Author: Tejas Rao

I think Law school/Residential campuses have a phenomenal way of putting you in your place. And more often than not they do that by informing you, subtly, through societal interactions that there’s far more for you to learn than the information you are already aware of. Other times it’s by showing you that there’s a lot more to life than the view you possess – there are perspectives for you to consider, and alternate ways of spending your time, several different things to enjoy.

Now that I reconsider that terribly abstract statement I have written, it’s pretty fair to say that it’s applicable for every place in the world. Just, your general existence – at some point if you’re open-minded and curious, you’ll figure out that the world is just full of stuff waiting to be learnt.

On this premise, I think we often forget, with how busy our lives are, what the value of reading actually is. And it’s difficult – but there’s so much out there to read and re-read and learn from.

It’s fantastic.

Here’s a post I wrote for Jury’s Out, the GNLU Magazine, called Night Mess Nostalgia:

Everyone associates phrases with things – “sadness and rage” with exam season, “happiness” with an e-mail that postpones exams owing to a National holiday in light of mourning. The phrase I best associate with the night mess is a sharp yell which, if listened to carefully, is “ANDA RAICE TEJAAAAS”, but from afar, is an obfuscation in a cacophony of sound.

I first visited the Holy Grail on my first day at University. A senior politely inquired for me, asked me if I had any tests, and when I responded in the negative, sent me on my way with Rs. 150 in my pocket to collect a very specific order:

“4 Cheese Paranthas in 2 plates, one plate with the red sauce and curd, one plate with red sauce and butter.”

I was amused. What is a Cheese Parantha? Being a kid from Bangalore, a multicultural, cosmopolitan city, I was quite certain I had experienced a fair amount of “North Indian” food. Cheese Parantha did not feature on the list. My curiosity knew no bounds – and I was thrilled to be sent on the assignment with an extra 30 Rupees with the meek: “Tujhe kuch chaihiye, tho lele.” My broken Hindi meant I nodded along and smiled without any knowledge of what was said to me.

But I went forth.

I didn’t really know where I was heading, I’ll be honest. Having joined GNLU 3 weeks late, I wasn’t up to speed with where things were or what random phrases meant (it would be 2 years before I understood KLPD, for example), so I had to ask for directions from my roommate, who smiled and accompanied me – because he was given Rs. 60 by another Senior.

As we chatted about what the “night mess” represented – my roommate explained that it was where Seniors devoured copious amounts of food and gained their supply of Caffeine for the night – my brain began to wonder about the Economics of it all. When I discovered that it was run by Mohani, I went into overdrive about how hilarious the Gujarati businessman trope was turning out to be. First loot the kids for mess food, and then operate a night mess where kids pay extra money to make more profits? Amazing.

That’s when we reached the stairs.

I’ll confess. I have this massive fear of heights, so even today, I’m bloody hesitant while climbing up the night mess stairs. My worst fear, and this is something I’ve almost experienced, is that, one day, when it is raining, I will slip while carrying food, and slide my way down to my death, clunking my head across the metal steps. But on that day, the fear of disappointing a senior and becoming publicly humiliated won over, and I trudged on.

In my first month, I was solely responsible for the collection of Rs. 3420 by Mohani Caterers. I made 41 trips to the night mess for seniors – and I have an Excel sheet tracking this (because I’m weird like that), with 23 Plates of Cheese Parantha ordered.

By the end of the month, Gopal knew my name.

In that month, I met every single batchmate of mine and got to know them over the question “Kiske liye hai yeh?” and “Kaunsa room jaa raha hai, bro?”

My identification of kind souls changed from those who had a smile on their faces and made warm conversation to those who offered to get your order along with theirs. While I came to Law School with the understanding that a lot of multitasking was necessary, I learnt that the biggest asset, in that first month, was your ability to juggle orders and remember personalized plate requests.

I hold nothing against those seniors, because my world has not been the same since.

Soon it was intra-season, and being caught up in the business of making an intra-memorial that would look nice (because Ctrl+Shift+K is so fun to do), I skipped dinner one evening. The hidden agenda was to eat Cheese Parantha myself, and understand what these seniors enjoyed about it. When I dined that evening with my friends, I learnt that it was possible to be rendered speechless by a singular food item.

As first year dwindled on, the night mess became my source of comfort. I stopped there everyday on my way back from the library at 12AM with my fellow enthu first-years, and had Hot Chocolate, and dabbled with tasting every item on the menu, before settling for 2 Aloo Onion Cheese Paranthas as my favourite (at the time).

But that’s enough about the food.

The night mess is a GNLU institution. It has belonged to us, the students, far longer than Aura has, and it has supplied us with a co-working space for more time than our “Students Lounge” has. The night mess is the facilitator of terrible lifestyle choices: late night calorie and caffeine consumption, and messing up your sleep cycle by guaranteeing you carbohydrates at 1:30AM. It’s the meeting point of every Committee (sans faculty), and the sole place on campus where you can attempt to understand what GNLU culture truly is.

The next time you’re at the night mess, stand bang-in-the middle and take a look around you. You’ll see an orderly queue for food, people chilling, people working, people playing board games, reading books, chatting about life, submitting a moot memorial. That’s what GNLU nurtures, right? Our lives here have flaws, granted, but you can’t deny that the University gives you the freedom to say, “Who cares, I’d like to do my own thing” and execute that thing.

That execution? Half of it is at the night mess. The identity you have is intertwined with your experience of the night mess. Are you a debater? You can’t get through 5 years without 1 debate, 1 motion breakdown, and 1 feedback session at the night mess. You’re a mooter? You would have finished draft discussions, and potentially constructed your memorial there. You’re a part of the Theatre/Music/Dinner Clubs? You’ve finished a performance and had a late-night dinner with everyone else from the club. You’re a Quizzer? Someone’s run through a quiz set there. Are you a GNLU Student? You’ve eaten at the night mess.

That’s what I love about the place the most.

Which is why it becomes so difficult to adapt to change, especially when any change to the night mess is a discredit to the years of regular service we have received.

There was a period I hated the night mess because of how uneconomical it had become and how tiny the portion sizes were. Paranthas were reduced from the large plate monstrosities we gobbled on, to these tiny things that could fit on disposables. We complained daily. Mohani relented, large paranthas were back.

In my second year, an attempt was made to shut the night mess earlier, at 1a.m. or so. Not much would have changed in 30 minutes. But we complained. And the night mess is open till today till 1:30 a.m..

The University attempted to ban us from bringing night mess food into the hostels for a while, a ban I refer to as “Five Days In Hell”. But that, as you can see, did not last very long.

My grouse today is twofold, starting with the coloured lighting.

It has been a month, and I cannot understand why we have blue, yellow, and red lighting at the night mess. Sources inform me that it is to ward off flies and mosquitoes, but I’ve been bitten and annoyed by both those creatures on my visits there.

To me, it’s also very weird that there is water on the table and cups which are readily available. It’s also super weird that the tables are aligned the way they are. I derived this simple joy at the night mess from picking an aerated drink because I had to walk further for water.

But I can adapt to that.

I’m getting used to the TV also. Because I think TV’s are useful for mass screenings, and such.

The lighting though, is not up my alley. White light is just more pleasant to look at, and makes work a lot easier. There is less squinting involved in understanding text when the light is white. This is a Scientific fact.

I also think that coloured lighting ruins the aesthetic of the night mess. I’m not sure how, but the night mess is suddenly less attractive to me as a location. While that is excellent for my waistline, my pocket, and my overall physical health, it’s very troubling for my emotional balance and well-being.

The second thing I find super weird is that people serve us at the night mess now. It’s made it so much more formal, like a restaurant, almost. I dislike that. A huge part of the night mess experience is the false hope that comes with someone screaming out your exact order, followed by a different person’s name, and the subsequent joy when your name is called out and you can sprint to claim what is yours.

That element of surprise is now gone, because you can see when the person is getting the food toward your table.

That is deeply disappointing. I’m hopeful that there is some discourse on this post or elsewhere that helps to make the night mess great again.

It is 4:30AM in the morning as I type this. To fully appreciate how much I love the night mess, you must understand that I have been unable to sleep because of two reasons:

1. The night mess was shut today and I therefore missed out on anda rice.
2. I’m thinking about how terrible tomorrow night’s dinner is so I have an excuse to eat anda rice.

I think it’s far more accurate to label this as a weekly blog where I decide to post 7 things at one go, rather than a daily blog where I’m consistently posting things. Either way, writing is something (a) I’m still enjoying a fair amount, and (b) People are still reading. While the latter has never mattered to me, the fact that it happens is always nice. I will never get used to responding to people who tell me about my blog in person, but that’s for another day.

Examination schedules really need to ensure exams end on a Friday, and not on a Monday. This is for a variety of reasons.

1. Kids who end exams on a Friday get the weekend to chill.
2. Nobody has the motivation or the energy to study for 2 whole days for a midsemester examination when it’s the weekend.
3. Everyone’s sleep cycle is messed up during exams, so providing them with a weekend to recover is excellent.
4. Students will not waste one set of black & white formals for 2 hours of a written examination.
5. Monday blues will not hit students.
6. Nobody will have to go to class immediately the day after finishing exams.
7. People can go home if they so desire.

As you can tell, my grouse is predominantly that I didn’t get a weekend after the exam ended. And this isn’t the exam department’s fault. Things were out of their control.

That doesn’t mean I can’t rant about it.

In other news it’s been almost 15 days since I last went to the gym.

The amount of information that is available in the world today that we are unaware of is a phenomenon that astounds me so much, it’s difficult for me to find the words to express the sentiment.

New person has followed blog.

And is unknown to me. Such a nice feels.

Found this joke of an article: https://thewire.in/government/ugc-wants-all-universities-to-ban-the-sale-of-junk-food-on-campuses

I am currently eating Cup Noodles and some Lays. Why does UGC care about all this now? Funny business.

I think picking toiletries is the toughest task any male has to undertake. Scratch that. Any person.

I go into the store and I am perplexed at all the choices. There are too many choices. Today, I had to pick shampoo, soap, and toothpaste. Standard. 5 minute job.

But exam time. So naturally I wanted to waste more time in the store.

So I looked through all the options once. First round done. I turned away and got distracted by Oreos.

I consumed the Oreos, but it was the Oreos that consumed my memory. I had no memory of all the options I had. So I gave it a once-over. Second round done. This felt like exam revision only.

Then I decided to segregate. Shampoo first. Some 50 varieties they had, okay? And different sizes also. How am I supposed to predict how much shampoo I will use? Why so many sizes in the hostel store? No need.

So I decided to buy a big bottle. And decided to buy one according to hair type: normal. (my hair is dry but I’m too embarrassed to admit that to myself.) Sadly, that reduced the number of options to 40.

I was tired.

So I decided to choose soap.

Soap also some 50 variants they had. First I had to figure out if I wanted bar soap or body wash. Then I had to figure out scent that I wanted. Then I had to figure out if I had brand preference, or “skin type” preference.

Too much work.

So I decided to choose toothpaste.

See this was easy. They had Patanjali and Colgate. I have brand loyalty. So I picked Colgate. That too some Salt thing. Yum.

This soap and shampoo thing was a conundrum.

I walked out with the cheapest things in the shop so now I have Kesh Kanti shampoo and Sandalwood Soap.

I am going to smell like sanskaar for one month.

Watch out Gujarat. Mosranna is no longer NRI.

The most amount of physical activity I do during exams is walking to the washroom.

That is incredibly, incredibly sad. Wow.

Just think about that for a minute. Let me paint you the picture.

My physical exercise during examinations is realizing I need to pee, walking 50 metres to the toilet, peeing and walking 50 metres back. Maybe, 10 times a day?

That’s 1 kilometre covered in walking to the toilet guys.

I walk 600 metres to go write my exam and come back.

And 400 metres at most, per meal.

It appears that the importance of the washroom in my life can no longer be understated. Today, it provides me relief, an arena for me to do my vocal exercises and tune my baritone, and the opportunity to shed calories (in more ways than one).

Man, juvenile humour is the best.

Mosaranna out.

Haila we have somehow reached 50 blogposts. Are we proud and/or happy? Not one bit. Why? Because we are writing 7 blogposts a day almost once a week. Too much thinking and too much typing for one day. Hand cramps happen off.

There’s this amazing value to repetition that is intangible. I can’t explain it, but if you notice, this blog has a recurring pattern: I will crib about not writing, I will write, then I will crib about curd rice or rasam, eventually I will make some funny musings, and then I will stop writing.

That cycle repeats itself. It’s programmed in my brain. I actually want to do a statistical breakdown of how many of my posts mention rasam (and, in what contexts.) I will develop the code to do this for me. I’m too lazy to read my own posts and search for these words.

Similarly, I enjoy electronic music because of how repetitive it can get. I was explaining this to someone the other day – and that repetition, it’s what gets my brain going. It’s why I really love listening to things on loop while working. Not the same song, maybe, but definitely the same playlist.

That way your brain subconsciously enjoys what it’s listening to, while not impacting the way you’re working.

At this juncture, it’s crucial to explain how useful wireless technology is. I did not understand how much I would love it till I received a pair, but wireless headphones are the greatest thing mankind has invented. I’m calling that today. I can listen to stuff playing on my laptop while going for a walk to fill water and I think that is beautiful.

I can listen to stuff on my laptop while lying on my bed! Without wires.

I love it.

Okay also here is scientific explanation for why our brains love repetition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzzmqUoQobc

In continuation of this e-mail thing.

Today I received an e-mail that started off with “Dear Mosaranna”, and I cried. I have half a mind of writing back to my friend saying this has caused emotional trauma, but the tears are purely of joy because I am uncertain of when I can eat good mosaranna again. 😦

I also have half a mind to change the name of this blog to Mosaranna’s Musings. Maybe when I’m older and have more sophisticated thoughts aside from “How many hours can I spend on my bed today?”

Imagine the evolution. Curd Rice Daily to Mosaranna’s Musings: The Evolution of an NRI who embraces his Kannadiga self.

Wow. I’d buy that book.

Tell me if you want a signed copy now itself. Otherwise you will have problems later. Then don’t come crying saying “Oh but we are your friends please give us signed copy.”

I am not Congress party. I will not show this favouritism.

Thinking of writing this book.

So I scrolled full e-mail and it ends with Uppinkai.

*whimper*

*tears*

I really need to get some home food in me soon. But you know what the worst part is! I’m not homesick. I just want access to that food. I wish I had a kitchen. Would’ve 100% made food.

 

I think e-mails are the greatest form of social communication that are available to mankind. Granted, receiving a letter still gives me more happiness, but it’s rare that people actually take time out to send letters.

Hence, I will do a millennial thing (wow, I’m using youth lingo), and compare the joy of receiving a letter to the joy of e-mailing.

I still recall how overjoyed I was at registering for my first e-mail account. Back in the day, Yahoo! was still the top search engine and the default on Internet Explorer if you used Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo Messenger. My grandfather had a Yahoo! account, and as a consequence, considering that he was responsible for my technology education, I ended up getting one too.

That sequence of events is one I remember very, very clearly.

So, it’s 2003/04, right? And Tata’s chilling in Dubai on what I think is his second trip to the city. We’ve just come back from a walk, and I’m drinking juice on the green sofa we have (which my parents would have really not appreciated), and watching Magic’s Greatest Secrets: Revealed, while it’s being recorded on a VHS Tape on AXN. Post that, we opened up the laptop, and I got around to doing some Typing Tutor. I detested it, but I pretended to enjoy it because it gave me a chance to play around on the laptop – which, at that age was all I wanted. I think Typing is one of those things my generation picked up pretty automatically, as opposed to the previous generation learning from a typewriter and immediately adapting those skills to the keyboard layout we have today. But that’s for another time.

On that day, Tata decided it was time for me to get an e-mail ID. I was so pumped. I could do so much (I didn’t know what, but the excitement of something new was real.) We opened up Yahoo! and he asked me whether I wanted a “yahoo.com” ID or not. I rejected the idea instantly. Then I saw a “yahoo.co.uk” option. Being the Anglophile I am, there was no way I wasn’t going to get me one of those. So I did. And that’s where my interwebs journey began.

A couple of years later, my dad moved to India, and he was on Gmail – so for the sake of convenience, I decided to open an account there as well. This was back when Gmail had the “XXXX GB of space (and counting….)” advertisement on the sign-up page – to try to get us to sign-up. I fell for the bait, hook, line & slinger. And Gmail opened up my world like nothing else had.

My first RuneScape account (of 5), my Club Penguin, my SoundCloud. Everything was linked to it. I didn’t get many mails back then – just a lot of GTalk chats. But every single mail was one I spent time reading.

Which brings me to my point. Nowadays, I don’t read half the mail I get. Because it’s useless spam I’m unable to unsubscribe from. Like Jabong.

I bought 1 pair of shoes 5 years ago for a classmate’s birthday. And I haven’t been able to unsubscribe from “Summer Stylezz” since. My life, man.

So receiving e-mails from people makes me really happy. Especially ones I need to communicate responses to in order to continue the conversation. I’m happy to report I have two e-mail friends, whom I no longer WhatsApp (except for “When can we meet?” or “Are you buying me idli today?”).

If you want to be a part of this clique, I invite you to send me an e-mail. The ID is tejasrao11@gmail.com

Go for it!

It’s exciting to procrastinate writing a daily blog. It’s also very tiring, mind you, but it’s exciting because sitting down to write offers me a chance to think about how wonky my week has been that I haven’t given myself enough time to type, what, 100 words or so on this digital space that is mine.

I have no excuse.

It took me a prolonged period of time to understand what Independence Day actually meant. As an NRI, I don’t think you fully learn to appreciate Indian history – in any sense, pre-colonial, and post-colonial, unless you study in an Indian school – and I wasn’t one of those NRI kids.

My History lessons focused on personalities – I ended up learning about the lives of Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Napoleon, and so on, while slowly picking up the context and constructing a timeline around when they were born. It helped me understand a bit of how the world developed. I thought I’d have to work significantly harder after moving back to India, but my school ended up teaching me Ancienct Greek and Roman History, and not much about India per se. After which I dropped History altogether.

Essentially, for an extended period I was ignorant about the circumstances that caused a day like “Independence Day” to be “celebrated”. What was worse, was that coming from the UAE, you celebrate “National Day”, which is sort of like a Foundation Day where each Emirate leader decided to come together and put aside their differences. It seems pretty peaceful to a kid. No revolutions, very little bloodshed in the process. Just a commonality of vision.

And, for a very, very long time, I felt that most countries were “birthed” the same way, so to speak.

That began to change when I slowly figured out how ignorant I really was. I couldn’t identify national leaders, couldn’t identify my own national identity. Today, I’ve learnt to scoff and understand that I find the “nationalism” business (it is a business to me) a little overrated. But when I was in 11th, I found it really confusing. Especially having lived here for 4 years (at the time) – I didn’t understand why exactly I couldn’t identify with these things.

So, I read. Which seemed like the only answer to the confusion in my head. I think my mum was equal parts confused, equal parts proud because I started picking up heavy non-fiction books around 12th especially.

My reading solved very little, initially, to be very frank. Yeah, sure, I now had a more concrete timeline of events, but not much else.

To me, Independence Day was still this day flag hoisting happened, I sung my national anthem, ate some sweets, and then went home to watch “Gandhi” (the Ben Kingsley movie), because of course, that was one of the only English movies every single channel would choose to run. My other picks were either Swades or Chak De! India.

Exemplars of the national spirit.

But other fond memories I associated with Independence Day were things like visiting my grandmother’s old college – because I used to inevitably be in India everytime on Independence Day. I’d fight with them about what to wear, because all I wanted to wear was something comfortable. (That I had worn 109482 times on the trip already.)

Anyway, I digress.

Today, I’ve learnt Independence Day has become this day of over-enthusiasm. Over-enthusiasm both in terms of “patriotism” and in terms of the criticism people choose to establish against the country. It’s this mass day where one half of the population believes it’s the best day to tell India exactly what remains to be achieved, while the other half of the populace believes nobody should tell India how to live her life.

And that’s the problem, for me.

I think experiences like nationalism and patriotism and these concepts are things that occur differently to different people. A country is an identity that is thrust upon you when you are born – and you choose to embrace it (or not) as you grow and change. It shouldn’t be something that is forced, nor something that is given a singular direction. No one group or community should ideally be allowed to dictate how a person chooses to celebrate his or her identity.

And this is true across all forms of identity – not exclusive to Independence Day.

I know that sounds supremely idealistic, but it’s what my brain believes.

The crucial thing to remember however, is that History has taught us the identity of a few national leaders – so much so that we often forget the others who participated in the Independence struggle, and what their stories are. Rani Gaidinliu is an excellent example (thank you, 3000.)

On Independence Day, it’s a useful reminder that a lot of people had to fight for our freedom from colonial rule.

And a useful reminder that there are certain freedoms guaranteed to us as a result.

How you choose to celebrate and find your national identity is something unique to you. Just try not to hurt people in the process, is all.

Additionally, on Independence Day, it’s probably useful to remember that being a colony had lots of pros and cons. India would’ve been very different without the Brits – and recognizing that has helped me in some ways. Maybe it’d help you too.

Happy Independence Day, folks.