The Happy Conformist

Does it always have to end this way? Seemingly endless mountains of work, notes to go through which would technically be drilling through the entire mound, the feeling of restlessness coupled with worry but not to such an extent that we would sacrifice our precious dreamy reverie to actually start focusing? Before my tryst with the hostel life, I thought this condition was self inflicted by me and the few friends who were honest enough to discuss the actual non-progress of preps.

              But then, it was Hello Hostel and Goodbye Presumptions!

              Presumption no. 1: Everyone studies all year round.

              Presumption no. 2: Time tables are meticulously followed.

              Presumption no. 3: People sleep early the night before exams.

    Presumption no. 4: People are so busy studying that they do not   gorge on food (a personal trait of mine!) unless their mother’s force it down their throats.

    Presumption no. 5: A very non-existent social life.

And there you see go my presumptions flying right out of the window with an unmistakable smirk. I guess this is one of the few times when conformity seems like a blissful state of affairs and not a single soul (bless them!) tries to even unthaw the frozen zombie-like mindless behavior preceding the exams. So on a not-so-detailed analysis of what actually goes on during those precious few days before the exams (and mind you, they are precious) here’s the bleak reality of the Incredible India generation :

                Reality no. 1: NO ONE, and I really mean no one, studies all year round. Sorry to break the bubble Ma and Deta, but all those childhood stories of how people in your generation used to wake up at four (bloody!) a.m. every SINGLE day of your student lives and study for God-knows-how-many hours before going to school… well we don’t really believe them! My suspicion that all those stories might be rooted in the belief that one day we might suddenly stop behaving like night prowling creatures (as Ma never fails to point out) and hit the bed at 10 pm…has been gaining ground for quite sometime now. Alas, it never happened…poor souls!

                Reality no. 2: Those old yellowed papers sticking to our walls/ wardrobes/ any-other-conceivable-place-we-take-a-fancy-to or found on the last pages of our notebooks or even as a flyer in between the pages of our notebooks….that is the sacrosanct timetable that we decide has to be religiously followed from the moment of its conception. Sad life it has though. It probably lasts shorter than the new year resolutions (and that’s saying something!). Are we really that good into deluding ourselves with impossibly long hours of hard labour (yes it is hard humph…) that we jot down in our soon-to-be-neglected Time Table when in reality we are fully aware of our attention-span-of-a-house-fly? Oh but still can’t forget the comfort of making a time table EVERY single year/month/month-before-exams/week-before-exams….somehow it felt like the job half done.

                                Reality no. 3: People sleep the entire week before exams notwithstanding the amount of syllabus but never, and I mean honest to God never, sleep the night before exams. They even sleep the evening before exams because ‘oh, of course we have to stay up the entire night studying so its better we catch some sleep now’. Which of course means real panic starts settling in at around 3 am when we finally realize the futility of our plans and with dejection on our faces (and a wee lil bit glee) we decide to resign ourselves to our fate and snuggle up in our beds convincing ourselves that we’ll not sleep for more than 3 hours (more than that would be a crime please). Another failed resolution!

                Reality no. 4: The discovery of this reality came as a pleasant surprise to me. Even though my ex-roommate would vouch that no female and hardly a few males would be capable of stealing my oh-so-precious Glutton Crown (to that extent that my name is actually saved like that in her phonebook!) but I just found my fraternity, for the time being at least! ‘Eat to your heart’s content and be super-broke before 3/4th of the month is over’ seemed to be our motto for that month at least. And God am I glad to have found you people! For at least the time being (and considering we live in the size zero generation) it is no longer ‘Hog and you hog alone’!

                Reality no. 5: Why are we suddenly itching to hit the road/ mall/ lounges/ pubs/ any-place-which-does-not-even-remotely-remind-us-of-books when subconsciously we know we should stay and study??? First comes the inevitable NO to any proposed outing, then the gentle tug at the heartstrings followed by self-reasoning about the benefits of going out for a breath of fresh air (overrated stuff I swear) and forming of another mental timetable (haaah!) after our supposedly much needed break. As we all are aware of, at this point, all hope is lost. The rest of the story is familiar…come back apparently too tired after wasting so much time, convince ourselves that the forty winks are ABSOLUTELY necessary at this point of time (because after all what refreshes the mind more than some good sleep) and not to lose heart yet…we WILL  study as soon as the forty-going-on-to-god-knows-how-many winks are over!

                And the same story goes on…. But in this case I do wholeheartedly agree that Reality is far better than fiction (or presumption in this case!). As I mentioned above… sometimes it’s a treat to be a conformist!

p.s. this is strictly for ‘average normal having fun yet managing to pass in college’ people.

Space Barred?

Just waiting on the curb waiting for a friend to arrive can be a pretty convenient time to drown in your oasis of thoughts without running parallel thoughts on possible excuses for your wandering mind. But be it a boon (or a bane as my parents would protest), headphones do let you have your own personal bubble even when you are travelling in a packed metro where every bit of your personal and physical space is violated and the only salvation is the space you create mentally. I love these little bubbles though. Even though they don’t exactly do wonders for your thought processes but somehow they seem so appealing to me (not the packed metro part) but the times when you are actually travelling in a pretty empty metro (wonder of wonders!) where you can lean on those glass panes which has the entire DMRC maps on them and look at the world outside as you pass it by and God forbid any sentimental tear-jerker of a number playing on your playlist at that time. Personally I invent myriad not-happening-in-a-thousand-years situations when one of these songs go into play mode. There’s nothing remotely sad about my life. Yes, I do my share of cribbing about the supposed ‘pathetic state ‘ of my life and I won’t deny that there are those fleeting moments when I wished things were different but I guess every undying optimist is also entitled to such moments of weakness although I hardly claim to be one of them. I’m a lesser mortal thank you very much.

            Metros. Not the metropolitan cities but those long silver trains snaking through the sky and hailed as the modern remedy to never ending traffic. But I don’t think that’s the first thought conjured up by a person travelling in rush hour. I am not damning the metros here and please don’t ever do that. These silver lifelines are practically the singular reason why single girls like me living alone in the proverbial big bad city are able to wear shorts (yes shorts for those living with the misconception that women in the streets of Delhi can wear anything and not be harassed by the ‘once-over’s right from the auto wale bhaiyyas to the uncles) and still be able to travel from one end of the city to another without a single shred of worry. But this is not about the benefits of travelling by metro. I think we have enough people covering that topic. This is about how much we, as human beings, have allowed ourselves to compromise on our space. Maybe its because of my small town upbringing but I’ve always been ingrained with the idea that ones personal space is the sacrosanct area where even a minor violation is looked down upon. That bubble is where the cognitive behavior starts from. The desire to be easily judgmental, in my opinion, stems from the fact that bubble is burst. No longer are we receiving-storing-retrieving information but we see and we judge. Where exactly has this kind of behavior led us? Yes, everyone has an opinion on everything now and am not exactly criticizing that fact but really how much are those opinions based on analysis of actual figures, real events or interactions with the subject? Can we really claim that living in a lightening paced world gives us the right to sit on our moral(and intellectual) high horses pronouncing judgment just because who really don’t go into intricacies to understand the multitudinous character of a person or an event? Isn’t it one of the reasons of the breakdown of relationships between parents and children, siblings, boyfriend, girlfriend, bestfriend….? Compromising and adjusting aren’t always the best options. Make a little space for yourself.