Weekend Ramblings

This is a totally random post. Actually, I can't even say that this post will actually be completed and ever be posted. But I think now that I have said this post may never see the light of day, it will actually find its way to my blog. In fact, this post promoses to be so random you'd do well to quit right here. But if I was you, I'd be pretty intrigued by now and would read the entire post. I get the feeling that this post won't be as long as some of my previous posts on this blog. I used to avoid long posts, the logic being that I didn't like reading long posts so naturally, why would anyone else? But then I figured I should just go ahead and write whatever the hell I want to and not care too much about my prospective readers. After all, my blog is for me. Or is it? Isn't blogging about vanity more than any other single quality. You write to impress. Not everyone and not in every way, but all the same it is praise that you are looking for. Moreover, and I just thought of this, I get intimidated by huge books but people routinely read tomes and claim to enjoy them as well, so maybe most people don't mind long blog posts either and I'm just a lazy reader. However, I value brevity and I still think Animal Farm is one of the greatest books I've ever read because it's brilliant and brief.

I've been listening to "Aadat" (the Jal version(s)) repeatedly for the past few hours now. Just turned up the volume. I have also recently acquired a table lamp that's the best going away present I remember receiving (thanks to him). Actually, that is debatable but anyway I needed a table lamp because I hate bright lights (psychoanalysis anyone?) and I hated the tube light in my room. There were so many times when I worked in the light from my monitor screen alone simply because the harsh white light destroyed the entire mood. How the eff do you airguitar (yes, I do weird things behind the closed door to my room, which is why I love having a room all to myself. Jai Shiva!) to the Fade to Black solo in tube light? I also totally detest sitting right in front in KL in all that brightness and among all the activity. I prefer the tables at the back that are in the shade of the KL trees and that afford some privacy. I usually hate being by myself. At the same time, however, I hate too many people milling around me almost as much. I love a semi-private state, like maybe with a couple of friends in an open area. That's why I find walking around IIT infinitely better than being holed up in some room. I associate conversations with open semi-private spaces. Being with good friends in small rooms makes me claustrophobic.

Yes, so the table lamp is lovely because now I won't wear out my eyes trying to type in semi-darkness and at the same time won't have to wilt in the needlessly harsh tube light of my room. I love my room just the way it looks right now with its mess of papers and a shoebox and books and magazines and the computer on my table and clothes all over and wonderrrful music playing in the background. Feels good. The lamp gives out white light but it can also give out warm yellow light if you shut the case because it has a translucent yellow cover over the fluoroscent white twisted bulb (you know, the U-shaped ones). Also one corner of my room is now full of wires and stuff so it looks cool in a very, well, bachelor of technology way. I feel vaguely engineerish, and it feels good. I honestly wish I was better at what I'm supposed to have come here for. I mean, what I have and what I am will do. I'm not bitching about my life here. It's just that my Dad is an engineer (he was in IITK for a sem doing Batti Btech, which he then left to join the Railways) and he's very intelligent and I respect him tremendously, and my brother, although he's not as sincere as I suppose I was during my pre-JEE days, has inherited my father's analytical faculties and is very intelligent too. I am more of a mix of my mother and father, but there's no point talking about the kind of person I am since you know me already. It's like telling an interviewer you have great communication skills. Surely the interview will make that obvious anyway. Actually it's not a correct analogy but I just thought that the blog kind of serves the purpose of revealing my qualities anyway, so I'll just let you draw your own conclusions.

So, Aadat begins again for the perhaps fifth, perhaps tenth time and I continue writing. I've written a lot today. I have what can be called an anonymous blog where I write stuff that I can't write elsewhere for fear of it being misused against me. So a lot of the writing I do these days goes into that and the blog is sadly sidelined. It's so much easier to write with no fixed agenda in your mind, to just ramble on with not a care in the world. It's like those rare moments when you enjoy your own company (no double entendres please!), like now. I don't want to stop just yet, and I'm not feeling too sleepy either, so lemme think of something else...yes, I feel very sleepy in others' rooms and I often find them more inviting than my own. I just had a little power nap in my neighbour's squeaky clean room (his is easily the cleanest room among all my friends), but now in my room I don't feel like wasting time by sleeping for more time than I absolutely have to. My hukka prof (who btw looks snooty but is actually quite genuine) has been quite disappointed in failing to make us understand that there are people in the world who are such incurable romantics that they don't see the point of living unless they can suck the very sap out of life. Look (I feel like telling her), IIT is a very middle-class place. People come here from all subclasses within the middle class and most arrive with the express purpose of doing as well for themselves as they can, which as I never lose an opportunity to point out, is a nicer way of saying "for making as much money as they can", without compromising too much etc. Some of us become a little weird, many discover they are rather bright, and many among us become these sad wannabe-weirdos. Anyway, my point is very few among us have ever obsessively loved anyone other than ourselves, very few have ideals we'd lay down our lives for, we live unabashedly for ourselves and we don't see anything wrong with that. So it seemed a little funny to me when she said to some girl in class (whose voice btw reminds me of my cousin sister - many people remind me of other people but more about that later), and I try my best to quote here, "...if I look straight into your eye and ask you if you'd ever die for someone you love, would you?" or something to that effect. Gimme a break. I know people who've probably been in some stage of love, and I'm certain they wouldn't die for each other. It sounds almost corny. She gave us the example of Dead Poets' Society and I took great pleasure in informing her that I think the kid who shot himself because his father didn't allow him to take part in a play (a play, Jee-sus!) was a loser. I hate a few things, am I then justified in killing myself because the sap comes in trickles into my mouth? Leaving aside Andhra Pradesh, I think suicides don't occur because people don't have enough to eat and nowhere to shit. They happen when bellies are full and there's too much comfort in life and people feel a vague emptiness in their lives. That's why some really developed country (Norway or Denmark or something) has the highest suicide rate per capita and not India, as one might perhaps expect.

Lesson of the monologue: Enjoy mess food and sadistic profs and lots of work and no girlfriends because maybe all these hardships are keeping you alive.
Okay, this post is much longer than I expected it to be. Apologies.

PS: I collected lots of Calvin quotes today and noted them down somewhere. In fact let me see if I can find something cool to end this with.
This kinda fits: "Weekends don't count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless." :)
Happy weekending everyone. I'm off tomorrow for a quiz with some of my favourite people on campus.