the drive.. friends, Ritz, Ellora!!

our road trip to Ellora!.. 

had an awesome time thanks to the guys... \m/

The best days of my life

Being an engineering student may not be the most challenging job in the world but it certainly is no piece of cake… except momentarily on birthday parties where a poor chap is punished, sharp at midnight, for being born, which was not even his fault.

Well let me not divert from the topic. The emotional era, composed of one-liners like “mera beta engineer banega” are long lost. Parents have become broadminded and the children, they certainly know how to live. Engineering college life, the transition phase in one’s life, is characterized by such degree of turbulence that it takes four years to reach the equilibrium state. It’s like the sluice gates of the dam, which your parents built, have suddenly burst open and your life’s flooded with concepts like independence and freedom. There are actually thousands of other concepts that escape the same gate, concepts that external agencies commonly known as professors try to instil into your life. But these are such bouncers which only the most skilled of the players can attempt to play. Those players who at the end of it all are called by the rest, with respect and pride and a li’l “:P”, as “the 9 pointers”. All credit to those guys any ways for having worked like hell, quite literally. 

For an engineering student, tensions are many and pressure equally huge. Grades, assignments, lectures at one end to friends, not so friends, and girlfriends on the other, handling the glamor of college life is certainly way difficult than what Farah Khan and Shahrukh thought. But the reason you never hear a true engineering student complain is that the opportunities that you get are infinitely many, which more than compensate for all the pain in the arse. Forget about academics (if you just did that, I’m surprised you had it in your mind in the first place), what people carry out of colleges is far more valuable than tonnes of formulae and equations. All the li’l moments in the cafeteria, the queue in the mess, the chalk fight in the classrooms, the late submissions following a mass copying campaign, the fests, the tours, the celebrations, and most specially the uncountable eternal bonds that form automatically. May be that's the reason that people get emotional when the journey comes to an end. May be that’s the reason that I am scared to think of the fact that there’s just one more semester. May be that's the reason why these four years are the best days of one’s life.

These years as an engineering student might not make me a good engineer, but will certainly have transformed me into someone who is ending his student life as a Man ready to face the world on his own terms. And that’s why I respect these years of my college life and I always will.

P.S.: wondering who's a “true engineering student”? Refer to the post on "What I don’t want to be". Agey toh aap samajhdaar ho hi!!

Exploring God's own country

The four day road trip exploring God's own country, was nothing less than an amazing experience. When i sit down smiling with all the little memories from the trip, i wonder, why was this trip so very special after all? I didn't have a girlfriend accompanying me, there was not even a booze party for God's sake. Was it the lovely time i spent in a car after ages that made the trip so special or was it the fact that it was a significant addition to the ultra-small list of trips i have had so far? Was it the excitement of exploring new places or the heavenly experience of standing amidst the tea plantations looking down on the soft cushion of clouds? Was it the tiny home stay with the huge bathroom at Thekkedy or the huge troop of  Russian girls we shared the restaurant with? Was it the early morning bread omelette by the waterfall or the wooden toy car I got from that shop at the Echo point?.... It certainly was not the boat ride, and definitely not the hotel room at Munnar without a lock to its bathroom door. I guess I know the answer perfectly well. They were my Friends, who were with me always, through out the trip, manufacturing all those li'l magical moments that now bring me a smile. That tea at the road side, 1700m above mean sea level, the awesome masala Dosa, the perfect bread omelette, even the chicken at KFC would not have been all that great without them sharing the table. It would never have been so easy financially had UNCOOL not volunteered to manage the pool. We would never have captured the incredible moments without BABU and RG's cams. The journey would definitely have been far less action packed without the nauseatic DAISY and the slow JEW. The altitude of 1957m above msl would never have been that interesting without BABY 's GPS and binoculars. Thanks friends for such an amazing time. God's own country would have been so less Godlike without you guys.

"yaadein" a beautiful poem from the movie UDAAN

In memory of school life :-

Chhoti-chhoti chhitrayi yaadein
Bichhi hui hain lamhon ki lawn par
Nange pair unpar chalte-chalte
Itni door chale aaye
Ki ab bhool gaye hain –
Joote kahan utaare the.

Aedi komal thi, jab aaye the.
Thodi si naazuk hai abhi bhi.
Aur nazuk hi rahegi
In khatti-meethi yaadon ki shararat
Jab tak inhe gudgudati rahe.

Sach, bhool gaye hain
Ki joote kahan utaare the.
Par lagta hai,
Ab unki zaroorat nahin.