The Chronicles of a Happy Life

There is no sadness
And there is no happiness
There is no pain
And there is no gain

Questions go round in my head
About whether life is dead
Should life be lived like a melody?
Or more like a game of monopoly?

This is not about the farewell
Or a computer engineer deaths knell.
It’s not even about better brands
Or about friends leaving to foreign sands

It’s partly about realizing that I’m a drama queen
(I don’t know for a guy what word that would mean)
It’s just so much more fun when stuff is happening
Even when the stuff is scary and frightening

Long ago, in Jeevan Vidya I learnt
(Completely useless it wasn’t)
That the best life is one with nothing amiss
But is this really bliss?

Let me die a youngman’s death
not a clean and inbetween
the sheets holywater death
not a famous-last-words
peaceful out of breath death

When I’m 73
and in constant good tumour
may I be mown down at dawn
by a bright red sports car
on my way home
from an allnight party

Or when I’m 91
with silver hair
and sitting in a barber’s chair
may rival gangsters
with hamfisted tommyguns burst in
and give me a short back and insides

Or when I’m 104
and banned from the Cavern
may my mistress
catching me in bed with her daughter
and fearing for her son
cut me up into little pieces
and throw away every piece but one

Let me die a youngman’s death
not a free from sin tiptoe in
candle wax and waning death
not a curtains drawn by angels borne
‘what a nice way to go’ death

Roger McGough

It was a very boring afternoon - made even more so by a Bioinformatics lecture. Since, the prof insisted that we not fall asleep (it just had to be in the ONE subject that sem in which I felt sleepy!) and that we keep noting stuff in our notebooks, the following was inevitable:

What a Greek tragedy!
Dedicated professors have we,
Even in subjects useless.
Where is the justice?

Who cares about bio-functionality?
Or a protein structure contortion.
Dense stuff about phi and psi,
Why is biochemistry the new fashion?

Helplessly we wait for 5400 seconds to tick.
While Mani SMSes to his chick,
Only IPV2 can read this limerick.
Visram is the only one who is not sick!

All along I sit and think,
about back then, when life was pink.
When we thought only about the here and now,
and biology was about the jasmine and the cow!

Back then, CAT was something which mewed.
IT Was only a pronoun we used.
Girls and women were not a big deal,
And we didn’t have to worry about a good meal.

The cheer from the heart was repeated oft,
We had only just heard of Microsoft.
Now some friends there are already placed
One of them even got his head shaved

I do have something to cheer me up,
After all, Aakash did win the cultural cup. (no it didn’t, sadly the poem was written before the revelation!)
Now my thoughts turn to love,
And dear God in the heaven’s above.

They drift to the campus election
And the process of natural selection
And you wonder how I write this
As I am already in sound sleep’s bliss.

I met a little girl in cyberland today.
We talked of the now and the before,
trifles a score, about my dog and her cat,
both of us loved Ram Gopal Verma more!

She is now angry at me,
felt sad, though knew it wasn’t meant to be.
Said sth stupid just like I know how
Foot in hand, open mouth now :(

Little girl, if you are reading this - the size of a person is determined by the kind of things that person gets angry at. I am also very sorry.

The following was my first entry in my personal diary. I wrote it before I owned a computer, when I was in class 7. I used to guard it with my life then and until now noone but me had read it. Forgive the pompousness, I was only a child then. I’ve not made any changes except obvious grammatical or punctuation mistakes.

I was never young, I never will be old. I grow larger somewhere, shrink somewhere else. Whatever I do, wherever I am, I don’t go unnoticed. Entire nations and yes, in some respects even the whole world depends on me for survival. In my enigmatic depths, I hold unnumerable secrets. Some I willingly share, others I have hidden and will contine to hide for centuries to come. There is complexity inside me. Mountains, valleys, cities all are present in me. Yet on the surface, I appear plain, simple, open to all. A thousand vile drains could not corrupt my pure heart. one million young streams submit to me and I, a graceful monarch humbly accept their offering. To the gentle I am kind, to an arrogant pride, I am invincible. I may kiss beaches but ddeep within me an undpredictable anger boils which can destroy ships, cities, entire civilizations like a pack of cards arranged by a foolish child. I shout and bellow at those who challenge, but I also comfortingly murmur into the ears of a little girl from a seashell. I am Sagar - the ocean.

Feeling senti today,
I asked the sage a question.
Isn’t it sad,
that after all the years we had,
Not many friendships and memories with
the departing I have?

Deep in thought with brow furrowed,
a question in return asked he
How many among our own, have we?
Dodged it with some light talk,
joked some more about little things,
but the thought weighs heavily on my musings.

I do have a a lot of friends,
and an even greater number of acquaintances.
I’ve been the tutor of a seventy and hundred,
and am at least known by the rest of the kindred..
but out of all these people now and here,
how many of them hold me dear?

The Farewell function was organized today. Aditya Maheshwari gave a systematic itinerary of his life here and said all the right things. Imran gave a hearty, humorous speech abt his experiences at iiit. Vishal Mallik sung the song - “Sona jaisa roop hai tera, chandi jaise baal’, originally sung by Pankaj Udhas. Piyush Bhargava told the story of his song by the way of popular Hindi songs.. He was simply awesome! Khurana tried to be nostalgic. The Director asked the graduating students to donate their caution money to the scholarship fund. The Dean was in his element. He even spoke about Gaurav Jain (my batch) for a while! Prof. PJN gave the best speech. He spoke really well. The following is all of the speech that I could remember:

“Aditya spoke as if somebody had died here. That is strange since it is only when you leave an educational institution and start living in the real world, you are truly born! You spoke about Prof. Jayanthi, Prof. Jawahar and me… I did a little calculation on my own - You guys stay here for eight semesters and do an average of five courses each semester… there are 100 of you and so all of you have earned a total of about 8*5*100 = 4000 grades here… out of which more than 1100 grades you have got from the three of us combined! for so many courses you have endured us. I’m worried.. you have done so many courses under us.. how will you face the real world?!.. These memories will stay with you forever.. The frustration of getting bad grades due to attendance… the wish that you had attended that one more class.. etc. In short, I would say that you can take students out of IIIT but you cannot take IIIT out of the students. Good luck and goodbye.”

I can’t end it better myself. Farewell!

I've been reading a lot of blogs lately. I found a lot of new things about a friend. Then, Rama's blog was awesome. It was great both in terms of style and content. I've found my ideal in blogging :D He inspired me to write poetry and the other friend has inspired me to be romantic.. so I came up with the following stuff.. Read at your own risk.

Thoughts of a hopeless romantic!

I turn around, to find her,
just where I thought she will be…
She was doing nothing in particular,
fortunately, she did not see me…

Isn't it so strange,
to find myself completely out of range..
But only about her I seem to think
even when the situation with her has no link

Oh! she is not the most beautiful,
and her voice is not extraordinarily sweet.
There are many who find her character questionable,
and some think that she is a dumb piece of meat!

I can't sing very well,
and I dance like an amateur.
I am not very rich (not enough, not yet)
all my achievements are too small to matter.

All of this is plunging me into depression.
My brain now registers no sensation.
In the night I cannot sleep,
Heavy metal music is all I find sweet.

Maybe I'm blowing this all out of proportion…
and this is a side-effect of weird sickness.
Probably there is no real emotion,
and only for a trophy, I am in this mess.

Soon, we will go our own separate ways,
never to see each other again.
Maybe, we'll promise to phone each other,
like two passengers on a train.

The above is a work of fiction and totally unrelated to reality. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental :D

R talked in a very strange way with me today. He was acting very hostile. When I asked him for a favor, he said, "YOU ask for favors… do you return favors?" I don't know what I've done to cause this.. must get to the bottom of this soon.

I took 3 tutes today. Hadn't prepared anything at all. Made a few mistakes.. but corrected them in time. The students were sweet… didn't trouble me much. Thanks guys.

A couple of guys in my batch have reportedly lost their mental balance. I agree that IIIT is a frustrating place… but doing 'it' next to a classmate!! That's really crossing the line.