~~Memoirs of the 6th semester~~

It seems its been ages since i last wrote a post , and so as i sit here once again typing away, i simply cant wait to complete this post and put it up, especially coz i dont know if this blog will survive after august ...i just wanna make the most of the 2 months thats left of it (maybe or maybe not... just a random thought that i might never update it after august...busy times ahead u see) ,and so i decided to start my new string of posts with my 6 monthly semester memoirs...

And what a sem it has been...so many things happened in such a short time... there's no sem that compares with this one when it comes to surprises shoved at ur face, be it not-so-worth -a-dime/ more-precious-than-a-diamond !!!

So once again, lets rewind a bit. It all started on that windy ,chilly January evening ,with the blower in my room providing some respite ,and my cold hands being terribly put to torture with the impending Economics presntation work that I was supposed to make the next day .I hardly felt like working and the though of going inside my warm blanket and enjoying the siesta was too tempting for me to want to do anything outside it. Then came the familiar gtalk mesg pop-up ,and my life changed forever...well, literally!!! I can hardly describe the next 4 hours (startin at 12 in the night) ,as I multitasked between my presentation and gtalk...only this time ,it wasnt any normal chatting ... I could never have imagined that it would end the way it did, or if anything at all would come out of it(except ofcourse timepass, or timewaste ,depening on how u prefer to look at it!! ) .But this very chat was supposed to be different from the very beginning. And till this day ,i'm amazed at how me and my tanhai made me win over love. Can't disclose too many details about the episode (somethings in life definitely are private!! ), but all I can say is, it was the most awesome start to a semester that looked so bland at the outset. If the starting was so good, nothing else could go wrong, and I'm glad to say as I type this post , that nothing did!! I hope you've by now already understood , that there's gonna be no tragic memories or preachings as in my earlier memoirs in this post. My date with love continues, and until it does, i'll be the happiest person alive!! :)

Moving on, this was the sem that generally proved Jag Suraiya's dictum - "only thing not in short supply is what in local parlance is aptly known as a bumboo. Which is only too frequently administered to our haplessly receptive backsides."

There were a lot of things that had the potential of making this sem regrettable for me too - the fact that I had so many responsibilities on campus ,couldve intimidated me and bogged me down . But, imagine the power of love, i sailed right through and also managed to take care of academics!!! Whew!! And talking about the responsibilites, being the Secretary of Philately and Numismatics, the Coordinator of the biggest event in the annual techfest, the Google Campus Ambassador,the innumerable efforts to get a good internship -there were just too many roles to play ,and that too squeezed within a 2 month bracket. Before this, I'd always thought that delegating duty and making others work is easier compared to workng for somebody ,but its only after I was at the helm of affairs that I realised what an headache it is to depend on others, incase you fail to have an inefficent team. And take my word for it, to be at a managerial position in an MNC will make sure your hairline recedes at the rate of 1 km per meeting!!!

I guess it was a very adventurous sem too!!! I undertook my mini adventure in february when instead of going home on my delhi visit ,I stayed back at my friend's place so that I could meet my sweetheart without any interventions and raised eyebrows!!
And hell, twas tough to hide my motives frm my friend's family and even my own family to an extent. Now what is one supposed to do when his friend's mom asks him why he's stayin at their place and not at his own house, when u dont have a clue about what ur friend has told his parents as the reason..what if one makes a contradictory remark and arouses suspicion!!! Phew!! I was fumbling with words at such a strightforward question. More so , what is one supposed to do when there's a child in the house - my friend's nephew in this context, and he- at the prospect of finding two two "Mamas" over the weekend cant take the shock of putting up with only one of them at once, and wants both as his toys(read both mamas)-that too when ur'e gettin late for ur date!!! Not only that, what when your friend's sister finds out about your motives, or atleast gets a slight hint ,and makes gestures every time you try n leave the house or demand a private corner for a phone call!!! One helluva adventure !! You bet I can write a novel which has more masala than Chetan Bhagat ever had in his "fiction" writings!!!

But that wasnt going to be the end of my adventures ... it was just an idle friday evening when we were musing about what to do on the last weekend before the onset of the dreaded end sems , when I struck gold with the idea of River Rafting in Rishikesh , something that coincidentally had been experienced by most of the guys this semester-but none from our group had been fortunate enough to be part of the travails. So after a string of yes' and no's and a lotta convinving , we had a heathy group of 15 people who were game to go farting ...oops rafting (actually that was an honest typo...but instead of deleting an d correcting , I thought its better to expose the kind of errors one can commit while typing , and what can happen if they are left as it is (no type of software will help u in this regard coz even farting is a correct word! :P )..can u see what mockery i'd have made outta this post had i not discovered my folly!! ) . We started early in the morning for Rishikesh ,although all of us were in a very bad mood ,coz we had just done what we hate most- woken up early on a weekend !!(Sleep for us is like that rare hottie on campus, we really dont wanna be disturbed while we're at it - god help if you if you are the reason for a date goin berserk or disrupting some1's sleep -makes no difference for an IITian. He'd look at you with such a piercing gaze that you'll whither with the guilt if u dont wanna be "bumbooed"!! ). So where was I...yeah ,so we reached Rishikesh in the morning and had a great time by the chilling waters of Ganga. (and I really mean it, one can almost freeze standing in the waters for more than 10 mins!!) .

Somehow the open spaces, mountains, and the river valley spelled freedom for us harried IITians, and we made the most of it ,just dawdling by the river. We didnt know what lay in store for us though , until we sat down on our rafts with our life jackets and helmets in place, and then there was no stopping us . After an initial lesson on rafting ,we were taken straight to our very first rapid , and gosh! its as they say- "fati padi thi" ,but while we were in that rapid, amidst the heightened fear ,we were looking at each other and askin in amazement -"Why am I laughing!!! "-with almost every1 chiming in with the same question!! It was a proud moment when we managed to keep the raft ,or ourselves from being compromised into the whimsical river and its gruesome flow .... but we couldnt hold on for long...as the biggest rapid came ,we were struggling to hold ourselves and the waves hit us fiercely , but in all the hysteria ,all of us saw one thing - on oar that was combating the river alone, without its owner, and thats when we all turned and saw one guy wasnt there in the raft !!! He somehow managed to appear just a second later to allow our hearts to resume its functioning properly, and the trainer caught hold of him and pulled him up !! Last moment casualty averted and we were all thankful for that. The guys face was horrid with the shock ,though once he recovered he said he had the most fun of us all -he actually swam in the rapid!!! To top it all was the jump from the 20 feet high cliff straight into river Ganga...doesnt look like much of a task when one looks at it from below, but when u reach the top and u brace urself to jump ,believe me, u feel like ure going to commit suicide -minus the depression!!! We all freaked out standing there at the top ,but the fact that a few girls jumped in front of us, we could not take an embarrasment ,and so the men moved on as if to save the last bastion of male virility -and in quick succession , we all jumped , and lemme tell u this, if u ever wanna experience ur heart skipping a beat ,thats the best way to do so. The jump lasted 3 secs approx, and between the 2nd and 3rd second, I'd closed my eyes and was packing my bags for my final journey to hell/heaven(whatever He deemed to be fit for me) -but then I heard a loud thud , and oh, what a relief it was to still be alive and kicking- the water that is!!! Pure fun -and that too all under 500 bucks...hehe!!!

Finally we had a tet-e-tete with end sems ,and that wasnt too easy for any of us , nobody had actually studied throughout the sem . But this was the do or die sem -the placements are to begin in december this year ,and this was the last sem which will make its grades counted before we get a job. So everyone seemed to be on a mission to save their grades ,and the last one week before the end sems saw heightened activity on the part of almost every person on campus .Even I ,for the first time, spent a few hours in the library -trying to make sense of how one is supposed to study in such pin -drop silence and an AC that seems to have been sprayed with sleeping gas!! Only on my part -it was an effort to escape the heat more than an effort to study!!! The proffs were too keen on showin their true colours all at once this sem ,and many of em just before the exams had reached such heightened levels of irritabilty that they'd put up notices outside their rooms saying-"CSE 3rd year students to stay away from my room" ,and one proclaiming -"MIT students are a lot better than IIT students " ...we agree with you ,ma'm ,completely , if only u'd have referred to MIT ,USA rather than MIT- Manipal Institute of Technology!!! Preposterous...we were in a state when we could nothing but think how on earth these proffs will ever give good grades to normal people in the class!!! Amidst all the fears , the end sems came , and went ...and now i dont give a damn about the grades..actually nobody does ,now that we're all happily interning!!

For the first time, I really didnt bother much about people around me , and though problems abound came uncalled for from many different people, particularly with one girl on campus threatning me to get me kicked out /suspended at the least(no dont worry , i didnt assault/evetease her, she just happened to be a victim of a theft that happened during our exhibition in which her valuable stamps got stolen-and i being the Secretary , evidently had the sole responsibility of the whole thing!!),and another person accusing me of unfair gameplay in the techfest ,I was in a quagmire for most part of the last 2 months. But luckily ,my chagrine was no match for my happiness at having someone special in my life .SO when I look back in retrospect , I have no qualms at all about the way the last 6 months have turned out to be!! I've changed a lot -and become a lot more optimistic than ever before... happys endings!!! :)