Change...

As a toddler, I never thought I'd ever be able to live without my favorite doll...bedraggled, smudged, yet so so adorable...whom I carried everywhere...from the children's park to the vacation in Puri...we were as inseparable as two faces of a quarter.

As a kindergarten student, I was determined to be a lorry driver when I grew up...I was fascinated by those who drove heavy load interstate vehicles that I encountered on the Grand Trunk Road every morning on the way to school that was about 20 kms away from home.

I never dreamt of meeting the 1996 Indian Cricket World Cup Team at such close quarters...or that a perennial two-left footer like me would dance in the opening ceremony of the same...or for that matter reach up only to Sushmita Sen's navel when we did get a chance to perceive her three days before the final dress rehearsal.

I always thought that boys were dense and that it was a waste of time, energy and emotional coefficient to fall for one...something that only frivolous girls who had nothing better to do indulged themselves in. Never in my wildest delusions did I dream of dating someone in high school who was more into music than math, keyboards than calculus and legal trivia than literature. Even when I did, for once it didn't strike me that I was actually falling for him, literally head over heels. And when that happened I thought we'd never lose each other. But we did.

I thought I'd never be able to fall in love again, and be happy. Yet I did. Or for instance, share my deepest dreams and darkest secrets with someone. Or feel the rush of adrenaline one experiences when you race a bike in the rain, arms flailed...every pore in my skin lapping up the wondrous magical sensation....till I thought I'd reached seventh heaven!

As a pre-teenager, I never believed I'd learn to drive a scooter...rope climb in the mangrove forests of Bhitarkanika...jump over the C gate...play cards till four in the morn...survive on black tea through the nights before the Jan tests...start smoking under utter dejection...and then give it up as easily as I had started it...forgive someone who had hurt me so bad that I'd wanted to kill myself as a ten year old...

While in school, I thought that I'd never survive without my pals...people who I'd come close to over a decade...the land of red bricks was so endearing that I soon forgot all that...leaving college was and still is a numb ache somewhere deep down...and now that I'm in a totally different place...

Donno. Guess, change is the only constant.

Gray...

Gray. Melancholy. Menacing. That was the look the morning sky adorned on a Saturday morning, that was meant to be like any other weekend morn...except that it wasn't any other week...she woke up with a start, realizing that she was off schedule by at least a quarter of an hour...only to cuddle back into the warmth of her early morning dreams...after all, she was going home after nine long months..and her flight to Kolkata was less than 100 hours away...life was back on track, what with the anandamide coefficient in her system still high after previous night's crazy chocolate frenzy. About a dozen minutes later...she re-woke up. By then, the firmament was a shade of pale yellow and the mellow September sun streamed in through the diaphanous curtains by her book-shelf. She smiled to herself, stretched and humming a medley to herself, went to freshen up. Someone at the back of her head kept whispering to her, warning her that too much smiling could be injurious, sooner or later, she would be crying. She ignored and went on with life...

She shouldn't have ignored the voices in her head...well, at least, not all of them! First it was the pump that stopped working, as a result of which she had to abort the experiment that had taken more than a week till then to plan, program and execute (alas, partially). Dejection...depression...utter irritation. That was what her state of mind turned to. It was still acceptable, and after a long chat, a few tears and an omlette (happy food), she was feeling a bit more resolute and definitely happier. Time passed on...the sinking feeling had just gotten to subside when she had another bout of it. This time it was even more massive, even more abstruse to the face of logic and the once patched-up soul shattered into a hundred odd pieces thrown apart by anger, frustration and self-loathing. How else would it feel when someone she had reckoned to be a close pal not only went against her, but in one of the most publicly deprecating ways possible? Sacrilegious, that's what it was.

Why is it that she trusted people so? Cared for them to an extent when they took it as a liberty to encroach upon her private space, that petite corner that was only hers'? What sort of blasphemous audacity did some people have to make her feel so minuscule, so lost and so drowned in self-abhorrence? Or perhaps, for a change, the fault lay deep within her. At some private alcove somewhere deep down, she knew that there must have been something that instigated such profane reactions. Why her? She let the tears fall, they had a healing effect, and soon she was too tired to care...or even think! A few more showdowns...she wanted to be over it...for once and for all...life wasn't a bed of roses, but then again it wasn't meant to be an altar of thorns either! She had survived worse scenarios, and emerged triumphant. Hurt, yes, but healed. If she was a survivor, she would do it. Yet again.

Shit happens...

It's one of those phases when everything seems to go wrong. Every God damn thing. Its not about getting off bed on the wrong side (there is but one side, the other edge is locked with the wall)...its not a black cat crossing the alley on a dark winter night...or a lone song-bird cooing on the clothes line...It just happens. When you least expect it. When you can least handle it.

She woke up to find her cell switched off...the battery needed to be re-charged, but then there was some problem with the charger connection...next she stepped out into the courtyard, only to find that it had rained the previous night and the once semi-dry clothes were now fully drenched (they resembled the bedraggled crow perched on the telephone pole on a cold wintry morning)...great! nothing decent to wear, she grumbled to herself, contemplating which of her least favorite kurtas she would don as she headed to the loo...God, she needed a splash of fresh water on her face, and wipe off the previous night's sallow after-taste....she opened the tap...no water...What the hell, it was just 7 am...how could have the tank run dry so early...anyways, sometimes...shit happens...she ran helter-skelter and finally found a ground floor bathroom at the other corner of the hostel which had some water feebly dripping from the tap...somehow, she managed to take a half-bath and head to the lab...

The breakfast table was adorned by her friend, U, looking as Mr. Grumpy as usual...with a sorry piece of semi-toasted bread in his hand...poor guy, he usually steered clear off the southern delicacies and to find a weird cousin of the ubiquitous idli as the only food besides bread/tea wasn't a very happy option...he took it out on her, by pretending to be blase..when that didn't fetch any reaction, he started complaining about how late she always got in the morning...she tried rationalising, and when that didn't work, lost her cool...shouted back at him...and then they decided to not have lunch together...he in his characteristic melodramatic way, she in her usual detached manner...shit happens...once again..

Once she stepped into the lab, she thought things would get rosier....after all she had got a much-anticipated slot on the machine...all that was now there between a data collection and elation was mounting the crystal...V helped, so did the other V, but the precious little mm-sized thing flew out of focus from under the microscope...anyways, it had been some five hours since the day had started, and by then she had habituated herself to her poor fate for the day...somehow, another kutti piece (good things come in small packages) was captured...and the experiment began...hours passed...the progress wasn't satisfactory, but not too bad as well...and then she realized that in the midst of all these, she had forgotten to call him...and when she finally did, two hours off the mark, she had to have a conversation with his answering machine...the experiment was nearing completion by now...the first phase of it anyway...and then it happened...the capillary (now ultra-brittle at 90K)....broke and the last eight hours' work was wasted in a fraction of a milli-second...shit happens yet again..

Night fell. She felt kind of lost, sort of lazily half-awake...it was an hour past the mock seminar...things were totally out of her control. And then, when she felt that the day, now about to get over, had been more than enough....and was hoping for a rosier setting for the days to come...shit happened..yet again....the Carpenters lyrics strummed at the back of her head.."We are lost inside this lonely game we play....we are lost in this masquerade"...

Twin Freshers'

"As the newbies embark on their peregrination into the realms of science..."

The last weekend stood out from the array of mundane September days with its never-ending vapid spells of late monsoon drizzles, clothes-that-never-seem-to-dry syndrome and oh-i-wish-i-got-some-work-done with its sheer vivacity and invigorating spirit. The two freshers' welcomes lined back to back were like a whiff of fresh air after the long, summer days when life itself replays back in insipid slow motion. For once the environment of plenary seminars, boring lectures, endless worries gave way to a positive, bohemian carnival...

Integration'08 was a melting pot of all the four streams...when phy, chem, bio and math come together to showcase their creative talents and through a mutual rendezvous the green-horns get to know the veterans and vice versa...the high point, to this die-hard epicurean was of course the food...which was surprisingly different yet a treat for the taste buds...the short skits were much better than previous years...."Bushwa"...."Atomic # 36-24-36"..."Physics students jumping off the Raman building roof top to reinstate the laws of gravitation that had run awry after watching Rajnikanth and Mithun movies back to back"..."We didn't start the fire"...a cute rendition of a "Pappu" and "Betaal" medley all added spice to the lackluster lives we lead...The DJ night of course was like previous years', one of the few moments when you let your hair down...literally.. ;)...and jive to the beats of what little non-scientific fun life has left for you...it's always a pleasure to watch a certain person, (shall we restrict ourselves to calling him B?), go berserk...but with the laser lights on...things resembled a mad frenzy...everybody shook a leg, even perennially "two-left-footed" me... :)...and then of course, the two "S's" also flailed their arms up high..

Saturday I was a senior, in fact a ripe third year who sat back and enjoyed the freshers getting "positively interacted with" ...the tables turned on Sunday..once again I was a fresher, being inducted into SSCU....and the incomplete first line refers to what they made me scribble on the blackboard 15 seconds in to confessing that writing/blogging were few of my fav pastimes... :)...it was an evening of food a la vikings'...songs and dances...chocolate pastries that nearly melted in your hands (and you had to gobble it up without the aid of spoons) the Fish Pond was extensive and well made..a few laughs..moments of shyness...some of exuberance...at the end of the day, with a bohemian birthday hat on my head, and a photo frame in hand (into which I tucked away the 18th Sept memoirs)..I felt younger, and for once, happier...

With a song in my heart..and a twisted smile on my lips....I stepped into yet another week..