In my dreams

I realize every morning that waking up is a great mistake. When you are asleep, you get to dream. And dreams are the gateway to your personal utopia. You get to escape the morbid realities, the agonizing decisions and the disappointments that hold you down.  Dreams let you shrug off the shackles of everyday life, and replace the stress and anxiety with endless opportunity to pursue your passion. All constraints disappear in the blink of an eye.

At night, when all life falls lifeless, time halts and distances grow infinite,  dreaming offers you a window to recall and relive all the beautiful moments you cherish. It brings back people from the dead and shows you how time could be.

It discards reasoning and that’s what makes it appealing. Impossibilities cease to exist. However, the most wonderful gift of all is the gift of memory. When you wake up, all details are washed away, providing you an opportunity to revel in your humdrum existence until you return to its loving care.

I love sleeping because when the eyelids meet, imagination takes flight and reality loses ground. And in that blissful state of unawareness, magic happens.

Hopelessly Besotted with “(‘,’)”

I look for you when I go online
I keep looking at you for hours
My eyes follow you closely
hoping to meet yours

I think of you when I’m with friends
I think of you when I’m alone
I re-read all the messages
you ever sent to my phone

It keeps me up at night
It haunts me through the day
I struggle but fail constantly
to keep your thought away

And then I glance in your direction
and time seems to fly
The cosmos shimmers and disappears
in the twinkle of your eye

I want to talk to you all day
if only to hear you speak
cause every time I hear your voice
it makes my day, my week.

I struggle to steer my mind
It’s far too fixated on you
It insists that these emotions
these feelings are all true

Being distant makes it miserable
It’s almost too hard to bear
I long and pine and pray
to always hold you near

I wonder if you too feel this way
It makes me look for the signs
obvious and not so
in your manner, face and eyes.

I lean in to observe closely
but all I can see
is a mesh of red, green and yellow
forming a dark ambiguity

So I wrestle with my feelings
and scream a silent scream
Till the day I see the flame
I bide my time and dream

The Road Less Taken

Three months had been wasted;
I was yet to make a choice.
Teachers, Batchmates, Internet
offered conflicting advice.

I felt my options;
too bad I couldn’t take both.
It was my life at stake -
that’s something I loath.

Too many parameters -
Branch or college…
Was I willing to adjust
to life in a village?

The decision was agonizing -
to make or break it all.
I wished to procrastinate
but hit a brick wall.

I thought long and hard
and finally figured -
‘What’s the brand name
But success of alumni considered?’

‘How would that help me?’ -
I couldn’t see.
My competence, after all,
was up to me.

It was over
I had thought a lot
I finally decided
to give it a shot

No more running
for second-hand glory.
It was my life,
my own story.

I am not cattle
to be branded.
So I went
where I wanted.

It may not be as famous.
Well, that’s too sad.
I had got BITS Pilani
but chose IIIT Hyderabad

JEE Counselling result

This morning I logged into the JEE website to check my counseling result. I had hoped that it would be BHU mech, or maybe CSE/Electrical at some new IIT. No such Luck.

I was instead assigned mechanical at IIT Mandi. The thought of spending biting chilly winters throughout the year and return to Delhi just in time for the summer wasn’t appealing. Definitely.

More importantly, mechanical as a branch holds no fascination for me. I simply abhor drawing and I have a vague feeling that drawing complex machines in 3D wouldn’t be much fun either. Lab work runs along similar lines.

I do think that in the second counselling, I will get something more acceptable. It only needs a few dissatisfied souls, from four thousand, to do the needful. But it won’t be much different – electrical at some new IIT or mechanical at IT BHU/ New IIT. No, thanks.

BITSAT doesn’t offer much hope at 330 either. IIIT Hyderabad CS 4 year is still the first option.

Let’s see where this goes.

AIEEE v/s me : Round 2

The AIEEE results have been out for some time but the pressure of the JEE counseling ensured that I could only look at it, smile and get back to talking to people to help me rank my preferences. And I  haven’t filled it yet.

The AIEEE results were on the expected lines. They weren’t in the top 500 and nothing spectacular. No institute, including career point, TIME and Narayana which focus on it, is claiming me. And the thrill was negated by the fact that in AIEEE, AIR 1200 is just as good as AIR 1. But it still felt bloody good after the debacle of JEE to rank 674 (Delhi 70) and score 318.

At this rank, I am getting B.tech in comp at IIIT-H and all the branches at  NIT Surathkal, Warangal and  Trichy. I will very likely go for IIIT. It has stellar packages, excellent reputation and most importantly, a no-reservation policy.

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Shit happens; RIP EML

I regret not having written in a long while. Frankly, things weren’t going well and blogging about defeat only leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

In spite of my best efforts and ample preparation, JEE just didn’t go my way. It was a paper fraught with too many tedious calculations and too little time to do them the proper way. The use of log and antilog tables simply accentuated this fact. One didn’t need to know the theory well enough as long as one knew the direct formulae. At the end of the day, it’s the IITs who decide which meritorious students they will teach.

The irregularities in the paper have been discussed to death and all the righteous rage over it has boiled over and disappeared. The corrections simply scorned educated public opinion and were only directed towards wasting enough time to prevent a re-exam. The Hindi aspirants, however, are a happier lot. In spite of a completely messed up paper and apathetic remedies, their selection trebled from 175 odd last year to over 500 now. I wonder how that happened to be.

On a separate note, JEE abolished the EML altogether this year granting a measure of relief to the thousands who got selected for the main list. The cutoff, as per my expectations, shot up and probably crossed 195 for an 8500 rank in the CML. We’ll know the exact figure in a week.

My rank, 4222, was in the range I had expected it to be. It could have got me something in BHU till last year but now that it is an IIT, it will be prefered over the newer institutes.

So much for a guy who was ranked 9 in the last Bansal test.

I will just fill in my counseling choices and wait for the AIEEE results.

I break bread with Bansal Sir

Last Sunday, I had my morning meal at Mr. Bansal’s residence, following my remarkable performance in the last test. It was a grand house, adjoining the coaching centre in Vigyan nagar. There was a BMW and a DC modified van parked among less august company.

The feast started at 0930 sharp and had the usual fare – parathas with sauce, kachodis, chips, muffins et cetera – all at one place. As expected, there was a lot of talk, and we were told a lot of history of BCPL. We got to know that Pramod Mishra, the owner of Career Point was a Physics teacher at Bansal – the best ever, he said – and taught Ninja (ex-HOD, Physics; now at vibrant) and Amit Gupta sir (present HOD, Physics) among others.

The sumptuous feast ended by 1030 and we left for home feeling  good about ourselves. This certainly was something to boast about. Besides, we were also told that we (Xl) will get to see a movie on the Fourth of October. In an auditorium at Gaurav Tower.

Comments would be appreciated.

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