

all i can say is i was witness to another effort to change the system...that's all we students here remained as...mute spectators... as the victors rolled out their dice... and we continue to watch in silence as they celebrate...knowing fully well that we could have changed the way things work..knowing fully that perhaps we too are responsible for the mess...the trip downhill has only started...and by remaining silent we are proably only hastening the process of downfall...

the externalities of being a Gokhaleite...

1) The Mess makes sure that you have a digestive system of a goat, by the time you complete one semester...anything ranging from polythene to phenyl is then digestible exactly after one semster

2) It is also exactly after one sesmter that you will find your skin resembling that of a croc...to put it plainly...you develop a thick skin...reactions are reduced to shrugs everytime someone opens his/her mouth to speak...

3) Academicians here justify the presence of the word 'politics' in the name of the institute Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics by indulging in politics of the petty kind...students follow suit at the hostel...

The power of the Nobel...

so a super-senior (from the batch that will receive their degrees tomorrow) was speaking out her mind to me last night...and thus she spake, " I dunno...I am just not feeling upto it for convocation...we were all so excited that Amartya Sen was coming for our convo...but now..it's just some professor from JNU...i mean the last batch had Abdul Kalam coming ( at this point i was thinking, "but Abdul Kalam goes for most occassions that he is invited to around the country..he is like the most accessible president we have ever had...")

and she continues, "...nobody even knows utsa patnaik..why couldn't they get someone else...i mean this is such a 'one-day in our lifetime thingy'...."

I just smiled and went back to my room to sleep...and i couldn't sleep so i was thinking and thus i thought,"so..is it really about having amartya sen over for the convo or is it about having Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen over for the convo? is it about the one guy who changed the way the world rationalised human hunger and deprivation? or is it about having clicked a pic with the Nobel Laureate for your convo, so that the photo dominates your shelf and you can show it off to future generations to come..."

and then i thought about what Amartya Sen himself had to say about winning the Nobel, "It's just a title that overrates my achievements...but it's something that helped me start two trusts in India for education"

and then i fell asleep almost immediately...