Friday, August 18, 2006

Treat Club

This is not my writing. But its a part of who I am. Its a tribute to the time I spent in IIT, the best time of my life, so far.

The Brothers Kara-mazov (ByVarun Sud)

While I have your undivided attention let me make the most of it and maro a ganda you might otherwise have refused to be tortured with : Why can’t anyone find rooms B-23 to B-34 in Karakoram House IIT Delhi?.... Well, uhm uhm, because it’s the unreal wing!

Pick a random hour on a random day in a random semester. Mer, GrimReaper, Shakti, Pongi, DilbaghSingh, Maddu, PappiSingh, Vivid and TreatClubber are in intellectual discourse. A finished packet of Hungarian chocolate lies discarded in a corner. The topic of debate on 9 days out of 10 would have been the female homo sapien, but a certain Reading Comprehension in CAT 2003 has changed all that, and girls now come in a close second to Cultural Capital (or CC as it is colloquially known). Just then the phone rings in B-26 and a female voice (with which the above characters are by now only too well acquainted) asks: ‘Can I speak to Rohit Arora?’

And then before the topic of discussion can go back to how red (of low CC content) or green(of acceptable CC levels) a certain random someone is, Adidas makes the characteristic loud entry. And as always he has news. Mer has been spotted with two different female soldiers in Nescafe in the last 24 hours and what follows is a lengthy Spanish inquisition.

Just as the inquisition seems to have dragged on for too long without any logical conclusion, news arrives that X has just got a job. But Pongi crushes all cheer and hopes of demanding a party by recalling the rules of Treat Club, to which we swear allegiance.
The 1st RULE of Treat Club : You do not ask for a treat.
The 2nd RULE of Treat Club : You DO NOT ask for a treat.
The 3rd RULE of Treat Club: If someone says "no booze" or goes broke, taps out the treat is over.
The 4th RULE of Treat Club: Only two guys to an extra large pepperoni pizza and pitcher of beer.
The 5th RULE of Treat Club: One treat at a time.
The 6th RULE of Treat Club: No Vegeterian, no Chinese.
The 7th RULE of Treat Club: Treats will go on as long as Mer has not had his fill of cheesecake.
The 8th RULE of Treat Club: If this is your first night at TREAT CLUB, you HAVE to treat.

The mood is suddenly mellow as we realize rule 1 and 2 cannot be violated. But GrimReaper saves the moment by pointing out that Adidas should be currently attending the Ghazal Nite and not lurking around in this boring map, and everyone joins in the nuking as the normal mood of cheer and excitement returns.

It’s now close to 2 in the morning but that does not deter PappiSingh from being spotted in his towel, just out from his fifth bath of the day. (Now you know whom to curse the next time you are forced to use an unflushed toilet). Nor does this unearthly hour stop two friendly neighbourhood attachees, from Nil and Kumaon, respectively, from dropping in to check out a certain Vivid video creating waves on the LAN.

And GrimReaper has a party to attend at the Elite modeling school the next morning and Maddu has class as 8. And Shakti is apparently going to have a hangover tomorrow for he has been eloquently quoting Wordsworth for the past 20 minutes. And its now four in the morning and everyone clearly needs to sleep, but kya karen, UT pay jaana hai!!

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Impulsive

Thats what I am, impulsive. Quick to hope, quicker to dispair. Quick to love and to indifference (hatred is too strong to me). And this post too, an impulsive inspiration which deserted me as soon as I touched the keyboard. Now, i dont have a story to tell.

Saturday, August 12, 2006

Stoned!!

Had decided that i would smoke grass once before i leave college. i did it today. in fact, am perfectly stoned right now. umpteen shots of vodka and as much grass as i could take. still after that i danced as well as i have ever done at the saturday midnight party we have at college. even danced with three girls and i don't think they would have been offended.

It's a day of firsts anyways. i bought my laptop and this post is being typed on that laptop.

All my drunkeness makes me think, is it a bad thing? No, i think not. not at all. i have been happy and bold, asked people to dance with an abandon that my sober soul hardly knows. i think this is good, heaven. world opinion be damned. and i am good enough to type out this post. god i wish this would last. but i am graduating early next year and then it would be all over. a thousand responsibilities, a mule under the yoke. sad human plight is, and we call it a career and a success. makes me laugh and cry out simultaneously.

What would i do if they allowed me to relive the last ten years of my life? I think i would become a perfect disgrace to my family. But i would not, my father would be too broken. Ah! there lies the chain with which i m tied to all, to the median path, to the standard, to oblivion.

Alas, I go to being the unknown citizen. How i would have loved ignonimony! ha ha

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Novels I Have Read- Part III

Do you take a little time to warm up when you write? I do. More on that later. To the novels now.

1. Diary of Anne Frank (2000): It is tough to belive that this book is the diary of a thirteen year old. Sweet book. Not for the intellect, but for the soul.

2. Heart of Darkness (2002): It is impossible to belive that the author wrote the book, ten years from the time he had his first brush with the language. The language, as I remember, is definitely a challenge. The book talks about White pioneers in Africs, of the white man's burden. Will have to re-read the book. This exercise is throwing up an unexpected benefit. I know which books I can and should re-read.

3. Tamas (2002): One of the two books I read as part of an Indan writing in english course. Talks of the communal tensions just prior to partition. Distinctly average book. The author came to address our class. next year he was dead. I had an autographed copy which some borrower never bothered to return.

4. Those Days (2002): The other book. Liked the book much more, much better told story. There are many love plots woven in a broad theme of the ills of Bengali society and its subsequent reform. The author is Sunil Gangoadhyay. His other book. first light is one which I will read on of these days.

5. Far from the madding crowd (2002): A simple romance by Thomas Hardy. A simple man and his fair maiden. Stuff of extremely naive dreams and crappy movies of the sixties. However the same story comes across much better in verse.

6. Ivanhoe (2002): A really old book, early 1830's I belive. Love and fighting. A gallant hero and a beautiful heroine.

7. Train to Pakistan (2002): I had heard so much about the book before reading it that expectations killed it. Frenzied hatred and inherent goodness of human soul set against the backdrop of partition is the theme.

8. Midnight Children (2002): The book began impressively well. Its a chronicle of India's progress from Independence to eighties. A lot of fantastic story telling which makes no attempt at sounding true at all. However, towards the end, it became well nigh impossible to follow the book. Left it incomplete

Sunday, August 06, 2006

Novels I Have Read-part II

Here begins my college sojourn. It would be very difficult to remember the choronology out here and the years i would give are approximate.

1. Atlas Shrugged (2001): The other epic of Ayn Rand, which is much more explicit about objectivism. however, for that very reason, I found it less enjoyable. It's a lot of theory and only a little a story.

2. Hundred years of solitude (2001): Magic realism, magic. This book introduced me to the writings of Gabriel garcia Marquez. The use of only two first names for all male characters in the book is what gives the book its character of stagnation but is, at the same time very confusing. However for people who want to read marques I wouldnt recommend this book as the starting point.

3. Love in the times of Cholera (2001): Best of the three Marquez books I have read and the one I will recommend for strangers to magic realism. However, this book is least representative of MArquez's patnt style of magic realism. Sometimes, but just as alcohol, its better that the introduction is small and mild.

4. A Portrait of the Artist as a young man (2001): Inspite of the fact that I can't remember the exact name of the book to save my life (goofed up in A interview) and the book was part of course reading, this is my favorite book. Introduced me to stream of consciousness, a style which appeals to me equally for its close imitation of reality and its complexity. Can't say that I can understand books written in this style completely, but still enjoy them a lot. These books are eminently re-readable, something which can't be said about too many books. Also, the description of the travails of growing up, and that too into something radical, is something I could understand. The irish setting exposed me to the hitherto unknown history of a new country, something thats never ceases to please me.

5. Lolita(2001): Don't shrug. Yes, the subject matter of the book is repulsive but this too was course reading. It is an example of experiments in modern fiction. Didn't enjoy the book that much. One last word, contrary to popular perception, there isn't much masala in this book.

6. A Clockwork Orange (2001): The third book I read as part of the same course, along with the two above. Even crazier that Lolita, this book by Anthony Burgees has been highly controverial in its time. The book is actually a thought experiment in my opinion and a rather intersting one. Rather sadly, I can't even remember the plot of the novel. Strange, very strange.

7. Grapes of Wrath (2001): Book by John Steinback, talks of poverty in America. Rather strange, you would think. But this was oklahoma, in times of depression. The book is a wonderful naration of how things go wrong with poor people.

8. Disgrace (2001): Award winning book by J.M koetzee, is about postb aparthied South Africa. Raises the question about historical retirbution and forms it can take. Distantly related to the reservation issue.

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Novels I Have Read- Part I

I have often wanted to list down all the novels I have read. It will be useful in my old age. I will try to list them in the approximate order in which I read them but it might not be always possible. Also, will try to write a couple of sentences about what I remember from the book. So here I go:

1. A Tale of Two Cities (Class VIII): Marked as the beginning of my reading though I think I had read a few before this one. Set against the backdrop of the French revolution, it is a romance. This book will never have made Dickens a writer for children.

2. Little Women, Robinson Crusoe, White Fang, Wuthering Heights, Heidi and some more I don't remember(Class VII-VIII): All children books, all classics. I wouldn't have got anything else from my schoool library in a small town. Wuthering Heights impressed me most at that age. It's a story of kindness to a forsaken infant, of cruelty, of victory of good. Sadly, its the author's, Emily Bronte's, only book. I was in love with the author and the narrator for a while (I often had/have problems seperating the two).

3. War and peace (Class IX): I began reading serious stuff. To me, the book is nothing special even though its conseidered one of the two greats by Leo Tolstoy. The book's merit, I hink, lies in its recording of russian society of that time.

4. Anna Karenina (Class X): The second book by Tolstoy. While War and Peace is about public affairs too, this is more about family lives of the russian rich and not so rich.

5. Mother (Class IX): My favorite among the three russian novels I read in rapid succession. This novel is set against the growth of the socialist movement in Russia. Very effective narration of how common people, in factories, old women got into the revolution. Could be motivational/propaganda writing.

6. Sherlock Holmes (Class VIII-X): I read and re-read the entire collection. The plots, the thrill, the cool character of Mr. Holmes, lounging on the sofa at his 221, baker street lodgings, the descriptions of English coiuntryside and London: Mr. Holmes was my first hero.

7. Freedom at Midnight (Class IX): A wonderful account of the situation prevailing in our country just before independece through impartial eyes.

8. Fountain Head (Class IX-X): I read the book from cover to cover around seven times. The book was my favorite for many many years and I absolutely worshipped the character of Howard Roark right into the first year of college. An extremely well told story expounding the philosophy of objectivism. An interesting aside: Very aptly the author, Ayn Rand, was a russian who emigrated to USA.

My school readings in terms of serious literature ends with this. i also read Shakespeare's work, The Merchant of Venice, as part of course work but didn't find it very appealing.