I never open my other gmail id...but today I did...and one particular mail sent by someone 2 days ago made me feel all touched...am sorry for being cheesy..but I reely was..:)It read: Hey write something on your blog. I'm bored and I want to read something. (Or something mostly like this :P)I felt nice reading it... So here I am writing something...For you to read, Ironmonkey :)
We have lectures all the time in this second floor seminar hall in ACJ (Asian College of Journalism) where I study. The room is filled with students, lecturers and guest speakers...they all congregate here to impart and share their knowledge and viewpoints on various pertinent issues.But, there is a group, which attends every single lecture...sits through all of them; they never bunk. But they aren't expected to either understand or deliver after any of the lectures- the attenders and technicians who help put together the electronic support for each lecture, presentation and walk around the hall passing the mic when its time for questions.
When I see them, I always wonder if they understood what was being discussed at length everyday within the confines of this lecture hall...do they realise that they could be one of the most informed and aware in their clan, if they could grasp what was being spoken?Assuming they don't....what does it feel like to sit in a hall where everyone talks in a foreign language, about things that appear very important for any number of reasons? Do they wonder what was going on? Do the power point presentations with charts, figures and estimates make any sense to them? And when people ask questions at the end of the session, and when they are passing around the mic...does it irritate them...to not know what was raising so many questions in so many people's minds?I sometimes feel jealous of them...they can simply zone out when a boring lecture's happening...they don't have to know why news and numbers are intrinsically related to each other...they wouldn't have an exam, even if its an open book, class test...they can in simple terms be "physically present mentally absent". But we need 85% attendance in each lecture, and have to write exams as well!!! The unfair lives all o us lead....sigh :pPseudo-nerd wrote something for ironmonkey today :)
I cant remember how many times in the past 3 months I ve fallen sick...
Well, for the records, if anyone s maintaining them, I am sick, yet again...
What do I write with a running nose, a burning throat and an aching face heated by some fever?
It has been on my mind to write abt this for a long time now...ever since I took that disastrous entrance exam in an attempt to get myself a seat in Asian College of Journalism, by far the country's best J-School, right here in my beauty city, Chennai!!
The paper had 2 sections: English and General knowledge. I owe it to my considerable prowess (:D) in the language, which is the reason why am now part of the ACJ Family!
The GK paper left me in such a state of demoralisation, I wouldnt want to accept it openly...
Even if I had no clue what the answer was to a particular question, I had the audacity to write something there on the space provided. On embarrassing retrospection, I found out they were so way off the mark, I had myself as well as my frends splitting into long spells of uncontrollable laughter...
That day evening, at home, I told myself and my family to just forget abt me making it to ACJ...
Then the list of ppl selected for the interview level was out...and MIRACULOUSLY (Im not exaggerating, here!!!!) my name was there on the list...it was jus too good to believe, and that is why I say, my English will save me in life :D
One day after the list was out, to which both Asha and Rashmi (my best frends in coll) had made it, the three of us were discussing...yeah...ACJ!!! They talked abt this mail that they had been sent from the management asking them to appear for the interview on a specified date and other details. I didnt remember having gotten any mail from ACJ...and I began to genuinely panic: What if my name had been put up on the list by mistake?, I wondered miserably...
On checking my mail Id again, I had received the mail two whole days earlier and the dyslexic thing Im becomin nowadays, I had missed it!!!!! Ahhhh, the RELEIFFFFF!!!!! :D:D
Interview Day:
After spending two whole days in the company of nothing but newspapers and news channels, I arrived at the Centre quite well prepared. Im sure I was scaring a few ppl with my constant discussion of possible questions and promptly answering them myself a few times or torturing my friends into answering a few other times!!!
My turn to face the panel:
I walked into the room with my meticulously prepared portfolio (which they didnt so much as glance at :|) The questions began:
Q: I see, you've got the Best Outgoing Student Award from Journalism Department in your college...
A: Yes, Sir. I have. (Smiling modestly :p)
Q: I see from your application form, you live opposite Valluvarkottam. What can u tell us abt it?
A: (I gave a whole host of details known to me )
Q: Who is the architect of Valluvarkottam?
A: (Mentally: $%#&@(#&) Errr...I dont know, Sir...
Q: Do you know, Thirukural?
ASIDE: For those o you who ve no clue wat this place is: It is a charriot like structure built as a tribute to the Tamil poet, Thiruvalluvar. It houses a statue of the poet-saint. He is the author of the book, Thirukural, which has been translated into several world languages and provides guidelines on how man should lead his life. It is acclaimed to be relevant even today, though it was composed many several years ago.
A: (Mentally, again: WTF is this!!!!) Yes, Sir. I had Tamil as m second language in school.
Q: Recite one for us
A: (Thoroughly baffled by the direction this interview was taking) * I recited the first kural, popularised by Balachandar's Kavithalaya title music :P *
Q: Why Do you think Karunanidhi (who is the current CM of Tamilnadu and the one who built this monument) suddenly built a charriot like structure for Thiruvalluvar?
A: (Openly going %$&(&*$%&^) I....don't know, Sir.
Q: You seem to have covered the 'Margazhi Season' quite extensively. What do you know abt it?
A: (I tell them whatever I knew about the season and its popular kachcheris)
Q: How many concerts are there in a seson?
A: I dont know, Sir. (I wasnt even bothering to get baffled now :|)
After such questions which brought my morale to an all time "high", I was asked a couple of questions to which I thankfully knew the answers...how come??? Because they were questions abt news in the past weeks!!!! That is how I expected the entire session to progress!!!
Q: What is your area of interest in journalism?
A: (I think this terrible answer was a product of the complete demoralisation I underwent a few minutes back) Social INTEREST, Sir.
ASIDE: There is no such area called Social Interest. Its Social Issues :|
Q: Can you tell us what u mean by the term, "social interest"?
There...that was my undoing I think. My area of interest is NOT social issues, least of all social INTEREST!!!!!!!!!!!! My interests lie in POLITICS!!!!!!! :((
I crapped so badly after that...I dont have the heart to embarass myself in such public glare by recounting what I crapped there, trying to explain what the hell ever I meant.
They finally said: That's it Aruna. You can go.
As, I was getting up...the Dean, Mr. Sreekumar Menon went : "Wait wait!!! We need to ask you the mandatory questions!!!!
I freaked out on hearing this: "What???? The interview begins only NOW?????????", screamed the voice inside my head....
Then they asked:
Will you be requiring hostel accomodation, Aruna?
I must have sighed quite audibly with relief...and that just drew more smirks from the "PANEL"
A: No, Sir. I wouldnt be requiring it. (Bcoz I wouldnt be getting admission int he frst place, I said in my mind voice...and trooped out of the room.
The next one week before the results were out...I put myself thru hell...I dont know why it made such a big difference...getting into this place...it DID!!!!
And finally, the results came:
NAME STREAM
Aruna Television
:D :D :D :D :D :D I just couldnt help feeling happy to a fault!!!!!
Now, its a almost a week since college began...the very frst day began on a tragic note, with one of the girls falling to her death from the hostel terrace the very day she checked into it...
I dedicate this post to that lost life...Mansi.
Hands from the pitch dark
Called her forward; coaxed her on...
Whispers in her ears...
Just one more...Just one more
They seemed to chorus softly...
She left the voices behind...
Not knowing she was taking an
Irreversible step forward...
Just one more...Just one more...
The hands still beckoned...
Entering darker darkness
She left behind her shadow too
Her sole companion, thus far...
Don't stop...Just a little more...
That voice egged her on...
Down she fell that hollow duct...
The air around her making way...
Caressing her one last time
Before the waiting ground took her on...
The life within thrown out
In that bloody spurt of first injury...
She died...a Death
Entirely ordained by Fate.
I ve always wanted to be a guy in my heart o hearts...
When I was a kid...it was because they could be outside longer than me...
When I started puberty...it was because they could still wear anythng...I couldnt...
When I started making frends from their side, nobody told them they cudnt stand on a road talking with a girl...because they told me that...
I had to be bothered what other people thought about me...which was most obviously a reflection on my family's reputation...well they only had to stay away from the police stations...if possible, that is...
They could flirt with any number of women...jus would be called a playboy...which finally became a cool tag to have...if I were to have done it...i'd have been called a slut...which is still not a very cool tag...
I had to take care not to be taken advantage of by them guys...why wasnt or why couldnt it have been the other way around?
They can:
#Smoke
#Drink
#Do drugs
#Or all o the above...
And guess what? Parents are mostly quite aware that their sons arent beyond these things...but still they go scotfree... If I were to do any o it? I'll have to take ten thousand precautions to ensure my parents dont come to know...am not spotted by a mama or a perima...or an elder cousin...who will of course, be a guy!!!
Night stays...trips out o city? No problem, guys. Night stays...? Do you have to, girls? Trips out o city....? Forget it, girls.
Guys can nowadays just take their girls home...introduce them to their parents...the girl is always the frst to be introduced... Well, women are still catchin up...sorry we're centuries late...
I could go on piling up such disparities...I dont want to... I jus want to say, I WISH I WAS A GUY!!!!
Pseudo-nerd talkin...
Next year this time I hope I will not be here in Chennai...not because i have stopped loving the place....it's as close to me as my family and God knows how many fights I've fought over her...from her side...I once read another blogger's outlook on this city...this sleepy, dreamy city of mine...I will never forget the kind of humbling I felt at the end of my reading...not just at the blogger's knack in stringing mere words so as to make poetry in prose form...but at a strange charisma stemming from its abstract beauty...at the way she talked to me and every other Chennaiite who cared to listen...I one day decided to listen...
Quite some time ago:
Was walking out of office...my part-time job at The New Indian Express in Ambattur Industrial Estate used to take me there every Sunday...I was leaving early...in a rush to make it to an evening assignment on time...reached the bus terminus at the end of the road...it was, as always annoyingly, infested with D70 buses...not the one I needed and that justifies any amount of annoyance, I tell you! Now, if you ve lived in this city long enough and have been on its roads too...you cannot have missed these...ummmm...let's say, Urban Legends...there are these legends associated with Chennai's roads, signals, and even her buses that are quite amusing, yet spot on!!!!
The one about the signals goes something like this: If you get a green at your first signal on your way to either cathedral road or Mount Road or Anna Salai, it means u were lucky that day coz you will not be made to stop at any of the succeeding signals!!!! (If you get pulled over by a traffic cop, this legend does not hold gud...duh!!) Well then, you ve by now recognised what I'm on to, and of course, the other side of the coin: you get the red at your first signal, say a silent prayer asking for a lotta patience, coz you re going nowhere too soon!!!
Moving over to the one about the buses in Chennai...it'd be one of those hot, hotter, hottest days....you would be standing at this bus stop for that godforsaken bus to show up...you wait for 10 mins...you don't even bat an eyelid...it becomes 15 mins, you shift over to your other leg...but still going steady...20 mins, you actually make an effort to look once down the direction you think the bus's supposed to be coming...then at your watch...excuses, if late, formulate in your head involuntarily...(habit s a hard thing to give up, afterall :P) if hungry, and if smart, you'd now open that pack of chips or biscuits or take a peck on that Dairymilk you ve saved for such trying times...if tired, you look back at the stop, ony to turn back after finding each seat thoroughly occupied(!!!)...and you wait on...you hang on...25 mins...one bus...your bus...finally makes its weighed down way to your stop...you try making your way to the steps of the bus...
A battle ensues....you elbow, she elbows harder...you shoot him a disgusted, look he looks away but keeps at it...and finally, the bus...that bus has moved away....without you....you lost your first battle in 25 mins...of course, you don't lose heart...you cant lose heart, would be more apt...you go bak to your palce in the bus stop and while doing so you re not really surprised to note that all those who had been standing at the stop when you came have actually won their own tiny bus battles and gone away, only to be replaced by a new, equally ready lot...you definitely look at your watch now...shuffle beween the only 2 legs god gave you... Now, 35 mins have ticked away and you ve lost even a second battle...bravo!
You think you've had enuf...you flag down the first unoccupied auto (well, this takes time too...and it's an entirely different story all together!)...you haggle with him, he double haggles with you...petrol prices are discussed...stats exchanged and even new half-baked legislations are reminded, and finally, finally a fare is agreed on...you park that sore ass followed by legs on that bumpy, cushiony seat...arrange your bags...shift your position so that you can see yourself in that rearview mirror, and he cant and then....you look back accusingly at that mirror...which is just now reflecting a far away image of an empty bus...your bus...this time there is no battle...afterall what is it worth, if the person who has to battle, is on her way, on an atrociously priced auto ride, to wherever land, thinking...no convincing herself, what she saw must have been a mirage..."it must have...it better be...oh, plzzz forget it man!!!!!" ringing in her ears...
And finally about the roads in Chennai...she has a whole lot of them and their names are quite amusing, if you can be bothered, that is...for starters, Big Street in Triplicane is a well known street in the city...but what it actually is, is only a laughing contradiction of its name...quite a narrow stretch...more like a lane that was once maybe a big street...
Frankly, at the moment, am currently unaware of any legends associated with her roads...I'm quite certain there are...you know something? Lemme know!! :)
Pseudo-nerd is quite impressed :)
The smoke drifted apart...a dream sequence:Useless CDs tied together and strung in neat lines, let me into a room...I turned my head to the right...and was struck by the orange of a wall...a queen-size bed...wrapped in a beautiful cover...Straight ahead...new drapes in a sunny, happy colour keep the sun out...A table, a laptop, and a framed picture o someone; a wall covered by two ample beige-coloured cupboards...on opening, I found clothes neatly stacked, hung...The other walls abound with a personal touch here, a framed photograph there...and a couple of posters thrown around reflect on the person who slept in that room...My eyes fluttered open and I realised I had been dreaming about the same room I was in at that moment...just that it was going to become EXCLUSIVELY mine in a couple o weeks time...and that totally excites me...:D
