Adios

I know this one would qualify as the third most common blog entry on the blogosphere. The commonest and the dumbest would be, "Why i have CHOSEN to be single" or a slight variation of it, which would be something like "My ideal boyfriend/girlfriend/valentine/partner/hubby". Finishing a very close second would be "How i spent my 'today' ". I still haven't blogged on either of them because they have continued to vex me. Words have eluded me whenever i sit down to blog on these topics. Frankly speaking, i am not logical or witty enough to falsely prove that i am single by choice and pretend that i am loving it. And forget 'today'! I hardly do anything in as long a time period(strictly by blogging standards) as a month which is worthy enough to deserve a blog entry. So, I am going to play safe and blog about my life over the last five years. College life that is- something which will end in the next few weeks, if everything goes according to plan and if my guide(professor) doesn't develop a sudden unwarranted affection for me. The best part about writing such a blog entry is that in case you run out of ideas, you can always take a tour of the blogosphere and use some catchy/sentimental pick up lines used by fellow bloggers without even being detected. Let me forewarn you. My college life is in NO way the stuff fairy tales are made up of. So if you are looking for something readable, look elsewhere!
So, like every normal guy, my college life started in my first year as a freshie. As a freshie, i did what most of the other guys did. Other than attending classes quite regularly, i remained confined to my room most of the time. I was mortally scared of my seniors without realising that they were equally scared, if not more, of the freshies. Later on, as my seniority rankings increased, i learned how ungrateful a job it is.
I learned to play table tennis and went on to become a champ in my own small group of people. I started dispensing fundaes and harboured dreams of playing in the inter IITs and thereby landing up a job with Schlumberger (which was the only real big company that i knew of then). You should pardon my lack of knowledge or awareness then. Hailing from a family full of doctors and civil servants, i was the only one who had chosen to enter uncharted waters. Alas! my table tennis dreams lasted only as long as i was a frog in the well. I wasn't bad at studies either. I did put in a decent amount of effort in academics. But the grades that i got somehow failed to reflect the efforts that i had been putting into my academics. And i am not writing this to sound funny or anything. Honestly, i did spend sufficient time studying but somehow always ended up screwing the exams. I am not getting into the gory details of my academic performance for quite obvious reasons.
Second year was no different from the first year. I still continued to behave like a freshie. The only welcome change was that i refused to remain confined to my room any longer. This meant that i moved around the city a lot. And the charm of Mumbai proved to be irresistible. The more i roamed around, stronger became the urge to get more of the city. I became promiscuous in the sense that i started moving around with different groups in the hope of seeing the city as much as possible. In that sense, it worked. Academics naturally took a backseat. Result was that my grades fell to abysmal depths. I flunked a course for the first time in my life. Strangely, i coped with it pretty well. My parents didn't.
Come third year and i wanted to do something different. I started the first ever newsletter of the department along with a few classmates. The newsletter did much better than expected. I started imagining doing a Richard Branson (For the uninitiated, Branson started off his career with a newsletter in his college and the rest is history). That remained an imagination but the newsletter is still going strong. Finally, i also decided to put an end to my promiscuity and stick to a particular group. The results were positive. Academically, i improved. I also got to know a few people who were interested in more than just the academic scene - the 'poltus'. This was the select group of people that stood in each and every election in the institute. If it weren't they, then their proteges stood for these elections. But, not many were bothered. The kind of apolitical institute that IIT is, nobody really gives a damn. On the brighter side, i also a learnt a few small tricks of the trade here and there.
Fourth year was possibly the most enjoyable of all. By now, the bonds of friendship with quite a lot of people had been cemented. I had loads of friends by then. Be it my department group, the institute newspaper Insight group, the hostel group or friends outside of iit. There was groupism everywhere :). But it was all for good! This meant, that now i had a group of some amazing people to look upto. I spent some of the best time of my life in their company. Whether it was going on a trek or a visit to some museum/sea or simply eating out. Or combined studies for that matter. For the first time in life, i did well in academics. I developed a couple of new hobbies. The number of friends outside of the campus also increased which helped me view things in a proper perspective. For example, i realised that we were lucky enough to have scraped through JEE and life outside of IIT would be much more tougher.
Final year has been pretty eventful in the sense that it had been pretty hectic to start off with. Initially, there was this novelty factor associated with the year long project and so i started off by working really hard on it. The sapping placement season came and went. Everyone (including me) got placed. We moved around even more than before. Post placement season life has become unbearably lukkha with hardly anything to do. But i am trying to savor it to the fullest. I know i would long for these days once the professional grind begins. I am just hoping Pune turns out to be atleast as good as Bombay or Delhi.