22 Crossroads

A lot of you keep asking me, “ tu din bhar karta kya ha i ” (what do you do all day in your free time). Here’s the answer. In what follows, most of the lines were spoken in the head, some aloud. And it’s not this coherent in original, it’s been paraphrased. “ I need a plan. I really need a plan. I need to retire, retire early. I can't work for long. I should retire by the time I am 40. Yeah 40 seems reasonable. That gives me 16 years of working life. Spend a couple years doing MBA, and I am left with 14 years. Not bad. I hope I will be able to retire at 40, and not get bogged by social obligation. Obligations? Will I have a family to take care of? A kid maybe? [No comment on this status update yet? Why isn’t anyone online?] Hmm, I can have a kid. How old would he be then? Around 7 I guess. Yeah 33 seems to be a good age to have a kid. And when the kid is 7, that’s a good time to retire. Give my nurturing instincts a way to express themselves [chuckles to self] . Seriously, 7 is a ...

Hello KGP In all probability this is the last blog written/posted from KGP. I started blogging after I came to KGP, and it’s been five years of rambling for me, and just somehow as I get ready to pack my computer for one last time, this turns out to be the 50th post on 22 Crossroads. Five Years. Five years can do a lot to you. They can make you well up at a stupid farewell ceremony holding a stupid cup in your hand trying to make sense of some stupid words while kids around you chant 'speech speech'. Well, goodbyes are full of clichés -- it’s the end of an era, life will never be the same. And as Myth pointed out in his blog ( link ) , Life outside Puri gate is a bitch . Five Years. I started writing this blog on the day Sanjay Da, while serving, in the mess said, 'Aaj mere haath ka akhiri fish hai. Fir na aap rahiyega, na hum rahenge'. He always used to save a good (if not the best) piece of fish for me, and well, so the sento nerve was struck. Thank You Sanjay Da and ...

Top 2 ON. Baby ON !! 4 years. 7 events. It’s been a long journey ... one filled with roadblocks, preconceived notions, mindsets and apprehensions. For you I have been a long haired devil, a fat bare-chested cannibal, a camouflage-trousered terrorist and a bald megalomaniac. In these 7 events I have probably managed a total of 7 different expression at max (you know where I tilt my head a little, open my eyes big, then rotate the head in a plane and them smell something weird :P (watch 6:10 to 6:20 of this video for reference) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9BvDtiD7gg ). A loudspeaker in my vocal chords and my audacious experiments with hair has been my saving grace as an actor. I have been as lethargic a director (Mythun will vouch for that) as I have been whimsical -- cracking jokes and shouting at people within 5 minutes of each other. But, I have dreamt and fortunately seen some of them come true (we pulled off a f***ing MUSICAL dude). Yes, in 2006 Patel Drams was a dream -- 1 Bron...

1. JEE counseling brochure 2. Morrison and Boyd 3. Constitution of the Patel Hall 4. Half a bottle of Kahlua 5. Manuscript of two 13 year old poems (written in 97-98) 6. Script of "The Pie and the Tart" and "Me Against Myself" 7. Secretary election funda diary 8. A half written ____-letter ish thingy [;)] 9. A bottle of hair oil (yes from those times) 10. Load Runner Quarter Final Result Sheet 11. This photograph Top-10(+1) things found while cleaning the room.

My second attempt at digital painting ... Model: ME Artist : ME Inspiration: ME Self Portrait by ~ ritwik-mango on deviant ART

If you thought that the CTE wing write up would be about heaving praises on its occupants .... Before we go any further, acquaint yourself with the following diagram. You would have to come back to it a lot. Anuj Anuj’s room is the party hub. Be it new years, be it birthdays, be it placements, and be it scholarships. If there is a reason to celebrate, it is being celebrated and it is being celebrated in his room. There is always enough stockpile of non-spurious alcohol for everyone. There is always enough music. And of course there’s his group of alcoholic anonymous (refer Fig. 1). They come, they see and they conquer all the potable water in the wing. (Aside: The author does not mind that as long as they support United). While we have never seen him do anything even remotely academic, he had somehow kept a sub-7 CG but accumulated a string of scholarships and internships for himself. Of course if your area of interest is lalaland, then he is the authority to talk to. This small man h...

Impulsive blogs are a bad idea -- I know that, still ..... First of all this is not a Choreo blog ... this is not a GC 2009 blog ... this blog is about "Patel and Me" " Patel and Me " -- is naam pe Sandy aur main dono hi book likhne waale the. Book ka to pata nahi ... All I know is one thing: In my first year, jab mujhe Patel allot hua tha .... then many people (non patelian) said "Patel is a sports hall. Wahan Soc-Cult ka kuchh nahi ... baas bamboo kar ke tere se sports karwayenge" .... and I somehow believed that. It's been 3 years since then. And today, perhaps only a handful of people know WHAT A CHOREO GOLD FEELS LIKE??? (Yo Bish for that ... i seriosly dint beleive that you could pull it off ... You dont know how grateful I am at being proven wrong for once.) This blog is not for comments ... this is not for poetry .... this is not for compliments .... this is not for awesomeness. This blog is for Sandy. and to my partners in crime over the last...

Won my first individual event ever in college. Since no one else was blowing my horn, decided to do that myself. So here is my gold winning speech :) Since you might get bored half way through the speech, let me thank the people who need to be thanked right now itself: Apurva, Myth, Zoo, Xar, Kamra, Harsha and even Bishnoi :) Motion: Increasing national security and surveillance is a cosmetic response to any extremist activity in a democratic and tolerant society . :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Let me start with a very clichéd “Picture this”. I am a 7 year old boy and I behave like any 7 year old does. I hate milk and I throw a tantrum when I see a glass full of that filthy white thing. As a seven year old I probably don’t know the words tantrum and filthy, but this ignorance does not save me from the wrath of my father. He takes less than 45 seconds to get that milk down my throat. I certainly don’t like it. Thankfully, sometime later my mother explains to me why I need that milk if ...

Disclaimer: I am not a sportsman. I am slightly obese and overweight and I couldn't probably walk 5 kms on a stretch. Still my dream is having a 70inch (not cms) LCD TV in my home and watching India win the Cricket World Cup some day, again! There is a certain charm in getting up at 1300 Hrs on a Monday. Primarily that means not being bugged by the so called Monday-morning-blues. So I wake up one such Monday "morning" and misty eyed as I am, I log on for my daily dose of news online. Usually that means something like – "9 Blasts 14 Injures", "Dhoni pulls out of test series", "Shilpa ready to rock Big Boss" and "Nothing can stop me from becoming PM : Maya". It is not everyday that an ordinary Indian like me [here] , wakes to the headline "IT'S A GOLD: BINDRA BAGS INDIA'S FIRST". I cannot even begin to imagine what an Olympic gold would mean to a sportsman, and there are not many Indians alive to tell you that eithe...

Dear Girl in Purple, Let me start at the bottom-line itself: I don’t like you. I don’t like you because you brought to the surface the very facet of my being that I dreaded the most – that being: acute paranoia, extreme wariness of public embarrassment, and of course my utter discomfort in the mere presence of a girl. Remember this – I have tried all my life to shield these aspects from public knowledge. For me these are more covert than perhaps the existence of the Holy Grail. Alas, though, as all this is now a thing of the past. You make me feel pathetic and miserable. I mean, how difficult is it to walk up to a cute girl in a coffee shop and say “hello” or whatever else might be fitting. What is the risk I am playing against? No probable solution of the Schrödinger’s equation will make my saying “hello” lead to a nuclear holocaust. Life is not like the Butterfly Effect. But my utterly female-terrorised brain makes me believe otherwise. Or maybe, it’s just that guys who talk of...

This post was in the pipeline for a long time. I got paid for a designing job. Modest sum - yes, but how much do you expect for a couple hour's job? Well this is the cover for the mathematics Department Magazine. The job was done a month back ... but was waiting be paid before posting here. That happened last night. So here it is. Xponent Cover by ~ ritwik-mango on deviant ART Xponent Cover - II by ~ ritwik-mango on deviant ART MORAL of the STORY : You can earn doing what you love !!!!

Patriotism. What does it mean to us? We are the youth of the country, the supposed to be future of the nation. What do we make of these three syllables? We are the progressive section of the society, marching forward, taking India to a better and brighter future. But have we really ever paid any attention to it? Have we ever spared even a figment of our fertile imagination for the same? Let’s have a look. I am twenty one years old. That’s right, old enough to be legally married under the laws of the state. I have no future plans. My future is as directionless as India’s foreign policy. I don’t know what I want to do with my life, apart from earning money. I study in an institution that runs on the ever cherished, ever cliché taxpayers money. My tuition is subsidised. The dollar-face Lincoln says, "Ask not what your country has given you. Ask what you have given to the country". Rather than giving anything to the country, right now I am actually taking away a large chunk of th...

My message to the team ..... “If I need a cause for celebration Or a comfort I can use to ease my mind I rely on my imagination And I dream of an imaginary time.” That imaginary time has become real … When everything's been said and done.... When words run out ... and so does your ability to invent new ones to suit the moment To honor it ... to savor it What do you say ... it’s not the first time that I have been in this situation That night u guys asked for one line ... well keeda never speaks a single line ... and again well as i said I just write my blog So, what do I say about such an astonishing fest and such a great group of people ... well for one ... it was more than about just a fest ... more than about 546 teams and 1500 participants ....more than about 2 odd lakhs spent on it ... more than 4 dog tiring days and nights ... much much more than that. It was about self belief ... it was about a dream ... a dream come true in much bigger proport...

I expect the DC++ hoggers already know about "Three KGPians day out", well here is a new version of it. Four days before the end sem exams, and on the eve of the day which has three tests in store for them, three KGPians, decided to go out for a late night snack. Actually there wasnt much decision involved except for the place where they would be willing to hog down stuff. The local canteen won on the grounds that being the nearest, they would be WASTING much lesser time if they went there. The guftagu began, after the initial rite of ordering your stuff. Two Bread Butters, one beg sandwich, and a cup of tea. No maggie, no chowmein -- seriosly these people were low on budget. Before we get any further into their actual conversation, lets name the three dramatis personae. On account of confidentiality, they have requested that they be known by aliases. So lets call them MyTh, Quark and manGO. As the three waited for the food to arrive, manGO being in a counter reflective mood ...

Hmmm.... well I am just back from the exam hall. Usually I choose to say as little about these two or three hours as possible. But today I have got a few things to say. Now I am one of those who take pride in not having any Examination blues. There nothing to worry man.If you've prepared (and that may include all kind of preparation) ... well then you will do more or less well, otherwise not. So I welcome my exams with a sense of humor. The concept of exam is more or less lost on me. Perhaps the only fathomable reason I can come up with is that if there were no exams, people would not stop their AOEs, CSs, Orkuts, FIFAs and some other things which I better not mention here. So this is kind of fasting from our regular passions that we observe during this apparently loaded and morose period. Okay, so much for my general musing. So what happened today that has got me spurting all this nonsense? Well, here's an advice for your next exam. Stay away from girls. Don't sit beside t...

Dear Michael I don?t know why I am writing this for you. To begin with I didn?t like you that much. When I started watching Formula 1, you were the guy who was winning all the races. You looked arrogant, conceited and just too proud of yourself. Watching you win all the races was becoming boring. And there was Rubens, the guy who was somehow suspiciously the bad luck magnet of the team. He had all the mechanical failures, technical failures, engine blow ups and anything that could go wrong in the book. The Austrian Grand Prix of 2004 didn?t help to dispel the suspicion either. I always felt that Rubino was never allowed to achieve what he deserved. While he was flamboyant and carefree on the circuit, you were clinical and precise and seemed just too bothered about wining races. But there are moments that define history. The one I remember and cherish the most might never be mentioned in any discussion about the greats, (after all it happened in a qualifying session), but that was t...

My dreams Little figments of my imagination They speak to me Through the darkness of day and through shining nights My Dreams They are all I have They call me to the land unseen They promise me To take me through And I believe them My Dreams They are All I am They are my music and food Dreams are all I live for I have nothing to give you I have nothing to offer But Me and my dreams Step into the world of this dreamer