I have exams, and analytical instrumentation tomorrow. Well , this subject actually made we want to study physics again and experience that leap of joy when you understand how something works around you. I’m studying engineering, and this is exactly what I should be experiencing on a daily basis, but to my misfortune its only been despair, well that’s for an other day. This is a purely self indulgent post about where I want to be few years from now. Now that I’m in final year( scary) and people all around me are making plans I’m totally in crisis mode. So I’m going to write this and see if it helps me.
1. Every girl wants to be princess. I can’t tell you how true it is. I have downloaded all the ten books of the princess diaries series and living my fantasy in them, or they rather gave me this fantasy. Arghh.
2. Election commissioner and a controversial one. I will totally aid the politicians I want to win, a certain saffron party will know rebirth in my hands. After my tenure I can travel around the world and teach ickle countries how to hold elections. Woooohoo. I can’t even imagine the joy.
3. Civil services- Ok, I have heard the line that I want to change the system hence writing Upsc some hundred times already and let me tell you I have no such intentions, instead I’m planning to write the exam so that I can somehow live in a nice bungalow in Lutyens, get calls from north block and south block, address the press as Secretary- ministry of XYZ (Damn you- Nirupama Sen).I could even become the Indian high commissioner to Pakistan or Sri lanka, if I get lucky Iran. Also this is the only way if I have to achieve ambition no- 2
4. An MBA and then work for a publishing house, but I still can’t envision myself in that corporate wear being a power lady (fantasies). My instinct tells me I don’t belong there. Darn.
5. Write a book or co author one with S.Become really rich , go around the world for book signings. May be win a man booker or two.
6. Quizmaster - I used to think of it when I watched bqc and mastermind as a kid. But RV sort of ruined it for me.
7. Marry Dalrymple.
8.Work in RV admin block. But I guess those guy’s are trained by management wing of ISI so no chances there.
9. Amma might implement plan b.
Being a software engineer doesn’t figure in this.
Ill go drown my misery in princess in pink.

I’m done with exams, fifth set of semester exams to be precise. It’s not some great thing to be blogging about on new year’s eve, but well that’s what just happened to happen, thanks to my flawed choices, many many years ago (yea, feels like a long time). These exams taught me a lot in the worldly sense. Idealism which amma routinely drilled into me, absolutely forbidding me to learn only the ‘revision question’s which some of the teacher’s generously gave for the final exams, instead making me learn the entire syllabus (including all the hindi poems) ,guess this bout of idealism lasted out its course till today or sorta till yesterday, when I made this elaborate plan on ‘smart studying’. It is an open secret, the mantra of sticking to the syllabus book and living by it, atleast on the night of exam. This brahma sutra like mantra, is not taught in classrooms, it is realized by dunderheads like me after two years of plain stupid -ness and blaming oneself for not working hard enough. There is an other vital secret to this whole process of swaggering out of the exam hall and lamenting about the two marks you might lose cause you messed up the labeling in a diagram, it is then that people like me would shiftily walk out of the building thinking about exponentially decreasing graph of marks, self esteem and self worth- that is pschyoanalyse the paper, always, not yourself during those precious three hours. it always pays off.
Digressing from the hot topic of my mark sheets, exams have a nice routine to them. I could sleep blissfully till eight in the morning, amma would double check my blanket cover thinking I had been mugging all night and thinking this early morning sleep is very important, she would shoo everyone away. Then of course I would spend the rest of the morning planning elaborate schedules for the day, messaging friends to check ‘how- much -they -have- finished-and –what –units-they –doing’, slightly panicking when they have seemed to be making rapid progress , this increasing my normal attention span of one hour . Alarm clocks would of course play truant on the morning of the exam. Cursing myself, I would wake up to see it was already seven and a half- hour left to catch my bus. Maximum mugging capacity would of course reach its peak in the bus, since it’s a routine favorite of mine to procrastinate everything to the bus-time.
Also ,S and I almost helped airtel and bsnl post respectable financial results by dissecting authors (text book one’s) and making elaborate plans to file RTI’s , day dreaming about our vacations, sometimes even talking about how certain author’s have the audacity to dye their beards. This helped me build my resilience to the world in general.
I should make a mention of ernest o doeblin in this regard, it was he who inspired this post. If you think this post is a marked piece of creativity, you can always borrow my copy.

Last math exam tomorrow.No more 'how was math?'. EVER. If it went well it would be a paradox. that is my excuse this time.

of overfed elephants

Yedyurappa came visiting, to pay his respects to our 8th cross ganesha ,tv9 in tow on the day the government was sworn in, seeing our ganesha on tv I shouted the roof down. It was brushed off, appa reminiscing about the times Hedge used to visit, in a white ambassador waving to the smiling crowds in the temple. I was all sheepish at my ignorance of the celebrity status our ganesha held. Now that exams are here, I did the usual round of the all the temples , this time stopping at ganapathi temple, thanks to the yedurappa factor also my parents were kind enough to remind me that- ganesha being the highest common factor among all gods would help me in warding off the troubling shani( Saturn), who is ruling the roost for the next seven and half years. I desperately needed all the luck in the world to remember the programs for my lab externals. I haven’t been to this temple in a long time, in years in fact because we are usually tired after all the shopping and just too lazy to stop here after the matha visit, jostling the crowds there. The smaller ganesha closer home is much more peaceful,hence the neglect.Climbing the white marble steps in the temple, which are stained in a very temple way, I could smell the faint stale odor of routinely broken coconuts, which made me think of the times when I used to run up the same marble steps or race twerp to the main temple at the top. We went for the sankashtha puja regularly for two years,at those times,we wore frocks and had a boycut. The main attraction in this temple held for us initially was the shundal, which tasted very good here, I still don’t like the idea of boiled pulses at home though, there is something about shundal and temples. The priests used to come up with a myriad of alankaras to suit the general mood, my favorite one was the notebook alankara just before school started.In the same period the management procured an elephant calf to hoist the urchava moorthi, mostly to add to the essential grandeur of the temple. Once the baby elephant arrived the crowds spent all their time away from the gods , near the calf. The elephant had a childish air about it and spent all its time feeding on bananas from 8th cross market which the malleswaram praje brought faithfully. Soon the elephant acquired the status of a favorite nephew in a huge household gorging on all the attention and bananas,the kids vying for its attention. As the shankashtha phase for my parents came to an end, the elephant was suddenly taken away from the temple. We badgered our parents for its whereabouts, they in turn promised us that it had been sent to bandipur, for it was homesick and ill from all the food it had eaten. The indigestion theory was the best accepted among the masses , we blamed ourselves for it. There were harsh rumors that the elephant died of food poisoning, this theory was carefully shielded from us and I really hope it isn’t true. I'm still too small to handle it. All this makes mahaganapathi very next door, I cant blame myself for the initial surprise at his celebrity-ness.