Smoke and Steal

This past Saturday I was sitting outside Barista at SDA, when a friend of mine passed by. I called out and he came over, all smiles and surprised.

“Hey man!" he gushed. "Long time. What’s up?”
I put my coffee down and stood to shake his hand.
“Nothing much,” I said. “Care for a coffee?”
“Yeah, sure.”

So we ordered another cappuccino and came out to the smoker’s area again.

“So, don’t see you around too much,” I began, “Sick of me already?”
“Nothing like that,” he said, as we sat and produced a cigarette each. “Been busy, that’s all.”

We lit up and smoked silently for a while. I watched the smoke trail away into the bright morning, amused at how much I loved my screwed-up existence.

“Good thing you got there,” I said, pointing at his Zippo.
“Yeah, and here’s the moment I wanted. You got to see this.”

Here he slipped a hand inside his pocket and came up with a slim object wrapped in black. He handed it over to me. In another second I was looking at a brand new iPod Touch 64 GB, complete with an expensive leather cover.

“Holy cow. When did you get this?”
“Today,” he whispered. “In fact, I was on my way for a beer. Celebration, you know, before the trip.”
“Hmm. Very nice.”

At this point his coffee arrived.

“So how has it been lately?” I enquired once the waiter had left.
“Umm, pretty good. Income’s on the rise.”
“Great. And how’s the family?”
“Happy. Wasn’t always this well off, you know. They like the new house. I even got a maid for the chores.”

This, by the way, is quite a big deal for people like my friend who have seen times when they lurked beneath highways looking for a day’s worth of alms. I was happy for him.

“So,” I said, eyeing the iPod, “Where?”
“Nehru Place,”
“Safe?”
“Got a line.”

Now if you are wondering what that was all about, I must reveal that this friend of mine is a professional thief.

“And the catch is from?”
“Jwala.”
“You are kidding me.”

Thing was, the guy had scalped a laptop from the very same place barely a week back. I had sources to be sure of that.

“No, seriously,” he said with a smirk. “Those losers fuck up like hell.
“Haha, ICs. So when do you plan on stopping this?”
“Stopping what?”
“This bullshit, man. This iPod guy, he might be a friend. Enough, really, for God’s sake. IIT’s not all you got.”

As expected, he burst into laughter. No one takes my indignation seriously.

“Ah, all right. To each his own.” And really, what did I care about a man’s honest-to-God livelihood?

He finished his cigarette and lit another one. I was close to the end of my own.

“You tell me,” he said. “IIT being good to you?”
“Totally. Am up to fifteen,” I said, referring to my daily smoking frequency.
“Hah. Great. So any news on your laptop yet?”

We laughed together this time. This was a private joke between us. I had had my laptop, my phone and my iPod stolen from my room a couple of months back. The thief had not been caught, and presently, he sat sipping coffee and puffing on a cigarette at Barista, SDA. And looking smug, for good measure.

“Okay, enough,” he said, putting up a hand. “So you got anything for me?”
“Always.” And so we flowed, right on to business. “Big fish ,” I continued, “Volley court side. First floor. Fourth window from the left. Time of day, your call.”
“Perfect. When?”
“Why wait. Make it today.”

And hence began our latest plot of debauchery, which involved Nilgiri, my hostel, and as a matter of fact, the room two down from my own.

I wished him goodbye and returned to the morning paper I had been perusing before this interlude. As planned, I found the room empty, bolted it from the inside, unbolted the window and tossed the laptop down into the waiting arms of one of my friend’s associates. Plop. Just like that. And off I went, feeling a desultory pang of sympathy for the owner, a pal and a Counter-Strike buddy.

And now, as I sit tapping away at my laptop, I am pleased at another job nailed to the bone. The whiff of moolah begins to seduce me again, and I think about the day I started out: a week after my tragedy, when the search for my things had turned cold and dry. Some of my not-so-hot contacts had helped me out, and I had struck upon the perfect little way to turn my pain into constant gain.

I had become my tormentor’s very own inside man.

Simplicity

I believe... whatever doesn't kill you simply makes you... stranger.

So spake the great Heath Ledger, now resting in peace, in the very beginning of his immortalizing performance as The Joker in what was decidedly the movie of the decade, if not the millennium. Enough has been said about the movie, though, and I would rather not lose my sense of supreme singularity by adding to its still-burgeoning repository of reviews. Why begin my discussion on this note then? Well, you'll see.

Let further ado be damned. Listen to this: we live to die. Veracious? Yes, but surely not entirely so. We live till we die. More like it, perhaps? But still not accurate. We live, we make a mockery of simplicity, and then we die. BINGO. Point not taken? Well, of course, I know why. I figure I put it a little too straight in your face. For brevity, a little too simply. Let me thread your far-more convoluted cranial guts, then, with a brief and possibly enlivening enlightenment.

I am sure you have a picture of the human brain in your own specimen of it (some of you might even have the highly popular picture of the 'male' brain in front of yourselves-- the one with naked females for the twisting tissues-- and, you know what, you have my kudos for it). Yes, so, consider that picture and respond to this rather simple question. How complicated, exactly, does that mass of flesh and nerves look? How full of unfathomable twists and turns? Your answer, and that from everyone not interested in hurting my well-worn notion of rationality, would have to be 'very'. So, let me conclude. We, homo sapiens, have a very complicated brain to help us think. Q.E.D..

Imagine me now as Albert Einstein. I am human, very nearly, and I have a brain possibly more complicated than most. And yet, in the middle of a life that gave the world a huge chunk of nature's truth, I make a statement to this effect: "the secret to every successful journey is to think simple." Now, now. Have I suddenly turned crazy? Gone ga-ga, maybe? Or have I had enough of Physical balderdash to last me my seven lives? Not so easy, baby, no. You see, I be Albert Einstein, and I be sane till I meet death. Sane, and simple.

They say every passing hour makes us wiser. I wouldn't go so far as to proclaim that cookies and whipped cream, but I do have my flavours to add. I think, and am, as on most occassions, irrevocably sure, that every passing second, let alone every passing hour, adds a measurable modicum of complication to our thinking, making us intrinsically weirder, taking us further away from what the Creator probably intended us to be -- sentient beings of the highest order, gifted with an unimaginably complex mind in order to view things as simply as possible.

I believe we have a terribly bloated up vision of ourselves, perhaps as bottomless creatures (no picturing required here) of infinite possible states. A maze, maybe, the goal of which is hopelessly resigned to unreachable dungeons far beyond our horizons. Alas, though, the only two states I see (I love talking in states, and I failed both my digital electronics minors... so much for talking) as relevant are 'happy' for one, and 'not happy' for another. I am about, in my view, reader, to deliver what is regarded as a very shallow perception of life and things. But then, did I ever give anything even close to a dead rat's tail-tip?

This shall be the final paragraph of this discourse. Which, as I couldn't help rambling on, has surely transformed itself into perhaps the most boring stretch of literature both you and I are ever likely to come across, but hey, to be here you hopefully read the last sentence of my last paragraph. And hence, you are aware that I don't give anything even remotely close to... anyway, you get my point. So, I see I bungled this paragraph up (and my promise too, but I keep doing that). Considering that the end deserves more respect, I move on.

So, yes, I intend to tell you that your next action is all that ever matters. And the outcome of one action can always be deterministically evaluated, speaking in a quasi-jargon that my IITian status begs me to flaunt. That one action gets you to your next, and so on, leaving a linear trail that takes you on just the kind of ride you choose. Make it a rollercoaster, if you will, but pray keep it simple. Till, one day, something comes around that kills you, stopping you dead in your tracks, but only after your simplicity of thought has fulfilled you, taken you closer to both your desire and destiny, and kept you from turning, as The Joker so aptly puts it, stranger.

The Spirit Carries On

I was in class 6 when my Civics textbook informed me that our country is home to about 1608 languages. And while the exact figure is almost surely as reliable as the NCERT, the ballpark is enough to indicate a scarcely acknowledged fact-- that we, as Indians by birth and free people by right, talk in no mean measure. Yes sir, we talk. We prattle and we preach. We implore and we instruct. We honor and we hack. We wheedle and we whack. I can keep unrolling the scroll, but no, I don’t intend a discourse. Just fact, and fact is, we talk. We’ve talked since Adam (oh yes we claim him!), talked our way through history and time, and we’ll talk till the stars fall from the sky and the rivers run uphill and all the words to “Louie Louie” are known. Corny stuff, granted, but what the hell. I have a point and I’ll prove it, I promise.

I dreamt of Ekta Kapoor yesterday. We were cozying up on the beach (snigger on, I don’t care… it was just a dream) and she was whispering sweet nothings in my ear. The heat was on and I obviously didn’t care much about what she was saying then, but in hindsight I figure it was just a million different inflections of the same thing. One letter, in fact, and no prizes for guessing which. (Imagine a torrent of Ks, all uttered in a sweet, moist, husky voice that I’ve since figured out as Britney’s, breaking incessantly like waves upon your eardrums, while other, more obvious things are happening. Scary? You bet.) More later.

Point is, the dream had a meaning, and not just the obvious one. Picture this. A snazzily decorated interior, a cabal of good looking people, and loads of stone-faced and sometimes bleary-eyed talking. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the Indian soap opera for you. The dream told me I have crazy (and morbid) thoughts, but it also told me that talking sells. KKyunki talking is the one fail-safe way to convince us. KKyunki we, the Indians, are moved by words.

The other day I was flipping through the formidable list of channels on Indian television (fast approaching, or maybe already past, the population of languages) and I came across a show featuring the ever-guffawing, ever-gregarious Navjot Singh Sidhu. He has made a life out of laughing, but on this occasion he was in the middle of a serious dissertation on cricket. This was what he said: “Dashers are bashers. Try them in a Test and they’ll be slaughtered like sausages in a doghouse. Twenty20 is not cricket, my friend, it is like a mini-skirt, it shows you enough to keep you interested, but hides everything that matters.” Man, this guy can talk, I was thinking, hooked by the scruff of my neck. And just then the electricity took its daily leave, leaving me feeling deprived. Now I think back on it and I don’t think those statements quite qualify as expert opinion, as the show claimed. But hey, who’s complaining, it was quaint talking alright.

Cricket is the one true opium of the masses, and I feel justified to stay with it. A prominent analyst recently commented that in the modern era of cricketainment, one must atleast be a graduate to fit in. Sounds strange, but I listened to him and I’ll tell you the context. What the guy meant was that you need to be a fluid talker to earn respect (presumably at presentations and the like). Personally, I refute this argument with all my heart but it somehow smacks of an inconvenient truth.

I’ll talk of another TV experience I had. It was time for the trust vote in the Parliament, and I tuned in to Lok Sabha TV to catch the action. The Lower House (as it is wastefully termed) is always a picture to behold. Only the picture has evolved over time. The erstwhile theater of political wisdom is now an arena of pugilistic speeches and catcalling, where words flow thick and fast, and the more you talk the more you make it a day for yourself, or so it seems. Just about anybody can disrupt anyone’s speech, and slogan shouting is no more the exception. So amidst this hoopla when Rahul Gandhi stood up to speak “as an Indian, and not a politician”, I and a million others were all ears. He spun us a yarn, telling us of Sasikala and Kalawati, of poverty alleviation through energy security. He talked about the important thing being how we impact the world, and not how the world impacts us. And all the while he forced me to smile, not because I am a fan of the Congress party, no, but because my country was listening to an Indian heart, after long. Maybe it was talk of the most beguiling kind, I don’t rule that possibility out, but for once I couldn’t help but sway.

Outside the hallowed grounds of the Parliament, politics is all about convincing prowess. The vanguard of almost every party is formed by a panel of people who can talk smooth when the going gets rough. It takes no rocket scientist to fathom the presiding protocol of Indian politics -- Power equals Talk.

For more of my humble pie, take the case of the increasing clout of the corporate. Money is the calling for almost every college-goer today, and I don’t really think I’ll burn in hell if I say that this cash-dangling fisher would go for the slick-talking fish nine times out of ten. Talking is no more only a trait. Hell, it’s a need. The radio’s knob has turned and the oldies are off, so you better learn how to sing for the moment, fish.

Closer home, lets talk of society. “Now, now,” you say, “loosen up, crackpot. That’s one BIG word.” And you know what I do? I give that to you, lock stock and barrel. Big, yes, and impossible to describe. But me, homer, I am a braveheart, I’ll take it on, I’ll talk. Wait… just a moment, my man… say, I talked already, didn’t I? Yeah, but I’ll talk some more, and then some more, and keep the sax rigged and blowing till I have peace and bliss and a girlfriend to go, and man, that’s society. Pardon the oddball behavior, friends, all I wish to say is that society is talk. Part sagacious counsel, part headstrong prudishness, a measure of virtuous vice and a wisp of care-to-the-wind revelry. Now, anybody have Snape’s number?

I am going nuts, I know. I can feel it in the way I just can’t seem to get a hold over myself. I just can’t stop talking. Oh, and is that not another one of my beloved little points? We talk mostly because we just can’t stop talking. The air seems so barren and the day so bleak without words. How our hearts yearn to give our vocal chords some (ill-needed?) exercise ever so often. Good or bad, pointless or not, we don’t care. Instead, we talk.

So much for the truth. All this talk is finally working, I am turning somewhat sleepy. So I’ll put my pen down and blabber no more, but not without fructifying a promise I made. I told you I’ll tell you more about my dream, my very exotic and thrilling romance with (STOP SNIGGERING, FOR PETE’S SAKE) the world of meaningless fantasies… in the end, Madamoiselle Kapoor turned into a hundred ton hammerhead and gulped me whole. Didn’t chew, no, Madamoiselle likes it whole, and I landed up straight in her ample guts. And then, in the final moments of my sleep, believe it or not, right there in the Queen’s cosmic guts, I turned into Slimshady and the spotlight was on and I was singing, “When I’m gone, just carry on, don’t mourn, rejoice…”

And I think (or like to believe, have it your way) that just as I opened my eyes, just as the last remaining threads of my nightmare dissolved into obscurity, from all around me I heard the applauding crowd murmur a song of their own… it was Dream Theater (of course) and they were crooning to… oh you know it… “The Spirit Carries On.”

Hallucination, make-believe, balderdash. Call it what you please, but one thing’s certain. The crowd was right, as is the norm in our country. I’ll go as I came, a blip, or a twinkle, if you may. But just as before, just as now and just as it will ever be, the spirit shall carry on.

I rest my case. Dreamland ahoy!

New Light in Country Doom

Reported by Waste from Planet IITD, in customary disarray

Sassi ka Dhaba, 8.30 PM, 20^th January, 2008

Hi. I write this on my laptop as I wait for my plate of Maggi at Sassi, and everyone around is staring at me as if I am some peculiar specimen of alien life. Presently I light myself a smoke, and suddenly there is a collective sigh of recognition. Oh, all right, he’s one of us, they say. Us, dear reader, refers to the inhabitants of Planet IITD, and if you aren’t a member, you probably have no business reading this. (But you might as well go on and get some of your theories verified. Trust me, if you manage to reach the end of this article, you’ll be clapping yourself on the shoulder and shouting, “Hey, I was always right! IITians really are geeks from outer space!”)

Smoking kills, I know. But anyone who’s more than “just tried it out” knows that not smoking can kill just as effectively. So it’s a Catch-22 situation and so I am caught up on one side of it, so what? Well, let me tell you what. I had seven hours at college today, four of them in a workshop jammed with metal, grease and sweat, and the rest in impossibly packed antiquated classrooms. This is my third cigarette since then, and guess what, I’ve already wiped myself of half of those hours. Plus I feel curiously free, stupid as that sounds. So, Momma Mia, could I care less?

Okay, I guess that’s enough, you know I am a smoker, and you know I am an IITian (not necessarily in that order, but they sound about the same, anyway) and I know this is not really going anywhere. But then, what is? So tough luck; I’ll stay.

I am facing the main thoroughfare, and the crawl of the vehicles is slow enough for me to glimpse a face inside, every now and then. In the ghostly half-light inside their cars, some faces are happy, some are frowning, some bilious about the obvious mismanagement of road traffic (courtesy our very own PWD), some in outright rage about it, but most are just weary. Yeah, just weary. And suddenly the same ghost light switches on inside my head, as if some dormant circuit has just been joggled and juiced up. It stays for just a moment, but quite enough for me to register what it showed: I can be anyone of those faces; maybe am, already. I can’t really tell. I can’t really tell a lot of things, and that doesn’t only mean the stuff about three-phase autotransformers I was forced to swallow on this, the zillionth day I attempted to attend class. Sure, I can’t even begin on that, but who gives a flying fuck when you can pass with no mean measure of respectability with no more than getting hold of the professor’s bag of tricks? Try dangling the world’s juiciest carrot before me (like a promise of a night with Jolie, maybe) and my answer would still be “not me”.

Here’s my range of can’t-really-tells. I can’t really tell professors from Mr. Bean, and sometimes from Old Heckles who could have had birds. I can’t really tell laboratories from hockey fields, and I can’t really tell IITD from Pornographer’s Paradise. I can’t really tell lilac from lavender, I am that canned. I also can’t really tell how I ended up here, in this giant dungeon of the country’s most… ahem… brilliant dragons. I know I took an absurdly hyped examination roughly one year ago, the same day I took a crap. As to which served me better, I can’t really tell.

Hold up ahead, my Maggi’s arrived. I puff one last time on stick no.2 of this sojourn, and snuff it out under my sneakers, mentally admonishing the fat guy with the ear-stud who’s brought me my dinner. All for wasting a good smoke. Yeah, I am into it, neck and all, I know. I know I’ll die someday soon. I also know I am an IITian. Someone told me that kind of makes up for everything else.

More claptrap later. I have so much to say.

The Temple of Technology, 10.15 AM, 27^th February, 2008

Okay, this is it. I felt I’d been too harsh on my alma-mater writing all kinds of shit about it at Sassi, but it turns out I was woefully wrong. I tried not to continue, I swear. But just as the pump turns on in ecstasy, so it sometimes does in frustrated ennui.

I am in class for a course that claims to cater to my core requirements. Sounds rich, but I tend to disagree. My girlfriend’s seated next to me, you see, and talking of core requirements, I feel positive she can take much better care.

Moments back the technological genius (who also happens to be the worst teacher on earth) uttered “squirrel cage” and I almost looked up from my reverie. Next breath he came up with “transformer”, and my head plopped back down. Now he’s going on again with something that seems to be meant exclusively for the first two rows of the lecture theater, and I feel bullwhipped into writing shit again.

A cartoon drawn on my desk catches my eye. It has a gravestone with the following epitaph: “In loving memory of the child who died waiting for this class to end”. I’ve seen that one before, but never appreciated it as much as now. It’s been done very expertly; I can tell by the strokes. I think I know who drew it, and if I am right, dear God, this piece is the righteous mother of destiny.

The guy who I figure is the artist is dead. He hung himself from the ceiling fan in his room a week back. He left a suicide note saying: “I have failed for the first time.” I wager he was being figurative, but I’d say he had solid facts to back him. He had had a remarkable first semester, and he’d been well on his way to making this semester nearly as remarkably disastrous. Until, finally, he decided to wave his final goodbye; all of which is quite reasonable, I am sure. I guess if you got an avalanche when all you asked for was a castle in the clouds, it does a number on your head.

I know I sound like a sick, twisted bastard saying it, but if this piece of art was his last work, I’d say bravo!, he made much neater use of his talent than this castle could ever have.

Look, don’t get me wrong. It’s not as if I hate being at this place; far from it, actually. I never saw no dreams about green green grass, never came expecting no palace on the plains, let alone a castle in the clouds. So no issues there. Not sure if you’ll actually believe what I am about to say after all I seem to think, but you know what? I love it here. Its one hell of a ride, maybe not one of those classic college merry-go-rounds your life is supposed to get on, but one rollercoaster of its own cast nonetheless. So baleful brickbats are not my point, provided one exists.

So why not let the spades be the spades and the king be the king? Is fun not the king, is it not the real thing? Hell, yes, it is. But hey, wait a waver, I have some more on that. What fun is a place haunted by ghosts of kids dead on account of things not excluding the place itself? You can say the kids were weak. You can say they caved in when the heat was on. You can say all that, sure, but listen up when I say they were kids nonetheless. College doesn’t suddenly turn everyone into a robust ranger or a double humped camel right out of some Persian fable you heard as a kid. Some people are still kids, some people still yearn for those fables, and when you load them with all kinds of gibberish in the name of God and technology, and maybe ride them (and whip them while at it), sometimes the knees give up and the load slips off the camel’s back. Sometimes the camel escapes, but if it’s still a kid, you manage to hold on, and whip it some more. You know what happens then? Then you have a kid one moment, and next moment you have a dead kid. That’s not fun, no sir, that’s manslaughter.

I don’t really give that much of a damn about the kid. He was a nutcase, as far as I am concerned, but maybe I am not the only one concerned. And maybe that’s the whole point.

Coming back to this lecture, I feel almost as one with him. I know what you are thinking. No, I won’t hang myself tonight. I have a pot session with some seniors, and then maybe a drinking binge. And later, if things are sober enough, some wild oats to sow. Too much to let go of, if you ask me. And too little time to live.

I know I give the impression of a confused mind, and deep inside I know it’s not just an impression. The professor’s livid with all the distracted actions around the class, and he’s singled me out a couple of times. For all my inner rebellion, I don’t like to be thrown out in front of a hundred other kids my age. So I’ll stop, and seeing how very pointless all of this seems, I don’t know if I’ll bother finishing what I wanted to say in the beginning. I’ll need some help remembering too, I will.

The Reading Room, 12.30 AM, 30^th April, 2008

I guess it’s been a million years or so since I last modified this file. And one hell of a million it’s been too. Ups in drips and downs in deluges. That hardly belongs here, though. What does belong here is an end, a tail to the monster’s head I birthed one smoky, dreamy evening a long, long time ago. Seeing I am far more proficient eschatologically than academically (as it seems), I decided to deliver the knockout blow on a fitting note. I have a Major on Applied Mechanics seven and a half hours from now. I figure I could have seven and a half light years and a pumpkin pie for good measure, and I would flunk all the same. Down Glory Road to Pussy Palace, it’s the same ol’ story. Might as well furnish an end meanwhile.

Okay, so I left off in a haughty huff, or so it seemed. I am not really good at conveying the subtleties of my emotions, but you were right if you thought I was thinking I had my institute by the balls with that dead kid theory of mine. How time can make even the most stolid of statements seem gauche and sheepish. I went overboard with some things, I did. And worse I painted an utterly befuddled picture of my thoughts. Let’s do some summing up then.

I am currently seated in a corner of the legendary room of retards, also known as R2. Around me is my group of cronies, some sleeping, some chatting, some trying to come to terms with the mysteries of gravitation and rotational mechanics, a la IIT Delhi. I am writing, of course, and listening to some soul-searching death metal on my plastic monster of a cellphone. All of us buddies have one thing in common: we have given up. We might be trying, yes, for human nature fails to recognize failure until, well, until you’ve actually flunked. But deep within, naked in a vaunted realm of utter honesty, we have all accepted defeat. All done, dusted and doomed. Hail King Mechanics!

On the table next to ours, lost in the world of dysfunctionally smooth pulleys and harmlessly academic collisions, are two people who, taken in one gilded frame of common purpose, officially epitomize success in IIT Delhi. They are the king and the queen, stamped forever with the blood-red ink of genius. Ask them about the peak of the world, and they’ll say Mount Ten-Point-Zero faster than you can spell humbug. They’ll rock tomorrow, just as they’ve been rocking all year.

So much for rhetoric. You might think I am green with loserly envy, but this time you’d be wrong. I actually appreciate these kids’ single-minded pursuit of whatever they think is the most important. They are the best of their lot, and that, at this place, is one lot indeed. So far, so good. I’ll bet my battered bottom they’ll set these Majors on fire, but go and ask them, pray, to tell you of their impression of a world without grades, and you’ll probably come back branded a zany jerk.

Their bad? I don’t think so. I’ll risk the cliché. I’ll risk being baked on a spit over a thousand years in fact, but I wouldn’t fall back on blaming the system for it. Yes, that’s it, that’s the alpha and the omega of it, that’s the one word that gets thrown around like rat-fink in a hurricane, and yet that’s the only word that can, though only just, bring all my babble to rhyme and meter.

Maybe I am blind, or maybe those kids’ are stupid. I do admit there is something to the “work hard” theory. But here’s another notion I borrowed with my precious ass for collateral (seem to be making a habit of it, don’t I?): if you roast your butt on a barbecue, you better do it right. Work hard, true, but work the right way.

The right way. The right way. Man, I could say that a hundred times and still not make it mine. Yes, I am blind. I was born blind. I guess everyone is. You come out crying, thrashing mad, and you come out seeing black. And then, somewhere along the way, the black turns off and you find a color for yourself. Thing is, but for the luckiest ones, you need a tuner to go. Some people never find that tuner, and they die seeing black. Some do, and they party. Sounds like cheese with a bit of salt and a bit of pepper, doesn’t it? But not to be, Buddy-O, for some people find a bad tuner, and that, for all I know and all I don’t, is the worst.

If you’ve ever been at the receiving end of a broken promise, you know what I mean. That’s exactly how the bad tuner operates. All black. And then, POOF! You suddenly see purple, and what’s more, it comes with a mouthwatering free gift of tinsel and glaze. And then, just as you begin to smile… POOF! Back to black, Jack, just kidding.

I would never admit in public, but I do hope those two darlings of our famed academia don’t turn out, in a couple of years’ time, as babes lost in woods of their own making. I think I can safely say that all of us who share this common fate of being an IITian in Delhi, no comments, came expecting to find our tuners, subconsciously or otherwise. Some of us have succeeded, and a vast majority of these are people in the same exalted league as the crown and his lady in waiting. Tuned to waste no time, tuned to keep their heads buried in text or work for as long as they can, and tuned to procure the creamiest of garlands for their non-stop academic ass-busting. Tuned good, you say? Bah!

There are some others who know more of their colors now, and I risk saying they belong to the “luckiest” category I mentioned in passing. They didn’t need a tuner, and in fact, (and I say this strictly off the record) they rejected the offer from our beloved institute to be theirs. In my still blind eyes, these are the people who make a difference, the ones whose brilliance of skill and strength of character is claimed by brand IIT as its own. I state unabashedly that I have failed in my quest to be one of them, at least so far. And I know, in spite of my current state of total and absolute hopelessness, that it’s a dream I’d love to live.

And so the cat is belled. So I sign off, listening to Ozzy Osborne’s Suicide Solution on my headphones, vaguely recollective of the point where I began this ill-fated tale of a hundred hairpins and volte-faces. Around me my gang of hara-kiri hustlers from Country Doom are all snoring now, my girlfriend among them. I take her hand and stroke her hair for a bit, drawing comfort from all the affection I feel for her.

People around are staring at me as if I am an alien, again. Déjà vu? Hah, you bet! I quit smoking some time back, after I realized it’s the worst habit. It’s much like the bad tuner, showing you dreams that would most likely never be. But that’s not the only reason I keep my extraterrestrial act up. More than anything, I don’t feel the need to be one of them anymore. All that I feel about this place holds true, but I don’t really need those feelings anymore. What I need is freedom, and a little bit of peace. What I need is change. It’s time, it seems, to abandon idle prattle and step up from denouncing geeks to announcing myself in the league of extraordinary gentlemen. In other words, to be a true IITian, lost as the term sounds.

I don’t quite know whether this is still more hollow trope; only time can tell. No saving me from tomorrow’s thrashing, however. You might as well expect Atlantis to rise from the ocean, palm trees waving.