Window View

While I lay sprawled on my bed with the laptop sitting in front, an unconscious gaze out the window with a half-drawn curtain made for the most beautiful moment of the day. I am not sure if that was for the previous day, or for the day that was to begin, but the 5:00 am moon with an orange hue was most mesmerising for sure.

Something similar to this, but a lot higher up in the sky...

PS - I am glad I did not choose to live in a golf course-view room even in the second year when there was a choice. The sun and moon taking turns to visit my door and window, both have been totally worth the two years in this room.

Threesome

If there was another thing which I believe I would never have done if not here in Pune, it was last night's experience.

Some incident in the recent past made the illegal dhabas at the foot of our hill a little inaccessible. So now one needs to walk down the hill, exit the campus, and enter that area from the other side. About 2 kms, we estimated. Quite clearly, the walk down is a lot easier than climbing back up. So, as part of their marketing strategy, the owners there offer to send people up in their own vehicles. While the guy at Shree sends his Scorpio, Silver Spoons has an economical motorcycle that takes several rounds for each group of customers.

My loyalties have always been with Shree because it was the first of the three dhabas that exist now, but last night we went to Silver Spoons because some friends have started liking it a lot more because of the better ambience. And while coming back, I got to ride pillion along with Debanjana. Yes, along with her. Two pillions. We were tripling!! It was absolutely insane! Deb was in the middle, and I was sitting behind her. The damn bike did not have anything to hold on to in the back, so I had to hold on to her tiny shoulder. I can tell you those 5-10 minutes felt extremely funny. And scary too because first we rode on kachcha road and then the guy was speeding while climbing the hill. I could have died.

Experience of a Lifetime

Here on campus we have a culture of screening movies in the auditorium every week. They range from award-winning work to popular stuff from across the globe. As you may expect, the popular stuff always has a bigger audience (including me).

This week's movie was Andaz Apna Apna. Social media got exploited in the best form - what with people's status messages on Facebook buzzing and the college intranet having constant updates too.

The auditorium regularly sees full occupancy because of random mandatory seminars. Seminars through which we nicely sleep. But the movie experience is different. The last time I saw madness there was during the screening of Dev D.

But last night...
The auditorium was almost full. People got packs of chips to eat through the screening. We had early dinner to ensure that we're there on time. Usually screenings begin at 10 p.m., but Hindi movies begin earlier because the hostel deadline of midnight needs to be factored in.

Aamir Khan's entry on the bicycle, Juhi Chawla's adaayein, Salman Khan's 'uyi ma', Aamir's 'hayi la', Crime Master Gogo's ghagra, just the name Bhalla, Teja's 'humara Bajaj', and almost every single scene with the audience delivering the dialogues in chorus, had us all in splits!
We sang along throughout. Be it 'do mastane chale zindagi banane', or 'ye raat aur ye doori', people knew every word with every sound effect!!

Karisma Kapoor's wardrobe was also a unique laughter point in itself. Phew!

This white thing even had pockets! :D :D

I don't remember a movie experience as crazy as this one! And I am sure nothing in future could beat it either. Some things are never to be missed. I am so glad I went for this one! :-)

Life in the sky

There it was. Alone. Shining.

There she was. Alone. Lying under the cloudy, starless sky.

The moon was still gibbous. But it shone like it was ready to take on the world.

And there were the clouds. The harmless, gray clouds. And the devilish, black ones too.

She felt like there was a corny movie playing in her head, but like most corny Bollywood movies, she was enjoying this one too. That, because she saw the moon and clouds playing her life in the sky. They came close, they moved away, they tried to hide it, they moved beside it as well. They let it shine alone, and the dark ones thought they’d take over as well. The moon kept moving steadily, the clouds were after all meant to wither away. It kept moving... until there seemed to be a clear, undefined patch lined up in its path. It asked the moon to decide how it wants to interpret it. Does it see the clear path? Or does it see the undefined patch? That’s when Robin called out.

I’m still fluctuating. But I am meant to move along, and I will.

Thursday Night Laughs

8:45 pm
En route to the mess. Aakash and Ritesh. Madness.

9:15 pm
In the mess. Aakash, Ridhima and Akshay. Madness.

9:55 pm
Sitting area outside the hostels. Aakash, Ridhima, Venky, Swetha, Vrinda, Ruhi, Debanjana. Complete madness.

10:30 pm
At the coffee shop. Sahil, Ridhima, Vrinda, Debanjana, Ruhi, Swetha, Robin. Died laughing. Madness didn't stop.

11:00 pm
Outside the girls' hostel. Namrata, Ridhima, Natasha. People yelling from first floor windows to ask us to shut up. Madness knew no limit.

11:30 pm
Ridhima's room. Natasha, Nidhi, Ridhima. Footprints bloopers. Nostalgia and madness.

12:15 am
Vrinda and Ruhi's room. Madness continued.

No giggles, no chuckles... LOL in full swing!

Back in my room at 1:15 am. Thursdays CAN be fun minus any trips to the city or elsewhere. Laughter is all I need. And if the laughter is in sync with someone else's... it's pure bliss.


___

Edit:
Avan got a 98.6 percentile in CAT. It's after really long that I am this happy for another person. Overwhelmed, is actually the word. I've seen her go through the entire process, am glad I was with her through this journey, know exactly how she felt and is feeling right now, and am Just So Happy for her. I know it is so much more than the percentile score. It feels nicer because she thought she won't score this well. I hope she goes to MICA. I really really hope she does. And I almost know she would. :)

Random Play

My corridor. The room at the end is mine. 223. :-)

Seminar Hall 01

I saw the most beautiful post-sunset sky ever today. There is a helipad on campus and I had never visited it before today. It is obviously on the edge of the campus with the entire view of the valley from its boundary and a breeze stronger than in the rest of the campus. The sky, apart from the orange and pink hues, had a turquoise. It was splendid. And of course, as it has become usual now, I did not have my camera. The first class today too had a lot of team activites which were fun and I wanted to click with my team at the end of it. But! This really sucks!

The process of losing weight has finally begun. It is combined with loss of sleep as well. Last three days have been unbelievably crazy! So much so that I took a bath last night (nights are cold here and there is no hot water at that time) to keep myself awake for a few extra hours.

My birthday is approaching, please send some sleep as presents. It will be appreciated immensely. Btw, there is a holiday on that day, and the next day is our weekly off. Party time away from this village! :D :D

Vindy, Ridhi, and demented Shwetha

Oh oh.. my calendar is receiving a lot of appreciation here. :D

Signature analysis was not a happy thing. With so many positives, the one negative killed it all. I need to make changes now. And it is hard. I tried doing it today and it was so difficult to not do what I have been doing for quite a while now.

Firewall has been installed. So Orkut and Facebook are dead. Unfortunately, so is Flickr. :(

I am coming home next month for Rakhi. Yayiii!! Diwali will be here itself though. I don't even want to think about that now. But I might get to spend some time later during winters in Delhi. If it works out, it's gonna be niice.

My still under construction home

When EOD is 6:00 pm, it feels good!

I finally have LAN in my room. Roommate is also here. Work is getting crazier too.

Had my first photography class today. Technical stuff, of course. Good that somebody is teaching; it's fun. Also found a classmate who will teach me otherwise. So he showed me what the BULB mode along with zoom burst does. Awesome it was! Also how I can use this lens for macro without going to the auto macro mode. I think I'll be taking lessons from him only. And he offered to lend me his 70-300!!! Vibes, I tell you. He thinks he can trust me. So boo to those who refused to even let me handle their cameras and lenses. :P

I noticed that I have an unbelievable number of left-handed and ambidextrous people in my batch. My value has gone down. :( But really, more than 10% of the batch is a little too much!

I also realised that I really AM a cleanliness freak. At home I didn't have to do anything, so the skills never got an opportunity to be honed. But here, even when I have no time, I'd be cleaning tiles in the bathroom, or sweeping the floor, or just tidying up the place. Yes, we do have housekeeping people to do all this. But it's so much fun!! :D

I think I am going to forget a lot of birthdays in the coming days. If I forget yours, advance apologies please. I don't even have my birthday list now because this jack of a laptop crashed last week and had to be formatted. Yes, an hour before a presentation of which I did not have a back-up. Hands on management training I am getting!

Being online is making me miss home. When I didn't know what the world was up to, I was fine. This is hard.

I am extremely sick of mess food already. A slice of pizza from the other world brought the biggest smile on the face the other day. Uh!

And now I shall go. Will upload a few pictures soon. Have not been able to catch the sunset even once because the cloud cover is always too heavy. But most days I am in class when the sun sets. Anyway.

See you soon, tada!!