What do I do when I have 3 whole weeks to blog about? Well, I blog. In a detailed manner at that. In order, even. Don't bother wondering how I managed to remember all the stuff. Call it a super memory. Call it technology. Call it whatever you want. I aint talkin. No, not even when you beg. No way, not when you fall at my feet (Maybe I would if you would be so kind to give me an I-Pod). Anyway, it's not information worth dying for, is it? So forget it.
Now let's see... Sometime during the 2nd week in November, I get a call from a genius friend of mine. We were in the same school, and now we're in the same college too. His first words are "Ranting Human". Any other person in my position would have shuddered and would have started to stammer. Not me. For I knew how he could have found out.
It was all due to a little comment. Being a blogger, one would say I frequent blogs. And I do. And I happened to stumble upon a blog which interested me because of its name. Upon reading it, I was damn sure it was the blog of that friend. I made the stupid mistake of leaving a comment on the blog, and with my blogger username too. BAM! All he had to do was click on my username to access my profile, see this blog and figure out who it could be.
I came to know from him that there are a lot of bloggers from our College. That fact didn't bother me much, though.
Monday, November 15. I head back to the College and its miserable hostel after my short vacation. I knew I would have flunked in Math. I didn't give a damn. I never did. But for some reason, I couldn't help feeling sick. One by one the other papers came, and I averaged a 75% in all of them. Except English. The one paper I knew I would be happy to receive, the one paper the professors hadn't corrected. I had to wait another day.
It was kinda funny, in a way. There's this guy who sits next to me. We share pretty much the same interests, and have pretty much the same views toward life. He's the only guy in my class with whom I can have an intellectual conversation. What I didn't get to realize is that we don't have the same views toward academics. He turned out to be the top of the class, and I sitting next to him, flunked in Math. In fact, he beat me in every other paper we got that day.
But I had something to live for. The next day, we got our English papers. As I had expected, I got 90%. And my good buddy, the only guy I can have an intellectual conversation with, got 85%. We were the top of the class. It felt good. But I came to know later that 90% is the highest in English in the College. That didn't feel too good. Why? 'cause the only guy with brains wasn't second to me. Just because he had committed an error, not a mistake, an error, which anyone could have done, he wasn't second. It wasn't his fault.
That performance in English brought me some revelations. There were some guys I knew in my College before we enrolled. Most of them usually just said "Hello" and went about their work when they saw me. After the above incident, all these guys started bootlicking me. What a bunch of phonies. I hate phonies, just like Holden Caulfield. Yes, the Holden Caulfield of "The Catcher In The Rye" by J.D Salinger. I read it recently. I'm assuming you've read it.
The next week was murder, I tell you, MURDER! With zillions of records to submit, one can imagine my plight. I was never one to submit record work on time. Or after time, either. My 12th grade Biotechnology teacher once told me that I might have some sort of mental block when it came to writing records. She had good reason to think so, considering the fact that I never got my record corrected. It didn't hamper my grades thanks to my teacher.
And almost every day of the week, this friend who found this blog would come into my class, and talk about it. We had interesting discussions, on blog design, etc. But I didn't like the parts where he nearly leaked out stuff to my classmates.
The 3rd week, i.e., the past week, was okay, but for the fact that my mobile/cell phone started acting up. That meant no free SMS. That meant no intellectual conversations. Damn technology. "It could destroy you, drive you mad. It could set you free." - Max Payne, but not relating to technology. But it fits just fine.
The lack of a phone improved the speed with which I finished library books. I finished both "Airframe", by Michael Crichton, and of course, "The Catcher In The Rye", in 3 days. But I'm still in the process of reading "The Ground Beneath Her Feet", by Salman Rushdie. The College library has a neat collection of Rushdie books. I'm also reading "Step Across This Line", Rushdie's collection of various essays and articles from 1992-2002.
My fellow boarders at the hostel get frequent qualms when they see me reading books instead of doing something useful. I don't know what they're problem is. Whether they're really worried about my future, or just that they're jealous, is a case to be investigated.
Just before I left for home this weekend, my roommate did something. Heard of those electric fly swatters? In a moment of euphoria, I presume, he hit me with one. Boy, did it sting like hell. Did I mention that he was the one responsible for the final blow to my phone? It cost me a 100 bucks to fix it. It would have been fixed for free if hadn't touched it. I'm gonna reclaim the cash from him on Monday. I sure am.
No comments:
Post a Comment