So long, MCA

I am such an “ambiance” person, I tell you. I am filtering a mug of black coffee for myself, and invariably I am thinking chocolate cake, chocolate chip cookies, and buttered rusk biscuits with sugar sprinkled on top. And that’s what I end up eating (yeah, all of them; diet doesn’t begin officially until June). But it’s not just about the eating. It has to be in my room, sitting on the floor with the lights turned off and the windows open to let the honey-colored evening sneak into the room. Add to it Beth Rowley crooning in my ears about how somebody’s got her wrapped around their little finger, and I almost forget what awaits me in a week’s time.

Which is ironic, given how just last month I was almost obsessed with the whole MCA getting, or maybe not getting over thing. And I am particularly thinking of that one fateful evening when I was lying in my hostel bed drowning in my own pool of tears, sobbing on the phone trying to tell R I am finally giving up. I might be a week premature in celebrating the end of my official student life, but well, the report’s almost done, what remains is the presentation that I have to give, and I am done. Like, really truly completely done.

Three years ago when I had grudgingly joined the university in a course I, to say the least, dreaded the thought of, I had hoped with time I would get used to it. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I moaned about how three years seemed like it would drag on forever. I couldn’t have been more right. Right in the second semester I begged of my mother to let me call it quits and join some other two-year post grad course that I would actually enjoy doing. But I did not. Quit, I mean. And now that one week is all that separates me from completion of this course, I find myself looking back on the times gone by, and strange though it may seem, I do not regret anything.

True, I did not learn anything that looks like it could be useful, from the course itself. I mean I can’t code to save my life (or maybe I won’t.. does that make any difference?). I honestly don’t know any new fangled computer language I am supposed to know. I don’t consider myself “equipped for the industry” in the least. And in three years I could have been doing so many other things and been happy doing them. But well, if it helps, I am not scared of anything tech anymore. Like gadgets and new softwares and stuff like that. And let’s just be honest, had computer applications not bored me to death, I wouldn’t have contemplated taking up writing with renewed interest. Which I am really grateful about.

But I did learn a lot of things outside the syllabus. Stuff that will remain with me for maybe my whole life. I learnt…

…that I am indeed square peg surrounded by round ones. But only recently did I learn to have fun being one, and to be smug about it instead of lamenting about the round holes I couldn’t fit into.

… that pleasure can be derived from something as simple as a long solitary walk on street light painted roads, letting my legs, and not my mind steer me, to nowhere in particular. And how amazing it was to come back to my room with messed up hair, my legs tingling from all that blood flow and my cheeks flushed.

…that friends, by definition, are the ones who will stand by you right till the end. And that everybody else will get relegated to mere acquaintances. That what might seem as a good solid foundation might not necessarily mean that it will remain so. And that friends will be found in the least expected quarters.

…that people will say the silliest things to demean you. And that they do it without even wanting to deliberately hurt you. They do it without thinking, to fill their bland lives with momentary spice. After three years of being on the receiving end I can safely consider myself immune to petty rumors and wild stories centering around me. Best part, I can laugh about them.

…that good food can work wonders to your mood. No, seriously. Having lost my appetite for the hostel mess food, and finding it back in all the restaurants in the town, I really do appreciate the joys of good food more than ever now.

…that there’s nothing as good as your stomach hurting from too much laughing, your eyes filled with tears of laughter. And that the people who make you do that are the ones you must keep closest to you.

And to add to it, had it not been for this university, and this course, I wouldn’t have been able to call myself the lead singer of an all girls’ band, and neither would I have been able to be a part of a team representing the university and then the east zone in a youth festival, for the first and the last time. Had it not been for this university, I wouldn’t have met the people I did nor made the relations I made. True I would have met other people, made other relations, but maybe my life as I know it now wouldn’t have been the same without those people.

And that makes me delve deeper into whether everything that is happening is predestined after all. Like MCA had to happen. I had to live the last three years exactly as I did. Because otherwise, my life wouldn’t have been what it is today. Which is saying something, given how I feel particularly blessed about things falling in place finally.

So long, MCA. We part ways now. And though you lead me through dirt roads more than smooth highways, I love this destination, really. Makes it all worth it.

Woes of a misfit: Part II

Prelude: Alright. Enough of it. I have been putting this off for an insane amount of time now. And each time I sign in to my blog, I see the “New Post” button beckoning me with almost palpable expectation, and I can almost sense its dejection as I sigh and log out saying “Some other time, baby… not today.” What with the end terms and a few other commitments I simply have not been able to find time to write for myself. But I mean to change that now that my two-month long summer vacation has started. My last summer vacation, I remind myself each day actually. But anyway, this is not meant to be about my summer vacation. This is about what I go through when I am not on vacation. Moving on to my post.

So just the other day after coming back from a grueling, literally back breaking exam, regretting more the amount of hours wasted in staying awake than the inability to perform up to my expectation yet again, I made the perfect environment to doze off for a few hours before starting to study again. Put my phone on silent mode and drew the curtains closed. And just as I was about to drift off to my happy land, I heard a loud bang on my door. I ignored it the first time, hoping whoever it was on the door would just leave me alone and go away, but then the shouting started. Somebody very hysterical was calling out my name to add to the persistent banging. And so I got up, extremely pissed, and opened the door to see M with a laptop cradled in her arms, and an expression that made my heart go out to her. Her laptop got “stuck”, she started. All of a sudden that too, and now it won’t accept her username and password. And before I could take a look at it, she started wailing about how all her project related stuff was in it, and how it would be a disaster if she wasn’t able to recover it. I rubbed my eyes and sat on my bed with the laptop in front of me, asking her to sit down. But she was too tensed to even do that. What if she lost everything? What would happen to her project? Did I have any idea how long it had taken her to compile everything in one place so that it made some sense? And as I tried to type in the username I realized the system wouldn’t accept it. I did what was the most natural thing to do. Turned it off by brute force, using the power switch, and turned it on again. And voila, it started working. And once again, the MCA in the hostel saved the day. Yawn.

After she went back thanking me profusely for saving her project and her career (talk about dramatics) I started thinking about mine. Career, I mean. Being an MCA student in a girls’ hostel meant being the technician who everybody could come to for troubleshooting the silliest things. I only wish it were bigger problems I could solve, though. Like maybe a virus nobody could do anything about, or a system which wouldn’t even boot. It would be then that I would have to scratch my head and say “Better take it to the computer centre, kya?”

I still remember that day in my first semester when I was approached by two girls from Cultural Studies who wanted me to edit and compile a few video clips for them and burn them all into one disc. Don’t roll your eyes, but until then I hadn’t ever burnt a disc (had never needed to, really!) and neither had I used the VCD Cutter (again, hadn’t needed to!). But the fact that I could work it out without asking anybody and that too while appearing to be an expert in it in front of those two girls made me pat my back over and over again. And then came the bit where people assumed that being an MCA meant I am good with laptops, which in turn meant I am good in typing, which in turn meant I could type out pages and pages of a senior’s dissertation. Which I did, by the way. But I attribute my being able to type fast to being more of a struggling writer and less of an MCA. How I wish it were because I spent hours typing code, though. Maybe that would have helped in some sort of an ego boost at least. The whole business of “turning off and turning on” laptops, burning discs, tweaking internet settings for a faster connection, and doling out random common sense advise to solve silly problems is so not what I relate my course to.

You know what the worst part was? When juniors came to me in the third semester, and I found myself hoping they wouldn’t ask me something too difficult cause then I would have to admit my ignorance in front of them. And introduce them to the age-old MCA tradition instead: “It’s so much more than just copying and pasting, you know. It’s an art”. Worse still, I myself had not been able to master that art. And results showed in my falling grades, which were partly due to my failing to submit assignments on time, or ever. I couldn’t possibly come up with “My conscience wouldn’t let me copy, Sir” in front of the Prof, now, could I?

But well, before I go into a full swing rant (or have I already?) I might as well stop and ponder over the lighter side of things yet again. I remember when I had first told a Jiju of mine that I am getting into MCA, he’d told me, “Sham your way through it, Missy. It’s all a sham anyway”. And I am doing more than that, really. I am also singing, dancing and at times acting my way through MCA. And enjoying every bit of that more than I care to admit. But more on that in the next post. Which, I hope isn’t too far away this time.

Woes of a misfit : Part I

Prelude to the prelude: Have decided will include a prelude to my posts starting today, since I always give redundant information overload at the beginning of each post anyway. Would make much more sense for you to just skip the whole prelude part if you don’t want to read it. Works both ways. I get to talk and you don’t have to impatiently wait for me to get to the point already.

Prelude:  So while going through my earlier posts in Facebook, some of which I wrote way before I started my blog, I realized that all through this time, I have been going on and on about my profound theories and overwhelming emotions on stuff like mood swings, music, marriage, my family, (posts on which I would like to name The Chronicles of the Saharia Family henceforth), books, good smells…and my love life for crying out loud. But sparring the constant cribbing and complaining about a course I hate with dumb lectures added to it, I have hardly written about my life as an MCA student in a university which is tucked away in a sleepy dreamy town which in turn, inspite of being seeped in history, makes you feel like it forgot to grow since then. And then the sudden realization that I have my whole life to write about music and books yada yada…..and maybe I’ll even write better then. But what about when I look back, and find out that I haven’t left any trails of the last three years of my student life in my writings? I can’t let that happen, now can I? And it isn’t like I haven’t got anything to talk about my life out here. I have loads, for a fact. Hence what followed was a conscious decision to write the next three posts about my life as a student.

And since this is the first post out of the three, allow me to give some background information.

Fact: MCA is the only post-graduation course which requires three years to complete. Plus, most often it is mentioned as an afterthought whenever other post-grad degrees are mentioned, in context of eligibility for higher studies and job openings. If at all it is mentioned. Most of the times it is not.

Fact: You wouldn’t find many daughters of the Controller of Examinations of a university studying in that very university. The Controller of Examinations of my university has one such daughter. Namely, me.

Fact: I had contemplated going for a degree in Psychological Counseling after my graduation. I ended up in Computer Applications. Way to go, I know.

And in case you haven’t figured it out by yourself already, I consider myself a misfit. Big time.

In a matter of a three months, our class will become the vestigial organs of this place. All our batch mates who’d enrolled themselves in other much more reasonable two-year degree post-grad courses will have passed out, and our juniors will have taken the place of “seniors”. And we the 5th semester MCA students will have been left behind. Always to be reverentially mentioned, specially in motivating welcoming speeches given by our juniors to the fresher batch, but never really to be considered when taking important decisions. Hence vestigial. We had served some purpose some time in the past, but we’re not really needed anymore. And yet we’re here. You can’t cut us off.

The only silver lining is that we’ll go out of this place in another semester. And I don’t want these to be the only feelings I carry with me. I want to have fond memories too, to be particularly clichéd.

Like one of last year’s notebooks that I found the other day. The doodles I had made on them made for interesting read really. I had hated that course immensely, much more than I normally hate these courses. And in those few pages which had even fewer lines of C++ code written on them, I had vented out all my pent up frustration, boredom and at times outright silliness. My notes had “Duh?” scribbled in pencil all over them. But it was funny, looking at those doodles and thinking of how in that class I would always sit right next to the huge open window with the breeze flowing in, and look out at the lush abandoned greenery near the boundary wall of the university. And then what with the Prof’s continuous monotonous drone growing increasingly distant by the minute, and the low hum of the ceiling fans adding to the ambiance, I’d finally succumb to a state of sweet ignorance and absolute dumbness. No wonder I got a “C+” in that paper. You can’t expect an “A” when the very first page of your notebook says,

“Studies say that students who doodle in their notebooks while in class retain much more of the Professor’s lecture than those who stare vacantly at his face.”

Which is strangely true by the way. I read it in the Readers’ Digest. And I attribute my not failing that course to all the doodles I had made. I swear.

And speaking of the doodles, the most common would be my “Note To Self”s. Here’s one of them from last year’s notebook,

“Go read the book, will you? It’s not meant for just propping up your glass when you heat water in your room. You could try opening it. Sometime in this semester itself.”

I guess that’s when I am at my patronizing best. At times I am outright pathetic. Like this one,

” I am pretending to nod my head in solemn understanding of the lecture while I am actually giving beat to a song inside my head, and I am scribbling this and pretending to take down notes.”

This one is again vintage bored me,

“G’s sitting in front bench and scratching his head. Who knows, he’s found a new way for knowledge to permeate through his skull right into his brain….

D’s looking out the window and checking his nails from time to time wondering whether it was time for his next manicure…

J is like me, except that she’s not writing anything. I’m sure she’s staring at the board just to hide the fact that her mind, like mine, is someplace far far away from here…

M’s doodling too… but can’t say for sure. His drooping eyelids and bobbing head do somewhat indicate he could just be drawing lines unknowingly in his copy…”

Sometimes  in my notes I brag about my limited French to myself. And try come up with a meaningful sentence that will use up all the verbs I know of that language. And the number of such verbs being extremely small, I get bored of that too.  So when everything fails, it is the lyrics of all the songs I know. Painstakingly written in my best handwriting. Or nice paisley patterns drawn on my copy. My pet specialty. And then sometimes all I would do is furiously scribble swear words of all languages that I know. Right on top of the page, to be followed by an insane number of exclamation marks. They are my specialty too you see, swear words.

Then again the “fundoo” (name copyright, R) that I am, I can’t help but come up with “funda”s of my own. So just this semester, I came up with a few. Straight from my doodles:

“Semesters seem to end fast. Classes don’t ever.”

“Dumb Profs should make up for their dumb lectures by giving good grades.”

‘Each class should come with a huge wall clock right in front of the Prof, or there should be an automated system which promptly cuts off power supply once the designated one hour is over.”

And this one I came up with just today while attending yet another boring Software Engineering class,

“All non-nerds should refrain from taking notes and paying attention in class to ensure that nerds can remain nerds. Otherwise there is serious danger of nerds losing their very identity. We can’t have the whole class starting to act nerdy now, can we?”

Enough for today. I could go on so much longer…  I know I will not carry those notebooks around with me forever, and that’s when these posts will help me remember these days. Which is the whole point of this three-post exercise, isn’t it? So let me leave stuff for the next two posts to follow. So long.