this post is dedicated to SHIT

“holy shit…”, Rahul’s first words on the Monday morning, he’s just gotten up, 8:15, first hour starts at 8:30, and there is no way in the world he could miss this class… thanks to the sheer number of Mondays that dot each semester. Cant say that was the only reason though… his teacher played a significant role as well… no matter how much caffeine is there in your body, his ability to drain it with so much as just a word biostatistics is nothing short of spectacular… that too without the slightest ornamentation (which one usually does while singing a lullaby). Net result… this hour (biostatistics) has topped the list of bunks (that would be 18)…to an extent that if Rahul attends all classes from now on then “probably” he’d be saving a lag…



Anyways he gets out of bed… which is the hardest part… but with a display of Brobdingnagian courage, that is achieved… go to get coffee, disappointment, coffee time over… bathing is not there in the circumference of activities, owing to the very short radius of time… what about shitting… the pivotal activity that would label the day as “not bad”…yes, a choice made instantaneously… but who was to prophesize that fate was against it… there was no water… “SHIT”…



“Hey dude, is there water anywhere…???”, he asks a friend just getting out of his room… he looked in a better condition, so Rahul, guessing the obvious doesn’t hesitate to enquire if there is a flimsy possibility of a “better day”…

“Yeah, central wing upstairs”… came the reply…

“Thanks buddy, you’re a savior”…



Time check… 8:20… shitting time… the time of most intellectual activities where one reviews, curses (oneself and others), thinks about things that have absolutely no relation to you, get frustrated sometimes… etc… and because of all this somehow one feels light headed… even if the rate of peristalsis is not as satisfactory as wanted…



So in this most intellectually active state, Rahul reflects upon the events that had taken place since morning… the ringing of cell phone at 6 am, time at which he promised himself to get up and go to gym… the pressing of the snooze button on the top right corner (its awe-inspiring how one can find that small button with great accuracy even at a time when nothing else in the whole wide world is visible either physically or mentally), then getting up again at six thirty… this time being unable to decide whether to go or not, and thoughts like ‘its too late perhaps, I’ll not be able to get over with all the exercises in time’ which are followed by computations and finally concluding the inevitable,

“its too late to go to gym… because its too early to get up…!!”...

but still aware of the deucedly pernicious condition of him missing the first hour he resets the alarm to 8:00 am, that would give enough time to do morning activities… if the ten minutes of late entry contingency time is included… at 8:00 am snooze button comes into play again… finally he gets up…8:15… “Holy shit”…



“Why, why does this always happen… why after all those resolutions of getting up early, jogging, going to gym probably, made up at bedtime, I wasn’t able to get up…why was I not able to keep a commitment I made to myself… and that too when I need it the most…


…what is the use of going through the day like a factory (only there’s no constructive production taking place)… going through the same routine with no enthusiasm, where one wishes for the day to get over as soon as it began… wouldn’t it be better if each day was like a new journey filled with ebullience and passion and joy, where everything is gratifying… even the double hours of Digital Signal Processing (well… sometimes at least), where each activity opens up the doors to new ideas, possibilities, where my brain works a thousand time faster than when fueled with just caffeine…”



(Why is all this being linked up with getting up early???...well... somehow he’s sure that getting up early could help solve most of his problems… even experience has a similar story to tell owing to the days when he used to get up early… no matter how numbered they were… or the circumstances under which it happened… the fact is that those days told him the experience is, well in one word… SEXY)



Come to think about it, I think its all about making the right choices at the right time… as is in this case as well… he made a wrong choice in the beginning and he suffered, whatever might be the logical conclusion of the calculations done at 6:30, the fact is that he was not able to keep a commitment he had decided to keep earlier, and at this point nothing else matters…



Let’s have another point of view… Rahul actually chose a response given by a mind that was at that moment covered with layers of iron oxide (more commonly known as ‘rust’), in comparison to a decision that was taken by a mind which was shining out of whole day’s filing... up to last night…



(then from some dank corner came a sound)


Ring ring… Ring ring…


(reminder…)


SHIT… its 8:30… but before signing off lets have a final conclusion….


“The movement of shit in ones bowels is directly proportional to the movement of shit in ones head”

second breath

second breath is typically defined as something which u find when u really crave for it... though in the dictionary it has several words like doggedness, perseverance, persistence, tenaciousness etc., I like the sound of "second breath".



the term is usually associated with sport, that's where Rahul first heard it at least... it was one of those days when he was literally tricked out of bed to go to jog (don’t get the impression that it happens every time… just once in a while)... ok...when you know one of your best friends is on his way to keep a commitment to go to jog and you're still with your lazy ass in bed, what do u do? Usually it becomes too much to handle for a mind that’s just started to get used to the fact that its morning already and that’s when you in some freak moment decide to keep your side of the bargain...I know u might feel I’m exaggerating but it can be totally vindicated... especially when you are an eighty kilo, big ass bum, who has up to now blamed the same guy for not waking him up...



ok so moving on… they go to jog, and Rahul wont pretend that he’s used to it, as it is that’s hard to do, I guess it all shows when the huffing and puffing almost sounds like the rhythm of a toy train, and the heart beat is like drums as in some metallica song, only out of tune. Of course his friend can’t feel that way, as already they’re running too slow by his standards which can be described by his winning of badminton championship and records in swimming in running waters of the Ganga… and in a sudden caprice to converse, he decides to help him out… he said “keep running… you’re close to the second breath”…



now this was after they’d run some 200m and it did come, I mean Rahul felt like dying at that particular moment and suddenly it was like his muscles had found a new oil well… they ran till the college gate (that’d be another 500m) before he asked if he’d have any third or fourth breaths … he still wonder what was it that was so funny about it, because he smiled, and said “no my friend only one second breath”… and they decided to walk their way back to the hostel…

rahul learns to fight

rahul became a part of the 'music cult' when he was 11 years old... the first songs he heard were of aqua, vengaboys etc. but as he grew, tastes changed, "its my life" by bon jovi caught his ear and he's been a fan ever since. then he understood the beauty that lied in the lyrics, the way those hardly decipherable words made amazing rhyme and meaning was much more than captivating and that's where he found another spring to derive inspiration from. since then music had played an important role in rahul's life. the fact that one can almost always justify the happenings in one's life and relate it to some song or the other is nothing short of baffling. hats off to lyricists worldwide.just read the lines below and maybe u'll understand what i mean more clearly...



"i've been knocked down so many times,


counted out, six seven eight nine


bring it off like some bad deal,


if you're breathing you know how it feels,...





chorus:


call it karma,


call it luck,


me i just dont give up


bounce bounce nothings gonna keep me down,


bounce bounce stand up shout it out...


i play hard, i play to win,


count me out count me in


i'll be bouncing back again...






this aint no game i play it hard


cut around all stitched and scarred


i'll take the hit but not the fall


i know no fear still standing tall…






chorus…"



now this tells you, there are times you'll get hit, but nothings wrong in that, everyone does, for if you come out of a battle without any scars, one would only assume that you never entered the battlefield. you gotto have scars, bitter memories, which will help you fight the next battle, and thats why you should not run from it "i know no fear" but go right in, "still standing tall".



he first heard this song when he was preparing for iit-jee. at times when he was angry with himself (various reasons can account for that), he'd tell himself that the goal lies at the end of the crusade and that he has to keep walking. he cant afford the luxury to be displeased over a failure. any ways iit didnt happen, and probably you'll now conclude that "i knew these things are not practical... they just look good in books", but lemme tell you they do work, what happened with rahul was not because the principle is wrong, but because he failed to apply it fully.



if one tries to fathom the depth of the lake with a stick and realise that the stick one is using is not long enough, then not many have the inspiration to go and find another becuz one would have to unclog the sweat glands which you havn't used ever since, and even if you do and go and find a bigger stick, chances are that it's still not enough... that's when one decides that the lake is actually an ocean and "i cannot measure it, others might have done it, but the've just been lucky". yes they were lucky because someone told them that patience and persistence are two prerequisites one must possess and practise continuously, not because someone gave them the stick of the right size first up.



now as he listened to this song just before he is to start preparing for his next exam, all these thoughts come back. he feels now that he is better prepared for his next battle.

brainy wave

*continued from brainwave...



so rahul finds this particularly interesting, i.e., saying a punchline and then interpreting it in different ways.



one... the obvious, i.e., you can surely save your jeans by rolling it up. two, if one thinks in the broader sense then one might say it shows that rahul is flexible, i.e., he's not one of those people that would do just anything else but to look back unto themselves and say "this is where actual work is supposed to be done... on me" or it might show your confidence (in analogy to rolling up your sleeve, for the ones who find it out of place, i'll clarify that it was a suggestion given by my roommate).



but here is what rahul actually thought. being a thinker and having asked himself many a questions about life (and many times at that), he has somehow tuned himself to learn from whatever life brings on and here one can see that when someone is confronted with a problem, the solution is awfully close (though one cannot generalise this, well if tomorrow you come to know that you have lung cancer, you cannot do anything abt it, can ya, oh... you can stop smoking... anyways... you get the point)...



here's another angle to it, one has to do everything bottom up, actually it should be inside out but one can adapt him/herself to conclude the same...
and one more... when one sees in a distance an uneasy journey approaching its usually better to equip him/herself before you begin.
i think i've used more brain cells today than i usually do so i'm gonna stop there... however let me tell you there could be more entailments, so people keep scratching...

the brainwave

Its monsoon season all around, though it's not raining where i m right now, this place gets showers when most of rest of india is sodden and drained and dried and preparing to embrace winter (its Tamil Nadu... so dont search for a link to any geography lesson)...Rahul was walkin on one such day through the campus, which was being cleansed with fresh rain pouring from heavens, but he could hardly stop and appreciate that.




Last night had been amazingly frustrating and tiring, as is every exam's eve. Yeah its exams... again. Biochemistry this time so he's just walking with a sheet of xerox in one hand and covering his head with harpers (the book) in the other. He's not lookin up front, "just one more time", "that goddam squalene sythesis", "should i go to the canteen n have some more coffee", are some of the thoughts going through his mind as he heads toward the examination hall. He hardly gives a damn to the muddy water, or the earth below him which was undergoing beautification or renovation or whatever u might wanna call it, and what its doin to his darn blue LEE. Anyways as hectic as it might be, only one thing can console him right now, "its soon gonna be over" (the exam i.e.).




Forgive me for not giving the details of the last minute hysteria, i can only hope u understand how painful it is, but anyways its over finally. The next one is in two days. For now he wants to enjoy the brief moment of mental stability.As he walks back the path to the hostel that he treaded a few hours ago, he notices his jeans, yeah the darn blue LEE. Its his favourite jeans and it bruises his heart tissue to see it begrimed. So he pulls it up to the knee and continues. Now that that terror is out of his head, he finds it relatively easy to walk through the slippery sludge of mud that floods the hostel entrance. And here comes the brainwave:




"u can walk straight ahead with relative ease when u have ur jeans rolled up"




as he started to decompress the thoughts and virtues and other significations of this sentence, he found it wasn't really just a statement, for one moment he doubted he had actually said it. because it means so many other things, depending on how one interprets it...